Work Text:
When the door to the shed closed, the thing inside the jar on the shelf, which until then had looked like a crumpled, discarded sock, unrolled itself. It was indeed a sock; but the creature wearing the sock as a cape was a tiny little man with a long fuzzy tail that unrolled out from under him and twitched angrily.
“Teach him to keep me in a jar,” Kellen Cobblestone muttered angrily as he pressed himself against the side of the jar. “Teach him to call me a mouse. I’ll fill his shoes with glass.”
He threw himself against the other side, jumping up at the same time. The jar wobbled on its edge, then fell with a clunk, and he caught himself on his hands and knees, grinning.
It began to roll, helped along by his weight, and fell.
He was already feeling a sense of triumph as he was falling, because the plan was so clear in his mind and he was so prepared for it and it was already working. He would grab the piece of broken glass that was easiest to hold, and hide himself somewhere near the door, so that the next time it opened he could be away before the big stomping fool even knew what had happened.
The jar hit the floor and shattered. Before Kellen had time to even pop up out of his roll and look over the pieces of glass, the door opened.
The plan disappeared and instinct took over in a split second. Kellen took off across the concrete floor and felt the vibrations as the human pursued him- one step, two steps, and the third came down in front of him, cutting off his path. He gasped and spun just to face another towering foot. Then the hand came down, covering him in darkness for a moment, and he was lifted off the ground by his tail.
He screamed. The human’s huge, booming laugh overpowered the sound and all but deafened him as the hand lifted him higher, higher, until he was looking right into the human’s eyes.
“Poor little mouse,” said the human. “So stupid.”
“I’ll kill you!” He tried to climb up his own tail to bite the fingers that held him; the hand gave him a shake, and he dropped back down with a yelp of pain.
“Squeak, squeak,” said the human, beginning to swing him back and forth lazily while he kicked and cursed. Centrifugal force was pushing all his blood into his head, and the world was a blur; he couldn’t see a thing until it suddenly ended and he fell against cold glass.
The sound of a lid screwing on was deafening inside the jar.