I was given a character (The Shrew) and a setting (the Academy of Heavenly Business) in my creative writing class. This is the story I created.
It is satirical, but only slightly. It is alright if you don't pick up on it, but this is kind of based on the red scare in the 1950s. On that note, I give you The Red Shrew.
. . . . .
It was another cold and misty evening in the atmosphere surrounding the Academy of Heavenly Business. The Shrew scuttered about on the tiled floors, splashing through a puddle of water, and, as he did so, he caught his reflection—eternally frizzy hair and subtly dotted fur that clung to his thin body, and the bald patches where his wrinkly, gray skin shone through.
The Shrew shrank back. Moments later, the shadow shortened and became a figure, a short, broad-faced, blond girl with a wide gap between her front teeth.
“Hello, you,” she smirked.
The Shrew coiled up and snarled, but Victoire continued to smirk. She raised a shiny dagger and prodded The Shrew with it. The Shrew rose up on his stumpy hind legs and hissed through his long, sharp teeth, but he led the girl through the winding corridors with the shimmering and insubstantial walls. The lights above appeared to slink farther and farther up as the floor angled down into the lower tunnels. The tunnels branched off.
The Shrew submissively turned into a tunnel that had been hidden in shadows previously.
After about a hundred meters into steadily darkening clouds, The Shrew and Victoire reached a heavy wooden door. Victoire advanced and knocked hard. Once. The Shrew thought about making a run for it, but previous experience made him stay. His patches of baldness stung in remembering that punishment.
“Enter,” came a voice from within the vaulted chamber.
Victoire opened the door and kicked The Shrew forward with her steel-toed boot. The Shrew slid forward, his head snapping back as he came to an abrupt stop against a black desk. A hooded man stepped towards The Shrew, taking care to tread upon his exposed claws, curled upon the stone floor.
“Come, now, Shrew, let’s not be difficult.”
Victoire sniggered as the man spoke.
“Victoire, dear, I do believe this piece of filth may need some persuasion,” he spoke softly, even as The Shrew made to stand up.
Victoire smiled a wide grin, her gapped teeth overlapping her fat, stretched lip. She advanced on The Shrew with a sizzling poker in her pudgy hand.
The Shrew held up a scarred paw.
From the candlelight that was flickering and casting shadows on his hand, his missing two fingers were obvious.
“Scum,” Victoire chortled. She stepped forward, brandishing her stick of misfortune, but the hooded man held up a gnarled and gloved hand. Victoire stopped immediately.
“We shall give him a chance, my pet.”
Victoire’s face fell.
“Now, then, Shrew, what do you have to say?” The man said, amused, obviously not expecting an answer, for he had a slightly perverted smile playing on his lips that The Shrew had learned preceded pain.
“Pity,” the man murmured.
Victoire darted forward in a flash her size would portray as impossible, and slammed a chain-ling-gloved hand into The Shrew’s ribs. The Shrew did not cry out in pain; he did not want to give these people the satisfaction. The man’s face fell slightly, but Victoire’s lit up at the prospect of more torture.
“So, creature, will you speak? Will you give me the information you possess and that I so dearly desire? Will you make it possible for us to release you?”
The Shrew knew this was a lie. He would be killed when he no longer had any use to this organization.
In answer, The Shrew spat a mouthful of blood onto the dusty floor.
“Pity,” the man repeated.
The schedule proceeded. The Shrew was asked questions that he would not answer. In not answering, he would receive more punishment, but this was an unnecessary imprisonment. The Shrew could tell the people nothing. If he could, he would not have. The Shrew had a conscience, and would not have betrayed those who had given him his life back…
It was a clear morning, one that could not have foretold of the day that would follow. The Shrew was outside, skipping rope with his brother and sister. Inside, his mother brewed coffee and soothed her husband’s financial woes. In an event so sudden that The Shrew would have missed it if not for the blaring and flashing sirens, suited officials swooped down on the cheerful yellow house. The officials charged into the house, tearing through the game of skip-rope in their haste.
Moments later, The Shrew’s parents were carted into the waiting caravans in shackles, hiding their faces in their hands, tears streaming through under their palms.
It was several days of fear and speculation before the three children were collected. They were brought to a home for forgotten and forsaken children, where The Shrew met The Opossum. The Opossum was smart, but shy. He barely approached people, but the instant The Shrew came through the iron-clad doors of the home, he knew that he could trust The Shrew, even with his most trusted secret.
“There’s a rebellion growing. It’s all underground. I’m going to run away from here and join. I’ve been planning for weeks,” he whispered to The Shrew late one night in the supply closet.
“What do you mean, resistance?” The Shrew asked. “What are we resisting against?”
The Opossum smiled grimly. “Yes, you’ve been believing the lies, that everything’s all right. That’s what the officials want you to think, to believe.”
“Then what’s the truth?” demanded The Shrew.
“The truth,” pondered The Opossum. “This underground project, called the Alliance of a Shared Community for All, or A.S.C.A., works on happiness and equality and prosperity for all. Freedom for all. No one goes without, even those undeserving. I suppose it sounds too good to be true, but I must find out if it’s true. I must!” Tears shone in his eyes.
“Why did you have to come here?” asked The Shrew suddenly. He had never asked this of The Opossum.
“My parents were killed by the ones in charge. The ones whom I shall destroy.” He vowed solemnly.
The Shrew merely stared.
“So, my friend?”
“What?”
“Will you join me? Will you help me tear apart the people who have torn us apart?”
The Shrew thought. It was true that he was angry, but his parents were not dead, he didn’t think, and this resistance sounded just as bad as their opposition.
“Think, my friend, think. Think.” The Opossum whispered, and he drifted away slowly back to his room.
The Shrew did not have to think long.
It was early in the morning, and The Shrew was already awake. He was anxious, for this was the day he would get a new family. His brother and sister were already in a black caravan when he marched down to the courtyard and received a shock. The Opossum was also in the caravan, his seat belt on.
“Are you coming, too, then?” The Shrew inquired.
“Leave while you can! They’ve killed your parents! DON’T GET IN THE CAR! IT’S THEM, SHREW, IT’S THEM!” A man in a suit reached over from the front seat and struck The Opossum across the cheek, leaving one of his eyes purple and swelling rapidly.
“Shrew!” The Opossum called thickly, his cheeks filled with blood.
The Shrew thought slowly. He was still working through the shock of this.
“NO! I have to save you and my family!” The Shrew yelled.
“It’s too late! Leave me! Now! Join the resistance! Join—.” The man in a suit choked him, and all that was left was a gargling of The Opossum as he tried to breathe through the bile in his throat.
“NOOOO!” The Shrew shrieked as another man in the front seat took out a machine gun and shot through his two gagged siblings, who crumpled in a waterfall of blood.
“Join—it—.” The Opossum choked. He was still.
The caravan sped away.
The Shrew ducked into an alley to hide, and moments later, he heard sirens and yells, and could only assume the officials were back to look for him. His last conscious memory before he stumbled off to hide in a dumpster was of sobbing and biting his paw to keep from crying out from the pain of losing his entire family and The Opossum.
It seemed like he had been woken from a long sleep when a woman in a cloak grabbed The Shrew and wrapped him in a wool blanket. She had a mask across the lower half of her face, but her eyes could be seen, and they looked sympathetic.
The Shrew woke up fully a week later in a sterile white room.
He was informed that all the passengers in the car, and also his parents, had been killed. The Shrew was suddenly full of a vengeful fury. His paws knotted up into fists, and a monitor beeped as his heart rate accelerated.
The Shrew learned that he was in the Academy of Heavenly Business, owned and operated by the A.S.C.A. He became an active member, and lost one finger in a battle against The Opossum’s uncle, who was opposed to the ideals of A.S.C.A. The Shrew left him bleeding in the rain.
The Shrew learned to be self-reliant and uncaring. People regularly died working for the A.S.C.A., and it would not do for him to constantly be grieving.
Insensibly, The Shrew did make one good friend. The Mouse became his friend and mentor on the job. She was small but fierce, and spent a good part of each day sharpening her glistening white teeth.
It had been a difficult day. The officials had learned about the A.S.C.A.’s possession of nuclear weaponry, and decided the time for negotiations had passed.
The walls of the Academy shook around The Shrew and The Mouse. Dust fell from the ceiling, coating The Mouse’s white fur in brown. The officials were attempting to break into the Academy of Heavenly Business, and were so far making great headway. The Shrew’s acquaintances and co-workers lay dead or dying around him, and the floors were coated in a sticky red liquid that The Shrew did not want to think about.
The Mouse looked over The Shrew’s shoulder, terror in her eyes. The Shrew saw the reflection of officials in her burgundy eyes, and knew the officials had succeeded.
The Mouse squeezed The Shrew’s hand fiercely and whispered, “I trust you,” and she took out a dagger and sliced out The Shrew’s tongue. The Shrew saw the tongue writhing upon the floor before he felt the pain of The Mouse’s attack. He understood, though, vaguely, that she was trying to keep secrets secret and to protect him.
The Shrew was dragged from his knees by an official in a black hood, but he stretched out his arm to The Mouse and tears fell from his eyes as he watched an official slit her throat.
This situation brought with it an extreme sense of déjà vu. The Shrew remembered the deaths of his parents, his brother, his sister, his colleagues, of The Opossum. But most clearly, he remembered the kidnapping of his siblings and The Opossum. They, too, he had had to leave behind by their choice. They, too, had sacrificed themselves for him. They, too, had been killed at the mercy of these officials.
This is officialism. He thought bitterly. He would never speak again.
Now, as The Shrew was being tortured by the hooded man and Victoire, he remembered his life and his famiy. He remembered Opossum. He remembered Mouse. He remembered all those who had died for him. They would not have died in vain. The Shrew would repay them, but not by dying for these two and what they stood for.
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