Ferret Story NUMBER 7

FERRET FICTION FRENZY ends with the last story! You can read about how it started here.

Please welcome our 7th and final FERRET AUTHOR, Harrison Pierce. When not posthumously stalking Kurt Vonnegut or watching the Oklahoma City Thunder play basketball, Harrison can be found in the wine section of the grocery store or harassing the bar wench for a pint of an obscure Oregonian micro-brew. Also, don't be surprised if he spits out the mass market, corporate coffee you just poured him, he's a bit of a coffee-snob jerk.

Ferret Story NUMBER 7 by Harrison Pierce

An Ideal Idol

Shfft. Pfflnk. Shfft. Pfflnk. Shfft. Pfflnk.

Two and a half foot down, still hemorrhaging into the cloth Michael wrapped me in, my last few moments are played out by the slow jazz drum rhythm of the shovel casting dirt on a sole-less shoebox. It wasn’t my fault. Or maybe Darlene, the daughter, said it wasn’t her fault. Whatever the case I am lying here, bound by a cloud soft, albeit, dirty bath towel while still being just alive to taste the warm copper in my own blood, being lowered into a night grave with an earthen dirge calling me home.

And for what, you ask? A locket, you ask? A goddamn necklace? No. I tell you it was more than that. It was the miracle that made up everything of life. The way the dim bedside light entered Darlene’s eyes and radiated from the top of her pubescent filled sleeper shirt, you would have thought that she was the guardian of all that was good and decent in the world. She never removed it, unless to do what I can only say was to caress more glow out of it before she opened the fleur-de-lis laden oval. She cried every time. Every time I knew that it was because the images inside could only be the world presented in the poetry of a spring sparrow’s return home after the long winter’s droll presentation of life’s recession.

Everything else I have ever found to have the light of life gleaming from it now lay barren among the piles of useless pocket and sofa treasure beneath the dining room plate chest. No luster, no beauty to share with me anymore. Just four different sizes dinge, dirt and grimy metal. Every night I got to play witness to this display of selfish mockery to the world. Tonight, I decided it was my turn.

Making it to her wouldn’t be so hard tonight, as it wasn’t any other night. Chad, her brother and my keeper, wasn’t the brightest of fellows. He wasn’t very tall, and as far as I can tell, intelligence in their realm is directly proportionate to height. Being that his black bat and red bird bed burdened duvet was only waste high to him, it makes since that he would think a pin latch would suffice on my door. One would have thought that Michael, being the tallest of the three, would have better sense to teach Chad better care and preventative measurements.

Fifteen minutes after the lights go out, I hear the Chad’s higher register voice stop asking the ceiling for favors and spring myself out like those fellows from the cages on the rock that Michael loves watching. Down the hallway, past the grey glow of older men talking about socialism that holds Michael frozen, partially in the floor, partially in the chair and, from the smell, fully in the bottle sitting next him, I make it to the room that holds the golden and silver lily that will bring me the happiness I had thought came only from round pictures of dead men. I digress; maybe that’s why those who are tall enough to know how to get them throw them away so quickly.

I slip into the moonbeam of a cracked door. There she is. There it is. My whole life has been meaningless up until now. Up until I get to hold the warmth and loveliness that brings the tears to Darlene’s face, even now as she has finished caressing it and lies on her back, holding the eternal flame in one hand, allowing the chain to flow down the other. It’s now or never. I make my scamper to the end of the bed and jump up. It is all happening so fast that I can’t register much outside the sound of my heart pounding so fast that it may explode.

IT’S MINE!! I have one paw clasped white-knuckle tight around the small piece of sun born joy while the other four are flailing through the air, almost as if I were swimming my way down to the ground weightlessly, aimlessly.

“Hey!!” I hear her yell. “Cherokee, NO!!!”

“Cherokee?” Fuck all if I hadn’t forgotten about her unholy terror of a big ass dog, my sworn and mortal enemy. And was he ever the most worthy opponent. I had managed to elude him all these nights, for months, because of the lacking of grace that the canine species possesses. What he lacked in grace, he made up for in agility and a steel trap jaw that managed to lock down before the locket, my only love in the world, hit the floor to shine it’s lovely, saintly face on me in favor, one last time as the world around it disappeared with Darlene’s rousing calls for help.

Was it worth it? You bet your ass.

Shfft. Pfflnk. Shfft. Pfflnk. Shfft. Pfflnk.

Shfft. 

P.S.: This is the last Ferret Story. If you want to indulge in more ferretness, here is Ksenia's Ferret Story that started it all (NUMBER 0?). And here you can find more amazing ferret stories written by different authors: Ferret Story NUMBER 1, Ferret Story NUMBER 2, Ferret Story NUMBER 3, and Ferret Story NUMBER 4, and Ferret Story NUMBER 5, and Ferret Story NUMBER 6.

Ferret Story NUMBER 6

FERRET FICTION FRENZY continues! You can read about how it started here.

Please welcome our 6th FERRET AUTHOR, J.C. Lillis, a pop culture junkie, serial fangirl, thrift-store art enthusiast, and Catholic school survivor. J.C. Lillis writes with both feet off the ground at all times. She never trusted ferrets. Her first YA novel, How to Repair a Mechanical Heart, came out on September 21st 2012.

Ferret Story NUMBER 6 by J.C. Lillis

The Picture Window

"There's a ferret on the front lawn," said Bob Smedley. "Two of them."

He stood at the picture window in this thick brown tie and a dress shirt stained with Sanka, leaving a ring of nervous taps in the condensation. They were ferrets, all right. Bob was not the sort of person whose eyes deceived him. He knew the long weaselly bodies, the pin-sharp fangs, the stripe of black across the faces, as if they were wearing masks. What he didn't expect was the ring of blood around each tiny mouth, and the way the little beasts moved. He anticipated frolicking. But these. . .these seemed to shamble.

April, his wife of twenty years, sipped weak tea from a chipped china cup in their neat, freshly Endusted dining room. She barely heard Bob. She preferred looking through back windows, her gaze caressing the skeletons of her prized summer rose bushes. She watched a cardinal hop from branch to naked branch, looking for someplace to settle.

"That's fine, Bob," she murmured. "Don't forget your lunch."

Bob knew much was on the line today. He was up for a coveted promotion at the stapler factory. All his life he'd took pride in his job, in being part of a company that helped stick things together. Now, as he watched five more ferrets stumble into the fray, their eyes wild and unfocused and their paws stained with red, he felt himself coming apart.

"April," he said. "I really think you should see this."

"I heard you," his wife sighed, wiping at the ghost of an old water ring. Bob never remembered coasters. "Will you stop and get some milk on the way home?"

Four more ferrets lurched onto the lawn, dragging the remains of the Rogersons' Yorkshire terrier. Bob just blinked. How easy it was to acclimate to savagery, to accept casual destruction at the end of breakfast hour. He felt shipwrecked. If only he could talk to April. If only she would hear him. If only she would stop scrubbing the breakfast dishes before he was done, and correcting his use of whom, and putting her hair in pin curls at night.

The words gathered inside him. Then, thunder.

"FERRETS," he heard himself shout, his voice cutting through the hum of the dishwasher, the saccharine swoon of Bobby Vinton on the radio. "FERRETS FERRETS FERRETS. FERRRRRRRREEEEETTTTTTTSSS!!"

Now he had done it. Surely he had.

April sighed and replaced her teacup in its saucer. "Bob," she said. "We don't need to talk about ferrets. We aren't savages." 

She got up from the table and went to the kitchen. He heard a familiar rustle: tuna fish sandwich dropping into paper bag.

"You're going to be late," he heard, faintly.

The ferrets--thirty now, maybe forty--had finished their congregation, and now they had turned their primitive attention to the Smedley house: specifically, the picture window. When they reached it, the tapping was ruthless and efficient. Within thirty seconds, the first small crack had spidered across the spotless pane. Dishes clinked in the faraway sink. Bob watched the ferrets work, their mouths a terror of want, their bloody paws a frenzy of focus. He admired that. You had to. Idly, he wondered what death by ferret would feel like, and if his church-promised afterlife would contain a fresh wife with a taste for hot-air balloon rides and monster movies, for spontaneous popcorn and midnight picnics by some celestial lake.

When they came for Bob--claws battening to his chest, teeth tearing into his thick brown tie--he was smiling. 

P.S.: If you want to indulge in more ferretness, here is Ksenia's Ferret Story that started it all (NUMBER 0?). And here you can find more amazing ferret stories written by different authors: Ferret Story NUMBER 1, Ferret Story NUMBER 2, Ferret Story NUMBER 3, and Ferret Story NUMBER 4, and Ferret Story NUMBER 5.

Ferret Story NUMBER 5

FERRET FICTION FRENZY continues! You can read about how it started here.

Please welcome our 5th FERRET AUTHOR, Rachel, the one and only, sister, writer, artist, reader, laugher, lover of life, connoisseur of all things hilarious and ironic. Rachel is a nerd and requests you to "speak geek" to her.

Ferret Story NUMBER 5 by Rachel

I once had a ferret, his name was Billy. He was a cute little ferret and I loved him so much. Sometimes I’d get bullied at school and it just wasn’t fair. So I’d come home and he’d be right there! He comforted me, and occasionally told me off. I’d feed him nice treats and he just loved the peanut butter flavored ones.

One time, I came home and he wasn’t there. I panicked and ran all over the place! I finally found him. He’d escaped the cage, and hidden behind the couch. I’m glad I found him when I did, he was starting to eat a hole in the back of the couch and if he squirreled 9 errr, ferreted his way into the couch, I would have never found him! He loves to hide in things so I went to investigate the cause of such a horrific accident.

I had been redecorating his cage and it completely caught me off guard that he’d wiggled out of the bottom of the cage. I must have forgotten to snap a hook in place. 

So funny! I set in a little treat for him and watched him nibble. I finished all my homework and then thought about the theme of his enclosure. I’d decided to go for a rainbow theme.

The colored tubing that he could crawl in alternated color, Red, Orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, but I decided to add in more things, wheels and hammocks and ladders. I almost wished I was a ferret.

The other thing I loved about Billy was the fact that he loved to listen to music. I had music for all different kinds of moods and organized them on to playlists. The way I knew how they made him feel was by which toy he’d stand by.

And the way I knew that was because he was a trained ferret. Not only was he an awesome pet, but once he was a drug sniffing ferret.

To be totally honest with you, I still take him out for secret missions. I usually turn In whoever I find to the police anonymously. He’s like a super ferret.

I would totally believe that because even his markings make him look like he’s wearing a mask.

He loves superhero movies, and really movies of any kind except romantic-comedy. He just falls asleep to those.

He also helps me with homework. He clicks his claws on the table and ‘eeps’ when I don’t add something right. But oh how I dread finals and exams! Billy isn’t there to correct me for those, because he’s just a ferret.

One day, I lamented this to my mother and she looked shocked. She asked me how long Billy had been helping me with homework, and how much time I spent with Billy.

She asked me if I had any other friends. I didn’t, but I didn’t really mind. Then mom broke the craziest news to me. She said that Billy was a figment of my imagination.

Billy didn’t really exist after all.

P.S.: If you want to indulge in more ferretness, here is Ksenia's Ferret Story that started it all (NUMBER 0?). And here you can find more amazing ferret stories written by different authors: Ferret Story NUMBER 1, Ferret Story NUMBER 2, Ferret Story NUMBER 3, and Ferret Story NUMBER 4.

Ferret Story NUMBER 4

FERRET FICTION FRENZY continues! You can read about how it started here.

Please welcome our 4th FERRET AUTHOR, Shawn Urban, an itchy folktale trapped in a scientist who takes him over at the first writing opportunity or challenge. 

Ferret Story NUMBER 4 by Shawn Urban

Tale of the Three Little Ferrets (the true story; the pigs stole the credit) 

Once upon a time there were three little ferret jills. The biggest one was brown, the middle one white and the smallest was patchy like a brown and white jigsaw. They lived together with their mother in a hole in the tall pine snag by the bubbling creek. Life was good and they were very happy.

But they were getting too big and old to stay with their mother – mostly big, so one day she kicked the brown ferret out. After all, she was the biggest and took up most of the room. The brown ferret protested, but in vain.

“No, dear. Sorry. You are much too big to stay in this snag. Your sisters can not move about while you are in here. You must go and find a home of your own to live in.”

The brown ferret left figeting. Her mother had never kicked her out before and she had no place to go. She scampered awkwardly away from the snag, looking frequently back to see if her mother would change her mind. But her mother didn't. So up the hill and over the ridge she went to a part of the wood she only saw from on top of the snag. She did not know how to find a home and look desperately for one. Eventually she stumbled on a hole in a sod of grass still within sight of the tip of the snag. She decided to find shelter in there and soon fell asleep with her nose sticking out of the hole and the tip of the snag still in sight.

Days passed, and the two remaining sisters kept growing. Their mother eventually decided to kick the white ferret out.

“I am sorry dear, but you also have outgorwn the snag. You must venture out into the world and find your own home.”

The white ferret was hurt by her mother's insistance, but she too left the snag to find a new home. She was not as sad as the brown ferret had been, for she knew that she would have to leave home too. But she would miss her mother and the patched ferret. She traveled along the creek in beneath the ridge in hopes of living near the brown ferret. Eventually she found a hollow fallen log and decided to nestle there. Mushrooms grew in the log and service berries grew on a bush that grew from its roof. This would make a good home, she thought.

Still more days passed, and the mother ferret decided she had enough of these kits. She kicked the jigsaw ferret out and told her to find a home of her own.

The patchy ferret left without a complaint. She knew that she was meant to go and was expecting to be kicked out. She left over the ridge in another direction and eventually came to another snag in the middle of a slope of boulders. A woodpecker had drilled several holes in the snag and the patchy ferret found one to her liking. She scrambled in and discovered she had full view of her old snag, the sod where the bown ferret lived and the rotting log where the white ferret stayed.

For a while, the four ferrets lived happily in this arrangement.

Little did they know, however, that an evil greedy red squirrel lived in a tree nearby. And it wanted the mushrooms and berries in and on the log. And it wanted the hole in the sod where the brown ferret had moved to store its nuts and mushrooms and berries. Indeed, had the brown ferret been curious or cautious at all, instead of being depressed that she had been kicked out of the family, she might have noticed that the squirrel had left a substantial cache of food deep in the hole already. That is right, the brown ferret and the white ferret had moved into the squirrel's parlour. So, maybe the squirrel had reason to be evil and greedy, not to mention a bit ticked by these kits and their restless mother.

The squirrel wrung his hands and kept his tongue. But he grew angrier by the day. Eventually, he could take this insult no longer. He marched to the white ferret occupying its mushroom and berry log and began chastising it.

“Out. Out. Out of my log. You do not belong here. This is my mushroom and berry farm.” And he sprung on the log and started stomping and chattering on it.

The white ferret had no taste for the squirrel's chattering and stomping, so she bounded out of the log and ran to her sister's hole in the sod.

The squirrel stayed behind at the log and began harvesting its mushrooms and berries. He packed as many of these in his cheek as he could and skittered to his main food cache. There he found the white ferret trying to squeeze into the hole occupied by her brown sister. The hole was a bit more cramped than the snag had been, so the two sisters did not fit well together. In fact, they were actually stuck right in the entrance to the cache.

The squirrel spit out the mushrooms and berries packed in his cheeks and began to scold. “No. No. Out of my hole. You do not fit here. You do not belong. I store my food here. You need to go.” And he sprung on the sod and started stomping and chattering at the intruders. “Out. Out. Go. Go you squatters. Find some other place to live.”

The white ferret was happy to get out, but she was stuck. And the brown one, having just discovered the squirrel's cached food, wanted to stay, but also was stuck. The two tugged at each other trying to move out of the entrance.

This aggravated the squirrel, who was getting a little more than upset at this point. He left the two ferrets to their throes and scampered to their old snag. He bolted up the snag right above the hole where the mother ferret was resting and began chastising her. He dug in the nest and chased the mother out. The two wound around the snag, chasing each other, neither getting the upper hand. But by this time, the two sisters were beginning to peel. They were completely stuck and need help to get out of the sod.

The mother ferret sprinted to the ground and up the hill to the hole in the sod, chased closely by the squirrel. When she got to the hole she assessed the situation and began digging at the edged of the hole to widen it. The two sisters began wiggling and pulling. Suddenly, the white jill popped out and tumbled into her mother. They in turned tumbled into the squirrel and rolled over him.

This angered the squirrel and he chittered loudly at the three. He bolted into his hole beneath the brown ferret and chased her out and then chased the three up onto the slope where the patchy ferret lived. The ferrets crawled onto the snag and the squirrel scolded them from the boulders below. But he could not get the ferrets to leave the snag and eventually he gave up.

The four ferrets found that each of them could live in a separate hole in the new snag and they decided to live there peacefully together ... well, except for the constant chittering of the angry evil squirrel who was their neighbour.

P.S.: If you want to indulge in more ferretness, here is Ksenia's Ferret Story that started it all (NUMBER 0?), here is Ferret Story NUMBER 1, here is Ferret Story NUMBER 2, and here is Ferret Story NUMBER 3.

Ferret Story NUMBER 3

FERRET FICTION FRENZY continues! You can read about how it started here.

Please welcome our 3rd FERRET AUTHOR, Rachel Lane. Rachel is an insane Stay At Home Mom who's crazy enough to think she has enough time each day to homeschool two kids, cook, clean, quilt for others, and write on the side!!!

Ferret Story NUMBER 3 by Rachel Lane. 

With a stretch and a yawn, Jill saw the sunshine peeking out through a window a bit away.  Feeling stiff, she tried crawling to where she saw it … the water bottle.  It’s so pretty, and full of yumminess, Jill thought.  After a good long fill, she lifted her head and sniffed.

“Oh boy!  Karl is up!  It’s playtime!” she squealed, running to the other side of her bed.  She nudged her brother until he stood up.

“Jill, please, not until I have had something to drink,” he whined.  Slowly he crept over to the water bottle, then finally perked up enough to be kind.

“So where’s the newspaper for today?” he asked Jill.

“Same place it is every day, under our fort, silly,” Jill replied.  They ran around, playing tag, until they hear a far-off jingle of a bell.

“Yay!  The tall one is here!” Jill squealed.  Of the siblings, Jill enjoyed the small things in life.  She had a set routine, and longed for the moment the tall one came to see her.  He always had a pat on the back and snuck a treat for both of them, with a shh to his lips as he walked away.  This morning was no exception.

“Oh, Karl, look!  He brought us a new ball!  And it has a bell!  Tag, you’re it!”

Karl rolled his eyes, then realized if he didn’t play along, she’d throw the ball at him until he did. 

“Fine, you’ve got my attention until lunchtime.  Unless of course, somebody else comes along.”

“Who else would come along?  You’d scare them away with your grumpy attitude.”

“Hey, my glass might be half-full, but boy when I drink it, it’s the best stuff on earth.  Catch,” Karl explained, throwing the ball back at his sister.

Jill noticed several new people walking by her that morning.  As she saw little ones staring at her, she tried to wave at them, in hopes of a return wave.  After lunch, she felt energized enough to put on a show for her audience, a race to the top of her fort and back.  Karl though, tired from lunch and watching Jill goof off, promptly fell asleep.

As the sun was nearing the horizon, Jill knew bedtime was near, and that her favorite tall one to clean up.  There was an unexpected jingle from the door, and voices too.

“Mommy, are you for real?  I can get one for my birthday?”  a tiny voice asked.

“Yes, son, you’ve shown me how much you’ve grown up this year, and you’re ready for that responsibility.  Now go choose the best one of the bunch.”

Tommy walked up and down.  Suddenly a pair of brown eyes framed behind glasses stared at Jill.

“Mommy, this is it.  This is what I want.”

“Good choice.  Mr. Bates, we’d like to get this one.”

“Oh, Jill?  She’s my favorite.  You’ll love every minute with her.”

Jill felt confused.  A hand picked her up, taking her away from what she’d always known.  She was then in the arms of little Tommy, but rather than looking at his cute face, she looked back at the life she’d known – one with her best friend, Karl.  Trying to lurch forward, she almost fell out of Tommy’s arms.

“Mommy, she wants back in.”

“I think, son, she wants her brother, Karl.  They play all day long together.  I think she’s a little bit scared about leaving him there.”

“Mommy, we have to take both of them.  I don’t want Jill to be sad.”

“Tommy, are you sure?”

“Yes, Mommy, I’ve wanted a ferret all my life.  Having two of them would be the best day ever!”

When Jill saw Karl being lifted out of their home, she felt the same way Tommy did.

THE END

P.S.: If you want to indulge in more ferretness, here is Ksenia's Ferret Story that started it all (NUMBER 0?), here is Ferret Story NUMBER 1, and here is Ferret Story NUMBER 2.