And along came Miles...

Do you fly in the sky? Like a bird….Hmmm,” muttered Harold the ghost, wringing his delicate spiny-white hands together. A gold band, his only decoration, tried to escape off his marriage finger, and he kept pulling it up like a baggy pair of pants.

            He began again, in a nasal drone, “Do you fly in the sky? Like a ghost, who would love to be your host. We could hang in a tree…Ohhhh,” he bellowed while removing his hallow head from his translucence shoulders, “Oh, I couldn’t hang in a tree.  The mysteries that hath made me a ghost hath,” he sneezed, and continued in a hysterical high-pitched wail, “hath also locked me in this house where there aren’t any trees.”

            A packrat with pepper eyes that sparked red, a strong furry tail, spiraling whiskers, and a camel nose, dashed across the floor carrying a piece of cloth in his yellow tinted teeth, wondering about the horrendous noise coming from the attic. “Perhaps we have a ghost on the premises,” he said. He dived under a plank of floorboard rising up in the air like the last minutes of the sinking Titanic. Once in the safety of his hole, he dropped the cargo from his teeth, and covered his ears with the palms of his hands, the long claws forming a crown above his head.

            Harold took a deep breath, sighed, “Do you fly in the sky like a ghost who wants to be your host, we could hang in the rafters…” 

Harold drew in another long pathetic breath, and muttered, “what rimes with rafters and how do you spell rimes?  Rafters, brafters, crafters, drafters, drafters!”

            He picked his head up and plunked it back on his shoulders.  “I’ve got it,” he grinned, which didn’t look like a grin at all.  In fact, it was quite scary.  His two front teeth pointed at angles, and his fangs protruded, making him appear vampirish.

            “Do you fly in the sky like a ghost who would like to be your host; we could hang in the rafters like a couple of drafters, trying to build a house...”

            The mouse, actually packrat, Miles, came out of his hole, and standing up on his hind feet, eyes glazed red in rage, shouted (which really sounded like the squeak from one of those dog toys), “You. Upstairs. Shut up. You’re poetry is like the taste of arsenic, the smell of a cat about to attack, rap (which I abhor) to my ears. Why don’t you stop the ghastly poetry and conduct yourself in a more ghostly manner. For your elucidation, rime is spelled r-i-m-e.”

            “MOUSE” screamed Harold, at the top of what would have been his lungs had he lived, “in the rafters like a couple of drafters trying to build a house without any MOUSE.”  His head plummeted off his shoulders and rolled down the floor like a bowling ball, almost pinning Miles. Fortunately, before he could say Bob’s your uncle, Miles flew back into the safety of his hole.

            “Oh,” Harold said. “I’ve managed to conjure up a mouse with my wonderful poetry.”

            Miles scampered out of his hidey-hole, and stood up on his hind feet, glaring at Harold’s head. His elegant tail twitched back and forth on the dusty wooden floor. “I happen to be a packrat,” he said. “Miles Packrat, esquire, at your service.”