They were walking back from a date of drinking orange wine at Vin Psychique—a splurge on their budget—when Grace Walker told her new girlfriend, Kate, she loved her. Kate grinned and nodded, squeezing Grace’s arm tighter.

A week later, on her way home from the art supply store, Grace spotted the big crow on a park path—improbably serene, resting sweetly on the damp concrete plastered with autumn leaves. 

Grace approached and saw, sheltered under its tail, a dead mouse. Was the crow eating it? No, its bearing was vaguely protective. Naturally impulsive, Grace tried to pick up the crow. The bird allowed it. She placed the crow in her box of art supplies, ripped off a cardboard flap, and scooped up the mouse too.

Back at her second-floor apartment, she put the crow and its furry companion in a dog crate left behind by her ex-boyfriend, arranging it so she could watch the bird as she painted. The crow resumed its stance, sheltering the mouse beneath its tail as though incubating an egg. She sent a picture to her ex-boyfriend and Kate. The ex replied, “Wow, cute!” Kate merely liked the picture. Grace crumbled some bread and fed the bird, then set about painting one of her sprawling, kaleidoscopic abstracts.

When she woke the next morning, the crow lay dead. The mouse carcass was gone. Grace assumed the crow must’ve eaten it before expiring (maybe spoiled mouse meat). Then she heard a faint scratching at the rear of the crate. Peering deeper, she spotted the mouse. She used her phone’s flashlight to illuminate the depths. The mouse’s eyes glowed deep red in the glare. Its nose wriggled. She removed the crow, raining a few downy black feathers. Its chest had been gnawed open.

Kate came over that evening, eyes smoldering, manner aloof and mysterious—everything that got Grace’s blood pumping. Grace told her what’d happened. Kate didn’t mirror Grace’s astonishment. 

“You shouldn’t keep it inside,” Kate said. “Mice started the plague.” 

They’d had a couple glasses of Sancerre and were moving to the bedroom to fuck, when Kate said, “Can you do something about that creature? I can smell it.” Grace looked into the crate—noting the mouse’s still faintly glowing eyes and jittering nose—before carrying it to the sideboard, opening the window a few inches, and pushing the crate close for air.

In the morning, Grace woke before Kate, slipping out to the living room in the morning chill. She went to close the window but found it blocked by the partially consumed carcass of an orange tabby, the cat’s neck pressed against the metal grid of the crate’s door at an unnatural angle.

Kate loved cats. She could not see this.

Grace fetched a plastic shopping bag from her recycling, lifting the cat inside, removing the collar before sneaking into the hall and cramming the body down the trash chute. The collar confirmed: Roy, from next door, often seen patrolling the ledge outside the windows. Grace left the collar at her neighbor’s door, feeling shame, chiding herself for not seeing the warning signs.

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A week passed and she gave the mouse no more opportunities for violence. But in the hours after midnight, no matter the amount of kitchen scraps she pushed into the crate, the creature began shrieking, hurling itself against the grated door with nightmarish force. Grace bought earplugs and started drinking gin before bed. 

She was having girlfriend trouble, partially due to her hesitancy at having Kate over, but mostly because they’d begun fighting about what Kate called Grace’s “meekness,” particularly at her job as a florist’s assistant, where Grace’s boss often left her working late, alone, producing funeral arrangements. 

“She’s exploiting you,” Kate said. “You should raise hell.”

“What if she fires me? Job searches are dreadful.”

“This is such a turnoff.”

Kate still intrigued her, but Grace’s kindness could be stretched only so far. She was slower to respond to Kate’s texts, blaming it on preparations for her upcoming art show.

The mouse piled its food against the crate door, luring the live bugs it preferred to gorge upon. And—though Grace couldn’t prove it—the more it fed, the redder its eyes glowed. 

One sunny Tuesday, the dead cat’s grieving owner had a seizure. As Grace watched the woman being wheeled out, she grew convinced it was the mouse’s doing. 

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On the night of Grace’s art opening, Kate no-showed. Grace paced the gallery, distracted by their raging text battle, drinking tequila from the bar. By midnight she was wrecked and she’d blocked Kate’s number.

She woke feeling on the brink of death, not remembering how she’d gotten home. She was lying in bed, mustering the fortitude to rifle the fridge for leftovers, when she felt a breath of cold air. 

Peering out the bedroom door, she saw the window was ajar and—to her horror—the crate was back against it. She inched forward.

The crate door was open. The mouse gone. And quite obviously—from the way the door was folded back and the cage was shoved against the window—it had not escaped. In a moment of drunken mourning, Grace had released the cinder-eyed creature. Beside the crate, she’d placed Kate’s left-behind sweatshirt, still fragrant with sweat and perfume. 

She didn’t leave her apartment. Crows gathered in the street. But after three days she admitted there was no undoing it—she’d have to go on with life. She refused thoughts of Kate. Avoided the local news. She’d done nothing wrong—the mouse was something she’d found. Not her creation. She’d only fed it.