Chapter 22: The Rescue and Recovery
The bathroom light was too bright, a clinical white that made the glue on Mavis’s fur look like a grotesque, tar-like growth. Travis sat on the closed toilet lid, a washcloth draped over his knee, a small bowl of warm water and a bottle of olive oil on the edge of the sink beside him.
“Okay,” he whispered, more to himself than to the shivering form in his hand. “Just gonna clean you up.”
Mavis didn’t speak. He just watched Travis’s face, his dark eyes huge in the stark light, his breathing still too quick and shallow. Travis dipped a corner of the washcloth in the warm water, wrung it until it was just damp. With his other hand, he cradled Mavis, supporting his back.
“This first. Just warm.” He brought the cloth up, blotting gently at the fur around the glued areas on Mavis’s hand and tail. Mavis flinched at the first touch, a full-body tremor, but then went still, his gaze locked on Travis’s. The water loosened some of the surface grime, turning the glue cloudy.
“Now a little oil. It’ll break the bond.” Travis unscrewed the cap, the sound loud in the quiet room. He poured a single drop onto his fingertip, the golden sheen of it catching the light. He held it up. “Smell that? It’s just olive oil. Food. Not poison.”
He dabbed the oil onto the glued patches, working it in with infinite care, using the very edge of his fingernail to gently tease the matted fur apart. The glue resisted, then began to soften, losing its vicious grip. Travis worked in silence, his entire world reduced to the square inch of fur under his hands. The only sounds were the drip of the faucet and Mavis’s unsteady breaths.
As the last of the glue released from the sensitive tip of Mavis’s tail, a small, broken sound escaped him. Not a whimper. A sigh that seemed to come from the very bottom of him, carrying out a weight Travis could only imagine.
“There,” Travis murmured. “All gone.”
He rinsed the oil away with the warm cloth, patting the fur dry with a soft hand towel. The silky brown was damp and spiky in places, but it was clean. The skin beneath was pink, irritated, but unbroken. The physical evidence was fading. The other thing, the thing in Mavis’s eyes, remained.
Travis didn’t move to put him down. He carried him back to the bedroom, Mavis curled in the cup of his hand, a warm, damp weight. He sat on the bed, then leaned back against the headboard, pulling his knees up. He brought his hand to his chest, right over his heart.
“Feel that?” he said softly.
The steady, strong thump against his palm. Mavis shifted, turning his body so his back was against Travis’s shirt, his own small frame pressed to the rhythm. He uncurled slightly, one hand splaying out against Travis’s skin.
They stayed like that as the afternoon light deepened from gold to amber, then to the long, blue shadows of evening. Travis didn’t reach for his tablet. He didn’t check his phone. He just breathed, and let Mavis feel him breathing. The tremors slowly subsided. The frantic bird-heartbeat in his palm steadied, syncing gradually with his own.
When the room was nearly dark, Travis finally moved. He slid off the bed, went to the linen closet, and pulled out an old, worn flannel sheet. He brought it back, folding and tucking it into a small, dense nest on his own pillow. He lined it with a scrap of soft t-shirt.
“Here,” he said, placing Mavis gently into the center of it. “You’re staying right here tonight.”
Mavis looked from the nest to Travis’s face, then at the dark hole in the wall, its silicone ring a faint gleam in the dusk. He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shudder. He didn’t argue. He burrowed into the flannel, pulling the t-shirt fabric around his shoulders.
Travis got ready for bed in the dark, moving by touch. He slid under the covers, turning on his side to face the pillow. He could just make out the small mound of fabric, the curve of a furry back. He extended his hand, resting his index finger against the edge of the nest.
A moment later, he felt it. A small, careful touch. Then Mavis’s tail, still slightly damp, wound around his thumb, holding on with a quiet, desperate firmness. Travis closed his fingers, creating a loose cage of safety.
“The forest wasn’t glue,” Travis whispered into the darkness. His voice was rough. “It was just a bad picture. A coward’s picture. I’m sorry you saw it.”
From the nest came a rustle. Mavis’s voice was thin, but clear. “It felt real. In the dark, it all felt… sticky. Like the whole world was.”
“I know.”
“I couldn’t get free.”
“You’re free now.”
Silence. Then, so quiet Travis almost missed it: “Don’t let go.”
“Never.”
Travis lay awake for a long time, feeling the tiny pulses of grip around his thumb. He listened to Mavis’s breathing even out into sleep, a faint, whistling rhythm. He watched the moon trace a path across the floor. He thought about grey rectangles and the cold, dead feeling of compromise. He thought about the violent, screaming clarity of prying a friend from a trap.
Somewhere near dawn, he slept.
Sunlight, weak and winter-pale, filtered through the curtains. Travis woke with a stiff neck and a numb hand. He was still on his side, his arm stretched out. The nest on his pillow was empty.
A bolt of pure panic shot through him. He jerked upright, the sheets tangling around his legs.
Then he saw him.
Mavis was sitting on the windowsill, silhouetted against the bright grey sky. He was wrapped in the t-shirt scrap like a shawl, his tail curled around his feet. He was very still, just looking out at the bare branches of the oak tree.
Travis let out a long, shaky breath. He pushed the covers back and walked over, his footsteps silent on the wood floor. He sat on the floor beside the window, leaning his back against the wall, putting himself at Mavis’s eye level.
For a few minutes, neither spoke. The furnace kicked on with a rumble.
“It looks different,” Mavis said finally, not turning his head. “The tree. The sky. It’s like the film is gone.”
“Yeah,” Travis said.
Mavis turned then. His fur was fluffed up, still a little unruly from the washing. The pinkness on his hand had faded. His eyes were clear, but older. “I need to go back in.”
Travis’s stomach tightened. “You don’t have to. You can stay out here. We can make you a place. A proper place.”
Mavis shook his head, a small, decisive movement. “It’s my home. The trap is… it’s a thing that was in my home. I need to put it in the bin. I need to walk on my floors again.” He looked toward the hole in the wall, his expression unreadable. “But I don’t want to go alone.”
Travis nodded. He stood, went to his desk, and came back with a heavy-duty LED work light on a flexible arm. He plugged it in, the bulb casting a harsh, daylight-bright circle on the floor. He then went to the kitchen, returning with the long, metal tongs he used for the grill.
Mavis watched, his tail tip twitching. “Planning to cook something in there?”
“Planning to not touch that fucking thing with my hands,” Travis said, his voice flat. “And I’m going to see where it came from.”
He got onto his hands and knees by the little archway. He pulled the curtain aside. The beam from the work light pierced the darkness, illuminating the smooth dirt floor, the turn in the passage. It looked smaller in the stark light. Vulnerable.
Mavis climbed down from the sill, moving with a slight stiffness, and walked across the floorboards. He paused at the threshold, his shoulders tense. Travis said nothing, just held the light steady.
Taking a visible breath, Mavis stepped over the threshold and into the passage. He didn’t look back. Travis followed the beam with the tongs, sliding them in carefully. He could see the yellow rectangle of the trap, now dust-fuzzed, lying where he’d left it. He maneuvered the tongs, gripped the edge, and extracted it slowly, like a surgeon removing a tumor. He dropped it directly into a small trash bag he’d brought, knotting the top with a violent twist.
“Good riddance,” he muttered.
He turned the light back to the passage. Mavis was standing a foot inside, looking around his space. He took a few steps, his feet leaving fresh prints in the dust. He reached out and touched the wall, then the little quilted shelf. He turned and looked back at Travis, his face half in shadow.
“It smells like you,” Mavis said. “Oil and… you.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
Mavis walked further in, disappearing around the corner. Travis waited, the silence stretching. He heard a faint scuffle, the sound of a small door opening. Then Mavis reappeared. He walked back to the archway, stopped, and looked up at Travis.
“All clear,” he said. His voice was stronger. “But.”
“But what?”
Mavis pointed a tiny finger at the heavy work light. “That stays. For now. I want to see the corners.”
Travis felt a smile touch his lips for the first time in what felt like days. “It’s yours. A sun for your world.”
Mavis nodded. He took one last look around his domain, then stepped back out into Travis’s room. He didn’t go to the nest on the pillow. Instead, he walked to where Travis sat and, with a practiced leap, climbed up his leg and onto his shoulder. He settled in the folds of Travis’s hoodie, a warm weight against his neck.
“Now,” Mavis said, his voice a whisper in Travis’s ear. “What are we going to do about that forest?”