The thought nagged me everyday. I would go to bed every night leaving my PC shut down, the mouse and keyboard stored away in the drawer, under the monitor. I was fastidious with this yet every morning, the damn mouse would be sitting up on the desktop as proud as punch, as if smiling at me.

At first I blamed my wife, Mary, for getting up in the middle of the night and going on the computer, and then not securing iit on completion. But she flatly denied any knowledge and told me it was me losing my mind.

I then sought to blame my eldest, Nicky, but was met with even more disdain for suggesting it, and the obligatory 'as if, dad' which followed these teenage outbursts of wit and fact.

Then, naturally, both of them blamed me for my own paranoia, which could have been the case, given my recent history with mental illness. Bad I flatly denied and stoically became determined to find out why and how the mouse could be moved, in my house!

I gathered we had a goblin in our midsts, and one I wasn't too sure of it's intention. You see, the computer was never left on overnight, and during this mouse phase, didn't appear to be turned on at all either. We had us one heck of a mystery.

I stayed up the next night determined to catch the mystery mouseketeer. But a hard days work and age caught up with me and I fell asleep at about one in the morning. Yet, sure enough, next morning the mouse was on the desk again, and I hadn't seen nor heard a thing to awaken me as to what was doing the dastardly deed.

This called for better monitoring techniques and methods and pretty soon I had the video camera charged up and ready to commence surveillance of the crime scene. By now, everyone is chortling over my paranoia, but they were also concerned as well as to how this phenomenum was taking place.

I set up the video camera and waited until one thirty in the morning to turn it on as it would only record one and a half hours worth of tape, and I set my alarm for three so I could get up, review the recorded tape, change the battery, and all the while, keep an eye on proceedings around the PC.

At 3.00 a.m., my alarm woke me as planned, and gingerly rubbing the sleep from my eyes, rewound the tape and commenced reviewing it on fast forward. I then realised that the mouse was in fact still stowed away, so I rewound the tape again, changed battery on the video recorder, set it up again, and commenced recording with the knowledge that I would have to get up at 5.00 a.m to both review the tape, and stay up incase the mouse was not out yet.

Well, my tiring night meant that I woke up at 7.00 a.m and a quick look at the PC confirmed the mouse had once again made it out to the same location again, so hopefully the second tape had some evidence for me, but I also knew that a gap existed between 5 and 7 a.m. so I wasn't too hopeful of finding any answers.

To compound matters, as I rewound the tape, I noticed that it didnt take long to rewind and when I checked the recording time, I noticed the battery had gone flat in only 3/4 of an hour! The batteries, I now remembered were old, and one had not recharged fully, probably due to memory lag.

My next plan had me rigging up my video camera to the video sender, tuning the video into the sender, and recording a total of six hours on the video recorder. This should work admirably as there was no requirement for batteries in the system anywhere, and god help me, barring powercuts.

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Pt III

Not long after, at about 2.15 p.m Nicky, my daughter, called me into her room, which smelled to high heaven.

"I don't know what you want sweatheart, but Max's cage has to be cleaned out. I stink's in here!" I exclaimed.

"I know, I know, Dad," replied Nicky resignedly, "I'll do it later ok. It's only mouse smell yoou know Dad, and you get used to it."

Then she look at me pleadingly and pretty soon I was outside with the offending tank, placing the hitherto indisposed Max in a spare container so I could give his tank the full monty in the cleaning stakes to appease my miserably lazy daughter. I managed to clean out all the old paper, with associated urine and faeces covering it, as well as remnants of shucked husks of corn and other seeds the mouse hadn't managed to consume.

I went to retrieve Max for the quick journey back to his permanent palace from his temporary digs, and he decided to play hard to get, as he usually did with me. I was an ogre to his miniscule eyeballs, and probably a fierce angry one at that. I managed to snare the rambunctious rodent with a quick grasp and place him delicately back into his newly cleaned abode. I spent the next minute or two watching the mouse scurry around the new layout of his humble home, through the castle from the old fishtank, over the little ramp from the Lego Carpark set, through the two tubes and over the miniature softball, complete with half the side gnawed away and the stuffing hanging out, and finally over the bridge, also from the fishtank, and into the feediing house, to nibble away at his replenished stocks.

He had a quick nibble, then stood up on both hind legs and proceeded to clean and preen himself, using his front paws to do somoe of the cleaning, and doing the rest with his tongue, very similar to our cats, Chloe and Tiger Lily.

I picked up the tank and transported it back to Nicky's room, where I was greeted by a big 'Thank You, I love you, Dad' to which I responded with the usual 'You're welcome, sweety'. I placed Max's cage down in it's usual location, said 'see you later' and waved bye bye to Nicky and went out to check my video set and do a test run, ready for the night to come.

The night appears to have gone well. I find my usual evidence of the mouse on the desk top again, and I head off to rewind and start reviewing six hours of videotape.

What I come across stops me dead in my tracks and leaves me sitting there with my mouth agape and tongue hanging out in disbelief. I watch the whole scene again, to be absolutely sure that what I saw the first time was in fact real. It sure was! But to get a different perspective, and perhaps a discreditation, I called Mary out into the lounge and ushered her into her chair. I tell her to make sure she is comfortable and to read with her own mind what she is about to see.

I reply the tape for the third time, all the while watching my wifes face, and start to see the disbelief spread across it, then the incredible "Holy Sh1t, no bloody way!!" she exclaimed as she watched the scene on the videotape unwind.

"Let's go into Max's room and confirm that he is there, hon" I urge as I get up from the chair. Ordinarily, Mary wouldn't go near Max, you know, that womanly fear of mice, but this time her interest and curiosity were peaked. WE had never had a 'Twilight Zone' situation happen to us, but human nature meant we had to know for sure, and besides, we also needed to know that Nicky was alright.

We opened the door and entered her room, Nicky softly snoring on her bed confirming that she was alright. I turned on the lamp and played the light over Max's cage, and lo and behold, the lid was on tight and Max was also fast asleep.

We knew how he got through the door, and how he got to the computer, so we had to assume that he got out of his cage in the same manner.

But we needed to see it with our own eyes. We now knew what time the deed happened, now we just needed to wait and see for ourselves.

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PT V

Mary decided to sit in Nicky's bedroom and myself in the lounge. We would be doing the watch between 5.30 and 6.30 a.m., the approximate time Max did his dastardly deed. We moved Nicky into her mothers bed so as not to disturb her, and also not to frighten her if she inadvertently woke up.

So 5.30 a.m. rolls around and approximately twenty two minutes later, the following happens. The CD ROM drawer on the PC opens up and the CD therein starts levitating off the carriage and flying effortlessly through the air, around the corner of the lounge and then straight through Nicky's bedroom door. I give a little cough to let Mary know it is in their, and her explanation of what happen goes like this:

"The disk appears through the door, and makes a beeline for the mouses cage, slows a little as it appraoches it, then glides gently into the cage. As it enters the cage, Max wakes up and is standing ready to climb onto the disk as it touches down on the edge of the bridge in the cage."

Mary takes a deep breath at this point before proceeding.

"Then Max climbs aboard the disk, and the disk starts to hover upwards a little to clear the bridge, and then glides across to the glass, passes through the glass, as does Max, and then flies over to the door and glides effortlessly through the door and into the lounge. It was amazing and I wouldn't have believed it with me own eyes if I hadn't of seen it."

It was then that the disk made a reappearance into the lounge and this time the ubiquitous Max was onboard for the ride, just as he was in the videotape from the previous day. The disk glided over to the desktop, and gently touched down, allowing Max to get off and start heading for the drawer with the PC mouse in it. The disk then took off again and titled slightly when approaching the drawer and then wedge itself in the drawer cavity and forced the drawer open. At this point, it retreated back to it's CD Rom tray, and settled down.

Max then leaned into the drawer, and grabbed hold of the mouse lead, and by sheer force of will, pulled the larger mouse out of the drawer. After a few nibbles around where the ears normally would be, Max moved the tail and set about trying to replicate his species, but of course with no success. As there was no suitable response from his suitor, his ardour flagged, and at this point, disappointed, he got down from his cybersex kitten, and waited as the disk alighted from it's tray, and came down to uplift the jilted mouse.

Both then returned via their previous path and pretty soon the disk was back and in it's tray and secured for the morning. The whole episode took a startling fifteen minutes, and left two very normally self respecting and upright citizens of this planet wondering aboout everything we had read and seen over the years. The X Files leapt to both our minds, as you would imagine.

My next move was to check out the disk in the CD tray, as Mary was not even prepared to go near it, but she would get a paper towel to clean the mouse, just in case Max had left a residue.

Poor old Max, the lonely mouse, never had a lady mouse and hunger after some comfort. But why with our PC mouse, and how did the CD become involved?

I extracted the CD from the CD ROM drive and noticed it was a music cd Mary had had in the PC during the day whilst she was on line. A smile started to creep onto my face when I read the Title and artist.

"Hey Hon!" I yelled "guess which CD it is?"

"I wouldn't have a clue," she yeeled back from the kitchen, but was soon in the lounge with the Handy paper towel,

"None other than Disk Two, In The Flesh, by Roger Waters. Gosh, didn't we always say he was bloody magic!"

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