The Twisted Ones

The narrator, Melissa “Mouse,” recounts the events that follow retrospectively, hinting that they have deeply traumatized her. Mouse is a 30-something editor whose story began when she agreed to her father’s request to clear out her deceased grandmother’s house in North Carolina; Mouse was recently single and viewed the task as a welcome escape from her life in Pittsburgh. Her grandmother had been a cruel woman predeceased by Mouse’s step-grandfather, Cotgrave, a quiet man who had always been typing. Mouse had been in college when Cotgrave died and missed his funeral, which she later heard was attended by a “bunch of weird people” (4)—a detail that now strikes Mouse as significant.

Mouse disliked her grandmother and did not know Cotgrave well. Nevertheless, Mouse felt a sense of obligation to her father, now in his eighties, so she packed her truck and arranged for her Aunt Kate, who helped raise her after her mother’s death, to look after her house. Mouse and her coonhound, Bongo, drove to North Carolina and spent their first night in a motel, an evening she remembers as her last in the normal world.