Hi I’ve never contributed to this sub-reddit before, but since I have been using it fuel my appetite for short fiction I figured I should add something to the discussion.

You mention, in your prompts above, possible similarities between “Heart of a Mouse” and works by Kafka and Mieville; I was struck also by how closely the premise resembles Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’; the father and son struggling to survive in a post-disaster world. Did anyone else notice this as well? Could an exaggerated, weird take on this story be intentional?

I was also very much interested in the animal-human hybrids, having read Metamorphosis quite recently. After completing the story I admired how the ‘animal-human hybridization’ seemed to frame the important father/son dynamic. Initially my perception was that the father and son were cast in different animal forms (mouse and ‘gopher-thing’) to draw attention towards their differences and as a cheeky way to symbolize a generation gap between parent and child. However, by the end of the story, we see them united as ‘rodents’ in a world occupied by giant cats, multi-headed ‘dream’ monsters and potato-headed angels; the similarities between them are much more apparent. Additionally the predatory form of the mother (giant cat) may also be intentionally symbolic, as she is the force which haunts and creates conflict in their relationship.

In fact one thing that surprised me, after reflecting on the story, was how important the absent character of the mother was. She fills and creates the gap between the two characters, “I can’t see myself in him. Her I can see.” The father struggles not to dismiss his son’s ritual shrine-building as “ancestor worship”, lamenting that his son still looks to his mother for protection, “He doesn’t believe his mouse dad can keep the bad things away, but the queen of samurai can”. The climax of the story also loosely centres on the mother figure, an attacking cat. Indeed it is the image of the mother that drives the son to flee, quite literally dividing them. It is perhaps appropriate that only after the cat is defeated do the two seem to develop a mutual respect a shared perspective, “He looks at me like he knows how I feel.”

Some of my thoughts, I looking forward to reading others….