Ever since I was a little kid, I have loved to squish things. I was so excited when slime became a fad, because I could make it and squish it and it felt so delightful. The way the glittering sparkles would sink into the goopy mess in front of me... it was tantalizing. Stress balls were a big thing for me, too! Just being able to squeeze and use all my strength to make it small. The thing is, stress balls go back to their original form. I hated that!

We were kind of poor, so birthday presents were smaller than normal, but my mom always knew exactly what I wanted. I was overjoyed one year when I opened up my gift from her and found one of those animal popper toys. You know the ones, you squeeze it a certain way and the eyes pop out of its head, then when you un-squeeze it they go back in? I cherished that for so long and I carried it with me everywhere, squeezing tightly all the time until one day, I popped the air bubble that kept things moving. I cried but I got over it.

My mom went on a work trip when I was about eight and left me and my sister with my dad. My dad didn’t worry a lot about us and let us play in the backyard unsupervised (this was the 90s, after all). My sister was four and we were partners in crime. We were out in the backyard by the tree line, which led to a really wooded area full of wildlife. From where we played, we could hear birds singing their morning songs and frogs from a nearby creek ribbiting. We were always willing to get our hands a little dirty, so we scraped out a hole in the ground and made mud pie, which of course I squished when my sister walked away from it. The cold mud felt good on a hot day.

When my sister walked back to me, she had her hands cupped. “Austin, look,” she opened her hands enough for me to see inside them. “I found a mouse.” It was so tiny and grey, with white specks around its adorable black pearly eyes. I put my hands under hers so she could hand him to me.

“Carly,” I said, as she put him in my hands. I got a big smile on my face. This was the most exciting thing I had ever done, and I could feel the hair standing up on the back of my neck. “Let’s see what it feels like to squish him.” The thought of the warm juices trickling over my hands made me nearly bounce with joy. I started applying pressure, feeling the mouse’s tiny bones crack between my palms. The squeaking ceased. Carly started screaming.

“Austin, no!” She started pounding on my shoulders from behind, with tears streaming from her eyes. I ignored her. The delicate eyes that were once in this small creature were now in my hands, ready to be squished just as their owner was. It was the most satisfying pop I’ve felt in my life. The brain was just as good, oozing and spreading fleshy, pink gunk across and in between my fingers.

I snapped out of it when Carly hit me in the back of the head. Quickly, I turned around and shoved her to the ground. “Stop hitting me!” I didn’t even think. Carly laid with the wind knocked out of her, face wet with tears and flushed. I wonder now if she knew what was coming next. I mean it when I say I didn’t even think.

I crawled over her, my eight year old physique much bigger than her still-toddler sized body, and put my thumbs against her eyes, willing them to go back farther than they were made to. Carly was screaming and tearing at my wrists with her fingernails, leaving bloody streaks on my arms and hands, but I couldn’t tell what was mine, hers, or the mouse’s. I pressed with all my might one final time, and Carly went limp.

I’m 27 years old now, and I still don’t know if that’s when she died, or when I dug my boot into her skull to squish her brain in my hands.