Two Mice

I find myself lying on something soft. Maybe it's my own bed, and l'm finally waking up from this bad dream.  Oh, I hope so!

I open my eyes a little and take a cautious peek around. No, I'm not in bed. Somehow, I've wound up on a davenport covered in noisy plaid, shabby and smelling of stale cheese.  

A couple of dark blobs hover over me, silhouetted against a harsh light. As my eyes focus, the blobs turn into the heads of two mice. One is large and wearing a uniform with shiny buttons up to his chin. The other is compact and dapper in shirtsleeves, a starched collar, a pin-striped waistcoat, and wire-rimmed glasses. 

"Look, sir, she's comin' to," Uniform says.

"So she is, Constable," Glasses replies. "Are you all right?" he asks me.

I sit up with a jerk. "Y-yes, I think so," I answer over the heart in my throat. "Is there any reason I shouldn't be?"

"No, no. We just found you on the rodentway unconscious and looking... er... displaced."

The mice goggle at me in my leggings and baggy sweater like I'm something from outer space.

"Sorry. I left in kind of a hurry. Didn't have time to change," I burble.

I scan my surroundings.  It's a cramped office paneled in dark wood with a cluttered, scarred desk, an ancient typewriter, an old-fashioned gallows-style telephone, a swivel chair with a burst cushion, a battered filing cabinet, and a tall hat rack with a derby, a suit coat, and an overcoat hanging on it. Behind the desk on the wall are portraits of a mouse and a man, both in elaborate uniforms. They stir a memory from a history class I once took.

I start to worry. An office with no computer, no flat-screen monitor, no wireless telephone, and with the pictures of two old codgers from the distant past plastered on the wall... What could it mean?