Muskrat Short Story

The muskrat sold cologne from door to door. He had a vague sense of hope for the day his black briefcase of bottles would cease to rattle and leak.
He walked from door to door, street to street, home to home.
The skunk flicked him a pity scent.
The chipmunk despised “such worldly vanities.”
One whiff—the ancient frog croaked on the spot.
The cat preferred perfume.
The muskrat was hard-pressed to move his pungent inventory. He felt helpless and lonely, he felt frivolous. Not to mention, he could never rid himself of the musk—an invisible, clinging reminder of his inadequacy.
He did manage to sell a few bottles—two to a deaf snake who mistook the ovular amber bottles for eggs, and one to a ferret, god only knows why. How else could the muskrat
He scraped together enough money to merit an in-store greeting and a breathless caress. When was the last time he involuntarily held his breath? The muskrat gave the slightest smile. True, he smiled all day long with potential customers, but that smile was like smudged carnival face paint. It was full of an alienating effort that meant nothing to anyone.
This hat had come to define the inside of the muskrat’s head, and his thoughts flared into a psychedelic worship. The magenta color was a stunning commitment to excess, and the hollow space, a blockade that cradled falling cannons above stoic blades of grass. The rim blossomed like a single petal whose fortune was guaranteed—“She loves me.” Courted by the wit of dreams, the muskrat forgave the brashness of his infatuation and married it to his existence. His future wore precisely such a hat at this. He exited the shop, and scurried down the street. He scurried up the street.
“Hello,” He entered the shop,
“How much is this
He placed the leaky suitcase off to his right, though the mirror took it for left. Bracelets tinkled on the badger’s wrist in motion as she placed the magenta fedora on the muskrat’s skull. “There we are!” she declared.
The muskrat smiled because a portion of his head was foreign to himself.
“I’ll buy it.”
—Every day but Sunday, the muskrat scurries out to sell smells. “Anemone” booms with business, and its spotless square window displays a spread of objects that speak the languages of drape and gleam—a stuffy, closed society of gems with their chins up. Waiting in lines to ride the neighing, plaster merry-go-rounds of a neck or waist, they are pretty and dumb and selfish and droll. There are no more hats.
The muskrat hasn’t received a “hello” since his skull first slept in the shadows of the friendly fabric. The magenta fedora is a visual trigger of imaginative processes, true, but it never promised to be anything of an osmotic conversationalist. So, it seems, everything can cease to be as it is. This means the Muskrat might still prevail. Give it time. But, for now, the magenta fedora at least squashed his ears, which muffles the smelly rattle of