The Rat God

Moments after the sun has set, the vermin leave their homes in the underground to begin their nightly hunt. Scavenging amongst the waste of human society, they feed only to survive.

The rat known as “Scar” left its home in the sewers and ventured up into the realm of the humans. Cautiously it made its way into the open, away from the nooks and crannies and out onto the floors and cabinet surfaces where it can find food. This is not the first time it has ventured out into the unknown. Scar is a survivor, each battle, each close call marked on its body with an ugly wound or deformity. It ran with a limp, broken bones having set incorrectly and left permanently twisted. Still it moved onwards, never slowing. Survival is all that matters. Scar lives day to day, no thoughts of anything else. Its only memories are lessons learned from moments it almost lost its life. Avoid the food that smells like sulphur. Avoid the peanut butter spread tantalisingly on the wood and metal contraption. Avoid other rats. There is no strength in numbers here, life is a battle and all others are competition. The only need the rat has is the necessity to survive. Beyond the need for shelter or mating. Survival is all that matters.

Tonight, Scar feasted. Meat that had fallen behind a kitchen cabinet, left to rot by lazy humans. Wasted food that the rat is happy to feed on. A delicious meal that should ensure survival. Until tomorrow. Scar turned to head back home, back to the safe haven of the underground.

Something is wrong, the rat can sense it. The place is too quiet, the humans too distant. Scar runs faster, its ageing deformed legs moving as quick as it can. Age has clouded its eyes and dimmed its perception, these frailties meaning Scar does not see the strange new tile on the kitchen floor.

Scar stopped suddenly, its foot trapped in the new tile. It is a glue trap and Scar cannot pull itself away, the adhesive gripping onto its skin so it can never break free. The rat writhed frantically, its movement only placing more of its body in contact with the deadly glue. Scar is trapped.

Survival is all that matters.

Scar knew it only had one option. One way to escape. Somewhere, deep inside the rat’s brain, part of its consciousness cried out for help. A primal scream for intervention from a higher power, to be spared the cold black void of death that is creeping ever closer. Scar has avoided death many times and now death has come to collect its toll, the one all must pay. Scar prayed to god for release. And then it bared its teeth and began chewing through its trapped leg.

*

Albert Gompertz, expert pest exterminator, reached under the kitchen cabinet to remove the glue traps he had placed there the night before. It took quite an effort for the rotund obese figure of Albert to get low down to fish out the traps, but it would be worth it. Soon he would see the fruits of his labour.

“Excellent. This is a good batch,” said Albert as he pulled out the first trap, two dead mice lying in the glue, bodies contorted from the special poison adhesive blend they had unwittingly absorbed.

“Oh my,” said Flora, the homeowner who had hired Albert to solve her mice problem. “It’s a bit grim, isn’t it?”

Albert pulled out the other traps, eight more dead mice adding to his tally. “Ten of them,” he said triumphantly. “I don’t really consider it to be grim. This is what you wanted.”

“Yes of course,” said Flora. “Still. It seems a bit inhumane.”

“Inhumane?” said Albert. “These vermin come into our homes. They are intruders. Invaders. They are pests not humans, it isn’t inhumane if it’s an animal.”

“Right,” said Flora.

Albert continued ranting. “These creatures no longer want to hide. They have grown accustomed to entering our world. I cannot live with that. The only thing we can do is make them remember how things used to be. Put them back in their place. To do that, we have to send a message.”

He lifted up a glue trap to eye level. “And the message is - fear me.”

*

Albert left Flora’s house and returned to his van, brushing the dust off his red plastic biohazard suit that had accumulated from his crawling around on the floor. The suit was more for show than any practical reason. People saw it and knew he meant business. They also knew to clear the area. Which was what Albert wanted. Once the humans were out of the way, Albert could get to work on the pests.

Mornings were when Albert made his rounds; visiting all the places he had set traps. Traps were his preferred means of dealing with pests, especially rodents. He was not fit enough to go hunting after them himself and he despised dogs, so a ratter like a Jack Russell was out of the question. It was why he had developed his own form of glue poison. It killed the rats efficiently. Any escapees, which happened rarely, would succumb to the poison before too long.

Albert opened the back door of his van and climbed inside. Another advantage of using poison was that it left the bodies intact. Albert laid the traps out on his workbench and began peeling the dead mice from the glue. It didn’t matter if skin or flesh were left behind, he wasn’t interested in the superficial. Albert took some empty glass jars from a cabinet and placed them on the workbench. One by one, he lowered each mouse into a jar. There was something beautiful in the repetition, thought Albert as he examined each mouse. How routine this had become.

The rats came in slightly different sizes and some had the odd scar here and there. Still they were practically identical. Beauty in uniformity, thought Albert. Only one way they could be improved.

He reached under the workbench and took a large white plastic bottle, undoing the safety cap, the strong smell inside causing him to quickly recoil. No matter how many times he did this, he never got used to the stinging acrid fumes that were desperate to escape.

Albert poured the liquid from the bottle into each jar, the liquid hissing quietly as it came into contact with each corpse. Soon the flesh would dissolve, Albert’s own concoction of solvent melting away the meat and skin, leaving only a perfect, pristine white skeleton. Albert took the jars and locked them away in a secure cabinet. In time, they would be added to his collection, trophies from the one-sided war he waged.

*

The next stop was a restaurant on a busy high street. Albert parked his van down an alleyway and entered through the back door. The restaurant manager ushered Albert quickly into the kitchen. No time for chat, he had to prepare for the breakfast service. Albert was disappointed. He liked to show off to his customers. He wanted to be seen as an efficient, deadly hunter. Not the help. Albert collected up his glue traps and made his way outside.

As he stepped out of the restaurant and into the back alley, one of the glue traps suddenly convulsed, causing Albert to emit a high-pitched scream of shock and drop the traps. He looked down and saw the cause of the convulsion. An extremely scarred rat was still alive, still fighting despite the glue and the poison. Looking closely, Albert saw that it had tried to gnaw its way through its leg to escape. He laughed as the rat continued trying to escape, pulling at the tear in its leg. “Almost,” said Albert, “But nothing gets away from me.”

He walked back to his van and opened the special toolbox. The poisonous glue was not enough for this specimen. This rat deserved something special. Albert grabbed a cattle prod from the box, testing the spark in the air. It crackled with a gleeful shock of blue electricity. Albert walked back to the rat and crouched beside it. He took the cattle prod and placed it close to the creature, firing it off. The rat squeaked in pain, trying more frantically to escape. “Does it make you happy? Being so cruel?”

Albert jumped at the sudden interruption. He turned and saw an elderly vagrant sitting in a makeshift bed beside the restaurant bins. “It’s none of your business,” said Albert.

He returned his attention to the rat and shocked it again, another squeal of pain. “To take pleasure from suffering only leads to more suffering,” said the vagrant, still watching.

“I said mind your own business,” said Albert, pointing the cattle prod in the vagrant’s direction and firing it off.

He smiled as the old man winced at the cattle prods crackling spark. Albert picked up the recently deceased rat, collected the other glue traps and walked back to his van.

*

Albert returned to his flat at the end of the day, his bag clinking to the sound of glass jars hitting each other as he climbed the stairs. He opened the front door and walked straight to his bedroom. A large cupboard stood pride of place opposite his bed, so big that Albert could fit inside if he tried. Albert opened the doors to the cupboard and smiled. This was his trophy cabinet.

Five deep shelves stacked with glass jars stood before him, the skeletons of a hundred rodents pickled in the acid, their bones brilliant white amongst the yellowed liquid. All his achievements in one place. Albert opened his bag and added the day’s catch to the shelves. The bodies of his victims were already melting away, the acid not taking long to work its way through the flesh. Albert took one more look at his trophies before closing the cupboard.

For the rest of the evening, Albert sat slumped in his armchair, his eyes not leaving his giant television, hands reaching out to the box of takeaway chicken that rested on a side table. Chicken wings were tonight’s delicacy, Albert taking satisfaction from picking the meat from the bones. Full of food and tired from the day’s exertion, Albert fell asleep.

*

Hours later and Albert was still sleeping when a chill filled the air. He woke up with a start as the cold made its way into his core, shaking him from his slumber. The television screen glowed blue, the connection having broken leaving only the digital square of no signal. Albert could see his warm breath condense in the air in front of him. It shouldn’t be this cold, he thought. Slowly he climbed out of his seat, allowing his sleeping limbs time to recover from their sudden awakening.

Albert walked to the wall and flicked the light switch. Nothing. He sighed angrily, unhappy that his peaceful sleep had been disturbed. He walked to his toolbox beside the front door to find a torch. Moving through the flat, he heard the sudden sound of wood hitting wood. He turned and saw a man standing in his apartment. At least he thought it was a man. In the darkness and his shock he could only see a shape. Slowly the shape took form, leaving Albert no longer sure what he was looking at.

The figure stared at Albert, two bright beady eyes reflecting the blue light of the TV, like an animal caught in the infrared glare of night vision. Its nose was long and pointed, whiskery hairs protruding on each side. It had big buck teeth and a horrible overbite. The figure wore no clothes except a necklace of bones and beads, the skull of a rat worn as a headpiece. It held a tall wooden staff in its hand, the source of the wood on wood sound as the figure occasionally tapped it on the floor. “Who are you?” said Albert as he edged towards the front door, not wanting to take his eyes from the figure in case it pounced.

The figure said nothing, its eyes boring into Albert until he could feel them piercing his soul. He had seen enough. Albert turned and ran towards the front door. Turning the corner into the hallway, Albert saw the figure before him, blocking his escape route. Albert could feel the figure behind him still, yet knew that it was before him too. In two places at once and yet unmistakably the same. Albert shrieked in horror as he saw the cattle prod in the figure’s hands. It crackled, the spark sounding like a distorted laugh. Laughing with glee at the prospect of shocking Albert’s pudgy body.

Albert ran away from the figure, to his bedroom. He moved to the window and thought about jumping to safety. Two storeys up with nothing to break his fall, Albert’s fear made him search for another escape route. He turned and saw his cupboard, his trophy cabinet. He ran to the doors and opened them, forcing himself inside and closing the doors. Praying that the figure would leave him alone.

He could hear the tap tap tap of the figure’s staff as it neared, Albert regretting his decision not to leap from the window. He could feel the vibrations of the figure’s fingers as it brushed across the wooden doors, inches away.

An intense feeling filled the air, static causing Albert’s hair to stand on end. The glass jars around him started shaking, blue electricity dancing between them. The skeletons inside started to animate as they were shocked with a blue spark of life, each one turning their empty eye sockets to Albert. He screamed as the jars started bursting, broken glass and acid firing into his skin with a scratch and a hiss of burning flesh. He tried to brush it away but the acid sank into his body, melting rapidly. The rodent skeletons ran towards him, climbing all over him and began biting into his body. Their perfect bleached white bones became stained red with blood as Albert was torn to shreds, a hundred angry mouths tearing into him. The killing blow was left to the scarred rat, the one Albert had tortured so mercilessly. Unlike the others, it still had flesh clinging to its bones, still fighting for survival. It climbed up Albert’s body to his throat and plunged its razor-sharp incisors into his jugular. Blood spurted out, the life violently leaving his body and spraying across the cupboard walls. The last thing Albert saw before he passed were his prized trophies tearing his body to shreds.

*

The Rat God opened the cupboard doors, a wave of blood and chum flowing from inside. The remains of Albert Gompertz formed a pool on the floor, bits of bone bobbing in the red liquid. The Rat God extended its hand for the rat Scar to climb on top, stroking the creature tenderly. It had heard the rat’s prayer. It had heard all the prayers, from rodents large and small, until there was enough power for it to manifest. The Rat God borne from the suffering of its worshippers.

A bright white light blossomed into life in the centre of the room, a supernova of belief and desire. The Rat God took Scar and the other rat skeletons and led them towards the light, shepherding them into the afterlife.