Rattus Norvegicus by Donovan Floyd
I am Rattus Norvegicus.
I live in a dingy, smelly, literal hole-in-the-wall of some shitty dive bar that the owners are either too lazy or too broke to seal over with plaster or Quikrete. Even if they did, I’d just chew through it again. Every morning, I get woken up by some drunk playing an overrated “popular” song and singing every line in his own tune and note. What an amazing alarm clock. I wake up to find my candy wrapper sheet has slid off me, and the disgusting smell of spilled beer, stale piss, and cigarette smoke still hasn’t left the bar despite how many off-brand cans of Febreze they try to use. You think this smells bad for you? Imagine how bad it is for my sensitive nose, way more sensitive than a human’s anyway.
After a nice morning routine of scavenging for whatever nasty leftovers some idiot couldn’t be bothered to throw in the garbage for breakfast, I like to go for a nice stroll downtown to get to my job. Why do I have a job? Why do you have a job—working in your dead-end position, flipping burgers or tip-tap-tapping away on a computer in some mind-numbing, soul-crushing cubicle? At least you can get an actual ride to work, I’m sure. If you can’t then maybe you get what it’s like to walk through the slum-infested streets. Even then, you’re on the sidewalk. I get to waltz through cigarette butts, old cans, leaves, dirt, muck, vomit, and whatever gross shit you all can’t be bothered to clean, so you just shove into the gutter. You, people, live like pigs!
After my lovely stroll, I finally get to my own dead-end soul-crushing rat race of a job. No, literally a rat race of a job. These nut job scientists like to stick little electrodes in my head and make me run through this maze they change every day. If I find a dead end, they shock me. Take too long to find the end? They shock me. Try and take more than fifteen minutes of my legally required unpaid break? They shock me. Why do they do this? Far above my pay grade.
Speaking of pay grade, you wanna know what they actually pay me in when I do finally find the end of this maze? Cheese. They pay me in cheese. Stale, hard, disgusting cheddar cheese. “Oh! But you’re a rat! You must love cheddar cheese!” Not like that’s not a hurtful stereotype or anything. If I wasn’t so broke and could eat what rats should eat: fruits and vegetables (especially tomatoes), maybe some nice red meat for some protein, and mozzarella. You know, the good shit. The kind of mozzarella that when you slice it, the juice runs out and blends in with the tomato juice. The kind of fruits that you can just smell the sweetness of. The kind of vegetables that feel crisp to the touch. Meat that isn’t rotting and doesn’t smells almost as bad as the bar.
I spend the entire day running through this damn maze, getting zapped constantly. The day slowly drags on, until I can finally clock out, and by then the sun has gone away.
The cool, crisp air feels different tonight. My anger and rage usually cool off by it. Instead, I feel a seemingly crushing, hollow emptiness. An empty hollowness in my soul. I don’t feel like going back to the bar, not right at happy hour. That’s when it gets particularly bad. I wander the streets, and I come across a pet shop. Filled with pampered little “pets” with fancy pedigrees and fine meals and little exercise balls. Birds, lizards, frogs, even a cat and a dog or two. And… another rat?
Another smelly, disgusting, wretched, vile rat? The same as me? But this one’s different? It’s clean. It’s pudgy and fluffy. Its eyes aren’t sunken in. Its head isn’t shaved for electrodes. Its paws and claws aren’t calloused. Its fur isn’t matted. There isn’t hurt in its eyes.
An old man with a cane comes into the lobby, opens the cage to the rat. Good. Maybe the rat is like me. Maybe the old man beats it with the cane to make it do tricks, like how the smart-asses beat me with electrons. Instead, it just jumps into his hands! No prodding or poking with electricity! No threat of harm. It just…lovingly embraces his hands, as it gets carried away.
I stared at that fucking pampered rat as he got carried away. Held so tenderly and kindly. So softly. Lovingly. Something horrible is happening inside of me, a weight in my chest is building, a pressure behind my eyes, an aura around my skull. A raging river, pounding against a dam. Waves eroding concrete. Cracking it. Bursting through it. Tears streaming down my face. I bang my fists against my head, trying to hold it back. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I drop to my knees. I move from the window to the street. To the gutter. Where I belong. Sobbing. Weeping. Distraught. I heave. I snivel. I yelp. I cry. My very soul is being ripped from my body. I feel my heart in my chest. My eyes shut so tight I feel my face ache. I can’t stop the damn flood. Snot runs down my face.
Seconds.
Minutes.
Hours.
Days.
Months.
What felt like years passed as I sat there and bore my soul to the litter and garbage in the gutter, more similar to it than I’d ever wanted it to be. A disgusting wretched thing. A miserable little pile of lies and shame and anger. I slowly start to feel the tide ebb. I rub my swollen eyes a little and see a rat. A rat with tears and snot and red in the face, staring back at me from a puddle.
I feel the weight of the world start to lift, and see little spouts of clean, white fur against my own greasy fur, blackened from soot and filth and god knows what else. I stare, silently.
I feel spots on my back. Cold. Distant almost, somewhere else. Somewhere not here. Anywhere else. I see my reflection in the puddle distorted from the raindrops and from the tears still silently streaming down my face and dripping into it. I look up, expecting a dark, ruinous sky, only to see a bright sky illuminated by the moon, and just enough clouds for it to drizzle. I feel. I feel the rain slipping away with my tears. I feel the concrete digging into my knees and hands. I feel the cool rain on my face, and I feel something inside me shift. I feel my contempt slide away from me, like tears in the rain and slowly lower my head. I feel the raindrops closer and closer, less than somewhere else each time they hit me. I feel my soul slowly slip back into my spine.
My eyes meet themselves again in the puddle. I start to think. About my life. About what’s around me. What’s inside me. Is this really what I am? Is this all that I am? Is this all that I want to be? I notice something different about my face. Is there really white fur, under this dirt and grime? The grime that has been washed away by my own tears?
I take a handful of the puddle and splash it against my face. Again, and again, and again. It’s unpleasant. I walk by these gutters every day; I know what’s in them. But I look in the puddle again and I see something. Something different? Is that really me? With a white furred face? The same face my mother used to kiss on the head goodnight after tucking me in? The one my father would yell at because I wasn’t good enough? No. Because he felt I wasn’t good enough.
I feel something inside of me. Something deep in my chest. Like a raging fire. No. Not raging. There was no malice or indignation in there. Like a warm furnace, protecting against the cold on a harsh winter day. But just as defiant as a raging fire.
I slowly stand up. I feel…stronger? Guilty? Against what? The rat in the window? Against myself? Against…I trail off in thought and slowly start walking back to the bar. Not my home, just a place I would sleep. I stop just outside the steps. No. I refuse to go back in there. I refuse to go back to the way things were. Something inside of me has shifted tonight. Something that I won’t ever let go.
I turn on my heel sharply and start walking. My fur is slowly drying. Still white. Still damp. I wander the streets, dodging puddles I used to just dredge through. Avoiding smoke from street exhausts and people smoking. The smoke that I’d inhale as a guilty pleasure. That I used to inhale. I avoid all these tarnishes against my fur, against my very soul. Searching for a new place to rest my bones. Determined to keep my fur clean this time.