Building 4 “Clump of Rats”

It's late again. Can't sleep. Margaret is upstairs resting. Just came back from a walk. I keep hearing them skittering around. I know it will leave me in the morning. I get fixated on things. The image of all those rats. Of the empty lot.

The siren covered in vermin.

The smell.

There is a siren near our house, built for emergencies. First Tuesday of every month they run a test.

I took a walk.

If you can, when you walk at night, you tend to develop a route. But some nights you stray a little. For a little entertainment at least. You remember small details and the placement of various landmarks. The names of roads matter, but the landscape matters more.

When you wander.

I wandered a little. Just couldn't sleep. It is cool tonight, but a humid sort of cool. I don't sleep well on nights like these. The neighbors have their back-porch light on. Can't help but think back onto the violent night months ago. All the blood...

I was not walking that night…

I ended up by the siren. Didn't know it was there. Just took a different route and I came upon a dark patch. A stretch between the streetlamps. I figured it was a stretch of wood. It wasn't, just tall foliage hiding the fence keeping people out.

I noticed a gate.

Tall. Reinforced.

I looked in and saw the empty lot. The building affixed to the lot with the single red light. I set off to the side was the siren itself. Nondescript. You have seen one like it I am sure, but in the dark. That place between the lamps.

Shadows have a way of making things stained.

Things were wrong. I could hear skittering.

I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight. Hurrying past my foot was a small rat. It was thin and haggard. It chittered as it moved, only stopping to scuttle its way under the gate and out of sight.

Then two more, larger than the other, appeared from the dark and did the same thing.

I looked inside and shone my light.

They were heading for the siren.

I watched as they got to the bottom and began to climb. Only the thin one wasn't there. And it wasn't just the two of them. There were six or seven rats climbing the pole, clumping together and climbing over one another.

They reached the top of the siren, then crawled over the lip and disappeared inside it.

Somehow, they all fit.

I thought I saw something coming out. It looked like a rat. Maybe it was. Couldn't tell. The siren is too tall.

I heard a noise behind me.

I turned around and across the street was a man. Staring. He looked sickly. Sunken skin. Kept spitting. I recognized him. Was my neighbor. He had a bottle. He just stood there. Not moving.

I got confused. I felt like I was being judged, but it was probably just me.

Thought he would drink.

Never saw him drink. Was too dark.

Heard him spit.

Looked back inside the gate. There was a mass of rats clumped together at the base of the pole, along the concrete covering the lot. Some were clumped by the red light.

It looked like they were coated in blood.

Just a trick of the light.

I turned around and went to leave. My neighbor was gone. He was nowhere in sight, but the bottle was on the curb. Bastard left his trash behind. I grabbed the bottle and went home. Could hear the skittering. Will call someone in the morning. Don't want them to damage the siren.

In case something goes wrong.

The neighbor’s porch light is on. I think he is sitting in a lawn chair. Hard to tell. The light is bright.

Margaret is sleeping. Loyd is on the counter watching me write this.

I need to stop staying up late, but I can't help it. I don't like to sleep.

It's getting up to October. It will be two years soon since I moved back to Wellington Street. It doesn't feel like two years. Feels much shorter. So much has changed yet it feels like it hasn't. Like a loop. I'm feeling restless.

I feel the same.

For Margaret, everything is different. Her entire life has changed since the attack. Her work is the same, but every morning she has to take those pills to prevent the rejection of the tissues. Every day she is reminded that things aren't like they were. And in a lot of ways that is for the best.

We are closer.

I hate to think of it like that, but we are. I don't want to imagine that this brought us back together, but it did. And she has suffered. I see it in her eyes. And we have fought through it. The community has fought through it; to treat her as if she is normal.

She is normal. She is one of the most sane people I know.

Her face isn't the face she had when I met her, but she is the same inside.

I love her. Probably don't say that enough.

I hear the skittering again.

When she met me I was a mess. I hadn't been sleeping well. Never have. Though it wasn't like it is today. When she met me I hadn't slept properly in weeks. I couldn't.

The nightmares were too much.

She is so different from Sarah.

The neighbor is still sitting in the lawn chair. Hasn't moved. Wonder if he is watching me, like I am watching him. Probably not. I have become a little paranoid over the years.

Loyd wants to go outside again.

I haven't tossed the bottle my neighbor left on the curve. It’s weird. Dad used to drink this brand of beer. I didn't even know they still made it. I remember my dad talking about how he was upset that they had stopped selling “the good stuff.”

I dumped the beer down the drain.

Promised Margaret the drinking was over.

I keep thinking of the rats. How many there were. Twenty? Thirty?

Going to let Loyd out and put the bottle in the recycling.

I hear skittering. It smells like sewage.

I wonder if my children are sleeping.