RODENT

The phone rang; David knew it was Lily about to raise hell about something.
“Hello”
“Hey Sweetheart, what are you doing?”
“Just getting home from work, tired, you?”
“Oh my God, I have so many bugs here, while me and Ashley were watching our shows, there was a beetle in the living room and I swear, there’s got to be a spider den in my ceiling, I kill multiple spiders every day, some of them are huge! Oh, and there was an earwig on my pillow and it was really gross,”
This usually went on for a while, and David was well adapted to Lily’s half
Phobias of bugs and all things “gross”. He thought it was petty, a girl in her twenties grossed out by baby spiders and beetles. What was next, coodies? David sat down and slouched in his computer chair, which had broken where the backside and seat cushion were connected, making the chair slant sideways. He leaned over toward the computer screen with a creeeeeek, listening to Lily go on about the shows he had not watched and the bugs he had not flushed for her.
“What if a poisonous one bites me while I’m sleeping?! I’ll never wake up! Then you’ll be sorry,”
David typed a keyword into his browser and waited to push enter. The time was 1:45am; he had not been home long. He had bugs of his own to flush. Tonight he closed at the Solar store downtown and was quite exhausted. Solar was a trendy retail store located in Soho. They carried the “Hottest” trends in fashion. He spent the majority of his time there folding piles of misplaced clothing. The store would usually be trashed at the end of the day; apocalypse style, and David worked late “maintaining” the stores “standards”, sometimes not getting home until three in the morning. He was basically a janitor that didn’t have to deal with toilets and handled money.
David turned away from the computer screen and, without letting Lily know, put the phone on speaker and began to change.
“You don’t think that’s disgusting? Spiders laying eggs in my hair! Are you even there?”
David’s shirt was half over his head and he responded in a muffled “FFFMMM Yea, that’d be FFFMM terrible”
“I’m on speakerphone aren’t I…”
David had been caught.
“I’m sorry, I just kind of walked in the door.”
“It’s okay, you call me when you can, okay.” Lily responded as if she had been rejected from going to a school dance for some faulty irrelevant reason.
“I’ll call you before I go to sleep, alright babe?”
“o.k.”
David dropped the phone where he stood and went into the kitchen. He grabbed a 2. Liter bottle of ginger ale out of the fridge and chugged several huge gulps. The soda was flavorful, and brisk, it was a refreshing burn for David’s insides and throat.
“AHHHHHHH…” He triumphantly sighed.
Standing in the kitchen he smelled maple syrup but wasn’t big into pancakes or waffles or anything of that sort, so the scent confused him. He picked up a few empty dishes from the sink and sniffed. On the floor he noticed the dead cockroach peeking out from behind the wastebasket. His work schedule was hectic and he had left it there for a day or so. He knew it was dead because it hadn’t moved at all when he had first discovered it, but he had not smashed it nor had he doused it in Raid. It was just there, peeking out, dead. If only the bugs in Lily’s apartment dropped dead like that, then he wouldn’t have to spend phone calls hearing about the wrath and carnage.
But what could have killed it? He thought. Didn’t cockroaches survive extreme radiation or function completely fine with their heads chopped off?
He didn’t like that there had been a dead cockroach parked on his floor, so he ripped a paper towel from above the sink and picked up the roach like a shit pellet. He then went into the bathroom and flushed it.
***
After a long day, folding piles of abandoned t-shirts and blue jeans, David stood waiting at the 2nd avenue F train stop headed uptown. It was deserted except for a foreign couple on the opposite platform. David thought they were arguing, but they kept managing to hug each other in between outbursts of random yelling. Standing around all day made David’s feet throb. He stomped hard on the ground to dumb the pain, and then paced around kicking large royal blue beams with the tips of his shoes. He gazed down at the muck layered above the tracks.
A rat scurried by, and then another. David wasn’t grossed out by rats like Lily was with bugs. He thought rodents were cute, although he wouldn’t touch or even get to close to a subway rat, but not many people would. He noticed more rats, three more had darted across.
Watch some Cloverfield shit happen- He thought.
Suddenly his attitude towards rats changed from a shoulder shrug to a slightly confused, bedazzled, intimate wonder. Hobbling slowly through the muck knocking its head into a decomposing McDonald’s cup was a rat, but to David’s absolute surprise it had two proportioned white wings coming out of its shoulder blades. He felt a tickle rise on the back of his neck and he developed a cry ball in his throat. It appeared to be the Pegasus of all vermin. This rat moved slower than the rats that had ran by before, like it was injured and struggling. Its right wing also appeared to be damaged. David’s eyes widened, he quick looked across the platform at the foreign couple now locking lips. They did not know he was there, or see the rat.
There is no fucking way? - He thought.
David rubbed his eyes hard and followed the rat slowly along the bumpy yellow strip designed to keep passengers back from on coming trains. He followed it until the platform ran into a wall bordering the tunnel as it descended into the darkness. It had gone un-noticed in the artificial light, but the rat had a glow to its fur. A faded pink shimmer, like a cave dweller. There were other colors among the pink aura as well, blues, and greens. David became determined to not let the rat just scurry off. He thought of many things like money and science, but also how badly he wanted to see it up close to study its awesome appearance.
A mutant, or an undiscovered species! - He thought.
He sat on the edge of the platform along the bumpy strip and looked both ways several times never quite taking his eyes off of the glowing sewer phenomenon. He leaped down onto the sludgy tracks and stared at the third rail. While David had been pondering the risks of being down on the tracks the rat made it a fair distance into the tunnel, but he could still make out the pink shimmer. He began to follow it slowly through the dark using his cell phone as extra light. It was cold. David only had a tee shirt and a grey windbreaker to warm himself. The ground was murky and there were too many puddles to avoid. Wet shoes didn’t bother David in this situation. He was jumpy, EEEEEAAARRRRRRAAACCKK, he heard in the faint distance, a train perhaps. This made David speed up and silently remove his windbreaker, which sent an instant chill underneath his shirt and up his arms. He shook for a second and approached the rat, which had stopped a short distance in front of him. Wow- He thought, as the rat took notice of him. He crouched down next to it and whispered, here cutie, come here, are you hurt poor thing- The rat then wobbled over to David and he scooped it up into his windbreaker. Its head was just poking out of the swishy fabric. GUNGA-GUNGA-GUNGA-GUNGA, sounded from another direction, as the dark became a swallowing menace of sound and stink.
David pressed the rat tight to his chest to keep warm and began heading back toward the light of the station. The rat smelled like piss, or was it the subway in general? He figured it was both. The dark let out another sound now, only, it spoke- Hoo-Hah! Flying straight into the moonlight! You’d have to eat a million of those things! David stopped, dead in his tracks, and turned around. He saw nothing; dim blue lights just under the ceiling were the only physical things he could make out. CLANK’ SHSH-SHSH, You asshole! - David knew the voices weren’t officials or police, the vocabulary he could make out wasn’t normal or professional sounding, but more groggy. He crept with the rat close to him and one hand touching the wall behind him for balance and grip.
He came to what seemed to be a clearing, a place where trains changed course, which was much wider than the tunnel. There were four different corridors and the mumbled voices were becoming louder. The lights here were brighter as well and he could see a fire lit in a trash can a ways down. There were three men, each sitting on milk crates around it, bullshitting about something he couldn’t make out entirely.
Shit tastes nasty, but it’s well worth it- One man said.
David leaned against the wall of the tunnel and watched the men at a safe distance. His heart was a mess of thunder and concrete, he felt it beat hard. The rat gave David’s chest a tiny nudge. He put his free hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t get caught breathing. He was mildly shivering, but told himself he needed to see what the men were doing so deep in the tunnel. He wondered if there weren’t more rats or glowing creatures.
The men had light pink objects in their hands and they appeared to be sawing and prying at them. Then David saw one of the men drop a baby wing on the black floor, they were sawing the heads off of glowing rats. One man wore a tweed hat and a heavy coat, with muddy boots. He held a decapitated rat body in his hand and said- Bottoms up!
David watched the man squeeze the rodent’s body and guzzle its thick blood. He had stopped shivering and was now sweating through his shirt, eyes wide. The man wiped a crimson streak across his face and smiled. David then dropped his arm from his mouth and raised his head as the ragged man began to gradually hover and then float above the fire. The other two men had also stopped and watched their friend in awe. David felt sick and the rat began to move in his jacket. He got up slowly and felt his leg muscles tighten. The man yelled- A God, HAHAHA I am a God!
David left the man suspended in mid air and rushed until he could see the light of the subway station and within a few minutes he and the rat were on the cold pavement of 2nd avenue.
***
It was approximately 5:30 am when David entered his apartment with the rat still wrapped up in his jacket. He held it cradled in one arm while he pulled a large clear storage bin out of the far corner of the room. He placed the rat inside with some newspaper. The morning sun had not risen fully and he turned all of his lights on. He carried the bin into the bathroom and placed it in inside of the bathtub. The rat seemed to be feeling better but its right wing looked frail and limp. He filled up a small dish with water and put it in the bin. As the rat drank he watched it in an enchanted gaze.
That man was levitating in the tunnel; his head almost hit the ceiling. How much are you worth you cute little weasel? You’ve got such frisky whiskers-
So many thoughts smashed into David’s logic. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to bring the rat to a veterinarian, or try selling it to someone, he didn’t know who. He held his forehead and sat on the toilet in deep meditation. He had work at 7:00am, an opening shift in less than an hour now but had decided he was never going to go back to that place after what he had witnessed. He knew telling Lily wouldn’t go over well; the mention of a rat willingly being in his apartment would be enough for her to hang up.
David realized he didn’t want to work or talk on the phone. He had just witnessed real magic with his own eyes. No card tricks, no models being sawed in half. David wanted to fly.
He watched the rat with a glazed expression. It sat curled in the corner of the plastic tub radiating its rosy flare. David filled a paper cup with water and threw it down his throat, feeling the cold takeover his insides. He paced back and forth through the doorway of the bathroom, lightly tapping his fist on the door. He noticed the intense orange of the sun on the floor, which made him turn and watch it from the window. In those moments of dizzying morning David picked the rat up in his hand like a coke can and brought it into the kitchen. There were some glasses, layered in a beige sort of film, on the counter and he pushed those to the side with the backside of his free hand. He pulled out a wooden cutting board and positioned it on the counter top. The rat moved its head around sniffing the blank air. David held it steady against the cutting board and picked up a bread knife. He closed his eyes only for a second, then watched as he sawed into the rat’s neck. It struggled violently, wiggling, kicking and flapping its one good wing. It frightened David and he lost grip of the handle for a second. The rat was twitching, mostly dead, and David regained his composure and sawed the head off completely. Blood spurted out like a dollar store water gun, and began dripping onto floor as it formed a puddle on the counter. David quick held it up right, much like a soda, and quickly skipped across the apartment toward the fire escape.
David pulled the screen up and felt the morning air hug his body. The rats’ blood had gone cold on his knuckles as he looked out at the rising sun. He felt triumphant, like he had gotten away with murder. He looked at the ground below, which was a mix of concrete and un-kept shrubbery. He looked into the windows of the neighboring buildings. No one seemed to be up, most of the shades were down. He held the rat in front of his face now. I’m gonna fucking fly! - He thought, and squeezed the rats’ body into his mouth. The blood was lukewarm and dreadfully salty. It made David fall to his knees and gag, shutting his eyes tight. Uuuuuuuuuuuaaaa, FUCK! - He exclaimed to the dead outdoors. His eyes opened wide and he began to lift from the ground. The sky above was banded with golden rays and heavy blue. He soared up high over a thousand feet, and looked at the city, leaving the body of the rat to sun bathe on the metal. The city grew brighter by the minute as David floated, spinning and screaming. He found himself over water and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he watched small waves move about in rows on the surface. He had become short of breath, like he had been running really fast. He slowed down and abruptly dropped twenty feet, and paused-
FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKK WHA’WHAAT’-
100 feet-
He was plummeting faster by the minute-
As he neared the endless sea beneath David blacked out.
Lily was leaving a message on his answering machine while straightening her hair. The three men in the tunnel were asleep beside their milk crates, grunting, dreaming about having wings of their own.

End.