God of The Rats (standard:Suspense, 1688 words)
Author: Jim Lekaks	Added: Feb 06 2003	Views/Reads: 3419/2338	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
God of the Rats (1700) is the story of a nameless man who experiences a psychotic break while watching his cat molest a rat. The horror of the moment combined with other common stresses in the man's life overwhelms him, pushing him into a rage of violence

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Dark moments passed. Terror. Gloom. And fascination. I was dreading the
future. What was I to do? Am I the cat? Am I the rat? This was foolish. 
I had work to do. Work to do! This was an act of nature. It happened 
every hour of every day, to tens of thousands of mice, rats, birds and 
whatever cats all over the world could catch. It is what cats do! It 
was beyond my judgment! 

Again, the cat suddenly retreated, seemingly buying into the rat's mime.
The cat licked himself- an all powerful narcissistic bully. The rat was 
motionless, knowing that to even open an eye or twitch a limb would 
lose him his life. Then, the cat looked up at me. Its long pupils 
locked on to mine. Its knowing mortified me. The hair on the back of my 
neck bristled and I realized but for the grace of a few pounds I was a 
spectator and not a player. I broke away from its stare and looked down 
at my idiotic fuzzy slippers. It knew I was watching. I was a willing 
component to the murder. My heart filled with cold blood and pumped it 
through my sunken chest. This foul play required a witness: and I was 
it! The cat's tail began to spasm. His eyes dilated round and 
bottomless. He lowered on his haunches, every synapse and fiber staged 
for the final blitz. 

I became poisoned with rage. I was jolted with a life time accumulation
of bullies, tax collectors, petty grievances and most of all an 
alcoholic father. A flood of personal injustice supercharged a tantrum 
of retribution. I lurched away from the window, bumping my desk and 
splashing coffee over my keyboard and papers. Flailing myself out of my 
study I grabbed my peace maker and broke through the screen door out 
onto the gladiator pit of my porch. The cat now had the rat in its 
front paws and was dishing out some expert feline disembowelment. The 
rat was now miraculously returned from the dead squealing like a 
asthmatic with a whistle caught in their wind pipe. The sound was shear 
panic and horror. The cat's back claws bicycled under the rat's soft 
underbelly. There was no time. I stopped myself over the wickedness and 
brought my tennis racquet downward like a bolt of bright lightning 
striking the cat into the air and spinning it over the porch rail. 
Airborne and tumbling the cat screeched like a child in conniption. 

The rat fell to the porch, slid into a gray lump, and stayed there. 

The cat was gone, but there the rat remained; injured and unable to
move. I felt scared. I think I almost killed my cat. My voice cracked 
as I called its name, "Shemp? Here boy. That's a sweet kitty. Here 
boy... come Shemp... come. Daddy has a surprise for you." I searched 
over the railing. The cat was no where to be seen. I really hoped a 
neighbor didn't just see that. I thought.  I looked into nearby 
porches, doors and windows and found them all vacant and absent of 
witnesses. I followed my arm down to my hand that still gripped the 
tennis racket. The tendons in my wrist were taught like bridge cables 
and my veins bulged like the statued arm of a mythological God. The 
assumption of power startled me and I tossed my accomplice into a bed 
of yellow daises like it had become electrified. 

I returned to the rat and inspected its small soft body. I bent down at
the knees satisfying my curiosity with the warm blooded warrior 
wondering if it were beyond recovery. Its fur was matted and wet. Its 
whisker's were longer than I had expected and lay bent like broken CB 
antennas. There were red and brown spots of blood, weeping from what 
looked like superficial wounds over its gray coat. It was a wonder it 
was still alive. 

Five minutes passed before the rat began to move away from me. It moved
slowly at first, too exhausted to care that another giant was standing 
over him. Its long black filthy tail marked a trail of water and blood 
behind it. The rat then found the wall to the house and moved with some 
confidence against it. It continued until it came to the end of the 
porch. It hesitated there and sniffed the damp air. Without looking 
back, it jumped off and into the high grass. 

I still don't know how I should feel when I think back upon my actions
of that day. I want to believe I did something good or just. Something 
that makes me feel worthy of the love in my life. Sometimes now, I can 
hear the rat's high pitched squeaks that finally hailed me- but nothing 
is ever there. Shemp has been gone for almost two weeks now, and I know 
I will never see him again. When my wife asks me what happened to the 
cat, I gently laugh at her tears and reassure her that, "He'll be back, 
he's just on Walk About- like Crocodile Dundee." I hug her and rest my 
face in her hair. "Don't cry." I say. "He'll be back, just you wait." 
Then I feel my secret. It rises in me like water filling a warm bath. 
The cat did come back, and that was a mistake. 

2 God of The Rats / lekaks@gorge.net 

God of The Rats / lekaks@gorge.net 


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