The Reluctant King - A Rat Story (standard:humor, 1796 words)
Author: hvysmker	Added: Feb 11 2005	Views/Reads: 3588/2441	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
http://home.woh.rr.com/hvysmker/oscar3.bmp In the year 2220 B.C., Genghis Rat rode his aardvark across the prairies of Central China. At the time, the Chinese had developed only a crude civilization, with minor despots ruling small city-states. Gen

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“What's going on here, anyway?”  He asked her, “how did you get in with
these trollops?” 

“They talked me into joining up with them, kind sir.”  The girl made a
point of edging away from the rats, avoiding the unnerving rapine in 
process in her near vicinity.  A long winded thought for a human.  “My 
Uncle took over my Kingdom, the rich expensive one on the other side of 
that hill over yonder, and evicted my ass.”  She sobbed, hiking up her 
iron chastity belt, key in the hole. 

“If you know how to use that knife, you can ride with us for awhile.” 
Genghis offered.  A human would come in useful, if they had an aardvark 
to fit her.  “We could use a human that can cook.  Can you cook ‘Rat'.” 
He asked. 

“You mean ‘Cook Rat' or ‘Cook for Rat'?”  She asked shyly. 

So that was how Oolga joined the Rat Pack.  The last of the Rat Pack
humans was named Frank, but he died recently, and they were short a 
singing human.  Now, Oolga couldn't sing worth a shit, but she could 
cook the same.  One shitty singer and cook.   Her specialty was 
aardvark stew, the smell of which drove the mounts crazy, and made the 
girl very unpopular with them.  The advantage was the sneaky creatures 
became very tractable during Oolga's stay. 

The pack made a side trip to sell the two captives to a herd of wild
lions who needed someone to pick burrs off their scrawny hides.  Then 
they returned to the scene of the battle. 

Genghis had heard Oolga talk of her former tiny kingdom.  It was rich
from growing and selling dried poppy juice.  The juice was in demand by 
others and brought a high price.  For that reason, the Kingdom's 
coffers were full of gold.  For the same reason, the guards were said 
to be pretty unsteady in their rounds, tending to amble into things 
like the local wells and outhouses. 

According to Oolga, a steady man was hard to find, and you had to settle
for the other kind, da, da, da. 

Finally, taking months to go back and forth, they rode over that nearby
hill, emerging into a vast field of poppies.  The smell was almost 
overpowering as the Rat Pack flowed over a yellow brick road through 
the almost endless field of white. 

The white flowers was broken only by the yellow of the road, and some
seven foot tall plants with four pointed leaves.  Each of the latter 
boasted a smaller plant growing little squares of porous paper. 

Oolga showed Genghis how to roll ground up leaves from the tall plant
into a cylinder made from a leaf from the other.   When she lit it with 
a match from a match plant, the little cylinder made Genghis feel 
really, really, really, really... you get the picture. 

“Whoo, nice smoke, if I knew what smoking was.”  Genghis smiled at the
little sparkles in the sunlight. 

“Don't let your Pack see you like that.”  Oolga confided in him, “it's
our protection.  Any invading armies always get so high they're 
pushovers for my own troops.  By the time they get to us, they usually 
discard their weapons and want to make love instead of war.” 

Genghis reluctantly gave the order to the pack. 

“No smoking,” he squeaked to his lieutenants, “it can kill you.” 

It was after dark when the Roving Rodents reached the edge of the poppy
fields. 

“Sic'um, you rats,” Genghis gave his war cry.  The bloodthirsty Rat Pack
ran into the sleeping Kingdom, killing, raping, looting, burning, 
screwing, pooping, and in other ways being unsociable. 

“Yippee, Ki, Yi, Yaa, we rats are here to stay.”  They shouted, slitting
sleeping human throats, biting through tendons on human legs.  Toppling 
the men, they killed them, then raided their refrigerators for cheese 
pizzas. 

Within the hour, the Kingdom was theirs.  Genghis immediately put Oolga
back on her throne, reinstalling her as the Queen. 

“I want you to be my Co-Queen, Genghis, honey.”  She raised him to her
broad, tattooed shoulder, putting him between a simulated python and 
the hard place.  Genghis Rat gingerly jumped down to her lap.  Because 
of the chastity belt and Queenly garments, he wasn't aware of the 
tattooed chasm beneath him. 

“I think you mean ‘King', Oolga.”  Genghis reminded her, “Sure, why not?
King Genghis the Powerful. Sounds about right to me.” 

*** 

Things went well for several years.  The fickle humans of the Kingdom
made good workers and servants for Genghis and his Pack.  The humans 
did all the work and the rats just sat around taking it easy, the 
rightful place for the two races. 

The only thing required of the rats was guard duty, and Genghis made
damn sure they were sober and drug free when at work.  A large stone 
stockade was built around the town, complete with new .50cal machine 
guns. 

The gold built up higher and higher every year, despite the extravagant
lifestyle of the Pack. 

“I'm bored, boss.”  Tommy Ratinski told him one day. “We ain't doing
nothing, and ain't nothing happening, nohow.  Can't we go out and ride 
around a while, huh, boss?” 

“I ain't got no time to ride around, Tommy,” Genghis told him, sitting
at a desk full of paperwork.  The more the sales, and profit, the more 
the damned paperwork, he thought, “I got the quarterly dividends to 
equate with monthly amortization projections to figure out.” 

He had to walk up a flight of stone stairs to get to his quarters, and
paused halfway to get his breath.  Damn, I'm getting weak and fat, 
Genghis thought.  At the top of the stairs was a lifesize portrait of 
him when he had arrived.  A mirror next to it showed Genghis the 
difference.  That night only three rat girls wore him out. 

In the morning, he staggered to his bathroom and puked up from the night
before.  While trimming his whiskers that morning, hungover as usual, 
Genghis peered into the mirror at his red eyes. 

“Screw this.”  He yelled, stirring the drapery across the room with his
shout, “This ain't Genghis Rat.  No way is this Genghis Rat.” 

He called for his human servant, gave an order to be taken to his
Captains, and dressed in his old Rover outfit.  The gun and sword belt 
barely fit, on it's last notch. 

Oolga cried as she saw the rats mounting their aardvarks, cheering and
seeming to take on new life as they gyred and gimbled through the 
gabes.  Jabberwocks beware of savage rats, as their strong jaws crunch 
frumious bandersnatch.  And all that sort of nonsense. 

The rats rode out through pernicious poppies, intent on returning to a
life of hardship, rapine, and other nasty habits. 

“Good luck, Queen Oolga,” Genghis blew his Queen a kiss, throwing the
chastity belt key to a large human ruffian as he exited the gates. 

Back to the wild they thundered, bouncing aardvarks loaded with gold and
blow.  Well, no reason to leave everything good behind, was there? 

Oscar (The Rat)


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