At night I turn into a rat. I scamper beneath clothes that no longer fit, out from under choking sheets,
and I leave my sleeping husband behind. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t turn into a rat: I dig through
trash, the piles that run down the alley beside our apartment’s sole window. Gnaw on old cheese. My
fingers, so tiny. The only marvel. In the morning, my hair matted, my skin stinking of sewage, I tell my
husband the truth. I say, I turned into a rat again. He playfully rolls his eyes then pats my head. My
little maniac, he says. Though he gives me space, never kisses me in the mornings—he smells what I
smell. A rat.
I have rat friends. Squeak squeak, I say to them. Midnights, we prowl the streets, pavement slick with
moonshine. Not all of us make it when we cross. Cars, they come out of nowhere. We mourn our
friends and scurry to the abandoned pizza box, crusts galore. In the mornings, my husband still says
nothing. Was it always like this? Perhaps it was. I insist I am a rat, and he digs his fingers through my
hair, calls me his little maniac. When he pulls his hand back, the tips are oily from the pepperoni I
rolled around in the night before. He smiles. Retreats into the bathroom.
I have a rat lover. I don’t know how this happened. We fuck like bunny rabbits, which is saying
something.
This story ends as one might expect. The city rat czar and her dirty tricks. We bound into the alley,
digging deep into the mystery box. There are many of us, over a dozen. We scavenge to the bottom.
Meet something slick and sticky. Our tails get caught, tangled further in panic. We dart away, each in
opposite directions, each pulled back by our tails. We’re stuck, the material’s knotted us into a clump,
we’re together. The moon dips before the sun rises. It’s a new dawn and we’re dying. At least we’ve
seen it with our own eyes, we say. The legend of the Rat King.
Then the sun lands on my face and I’m no longer a rat. Naked in the alleyway, I look down. The rats
are still a knot. They look up at me, they squeak. I have the instinct to kick them. I lock eyes with my
rat lover and my stomach turns. Squeak squeak. I ready my foot and his pleading eyes glitter.
Joshua Vigil lives in the Pioneer Valley. His work has appeared in Hobart, HAD, Maudlin House, and elsewhere.
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