The Rat King

Written by Jordan Miller

Alex Luvie found the first rat in the third week of October. He had been about halfway through a long list of daily chores when he found it in the barn hiding behind a stack of old tools. He killed it with an edging shovel and through its wooden handle he felt the reverberations of its tiny bones breaking. The weather had just started to go cruel, as his mother often put it, and the talk amongst the old timers at Webber’s Market had turned away from fishing and football and towards things like when was too early to buy salt, and bets as to how early we’d see the first overnight freeze of the season.

Alex hated winter. He hated the way cold wind hurt his cheeks and how the frozen ground crunched beneath his boots. It wasn’t just the cold, it was extreme temperatures in general that he hated. He hated the oppressive swelter of summertime just as much as the bite of winter. He didn’t understand why his family chose to live anywhere that allowed such dramatic fluctuations throughout the year.

On very cold or very hot days Alex would often fantasize about moving somewhere far away where the summers and the winters stayed more or less the same, where it never snowed and rarely got up above 80 degrees either. He’d heard that parts of Central America were like that, and he would picture himself there on adventures all alone. His parents were never included in those dreams, and Alex had never asked himself why that was. Had never even considered the question. Nor had he ever asked himself why none of his classmates were ever included, but if asked he could have at least provided quick reasoning for that. Simply put, he just didn’t really consider any of them as real friends, and if he was being truly honest, most of them just got on his nerves.

All the kids at his school seemed to do was bicker about music, movies, celebrities, and who had a crush on who. While he worked his chores on weekends Alex pictured them all riding bikes and playing tag in the park. He knew in a couple years they would all be sneaking alcohol and getting into trouble and he would still be halfway through the same list of chores. He would lie in his bed at night, imagining them all laughing and smiling and quietly hating them for it.

He scooped up the dead rat with the shovel and tossed it out into the back field where he figured a crow or something would surely turn it into a meal. Every year he would find a few rats who would try to nest in the barn to escape the cold, but usually not until the end of November. Every winter seemed to get progressively colder, he thought, so there could be a few more than usual this year. So what? He would deal with them as he always did, and as Alex’s dad so loved to say, who gives a solid shit?

He finished the rest of the day’s chores and went in for dinner just as the sky started to turn pink over the mountains. Dinner was chicken and vegetable medley, and the family ate in silence as they so often did. Anytime his parents were in the same room together, Alex felt like the air would grow thick and heavy, the way air sometimes feels just before a big thunderstorm.

Sometimes dad would finish his meal early and go up to bed, and then Alex would talk to his mom about something interesting she read in the paper or what was going on at school, but most of the time he would just follow his dad’s lead; finish his plate and excuse himself to his room.

There, he could do the things that really interested him like build models, and read. He loved to read. When it came to literature Alex was an omnivore. He consumed everything he could get his hands on from novels to comic books to the tv guide. Anything, so long that could take his mind to some far off place. Somewhere he could wander and dream and adventure through the places he believed he would never get the chance to go to in real life. After that he would lie in bed and think about school the next day and chores followed by a conversationless dinner with his parents. He would close his eyes and he would hate them all.

The following morning Alex woke up around 6AM and was just digging into a bowl of cereal as his mother came in from one of her own sets of endless chores. He woke up early, but his mother rose with the sun. She reached over the counter and poured herself what was likely her second or third cup of black coffee.

“Before the bus comes you need to put out some traps in that barn. I saw rat shit the size of Texas out there this morning. Just about needed a trash bag it was so much” She said between sips.

“I killed a rat yesterday, that was probably it.” Alex responded.

“Could be, but put them out all the same, I hate those little bastards”.

Alex did what his mother asked. Farmwork never stoppin’. That was another thing his mother liked to say. She used it as a replacement for most casual responses. If the postman asked how she was doing that day for example, or if she had just come in from a long day and needed a suitable substitute for hi, how are you? Alex said his mother’s phrase to himself like an unconscious mantra, and had all the traps baited and set ten minutes before the school bus picked him up at the end of the driveway.

During his lessons Alex found himself drifting into daydream. The daydreams started as usual, with him living the good life somewhere in Central America, but soon drifted to images of rats. Thoughts of coming home to a barn full of rat traps fat with the carcasses of those little assholes. He thought he might toss the corpses into a little pile and have himself an evening fire. That was a nice idea, he thought, and couldn’t wait to get home to check.

That afternoon when the bus dropped him off Alex would have gone straight for the barn, but his mother met him at the front door with another sidelist of chores that needed immediate attention. Alex, the good son and a dutiful farmhand, got to work immediately.

It was nearly nightfall by the time he finished the list and could finally check the barn. He inspected each trap and found his excitement quickly turning into bitter frustration. Every trap had been triggered with the bait removed, but there wasn’t a single rat in sight. Alex let loose a string of curse words that his father would have been proud of, and started the process of re-baiting the traps. He was almost done and setting the last few in place when he heard a horrible high pitched shriek so close it made him jump.

He knew that sound. It was a rat, and not just any rat, this was most definitely the sound of a rat who has been caught in a trap. He’d heard it before. Sometimes the trap didn’t kill them instantly like they were supposed to and the rats made this awful tortured squealing sound. That’s when you just had to give them one real good one with the shovel and presto, no more squealing sound.

Rushing to find which trap had the wounded thing, Alex only found himself more frustrated to find all the traps still set, baited and empty. Frustration turning to anger, Alex wondered how this was possible. Though the agonized squealing had died down to a low pathetic mewling, he was still hearing it, but thinking back he couldn’t remember ever hearing the snap of the trap.

Because it’s not in any of the traps, dummy. Alex said to himself. He looked down, got an idea, and then got all the way down onto his belly. He turned his head and put his ear to the floorboards. He could hear the mewling sound a bit better.

He got up, ran to the rack of tools and grabbed a crowbar and a flashlight off one of the shelves. He was a little kid, but one who was used to daily farmwork, so it didn’t take him long to get the first board loose.

“Farmwork aint stoppin’” he said with a grin, pulling up the board, then another adjacent one. He could hear something down there and lifted his flashlight. Down between the baseboards he found the source of the mewling, and nearly dropped the flashlight the instant it shone over the writhing brown shape. Staring directly at it, Alex took almost a full minute to understand what it actually was. The coarse blackish brown fur and blank pink eyes were familiar, but the shape was altogether alien.

After giving himself time to process, he realized he had read about this. There had been a whole section in one of those nature books he was always finding. What he was looking at was close to ten individual rats in a tight enclosed space that had become fused together through dried filth, blood and knotted tails and were now unable to free themselves. He had found what was referred to as a rat king. His flashlight then found something else, the source of the tortured mewling sound that had drawn him here. It wasn’t the rat king, but a single separate rat who was now being cannibalized by several of the rat king’s independent mouths.

Alex dropped the floorboards back down into place and ran to vomit into a stack of loose hay. Once calmed down, he debated what to do with the discovery. It was vile and upsetting, but something inside him liked it too. It was something bizarre, like one of the things he had only read about in books, but this was happening to him in real life. This was something new and different and most importantly, it was his.

He had found it, and nobody else in the world knew it existed. And it wasn’t going to hurt anybody, the damn thing could barely move. The only thing it might hurt is a few other rats it might catch and make into a meal. No biggie. He secured the floorboards where they belonged, but left the nails out so he could come check on the thing again later, then Alex went off to bed to a night full of fantastic dreams of unfathomable beasts and endless adventure. In his dreams he rode atop a great creature of enormous power and cut his enemies down with single deadly swipes of a magnificent fiery sword. The sword shone so brilliantly he couldn’t look directly at it, so he looked down at the poor souls who met its edge. In this dream, his schoolmates did make appearances, albeit short ones, as did his parents.

In the barn underneath the floorboards, the rat king dreamed as well. In its sleep, the creature throbbed and began to grow.

III

The next day school seemed to drag on forever, and Alex found it impossible to focus on any of his lessons. His mind was fervently drawn back to the thing under the barn. That morning he had overslept, which was very rare for him, and had no time to check on it before the bus. He promised his mother he would deal with the traps when he got back and not to worry about them.

He had less patience than usual for the inane jabber of his classmates, and tried his best to just focus on running down the clock so he could go see the rat king again. He half expected the thing to be dead, but it might actually still be alive, and he wanted oh so badly to check.

As the 3 o’clock bell rang, Alex hurried to scoop his belongings into his backpack and rush out the door. He made it down the hall, out the front door and maybe ten feet onto the blacktop when he felt something slam into his chest, his wind knocking out of him. Alex’s legs seemed to keep running, and before he knew what was happening he found himself knocked hard to the asphalt. It felt like a tree branch, but after hitting the ground and looking up he saw it was no tree, but the long immovable arm of Duncan Reed.

Duncan was a couple years older than Alex, which at that age seemed to most kids like a pretty big deal. Most kids found Duncan himself to be a pretty big deal too, at least in the arena of school bullies. He had fiery red hair that was always falling into his eyes and was twice Alex’s size. Due to his terrible grades he had been held back a year; a fact that any kid who valued his life never brought up to Duncan’s face. There were a handful of kids Duncan enjoyed tormenting most, and on that list Alex’s name seemed to be ranked quite high.

“What’s the big hurry, farmboy?” Duncan croaked. “Hurrying home so you suck off the family cows?” Duncan was always railing on Alex for being a dirt moving redneck, or a penniless worm, or a an incestous freak with a full list of colorful sexual acts he regularly performed with every member his poor farm family. Usually it was some kind of fun combination. It took Alex almost ten full seconds to get his wind back before responding.

“If I don’t…” Alex’s chest heaved. “...then your daddy gets to ‘em first… and sucks off the whole field”

Duncan pulled back his fist and swung down a bone crushing blow. Unfortunately for him, Alex rolled out of the way at the last second and the only bones to be crushed were in Duncan’s oversized hand.

Duncan began to scream and rolled onto his back, forgetting about Alex entirely. Alex, however, had not forgotten about him and while any other day he would have turned tail and ran, today he felt something different. Today he felt no fear, only ugly wild hate.

Alex crawled on top of the huge screaming boy and began punching down onto his face. He delivered blows into his eye, his cheek, his lips. He hammered down with everything he had and he felt things break. He felt soft skin bursting against teeth under the impact of his knuckles. He felt the skin of his hand wet with blood and the feeling was indescribably good. He transformed Duncan’s face into a bloody screaming mess, and underneath that mess he imagined the faces of his other classmates, not just the bullies but every last one of them.

He would have kept swinging except the rest of the class started streaming out of the doors and he knew that even though Duncan had started it, he would be in big trouble for beating up on a kid this bad so he got up and started backing away. He usually took the bus, but he could hoof it back home if he had to. It would take a lot longer, sure, but with the amount of blood on his knuckles he thought this was one of those times. He turned back to the whimpering Duncan one last time before running the rest of the way home.

“I see why you do it now, but mess with me again and I won’t stop. Got it?” He waited a second but Duncan just kept crying. It didn’t matter, Alex thought he got the point.

Alex turned and started running home. He didn’t think Duncan would tell anybody who did it. He would be too embarrassed. That made him smile. He deserved to be much worse than embarrassed. Looking down at his bloody hands he smiled wider. Man alive, that had felt good, but his hands were starting to hurt now. There was a creek halfway back where he could wash his hands to avoid any unnecessary conversions with his folks. He didn’t stop smiling the rest of the walk home.

At home he dumped his backpack by the barn door and went straight for the loose floorboards. Prying them up he once again expected to find the thing dead, with maybe one of the rats still hanging on. He knew from reading that rat kings by nature didn’t last long. Without a shared brain, the entwined rats would struggle until they knotted themselves tighter together and finally, unable to move, would eventually starve or cannibalize each other. Either way the final result was the same.

Alex dropped the last board and took a step back when he saw the rat king. It was not dead; far from it, in fact. The thing appeared to be nearly twice it’s original size, which of course was impossible Alex reassured himself. Surely, when he had found the thing the prior night it had been the darkness and the shadows cast by his flashlight that had made the thing appear smaller. Rat king’s didn’t grow. They were made of separate rats, not connected biologically, and so it made no sense that it could grow.

He leaned in closer and the rat king looked back at him with its many heads. Its many noses twitched and sets of pink eyes met with his own. What was really strange was how the heads seemed to move together, like they really were all members of the same body. Again, Alex thought, this was impossible and not just impossible, but completely ridiculous.

Alex got down on both knees and peered as close as he felt comfortable getting to the thing between the floorboards. He inspected its matted fur and found something else that was different. The night before he distinctly remembered seeing where the bodies of the different rats met, pressed together and caked with dried mud and shit, but still a visibly distinct. Now he found his mind turning back to a children’s horror book he had bought for a quarter at a local yard sale. It was one of those old Goosebumps books about a girl who had bought a cursed halloween mask that once put on could not be taken off. The girl in the book had felt her neck and chest for the place where the mask was supposed to have stopped but she couldn’t find it, because it was gone.

“No line!” she had screamed in the book, “no mask line!” The girl had screamed into the mirror at the monstrous face that had become her own.

“No mask line” Alex thought, looking down at the rat king, where he could no longer find a place where one rat ended and another began. They seemed to have become one single living organism. Impossible, he thought.

Alex found a nearby stick and poked the thing in its fatty middle. The multiple heads all squealed at the same time, several of them tried biting at the stick until Alex removed it. An impossibility, sure, but one that had apparently happened anyway. It had happened right here, under the floorboards of his family barn. Not just an impossibility, he reminded himself, but his impossibility.

Beside the body of the rat king was the skeleton of the other rat it had been eating the night before. There was nothing left.

“You must be hungry” Alex said softly. The thing looked up at him almost as if it understood. Alex stood up and left, returning a couple minutes later with a handful of ground beef. He tossed it down beside the rat king and instantly realized it had landed just out of its reach and he would have to move it.

Before he was able to, however, he found the rat king started shifting its weight and was actually able to use some of its legs to paddle its way over towards the meat so some of the heads could get at it.

“Yeah boy, you were hungry” Alex said, smiling as he watched his new pet take its meal.

The next morning Alex was still deep in another fantastic dream when he felt something like a football land on his bed. He stirred and reached his hand down and found something that felt like wet hair, but it was warm and sticky. He shot up in bed and screamed in disgust at the humongous dead rat in his bed, it’s blood staining his sheets and smeared across his hand.

“Two rats in the kitchen this mornin’, Alex. The god damned kitchen.” his father said from the bedroom door. “Your mother said you’d been taking care of the rats.”

“I have…” Alex said.

“Bullshit, you have.” Alex had no response to this. He just lowered his head and waited for what came next. “Get up. You’re not going to school today.” Alex’s head shot back up. He hadn’t expected this.

“What?” is all he could say.

“You’re stayin’ home and guttin’ that barn ‘til you got every last one. Winter comes and every rat in the area gonna call that place home. Breakin’ in here every time your mother starts cooking up some goddamn thing for dinner. I won’t have it, so get up. I’m runnin’ into town today and won’t be back til this evenin’. I want to see it done when I get back. You can start by takin’ care of this one here.” His father motioned to the dead rat in his bed as he turned and disappeared downstairs.

Alex felt a strange mix of feelings at this sudden development. The feeling that lived on top was hate. He hated when his father talked to him like this. Like he was a dog who had messed on the bedroom floor. The feeling underneath that, however, was something far sweeter. Somehow, through his anger and punishment, his father had given him exactly what he wanted. After the pummeling he had given Duncan the day before, he was in no hurry to see how that drama was going to develop at school. More importantly, it gave him more time to spend in the barn with his new pet.

His father had awoken him from a most peculiar dream, in which the rat king had broken loose and had attached itself to his back. It’s many claws and heads digging into his soft flesh, it’s tiny tongues lapping up whatever leaked out of him. The really strange thing was that in his dream it didn’t hurt. In his dream it felt good. It was almost like relief as the rat thing sucked him down to a withered husk, growing fat like some massive tick. He wondered briefly if this was what mothers felt like when they nursed their young, but he pushed the bothersome thought away. He would take care of the rats, alright, he would catch every last one if he could. They would make fine meals for the rat king.

Freed from the obligation of school, and safe with the knowledge that his father would be gone most of the day, Alex started his day in good spirits. He took pleasure in every rat he was able to smoke out of a hole or peel off of a glue trap. He found joy in watching the rat king tear them to pieces and pull scrap after scrap into their snapping little jaws. The thing was bigger today again, he knew it, but was no longer concerned. He was overcome with an inexplicable feeling of whatever.

Since his rude awakening that morning, he had been unable to fully shake the dreamlike feeling of unreality. It wasn’t bad, it was actually somewhat pleasant, and it definitely helped him sink further into that whatever feeling. Catch a rat, toss it in, watch the king eat. It was a simple joy and a fine way for a boy to spend an autumn day, he thought. He started calling them peasant rats and that made him chuckle.

Whenever he threw a new peasant rat down between the floorboards, he imagined he was an almighty god, towering above his gladiator's arena. It wasn’t rats he was throwing down there, but his father and mother. They were tiny, and sometimes they tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but he was stronger. He would let this fantasy continue as he watched the rat king rip pieces of flesh away from its latest victim, imagining what his parents’ screams would sound like had they actually been shrunken down to such a size.

After six hours of work Alex felt he had more or less accomplished the task, though it was seemingly impossible to entirely clear out the whole barn of rats. No sooner would he have cleared one set of glue traps and placed down fresh glue, then he would hear the frightened squeaks of a new rat in the trap. He had never seen them in these numbers.

They come to serve the king. Alex’s mind insisted, followed by something even stranger. It’s eating rats, but it’s not really eating the rats.

It was an alien idea that wouldn’t leave Alex’s mind, and was reinforced with an inarguable sense of truth that frustrated him on a level that he didn’t fully understand. It was an idea that not only disgusted, but offended the rational mind, and like everything else that had happened the past couple days, was all quite impossible. But just then that dreamlike haze of whatever settled over him again and it all didn’t really seem to matter. Possible and impossible were just words to describe what humanity believed at the time, and that idea was constantly changing. Every impossible was just a possible waiting to happen. There was a time when people thought it was impossible for a man to walk on the moon. No reason for him to fuss. It was better to settle back into his old familiar bedding of hate and just enjoy the ride. He thought of how his father had woken him so rudely that morning, and all those delicious nasty feelings that came along with it. It felt good to think this way, so he did it some more. All the while, between those nasty thoughts, his mind would repeat it’s eating the rats, but it’s not really eating the rats.

Alex knew what it ate, and so he fed it some more.

After he had cleared out as many peasant rats as he felt he was likely to find, Alex decided to head inside. He dropped the boards back into place, noticing that they didn’t quite fit all the way down anymore. The rat king was too big. He knew he should probably do something about this, but he couldn’t bring himself to care all that much. It was all so whatever. He was tired. It had been a long day and he was hungry.

He walked to the house. By now his mother would usually have started cooking up something for supper, so Alex stepped through the side door and into the dining room, letting the screen slam behind him. He looked up to greet his mother but there was no one there.

He checked the kitchen, but found it empty as well. On the fridge he found a note from his dad, who had apparently come home at some point and left again. The note said one word, Woody’s, which was the name of the local bar and assuredly where you would find his dad for the remainder of the night.

He walked through the kitchen and into the main room of the house, but his mother wasn’t there either. Alex ascended his front stair case and halfway to the top noticed the door at the end of the hall was not only open, but was glowing with warm light from within. It was the old storage room that almost always stayed closed. Alex made the rest of the way slowly and pushed the door silently open.

Across the room he saw the old trunk of family photos was open and his mother was crouched down on the floor next to it. She had one of the albums open in her hand and she seemed to be hunched over laughing about it. Whatever could be so funny about an old photo album, Alex had no idea, so he approached his mother.

“Mom?” he called out with a squeak that was almost nonexistent. His mother turned to him with surprise, and in that instant he knew she hadn’t been laughing at all, but crying. He looked in her hand and saw the old family album open to pictures of his granddad. “Mom, are you okay?”

She wiped her face and started to close the album in a hurry but then stopped and opened it back up.

“Come here a minute, kiddo” She said, her voice still shaky. Alex did as she asked. “Do you remember your grandad much?” she asked. Alex shrugged. Truth was he barely remembered his grandad anymore, but he remembered he was nice. He remembered the warm feeling that came along with his visits, and the way his grandad’s jacket always smelled like his unfiltered cigarettes. He remembered how it tickled his nose but he kind of liked it anyway. He wasn’t sure how to say all that, so he shrugged. Somehow he felt like that said it all.

“You remind me a lot of him, you know. He was a hard worker, your Grandad, and knew how to get things done. Always had an air about him like it didn't matter what came at him, that he’d be ready. You’re a lot like that and it makes me happy to see that part of him alive in you, but your grandad was a distant man too, like your father. Hard to read, and it only got worse as he got older. I see that in you too, baby, especially lately, and it worries me. Just promise me you won’t forget that I love you okay? Promise you will always talk to your mama if things get hard?” She reached out and squeezed Alex’s hand.

“I promise, mama” Alex said, and deep in his chest he discovered it was true. Part of him wanted to tell her everything. Part of him wanted to spill his guts right then and there. He could see himself taking her to the barn and explaining everything that had happened over the past few days. He imagined them pulling up the floorboards and putting a shovel through the middle of the abomination that waited there. He heard it shriek and writhe and finally die, and a pressure release like something heavy on the back of his neck had finally lifted. He saw him and his mother hug, and the possibility of a life where he could allow himself to fully love her. Maybe even his father too, and if not love then at least respect and civility. He saw a life, not perfect or without sorrow, but a good life filled with love, and more importantly without those sinking tarpits of hate. He saw all of this in an instant, but never said a word, and so none of it came to be.

“I’m sorry baby, I don’t mean for you to see me like this. I was just missin’ your grandad a little bit today, that’s all. You get back to what you was doin’ alright?” She let go of his hand and closed up the photo album for good this time. Alex started to walk away and then turned, walked back and hugged her. When was the last time they had hugged, he thought. He couldn’t remember.

She gave him a sad half smile and told him to go wash up.

That night he lay in bed thinking not of the rat king, or the ugly violent thoughts that had filled his dreams the past couple nights, but of his mother. He thought of the tears glistening on her face and inside his chest his heart ached. It hurt for the simple fact that he was a boy and his mother had been sad, and there was nothing he could do about it. Under that was a different, more complex hurt directed squarely at himself. He felt awful for the horrible fantasies he had entertained, the faces he had imagined on the peasant rats. He hated himself for allowing such things to make such easy homes in his head, and in his heart.

In recent years Alex had started to imagine that inside his heart there was a pit. A deep dark chasm lined with jagged rock, the kind that would shatter your bones as you fell if you were unfortunate enough to fall in. He had no clue how far it went or where it ended, but he knew there were nasty things down there. Awful terrible things, but they couldn’t climb up. They were stuck down there, and all you had to do was not fall in. He had on numerous occasions, however, allowed himself to indulge it in the most innocent of ways. Letting himself drop a stone in and listen to it fall, never to hear it land. He knew he should avoid it entirely, but he found it fascinating to entertain it the occasional stone and long hard look into the black. Lately, though, he felt like he wasn’t merely dropping stones, but lowering himself in at the end of a thick frayed rope. He felt like was lost in it.

It’s not too late, Alex repeated in his head. He could go wake up his mother right now and tell her how much he loved her and how sorry he was for everything. He could still make amends for things in his head that she wasn’t even aware of.

Another thought then. He didn’t need his mother’s help when it came to killing the thing out in the barn. Suddenly he felt no affection for the thing at all. Suddenly he hated the rat king. That vile thing that had somehow allowed himself to sink deeper into that pit inside himself, but it wasn’t too late to start pulling himself back out.

All these thoughts and feelings were invaded by waves of competing thoughts and that returning thick dull sensation of whatever. The whatever feeling told him he didn’t need to rush. What he really needed was a good night’s sleep, and maybe some dreams. That was the ticket. What he needed was some rest, and then he could tell his mother anything he wanted in the morning. Tomorrow was good. Tomorrow was better. Much better. Alex tried to push these thoughts away but could feel his motivation drifting. His eyelids, suddenly so heavy, fought against him. Just sleep, the voice cooed, deal with the rat tomorrow. It’s not going anywhere. He tried to argue with the new voice in his head, but in just a few minutes he was asleep.

At 2:15 am Louis Luvie finally pulled his Dodge drunkenly into the driveway with the headlights off. He parked, stumbled out and gently pushed the driver’s door closed. He was used to getting back late like this and knew he had best keep his volume down or he would take some serious shit from Janice, he could bet his ass on that. It was the same reason he turned off his headlights when he hit the driveway on nights he had been out at Woody’s.

Finishing the last swig of his road beer, Alex’s father started towards the house but stopped when he spied the barn with one of its doors still swinging open. He thought about the rats his son was supposed to have taken care of, and the two rats his wife had found this morning in the kitchen. He wondered how much Alex had actually gotten done that day, and judging from the fact that he couldn’t have been bothered to close the barn door on his way out, he had a suspicion the boy was gonna need another good talking to.

Sometimes when he drank his temper, which had progressively grown shorter in his adult life, became almost non existent. He was feeling some of this familiar rage bubbling up as he trudged over to the barn. He would inspect his son’s work in the morning, but someone had to close the goddamn door.

Lou swung the door and had the padlock in hand when he heard something inside. A mewling whimper, almost like a human child.

“The fuck is that” Lou said to himself under his breath. His first thought was that his idiot son had set out all the rat traps, left the barn door open, and now they had a raccoon or something caught in there and now he was going to have to deal with it. “Christ on a cross” he growled as he pulled the barn door back open and stepped inside.

He pulled a pickaxe off the wall, figuring he would have to put the pathetic animal down, whatever it was. Lou rubbed his head as he pulled the string to activate the overhead light, fuck me I drank too much this time, he thought dimly. The yellow light flicked on and Lou stumbled back in surprise. There in the middle of the barn floor was a giant hole. Two of the boards seemed to have been cleanly lifted out, but all the ones around them had been knocked out with considerable force. Many of the boards were actually broken in half.

Lou’s mind immediately went white hot with anger. What had the boy been doing out here? What exactly in the fuck had he been doing, and my oh my was he ever in for a shitstorm of hurt in a few minutes. Then a cold sober thought penetrated his anger and overtook it completely. Lou looked at the destruction closer. Whatever had smashed all those boards had done it from underneath. God damn it something had broken out, and from the size of the hole the thing must be the size of a fucking VW bug.

He gripped the pickaxe tighter and thought it might be wise to go inside and get his gun. Turning towards the door however, he found there would be no time. The creature that had broken from underneath the floorboards was now planted between him and the open barn door. It was the most horrible, offensive thing he had ever seen. It’s likeness was leagues beyond anything his mind would have been capable of creating and something in his brain seemed to actually snap. He truly believed he heard it when it happened.

The thing standing over him was a writhing mass of brown fur and flesh, moving itself along inch by inch on what must have been hundreds of loose broken appendages that maybe once were legs, but were now being used like flippers. From all sides, hundreds of thin fleshy noodles flailed side to side like tentacles. They looked like rat tails. The top of the thing’s arched back towered a foot over Louis's head.

Staring at the thing, Lou didn’t know where he should focus in order to defend himself. It had so many heads he couldn’t even begin to count. He couldn’t tell which, if any, was the master head. Even had he been sober, he still wouldn’t have had enough time to take stock of them all before the thing started in on him.

It’s a thousand rats, but at the same time only one, and they all serve the king. That was Lou’s last free thought before his mind was raped by a hundred stabbing, gnawing intruders. His face went slack, his mouth falling agape and stupid. His hands went limp and the pickaxe clattered to the floor. Outside the wind picked up to a howl as the rat king paddled forward, finding its prey. Louis Luvie wasn’t even aware when he started screaming.

VII

Alex woke with a jolt and sat up in bed. He thought he had heard screaming from somewhere outside, but couldn’t be sure because by the time he was consciously awake the sound had stopped. He pulled back his curtain and looked outside at the barn. The light was on and one of the doors was open, swinging back and forth lazily in the night wind. He was absolutely certain he had closed and latched both barn doors earlier. His dad would tan his hide if he forgot. He couldn’t be sure about the light, but he didn’t think he had turned it on. During the day enough light came in that you really didn’t need to use it. Something felt wrong.

Alex got out of bed, slipped on his shoes and jacket and snuck downstairs careful not to wake his mother. She was a solid sleeper most of the time, but if you woke her up she was going to sure as shit let you know about it. That was something he didn’t need at the moment.

Once outside Alex hurried across the grass and towards the barn. On the way he noticed that his dad’s Dodge was back in the driveway. Something new occurred to him. Maybe his dad found the rat king and was going to give him the beating of his young life. Whatever it was, he had to know, and if it was a beating then it was inevitable anyway.

Inside the barn he found a circus of ghoulish dancing darkness. The yellow overhead light swung wildly from side to side, sending long dark shadows stretching one way and then another. Across the floor there was a massive hole broken through the floorboards. He knew instantly what had made it and his heart sank. Too late after all, his mind repeated, too late after all. There was no way he could have known it would have turned out like this, but still it was too late.

The light swung back and forth again and this time he could see there was a puddle of something dark on the floor. He knew it was blood. He had seen farm animals slaughtered before, and had seen how blood looked like black pools of tar at night. This is what he was seeing now.

Then Alex felt something inside him change. He felt that hot coal of hatred heating up again. That thing he had hoped to extinguish was glowing once more, and hotter than ever. He felt all those loathsome familiar feelings welling up in him. Suddenly he hoped his dad was here. He would show the old drunk that he was no scared little kid. He saw a pickaxe on the floor. He picked it up. If the old man was here, that would do.

Alex turned. The light swung again and cast light into the corner behind the door from where he came in, illuminating the hulking thing shuffling towards him. Paddling itself out of the shadows towards the boy that had fed it so well the past days. The rat king, all coarse fur and swinging tails and snapping jaws.

Among the numerous chattering rat heads there was something different. A shape like a human arm protruding from the rat king’s side, only it was covered in coarse brown fur like a rat. Above the arm was the shape of a human face. His father’s face. It pressed through a translucent covering of fresh skin. He wasn’t dead. Alex could see his gaping mouth slowly opening wider and closing again, the shape of his tongue bulging inside. His head rolled idiotically from one side to the other. At the end of the thing that looked like a human hand the fingers clinched and opened, clinched and opened, slowly and rhythmically. The rat king had absorbed his dad somehow and was feeding off him. Much in the same way it had been slowly feeding off him too. Growing fat off his hate.

Alex swung the pickaxe, burying its sharp end hilt deep into the side of the enormous rat thing. It shrieked, all the heads at once howling in pain together. He looked at his father’s face behind the thin rubbery skin and could have sworn that he looked like he was in pain too. Was his dad in there somehow feeling the same thing the rat king felt?

This thought was interrupted when the rat king reached with several of its heads and snapped its sets of needle-like teeth. Just like that three of Alex’s fingers were gone. Alex fell back, his complete hand instinctively grasping its wounded partner, where the pinky, ring and middle finger were now missing above the middle knuckle. Gouts of blood began to soak his arm and jacket.

The pickaxe was still stuck in the creature’s side, thick rotten blood oozing down around it. In the matter of only a few seconds the rat’s wound seemed to heal itself. The flesh closed and pushed the pickaxe out, clanking to the floor in almost the exact spot where Louis Luvie had dropped it not so long before. Alex looked up at the rat king and the white hot pain in his fingers faded to a dull, distant ache. The rat king demanded all of his attention, and he had no choice now but to give it.

This was his fault. He knew this to be true and yet at the same time he didn’t care in the least. He couldn’t. Everything seemed to be okay, actually. Everything was just whatever.

Running wasn’t an option now. Alex couldn’t move. The thing he had nurtured was grown up now, and he had now choice but to join it. That was alright. It was good, even. The rat king moved forward and overhead one of its many rat tails swung and shattered the swinging lightbulb, casting them both into darkness. As the thing pressed itself against him and sunk a dozen sets of teeth into his flesh he could feel that hot coal of hate dissipating. Everything that was his was now was shared amongst his new brothers and sisters, and his father now too. They would share everything; thoughts, meals, pleasures and even pain. Wasn’t that what a family was supposed to be, Alex thought, a group united together by blood that shared each other’s pain? Were they not meant to help carry each other's burdens? He thought so.

As the process continued Alex thought it was a lot like getting into the bathtub when the water was set to just the right temperature. When you could get in slowly and barely tell where the air ended and the water began. Surely, he thought, it is a blessing to join the king and his royal court.

VIII

Janice Luvie woke from a frightful nightmare and checked her bedside clock. 3:25am. Early even for her. She wasn’t sure what woke her but she had a feeling it was her no account husband probably coming home from that goddamn bar and slamming something around. Looking out her window, sure enough, there was his truck parked in the crooked fashion he often did after drinking. Great.

Across the lawn she saw the barn door was wide open. She shook her head disapprovingly. She would have to close that, and knowing she could never get back to sleep after waking up, decided to start her day earlier than expected. Fantastic.

Sometimes she felt like she was the only one who took the work seriously around here.

“Farmwork never stoppin” she sighed to herself as she tied her bathrobe around her waist and walked downstairs to go check on the barn.