Rats On The Brain
Rats On The Brain
There once lived a sad, sad boy. Melancholy clung to him like damp fog, curling around his every thought. He wandered the narrow lanes of his crumbling sad village, trailing his sad shadow in silence, speaking only to the rats that scurried along the gutters beside his splashing sad footsteps. They were his confidants, his dinner companions, the only witnesses to the soft tears that fell into his chipped wooden bowl at supper.
The boy’s house was an abandoned hovel at the edge of the marsh, it’s walls soft with mould and it’s windows long since surrendered to the wind. At night, the rats would gather, their black eyes glinting in the candlelight, twitching their whiskers as though they were actually whispering secrets instead. He listened. Oh, how he listened. And slowly, he began to understand them. They spoke of darkness, of the hollowed earth beneath the floorboards where bones slept, and of the sweet, warm meat above—him.
“Delicious, delicious, must have his succulent sweetness. One bite, one tiny chuck of boy flesh to feed the insatiable hunger”. Collectively “we must have it”
When the first bite came, he barely stirred. A sharp nip at his finger, a small red pearl welling up. Glimmering in the moons embrace the red pools became larger, reflecting the moon as a mirror. He smiled, almost relieved to feel anything at all. “Finally” Nights blurred into weeks, and the rats became bolder, their teeth sinking deeper, gnawing his pale skin while he stared at the ceiling beams in quiet rapture.
His reflection vanished from the cracked mirror, his eyes sinking into black pools, yet he felt lighter, freer. The rats spoke louder now, a chorus of hunger and triumph. He lay still, surrendering to their banquet, until he could no longer tell where his mind ended and their chatter began.
And so it was that the sad, melachonly boy found his last company, the only companions who truly understood his hollow empty heart—ending with rats living in his mind and crawling through his now empty head, eating his innards till they are outward and free.
By- Eve Sara McIntosh