The Chicago Rat Shifter

Chapter 10

“He’s a bit naïve, don’t you think?”

From the back office, Thurston spied on the interview and listened through a secret microphone in the ceiling. The window was reflective on the outside, but inside, he could see everything in the store, including Cyrus, who was fidgeting nervously as he answered Laurel’s questions.

The only thing that made this stale room bearable was the flowers. The room was covered, quite literally, with flowers. To be among friends as he listened to interviews was the most one could ask for during this dreadful work.

The kid was endearing enough, but his jokes were insufferable.

Thurston leaned back and inhaled the floral scent from a bouquet of night flowers that oriented themselves in Cyrus’s direction.

The boutonnière on Thurston’s lapel, the acorns wreathed with baby’s breath, came alive.

Murgalen’s voice whispered, “He’s perfect, Atty.”

“And why is that again?” he asked, frowning.

“The magic binds better with fools. He’s giving the right answers. At this point, it’s up to you.”

Thurston bit his bottom lip. “It’s possible. He could be the final piece.”

“Wouldn’t he be a nice contrast to the other brute we recruited?” Murgalen asked. “They might not even get along. It could be fun.”

Thurston glanced at the clipboard with a bunch of names. What number was Cyrus Grant? How many people had wandered into Whisker & Claw in its various locations across the city? How many of them had contained promise but ultimately disappointed him?

“If you insist,” he said. “But he looks just like all the others to me. Empirically, he doesn"t check out.”

“You and your empiricism,” Murgalen said, disgusted. Her voice floated up from the boutonnière. “My magic trumps your scientific instinct every time.”

instinctThurston leaned back in his chair. Furrows of displeasure formed on his brow. “If that"s true, then why do we keep failing?”

“Magic requires patience,” she said. “And trial and error.”

“Like science,” he said.

“Nothing like science,” she said.

Silence.

Cyrus waved good night as he skipped out of the store.

Closing time. Thurston emerged from the office.

A tall, potted laurel tree rested in Laurel’s place at the table. Its leaves rustled and swayed, and Thurston snatched the clipboard hanging from one of the branches.

“Thank you, Laurel,” he said. He had never quite gotten used to talking to trees and plants, but they always did their work faithfully. The extent of Murgalen’s magic never failed to amaze him.

He’d never forget sitting in the alley behind his apartment, after his wife left him, crying and in pain. A flower blew in from the street, drifting on the wind until it landed on his lap. Then he heard Murgalen’s beautiful voice. It came upon him like a gift from heaven.

“They’re coming for me,” she had told him. “I’m in so much danger.”

“Who?” Thurston asked. He would have done anything to protect her. Anything.

“All I wanted to do was heal you,” she said. “And they’re going to lock me away for my good deed.”

“No. They can’t.”

“Will you do a favor for me?” she asked. “It’s just a small favor. But it’s based on wisdom I learned from you. You’ve inspired me so much.”

“You’ve inspired me,” he said.

He grunted as he thought about the memory. One long year later, and here he was, trying to free her from the twilight world so that they could be together again. It should’ve been a crime to lock someone so beautiful away. Still, he didn’t know why. He hated being apart from her.

Grabbing his Cubs baseball hat and leather bag off the wall, he nodded to the tree. Then he turned to the corner, to the kennel, where a naked man huddled against the cage, knees pulled into his chest. His body was smeared in dust and dirt and covered in cuts and bruises.

Thurston’s face hardened upon seeing the man’s pathetic sight.

Donovan Smith, age forty-five, from Avondale. Signed up for a study while waiting for pizza. His biggest hope, and his biggest traitor.

“I did what you told me,” Donovan said. “Now let me go.”

“You didn’t do what I told you,” Thurston said. “That’s why you’re here.”

didn’t“You asked me to find another lost soul,” the man said. “I sniffed one out for you. I found you a replacement. So let me go.”

“We’ll see how he turns out,” Thurston said. “Hopefully better than you.”

“You turned me into a f*****g rat, you bastard,” the man said. He shook back-and-forth and began to cry. “A rat!”

Thurston paced the length of the cage. “You put the entire expedition at risk. If you had just listened…”

“And gotten stuck back there with the others? What kind of life is that?”

“You were a coward,” Thurston said. “And I have no patience for cowards, or for people who break the rules.”

He stopped. “Transform. Now.”

Donovan went quiet.

“Transform!” Thurston barked.

Thurston slid an ivory-colored stick from his pocket and pulled it on one side, extending it to two feet with a sharp needle on one end. He drove the point into the man’s chest, then his stomach. No blood, but howling pain. Relentlessly, he prodded the man until he cowered at the back of the cage.

Thurston watched with satisfaction as the man shrank, bone and skin molding into chocolate hair, wild whiskers, and pink claws. The rat shivered in the space where the man had been.

Thurston slipped on a pair of latex gloves. Then he pinned the rat to the floor with the poker and produced a sea-green ball the size of a pea from his pocket. He dangled it over the rat’s mouth and told it to open up.

The ball disappeared into the rat’s throat and Thurston told it to chew and he’d let him go.

When the rat finished chewing, Thurston released the pressure from the poker.

“Out,” he said, opening the cage.

The rat jumped out of the cage and toward the door. It raced around the shop madly. Realizing it was free, it shifted. Its hair changed back to flesh and bone and its face bloomed into the man’s face again, but midway through the transformation, the man’s body jerked violently, a mess of human flesh, whiskers, and eyes dripping like a Dali painting.

Pain and fear flashed in the half rat, half man’s eyes, and his tail slapped the floor angrily. He shrank again into a rat.

“Rodenticide laced with magic,” Thurston said. He drove the poker into the rat’s tail, piercing it. The rat squealed in agony as Thurston carried it through the office and into a back alley. He tossed the rat, and it bounced, landing next to a catch basin where the darkness of a city sewer loomed below. A trickle of blood streaked the asphalt.

Thurston locked the back door. Just like that, it shimmered away, replaced by a brick wall. He tipped his hat to the rat.

“Good night, Donovan.”

The rat lay on its side, staring up in fear as Thurston walked past.

The boutonnière came alive again. Murgalen’s voice floated through the alley. “Another expensive failure, but I’ve got a good feeling about the new group, my love.”

Thurston stopped and smiled. “If you do, then so do I.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Everlastingly,” he said as the shadows covered him.

“When we are together again, it all will have been worth it. Shall I sing to you, my love?”

“You know the one,” he said, starting the song for her. “Oh, how love lies bleeding in twilight...”

Dr. Atticus Thurston passed onto North Milwaukee Avenue, past the closing shops and the day’s remainder of shoppers wandering the sidewalks, whistling along to the song that only he could hear—the one where she sang how much she missed him.