The Chicago Rat Shifter

Chapter 13

Cyrus jumped a foot in the air upon seeing the rat.

“How did it get in here?” he asked.

“I don"t know, but this is your chance to get some training,” Becca said. “Take care of it.”

Cyrus stared down at the dying rat. It breathed in and out slowly.

Every hair on his arms stood up. “Why do I have to do it?”

“Hello,” Becca said, “you"re supposed to be the rat expert.”

“Not until tomorrow,” he said.

“Will you please just take care of it?” she asked.

Not many things reduced her from tough-as-nails to frightened. Most of the color had drained from her face. “I"m gonna have to call the landlord. We"ve never had a rat problem before.”

“Logan Square is full of rats,” Cyrus said. “We had the most complaints in the city last year, remember?”

“But not in this building,” Becca said. “I hope they"re not downstairs. Can you please do something?”

Cyrus stumbled into the kitchen. “I"m not touching that thing with my bare hands!” he called back.

“Get some tongs,” Becca said, her voice more distraught. “And a container. Put some gloves on, for Christ"s sake!”

Cyrus paused and glanced around the kitchen. “Where are they?”

“You’ve lived with me two weeks and you still don’t know where anything is,” Becca cried. “Drawer next to the refrigerator, doofus!”

Cyrus pulled on two oversized rubber gloves. Then he opened all the drawers one by one in quick succession. He found a pair of tongs and an oversized salad bowl.

“You"re not ruining the salad bowl that Mom gave me for Christmas,” Becca said, folding her arms. “Find another container.”

“Then YOU take care of it,” Cyrus said, grabbing a spaghetti colander instead.

He stood over the rat. The body loomed larger, though it must"ve been his mind playing tricks on him. He couldn"t imagine touching it.

The rat looked Satanic. Clotted blood covered a wound at the base of its tail. Its mouth was open, bright yellow incisors on the top and bottom showing—a visage from a nightmare. Its beady black eyes stared into nothingness.

“I haven"t done this in forever,” Cyrus said. “Not since we lived in that little apartment when we were kids.”

“Don"t remind me,” Becca said.

Cyrus reached down with the tongs, but then he recoiled. “This is crazy.”

“You can do it, Cy,” Becca said. “Or I"m putting you out on the street tonight. I take back everything I said.”

“Thanks for the confidence boost,” he said. He took a deep breath, looking at the rat again.

He could do this. He could do it!

In one fluid motion, he grabbed the rat"s body with the tongs, but tripped, and the rat bounced across the floor, hit the wall, and landed face-down. He dropped the tongs and crashed against the wall, jumping away from the rat in fright.

Becca screamed again.

“You suck!” she shouted.

Cyrus sighed and grabbed the rat again with the tongs. This time, he had a firm grip.

Screw the colander! He threw it aside and bolted down the stairs.

With one hand, he pushed open the security door that separated the hallway from the foyer from the private residence. He wouldn’t allow himself to breathe.

He burst through the front door, into the night air, bare feet on cold asphalt, and around the building into the alley behind the Wicked Cat.

He beelined for the dumpster. The lid was closed and he cursed at the revelation.

Holding the tongs in one hand and reaching for the dumpster lid with the other, he tried to lift the lid and toss the rat in. But he lost his balance and misjudged his aim, and the animal struck the side of the dumpster like a brick and rolled underneath.

He cringed.

Hopefully, Mother Nature would take care of it for him. He’d had enough of rats for one night.

He slipped off the gloves and threw them into the dumpster quickly, afraid that the rat would somehow come to life and bite him on the ankle.

Then he heard a squeak.

The damned rat was alive. And it was squeaking at him!

He tore out of the alley, nearly stumbling, his feet covered in grime and gravel. Only when he was safely inside the building did he exhale.

Upstairs, Becca had the hallway floor doused in bleach and was mopping it up. She had gone a little overboard and covered her mouth with her starry night bandanna. Cyrus coughed upon smelling the odor.

“Did you take care of it?” she asked, her voice muffled.

Cyrus thought of the rat underneath the dumpster and decided not to tell Becca that his aim had been bad. He just nodded.

“Well, if you get a chance tomorrow,” she said, “see if you can bring some rat poison home with you from your new job. If customers find out that we have rats, I"m screwed. God, I"m so screwed.”

She was rattled. Cyrus took the mop from her. “Why don"t you finish up downstairs?” he asked. “I’ll take care of it.”

Becca composed herself and jogged back to the shop, tying her bandanna in a haphazard knot across her head.

As he mopped the floor, Cyrus couldn"t get the image of the rat out of his head—brown hair, streaks of black, long tail. He got the sense that he"d seen it before, but there were hundreds of thousands of rats in the city. Then he finished cleaning up, put his pajamas on, and went to bed.

* * *

He dreamt of rats.

To a soundtrack of a heartbeat, he walked through a graffiti-filled alley and oval shadows darted out in crisscrossing patterns before him. He startled.

Reflective eyes stared at him from inside a sewer grate. He stepped on a manhole and heard squabbling down below. Something brushed against the manhole’s lid from below, threatening to push it up.

Cyrus jumped over it and started to run. Suddenly, claws scratched all over his skin, all over his body.

Rats. All over him.

He screamed, pulling at his skin, but the rats dug in, staring at him and shrieking.

He fell on his back and found, conveniently, a pair of tongs on the ground. One by one, he plucked the brown rats off of him like burrs, casting them into the sewer. He ran like hell until he reached the end of the alley, where a brick wall awaited him. He turned around, seeing the rats" eyes in the darkness. They were climbing out of the sewer in bigger numbers now.

The heartbeat continued as the rats consumed the alley—scratching, squabbling, shadows zipping along the walls.

It all stopped when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

His mom. Long brown hair with streaks of gray, navy blue sundress, and a sleek black purse over her shoulder. His mom was what Becca would look like when she was older, with slight wrinkles and graying hair. She had a CD in her hand. The Bee Gees. The Gibb brothers stared at him, hairy man chests exposed through white leisure suits.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere, sweetheart,” she said. “I thought you might like this. Don’t tell Becca I gave it to you.”

And suddenly, he felt Becca’s presence, even though she wasn’t there with him. She was going to be angry at the CD. “No more Bee Gees!” he could hear her say.

“I"m in mortal danger and you give me a CD?” he asked incredulously.

“What danger?” Aurora asked. She turned and beheld the alley, which was now filled with flowers and bright as a summer"s day. The walkway was covered in a patchwork of concrete and grass.

“But the rats—”

His mom was gone. The brick wall behind him was gone too, replaced by a street and a park. Logan Square Park, the one right in front of the Wicked Cat. It was a small island in the middle of several busy streets, with a street cutting right through it like a ribbon. But the roads were quiet; a lone car swirled past in an ethereal wisp. The park’s giant Greek pillar monument with an eagle perched at the top stood tall over the trees, a brilliant gray against the the swaying tree-tops and stars.

He smelled Becca’s telltale coffee. He even heard her voice and her full-throated laugh. Through thick bushes and oak tree leaves, he sensed her, though the foliage obscured his sight of the coffee shop save for the fringes of light around the shop’s windows.

He dug his hands into his pockets and crossed the street into the park. Above the tall trees, he heard something jangling, like wind chimes.

In the azure sky, he saw himself in double exposure. His head, rising and rising, looking up into the sky, the entire park and square within him. Higher up, distant in the pure blue sky, were twinkling stars. His head inhaled, filling the air with the sound of jangling. His shoulders shook the oaks as they rose over the tops of the buildings.

“Becca?” Cyrus called.

But she didn’t respond.

“Bec!” Cyrus said again, growing more nervous.

He walked into the park and into the depths of his rising soul.