Pied Piper of London

I want this city eaten from the bottom up, so bottoms up to that. The whiskey I stole off one of the ‘sisters’ tastes like smoke and moors and decay. I want this city squealing with delight and pain mixed exactly like this drink, painful but irresistible. Especially this house by Primrose Hill, this house with unparalleled views. I want its foundations crawling and stumbling, its inhabitants nibbled away in their beds, frozen in a waking nightmare, limb after limb. Until their legs that aren’t for running, and their hands that aren’t for hitting, until they are all gone and nothing but head for screaming, screaming, screaming like pigs in front of an abattoir.

And if they ask me if I meant it, to eat London alive, if there’s anyone left to ask, I will raise a glass. Bottoms up.

One night in bed, those cherished ones I wasn’t tied so I could move around freely and raise my face to the moon by the grated window, letting the light fill me up with its anaemic energy, I heard a knock. A curious creature shuddered on the other side of the glass, a ball of matted fur with an endless charged wire for a tail. I slid the sashay open two inches, all the mechanism allowed, but the beast remained in its spot on the sill. A series of sniffles and squeaks followed, an exotic language designed to echo down tunnels and sewers. I come from the Underground, the rat whispered. We are hungry. We are bored. And we feel your hunger, too.

I happened to stock an emergency ration of cheddar under my pillow, saved from dinners of baked beans. I broke off a small piece, and handed it to the rat.

Is there nothing to eat on the Underground?

A huff followed chomping. The rat squealed with pleasure and the cheese disappeared between its comical teeth. More, more.

I gave it two more crumbs, and at the end it bit down on my finger for a drink. There was no violence and I didn’t jump back; there was only a matter-of-factness precision. We could eat you, the rat said. But it’s scary for us out of the darkness. There are those who hunt, and those who are hunted. There are moulds for all creatures dead and alive. If I asked you to come share the tunnels with us, you’d tear your hair out.

I considered this in silence, but by the time I decided I wouldn’t in fact tear my hair out and readied my measured response, the rat had left. I wiped a droplet of red metal off my finger, and went back to sleep. I dreamt of an army in tiny uniforms, grey as their fur, marching down streets of London, lifting buses from underneath and shaking their passengers out, swarming over pretty ladies, breaking into shops.

I loved darkness. My body didn’t tolerate the sun very well, and doctors said I rejected vitamin D, so I always suffered from a lack they ascribed my ‘symptoms’ to. They fancied me lethargic but violent, moody but numb, and so I was stamped unpredictable and sent to a small room in Primrose Hill with a beautiful view wasted on me almost entirely.

I could be a rat. A skittish and distrustful rodent rejected by humans, preying from hungry shadows. I could bite on the hand that fed me with gusto. I could twist and contort and learn to absorb poison, generation after generation of renewing cells. I had become completely immune to the drugs they forced on me, and learned to pretend they worked. I had an absent look by nature, they told me. I cranked it up like a lobotomy patient.

So on one cloudy, dusky walk, I got lost on the hill. This isn’t very easy to do, because a hill is like a pimple on the landscape, bulging and screaming for attention. Still, I rolled down playfully like a barrel, and then sat at the bottom, faking dizziness. When they looked away, I slithered into the nearest patch of trees, and crawled from there into the thicket. All I had missing was a tail, and I felt its sudden absence on my tailbone like an amputation, hot and desperate.

They dressed us like normal members of society, so getting away and blending in wasn’t difficult. I ran like hell and high water to Chalk Farm, and entered the Tube tunnels there. No traveler awaited transportation on the platform. I jumped over the ‘MIND THE GAP’ warning joyously and sprinted into the darkness. No train for another five minutes, the glowing sign said. The gaping hole soon widened into a wide nostril and I felt safer. And if I got caught, at least I would get caught free.

Something crawled over my feet soon enough. A couple of faceless trains had passed with terrible force, and I cried from the earache the noise gave me. I want you to eat the city, I screamed into the void, and they came. I want you to decimate what they hold dear here, I demanded like a true revolutionary. The tunnels merged, divided, shot off into unexpected directions as they led me away from the tracks. Bring me something to eat, I begged them. I never want to go upstairs again.

They multiplied around me in warm, wriggly blankets, and led me further and further down. I ate offerings slimy, dark, and sweaty. I swallowed whole what tasted of fear and desecration. The tunnels branched out like roots on a rotting tree, some clearly dug by man for purposes I could not decipher, some rodentmade, uneven hungry mouths under the ground. I must have slept at times, though I couldn’t tell when exactly. I was never cold, forever in a shapeless warm mass of fur and hearts beating with hunger.

From Chalk Farm, a long cavity stretched right under Primrose Hill, and I crawled relentlessly through to what turned out to be St John’s Wood. There, in the true dead of the night, which only steals the day’s last breath around 3 o’clock, I went up the never-ending windy steps. Minutes ticked away while I looked through the barred entrance onto the unassuming street seasoned with moonlight. The grated snippet of the city looked like a close-up of the view I had from my windows – petite brick, excessive windows, road signs like no tomorrow, grey pavements with tree roots violently splitting concrete tile.

I sat on the steps on my way back down and let the fierce gusts carry my smell away. The night was quiet bar the ceaseless hurricane that originated devil knows where. At that moment, gratitude was worth more to me than knowledge. I slithered back into the tunnels and bade farewell to the grey line. They called it Jubilee.

South, south I wandered, though I had no sense of direction myself, led by the company of the legion who had their compass set to lightless variables. In Edgware Road, I had my first human meal in weeks – a sandwich left on the platform, way too long out for safe consumption. Something nibbled on my filthy finger, and I shared this Tube offering with others. Remember, they hissed, we keep you going. We plunge you. I know, I replied. The soot and clay under London had taken my nails, like a sacrifice and proof of my commitment.

I watched the mischief closely. Those who contorted from poison distending their murky intestines. Those who played dead under the groaning of train tracks and human feet. Those who engorged themselves with no foresight and got left behind, and those who kept light on their paws and kept the rhythm of the relentless crawl through Paddington, Marble Arch, and finally a long and deep stretch to Green Park like an oesophagus leading into smelly, acidic bowels. And in these roots under the city, I bred the strongest. Before the pups could feed shamelessly on their mothers for a short and intense couple of moons, I offered them my thumbs, the metal of my blood forever twinkling silver in their vague memory. I prepared. I conspired and counted on my nailless, rough digits.

In Green Park, we surfaced. I took my bitter time straightening into an ape shape again, dizzy from the height as I stretched my gangly legs. We rode up the escalators, ever up, out into the ozonic hour right before dawn. We huffed on the pavement. We pattered lightly through the park, south, south. In front of the Buckingham Palace, we stood. It’s time, I told them, and for a while, nothing happened. The sun bled more light into the dark canvas of the sky by the minute. I breathed deeply.

Then, the plague of rodents began to slither. Their tails picked up dew, and I regretted not waiting until sunrise so I could remember them sparkling away from me. They disappeared in the building’s numerous cracks, my parasites. God save the queen, I whispered, though I had no idea whether the old bitch still drew breath.

I decided now was enough time spent in tunnels. I broke into an empty house; we had a sense for things like this now, something like a survival instinct but less blunt. The rabble rummaged through the rubble of the foundation, for it was an old house, and the front door moaned open. I took a shower, then another, and finished off with a bath. The mud trail had been wiped from existence by wet tails by the time I exited the steaming tub.

Then, we watched the news from a velvet mid-century couch as the surface of London spiralled out of control. The Queen found dead in her bed in mysterious, inexplicable circumstances. Mauled to death and deformed. So, the hag had still been alive. Guards falling, the court in disarray. Heir to the throne dismembered by curious, hungry beaks they called rabid foreign agents.

My company grew hungry, but I didn’t wish to let them all out yet. I walked the streets, ate from freezers in more homes, some empty and some simply asleep, not worried about consequences. The sun and moon played hide and seek in the sky. I let the panic subside and enjoyed the city sitting on edge, riverbanks swelling and ebbing, a tentative sense of security settling again.

Reports came to me on light feet from the house in Primrose Hill. A gift for you, they told me. Extinguished in full, drop by drop, limb by limb. Just like you dreamt. I found some whiskey and drank to ill health.

And then, the cabinet was exsanguinated. We breathed in the fear and exhaled joy. I roared and sent emissaries. Come from the tunnels now, I pleaded. Come upon this island that shall turn yours.

We’re hungry, they squeaked. Nothing’s ever been as good as that first taste. Like the first sunset watched from a sandy shore. The first kiss stolen under mistletoe. The first inexplicable pang of pleasure on seeing someone suffer.

Have at it, I told them and stretched my arms out in invitation. The nail beds had begun to shine again on my hands like waxing crescents of the Moon, pale and devoid of iron. Have at it.

The world was screaming, but I did not. The teeth in my flesh, too many to count, scratched an itch that finally waned forever.