Rats are People

If you were to ask me how I felt, I would tell you I was fine in a flat and frankly rude tone, as if you had just given me a backhanded compliment.

I hate back-handed compliments; they sound petty.

This is exactly how I felt when I entered the apartment complex.

I feel FINE.

The sound of a leaky pipe dripping somewhere in the plumbing system above, most likely causing water damage, made me feel sick. The damp hallway, filled with doors and dim lights, most of which were burned out, made me feel sick. The eviction notices on most, if not all, doors made me feel sick.

Water drips mindlessly above me from that god damn pipe. That pipe, that broken pipe. The pipe with a small, almost invisible crack won’t stop leaking.

I find myself standing in front of door 49 on the left—no, right side of the fourth floor. The feeling of my boots sticking to the stained concrete ground increases the strange, tickly feeling in the back of my throat. A scowl forms on my face as I stare at the cream-white door, the peephole like the beady eye of a disgusting brown rat, the yellow teeth protruding from its mouth like a beaver’s.

The gun strapped to my side feels strangely heavy, like an anchor keeping me in place, and I happen to be the boat, mindlessly drifting on the water with no sense of purpose or dignity.

I raise my fist to the wood of the door and knock.

Knock-knock

The sound fills the silent hallway and fades quickly in the humid, musky air that floods every creak and corner like water.

It drowns me.

No one answers the door, and the apartment remains silent.

The dripping of water fills my mind and makes my eye twitch.

I let my hand fall to my side next to the black pistol on my hip as my eyelids fall shut and cast my gaze to the flaps of flesh called palpebra, darkness enclosing me in a fake sense of closure that maybe, just maybe, none of this is real, that it’s all a dumb, stupid dream that my mind so stupidly casted upon me for being a broke failure of a human being, that I’m nothing but a pile of flesh that was ungraciously brought into this world.

I hear the rats shuffle throughout the apartment complex.

I knock once again, this time louder in hopes of someone answering the door, but alas, no response.

I sigh through my nose and open my eyes, the dim, yellow lights of the hallway making contact with my eyes, causing me to blink and move a hand to rub my eye.

The feeling of the round metal of the doorknob makes my skin tingle as I twist it and push the door open.

Creeeeaakkk

The door falls open without resistance. I step inside and shut the door behind me.

The apartment is small and damp and just as filthy as all the others.

My face scrunches up like a dead spider, my hand sliding from the doorknob to the door as I push it shut. I take another step further into the dark apartment and repeat until I’m standing in the small living room, trash piled up in the corners of the square room.

Paint chips from the stained walls slowly descend to the ground like snowflakes, dancing in the stale air for a moment before landing on the ground silently, like the way my mother’s skin would peel off her body to reveal the red and sticky underneath.

God, how much I hated that woman.

I look around and spot a heap of brown fur scurry into the bedroom, and my hand unconsciously makes its way to the sleek black pistol.

I follow the rat.

Rats are a type of rodent; they’re part of the genus Rattus or related genera.

They’re like large mice.

The smell of feces and urine fills my senses and causes me to involuntarily take a step back from the bedroom, my hand shooting up to my face and covering my nose and mouth.

I step into the room and look around, my eyes watering from the strong smell. It seeps through the cracks in between my fingers and into my mouth and nose.

I should’ve brought a mask.

The rat hid in the far corner of the room, huddled up and shaking like a leaf in the wind.

I look down at it and pull the pistol from its holster, aiming it at the rat and firing, watching as it connects with its soft body and buries into the wall behind it.

A smile forms on my face as I stare down at the bloody and crippled body of the rat, my grip on the pistol tightening for a second before I slip it back into the holster.

Dead.

I ignore the sound of sirens and walk out of the apartment, walking down the hallway and stopping at the heavy door that leads to the countless flights of stairs connecting the floors with rows of apartments.

The familiar sight of dead rats fills my line of vision as I stand in the tenth apartment of the day.

Two more and I can go back home.

I find myself outside another apartment door, the once scowl on my face had twisted and bent to form a smile, though it felt a bit forced due to how my crooked teeth sat in my mouth, lined up unevenly.

Like a rat’s teeth.

Another damp, filthy, and dark room. I step in and head to the kitchen, where I hear the squeaking. I see a rat under the kitchen table and aim at its head, firing a shot and watching as its head caves in and it falls silent, leaving me with the sound of sirens and a few more rounds of bullets left to go in the chamber of my gun.

Why are you doing this?

…I had to.

I didn’t have a choice.

The policeman sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, placing the file on the metal table. “You didn’t have a choice?” He repeated, cocking his head to the side as his lips twisted into a sowl.

Seth Williams remained silent, staring at the policeman with a blank gaze.

After a few seconds had passed, the policeman sighed and stood up, the metal chair screeching as it was pushed across the floor. The man in uniform scooped up the files and gave Williams one more glance before walking out of the room, the heavy door falling shut behind him.

The officer looked down at the file as he walked through the hallway, reading it over briefly once

more as he entered his office.

Official report by Alexander Reeves, head of the investigation team:

According to his words, Seth Williams reported having done jobs like this multiple times, although not on this scale.

Twelve people were found deceased, and four were severely injured in the mass shooting. All of them were residents of the ‘NorthWood Apartments for the Disabled’.

Williams appears to have some form of PMO or Prosopometamorphopsia, more commonly known as ‘Demon Face Syndrome’.

He remembers being hired to exterminate rats in the building.

More information is still being uncovered.