My Whole Life and Some of His

I’m a rat. I’m hungry. And it’s dark. I woke up for the first time before dawn, which has now become a common occurrence. It was probably one of the darkest mornings I’ve ever experienced. I can barely see my brothers and sisters right next to me, let alone my surroundings. I struggle to latch onto a teat because my siblings are so much bigger than me. But I’m hungry. I finally squeeze my way through and start sucking but my mother moves away. It wasn’t clear to me at the time, but she didn’t want me. And because she didn’t want me, neither did the woman giving us away.

When they were old enough, the woman took my six siblings away and left me with my mother who despised me. Luckily though, I wasn’t with her for long. She was taken away as well, rather quickly. Then finally, it was my turn. It had to be. The woman came and placed a strange green block in front of my face then closed the gate. I assumed she was feeding me, so I gave it a sniff and nibbled. But just as my teeth sunk into the green block, I heard another big person running quickly and screaming, “NOOO! YOU CAN’T KILL HIM!”. This was Cameron. Cameron grabbed me from my birthplace and hit my head on the metal bars as he pulled me out. If you knew Cameron, you’d know this was an accident. He held me tightly in his cupped hands, and for some reason, I didn’t struggle. Maybe I was too stupid to know any better, or maybe I knew how the rest of my life would turn out then and there. “I’m going to call you Frank,” he told me. I thanked him. The perfect name for a female rat.

As he carried my tiny body out, I watched my siblings behind thick transparent walls, and they watched me back. I knew what they were thinking. That I wouldn’t survive to see the sunrise.

That was a few weeks ago now. Little did I know that Cameron had a similar story. He was the second oldest of three children. “Twelve-years-old,” he told me. But he also told me he wasn’t good at anything. He tried his best at things his brothers would find easy, but he could never get the hang of it. It didn’t help that ‘Mum’ or so he called her, was his mother. He would smile after drawing a picture straight from his imagination, but when his bigger brother would draw the same picture, it almost looked real. Mum would only ever pay attention to his brothers, or, her ‘stars’, as she would call them. The bigger one was smarter and good at drawing. The smaller one was funny and athletic.

Although he received no reward for his pride, I think Cameron was proud of saving me. I certainly am. He still holds me carefully, feeds me his left-over crackers, and guards me from his brothers who try to hurt me and say I smell.

One night, his brothers came into the room with big smiles across their faces, opened my cage, and lay one of Mum’s big green blocks in front of my face again, watching with lidless eyes and great toothy smiles. I wasn’t hungry this time though, so I left it. When Cameron walked in and saw the block, he went crazy. I hid away in the corner of my cage while he threw himself onto his brothers. They didn’t retaliate, though. They ran away and told Mum. Mum was the one who retaliated. She came in with a big wooden stick and whacked him over the legs several times before he screamed and crawled under his bed. She smacked a hand into the wall, and everything went dark before she slammed the door on her way out. Then for the first time, something came over me. I needed to help Cameron.

I struggled against all the metal bars of my home, then remembered how Cameron opened it up. I latched my teeth onto the bar just above the door, stabilized myself with my back legs, and pushed with all my might before it fell open with a clang. I ran out for the first time and became distracted by the strange smell and feel of the floor, with small bits of food littered like my droppings on the ‘newspaper’, or whatever they call it, of my own home. But I ignored it and pounced under the bed into Cameron’s arms which were wet and hot from angry tears. He cuddled me tighter than he’d ever done before, and I cherished it.

We both stayed under the bed that night, but I didn’t sleep. I was protecting him from his mother, just as he had done for me. But, when he crawled out in a huff holding me in one hand, I knew that he hadn’t slept either. It was a dark and quiet morning, and I had no idea what he was planning. He grabbed this strange mess of metal attached to a ring from a wooden bench near the family’s food stores. I later learned that he called them ‘keys’. I sniffed them in his hand, and they smelt like the bars of my home, only laced with the stench of Mum’s dirty palms. Suddenly, he had brought us ‘outside’. Somewhere massive, cold, and as dark as my first morning alive. Somewhere I had never been before. But we weren’t out for long. Next thing I knew we were inside some kind of metal house he called ‘the car’. He stuck the smelly keys into a hole, and I felt the floor jump quickly, reverberating beneath my claws. I clambered up his sleeve in fear, but suddenly, the car started to move. I could feel it. Like riding on top of a big person, but with my favourite one riding with me. I climbed onto his shoulder and looked through the transparent wall to his right, and we were definitely moving. Fast. I sniffed the cool outside air as he laughed out loud while the car swerved left, and right and loud screeching noises came from below us. It was exhilarating for me. But even more so for Cameron.

“WOOO!” he screamed, “Look, Frank! Look at how fast we’re going!”

I was looking. And I was feeling. I climbed onto his shoulder and felt his arms move while the car swerved again, and I soon realized he was controlling it.

Go, Cameron, go! I squeaked.

“Look at the trees zoom past us! And the stars that shine above us! Isn’t it weird how they stay still no matter how fast we’re going?” The trees were black like the darkness that surrounded them, but the stars... the stars were beautiful. If only they were much bigger and easier to see.

He laughed and grabbed me with a free hand and pressed his lips to my head. Suddenly, he pushed something next to him, and the wind came hurtling into us past the transparent wall that was now gone. His laughs and cheers grew louder, and I cheered with him, despite my lack of ability to laugh. I don’t know if he heard me, but it was the best time I’d ever had. He was the best and fastest friend I could ask for.

We arrived back at his home, and he placed me carefully onto my newspaper before he sat down in front of me. “I love you, Frank,” he said. “You understand me. You know, your beginning was not so different to my own. I hope we can be friends forever!”

I hope so too, Cameron. I leaned onto the metal bars of my home and took in his scent while he talked to me. It was calming, while his voice was the opposite. Exciting.

Since then, Cameron has done this for years, at least one morning every week, before the birds started chirping. I never came out of my home which I’ve now learned is my ‘cage’, unless he was alone in the dark when Mum and his siblings were asleep. He would take me with him to go as fast as he could every time, and I would sit on his shoulder or his lap, wherever I was less likely to fall or hurt him with my claws. Every time was as exhilarating as the last for both of us. He had finally found something he was good at, but I knew he wasn’t allowed to do it. The way he snuck out. The way he made sure he arrived home before the sun came up every morning.

Not only him, but I had also found something I was good at. I could open my cage door by myself whenever I wanted, no matter how much string Mum used to tie it closed. Cameron told me I was the best in the world at ‘escaping’, so I told him he was the fastest big person I’d ever seen. Every morning we got home, he would sit down and talk to me, like we were lifelong friends. Like I was the fast one just like him.

But one morning before dawn, we got home, and Mum was standing, waiting for us. Cameron held me so close to his chest that I might have fallen between his ribs. I could hear his heart speed up to match the beat of my own. I watched her as she approached him, and when she raised her hand, he dropped me to cover his face. It didn’t work though. She wasn’t aiming for his face. She whacked him over the ear, and he cried. He cried louder than he’d ever laughed. And she wouldn’t stop. Without a single word, she took her keys from his hand and used them as a weapon against his pure skin which soon turned red. I couldn’t watch it any longer, and the feeling came over me again. I sniffed around for her disgusting, smelly skin and when I found it, I jumped onto her leg, holding on with my teeth and my claws. I sensed that she had stopped beating Cameron, but her leg started to swing violently while I held on with all the tiny muscles I had. She grabbed me as Cameron ran away and tried to take me off. But I buried my claws so deep into her skin that the fur of my arms started turning red, stained by her blood. She pulled me off by my tail, a move which I had no chance of resisting. I couldn’t hold on any longer or else she might’ve pulled it off. Suddenly, I was flying through the air, almost as fast as Cameron and the car, and I hit something hard.

That’s all I remember until I woke up in my cage, locked with thicker metal than any of the cage bars. I was so obviously close to Mum whose loud, wet breathing I could hear so vividly that I had to cover my ears. That’s how she sounds when she sleeps. All around me were those green blocks again. A lot of them. But I wasn’t stupid. Cameron told me they were bad for me. And I needed him. I needed him to carry on with his new talent. To grow just as I have. I needed to get out. I opened the cage the way I used to, but it wouldn’t go any further after it opened a quarter of the way and didn’t know how skinny I was until I managed to squeeze my way out. I guess Cameron’s crackers weren’t sufficient to fatten me like my mother had been. It was still dark, so I wandered around the warm pungent air and even jumped onto Mum who I used as a replacement for my newspaper. Then I spotted the smelly keys that Cameron used every dark morning we went out. I took them into my mouth and dragged them with me, walking backwards while I sniffed for Cameron. He wasn’t far away, but there was a wall which blocked my course. I scratched it with all my might, creating marks while the keys jingled, still dangling from my mouth. The wall moved, and I saw him. He laughed and jumped up and down with excitement before picking me up and planting his lips on my body repeatedly and whispering “I knew you could do it, Frank! You’re an escape artist!”. I moved around and sniffed his palms with joy, and we were ready to go.

My life started when Cameron first picked me up. And it was a short one. Much shorter than he will be anyway. I didn’t know until today how Cameron managed to move so quickly. ‘Driving’, he called it. But even if I didn’t know what it was called, I always knew he was good at it. And now, I’m sitting on his legs, on the ‘boot’ of the car while the cool light breeze winds its way through my tiny grey and white hairs.

He’s talking to me. I don’t know what he’s saying, I can barely keep my eyes open. I know he’s upset though. I keep feeling wet drops land on my back, but I know it’s not rain. He’s gently rubbing the lump near my leg. One of the many that I have on my body. I know they’re taking over. About to win. Cameron knew I’d want to be with him while they got me. As my eyelids struggle to stay open, and my breathing slows to the speed of his heartbeat, his voice soothes me. And I can finally hear him.

“I hope you’ve had a good life, Frank. Three years isn’t long enough. That’s all I wanted when I found you. I know you can’t hear me, and I know you can’t talk. Please say something if you’ve had a good life. Anything.” He sniffs and breathes shakily.

Squeak.

He smiles and sighs and looks outward while I stare up at his chin, dripping with tears. “Now that I think about it, Frank, you’ve never seen the sunrise, have you? Every time I take you out it’s dark.

“It’s beautiful, you know. The sun. It’s what keeps us alive. It gives us warmth, it lights things up, and it makes people happy. Look you can see it past the clouds!”

And there it is. The sun. It turns the sky pink and the trees green. It kills the stars but births the clouds. He’s right, I have never seen the sun. But it sounded like he was describing something else. I finally open my eyes in full as I look up at his smooth face and his wet eyes, almost honey-like as I’ve never seen them. As dawn finally comes upon me, I realise I’ve seen the sun my whole life. He is the sun. He keeps me alive. He gives me warmth. He lights up everything around me. He makes me happy. And he will rise while the stars fade. Proving his family wrong, just as I did. I lived to see the sunrise, with the fastest big person alive.