Doctor Rat

by William Kotawinkle

  “I implore you, fellow rats and fellow animals everywhere—turn to another channel! We’re running a film strip today on mechanical injuries to the teeth of canines. It’s very informative, you’ll see how to fracture a hound’s tooth and bring about some marvelous hypoplastic defects. These will result in slowing the growth of all the other teeth in a dog, and I say that’s a good thing! Dogs have too many teeth. They’re vicious and dangerous and…”

  It’s so hard to get their interest. The dog’s program is more subtly suggestive. It works on the weakness of my fellow rats. They don’t realize that we’re the friends of man, that we’re here to serve humanity selflessly in every way we can. For only in man does one find the divine spark. The rest of us live in darkness, without souls.

  “You’re all just basic models, fellow rats! Don’t you understand the meaning of that? A basic model has no feelings, has no spirit. Man is able to twist us and starve us and cut off our tails because that’s the law! Haven’t you read St. Thomas Aquinas? Animals have no soul!”

  I’m growing hoarse trying to get the truth across to the Experimental Radiation Cage. All the rats in there have clubbed paws and absent toes and you’d think they’d be able to listen to reason. But no—they’re sitting there, staring into space, entranced by the dog’s broadcast.

  “Five percent formaline, that’s the scent! Believe me, fellow rats, there is no magic scent in the air. Look there—the dog has collapsed on the treadmill, his legs flopping lifelessly. He’s dead! Look at the eyes rolled into his head and his body thumping along. He’s dead! And death is the only freedom!”

  The Learned Professor and his graduate assistants have opened the dog’s cage and are taking him away. His body is thin and dehydrated, but his infernal message goes on!

  “Plug your ears, rats. Don’t listen!”

  The Learned Prof is leading another dog into the glass chamber, tying his front paws to the rack. Now the power is switched on again and the treadmill is turning once more and another martyr is being created! Professor, I beg of you, get those dogs out of here!

  He doesn’t hear me. Professor, you’re playing right into their hands! Don’t let him run along in sight of all the other animals. Because the fumes of revolution are rising out of him already. Can’t you see!

  No, the L.P. doesn’t see the powerful images pouring forth from that damned dog. But we can! We see dogs of all kinds, leaving their homes, leaving their posts, running away. They run in the air all around us as the intuitive picture grows brighter. The dog has conjured up trees and dusty roads and sparkling streams. A terrible power is at work in our laboratory, obliterating the wire cages and the operating tables and the exercise wheels. All of the marvelous equipment is being submerged behind a woodland scene.

  “Don’t look, fellow rats, don’t look! Concentrate instead on the Shock Discrimination Box. Look at your fellow rats in there, jumping in the air after touching the electric grid. They’re being driven slowly insane. They’re going to receive their Mad Doctor’s diploma soon. Isn’t that worth working for? Chronically disordered behavior isn’t something we get for nothing, just because we’re rats. We have to earn our neurosis. Come over here and join in with those rats being tormented by the Disturbing Bell Stimuli. You know how sensitive our ears are; they’re the perfect instrument for mankind to work with. I’d like you to observe carefully now—that’s it, don’t look at the disgusting doggie broadcast—observe how your fellow rat is being skillfully used. A bell is being rung alongside his head while his cage is oscillated in the air in an arc of 180 degrees. It’s enough to make anybody feel strange, wouldn’t you say? Swinging back and forth, with bells ringing all around you, you start to feel tense and frightened. Look, look, look at how the bell is being brought nearer, then moved away, now near again, threatening and retreating once more. Now, now! There, the rat has gone into a seizure, running around his cage and bumping into the walls. Look at him rolling over on his side with his legs kicking in the air. His body is trembling, and he has ticlike movements of the head. He’s a candidate for a Mad Doctor’s degree! Congratulations, my boy! We’ll be throwing a pressed biscuit banquet in your honor a little later on!”

  Well, now, here’s a distinct improvement: The Learned Professor is bringing out his cigarette lighter. I hadn’t thought we’d be doing this experiment again, but of course we’ve got to repeat these experiments in order to validate our findings.

  The graduate assistant has selected a floppy-eared cocker spaniel for the experiment. Another assistant ties down the cocker’s paws. Excellent, very smooth work. You young folks are Doctor Rat’s pride and joy.

  The nice doggie-woggie is all strapped down. And he won’t be doing much revolutionary broadcasting, I guarantee.

  The Learned Professor is flicking his lighter—he’s got it lit—now he adjusts it so that it shoots out a long tongue of flame.

  Doggie-woggie is looking at the flame, now looking at the Professor. Oh, you’ll like this one, Doggie!

  The Learned Professor brings the flame right into the dog’s nostril, shoots it right up there. Excellent, well-aimed. The cocker is being forced to inhale the flame. Now the assistant lights his own lighter and both nostrils are filled with fire, as the dog’s mouth snaps open in a soundless howl.

  I’m sorry to say that this experiment is not original with our great university. It was dreamed up at Harvard. Well, of course Harvard’s one of the better schools, and I’m not really jealous. Hand in hand with Harvard, we’re continuing the great Burning Issue Experiment. It’s essential, it’s informative, it’s good for the nation.

  That’s it, Doggie, take a good deep noseful of fire. You’ll like it.

  This is the sort of experiment that doesn’t cause much trouble. The dog is too panicked to send out any revolutionary signals. I wish I could say the same for our Pain Threshold Experiment over in the corner. It’s not going well at all, because it proceeds at a slow, steady pace. Anything that lingers that way gives the dog a chance to concentrate, to produce the revolutionary signal.

  Shall we look at the experiment more closely? One of our graduate assistants has been working for the past hour. He has a rawhide mallet. Watch closely now: The assistant raises the mallet and whacks the dog in the leg with it. Another assistant keeps count. That’s blow number 573. The dog will receive exactly a thousand blows on the leg, which is the number that Columbia University has established as necessary to produce shock. We’re indebted to the Learned Pros of Columbia for this information.

  We lift our heads and howl, and the wild dogs lead us onward. Through the forest we race once again, with the dew upon us. The variety of smells is wonderfully sweet. How did I ever forsake this for a life of captivity, a life of subservience? I sold my soul for comfort, for security, for a leash. But there are others less eager than I.

  “This is folly. Our masters are calling us!”

  “Rid yourself of illusions!” cries a wild dog, leaping like a streak of light and then going far ahead.

  We emerge from the forest onto a dirt road and run down it, in the warm summer air. It’s a small and winding road, leading through farmland. Ahead of us, floating on the air, is the scent of man. We surge forward, afraid of nothing. Our numbers are great now, and we run on over the hill, catching sight of the man below. He’s working with a horse who pulls a fallen tree along the road.

  The man hears our howling and turns toward us. Seeing the torrent of teeth and tails he turns and runs into the forest. The work horse, still dragging his log, tries to follow the man, but the log catches in a tangle of smaller trees and the horse can’t move. We see his trembling muscles and his frightened eyes.

  “Come with us!” we cry. “Can’t you smell what’s in the air?”

  The horse struggles to follow his master. If the wonderful smell has reached him, he gives no sign of it. He’s securely in the traces, he’s forgotten his nature. Realizing he’s lost, we race past him then and on up the road, with the warm du
st beneath our paws and the smell inside our nose.

  “Pure bile, fellow rats, that’s what this talk of freedom is, pure green bile. It’s a result of an infection in the dog’s liver, that’s all.”

  Things have gone from bad to worse here in the lab. My fellow rats are deserting the ship of science in great numbers. They’re snapping and biting at the graduate assistants, and the Learned Professor has begun mass inoculations against parasitic flukes of the Echinostomatidae family. But it’s the dog family that’s troubling our guts, Professor, not the flukes. I would much prefer microscopic worms in my intestines to these blasted dogs in my eardrums with their slobbering tale of freedom. Please, Professor, get them out of here!

  They’ve hooked up their signal to the signal coming out of Creighton University. You recall the Creighton Starvation Experiment. A group of dogs was starved for sixty-five days. The important information resulting from this experiment did not surface immediately, I regret to say, as our learned Creighton colleagues preferred to be secretive about their work in order not to have anybody steal the march on them. They were so secretive that a different group of young Creighton scientists duplicated the experiment three years later.

  It was this repetition of the starvation experiment that caused a definite signal to emanate from Creighton U’s campus. Anyone on the intuitive band can see it hovering outside the Creighton lab—a sort of faint, fading photograph of emaciated dogs, their ribs sticking out, their eyes sunk deep in their heads. This inspiring photograph, which should have become a hallowed bit of scientific testimony, has instead been picked up by the rebels. They’re using it as their channel pattern-picture. Any animal who starts to drift off onto the intuitive band around three o’clock in the morning, when nothing else is on the tube, sees that photo, accompanied by a long, low howl. It’s this revolutionary use of our priceless scientific film strips that I find so disgusting. The young Creighton professors worked long and hard starving those dogs.

  You rebels have stolen our studies! You’ve copped the bones! And you won’t get away with it, I promise you. You’ll all be inhaling flames, dear rebels. Harvard will make sure of it.

  And the good professors of Columbia will club the shit out of you, first chance they get!

  How convenient that reprisals and punishment can be part of further learning programs. While those rebels are being burned and beaten for their revolutionary activity, our young students will be taking careful notes and making snapshots for the yearbook. Everything will turn out right in the end—if we squash the rebels now!

  But unfortunately the rebel network is enlarging. If you’ll cast your eyes over to that work table, you’ll see what I mean.

  No, no, I don’t mean that lovely young blond assistant. Yes, she’d probably throw a good copulation plug, but I mean to draw your attention to the egg she’s holding in her hand.

  It’s just an ordinary fertilized egg, and our lovely blondie is only going to do some research into embryonic development. But—in these inflamed times every lower-life form is radiating an intense signal on extrasensorial TV.

  Do you see what I mean? The egg is broadcasting!

  We live in eternal day. It makes us lay more. We live on wire flooring so that our excrement will fall through onto the constantly turning belt below, which carries it away. Our beaks have been cut off. And we’re cancerous. They call us egg machines.

  We’re the best egg machines in the world. Twenty-seven thousand of us sit here, our only exercise the laying of an egg, which rolls away from us, down a little chute.

  I remember how wonderful it was to peck my way through the shell and step out into the warm bright dawn of life.

  I have seen no other sunrise. We live in eternal noontime. My birth was a grievous mistake. And yet an egg is developing in me, as always. I can’t stop it. I feel its growth, and despite all my bitterness, tiny surges of tenderness fill me. How I wish I could stop the egg from growing so that I wouldn’t have to know these tender feelings. But I can’t stop. I’m an egg machine, the best egg machine in the world.

  “Don’t be so gloomy, Sister. There are better times coming.”

  The insane hen in the cage beside mine has fallen victim to a common delusion here at the egg factory. “No better times are coming, Sister,” I reply. “Only worse times.”

  “You’re mistaken, my dear. I happen to know. Very soon we’ll be scratching in a lovely yard.”

  I don’t bother to reply. She’s cheered by her delusions. And since our end will be the same, what does it matter how we spend our days here? Let her dream in her lovely yard. Let her develop her dream to its fullest, until she imagines that the wire floor beneath her claws has become warm dry earth. We don’t have much longer to go. Our life span is only fourteen months of egg laying and then we’re through.

  An egg machine!

  There’s a great fluttering of wings along this cell block, and much loud clucking. The cages are opening, and one by one rough hands grab us.

  “You see, Sister. I told you better times were coming. Now we’ll be going out into the lovely yard.”

  “Yes, Sister. Now we’re finally going.”

  Now we’re hung upside down, our feet tied together with wire.

  “You see, Sister. It’s just as I told you—the better times have come at last.”

  We’re hooked to a slowly moving belt. Hanging upside down, we’re carried along through a dark tunnel. The wire bites into my flesh. Swaying through the darkness we go. The gurgling cries up ahead of us make clear what better times have come.

  “Our reward, Sister, is here at last,” cries our mad sister. “We were good and laid many eggs and now we get our reward.”

  The cry of each hen is cut off so that her squawking becomes liquid bubbling. And then the sound of dripping: drip, drip, drip.

  “Oh, I can see it now, Sister, the lovely yard I spoke of, all covered with red flowers and…”

  The mash runs out of her neck.

  “Chicken manure, fellow rats, believe me, that’s all this talk is.”

  But look how it has excited the colony. Teeth bared, tails twitching, eyes blazing, the whole laboratory is in rebellion. I searched the files and couldn’t find a single thing like it anywhere, and I went all the way back to the early work of Doctor Claude Bernard in Paris in 1876. You recall Doctor Bernard’s immortal words to his students: “Why think when you can experiment?”

  I admit quite humbly to having received the Claude Bernard Animal Experimentation Award the year I went mad, so I’m familiar with every possible kind of laboratory situation, and there’s nothing like this present rebellion in any of the records.

  Oh, for the good old days when our conflict-situations were all experimentally produced.

  Now a bunch of armchair lawyers from the Protein Deficiency Cage have joined the incendiary campaign, trying to convince the little ratlings that they have certain rights.

  “Don’t listen to these albino assholes, my little ratlings. Listen to your true friend, the good Doctor Rat, and learn about gut reality (see my paper, “Removal of the Rat’s Stomach,” Anat. Dig., 1967). I wouldn’t steer you wrong, you know that. Let’s all do the little dance called the New Necropsy! Come on, ratlings, dance with Doctor Rat, and sing:

  Do the New Necropsy

  Let me see you quiver and quake!

  Do the New Necropsy

  when they extirpate your liver and take

  your head off with a cleaver

  do the New Necropsy and shake, shake, shake!”

  “Be quiet, Doctor Rat. We’re listening to the dog.”

  “That dog is full of shit, my friends. Look at the way his feces are streaked. Look at his heaving sides and belly. He’s an enemy of the state!”

  I slink away, exhausted. Interpretive dancing is not my forte, but I would do anything to save my beloved laboratory. Oh, for the good old days when we all used to sit around the cisternal puncture stand and sing harmoniously about having our frontal
lobes removed. Those were dear sweet times. I miss them terribly. I feel so alienated.

  “…when a chicken’s neck is wrung, the following should be done: Hold the bird by the head, placing the fingers just behind the skull. Then force the right hand down. The neck is thus elongated. At the same time, turn the bird’s head backward, bending it over the neck. This will dislocate the neck…

  “Oh, be quiet, you stupid egg!” What do I, a Learned Mad Doctor, care how a chicken’s neck is wrung?

  I have important papers to write. I have to mount a counteroffensive against these dogs and that half-cracked egg. But I just don’t have my usual zip. One of my favorite experiments, the 500-pound pressure clamp, is taking place right now, and it’s not giving me the kick it used to, because I know the rebels will try to make propaganda out of it.

  And what could be more innocent than this—come on, step over here behind me and see for yourself. There’s a big, stupid-looking spotted dog, right? Alongside him a graduate assistant.

  The graduate ass. is making a very delicate appraisal of the experimental situation. One day his findings will be published in a little-known scientific journal and earn him a degree. But that won’t be the end of his intrepid work. Not at all. It will eventually become part of a complete textbook on the subject. He’ll be able to hold his head up high in the hallway. He’ll get a raise in pay. Why?

  Because he is presently turning the screw attached to that dog’s leg. The pressure is being raised in proportion to the desired raise in pay. The higher the pressure applied to this dog’s leg, the higher will the young man’s salary go. The gauge indicates that the pressure is now at 250 pounds.