The drop into the void seemed to go on forever, and while she was falling, in the cold and musty darkness, she thought about the babies inside her and hoped for a miracle—a soft landing. She prayed she would not die, otherwise her little ones would die too. And God heard her and broke her fall with a soft, warm blanket of fur that enveloped her in an embrace that seemed to be moving. But it was also very noisy. The moment she landed she heard a cry—more of surprise and protest than of fear—that was repeated by a thousand other voices, creating a monstrous echo that reverberated off the walls of the mysterious place where she had landed.
Aaaah! But where … ?!
The female found herself in the water; the soft surface she had landed on had suddenly disappeared, its place taken by the black, cold tide.
She looked around and shook her head in disbelief; she blinked once, twice, three times to be sure that she wasn’t dreaming. All around her there were hundreds of squeaking rats, frightened and startled by her abrupt arrival. Some of them were swimming underwater, others were scrambling up the brick walls and running around anxiously, worried and ready to defend themselves.
“But where am I?” she said, thinking aloud.
“Who are you?” questioned a chorus of voices.
“Yes … who are you?” other voices repeated.
“Where are you from?” asked yet more.
“What do you want?” demanded the echoing crowd.
“THAT’S ENOUGH!” shouted someone very near her, and suddenly the roar of questions died down and a silence descended.
The female was terrified and swam in circles looking at the gaping mouths that had been screaming at her and those unfriendly eyes staring at her. Her heart was beating fast and the babies were wriggling in her swollen stomach.
“Who are you?” the voice that had shouted before asked her gently; it was very close.
She turned and saw a kindly muzzle, adorned with long gray whiskers, and two dark, deep eyes that smiled at her.
“I’m Milly and I fell, I was going up some steps and all of a sudden the floor went from under my paws, I thought I was dead, I’m pregnant,” she replied without pausing for breath. The silence was complete, but her last words had triggered thousands of exclamations of pity and sympathy from all the females.
“I’m Grazia. I’m in charge of this community … I’m the oldest and I welcome you on behalf of everyone here … Come along, you must be tired and hungry … There’s somewhere dry where you can rest, but you’ll have to wait for food … Follow me.”
The large female headed toward one of the redbrick walls that enclosed the flooded basement and, as she walked, hundreds of rats drew aside to let her through. Each of them had a kind word, a welcoming touch, a shy smile for Milly, who was confused; her head was spinning and she wasn’t at all sure that she was really awake.
Grazia led her toward a wooden structure, the base of which was submerged underwater; it had three rows of horizontal planks, each about a yard long. All the flat, dry surfaces were occupied by females and their young, and along the vertical posts that led to the various levels there was a steady stream of rats running to and fro. The old female rat climbed up to the top of what must have been a bookcase and came to a stop on the last shelf.
“Come along, Milly,” she said as she motioned with her muzzle to the other rats to move. “It’ll be nice and quiet here; it looks like you don’t have long to go … As you can see, you’re in good company …”
Milly followed her gaze and realized that the females who were living on the plank were all pregnant, or had recently given birth.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, her eyes wide.
“We call it the palace of life … Only mothers-to-be and new mothers with their babies stay here … They stay until their little ones are weaned and we take turns bringing food and water and we help with the birth when it’s needed … Here you’ll be safe, you can be quiet and just think about your babies.”
Milly stared at her open-mouthed while the other females with their round stomachs came toward her and sat down around her, embracing her in a ring of protection and kindness. The tears she had held back for so long now blurred her sight and a flurry of silent sobs rippled over her pregnant body. She shut her eyes and crumpled like an empty sack. Someone lightly stroked her neck, then her shoulders, her bump and muzzle, and soon she felt a single, all-enveloping embrace from paws, noses, and tails that held her gently.
“My husband …” she murmured.
“What’s his name?” asked a nice voice nearby.
“Rocco … I haven’t heard from him in three days. He went out to look for food and didn’t come back …”
“I don’t think he’s here, but I can ask my husband. Perhaps Rocco is somewhere like this, where he can’t get out … like us. Calm down now—all these tears are bad for your babies.” Milly sighed deeply and dried her eyes on the fur of her paw; she turned her head and looked into two large, gentle hazel eyes with long lashes.
“Hi,” said a little face, young and cunning, framed by a thick, reddish down. “I’m Ambra. Nice to meet you, Milly. I’ve got a feeling your babies aren’t going to make you wait much longer.” She glanced at Milly’s enormous stomach that made her look like a ball with legs. And she smiled at her.
That led to more introductions.
“Hi, Milly, I’m Paola.”
“A pleasure to meet you. My name’s Enza.”
“I’m Giovanna …”
“Martina …”
“Perla …”
They smiled at her and competed to move closer. She responded to everyone—“A pleasure. Milly”—immediately forgetting the huge number of names, all called out at the same time.
“That’s enough now,” said the calm voice of Grazia, “let her get her breath back … She has to rest … Ambra …”
“Yes?!” squeaked the cunning little face.
“She’ll be next to you. Make room for her and tell her everything she needs to know. I think the next one will be here soon … It’ll be better if she’s prepared … And the rest of you—move! And look after your own bumps, and your children … Come on, back to your own spaces!”
“Okay, Grazia … Come on, Milly, over here …” Ambra’s voice had darkened and she had lowered her ears against the side of her head, giving her an unhappy, annoyed expression.
The young red-haired female pushed her way through her companions—some with prominent bumps, others less so—and nests of babies who were suckling milk from their mothers or sleeping one on top of another.
As she followed, Milly noticed heaps of rags on the planks forming warm, soft nests. There were pieces of material of different colors and patterns, sleeves from shirts and sweaters, strips from skirts, fragments of pants, the cups of bras, and panties. They looked to her like the remains of a clothes shop where a bomb had gone off.
“How come you have all these rags?” she asked Ambra once they had arrived at her nest, at the end of the plank.
The red-haired female sat down heavily on a piece of gray wool that still had a button attached and rested a paw on her prominent stomach; with the other she beckoned Milly to settle down beside her. “They’re from tourists,” she told her in a hesitant voice.
“What tourists? Do you steal them?!”
“No, that is … We take them. They’re no use to them anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because … they’re dead …”
“Eugh! But dead how? Do you undress the dead bodies?!”
“No, Milly … we … God, why do I have to tell her?! The thing is … we eat them.”
The female with the blue-black fur raised her paws to her mouth, stifling a shriek of horror, but she wasn’t able to hold back the nausea that overwhelmed her. She leaned over to one side and vomited. No one protested, there wasn’t even a grumble, and Milly became aware of an unnatural hush that had fallen, not just in the palace of life but in the whole of the large basement. Even the babi
es had stopped their shrill squeaking. Everyone was listening to what Ambra was saying.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, “but we don’t have any choice … We’re prisoners. Either we eat them or we all die.”
“But how … ? Why … ? Who … ?”
Ambra sighed and grimaced, though she meant it to be a smile. “Above this basement there’s a woman’s apartment … Look up, there … see? There’s no ceiling.”
Milly nodded, unable to make a sound.
“It used to be the floor of one of the rooms of the house, but it caved in who knows how long ago. The door you can see opens into her home and it’s always closed, except for when … the tourists arrive and fall down here. I don’t know how she does it or why, but she does. These are their clothes. We take them, divide them up, and use them for our nests.”
“But why don’t you all leave? No, wait. How did you all end up here?”
“I don’t know about the first ones—perhaps she caught them. The others, all of us, were born here and had babies of our own. There’s over a thousand of us now, and even though this place is huge, there’ll come a time when there won’t be room for everyone. Grazia says we should start to think about limiting the number of births … It’s been awhile now since anybody’s arrived, but now it’s carnival and lots of people visit … I know it’s awful but they’re the only source of food we have, and their clothes keep the babies warm.”
“I can’t believe there’s no way to escape, to get away from this horror. You can’t have looked very hard, there must be a crack, a hole … something!” There was a touch of hysteria in Milly’s voice.
“We’ve searched this place inch by inch, my dear,” said Grazia in a voice that was resigned and sad. “We’ve even tried digging, but we found only stone and petrified wood, as hard as rock.”
“And me?”
“What about you?”
“How did I get here?”
“From the broken step, I imagine …”
“But if there’s a way in, there’s a way out, isn’t there?”
“No … the basement wall that ought to go up to the steps has a gap in it; the bit that joined them has collapsed too … It’s a very old building and it’s falling into ruin, one brick after another … We’re stuck here …”
“No, there has to be a way. Doesn’t the woman ever go out?”
“No … we watched her for days, from under the door. They put her groceries in a basket she lowers from the window … She’s always in the house, on her own. Her imprisonment is voluntary, unlike ours.”
“Yes, but … you can’t keep on eating people!” Milly was talking to herself, she was thinking aloud, and in the huge flooded cellar there still hung a thick, heavy silence. “I know you do it to survive but it still isn’t right and I think you haven’t really tried to get out … After all, you’re doing okay here … and I imagine you eventually get over the sense of guilt and get used to the horror. You’re behaving just like them, humans, when they’re at their worst … But we’re not like that—we love them, even if they hate us and despise us, even if we disgust them … We love their funny ideas and their high spirits, we’re their friends … even if they’re our enemies. We don’t eat people, no, we don’t eat them—”
Suddenly, all the ears that had been turned toward her pricked up and rotated slightly, all in the same direction: the door into the void. Signora Adele was talking to someone, and in the background they could hear the sound of saucers, cups, and teaspoons, of biscuits being broken and jaws crunching them.
“They’re about to arrive,” said Grazia in a solemn voice, but Milly noticed that her eyes were gleaming. She looked around her and saw that the other rats had the same expression of deep sadness but also great expectation.
“How long has it been since you’ve eaten?” she asked Ambra.
“A long time … too long,” she replied, keeping her gaze fixed on the door. “You’re right,” she added a second later, looking Milly in the eye, “we’re monsters and we shouldn’t feed on them, but I’d eat anyone to make sure my babies survive … You know that most of the time they’re still alive?”
Milly felt sick and retched again; this time she held it back but an expression of incredulity and horror was etched on her face.
“We kill them right away, we aim for the jugular or the aorta … They don’t suffer much … Once no one arrived for months … Do you want to know what happened?”
“N … no … wh … what?”
“Carnage … We ended up eating each other and—”
“Stop it!” shushed Milly. The tears that were filling her eyes streamed over the fur on her muzzle and she shrank into the redbrick wall against which the bookcase rested.
Ambra stopped talking and turned to stare at the door, waiting.
“Get ready!” Grazia suddenly cried, and all the rats moved at the same time as if they were one. An immense furry army cleared the center of the mirrorlike black tide that covered the floor of the flooded cellar, leaving it empty, ready to swallow up the next lavish meal. They settled along the walls, quickly scrambling up, almost to the ceiling. Only ten or so remained in the dark water; they were the ones who would finish off their wounded prey. The first to feed would be the females who were pregnant or had recently given birth, then the elderly and the weaned babies, and finally the adolescents and the adult males.
The door opened slowly, creaking on its rusty hinges, and a shaft of light entered the dark basement, lighting up a slice of the submerged floor. It was then that Milly realized there were things floating on the water. They were light in color and smooth, some long, others rounded or slightly pointed. It took her a few seconds to work out what these strange objects were, and when she did she hid her face in her paws. She hadn’t noticed them before because it had been too dark and the rats had completely covered the surface of the water, but now that it was almost empty she had seen them and recognized them: bones from thighs and forearms, knuckles, vertebrae, and skulls. The leftovers from the rats’ meals. The only traces of the passing of human beings from that hell.
The influx of light was accompanied by Signora Adele’s laugh, followed by two other cheerful voices.
“Here we are! Please, come in … Oh, how silly! I forgot to turn the light on. Can you do it, please? The switch is there, on the right.”
A hand and a foot came into view at the same time, and immediately after that a body tumbled down into the void, followed by another who had been gently pushed by Signora Adele. The thud was hideous and the splash reached as high as the third level of the palace of life, where Milly was curled up into a ball, her muzzle buried in the heap of rags that made up her nest and her paws covering her ears. She didn’t want to see or hear; she would have liked to have been a thousand miles away from there, even all alone in the night, in labor, without anywhere to go or anyone to help her. Even hell would have been better than this slaughterhouse.
The man and the woman, two elderly people, barely had time to scream—“Ooooh!” and “Aaaah!”—more in astonishment than fear. Then they landed heavily on the fifteen inches of icy, slimy water and had no idea where they were or what was happening to them. Ambra was right: their deaths were quick and virtually painless. Milly heard all the rats talking at the same time, creating a monstrous collective squeak. A few were excited and relieved because food had finally arrived, some were crying, and others were giving directions. And above it all, the voice of Grazia was telling them what to do. The palace of life began to shake and Milly opened one eye to take a peek. All the females were leaving their nests and descending to the water to go eat. The operation was extremely orderly and swift as all the rats went to feed on the tourists. She, however, did not eat, and even when she met the eye of Grazia, who kindly invited her to have something, she stayed where she was, on the top level of the palace of life, demurely hungry.
When all the rodents had finished eating, there was very little left of the two bodies: just the skeleton
of one, and a bit more of the other.
In the meantime the tide had started to recede, and within a couple of hours there would be left in its place a thick layer of dark sludge in which the white of human bones would be clearly visible.
Milly touched her swollen stomach and sighed; she could not understand why she hadn’t already gone into labor after all this emotional turmoil. She closed her eyes and fell asleep almost at once; her last thought was for her husband and the two tourists who were resting in peace in the bellies of the rats.
Signora Adele was furious: that fat bitch had broken the handle of the door to the “guest room.” When she pushed the woman after her husband, who was already falling into her darling little friends’ lair, that idiot had tried to grab hold of her, and then snatched at the door handle. And since she was obese she had nearly wrenched it off, which meant that Signora Adele couldn’t close the door anymore—it remained slightly ajar. That moron had deprived her of one of the few pleasures still left to her: watching her friends welcome the guests she gave them as a gift. The handle almost coming off had distracted her and put her in a bad mood, and Signora Adele had slammed the door violently and went to sink into her favorite armchair, the one with the floral velvet upholstery that was so threadbare it was almost transparent. And she didn’t get to enjoy seeing them have their meal. She regretted this now and she was twice as angry. She fervently hoped she would be able to do it again with the next tourists; she was certain more would arrive the following day. The city was a masked hell, and among all those crowds there was sure to be some other fool with nowhere to stay. She went into the kitchen and poured herself another cup of tea; those two bastards had eaten almost all her biscuits. They were uncouth and coarse. Two ignorant scumbags, thought Signora Adele as she switched on the television and collapsed again into her armchair, turning the volume up so she couldn’t hear the noise of the masked revellers passing under her window.
A whimpering squeak woke Milly; she rubbed her eyes with her paws and poked her muzzle out of the nest of rags. The basement floor was completely carpeted with rats sleeping almost on top of each other. Legs and tails intertwined, one head a cushion for another. The darkness was as deep as the silence, but Milly noticed that a sliver of light seeped from the door into the abyss—it hadn’t been there before. She looked more closely, trying to work out where it came from, yet she couldn’t: it was too far away for her to identify the source of the glow. But she desperately wanted to find out. Trying to make as little noise as possible, she crept out of the nest of rags and went down to the bottom level of the palace. The water had receded completely and it was a nuisance having to walk through the mud—it was smelly and sticky—but she braced herself and quickly crossed the room to get to the redbrick wall that would allow her to scramble up to the top. She had to climb only halfway up to realize that the door had been left ajar. She thought it was a sign, an opportunity not to be missed. She rapidly climbed down again and went back to her nest; she had to think and organize the escape. After about an hour she went to look for Grazia. She found her near one of the wooden struts of the palace of life; she drew closer and sat next to her, out of breath and with her paws on her stomach.
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