by Adam Cloake
Angrily, he turned around on the stairs.
But the sickness disoriented him. He didn't do things in the correct order. Rather than move his left foot down to the lower stair, he moved his right instead. He had already taken his left hand off the banister, but still held the belt in his right. He had nothing to balance him as his feet crossed over each other. His left foot slipped off the edge of the stair, and landed on the next one down, twisting on its side. By now, he had lost his balance completely, and tipped over sideways. Despite trying to use his hands to break his fall, his arms and shoulder bounced off the hard steps as he crashed his way downwards. Near the bottom of the stairs, his body flipped into a somersault, his legs arcing over his head. He landed heavily, his legs and back stretched stiffly out on the concrete floor, his head resting crookedly on the bottom step. The slipper on his right foot had flopped off across the room. The bathrobe was bunched up under him.
In the seconds it took him to recover, Terry realised he didn’t seem to have suffered much harm during the fall. In fact, his first thought was a mere twinge of embarrassment; he had just taken a comical tumble in front of the dog he despised.
Looking over, he shouted, “This is your fucking fault, mutt!”
Or rather, he shouted almost nothing at all.
His voice had come out hoarse and fractured. It hardly carried any distance before dying in the air. What was wrong? Had the fall damaged his larynx?
He tried to get up. This should have been a simple matter of rolling onto one elbow. He quickly realised, however, that his body wasn't rolling very far. Nor was his elbow moving into the necessary hoisting position.
He tried to wriggle his fingers, but they remained static, as if they were receiving no messages from his brain. He was frozen in this position, his arms were spread wide, as if his palms were nailed to the floor.
Although this was certainly a matter for concern, he decided he needed a few seconds to regroup his faculties. Then he would try again.
He considered the positioning of his body. His shoulder and head had both bounced off the bottom set of steps, and his lower back had landed heavily on the concrete floor. He became gradually aware of a throbbing in his hips, and in the lumbar region of his spine. He tried again to shift his position, but found that his movements were severely restricted.
And then it struck him. “I'm paralysed!”
He tried to make sense of this situation. After all, he could feel the pain growing in his back and neck. He was aware of the cold concrete beneath his bare legs. These sensations certainly existed within him, but his understanding of paralysis was that it meant total numbness. If he could feel, then how could he be paralysed? Surely then, this state was temporary! He would mend after resting here for a little while. Maybe it wouldn’t be that long before he was standing up again. Maybe just an hour. Two or three at the most. Half a day was surely the absolute worst he could expect.
Wasn’t it?
And she would be here soon. Helen would come, as she had promised, to take her beloved little dog away. And she would rescue him. What had she said last night? She said her new landlord had already given her the keys. She said she was moving house today. She said she would be here this afternoon for her things. Of course, that could still be hours away, but at least it was better than…
He realised he was beginning to panic. All these thoughts were unsettling him, causing him to lose his grip.
Paralysis!
Short of death, it doesn't get any worse than that. Short of death! Death! That was the next stage, wasn't it? Dying! Here in this basement! Starving to death, his body rotting away while he was still alive, with the dog over there, gloating over him.
No, surely the dog would die first. At least Terry would depart this world without having to listen to that incessant barking sound.
He needed to stop thinking about death.
He needed to yell out, to attract somebody's attention. This was a quiet street. Someone would hear him. It was a typical neighbourhood in the suburbs. Hearing him meant helping him. That was a given, wasn’t it? That was a certainty, right?
Again, he attempted to yell, but the sound that came out was only half of what it had been before. The sharp jolt of pain in his neck told him that his voice was too damaged to be used, even if he could utter any kind of decent cry for help. He tried to remember what someone had once told him, some nurse that he had slept with while Helen was visiting her mother. She had been talking about partial paralysis. He hadn’t really been listening, but now he tried to remember what she had said. It was about a patient of hers, an attractive young man she had fancied. Why had she even mentioned the guy’s looks? Never mind! That wasn't important right now! He needed to remember. The patient had been suffering from partial paralysis. He hadn’t been able to move, but his nerves weren’t seriously damaged. He could still feel things. And it had lasted only a while. She told him that the young man had improved quite quickly. He had been in hospital for months, but he had eventually recovered almost all his abilities.
So, Terry might not be permanently damaged. For all he knew, he could still walk out that front door sometime today. It might not be the most fluid of efforts, but at least he ought to be able to do that much.
But the nurse had said “months”. That was much longer than he could possibly survive. Waiting months was out of the question. He would last only a few days. And his back was already sore on the hard concrete! Even the bathrobe, normally so soft and reassuring, was becoming like a rock beneath him, all bunched up like it was.
Soon this position would be unendurable.
He needed Helen here. He needed her today, this afternoon. She had promised. Promised!
But no, it wasn’t a promise. It was just a statement of intention. “Stop thinking like that!” he yelled into himself, the only place where his voice could be heard.
He was churning these thoughts over in his head, still scared, but trying to control his panic, when he saw the intruder for the first time.
The dog had not stopped growling. Despite being in his own pain following his recent punishment, Rusty’s neck was still tugging at the rope, fixing every ounce of his energy at the same spot as before.
At the stove, halfway along the wall.
But it wasn’t the dog which now held Terry's attention. It was the movement, the small dark movement beneath the stove. There was something there, and it was emerging into the dim light. It moved slowly, almost at a waddle. He could just make out its arched furry back.
It took Terry just a few moments to realise what was approaching him from out of the darkness.
He was old and slow, not as strong as he used to be. Because the rest of the pack was younger and more aggressive, he had been allowed few opportunities to feed in the past few days. His hunger had been growing; he had never felt such emptiness before. The night before his entry into Terry’s cellar, the rat had been foraging for food beside the canal when the surprise attack had happened. These attacks were becoming more frequent, but this one had been the worst yet.
He had been lucky enough to spot the piece of beef before any of the others saw it. Or so he thought. As he approached the morsel, he suddenly felt a heavy jolt as the young rat leaped onto his back. He felt an unexpected shock of pain as strong teeth dug into his ear. A second later, there was more anguish, as the young rat proceeded to claw at his eyes. Not having the strength to flip it off, he had been forced to try fleeing instead. This idea, however, only worked for a moment. His short sprint succeeded in forcing the other rat to slide off his back, but it wasn’t finished with him yet. As one last insult, it grabbed the old one's hind leg in its powerful jaws, the teeth sinking in, until they were touching the bone. The young rat wrenched and gnawed at the leg until they could both hear the tibia snap. By this time, the other rats, ignoring the fight, had begun to eat the piece of beef. Seeing this, the younger one chose to leave off its assault, and return its attention to the food for which it had been
fighting.
A short time later, the pack finished its feeding. They all wandered off, their jaws stuffed, storing some of the meat for later. The old one, however, was unable to follow. Although he tried to move with them, his shattered leg soon halted him. He had to rest for a while, his body a furnace of pain. Aside from his leg, the wounds in his face and ear continued to throb and sting. He dragged himself towards a length of discarded plastic pipe, hidden among the tall weeds, and crawled inside.
It took him almost a full day of cold and starvation before he had the strength to move further. The nest was too far away, and he needed to find food quickly. He left the pipe and, after a long, tiring struggle, came to a rotting fence near the canal. Thanks to his rubbery bones, he was able to squeeze through a hole that separated two of the planks. Dragging his leg through this narrow space was agony, but he knew he had to remain quiet. His kind had enemies everywhere.
He found himself in a small, square back garden, beside a house. There did not appear to be any signs of food among the straggly blades of grass, so he shuffled towards the wall of the house, where the clumps were thicker, more protective. The old rat chose to rest for a while beside the tiny basement window, which was just above the level of the grass. The panes were all caked with dirt, but there was a hole in one of them, so he could look in and see the expanse of the cellar. There was no scent of food from in there, either.
It was a short time later when the man arrived, emitting a strong smell, and mumbling in an angry tone. His voice grew louder as he found his feet tangled in the coils of the hose. The man entered through the back door. The house remained in darkness.
But the rat was still hungry, and getting hungrier. Perhaps there was something to eat inside the house. He had found food in such places before.
As he surveyed the grass fringing the wall, he was surprised by a sudden hissing sound coming from the top corner of the fence. Looking up, he saw an obese black and white cat glaring down at him. The cat leaped heavily onto the grass, and ran towards him.
The rat had to think fast. The broken leg made it impossible to run, either to right or to left. As the cat charged, the rat used the only escape route available. He quickly squeezed himself through the hole in the window, giving the cat just enough time to grab him by the tail. She quickly let go, however, not pleased at all with the hard, gristly texture between her teeth. The rat, who had been pulling at the inner sill with his forelegs, suddenly pitched forwards into the cellar. Although he managed to twist his back mid-fall, he couldn’t prevent himself bouncing off the stove below the window, his broken leg receiving the brunt of the impact. Another shock of pain ran through him.
The hole was too small for the plump cat. She hissed her displeasure for a few seconds, then went off to find another small animal to torment.
The rat lay exhausted behind the cold stove throughout the night. It felt like his whole body was either bruised or broken, the pain of his injuries only marginally worse than his growing hunger.
A few hours later, the cellar door was flung open, and things began to happen.
Terry chose not to look at this new threat to his sanity. He clamped his eyes shut, and faced in the opposite direction. Anything would be better than acknowledging the presence of this fresh horror in the room. He was dismayed by the fact that, at present, his only defence was one of denial, that the best he could do to protect himself was something as basic as to turn his face away, and hope that the rat would simply disappear.
It was impossible to imagine a worse scenario. He was unable to move any part of his body, except for his neck. His hangover had been intensified by the fall, so he could barely even think. The dog was still barking furiously. And now, his worst possible fear had sauntered into the room. He was, for the second time in his life, in the immediate vicinity of the animal which terrified him more than any other.
“Please, please, not again!” he heard himself whimper inside his own head. “Not again! Please!”
His old nightmare, dormant for many thankful years, scrabbled its way back to the surface of his consciousness with claws as sharp as those of any creature from Hell. For years, Terry had wished that this was just a normal nightmare, the type you have while asleep in bed. But no, this nightmare was born in reality.
When Terry was twelve years old, he had kicked his grandmother in the shin, hard enough to make her bleed. His parents were away at a wedding, and he and his two brothers had been offered no choice but to spend most of the afternoon and evening in the old woman's custody. Confined to the house by lashing rain, the three boys quickly grew bored of the television, and began engaging in bouts of horseplay. As the oldest and roughest of the boys, Terry's play was a little too aggressive for the other two, and they were both eventually reduced to fits of sobbing. Finally, Gran decided she had put up with enough of Terry's behaviour. She grabbed him to administer a good shaking.
The kick to her shin had been an instinctual, unbidden reaction, but he was horrified by the immediate appearance of a small red penny on the old woman’s tights. The spot of blood grew quickly into a circle the diameter of a snooker ball. Whenever the image returned to him over the next twenty years, Terry often saw it as the size of a dinner plate. He had panicked, turned, and fled out into the downpour. Half an hour later, he was wetter than he had ever been before, so he had sought refuge in a local farmer's barn. The fear of what his father would do to him, and the exertion caused by so much running, had left him exhausted. He lay back on the soothing hay and, a brief time later, he had dozed off.
He was asleep for only a few minutes when he heard the sound. Even with his eyes closed, he was aware that something was moving just a few feet above him. When he opened his eyes, he could initially see only the inside of the barn roof, and the narrow wooden beam which ran across between the two side walls. It was shadowy up there, so Terry had to strain to make out what was moving along the top of the beam. The length of wood was shielding the thing from view, but he could just make out the two sides of a coat of matted fur scurrying across the wood. Terry moved to sit up, and this motion may have distracted the furry thing because, without warning, it slipped off the beam, directly above Terry's face. It fell about ten feet, and landed squarely in Terry’s open mouth, its chubby, wet belly slamming painfully onto Terry’s teeth.
He knew then that it was a rat.
Its weight threw Terry's head back onto the hay. For an instant, he could taste the sweaty fur on his tongue. In panic, the creature scrabbled to get away, the claws on all four of its feet digging into the soft young skin of Terry's cheeks. As it scampered off his face, Terry could feel the long gristly tail slide across his lips and tongue.
The rat disappeared into the dark corner of the barn. Terry lay in the hay for a few seconds, too shocked and sickened to move. He heard himself utter a little cry of revulsion and self-pity. He stumbled to his feet and sprinted from the barn. As he walked home in the rain, he was glad that his clothes were so wet. It hid the stain on his trousers where he had urinated on himself.
Gran, who had been left to clean up the bloody mess of her leg with only a token of help from her two youngest grandsons, was surprisingly sympathetic to his story. The claw marks on Terry's cheeks were evidence enough that something bad had happened while he was on the run. His father, however, was furious over the kicking incident, his rage erupting from deep within the cloud of his drunkenness. As punishment for Terry’s violence towards the old woman, he had slapped the boy hard on his wounded cheeks, and punched him twice on the shoulder. Although this experience was painful and unpleasant, its effects quickly faded. The same was not true of the memory of the rat.
From that moment, he had avoided all contact with all such vermin.
And now, at the most vulnerable moment of his life, almost totally immobile, Terry was forced once again to share space with his arch enemy.
He hoped, with everything he had within him, that the rat would stay where it was, or slink off into the
shadows again. Of course, a return of Terry's physical faculties in the next few minutes would be the best solution to this whole trauma. To be able to stand up and flee from the cellar, leaving both animals behind him, would be the best miracle he could hope for right now.
What would it do if it came right up to him? He tried to remember what he had read about these filthy monsters. Wasn’t it the case that a rat will leap at your throat if it’s cornered? No, it’s actually leaping at your shoulder, trying to escape behind you. Besides, this one wasn’t cornered. And they’re scared of us, aren’t they? Our size is a deterrent to them. That makes sense! So why is this one still here? If it’s frightened of me, and of that noisy dog, with its predator smell, why doesn’t it try to get away from us? Then it occurred to him. It was hungry! He tried not to think of the horrifying implications of this thought. But, suddenly, he was remembering things he had read about rats – unwelcome snippets that were coming back to him.
A homeless German man, eaten alive by rats as he slept under a bridge in Majorca!
A film crew attacked in a sewer in New York City!
And then there was that story from just a few months back! A 14-year-old quadriplegic girl! Was it somewhere like France, or maybe Spain?
Stop thinking about this!
Lying immobile in her bed, she was overrun by a swarm of rats!
Stop remembering this stuff!
45 bites on her face! 150 bites on her hands!
Stop thinking! Stop thinking!
He tried desperately to replace these thoughts with a daydream about the pint of Guinness he should have been swallowing right now. If only he hadn't chosen to come down here, into this disgusting subterranean hole. Punishing the dog had been an afterthought, a small pleasure to kickstart all the other pleasures of the day ahead. He cursed himself for his recurrent inability to control himself. He should have let the damn dog be!