Doctor Rat

by William Kotzwinkle

  They’re charging the cat from behind. “Watch out, pussycat!”

  I leap down in front of the Growth Hormone Squad, brandishing my chisel against the needle point, driving it aside. But these Growth Hormone goons are strong, they regroup instantly and charge again. I lash my chisel, at the same time avoiding the swiping paw of the cat above me. We dash in among his legs, under and over his claws. The needle comes directly at my heart. I strike, crashing it aside and pinning it against the wall…

  …oh no!

  We’ve given the cat a subcutaneous injection in the abdominal wall!

  He trembles and tumbles to the floor and I leap away, out from under his tail and up the doorframe.

  “Doctor Rat, you’ve betrayed your people!”

  “Yes,” I cry, swinging on the light bulb, “and your mother was fucked under the back porch by a flying squirrel!”

  Goddamn inferior strains of sonofabitch bastards, I’ll show them yet—swinging off the end of the bulb and sailing through the air toward the sink.

  Sponge here, suitable for crossing the water. Quick, Doctor, paddle!

  Using my paws and tail I get the sponge moving, cutting a wide swathe through the waves. Cat stretched out on the floor down there, out like a light. I know the strength of that injection, he’ll be immobile for the whole night.

  Rebel flashlights scanning the ceiling, the floor. They’ve lost sight of me, the liverless louts (cf. Weight of the Extirpated Liver: “…after killing them the liver glycogen content was determined. It was shown there was a definite loss of glycogen, presumably because of the strong emotion felt by the rat during his decapitation.”).

  I like that, don’t you? The strong emotion felt by the rat during his decapitation.

  I’ll teach you revolutionaries about strong emotion.

  MEMO TO CONGRESS: To preserve our billion-dollar basic research program, it has become necessary to send a number of individuals to the ovens. It will take time, of course, but I promise you we’ll keep the microwave turned on around the clock.

  DOCTOR RAT

  “Come on, Mossy Sloth! You’ll miss the meeting. Every animal will be there!”

  Don’t worry, little monkey. I’ll make it. I just have to rest a bit before I go. It doesn’t do any good to go rushing about.

  “You’ll never get there, Mossy Sloth. I’m traveling on without you.”

  The pleasure of hanging motionless here in the trees can’t be adequately explained to a monkey. He spends half his time on the lookout for jaguars, while I just hang here looking like an ant’s nest. The jaguar never spots me.

  Such a lot of animals scurrying along on the ground, all in the same direction. I can hear them rushing below. Everybody always in such a hurry. Don’t they realize what peace of mind can be had, simply by hanging upside down like this, with the light coming through the leaves?

  All the sounds blend into each other when you hang this way. You seem to float along on the streaming sounds. The animals are talking about a deep experience they’re going to have at the great meeting. Could it possibly be deeper than the deep relaxation of a three-toed sloth with moss on his back?

  “Come on, Mossy! You’ll be the last one!”

  Don’t worry about me, little monkey.

  He goes off chattering and his voice blends into all the other voices. I suppose I should move along a bit, but it seems a shame to move just now, when all the leaves and all the breezes are singing to me so sweetly.

  “Mossy Sloth, you’re the laziest thing I’ve ever seen. You’re the laziest creature alive.”

  There’s no point in contradicting them. Actually there’s no way for them to know about the old creature of the mountain called Surpassing Slothfulness. None of the other animals has ever seen him for he’s spent his whole life on the same branch and is completely covered with lichen. A remarkable specimen. Not for a moment would I compare myself with him.

  They say he’s remarkably old, having preserved his vitality so carefully. Mother told me of him and said that her mother had told her. He’s been up on that mountain branch for generations, hanging motionless. He had an uncle called Admirable Sloth, whom the hunters shot. Admirable Sloth never moved as the bullet entered him, and he continued to hang there until he’d rotted completely away.

  “Shake that sloth out of his tree!”

  Easier to lift a mountain, my friend. A sloth cannot be pulled from his branch.

  “You terrible sloth! Don’t you know the importance of this meeting?”

  I hang here, gazing at the fascinating patterns in the leaves. You see many wonderful little details if you just stare calmly with half-closed eyes. Everything comes together so beautifully, the voices around me all merging again, and the sparkling leaves slowly melting into a warm wonderful pool. There’s no nicer feeling than hanging like this, right on the edge of dreams. We sloths have the technique down to perfection. Other animals fall asleep quickly and miss all the delicate fringes of sleep.

  But I flow down toward it slowly as sap on a tree trunk, little by little, savoring all the enchantments that play in the place between waking and sleeping. So many delectable currents pass over you, all the countless charms that rule this realm. No yesterday, no today, no tomorrow, just this happy moment…

  “Ai, ai, ai!”

  Whose voice is that? It sounds like a sloth who’s been separated from its mother.

  “Ai, ai, ai!”

  I’d rather not turn my head, I rarely do so, but I suppose I have to. Slowly then, not rushing anything, trying to enjoy all the details along the way, I start to turn. The red berries have swollen, and there’s a new butterfly emerging from his cocoon.

  A bunch of old moss and twigs flopping along down the hillside. It must have been dislodged by a racing jaguar.

  “Ai, ai, ai!”

  Can those be lips within that moss? How could anyone breathe under all that spongy fungus?

  “Come on, my boy, stop hanging there with your mouth open. You look like Uncle Admirable two days after he was shot.”

  “Surpassing Slothfulness! Is it really you?”

  “Slide down your branch, young fellow, and make it snappy. We’ve got a long way to go.”

  “Hup—bup—bareeep—four! Hup—bup—bareeep—four!” Here comes the rat-rebel army, drilling around the laboratory floor. I’d better pull my tail in out of sight.

  “They cut off our tails with a knife—”

  “You’re right!”

  “They sucked out our eyes with a pipe—”

  “You’re right!”

  “Sound off:”

  “One two!”

  “Sound off:”

  “Three four!”

  “Cadence count:”

  “One two three four—one two—three four!”

  “They cut until nothing is left—”

  “You’re right!”

  “They bleed us till nothing is left—”

  “You’re right!”

  “Sound off:”

  “Norwegian rat piss on you fuckers!” Oh dear, I got carried away and now I must run, with the entire rebel army on my tail. The good doctor scurrying quickly, surgical picks flying all around him, a rain of rebel spears.

  Into the bottles, through the tubes, over the sponges and onto the inclining surgical table—down its smooth shining surface and off the end of it, with rebels sliding after me.

  I have no choice. I’ve got to hide in the Killing Box.

  I lift the tin lid with my tail and quickly slip inside, pulling the lid down behind me. This is a marvelous scientific apparatus: the rat who enters it is definitely kaput, be he a Norwegian resistance rat, a French cellar rat, an English ship rat, or just a plain old Polish sewer rat. Makes no difference, he’s kaput.

  Naturally, the rebel rats are in awe of this box and don’t even want to come near it. Yes, it’s a gas chamber. The victim, ah, prisoner, excuse me, the scientific-sacrifice is brought to the box by the Learned Professor, who is able t
o view the sacrifice through a little glass window in the box. I’m able to peek out that window now, just my nose and eyes, watching the stupid resistance troops rushing around, chasing their tails. I might as well lie back awhile and relax. There’s a nice cotton wad here for a pillow. Naturally, there’s no chloroform in it at the moment, or I’d be kaput. Occasionally the Learned Professor uses coal gas, which turns the vessels bright red. We get marvelous specimens that way.

  And the Killing Box allows us to test some of the delightful new war gases. We’ve got a marvelous collection here, with samples dating right back to the magnificent German product Cyclone B. In our quiet patriotic way, we Learned American Doctors are trying to improve upon that potency—and we’ve got an endless supply of rodents to test it on. How grand that the Rodentia family is so large. We’re able to supply squirrels, mice, voles, guinea pigs, beavers, and even an occasional porcupine! What an honor!

  I cannot fail to be impressed each time the Learned Professor makes a selection for the Killing Box. With just the lightest flick of his pencil he points to the rats who will be offered up to science. Such power. Such finesse. The Learned Pro has countless obscure papers to his credit and is, of course, my idol. A veritable superman, in my opinion, with his Advanced Committee on the Preparation and Mounting of the Skeleton.

  Lifting the lid of the Killing Box, I allow only the tip of my nose to protrude. Sniffing all around. The resistance rebels have gone searching for me in some other part of the lab.

  Furtively, I sneak out and gently lower the lid. I’ll dissect a few necks before this night is out, dear students. Just follow Doctor Rat along the floor. Feel every little change of air pressure in your whiskers. We’re moving stealthfully. Is your scalpel sharpened? This is going to be a delicate work, dedicated to the memory of Claude Bernard. May I be worthy of his blessing on this night of nights, the dark night of Doctor Rat.

  “Hi there, big boy…”

  “What? Who—wha—” A lovely female norvegicus standing in the doorway of a simulated burrow.

  “Come on in and have some fun.” She slinks slowly up to me, twirling her tail seductively.

  “I’m sorry, much as I admire your hypothetically suitable burrow structure, I—”

  “Come on and just sniff it a little.”

  She shakes her hips and arches her back toward me. I could just take a little whiff to fortify myself.

  “Oh, yes, honey, that’s the stuff. Now give me some paw…”

  My goodness, I’ve excited her. I didn’t know I had it in me. I might just give her a little paw, pawing the genital region as described in the Clark and Bridges report on…on…

  “Oh, ratty, you’re so bad.”

  “Am I? Really? I never—I didn’t—”

  “Oh honey, come on…quick.”

  She dives into her burrow! And I’m trembling all over, with an…irresistible urge to…roll around at the entrance to her burrow! Yes, I’m rolling around, rolling in her scent which she’s deliberately set out. Oh…oh…

  “Come…in!”

  She wraps her tail around my neck and yanks me into the burrow. It’s a very lovely system of tunnels she’s got here, dug into the embankment of dirt the Learned Professor lugged into the lab. Deeper and deeper we go, she leading me, her tail wrapped around the end of my nose. Eau de Rattus Norvegicus, oh la la.

  “I feel I should tell you—I mean, you really ought to know that I don’t have any—that I was—”

  “Please, honey, not now.” She drags me still deeper into the dark burrow system. No drafts. All the rocks hauled out. What a tidy little place. I should really prepare a paper on it and send it over to the Sociology Department; they love this sort of thing. Now she’s rolling a ball of mud with her nose, closing off the entrance to the burrow.

  “Nobody will bother us now, darling.”

  High incidence of burrow sealing, Atkinson and Davis, Sociological Transport Studies, 1956. I’ve got a gold mine of pertinent details here, but this female won’t give me a chance to make any memos in triplicate, and I find myself approaching her, stamping my paws on the floor of the burrow.

  Rigid-legged…back arched…stamping…now rolling a little rock toward her, which she rolls back. She stamps, we stamp, rocking and rolling. One hind leg in the air, now the other, twisting, round and round.

  “Honey, you sure can dance.”

  “Just a little thing I picked up.”

  Everything in this burrow is saturated with her scent. It’s driving me nuts. If only I had some, if only…if only…

  “Come on, big boy, bite me on the neck a little.”

  She turns around and lowers her chest to the ground. How beautiful she is, with her hind legs extended and her back arched. Her head is held high and I can’t resist leaning over and giving her a little nibble on the neck.

  Our bodies touch.

  “Intromission, honey, now!

  She gyrates her behind, lifts her tail. I… I…try…try…

  “Honey, sock it to me. Sock it to me now!”

  I try to sock it to her…but it won’t…it won’t…the penis will not become engorged with blood and the support bone (os penis) does not support (cf. The Castrated Rat, Bentley and Swen, 1956).

  “Honey, what’s wrong with you!” She pulls away suddenly, knocking me off balance, in the customary way. But unlike the virile male I do not sit here, happily licking my penis. All I can do is make a few professional notes, which will bring me more enduring satisfaction when I see them published in Science Today.

  She eyes me carefully. “Honey, haven’t you got any…”

  “I am indebted to the Learned Professor for his having assisted me in the emasculation experiment I underwent shortly after my birth. Without his collaboration and the cooperation of the university this paper would not have been possible.”

  “Well, I’m hot to trot, darling, and I’ve got to get a soldier rat who can do it to me.”

  “Futile pleasures, lasting only for a second.”

  “Yes, honey but we can do it a thousand times a night and that ain’t so bad…”

  She’s off through the burrow and pretty soon this place is going to be swarming with soldiers. I know the scene; Collins and Moffit have described it thoroughly in their monograph. Rats will be coming in every doorway, righting, brawling, clicking their teeth. I’ve got to get out of here while I still can.

  Tunneling then, through the dirt, scraping with my paws and tossing aside stones. I wish I could have socked it to her for scientific reasons, to better perceive the little nuances of intromission.

  “Where is the meeting going to be, Mother?”

  “At the place where men have given bears a share.” Perhaps he will be there, the strong black male who mounted me, thrilling my heart. It was springtime in the valley; I’d left my scent where it could be found. I listened for him coming through the pines, heard him growling and raising his claws high up on the tree and scratching. He scratched higher up than any I’d ever seen before.

  “At the dump, Mother? Is that where it’s going to be?”

  But I kept moving, for I didn’t want him to find me too quickly. Quick enough, but not too quickly. So that his desire would be greater, I kept moving. I crossed the stream but left my perfume on the rocks. He didn’t bother to fish, though the salmon were upstream then. He charged into the water. I watched him from above, high on the bank. I was surrounded by the little trees that grow on the bank. He couldn’t see me. But I could see him—he was standing up in the water, sniffing at the air, because he knew I was close by somewhere. I saw how big he was then, even before I’d seen his marks on the trees.

  I thought we’d mate on the top of the bank, because of the soft moss there, but something in me grew frightened when I saw him leap from the stream and jump at the bank.

  “Will all the other bears be there, Mother?”

  “Yes, I think so.” But will he still be in this forest? There are further forests and I know that he liked t
o roam. He may be meeting at some other dump, far away, with a lot of other females all around, sniffing him. It makes me feel strange inside to think of that, I don’t know why.

  “And will the raccoons be there?”

  When I saw him that way, clawing at the bank, I ran as fast as I could. There was just the beating of my heart and the branches snapping around me. His roar sounded in the valley as he climbed the bank. I knew he would catch me. I wanted him to catch me, but I couldn’t stop running.

  “Look, Mother, there are the deer! Have you ever seen so many?”

  I could hear him behind me, much faster than I. I could hear his heavy breathing. I stopped then, not wanting to seem afraid. He came through the trees, his chest heaving. The wind blew over him, bringing me his scent. I felt like a frightened colt. His scent was powerful and strange, and my own perfume was mixed with it. His steps were slow as he came toward me. It was like the taste of the honeycomb as he came slowly toward me, sweet and painful, delicious and frightening, forbidden yet impossible to resist. I roared and he answered me, beginning to circle.

  We chased around slowly in the thicket, over the fallen trees. His mouth was open, his tongue hanging out from running. But he wasn’t tired, not at all. I was trembling inside; I saw the peculiar dark spot on his neck. I was shot there, he said, that’s where they shot me. And I ran, he said, with the dogs after me but they couldn’t catch me. I took pawfuls of pine needles and pitch, he said, and jammed it in the wound. You must do that if you are ever wounded and bleeding, for it will stop the blood from flowing and will make it harden. I tired those dogs before evening and continued running through the night.

  “Oh, Mother, look, there are the groundhogs!”

  So he circled slowly, then leapt so fast he was just a blur. He held me with legs as thick and unbending as great trees. My body raged and I roared as he entered me, but then suddenly my ferociousness was gone. There were flowers all around us. I was like a cub again as he enjoyed me. I felt his whole life moving through me. I knew his secret trails all at once, knew everything about him in an instant, or thought I did, though perhaps we can never fully know an old male’s heart. I knew he was strong and feared nothing, not men or dogs or the dark shadows that move in the forest at night. Perhaps he felt all the things I’ve known, and took them away with him.