Rats



Rats. Everywhere, rats. I'm told that there never was a better ratter than Silky the cat--You flatter me, Mrs. Peaverton--and yet I don't believe I've ever seen a town so infested. I imagine I'm just barely holding back the tide that will consume poor Peaverton's body when she grows old and passes away unnoticed (I am sure the gay young wife will die a lonesome widow) until the stench wafts over the rose bushes and into the neighbor's kitchen window.

There goes young Stanley, to wait for Lizbeth by the general store with the great glass doors. The front of the place is nice enough, and the inside is clean, but the alley that runs along the north side is absolutely plagued with vermin. I've even seen a raccoon rooting around there, twice. He had a guilty look about him, kept wringing his monkeyish little hands between picking up and dropping rotten corn cobs and licking his back like a cat does when she's embarrassed. I don't think he's been out of the countryside much; all I had to do was send a metal lid crashing to the pavement and he was off in a flash.

There's Lizbeth, now, checking her reflection in the glass door before Stanley sees she's there. She'll act as if she's just walking up, silly thing, when he turns around. They'll disappear into the store together, furnish their pockets with all sorts of eatables, and be off to the cinema, I imagine. Now there's a building rife with all sorts of hideous little creatures. I can smell them every time I pass by. If only they'd let the cat in, I'd eradicate that horrible odor for them and stop the scurrying bastards in their tracks. It drives me mad just to think of what must go on in that place. If I spoke human I'd tell the ticket-taker to lick my ass each time he shooed me from the door.