Style: Narrative
Statement: A sequel to Rat King.
“They want us back.”
“There? Where—”
“What? You scared?” Vernier spit his gum into the trash bin on the right side of the closed door he stood on the left of. His large frame covered half the door.
“No.” Jean’s breathing became audible. “I’m not… I’m not going.”
Light bulbs above buzzed, a low vibration filling the air and sneaking into their ears to travel down their throats and right into the center of their stomachs.
Vernier looked at the door. “Funny how they chose us.”
“Huh, funny, yeah?” he said bluntly. “Get somebody else.” Jean lifted his glasses as he stood up from his chair. “I don’t follow you anymore.”
Jean’s hand made its way to the doorknob as he brushed shoulders with Vernier.
“Jean,” Vernier slowly called, turning himself towards his colleague.
Jean kept walking.
“Jean,” he said again.
Jean stopped.
“Vernier,” he replied, imitating the other’s tone before resuming his rhythm away from the door.
Vernier kicked the trash bin before he ended his work day outside with a smoke. The room’s buzzing light bulbs disappeared from his ears but remained in his stomach. On the drive home, he thought of this, thinking his stomach would be filled whole with the vibration before he would eat dinner with his family.
Jean had the vibrations stuck in him, too. But he felt them especially in his temples when he took off his glasses before his head touched a pillow. Jean was a thinker. He knowsew things, or at least knew of things. When he did not know, he knew how to pretend.
He knew Martin came with himself and Vernier to the investigation of a building in a field of bare, crooked trees.
He knew Martin did not leave with himself and Vernier.
However, he did not know where Martin went.
Not knowing where Martin went was what led to uncertainty swallowing Jean, and chomping on his thin fingers. The same unknowing fingers that held his last cigarette before he knew Martin vanished.
Jean did not touch a cigarette since.
Even though he knew he liked cigarettes.
And that not smoking does not make men reappear.
A command the next morning reunited Jean and Vernier. They begrudgingly listened to the details of a welfare check for a lady whose children lived in Paris. Ever since her husband’s passing a few weeks ago, no one was there to take care of her.
“Let the city rats go visit her themselves,” Vernier said.
Jean shrugged and adjusted his glasses to sit higher on his face as a small gesture to prepare himself for the drive with Vernier to the woman’s home.
Their car rolled past blocks of houses until arriving at the smallest one to be found. It was near that same field of bare, crooked trees. That familiar building seemed just a branch away.
Vernier clicked his teeth. “What an eyesore.”
Jean sighed and stepped out of the car, slamming the door hard enough for Vernier to whip his head around to meet Jean’s paranoid eyes.
Vernier’s knock at the door was greeted by an eventual creak that revealed a stout woman in her seventies, or perhaps eighties.
She brushed her thin white bangs behind her ear and eased her wrinkled face into a gummy smile. “Hello, hello there.”
“Good morning, madame,” Vernier replied, returning a grin.
“Your children were worried and called us to check on you. Is everything all right, madame?”
“Hm, children? Who?”
Vernier and Jean exchanged a knowing glance.
“It is good to meet you, madame,” Jean tipped his head. “We will—”
“Oh, oh, dear! But what are your names?” Her head tilted up and she settled her pupils onto the officers.
“Alain Vernier.”
“Matthieu Jean.”
“Ooh,” she cooed, “good, good names. Would you like to come inside? It’s so, so cold outside.”
“It’s quite alright,” Vernier insisted, his hands now out of his pockets waving a “no” to reassure her.
“No, please, please! Come in. It’s good to have guests. Very good!”
Jean smiled and stepped into her home slowly. She grinnedsmiled again, then Vernier followed Jean’s footsteps.
She led them to the living room and gestured at the low-rise glass table. “I can bring you something. Coffee?”
“Oh, much appreciated,” Jean looked around, “Thank you.”
Vernier sat down on the couch and loosened his tie.
“Please sit down too, Monsieur Jean!” He obliged and noticed Vernier staring at the ceiling.
The woman came back with three dainty cups of espresso and placed them on the table in front of the men. She quickly took her place in a chair and watched them reach for the cups.
“What brings you here today?”
“Um, you…” Vernier began.
“Simple business,” Jean chipped in.
“Oh, is it good business?”
“Yes,” he answered solemnly. “And good company.” He took a sip of coffee.
She smiled. “Aw thank you, thank you, dear.” Her hand, freckled with dark spots, took the small spoon out of her cup to tap the rim.
A sporadic scatter on a floorboard caught Jean’s and Vernier’s ears by surprise.
teke teke teke
Two gray creatures ran out from under the lady’s chair. The men’s eyes shot to the woman’s pink slippers that were being nibbled on by fat rats.
“Oh, no, no!” she cried. She fidgeted her feet away from the rats before reaching into her skirt’s pocket.
“Madame!” Jean and Vernier stood up.
But the woman was quiet and dropped a brown cube to the rats. “Don’t worry, they just like to be fed.”
“Are they yours?” Vernier asked, his mouth wide open and his legs spread shoulder-width apart in a defensive pose.
“No, no, they just come in and out. They like it here, I think!” She giggled and dropped a few more brown cubes., Tto which four more rats ran from out of nowhere to grab. All six of the dark hairy creatures gnarled and hurried towards the food, fighting with claws and scampering on top of one another. Their black bead eyes grew ever wider as their lips lined with irritated red bumps popped open to reveal rotted yellow teeth.
Vernier shook his head and blinked rapidly several times. “Y-you’ve been feeding these?”
“Yes, yes. And my husband helps me, because there are just too many of them!”
Jean felt his chest constrict like a boa’s chest tightened. “Your husband?” He suddenly remembered the details he received earlier this morning. “Madame, do you know where your husband is?”
“Oh. I’m sorry I forgot,” she replied regrettably. “I forgot…” Her posture slouched and her face regained all its wrinkles.
Jean suddenly jumped back onto the couch when more rats appeared from underneath the furniture. He folded his legs towards himself.
The lady chuckled. “Oh, don’t worry about them at all.” She reached into her pocket again. “I’ll go get more food!”
As she made her way out of the living room, more rats appeared and ran towards her. She slowed down her steps and looked at her holed slippers.
“Oh my goodness! I remember!” Her face lit up when she turned to Jean and Vernier. “I forgot my husband in the freezer!”
She hurried away. “The rats have been trying to get in there all day.”
Jean started to run towards the woman. His shin hit the corner of the glass table, and he fell on it.
SMASH
Jean had braced his fall with his arm, shattering the table when he tipped it over.
“What the hell!” Vernier balled his fists.
gurgh gurgh gurgh
A few meters away from Jean, a rat’s disgustingly large stomach oscillated in and out, causing its fat legs to shake and its arms to tremble in a pathetic attempt to keep its stomach above the floor. This gagging rat took center stage on the dark red carpet it stood on. Its erratically-twitching pink nose was pointed upwards, above its ugly, yawning mouth. In no time, a bulge appeared in its face and forced itself out the mouth. It was a vomited, twirled mess of fuzzy darkness, of wet hair, of brown splotches, of repelling odor.
Then another solid fell from the rat’s mouth.
On the dark red carpet shone a white pebble. A small, flat one whose surface reflected the ceiling’s light, and whose weight created a small ruffle in the carpet hairs.
This square white spot dominated the carpet. This white among the red.
This tooth.
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