RATMAN

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Crunch, roll, scrape, scrape, pause.

That noise again. It had been happening all night. Something was under the stairs, under the floorboards, in the larder. It sounded like a convict trying to break out of prison in the dead-of-night, only whatever was down there was not trying to get out… but trying to get in. Into Bryony’s house. She sat on the stairs, clenched the carpet and listened.

Crunch, roll, scrape, scrape, pause.

Whatever it was seemed to be aware of her presence, because every time she silently bum-shuffled down a step the frenzied digging would stop. Maybe it was… a rat?

Bryony had heard about rats, how they could chew through concrete, could manipulate their jaws to crawl through a space an inch in diameter. Her friends had shared stories of the animals swimming up the toilet to be chased by the family cat, or of waking up in the night to find one sitting on their pillow. Nightcrawlers. Vermin. Sent from Hell. Not that she believed in all that afterlife nonsense.

Crunch, roll, scrape, scrape, pause.

She crawled over to the larder and waited for more demolition, the sound of teeth munching through brick. She was above ground, the rat below. The rat wasn’t so smart – it waited for a while and sensing no observation started up again.

She purchased poison. Bright blue, fluorescent death pebbles which she dropped down a hole in the floorboards and thought nothing more of it. She was doing her duty for the community and her designer home.

A day later, there was no more noise under the floorboards, no nighttime scrapes and crunching, no more house invasion. Life returned to normal. She didn’t give a second thought to the animal who had been coming in from the cold as autumn turned to winter, didn’t care how it might have died, writhing in agony. There were bigger things to worry about, like manicures, highlights, yoga on the beach with Christabelle.

And Halloween of course. Her favourite night of the year, when the town got together to dress up as ghouls, Draculas and demons, to walk the streets and invade each other’s houses looking for treats. This year she had the perfect outfit: a sexy cat – a hunter. Time to go on the prowl and perhaps pick up a human treat of her own down the pub.

Just the day to get through before the party could begin.

On the way home from a session with her therapist where she was reassured that nothing was her fault, she opened the car window to de-mist the windscreen and in flew a two-inch insect that almost made her crash into an oncoming truck. It looked like a Lego Batman with wings. A black thorax cloak, a stinger like a knife. A hornet. In October? It buzzed around her head like a dark thought. She swerved into a layby and slammed on the brakes to leap out, but as she reached for the door handle, the insect settled upon it, and if she wasn’t mistaken, tilted its head, the stinger bouncing like a tooled-up gangster. Then the hornet moved, its wings beating loud as a drone. She was paralysed with fear as it hovered millimetres from her eyes. With a flick of its head, it appeared to dismiss her and flew out of the window.

Back home she tried to calm her nerves with a healthy breakfast. “Afterall, you are what you eat,” she always said on her Insta live-feed. She was just tucking into an omelette when she saw something move on her fork. Mouth open, she focused on… a spider… that wrapped its legs around the prongs and stared at her with eight eyes.

‘Go on,’ it seemed to say, ‘I dare you.’

Bryony threw the fork down and ran from the room.

She phoned Christabelle to make herself feel better. Christabelle was always busy dealing with her disabled son, but she always had time for Bryony. She was one of those friends who never asked questions, just let her talk it out. A sounding board that sighed occasionally but Bryony put that down to her asthma, poor love. She told her all about how she was having the ‘proper Halloween experience.’

‘But something’s not right, it feels like nature is coming for revenge.’

Christabelle sighed. October was a bad time for asthma.

Bryony shook off her silly thoughts and began applying make-up for the big night.

‘Meow,’ she said to her reflection.

As she left the house, she smelt something coming from the larder – like rotting meat, and heard a sound – the low thrum of collective wings. Strange, so strange.

Everyone had outdone themselves for the party. Pete came as a possessed Ghostbuster, Andy as Andy – he was scary enough as it was, and Kent as a demented dentist. Everyone adored her cat lady outfit. ‘Oh, this old thing, I just threw it on.’ She pointed to the latex that had required talcum power to squeeze into. It wasn’t that she liked being the centre of attention, but it wasn’t her fault if she was blessed with a perfect body and model good looks. Which seemed to have caught the eye of a stranger. Tall, pale, with a ponytail of dark grey hair that didn’t match his smooth skin and inquisitive eyes. The moustache was a little on the long side, but you couldn’t have everything. Maybe it was part of the costume, and she could peel it off later. She would bide her time, circle him and then pounce like the slightly pissed tigress she was.

Queuing at the bar, the stranger came up behind her, gripped her waist and whispered, ‘You smell delicious.’ His nails were on the sharp side and his voice high-pitched for someone so muscular. She purred back, ‘Good enough to eat?’

‘We shall see…’

The tone wasn’t quite playful but not everyone knew how to make cannibalistic banter sound sexy.

Apples were bobbed, blood-red jelly vodka shots slipped down throats, red lipstick smeared napkins and other lips, as the night passed by in a blur of laughter, dancing, flirting and… Briony getting in a cab with the grey-haired man and going to his apartment. She meant business, no second dates, no asking what his relationship with his mother was like, just straight-up sex. Halloween sex.

‘Bite me,’ she said over her shoulder as he let her in. And he obliged, a little too hard.

‘You animal!’ she purred as she rubbed the teeth marks on her shoulder.

Outside, his place looked a little dank, with damp climbing up the brickwork, a dripping broken gutter, a peeling front door, but inside it was surprisingly clean. A large, open space, decked out with white wood panelling.

‘Nice,’ slurred Bryony as she kicked off her kinky boots.

‘I had it imported from a monastery in France. I hate concrete. But I especially hate enclosed dark places. My family spent way too much time underground.’

When he smiled his sharp nose crinkled from side to side. Endearing.

‘Ah, a dark past. A boy from the gutter made good. Sexy,’ she slurred,

She flopped on his white sofa and sighed. He sat beside her and started to massage her feet. Gently at first, then a little harder. His mouth moved to her toes where he sucked and nibbled, sending shivers through her body in cascading waves.

‘Ouch! That nearly drew blood!’ she yelped.

‘Sorry baby, you just taste so good. I’m not very experienced with gentle mating.’

‘Mating? What are you, David Attenborough? There’s no need to make such a meal of it!’ She snapped, unable to hide her displeasure that he was bad at both flirtation and the fine art of foreplay.

He laughed then, or rather, he squeaked.

He squeaked! Then he covered his mouth as if to try to supress the sound. His fingers no longer looked like human fingers, the nails she remembered from the bar, now looked more like claws. Claws for digging.

Crunch, roll, scrape, scrape, pause.

‘What was that noise?’ she asked, suddenly sober.

‘Oh, just my family, I invited them to join us. I hope you don’t mind?’ He smiled revealing teeth, which had seemed dentist-white and straight, but were now crooked and longer, much longer than she remembered.

‘Revenge is a dish best served warm. Feast time,’ he said as an army of grey marched across the whitewashed floor.