The Burial of the Rat

Musik: Ballad of a Thin Man - Bob Dylan
Kleiden: Hoodie, long-sleeved shirt, jeans
Buchen: The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Filme: Shaun of the Dead (Wright)

This is based on true events, but twisted into a more interesting short story version. You must twist reality to create fiction. You must twist fiction to create reality.

The Burial of the Rat

A cloying sound just as I had drifted out of consciousness. Eyes open slowly; darkness, cold and the physical pain of waking. My eyelids sting as I clumsily switch off the alarm. I lay back for a few seconds, resting them briefly. Up or not? Now that I should not I could easily drift away; the irony of false awakenings. Now that the sound of the alarm is gone I can hear the soft smattering of rainfall, throwing itself against the glass pane of my window as if to tease me. You ought to stay in bed. Well, they should’ve used reverse psychology because I am reactionary. I love to rebel and so I open my eyes defiantly and pull my cow-heavy body from underneath my downy duvet.

I hardly slept. I can’t anymore. Sleep is ineffective, at any rate. It does nothing to ease my integral exhaustion. I feel sick again. The sickness, much like the sleep, is there regardless of food. If I do eat it increases the sickness briefly, so I do so sparingly. I mean…I ought to stay alive. But just in case I decide otherwise…well, I’ll get to that.

Stumbling around my room I find the warmest clothing possible because it is unutterably cold in the mornings and I am desperate to rid myself of the awful chill. It clings to your bones, though. It won’t go away until it’s had its fun. I understand but I won’t comply with its terms; long sleeves, hoodie, jeans, a hat, scarf and gloves. I make tea and sip it thoughtfully. It settles my stomach and fights back the chill a little. I imagine the warmth, little flame-winged horses charging like the Light Brigade against the chill cannons. Cannon-fodder. But honourable, yes, and never forgotten.

She’s there but I choose to ignore her. You are boring, I tell her, I have no interest in you today. She smirks at that, but remains the silent spectre. She knows I’ll cave. Horrible thing. She watches as I make ready my bag and leave the house stiffly. Follows me mockingly.

The rain is obstinate. Turn back. I will not. Besides, I have worked too hard for this – read the book and the essay and everything. Word by word, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter. Though she kept looking over my shoulder and asking me what I was doing and telling the others to make sounds in my ears so that I could not concentrate. I ignored them, and her. I was better than that. Now I would know all about what we were discussing in class and would not be stupid.
I wander down the sodden streets, watching my feet move along in front of me as though I’m not quite sure if they are mine. Squashed leaves, conkers and murky drains. The sky is still dark and cloudy, steely grey. Something small and oddly shaped up ahead, though I can’t see what. Right in the middle of the pavement. As I draw closer I gasp. A mangled corpse, guts splayed out over the pavement, crushed into the ground and almost split in half. It’s soaking and barely recognisable; there is no face. A carcass, disturbingly gory. My sickness increases tenfold. I cannot stomach it, yet this death leaves me a profound sadness.

I move on swiftly, trying to forget the monstrosity. For a couple of hours, I do. When I leave my class I have all but ceased to think of it. She is still following me and has been whispering strange, yet helpful things into my ear. Things that I could not possibly have known on my own. That is why I need her, despite loathing her so. She has all of the ideas.

Having almost forgotten it I am shocked once again by the presence of the corpse on the way home. I cross the road hastily and guiltily. Part of me thinks it might be her doing, but she claims it is not. An omen, then. I’d seen one only a few weeks ago, larger though better hidden. It can’t be a coincidence I’ve gone downhill since then; everything is so connected like that.

I cannot get this morbidity from my mind, even as I enter the comparable warmth of my house. It is too much; it cannot be meaningless, it oozes meaning like thick green sludge. What to do? I can’t just leave you there, poor thing. It seems so awful, splayed out like that across the pavement for all to see. People crossing the road to avoid seeing such a terrible sight. Or worse, gazing at it in perverse wonder before moving on and forgetting the whole thing.

I will bury you. That is what I shall do. It is only right and respectful.

I step outside again with a plastic bag and a shoe box; a make-shift coffin. I go to the site of the accident (that is what I assume it must have been) and stare at the crushed, dead limbs for a few seconds before scooping them up into the bag and placing them into the shoe box. She laughs at me but I take it all very seriously. No death is without significance. Not even yours.

Carrying the shoe box back along the street I am eyed suspiciously. But I believe fully in my cause. This second corpse…what did it mean? Greater toil. But if I laid it to rest…

I walk straight through the house and into the back garden. There’s a shovel in the shed, which I prise out of the tangled mass of garden tools and spiders livelihoods. They can re-build. I bet they have to do it all of the time. I find a nice spot in the garden; soft, damp earth covered with brown, orange, green leaves. I stick the shovel in defiantly and begin to dig. The way the earth shifts is oddly satisfying. Flecks of brown move to reveal deep roots all sticking out in odd places like the sparse hair on a balding man. The hole gets deeper and looks like a proper little grave. I fancy the garden as a cemetery and the house as a church. I think of the Lord’s prayer. O Father, who art in Heaven. But that is all I know.

The hole now being deep enough I carefully lay the shoe box coffin at the bottom. Rising, I take a handful of dirt and scatter it across the top. For a brief moment I imagine what it might be like to be buried, to be dead as a door nail. Peaceful, I’d imagine. At least I am giving you peace, little one.

I fill in the grave with the usurped dirt, patting it down as hard as I can. I scatter leaves over it so that the disturbance is less visible.

So tired. So sick. But I am satisfied. I have buried you. Ha, you’re gone.