Don't Step on the Dead Rat

Don’t Step on the Dead Rat



“Don’t step on the dead rat. Don’t Step on the dead rat. Don’t step on the dead rat.” Monica had been lying on the sofa in the semi-darkness of her living room. This was the time of evening she would calm down from her hectic day. Ritualistically, she turned off the television, or whatever noise was keeping her company, and then she lit about a half-dozen candles.

Monica tried to clear her brain of appointments past and present. Sometimes she repeated a mantra.

She knew it wasn’t helping her relax, but now that she started, she couldn’t stop.

“Don’t step on the dead rat. Don’t step on the dead rat. Don’t step on the dead rat.”

Rather than the monotony of darkness under her eyelids, she saw the dead rat in detail. He’d lost weight from the last time she saw him.

Two weeks previously, the fat dead rat had shown up on her back doorstep. As urban rats go, he was rather sizeable. Whichever cat had caught and killed the rat had intended it as a present for the mother of the house. Monica understood the theory, but facing an unanticipated rat about the household always gave her the creeps.

“Well, thank you Muffy, or thank you Fluffy, but I can’t deal with a dead rat right now.”

Monica shut the door, wishing the rat would just disappear. Rats, mice too, but especially big fat city rats grossed her out. She didn’t want to even touch a dead rat.

“They carry vermin, and plagues,” she assured herself. “It’s not going to walk away, but I just can’t make myself deal with it now.”

When Monica opened the back door a couple of hours later, the rat was gone. With a brief sigh of relief, she surveyed the surroundings. “No rat in the general vicinity. Maybe the puppy carried it away.”

Two weeks later the dead rat resurfaced in the dining room, blending in with the pattern on the ivory Oriental rug. She made a mental note to invite a friend over for a visit—a friend that wouldn’t mind disposing of an already very dead rat.

Monica grew up watching early cartoons. She supposed that all cartoon writers were men, and that all women should respond as they did on the cartoons she watched. An unexpected mouse appearance in a cartoon always produced a set of female legs on top of a kitchen table, and a women’s shriek. It was what Monica was raised on. It was part of who she was.

Monica thought about rubber gloves, to cover her hands as she disposed on the rat. The thought put a wave of shivers over her body. She found a convenient cat food can lid, and laid it in front and on top of the rat.

“I’m tired. I just want to go to sleep. This rat is something to deal with tomorrow. If I walk this way in the night, I just have to keep an eye out for the can lid to shimmer in the dimly lit room and I’ll walk around it.

Her mantra continued…”Don’t step on the dead rat. Don’t step on the dead rat. Don’t step on the dead rat.” Above her mantra, she heard a puppy commotion in the kitchen. At eight months, he frequently caused commotions that needed immediate attention.

Rising from the sofa and walking carefully across the hardwood floor, she slid her socked feet forward, rather than picking up her feet to take a step.

Her foot touched the edge of the Oriental carpet, and she stopped in her tracks.

“Where is that can lid? It ought to be right in this area in front of the table. Yes, I see it.” Monica proceeded the four steps it would take her to reach the kitchen and the pup’s most recent mess.

In two more steps, she could reach the light switch. As the comfort of holding the light switch urged her ahead, she took the last step, screaming as her foot landed on top of a bump of haired clump matter.

She jumped, she screamed, she bounced on one foot until the puppy joined in the game.

“Okay, you’ve had it now Pup. Dead rats cannot be playthings! I bet you’ve been playing with this dead rat for two weeks. He has got to go. My gosh that rat has been in your mouth, and that tongue of yours has kissed me. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.”

Monica, being the kind of person that she was, turned off the lights and went to bed. She no longer chanted the dead rat mantra. The adrenalin rush had left her feeling emotionally drained, and even more tired. She was tired of thinking.

"Nobody but a silly pup would want to deal with a dead rat at this hour. Besides, he’s been around long enough to be part of the family."


821

I’m trying to write shorter works. I was aiming for 500, and kind of went over.