The Fucking Rats
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The dark cellar was littered with rats.
The living- the victors- fought for the corpses and then their lives when they were inevitably turned on by their kin. The colony sheltered beneath the ground in a dank stone basement for they had no choice. The outside was dry and burnt by the sun. Predator birds circled any insect that dared breathe air. Both bird and desert were starving and what a meal a cannibal rat would be. The ruins of the old house sat on top of the infestation. It was once an elegant, albeit odd, manor that no longer held even a roof or what one could call walls, much less four. It was the only tombstone that marked the wealth and status of its former occupants. Deep in the ground, inside the footprint of their footprint, held the only cold and only wet for at least 5 miles or so in any direction. Thus the cellar was blessed with the shambles of shelter, drinkable if sickening water, an infestation of despicable life, and the rats that bred in its cool damp air. Accompanying the writhing furry masses in the dark cellar, sat a nest of matted hair resting on top of a patchy head that lay upon crooked points called shoulders on a body sighing with decaying skin and sores. Though it somehow breathed, life itself would be insulted if it was called anything but a Corpse. Still, there it leaned against the wall, tongue to stone to drink the oozing muddied water. It technically qualified. |
Shira Davis
is a poet from Atlanta, Georgia. She has work published in Silent Spark Press, an ebook titled "Astounding Poetry" (2022). She is currently enrolled in Georgia State University pursuing a degree in Anthropology. |
Quiet groans and arrhythmic spasms of its fleshy sandpaper tongue on the wall accompanied the scuttling and screaming rodents, but for the most part the rats left the man Corpse sit. Instead of approaching the unknown disease, they kept to their own meat and festered together as its strangled whines collected in the corner of the cellar.
While the rats would mingle, the Corpse kept its neck strained and twisted to scrape its mouth against the sharp rocky wall, cutting its flesh and any sound that could be cried from its cracked lips without struggling for air. The throaty grunts it gasped struck the stone with a pathetic desperation like a limp angry beast. Occasionally, the sore muscle of its tongue would flick up, stretching to reach for runny brown liquid that dripped down the wall. Now its eyes fixated on a slimy stone just out of reach from the sanded down rock that its mouth called home as it nursed a sore growing on its buttocks.
The Corpse carped sharp whimpers as it lengthened its bruised tongue once more, throat bobbing, reaching for the soothing, warm, grainy water that coated the wall above. It yearned for the feeling of wet in its mouth, but the length of its tongue fell short again, again. Trembling, it started to whine, but its lamenting groans could not pierce unrelenting stone. No matter how loud or violent its cries struck the wall it leaned on, clawing up against the weight of the baking dirt above, it could not sway the water denying its putrid mouth. The Corpse’s shrieks made the basement tremble and pulsate as if its screams were trying to break free of the trap that held them within the earth with the rats and mud.
The Corpse lashed out rabidly, striking and snapping its teeth at the stone wall with sharp cracks that splintered rock and enamel. Crack and startle scattered the runts of the rat colony beyond its feet. They fled from the rat corpses they were feeding on before being mounted and eaten themselves. As the colony began to feast on the cowards who turned their backs from the fray, the rats’ squeals joined the mancorpse’s ballad in a screeching symphony.
The singer's voice warbled and groaned, growing with each bite of the wall, twice, three times, and four as its mouth filled with blood. Tongue wagged over rock, painting the stone and grinding red into the wall as the man wailed and barked. It descended into a frenzy that outshined the rats. Its head thrashed as teeth and tongue were thrown at the wall in a growling fit of yelping, blood, and the last spit it could spare to beg the mucky water to, please, grace its mouth, but the water seemed content to watch and taunt from the wall above.
Even the most well fed, greedy rats abandoned their prey.
Blood clouded one eye as the sour bitter taste of its own teeth spread on their tongue and laughter bubbled like gas from their chest. Its screaming was forgotten in elated hysteria as it flung its head around as if to divorce the body that begged for water but sat in its rot. It took gleeful delight gargling their bloody teeth. A wasteful tear slid down its cheek with blood and spit and the poor man couldn’t even bother to drink it.
It was only when their foot twitched that their hysterics ceased, and it rested. A catatonic stare replaced the craze. They did not drink the mud, but their thirst was quenched for the time being.
While the rats would mingle, the Corpse kept its neck strained and twisted to scrape its mouth against the sharp rocky wall, cutting its flesh and any sound that could be cried from its cracked lips without struggling for air. The throaty grunts it gasped struck the stone with a pathetic desperation like a limp angry beast. Occasionally, the sore muscle of its tongue would flick up, stretching to reach for runny brown liquid that dripped down the wall. Now its eyes fixated on a slimy stone just out of reach from the sanded down rock that its mouth called home as it nursed a sore growing on its buttocks.
The Corpse carped sharp whimpers as it lengthened its bruised tongue once more, throat bobbing, reaching for the soothing, warm, grainy water that coated the wall above. It yearned for the feeling of wet in its mouth, but the length of its tongue fell short again, again. Trembling, it started to whine, but its lamenting groans could not pierce unrelenting stone. No matter how loud or violent its cries struck the wall it leaned on, clawing up against the weight of the baking dirt above, it could not sway the water denying its putrid mouth. The Corpse’s shrieks made the basement tremble and pulsate as if its screams were trying to break free of the trap that held them within the earth with the rats and mud.
The Corpse lashed out rabidly, striking and snapping its teeth at the stone wall with sharp cracks that splintered rock and enamel. Crack and startle scattered the runts of the rat colony beyond its feet. They fled from the rat corpses they were feeding on before being mounted and eaten themselves. As the colony began to feast on the cowards who turned their backs from the fray, the rats’ squeals joined the mancorpse’s ballad in a screeching symphony.
The singer's voice warbled and groaned, growing with each bite of the wall, twice, three times, and four as its mouth filled with blood. Tongue wagged over rock, painting the stone and grinding red into the wall as the man wailed and barked. It descended into a frenzy that outshined the rats. Its head thrashed as teeth and tongue were thrown at the wall in a growling fit of yelping, blood, and the last spit it could spare to beg the mucky water to, please, grace its mouth, but the water seemed content to watch and taunt from the wall above.
Even the most well fed, greedy rats abandoned their prey.
Blood clouded one eye as the sour bitter taste of its own teeth spread on their tongue and laughter bubbled like gas from their chest. Its screaming was forgotten in elated hysteria as it flung its head around as if to divorce the body that begged for water but sat in its rot. It took gleeful delight gargling their bloody teeth. A wasteful tear slid down its cheek with blood and spit and the poor man couldn’t even bother to drink it.
It was only when their foot twitched that their hysterics ceased, and it rested. A catatonic stare replaced the craze. They did not drink the mud, but their thirst was quenched for the time being.