Republic of Rats

Chapter 3

Chapter 2

When they thought they had him, the rat turned to their direction, passing through the old man’s legs to the other side of the compound and the chase was on again. Neighbour after neighbour came to see what the trouble was with their kinsman’s home.

These joined the family in the chase, making it even more frantic. By the end of the hour, there were hundreds of men and women, all hands thirsty for this one rat’s blood.

‘Kill it!!!!!!!’ They shouted.
‘We are tired of these monsters.’

The whole village was up as hell. Men and women, the young and old all alike, were chasing but this one unfortunate rat.
Others related him to his brothers and sisters who had the heart to leave nothing in the granaries, even those that belonged to the old, toothless dying widows. So, they too ran after the poor rat, eventually running after their mates, for the rat was so small a creature that only a handful of the leading men could set their eyes on it.

All the same, thousands of feet stepped on the ground, now dry with about four years of drought. They shook the earth to the core. As they did so, the vibration through the land went directly to the poor creature’s heart, terrifying it almost to the death. They shouted thus as they moved;

Kill it
They eat our clothes,
Kill it
They eat our food.
Kill it.
They eat our feet.
Kill it.
They disturb our sleep.
Kill it.
They scare our children.
Kill it!!!!!!!

The song went on and on. At the peak. It was a loud, harsh song in which the entire village was engulfed. The culprit was still running for his life, with no chance at all to look at his chaser. His tail waggled through dust and the dry grass like a submarine.

You’d think he would always be out of reach of the barbarians. When he saw the still water ahead of him and the swamp after it, he had no choice but to reconsider and establish which option was worse.

That would be so crucial to him, as it would help him decide on whether to try jumping over the water or face the barbarians, in a sure to lose war. His tail slowly writhed on the ground, coiling a little at the end, like a truck driver who had all of a sudden read the sign post ‘END OF ROAD’.

‘What difference will it make? He thought. ‘I can’t jump over the water anyway.’ This was more of a lamentation than a thought. He slowly turned toward the madding crowd to give himself a shock of his life.

When his eyes met theirs, his body froze almost immediately. What had he done to deserve all the rage? Were all those arms, legs, sticks, stones and feet for him? He felt so weak, and a short, thrilling cut made him stand still. And the song came again, as though from the worlds so far away, only this time it was stronger and more victorious.

‘Jump over’ The voices said.
‘and save your poor soul’

He turned around and faced them, then stood still as a rock. He felt his legs weaken, especially when he tried to take a stride, but the shaking legs wouldn’t. The poor creature could so well feel the heat of the sun burn all through his soft bones, and some warm familiar liquid trickle from a scorched face, sealing his fate. 

Then someone, a man obviously by the strength of his arm, held him by the tail and raised him high above most of the crowd, who shouted victory and swore by their children that the God they served was the mightiest, and no thief would ever again go away with a thing from their village.

They shouted gain, but this time their noise had no definition. It was more of disparity than fulfilment, and as they traced their feet back to where they had run from, their energy slowly faded away, occasionally rising and falling.

You could tell that their anger escalated from something much more serious than the trivial action of a rat; from a long evolving anger, stemming from the so many years of frustration and weariness.

In a moment, the villagers were already started at tracing their feet back to the trading centre; a venue which all tacitly agreed was their destination, although none had decided on it. 

From a distance, you might have mistaken them for pilgrims, travelling perhaps to a very far place of worship. When you came closer however, you needed no time to realise that their day’s god was a rather small and unusually long rat, which made no efforts to disturb the one holding it, most likely because the two had something in common, a kind of thing which none but they could feel, at least for now.

The trading centre was a remote valley settlement with two rows of mud walled houses facing each other, divided by a long dusty road. Some of these houses were thatched with grass and papyrus, whereas others had either old decaying iron or asbestos roofs.