A Rat of Culture | Short Story

My name is Mip.

And I am not your typical rat covered in dirt, disease and despair, but a rat of culture. One of uniqueness and curiosity.

Yes, yes, and it was that curiosity that brought me to nuzzle a glowing rock under the streets of London, deep down in the sewers. It wasn't long before I began to understand the human language.

It still didn't feel right to me; speaking the same tongue as the species that saw my own as an infestation. A spot of sick in the great big world. I felt like an outsider, even if the other rats worshipped me for my spike in knowledge. Some did. Some didn't. But I felt abnormal nonetheless, because that was it: I was abnormal, and I longed to be a puzzle piece that would for once fit where it was supposed to. 

I scurried through the sewers of London with no goal in mind. The streets above were more quiet than the usual bustle of activity and the low hum of indistinct chatter. I found it quite peaceful . . . For a short while. The silence began to unsettle me right alongside the rotting oder that brought attention to my keen sense of smell. It wasn't the everlasting stench of the sewers. No, different. The smell was different.

I turned into a tunnel that intersected the one that I'd been moving through to see a rat sniffing the air, as if it too were confused with the rotten smell. How could I not have noticed it then; there was a human being laying there beside the rat. Cold and lifeless. Pale and thin. Interesting.

I knew that this rat was like me before it spoke through my mind: "I did not do it. Something is happening." We were not supposed to understand the human language. We were not supposed to have this level of intelligence that reached past our instincts as rats. I was intelligent enough to know that for sure.

But whatever we had within us had a very poor affect on the humans. The silence above. The smell of death . . .

The rat heard my thoughts, and responded.

"The humans call it the Plague."

-Christopher Williams(IamWriter1)