Vanya vs the Rat King of le Barrows

Things are usually pretty quiet in the back alley of the Barrows after nightfall. The dark air rings silent when the blonde ditz upstairs isn’t getting railed by some shell-necklace wearing Todd, or if Max and Jennifer aren’t yelling at each other in the kitchen (and they haven’t lately!! Love truly conquers all!!).

So imagine my horror to hear the most devilish shriek in all the land around 11pm last night, as I tried to lull myself to sleep between the soothing sounds of Vin Scully calling the Dodgers game and Quagmire making date rape jokes on Family Guy. It truly was the sound of bedtime creeping into the Purple Room of Hotel Borrows.

But then. This shriek. This high-pitched howl. This sadistic cry out from Hades pierced the night’s innocence.

If Satan himself in Charlie Daniels’ “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” had a giant rabies-infested rat in its fiddle-playing band of demons, this shriek alone might have earned him Johnny’s famed fiddle made of gold.

“You’ve got a nerve, to be asking a favor,” it called out in its hipster rat language, the sound slicing through the darkness and reflecting tersely on Latino graffiti that has, actually, fancied up the place a bit. This shriek, however, came from the ugliest of women, the fattest of men, the most grotesque of lonely redheaded college professors in landlocked suburban towns. It cried out. It yelled. It called unto nothing. It called upon me.

And then it ran. Scurrying off into the distance, it employed more of gallop than a simple hop. It was the Eight Belles of the rat world, a broken nappy-haired monster fueled and augmented exponentially by the sky-high garbage of Allston Village. It was the size of an adult cat, with fangs stretched down like the most venomous of vipers. It looked back at me, like the great Nicodemus oh Nihm, like the aged wonder Master Splinter down in the sewers, like a ravenous capybara trapped in this unforgiving city of hate and despair. Then it confronted me.

This beast, this monster, stared right into my eyes. It asked me for a show. It asked to be on the guest list. It gave me a rat demo. It asked to eat Lola. We shot glances back and forth, communicating with facial expressions and hand movements that in the rat community, mean nothing short of danger. Gang signs on rat claws, traded in for whiskers on kittens. It scoffed at my demands, it laughed at my past and snickered at my present. Lola locked herself in my closet like a furry Elian Gonzalez, trapped between two worlds colliding together where the beasts that walk on four can grow to sizes unheard of in this human dominated landscape. It was the Battle at Kruger played out off Cambridge Street.

This rat, this beast, this mongrel, jumped up upon my windowsill, and mocked me. It threw down several pogs, and flipped them all. It played C-Lo, and the Trip-6 dice were weighted. It pulled out a Will Clark 1986 Topps Traded baseball card, and ripped it to shreds. It called my girlfriend a whore, and said it beat my father at golf. It pulled up the tattered burgundy shirt from its needle-pinged forearm and flashed a perfectly crafted New York Rangers tattoo within a shaved circle of its gray, color-less flesh. It spoke highly of Sean Avery.

I tried to barter with it, but it wanted none of my possessions. It looked at me with its yellow eyes, its evil-bred dark brown fur clung together like dreds on a college-aged white girl from Pittsburgh, and yawned violently. It told me to escape, to flee, to find solace in a far away land, where the Rat King can not find me. It mapped out a route more ambitious than the Oregon Trail, presiding over the treasure map like a virgin Floridian about to win at Risk. It cracked its whip down on the dirty pavement outside my window, and spoke only a few words. Mustering enough English with a long, drawn out dialect that can only be picked up in the rural lands of 1800s Russia, it said to me, cold and slowly and without respect for my surroundings: Go west, young fucked up boy. Go west.

And then it left, a trail of ooze simmering in its wake, up the stairs and back to feed on the piles of garbage left by the Hispanic cult on Floor 2.

And then silence returned. And I went to bed, too scared to even watch Robot Chicken.

(Ok, but seriously, this fucking rat is HUGE.)