Spooky Stories: Halloween Vault 2020 -2021

Revenge is Mine, Sayeth the Rat (WattRevenge)

Profile: Wattrevenge

Prompt Title: A Shift in Anger

Prompt: Revenge can come in too many shapes and sizes, but what if your anger can shift you into something else? (500)

My word count: 447 words

Revenge is Mine, Sayeth the Rat

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter. 

Can you hear me coming? 

The sound of tiny paws scrambling up through the bowels of your elegant high rise, pressing through ventilation grates, scaling electrical wires, can be so very faint, so very light. 

Light, like the flakes of snow that swirled down to die on the grimy sidewalk the day you appeared in our lives. The day you climbed out of your shiny car and shoved those legal papers under our noses, stealing our future out from under our feet. 

We worked so hard on that business. And you stole it with a flick of a pen. Can you hear these little paws that leave star-shaped prints like snowflakes in the hidden grime of your nest? 

Dirty little paws. My little paws. 

Pitter-patter.  

I know which floor you live on. The 27th, am I right? 

Listen, I may be a rat now, but I still remember everything from when I was human. From before I didn't see a point to living anymore. From before I put a gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger. That wasn't pleasant. Not for me, not for anyone. 

But then I found myself in this furry animal body, heaped against others of the same kind in the corner of a sewer pipe, our hearts thumping in unison, our eyes seething red in the darkness. Each one of us reeling from a different tragedy. From a different, all encompassing deaths.  

Somehow, somehow, all of us had been united in one place and granted a second chance. 

A second chance to get even. 

But rats don't live long. Two, three years, at most. That's why time is of the essence for us, and you are of the essence for me.  

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter.  

You can't hear me now, climbing, sniffing, turning in the darkness, pressing through grates, scaling railings, seeking you out by your stench. 

But you will. And then you'll know you've got a serious problem.

Because, we're all carriers, you know. Us revenge rats. We've got an illness that doesn't affect us, just you. 

You'll have no idea I've crawled over your possessions, streaking spit across everything I can find: the apples in your fruit bowl, your silk pillowcases, your state-of-the-art toothbrush, your slippers, your wallet. I'll have pissed on your water taps, and shat in the grooves of your laptop, dancing the muck in deep with my faint little paws, like snowflakes falling from the sky.

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter. 

Six more stories to go until I burst into your life. Six more stories until these little paws start tolling your death bell.

Pitter-patter.