I remember writing this for a school project at 16. We were supposed to come up with a story after listening to a song. For some reason this is what came to mind when I heard The Things We Do for Love. Finished.
Their home has been alive for years. The floor, once covered by a large cotton mat, was now layered with the fur of the rats, and, most recently, the feathers of the birds. Plants sprouted from cracks, reaching for sunlight that filtered through the garage ceiling, where a tree had fallen through years before. It remained there, dead, but acted as a comfortable home for the birds and the insects. Wallpaper was peeling. A musky odor filled the place, smelling from the colony of rats that had taken refuge there long before the birds came. They weathered through storms that howled until the windows could no longer bear it, and remained strong when the earth roared. When even the sun worked to end them, the rats had their home to keep them cool. The rats took pride in their resilience, and were pleased to hear their numbers would grow shortly. In the far corner of the living room a rat cries out as she gives birth.
Suddenly there is a bang from the door, and a wave of silence spreads throughout the home. The rats and birds stare, petrified, and the noise is repeated. The door splinters. A loud bark follows it, as well as the shuffling of feet. In a moment there is another bang, and an iron-plated boot pushes through, sending wooden debris flying. The rats squeak and scatter. The birds fly into the grey sky. The boot recedes behind the door. The birds watch a black figure move away, then sprint forward and destroy an even greater chunk of the old door. This is just enough for the brown-furred beast beside it to jump through.
There is chaos in the home as the beast attacks every moving body. The colony is in a state of crisis. Rats run over each other in terror as the beast grabs them into its maw and crunches on their bodies, only to spit them out and move on to the next. All the while there is the incessant bang at the door. It doesn’t last. The old wood falls off its rusted hinges, and the figure steps through. It stands firm, and the rats that weren’t able to escape through the crevices of the home are at the mercy of the strangers. Some rats make an attempt to exit through the open door, sprinting faster than they’d ever had before. Indeed, some make it through, but the great deal of them are kicked back. Those that don’t die are easy pickings for the beast.
The slaughter lasts for only six minutes. The last rat is stomped on, and the figure wipes its boots on the bloodied earth. It pats its beast’s head and sends it outside for a while, so it can rest and protect the large bushcraft pack its master left at the door. The birds then realize: these creatures are human and dog. Their ancestors knew of them. Indeed, a great many of them once lived anywhere a bird could fly. Sometimes further. But they had thought these predators had died off long ago.
The human set to work, cutting down plant after plant with a knife until it had cleared the living room of most its greenery. It put the plants in a pile on the rotting couch, then gathered every murdered rat and piled them next to the plants. The birds watched in silent fury as the human grabbed a branch from their tree and snapped it off. For the stronger branches it couldn’t break with its bare hands, it kicked and pushed with its boot. More often than not, the branches bent to its will. When it was satisfied, the creature took the wood and placed it next to the couch, on the floor. It ripped off wooden panels from the floor and whistled.
The dog bounded back in, and when the human pointed at the bare earth, it set to digging, making a mess of the place. The human brought in its bushcraft pack and took out the bedroll. Once it was done setting up, it had the dog stop its digging. It dumped a large portion of the wood in the hole. In a few minutes, it had a fire going, and it set a grate above it. It skinned and gutted rat after rat, put them over the fire, and waited patiently.
Night fell. The light of the fire flickered on the walls, lighting the faded pictures that managed to remain on the walls after all these years. A family of humans lived here. It’s possible many generations of that family lived here. They all looked clean. The human sniffed itself and sighed. The dog licked its cheek, and was rewarded with a good-natured scratch behind the ear. The human yawned. It was late. It used the last of its plant pile as tinder and went to sleep.
The birds waited a while longer before returning to their tree. They hardly wished to share the same fate as those rats– whose uneaten bodies sat in the plastic bag of a long gone grocery store– befall them, but they were tired too, and they needed to see how many of their eggs survived the human’s assault on their tree.
Sometime in the night a rat returned. Careful to put as much distance between it and the sleeping beasts, it scurried to the far corner of the room, where its mate and children remained hidden underneath a fern. Two of the pups had died, and a third had been eaten by its mother. She looked ragged and tired, eyes wide from fear. Her surviving pups cared not for the trauma their mother had endured, and they fought to nurse on her teats, which offered little. The father lightly bat at the dam’s side, urging her to follow him. With great difficulty, she stood, and limped after him.
The human and the dog wake early the following morning They go about gathering their things, yawning and stretching all the way. They move in a careless manner which reflects their cruelty: stepping on bloodied floors as if they had not destroyed an innocent colony. The human takes some kitchen knives, perhaps hoping to use them for further genocides on other colonies, but eventually puts them back in their stands, murmuring that they are duller than the one it already has.
The beasts leave quickly after they wake, and for that the birds were grateful. They haven’t seen humans such as this in many years, and they hope it’ll be many years more before they suffer the misfortune of meeting another.