Uncharted Frontier EZine Issue 16 Read online

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  Sam The Rat

  By Holly Day

  When I was 20, my ex-roommate gave me her six-foot-long savannah monitor. She had discovered heroine earlier that year, and therefore could no longer afford the $20-per-week required to feed the lizard. She’d started feeding it chopped-up hotdogs and old bologna instead, and it had responded by pushing through the chicken-wire lid of its tank and chasing her cats.

  “It’s just until I can afford to buy him real food again,” she kept saying as she brought a variety of pet accessories into my tiny apartment—a big heat rock, a couple of old toothbrushes to scratch loose his dead scales, a can of fancy cat food she’d picked up out of guilt on the way over. “Maybe a month. I don’t know.”

  Having had a lot of carnivorous reptiles of my own as a kid, I honestly didn’t mind taking “Baby” in. When I’d lived with my ex-roommate, I’d had all sorts of fun with the lizard. He was actually quite affectionate, in a friendly-alligator sort of way, and with a little scrimping and saving, the extra expense of feeding and caring for him would be more than worth the crazed looks passersby would give us on our daily walks in the park.

  My boyfriend, Tim, just loved the idea of me keeping Baby in my apartment. “It’ll be just like the Roman games,” he said, lifting the heavy tank up off the floor where I’d originally put it and plopping it down in the middle of my dining table. “We can eat dinner while he’s eating his!”

  My apartment soon became the scene of many, many gruesome murders. At least twice a week, Tim would show up with a couple of meaty rats for Baby and a bag of hamburgers and a twelve-pack for us, and we’d sit and eat our dinner while the lizard smashed bloody rat bits into side of the cage. “Oh, God,” I’d groan when a piece of nose or foot stayed stuck to the glass, inches from my face. “That’s going to be hell trying to clean up.”

  Baby did well in my apartment. On nights when Tim stayed at his own place, I’d put Baby on my lap and we’d watch TV together while I scrubbed at his loose skin with a wet toothbrush. Sometimes, I’d give the lizard a can of the awful-smelling cat food that Tim had pushed me to buy by the case when he was an Amway salesman—stuff so rank that my own cats wouldn’t even try a bite, but was apparently very appealing to reptiles.

  It wasn’t long before Tim was turning Baby’s dining experiences into feats of strength and/or gluttony. Sometimes, he would bring about twenty medium-sized mice over and dump them all into the tank at once, laughing his head off at seeing Baby opening and closing his mouth frantically trying to catch the little bodies scampering around and around the tank. Other times, he’d put two or three small rats in the tank at once and place ridiculous bets on which rat would get a nip into Baby’s scaly flesh before being devoured. It was as good as any rubbery dinosaur movie ever made.

  Then one day, Tim showed up at my apartment for the weekend with the usual bag of cheeseburgers and case of beer, and, of course, the hole-studded cardboard box from the pet store. “This,” he said, opening the box, “is dinner.” He reached in and pulled out one of the biggest rats I’d ever seen. From the tip of its tail to the end of its nose, it was as long as Tim’s arm, and he was not a small man. He held the rat by its tail and brought it over to Baby’s tank and dropped it in.

  The fight was actually not as dramatic as you might have thought. Baby was obviously hungry, and the rat, being as big as it was, had a much harder time evading the lizard’s teeth and tail than its smaller counterparts. It was probably pretty old, too, and may not have had the energy to put up much of a fight. Anyway, by the time we’d finished dinner, the rat was dead, and Baby was circling the carcass slowly, obviously trying to figure out how to eat such a big animal.

  Usually, Baby would grab his defeated prey by its nose and gulp it down whole, spasmodically jerking his head up and down to help move the carcass along. Sometimes, he’d pick the rat up by its butt and try to eat it that way, which usually resulted in some really sickening cracking sounds as he’d break the rat’s legs backwards on its way down. But this rat was way too big to eat either way. Baby first tried sucking it down head-first, and ended up gagging wildly after a few seconds and spitting the now-damp head of the rat back out. He then tried the butt-first method, which was even less successful.

  “You know, I don’t think he’s going to get it,” I said, getting up from my seat. “This is just cruel, you know? The poor thing’s obviously starving.”

  “Fuckin’ sit down!” snapped Tim. “He’ll get it, okay? C’mon, Baby,” he crooned through the glass at the reptile valiantly giving the head-end another go. “C’mon, big guy.”

  “We can’t go to bed until he eats it, or doesn’t,” I said. “If he chokes to death, you owe Leigha $700 dollars and a new lizard.” I sat back down and grabbed another beer.

  Baby made a few more futile attempts to eat the rat the regular way, then seemed to give up. He laid his heavy, triangular head on the rat’s stomach and let out a big sigh. I threw my hands up in exasperation and stood up. “Okay, we’re done,” I said. “I’m going to get him some cat food and put the rat in the alley.”

  I had just stepped into the kitchen and gotten the can opener out when I heard Tim giggling. “Oh, man!” he cackled. “Oh, man, that’s gross!”

  “What?” I asked, running back to the living room. “What’d I miss?”

  I’d been wrong when I’d thought that Baby’d given up the fight. Instead, he’d figured out a new way to eat his trophy—instead of swallowing the gigantic rat whole, he’d chewed a gigantic hole in its stomach and was busily ripping out the rat’s insides. A whole parade of organs came out with each gulp, the liver, stomach, and lungs all connected together by stringy bits of wet meat that were apparently quite delicious. Baby’s face and claws were soon smeared with bright red chunks, and he ripped into what was left of the rat’s inside with obvious gusto.

  “Oh, man,” I groaned. “That’s gonna be a bitch to clean up.” Tim giggled maniacally near my elbow, and I punched somewhere in his direction.

  The next morning, very hung over, I was greeted by the empty husk of the gigantic rat folded into the corner of the sleeping lizard’s cage. “Oh, come on!” I said to the lizard. “You can eat that part, too, can’t you?”

  “Ooo, look at that!” said Tim, emerging from the bedroom, grinning. “It’s like a little rat-skin rug. The head and the tiny feet are there, but the rest of the skin is completely empty.” He opened up Baby’s cage, reached in, and pulled the empty rat out by the back of its neck. “Hello there!” he said in a high-pitched, squeaky voice, holding the rat up to my face. “My name’s Sam the Rat! What’s yours?”

  “That’s fucking gross. Take it down to the dumpster,” I said. “Hide it under some trash so no old ladies look in and think Satanists live here.”

  “Sam the Rat wants a kiss, Holly,” said Tim, pushing the rat towards me. Its arms and legs and tail flapped horribly, all barely held together by a thin strip of skin and fur. I had to take a step back so that my nose didn’t end up right where I’d seen the lizard rip entrails out the night before.

  “Just one kiss, and then I’ll take it down,” said Tim, following me. “It’s dead already, right? It’s not like its going to bite you or anything.” He laughed, and I turned and ran. I ran into the bathroom and had almost gotten the door shut when Tim shoved his shoulder against it and pushed so hard I flew against the wall. “Just one kiss!” he bellowed, trying to contain his laughter, waggling the rat in front of him. I dove behind the toilet and cowered there, terrified of having that empty stomach cavity anywhere near my face. I don’t know why—I’m not really afraid of dead things, or rats, obviously--but that day, I was so scared I couldn’t think. I reached behind me and grabbed the toilet brush and started swinging it back and forth and knocked the rat out of Tim’s hand.

  “Ooo, you ripped it in half!” Tim chortled. “Now you’ll have to kiss two pieces!” He scooped the sections of rat up in his big, meaty hands and held them u
p to my face. “Kiss Sam the Rat—both of him!” he ordered.

  I reached behind me once again and my fingers touched the can of air freshener tucked into the corner. I pulled it out and held it in front of me and had almost pressed the button when Tim knocked it out of my hand.

  “What, are you trying to kill me?” he laughed, incredulously. “Forget kissing the rat—he’s going down your pants! One in your shirt, one in your pants,” he said, pushing one rat half into my chest while he tried to get his fist down my shirt. I wiggled and screamed and screamed and suddenly, there was a loud knocking on the door.

  “Oh, shit,” grumbled Tim, getting up. He walked out of the bathroom, the rat halves still clenched in his fists. I got up, glad to escape the confines of the tiny bathroom.

  Tim was at the front door, laughing loudly and acting very nonchalant. One of my neighbors, am 18-year-old who’d just moved into the building, gave me the hairy eyeball over Tim’s shoulder as I came into the living room. “See? She’s okay,” said Tim, pointing at me. “It was just a big joke.”

  “Maybe you’d better just throw the rat away now,” I said. There was a little spot of rat blood on my shirt, but no guts, no legs. My cats were creeping around the apartment in slow motion, obviously terrified. I went into the kitchen and came back with a plastic grocery bag. “Just give it to me,” I said, holding the bag open. “Give it to me, and I’ll take it down.”

  “Are you sure everything’s all right here?” asked my neighbor, eyeing the blood on my shirt.

  “Yeah, everything’s fine,” I said, still pissed. Tim dropped the rat into the bag and went into the kitchen to wash his hands. “Everything’s just fine.”