Kelly Gray
The History of Rat King
The boy rats wore Jerseys. Drove muscle cars across smooth roads, the tailfins tilted towards the sky in a pounce. Their cars were rats, but they called them Mustangs, Rockets, and Thunderbolts. The teachers were also rats, and they let their hairy tails brush your neck. They gave us a square of hallway and we went around and around. The girls were rats, too, the meanest. Rattus Rattus. Hair sprayed rats with rat dads who owned rat ranches. There were some who weren’t girls or boys, but they were rats, too.
There was a rat football team which included the strongest rats with the smallest of eyes who cracked corn nuts between their teeth. For sport, they pinned the smallest of rats in the thick stench of locker room. They pulled his pants down and exposed his pink tail, the soft white hairs of his groin. They held him down. While he squealed they formed a circle around him. There was a rope of hair in the locker room. It caught on one tail and then another tail, binding them. Sticky rat cum leaked out. Rat cum might sound vile, but let’s be clear, what’s viler than rat cum is rat power. Their tails dragged in their power, linking and twisting, tying each rat to the group. Sticky gum power. Chew it. The Rat King rose.
The land the Rat King presided over was fertile. Cabbage was grown. Butter was churned. Cattle were grazed. Opposing football teams fled the field, seeing the mass of rat was impenetrable. The meanest rat girls pretended to like the Rat King, but at prom, so entangled was the Rat King that the rat girls could not be asked to dance.
But the land of Rat King. The cabbage was laced with purple and grew large enough to shade rabbits. The butter tasted like soft sugar of mother, the kind that makes pie a breakfast food. The cows had long lashes and sweet velveteen muzzles and they walked lightly, as if on clouds.
The hills were golden until they glowed green. Then they were swept with a wash of yellow, mustard flower touching blue sky. Craggy rocks housed blooms of lichen, an Oak tree, a fox burrow. The estero cut west, cormorants used it as a flyway, perching on the bridge to open their florescent mouths to pale mornings. They stretched their wings into the damp of marsh. Fog rolled in; fog rolled out. Bright white of egret marked the deep green of pickleweed. Deer ears twitched in grass whisper, cloud shadow blurred blues into greys into the call of a barn owl.
But the rats.
In the dark space of rats,
they ruined it all.
