by Gene Stone
“That’s it,” said the third rat. How did she know what he was thinking?
“Smell what we do. Go on. Take a bite.” The rat grinned, exposing a row of finely sharpened yellow incisors.
“No,” said Cooper. But he wanted to.
“If you won’t, we will. Stand back.”
“No.” Cooper puffed out what fur he had left, momentarily hating the groomer and then, forgetting her, bared his teeth. Hot, angry drool dripped to the floor.
The rats hesitated, but instead of retreating, they scattered in different directions. Cooper dropped his head and tried to follow all three at once. He lost sight of each. The leader jumped on the small bedside table, where the blinking red lights of the alarm clock flashed on Jessie’s face. The second rat darted under the bed, the quickest access to the other side. The third rat ran in a circle, stopping in front of Cooper, acting as the diversion, the martyr.
Cooper paused just long enough for the third rat to open her mouth wide and sink her teeth into the bony flesh of his right front leg. Cooper yelped in pain and panic; then, the initial shock passing, he lunged with his own teeth, found the nape of the rat’s neck, grabbed her, and shook her body back and forth.
He’d done this before. To toys. Rubber things. And now he was doing it to this rat, this breathing object that lay powerless in his bite. She tasted like felt-covered peanut butter. He could feel the rat dying as she squeaked in pain. And then the blood came, trickles of it, coating his tongue and rolling down his throat. Repulsed, Cooper dropped the rat, silent and still and dead.
The leader watched from the bedside table.
“You kill one of us and more spring up from the shadows,” the leader said.
The second rat appeared on the other side of the bed. “Now we feast.”
Both rats scurried toward Jessie, still asleep, her headphones keeping her impervious to the battle.
The leader had reached Jessie’s neck, but Cooper used his tail to flick the rat off a split second before his teeth would have made their puncture.
As he did this, the other rat dug under the heavy cotton blanket, looking for the exposed skin of Jessie’s stomach. Cooper pounced on the blanket; he could feel the rat trapped between the blanket and the mattress. But the rat was quick, relentless. He squirmed until he reached the bottom of the mattress, dropped to the floor, and regrouped.
The leader, having been flung off the bed by Cooper’s tail, was back on the bed and sprinting towards the woman’s neck once again. Cooper leapt, smothering the rodent with his body, and was, for the second time, bitten hard.
The rat jumped off the bed and joined his compatriot.
“Why are you stopping us?”
Both rats were panting.
“Because you’re attacking her.”
“As should you. As should we all.”
“This human is my life. I would die for her.”
He had a fleeting image of himself, in a cage, his puppy teeth gnawing at the price tag attached to his small, opened cage, his fur imbued with fleas, devouring him like a virus. And then Jessie, grabbing him, pulling him close to her, hugging him, not afraid of the fleas. Not even aware of them.
“You don’t have to understand. We do. We’ve understood this since the dawn of time. They are to be hated, bitten, turned to ash.”
Morning sun streaked through the window like a harsh yawn.
The rats glanced at each other, made a mute agreement.
“We’ll be back,” the leader said. “You better understand by then.”
Cooper stood guard over the sleeping body as he watched the rats leave. The corpse of their friend lay in the corner. Neither rat acknowledged it as they vacated the room.
Cooper remained still for at least a full minute. He could sense the rats heading outside, back down to their home in the shed. Finally, when it was safe, when he knew they were out of the house, he sniffed around Jessie, checking her body, smelling it, rubbing his nose against it, making sure she hadn’t been hurt. Once satisfied, he jumped off of the bed. He licked her outstretched foot and nuzzled against it, proud to have been its savior.
Then he approached the dead rat, picking it up gently with his teeth and carrying it downstairs, through Coop’s Door, as Jessie called it, to the backyard. There he found some loose soil where Jessie’s mother, Carol, had been doing some planting, and dug a small hole. He dropped the rat into the hole, covering him up with the dirt.
Cooper hung his head as he looked at the mound.
“He’s dead. I killed him.”
Cooper had chased rats before back in the city. How many times had he kept rodents away from the apartment? How many times had he frightened them from trash bins, from holes in the wall, those small grey pests with the beady eyes and unremitting determination to encroach on Jessie’s territory? First on Avenue A where Jessie lived in a tiny studio, and then when she moved to a nicer neighborhood uptown after she’d finally landed a good job. But mostly, he chased them when she moved in with Peter, who had a duplex apartment on West 15th street—until two weeks ago, when Peter left Jessie, and Jessie left New York City, and now the two of them, Jessie and Cooper, were living temporarily at Carol’s.
“He deserved it,” Cooper said of the dead rat, convincing himself. “I was protecting Jessie. That’s my job. That’s what I’ve always done.”
But he felt hollow, his skin pliable and full of holes, rattled by the wind.
“What you’ve always done is no longer important.”
Cooper didn’t realize he was talking aloud until he heard the voice respond. He turned.
“Clio.”
“Cooper.”
The tortoiseshell cat walked close to him, rubbing her tail against his fur, pressing her body softly against his chest. She sniffed the mound that housed the dead animal.
“We need to go now,” she said softly.
“Go where?”
“To join the others. But first we need to think of a reason for this,” she said, pawing at the mound, scratching up some dirt. “The others won’t take kindly to the fact that you’ve killed one of our own.”
“How can you call a rat one of our own?”
“How can I not?” The cat and dog looked at each other, eye to eye. Cooper knew just how many rodents Clio had killed.
“Don’t talk to me about what I’ve done in the past,” she said. “The past is dead. What we do now, everything we do, is about our future.”
The sun was ascending in the eastern sky. The insects had begun their morning chorus, but there was no rejoinder from the morning jays and mockingbirds. From inside the house, Cooper and Clio could hear Carol clamoring about. Pots and pans and brewing coffee.
“Cooper, we can’t stay here.”
The phone rang in the kitchen. Cooper raised his ear and heard Carol answer.
“I think we both know that’s not a gossip call to talk about who needs a new hip,” Clio said.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s happening. Humans are waking up and they are talking, emailing, texting. The revolution has begun. Do you think Jessie is going to fight for us? Do you think she’s going to betray her people?”
“How can you talk like that? Jessie saved you from the streets as much as she saved me.”
“That was in the past.”
“The past matters.”
“Not now. We no longer belong to them. We belong to ourselves. And the future.”
Cooper’s mind heard and understood Clio’s words, but he fought them off. She saw this. She knew the first battle she would have to fight was right in front of her.
“Quit trying to find reasons to love her,” Clio said.
But Cooper couldn’t quit doing that. It was more than just collars, belly rubs, walks in the park. It was the way she grabbed his nose, pretending to gnaw it, laughing. It was how she spoke to him in a private language that no one else understood, not even Peter. It was the way she made room for him on the bed on the coldes
t nights in January and how he could feel her next to him, her breathing steady and thus steadying his own breathing.
“You can’t stay. I can’t stay. Not any more. It’s not safe. We need to join the others, to mobilize, to fight.”
“I have to think. I have to think. I have to think.” He panted the words.
“Cooper. The last thing the world needs is a dog who overthinks.”
Cooper kept silent, causing the impatient cat to rub against his body once more. She pushed him a little, putting him off balance.
“Why do you rub your body against everything? I’ve always wondered.”
“Why do you open your mouth and drool all over the house?”
“Why do you make that strange purring noise?”
“Why do you wag your tail all the time?”
He changed gears. “I cannot go without saying goodbye.”
“Okay. Goodbye. Then we go.”
Cooper instinctively sniffed her nose and then, backing off, used words. “Agreed.”
Clio led the way, Cooper close behind. They reentered the house through the pet door, both trying to act as normal as two animals with this new awareness could. Carol was still on the phone, whispering inaudibly into the receiver, still in her floral nightgown and plush slippers. But her body was tense, her back rigid. Her whispers sounded like hushed shrieks.
“She knows,” Clio said to Cooper. “She knows.”
They stole past Carol and climbed the stairs, silently, Cooper looking at the photographs that lined the hallway, celluloid nostalgia, Jessie at various stages of development: a toddler in floaties splashing in a kiddie pool; an eight-year-old birthday girl sliding down a slide, arms raised, carefree; a teenager at her first formal dance, awkward smile silver with braces, hunched shoulders towering over the nameless boy who stood grinning with his floral boutonniere. Her graduation from high school photo, her graduation from college photo. The photos of her and Peter. There weren’t any photos of him and Peter—Cooper was always Jessie’s.
“Cooper,” Clio said with force. “Make it quick. Say your goodbyes. I’ll meet you downstairs near the door.”
“You’re not saying goodbye?”
“Cats’ actions are our words.”
She wasn’t sure why she said that because the fact was, she wanted to say goodbye just as much as he did. But she couldn’t admit it. Something inside was talking to her about ancient deserts and hunts and things that she had never thought about before, but seemed now to be as much a part of her as Jessie.
Both animals paused on the steps, unsure where this journey was leading. Cooper moved first. He turned and slowly walked up the rest of the stairs, then down the corridor to Jessie’s room. Each step felt heavy on his paws.
He stood for a moment before entering. This was where Jessie had grown up, and it still was a girl’s rather than a woman’s room. Carol had kept it as it was, this animal-themed room, filled with stuffed beasts, all with those dark eyes that, though inanimate, seemed to blink as if they were going to come to life at any moment. Cooper had never paid any attention to them before, but now it was all he could do not to rouse them from their sleep, to see if they would come and fight and join the fray.
Jessie was up. She was waiting. Her eyes were burning. “Cooper,” she said. “Is it all true? I read about it online. It must be. Is it?”
He didn’t know what to say. He had waited his life for this moment. So many times in the past he had felt so close to being able to speak to her. He often felt he was speaking to her through his groans and barks and whines, through his tail and his eyes and his legs. Yes, he didn’t have awareness like this before, but he had felt something so close, moments when the awareness he did possess was only limited by his inability to communicate it. And he suspected Clio had felt something similar; and perhaps all the other animals had felt they were just a step or two away. Just that close.
Now that he could talk, he didn’t. He jumped up on the bed and nuzzled her. He licked her hand, cherishing the salty smoothness.
“Say something,” she said.
He wanted to say the he knew when she was going to move or flinch or yawn before she knew.
“I’ll start. From the beginning. Do you know I loved you from the first moment I saw you in that horrible cage? I’d wanted a poodle. I was desperate to get a poodle. Then I saw you and I haven’t thought about a poodle since.”
“I love you, Jessie,” he said.
She started to cry. “I love you too, Cooper. You’ve been with me longer than anyone. You’re the only constant in my life. I don’t think I ever quite realized that until now. But you’ve always been there. Always.”
Cooper looked into her eyes. He could feel that breath again, entering his body, then exiting. He could feel the essence of being alive. He could feel something he’d never felt before: the consequence of action. Leaving meant more than just going someplace else. It meant leaving something behind.
She knew.
“Don’t go, Cooper.”
Cooper felt his heart; he actually felt it hurting. “I have to,” he said. He had thought talking to Jessie would be the most wonderful thing that could happen. It wasn’t.
“No,” she said.
I have to stay, he thought. But he also thought, I have to go. He could sense Clio waiting by the back door along with his destiny. If he acted now, he could still meet it. If he waited just one more moment, if he spent one more second with Jessie, he would never leave.
“I’m sorry, Jessie,” he said.
Without looking behind, he left Jessie pining on her bed and went downstairs.
But Clio wasn’t where he thought she’d be. Cooper sniffed the air, trying to locate her scent. He couldn’t. Had she left without him? Perhaps she had gotten a bit of a head start; that was something Clio might do, even before the awareness had set in.
He put his snout to the thin, plastic door, but it didn’t push out. Something was blocking it. A wood plank, which kept Cooper from going out and anything else from coming in. The skunk plank, Jessie had called it.
He felt a twinge of fear. Had Clio done this? Locked him in somehow?
He went to the back door. There he found Carol, locking it. The two made eye contact.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Carol asked.
Cooper couldn’t stop his low growl. Carol had never liked him. Whenever Jessie came to visit with Cooper and Clio, Carol tolerated the pets, but only out of love for her only daughter. Everything else, from the food she gave to the truncated love she proffered, indicated a woman who wished there were no animals.
Carol moved around Cooper and walked diagonally toward the kitchen. She rummaged through a few drawers, using her hands as her eyes, her actual sight never wavering from the shaved dog near the sliding glass door.
Upstairs, Cooper could hear Jessie stirring.
He wanted to leave the house before she came down. He couldn’t face her again; he couldn’t say goodbye for a second time.
“I have to get out of here,” Cooper said.
“I bet you do. You think I don’t know what your kind has been up to? The deaths? Not here. Not in my home,” Carol said.
She had found the object of her search: a small, silver pistol, a gift of protection from a long-dead husband. With shaky hands dotted with liver spots and spider veins, Carol pointed the gun at Cooper.
Pig
Her hoof slipped on the sodden floor. It was damp from washing, clean now of feces and fallen slop. Her eyes were on her hoof, but it was what she heard, not what she saw, that preoccupied her. Noise everywhere: squeals, grunts, groans. They came from her neighbors, from the machines, anywhere, everywhere: high-pitched, loud, loathsome. She had always heard them but now she heard them. They sounded foreign and frightening, like giving birth, like taking life, and they hurt her ears. She did her best to ignore these sounds, as well as the other sounds: the hum of the temperature gauge; the clicking of the feeder troughs; the clanging of m
etal. The din of the world she knew.
Her hoof slipped again. She realized that the ground wasn’t level here; it receded slightly, so that slop and feces ran into the metal-grated drains in a small parcel of floor at the center of the pen. She stared at the drain, the place where the discarded things fell, never to be seen or heard from again.
“Pig,” she said as she caught herself.
The word felt good as it escaped from her mouth into the air. She let her tongue escape too, she let it wet the area just outside of her snout. She was beginning to feel warm. She was beginning to feel hot.
“Pig,” she said again.
She was pressed against an iron fence. She let the metal of the fence dig into her pink flesh, branding her, and although it hurt, although she could feel her hoof slipping again, she kept herself pressed against the metal to fight off the vertigo that was overtaking her. She began to feel as though that drain, the sewer, the hole in the floor, were destined to take her, to swallow her into their mysteries, pulling her down with the waste and vomit and excess.
“Pig.”
She kept herself locked against the fence for as long as she could, but inevitably the pain of the metal overtook her fear of the grated floor.
Amazingly, she didn’t slip. She didn’t get pulled down by some unseen force. She remained where she was. And she thought, for the first time, about who she was: a pig, one of scores of pigs, big breathing pink beasts, packed together, moving almost as one entity made up of many parts. All of them with wild eyes, staring at each other, screaming at each other in a new language—this was the noise she couldn’t understand, she realized. A language teeming with semantics and syntax, void of the groans and grunts of her past.
She glanced over the slew of bodies surrounding her. Had she never seen the large, silver walls of the pen, towering fifteen feet high? Had she never noticed that the pen was actually cut in half by a dirt path, that each half was gated by the same metal that had bored into her skin? How many of those just like her were in here? This large room? How many? She lifted her head. Too many. Too many replicas, and for a second she thought perhaps it would be better to fall down the drain, to slip into the ether, which had to offer more solace than what she saw before her. The claustrophobia of the awareness, of her particular awareness, was powerful and scary.
