The Poe Rats

The Poe Rats is the story of an adolescent boy that makes many new friends while reading Edgar Allen Poe in an underground lair.

Tim groggily opens his eyes in the stillness and quiet of the early morning hours and looks at the digital clock sitting upon the stand next to his bed. It is just past 2 am. Tim smiles, knowing there is plenty of time to sneak out for at least a few hours and then return home before his parents wake up. He pulls back the sheets covering his body and softly places his feet upon the floor. The walls of the room are covered with horror movie and heavy metal posters, as well as a large black and white portrait of Edgar Allen Poe that glares intensely in Tim's direction. His parents are asleep in the bedroom next door. Delicately tip toeing to the other side of the room, Tim slides on his blue jeans and black t-shirt and laces up his red high tops. He then slings a large blue canvas backpack over his shoulder and peers out of his second story bedroom window. The coast is clear, the street is empty. Tim cautiously double checks for the neighbor's dog, but luckily it does not appear to be around. Once, the dog, a cocker spaniel, had spotted Tim climbing from his window and had gone crazy, barking, growling and running back and forth in front of the house. At the time, Tim had already climbed from his window and was walking along the edge of the roof towards the side of the house. When the dog began freaking out, Tim jumped and his heart nearly exploded. Thankfully, Tim kept his composure enough to quietly climb back inside the window and give up on any hopes of making it out that night. Tonight would be different.

Unlatching the window, Tim lifts it up, allowing just enough room for him to slide through. Now standing on the roof, Tim lowers the window back into place and quietly walks to the side of the house where several oak tree branches overhang. One of the large branches serves as a sort of bridge, allowing Tim to quickly descend from roof level to maybe five or six feet above the ground, from where Tim leaps down onto the soft grass of the front yard. Now crouching on the grass, Tim looks left, then right, making sure he has not drawn the attention of unwanted observers. Quickly now, he crosses the lawn and turns right, heading down the side walk towards the dead end of a cul-de-sac. Before reaching the end of the cul-de-sac, Tim disappears from the sidewalk into a thicket of trees. Within the small thicket, Tim crouches down into the shadows created by the moonlight, limbs, and leaves and reaches into his backpack. He withdraws a small black crowbar and a black flashlight that he clicks on to illuminate the roundness of a rust covered manhole cover set within a block of concrete. Using the crowbar to pry the manhole cover loose, he slides the heavy lid to the side and shines the flashlight down into the opening. He can see the ladder and the ground it leads to below, maybe ten feet down. Swinging his legs onto the ladder he descends down into the darkness. Reaching the bottom he takes several deep breaths, letting his body relax, knowing the difficult and stealthy maneuvers are over, at least for now. He won't have to worry about anyone seeing him down here. The sound of trickling water travels through the darkness. This underground cavern is part of a runoff control system. When there are heavy rains, the roads are kept clear by drainage ducts that feed into this underground concrete cavern, which in turn directs all of the surplus water to a creek bed several hundred yards away that lies within a wooded canyon. Recently, there hasn't been any heavy rainfall, only small, periodic, light showers. Tim monitors the local weather forecasts closely to avoid the dangerous, possibly deadly, scenario of being caught underground in the cavern when a heavy rain strikes. From his pocket, he retrieves his cell phone and ear buds. Placing the buds in his ears and pressing play on his cell, Tim walks forward, deeper into the cavern, listening to the ear-drum shattering heavy metal coming from his earbuds. Shining his flashlight back and forth, Tim searches for the usual, and often times unusual, treasure that sometimes shows up underground. Empty beer cans, an abandoned car battery, tangled electrical wiring, the decaying corpse of a raccoon, several gold Mexican pesos, a broken compact mirror, empty cigarette cartons, and rusty nails, bolts, and screws everywhere. One time he discovered the upper half of a mannequin torso, arms, and head, all intact but missing the lower half of it's body. He's aware that other people come in here, either dropping down in through the manhole like himself, or crawling up into the cavern through the pipes that drain water down into the creek bed. He is here to meet friends, yet these particular friends are not human. They do not go to high school, like Tim, or work in an office like Tim's father. These friends live within the cavern in a vast colony, breathing, eating, breeding, and playing.

Walking deeper into the cavern, Tim heads directly towards one of the far corners. It is in this corner, within the intersection of the four massive concrete slabs that Tim first discovered the small iron mesh screen covering a four foot by three foot opening in the wall. An alcove of sorts, very small, but an accessible passageway. On his first venture into the passageway, he had pried the screen mesh open on one side and crawled on hands and knees into the small tunnel, and continued on, until the passageway opened up into a rather small yet peculiar room. It didn't seem to serve any obvious purpose and was only accessible by the small crawlspace. It was a very strange discovery, but one that Tim cherished. It was perfect for solitude, something Tim rarely had at home. During the first few weeks, Tim would make his way underground each night, to the small room and read books using his flashlight. He read Frankenstein and Dorian Gray before moving on to the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe. One night, on a whim, Tim decided to read the Poe stories aloud in the small underground room. This was the night that he met his new friends for the first time. Sitting with his back against the wall, reading aloud from an oversized hardback collection of Poe stories, the guests appeared. His voice boomed through the dark, moist air of the underground lair, reciting the strange and utterly bizarre tale The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfall by Edgar Allen Poe, and suddenly, there in the corner of the room, something was moving. With the flashlight he illuminated four plump black rats. He was momentarily overcome by a feeling of disgust before realizing that such unsavory visitors might actually enhance the experience of reading Poe aloud in the middle of the night in an underground storm drain. So he continued on, and as he continued, more rats appeared. They crawled out of barely visible cracks and holes in the walls of the room. Soon there were dozens of rats, filling most of the floor space around Tim's body. Night after night they would appear, as if they were listening to the stories, which in fact, they were. Surprisingly, they would only emerge from their hiding places if he specifically read Poe aloud. He tried reading other authors and books to no avail, but within seconds of reading Poe, they would appear. The rats were his audience, and he was their late night performer, spewing forth Poe's stories and poems.

Tonight, Tim will read the great Poe poem The Raven. In fact, he will read it several times, as his friends seem to never tire of Poe, even when the same piece is read over and over. He slips through the tunnel and arrives within the small room. He sits down, retrieves the Poe book and flashlight from his backpack, and begins reciting The Raven. "Once upon a midnight dreary...". Within seconds the rats pour forth from the walls, scurrying over Tim's legs and toppling over one another in an effort to find the perfect spot to listen. Tim continues reading, and eventually the rats become still, content, entranced by Tim's voice and Poe's writing. The rats cover the entirety of Tim's body, legs, arms, chest, shoulders, and one brave fellow perches precariously atop Tim's head.

In this way, they go on for hours every night. The audience of rats listening intently to every word, and Tim, luxuriating in the warm embrace of his small, yet quiet literary friends. It was a symbiotic relationship, truly beneficial to all involved, and continued for quiet some time. Eventually Tim grew up, moved away and began his own life in a far away place, but he thought about his friends regularly, and wondered how they were doing.

Author's Note

All comments are welcome. Please don't hesitate to make suggestions. Thanks!

Reviews

[Mila]

Your taste of description is impeccable, and it really painted the picture for me! I thought it sort of ended suddenly, so try and lead a bit more into the ending so that when it happens its not so abrupt. Also, try and find a place to separate your larger paragraphs. If anything, that helps your story flow more and your individual points and plots can be conveyed sufficiently. That being said, those larger paragraphs didn't detriment the reading experience for me, that's just a tip for later on :) I really enjoyed this! Well done!

[Robert Campbell]

Thank you so much Mila! I am glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for the great advice!

[Marie]

THis reminds me of "WIllard." Rats are generally disgusing, but these don't seem so. I understand why your paragraphs are long; this is the way Poe himself wrote.

[Robert Campbell]

I liked the movie Willard as a kid. I think that's exactly where this story came from. Thanks for the comment!