Beyond the Sudden Door

Lyra Meurer

T hey had been seven rats at first, six squirming impatiently inside their mother’s womb, then writhing their helpless pink bodies by her nipple-lined belly. When they had fur and no longer needed milk, the females were separated from the rest and kept in a tank at a pet store. There they met other rats, became a mischief of thirteen, and spent their days roughhousing and squinting under the oppression of fluorescent lights.

They became two rats when, one day, a human reached in and lifted them out by their tails. The one who is still alive remembers it still–the pain wrenching through her spine, the precipitous view of the human’s upturned face, the fear that she’d be dropped into that kissing mouth. She and her sister, the Albino, were deposited into a small box and carried through the night at terrifying speeds while they fear-shitted all over the cardboard. Then, at last, human hands placed them in a roomy wire cage, which they tentatively explored. Never had they had so much space to themselves.

Oh, to think they had feared death at first! The humans – a female and a not-female – had been unfamiliar and incomprehensible, generators of gratuitous scent, sound, and huge, horrifying motions. But they realized, with a little time, that these humans didn’t want to eat them. They fed them, pampered them with tidbits, let them roam around the house, provided them with cozy places to sleep, stroked them with astonishing delicacy despite having such enormous hands.

Albino is gone now, and her sister is old and fat. Jumping to the floor hurts the joints in her legs, and she is more inclined to sleeping under the blankets in the humans’ bed than trying to break into the trashcan or knocking things off shelves.

They are three rats now. The two young ones – the one with the spots and the skittish one – bound around the house while Old curls up under the blanket next to the female human’s thigh, awash in her warmth. When the human has a free hand, she runs her fingers down Old’s spine. Old luxuriates at the stimulation of her skin, the weight on her muscles, becoming as flat and round as a pancake.

While she is half-asleep and half-aware, a familiar smell coils around her, a body brushes against her side. That scent almost like her own, but richer and deeper, like stolen chocolate. Albino is here, settling next to her as she has done since they were in the womb. But she isn’t breathing.

Old wakes with a sneeze, a chill tingling at her side. She lifts her head, drawing in the smell of herself, the human, the splash of dried food on the human’s pants, the flowery chemicals in the sheets and blankets. But no hint of Albino. She isn’t there.

Old stretches and yawns, then slides off the bed. Pain jolts her joints. She scurries off in search of food, leaving drops of urine to mark her passage.

T he young ones don’t know what it means when Albino’s scent lies beside them or whisks along the floor. They lift their heads, searching for the other rat, but they don’t know who they’re searching for. They notice how Old rouses and sniffs around, her heart straining towards someone who isn’t there.

They never met Albino, never knew how tempestuous and sensitive she became when she went into heat, how tender she was otherwise, wielding the power of authority with gentle but firm licks and nibbles. They’d never witnessed her bravery – stealing a whole bar of soap from the bathroom, only to have it snatched from her mouth – and her circumspection – hesitating at the edge of unfamiliar terrain, sniffing hard and long to compensate for the dimness of her red eyes.

They hadn’t seen Albino change, growing thin, confused, and angry; cuddly one moment, biting the next. Her smell went sour. She hated the light, hiding her face in shadows and blankets. She couldn’t make it to the second level of the cage and so languished at the bottom until the day the humans took her away.

They came back and showed Old her sister’s corpse, her shrunken scent, cold and overshadowed by a chemical stink from a streak of something poisonous on her leg and stomach. So, that was what had happened to her: an illness, followed by death. Then the corpse was gone too, and soon after came the young ones, twin whirls of energy, sisters who would never know Old once had a sister too.

When Albino appears again in unbreathing whiffs, Old realizes that she’s encountered this sort of manifestation before. Whenever the humans leave the house – sometimes, even when they don’t – presences sit in the chairs, trundle about the kitchen, creak across the floor. Sometimes they come in incredible numbers, passing from the front door to the back.

The rats, small and alert and close to the ground, feel with their whiskers the disturbances they shake into the air, smell their unfamiliar odors, hear the distortions their feet press into the ancient floorboards. But never do they cast a shadow or create a silhouette in the rats’ blurry vision, and the eddies made by their movements never include the rhythmic issuance of breath.

They’re there, but not there. Gone, like Albino, but not gone. No harm had come from them. So, there should be no harm from Albino’s presence either.

T he young rats had come from the same place as the old ones, had been plucked out by the same human, taken home the same way. Spots acclimated quickly, took to climbing the humans from the cuffs of their pants to the cliffs of their shoulders. Scaredy could not comprehend such acts. The humans moved a hand and she darted away, afraid of being picked up and swept through the air to she-knew-not-where. They made a sound and she tensed, waiting for the next sign of danger.

Anxiously and inexpertly, the humans tried to rectify her nature. On the third day, the female picked her up like it was nothing, cradling her. Scaredy trembled under petting hands, then squeaked and buried her head between the female’s belly and arms, hiding from what must be impending death. Realizing her mistake, the female released Scaredy back into the cage, where she lurked in the shadows, afraid of a second such near miss.

They are allowed out of the cage to explore the house, but whenever they are let out, they must be brought back in, and Scaredy suffers the torment of being cornered and grabbed and wrestled into the cage. She fights for her freedom, but never wins against those massive beasts. Thus, the cycle continues, without a clear end: fear begets force, which begets more fear.

W hen Old was younger, she took every opportunity that appeared, stealing into cupboards and closets the moment a door opened. Often the humans noticed and snatched her out before she could explore, but once they hadn’t. She’d slipped into the closet and entertained herself for a while, snuffling through folded cloth and unfamiliar objects.

Then she got hungry and sought her way out. The door had been open before, but now it was closed. She stuck her nose under the crack, sneezing at the cool air beyond. She twisted her head to chew on the wooden edge of the door. Nothing gave. No way out.

Fear set in, that same fear as in the cardboard box on the first night. She shat messily in the corner, terrified that she would never be able to get out, that there would be no food, no water, no one to keep her company as she perished.

After a long time, the door opened and light flooded in. The female human found her in the corner amongst her diarrhea, wide-eyed and awaiting death. She made a noise of relief and humor, scooped the rat up, and transported her to her cage with many kisses. Old had never been so happy for the cage door to close behind her. She chewed on her dry food with relish, took a long draught from the water bottle, and hopped up to the hammock to sleep.

So when new doors begin opening around the house, she remembers her lesson. The doors appear in unexpected places: in the middle of rooms, underneath the couch, on top of the coffee table, inside the cage. A creak, a breath of air, and the scent of Albino.

They open before Old and she hesitates, remembering the closet. It’s strange to her that Albino, so careful, would rush into such a place before her sister. The young ones take no notice, wrestling in the corner or stealing off with crumbs to crunch away in peace. The door always closes just as Old has decided she might investigate, and the scent of Albino disappears.

One time, the door opens in a ray of sunlight and stays open long enough for Old to poke her head in. Strong light dazzles her eyes, so she can only smell and feel with her whiskers, which brush against the constriction of the door, then spring out into open space. Albino’s scent grows strong, along with the promising odor of new food, something delicious she has never tried before.

Another whiff makes her hesitate. That chemical bite on a hush of cold air, crawling into her nostrils. She sneezes and recoils, snapping her head away. The door slams shut a hair from her nose.

The humans find her lurking under the couch and must tempt her out with bits of cracker. Back in the cage, she slips into place in the hammock between the young ones. Their smooth sides breathe against hers, their safe smell fills her, warmth floods her feet and ears. Scaredy twists about to run her teeth through Old’s fur. Old’s eyelids slide closed and she grinds her teeth together, the vibrations thrumming through her head, tickling that pleasure spot deep in her mandible. The muscles of her face work in delightful concord, pulsing behind her eyeballs until they jiggle in their sockets – an expression of incomparable delight. Bruxing and boggling, she falls asleep.

W hen Old awakes, she is cold. Her feet are folded beneath her but ache for warmth. She blinks in the darkness, sticks her nose out of the hammock to sniff around. She smells the house, the varnish and old wood, the waft of dust from the heating vents, but nothing alive. No rats, no humans, not even the mysterious airs that sometimes swirl in from outside. Just herself.

She slips out of the hammock, her paws spreading on the plastic of the cage shelf. The cage door hangs open, slack-jawed. She creeps out onto it, her toes curling around frigid metal, and flops to the ground, the sound of her small impact echoing around the house.

Old always wants the cage door to be open, always wants the freedom to roam. But from the moment she hits the floor, when she feels the frozen, breathless wood against her sore feet and round belly, she knows she doesn’t want it now. There is no one here, no one to warm her, no one to feed or groom her. She searches every corner, under the couch and through the closets and cabinets, the doors of which stand open, but smells no living being, feels no stirring in the air, never hears a note of the constant squeaking discourse of fellow rats, nor the booming of human voices.

How has she gotten trapped here? She crouches by the stove and feels her bowels loosening. She should go back to the cage. Then maybe the others will appear, maybe the shaft of light will blind her and a human will rescue her.

Then, a wall of smell, so sudden and horrible she squints against it and sneezes. Bitter chemicals and cold flesh, Albino’s final scent, stinking of loneliness, slamming into her like a death strike. Old shrieks and runs. A needle of pain thrusts into the back of her neck. She cries again, certain she will die.

Old wakes to find Spots grooming her, her teeth pulling at her neck fur. Old struggles to her feet, shaking Spots off. She sways in the hammock, nose poked out between folds of fleece. Living odors flood her nostrils. Spots’ and Scaredy’s matching auras wrapping her like bedding, Scaredy’s fresh feces a rich pong from below, the must of the dry food, the not-female human walking by, trailing sweetness, sweat, and farts. No acrid stench, no chilling isolation, just the musk and heat of living things.

Old sighs and settles as Spots returns to grooming her. Her teeth comb through Old’s fur, pulling out dust and loose strands, tickling and caressing her skin.

O ne day, the female human scoops up Scaredy and holds her in her arms. Scaredy is tired from bustling about the house, would’ve gone to sleep anyways, so she allows this treatment. The human’s fingers run over her head, down her neck, her back, a pressure slight but firm. An unexpected combination of sensations: the human, and pleasure.

The muscled tube of Scaredy’s body relaxes. She bruxes, her teeth sliding together, then boggles a few times, licking her tongue around her teeth between each round. So this is why Old and Spots allow themselves to be manhandled so.

Scaredy recollects herself. The human stinks, and the feeling of flesh and a heartbeat surrounding her is too uncanny to bear. She alerts, pushing herself back to her feet. The human contains her before she can struggle away, walling her in with a gentle hand, and she is carried to the cage.

Scaredy returns changed. She stands a while by the dish, which is full of pasta, peas, and cucumber slices, too stunned to recognize any of it as food. She sniffs between the bars as the humans thump around the house, wondering if she’ll be lucky enough to feel such pleasure again.

T he floor is cold the next day. The rats skitter across the boards for a while, their naked feet losing warmth as they check the best spots for new crumbs. Just when Old is thinking about curling up in the blankets on the bed, in the cage, or on the humans’ laps, a door opens right next to the fridge. Albino’s scent wafts across the kitchen, mixed with the smell of unknown humans and hot laundry detergent: the promise of ambient heat. Old ignores it. She has been there before, she can detect the chemical stench of Albino’s death underlying the fragrance of false comfort.

Scaredy, lingering under the overhang of the cabinet doors, lifts her head, nostrils widening to take in the new smell. Her claws scrabble on the wood until she catches some friction, and she takes off around the circumference of the kitchen, sticking to the shadows under the cabinets.

Old, who has paused to groom herself, notices Scaredy stopping before the new door. The young rat will learn, she thinks, and twists around to clean her rump.

After a thorough licking, she looks up to see Scaredy’s tail whipping beyond the threshold. The door clicks shut. Albino’s scent disappears, and so does Scaredy’s. Old trots over to where the door was, but Scaredy is gone.

T hat night, the humans turn over the house, calling out and shaking bags of treats like they did on the night when Old got herself stuck in the trash can. Old and Spots huddle in their hammock, conscious of Scaredy’s absence, unsure if she might return, or if she might be gone forever.

The female human cries into the night, sleeps, then wakes to cry again. When morning penetrates the windows, Scaredy has not returned. Old and Spots have already begun to account for her absence. They wrestle a bit in the cage, and Spots re-establishes that she is in charge. Old stashes some dry food in the hammock, among the shreds of paper Scaredy shredded for bedding not long ago.

As two rats, their warmth is smaller, the knot of their shared flesh timid and quiet, the ever-present danger of the world a little closer. To be awake is to be aware of the shrinking of their number, so Spots and Old sleep through the day and into the night.

The days pass. The rats search the cracks and corners for Scaredy, but the traces of her fade fast: her feces dry, her scent markings are covered with fresh ones, her shedded fur swirls away on errant breezes. When the humans clean out the litter at the bottom of the cage and wash the hammock and trays, there is nothing left of her. They are two rats now.

O ld dreams of the open cage door. She remembers what this means: that she is where Albino is, that there is no company around, no food.

She climbs out of the cage and stands on the floor, sniffing. Her feet are warm, her body feels young, and it is no trouble to climb on top of the cage and stand to catch more wafts from around the room.

It is not cold and lifeless this time. There is no one here, no one she can visit at least, but the smell of company surrounds her. Rats, their groomed fur smelling of spit, the warmth of sleeping bodies accentuating each individual’s scent. Stored food waiting, humans under blankets, food cooking on the stove. Albino and Scaredy together, and countless other rats besides, their scent markers meandering into every corner, commemorating explorations old and new.

Old jumps to the floor and checks the best spots in the house. A new air floats through: all the doors are open, even the ones to the outside. Old hesitates at the threshold, then goes through, onto new spaces, new houses with new foods dropped on the floor, across fields scattered with seeds, between trees, into holes in the ground. Though she never sees another rat, she always smells them. She never feels alone and not once is she afraid.

Old awakes in her hammock. She is sleeping on top of Spots. The younger rat’s nose sticks out from under Old’s puddled fat, and her breathing is slow, the occasional contented, sleepy squeak easing from her body. Old scratches her ear, chews on her nails, bruxes, and falls asleep to dream of the world beyond the door, and the company that waits there.

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