True Rats

Those Rats

He probably ate someone's thrown out roach or maybe flakes from an empty bag of bloomers or something like that. I watched him for a few minutes from the stoop while smoking a cigarette. I knew he was on something. He was dragging his belly around slowly and shaking his head from side to side in a small circle on the ground. A few girls started coming down the block, I pointed at him. They expressed surprise then disgust as they saw what I was pointing at, all except one on her cell phone, wrapped up in all that. The toe of her shiny black pump sliding under his fat belly, scooping him up with the motion of her walk, and dropping him a few inches from where he'd been. He didn't really seem to mind. She screamed and almost dropped her phone, shaking her hands wildly. She seemed to be trying to keep both feet off the ground, dancing, as it was in the wild West. The girls jogged a little bit down the sidewalk. He kind of walked in a half-circle for a moment, then turned towards their direction. He began following then. I watched him slowly chase them for as long as they remained in sight. He was closing in ever so slowly, but I don't think he wanted to catch them.

Our Rats

"So, he walked up to us and I knew we were butched, so I just gave the stuff back when he asked for it. But Amanda, that girl is crazy, she hit him in the face and just started sprinting."
"She hit a cop?"
"Yea, she's crazy, right?
"Crazy, yea, definitely. She's gonna have all kinds of legal shit now."
"I know, right?"
"What were you guys stealing anyway?"
"You're not going to believe me."
"Why, what was it?"
"We were stealing makeup and..."
"And what?"
"Pregnancy tests."
"Oh, my god, that's too funny."
"I know, right?"
"Are either of you pregnant?"
"I don't know, we had to give the tests back."

No Rats

He'd put his gloves on, grab their corpses by the tails, drop them in the bag, twist it, clamp it, and throw it in the trash.
"They serve no good purpose," he'd told himself that many times. But what good purpose do humans serve? Now he wondered if someone were going to do this same thing to him, except not by the tail, humans don't have tails, but the legs, probably by the legs and drop them into bags and throw them in the trash. At least he didn't mind the rats so much anymore.