The Rat

          From beyond the furthest shore I came, defying the oldest power.  I love this place, this earth.  Actually it was a palace.  It was just an old tenement, nothing more than a flop house.  But for an old rat like me it was a palace, a dark palace.  Old did I say?  I am aged, yet ageless.  The flea and the spider speak of a divine golden age, but that age has never been on my earth.  I am of the earth, and my voice is the hunger of time.  As I said, this place was just a flop house.  But the rat's home is everywhere.  You will not find a prophet telling my story.  I was an appetite, a hunger that preceded rational existence, a stomach that filled itself with the unspeakable then spat it back against the great dark that neither knows nor cares for your existence.  Solomon came in his glory yet I devoured him.  Warriors and kings went forth in splendor only to be thrust into my jaws and I killed.  Then long time I hungered, long ages.  For the ages of Jerusalem pass slowly.  I despaired, counted the centuries of hope, watched the rise of progress.  Scourge of the eons, had I been conquered at last?  Like so many, I became a fool and believed in the prophets.

          But with the malice of patience, I hunted.  Then at last the awaited sign came.  The poet hung himself tonight.  I waited beneath his bed, silent, watchful, barely concealed in the shadows.  The plaster and lath of his ceiling had rotted, collapsed.  He tied a rope to an exposed rafter, coiled the other end into a noose.  ON his pile of manuscripts, he scribbled a note.  His intend, I gather, was simple: once gone, he wanted to be missed.  Once, missed, he never wanted to be gone.  A final challenge flung against what?  A world that denied him, that neither wanted or desired him though he came in innocence, arms heavy burdened with divine gifts.  It is a man's undoing to be touched by the fire of heaven, forever finding death while seeking life.  Even as the gods incarnate seek to be filled with humanity, long for death and receive the resurrection's curse of endless lives, thus the eternal returns.

          He finished.  Pen hurled against the wall.  He dragged a chair to the center of the room, stepped up, slipped the noose over his head then around his neck, fisted back one last melodramatic tear, a final flourish for his ego, an appeal to the great dark, the only audience he had ever known.  I grinned, a hiss of pleasure escaped my throat.  I coiled for the spring - timing is everything.  He lifted his hand in a farewell salute to his life piled up on a dirty table.  He dreamt of his testament.

         I sprang!  Landed upon the pile of greasy pages.  As I tore apart the first page I read the title: THE SONGS OF ORPHEUS.  Our eyes met. He saw me as I am.  For one moment I was his shadow, the rat of time.  Even as he tried to undo the noose, found sudden purpose in my jaws, he slipped.  Briefly the chair balanced on a single leg, then slowly toppled.  He learned a truth beyond philosophy, how much the earth can hold a man.  Legs thrashed horribly, wonderfully, a sharp crack of bursting bone, the sudden spray of red as the rough hemp severed his life, another mark on the trail of passions that have stained my palace.  He petitioned me with death's eyes, let some part of him become immortal.  Poor Orpheus!  I did not come to be his muse.  He shall wander homeless and unburied, damned and dishonored with all whom I have sent forth into the stygian night.  I turned my back.  I hungered.  And as I ate, I remembered.

          There was once a poet, let us call him Orpheus, who crossed a vast desert called the great dark.  His path was littered with the dead, his feet scattered the hopes of ages buried in the sand and ash.  But he was a brave heart, like all poets, and fool enough to believe he could do what had never yet been done, could seize the prize that had eluded all others.  Sacrificing all, he hoped to gain what?  I never understand what they hope to gain.  What indeed?  Hope!  The dry bones I gnawed in the dark.  But let it pass.  Orpheus crossed the great dark of history, of progress, of ego, and at his end, of illusion.  At last he saw it, the Library, vast, immeasurable, glittering like a bride.  He rushed upon it like a lover, burst through the doors like a bridegroom.  A golden palace stood ready to receive him.  Speechless with wonder, he explored halls filled with marvels past count, beyond description, older than the prophets, younger than birth.  At least he came to the Hall of the Poets.  He wandered the passages, breathless with awe, the work of the orphaned of the ages, the splendor of knowledge, the glory of thought.

          Orpheus knelt, wept, gave thanks.  It was then that he heard it, echoes, the whispers, the murmurs. Or was it the sound of small, sharp teeth forever gnawing in the dark?  He called out.  But there was no reply, only the heedless dry of whispers, of murmurs, of small, sharp teeth that gnaw.  Long time he journeyed, and the echoes were before him, behind, and to both sides.  A doubt began to slowly gnaw at him, my hunger.  At last, he reached for a volume, opened to read, but even as he looked it crumbled to dust in his hands.  With horror he read the title even as the pages turned to ruin: THE SONG OF ORPHEUS.  Blindly he ran.  And each volume the he touched turned to ash, and in his wake he left a trail of embers, the remains of the ages of progress.  He fled the Library.  Turning back he saw a glow in the sky. For a moment, a brief, sweet, pitiless moment, Orpheus thought he witnessed the twilight of dawn, the beginning of a day that all long for but none have ever beheld.  It was not the sunrise, but a different fire.  One by one, the windows exploded, flames leapt out.  Like a cloud, the glory of the ages rose up hot into the sky then fell back onto the earth in a cold rain of black char.  That light, that burning light of progress, had served only to illuminate a small brief space and time amidst the great, surrounding dark.

          Orpheus knew me in the ruin, read fate in my red eyes, in small, sharp teeth that forever gnaw in the dark, how I had destroyed him, and would destroy him yet again in all the futures.  Like a thief in the night I came while he thought to steal a fire from heaven. I crushed him beneath his resurrection, bearing the knowledge that even as he must rise again, so I must be his fall, the rat of time, who hungers, who devours.

          My banquet completed, I gazed up at the poet as he hung from a rafter.  About me were spread the remains of his innocence, of all that he had brought with him from the great dark, and yet shall bring again.  I leapt up onto his boots, clambered up his lifeless body.  How sweet the taste of his blood in my mouth.  I am chaos.  I darken the stars.  I am the ocean of time come to destroy you.

John Roth

from January, 2001