Traum - Life as a Laboratory Rat.

The tests continued on and on, taking up what little time he had to himself.

Perhaps to preen his whiskers, groom his coat or to attempt to socialise through the bars of his cell with fellow laboratory inmates. Rats are colony animals, just like us, and they enjoy the company of their own kind. But here, in the white wall hell of bitter smells and cruel isolated conditions, no consideration was given to this need. Traum was sadly used to living like this. He did not enjoy it, but what could he do about it? He was just a little rat.

The science he had been bred for would teach him nothing but endless pain and violation. And considering that he was a small fur covered rodent and not a giant humanoid with only two legs, it would teach the humans around him very little as well.

Traum had no idea he had been born to die at the hands of science. Should he have, since rats are said to be very intelligent animals? In fact, the rat's intelligence has been observed and studied and likened to that of dolphins and, ironically, to humans as well. All Traum knew was the aching haze of injected chemicals, the itchy skin that would itch so much that he felt (if he knew what fire was) like he was burning. He did not like the laboratory food, it was as bitter to the senses as everything else around him.

He remembered back to when he had just been weaned, and how his siblings fought over the remains of one of their littermates. It was one, out of three babies that died, who had starved because their mother was unable to produce the right quality of milk. Even though he starved, the flesh of another rat was just as tainted to the tongue as the processed rodent pellets. Traum could not justify eating a brother. He had grown up in an over-crowded cell with brothers and sisters driven insane to the point that they injured one another, with some even killing one another. And even now, housed in isolation, Traum could still hear the echoing shrieks of the dying. Inside his cell he knew nothing but agony, while outside there was nothing but abuse and death.

As he stared listlessly through the bars of his cell, his eyes caught the dull, spiritless gaze of a dog who was caged opposite him. The dog, which seemed far too thin for it's size and whose once-proud stance was now riddled with sickness, barked Traum a futile message of hope. This was the same dog that had told Traum of the world beyond the white walls. These stories would always end in a yelp however, as the dog would writhe to the floor of it's pen and convulse violently for some time until relieved by an injection given to her by the white-coated humans.

This dog was named Frei, and until she had come here she had been a pound stray, a thrown away domestic pet. Now she spent constant hours of sleeplessness, the agony of many experiments coursing through her muscles as if her blood had been turned to acid and her bones to straw, so easily could they be broken.

Frei would soon die before the tests being carried out on her were completed. Her death would not be counted as cruel, despite her last weeks of life being nothing but torture at the hands of humans.

With Frei gone, Traum spent his time pacing his narrow cell, depressed and frustrated. Every so often a human would come by and poke him with a pen to try and distract him from chewing at the latch on the cell door. Traum had already collected four pens, having been quick enough to grip them in his teeth and snatch them from human fingers. Then he would sit perfectly still watching the humans, his head slowly swaying from side to side with teeth chattering and eyes glaring.

(A sign of intense emotion in a rat)

However, his body constantly subject to a cocktail of medicines, Traum soon gave up resistance. Now when humans came to his cell he'd numbly let them do what they wanted without protest. Though it would have pleased him to be handled with a little more kindness. He hardly ate, he hardly slept. Over and over the tests continued day in day out, until at night, unnatural night filled with tormented squeaks and whimpers, he was left alone to wallow in the gloom of this environment. Locked up for doing no wrong, from six weeks old he had known nothing but a sickly existence. Why?

And the company collected the praises and profit for yet another supposed break-through in medical science. Just like last year, and the year before, and the year before that. Traum was lifted from his cage, his albino pink eyes weeping red mucus with the symptoms of his forced illness. His handlers flat human face looked at him with an arrogance noted in the cruellest of slave drivers, and a mockery of one who enjoys power over the weak. Traum felt a sharp pain enter his stomach, digging deep into his intestines. He squealed and rolled his eyes, his breath coming in quick panic filled gasps.

He felt so cold, so terribly cold.

These people standing around did nothing to help him.

He was placed on a table and surrounded by them, as his handler spoke to them in informative, confident tones. Traum began to close his eyes as his breath became laboured.

Every now and again he would get a jab in the side with a curious human finger, where he would shuffle along clumsily for a few steps before settling again. Movement was becoming all too painful, yet these humans seemed to enjoy his suffering.

The sort of treatment Traum had to endure was void of any compassion. If humans treated other humans this same way it would be called evil. There would be a public out cry.

He shivered. Not all feeling had left his body yet. Every time he tried to lift a paw to wipe his own eyes of muck, his spine would knot in spasms that sent him tumbling over on to his side.

Naturally he panicked, trying pathetically to right himself. Then human-made death was there with every twitch of a whisker. He began to dream.

He remembered his first and only cellmate. An albino, like himself, with a gentle nature. She called herself Ruhe. With her company, in the precious little time that they had had together, they shared many dreams of the world outside the clinical one in which they lived. The world that many of the laboratory dogs cried out for. The life these dogs had known before even the animal shelters, with their cold concrete floor, had denied them sanctuary and a chance of finding a loving home.

Before the betrayal of being sold to a laboratory these dogs had known what sky looked like, the scent of earth on the wind, grass under the paw, and the sweet taste of fresh water and clean air in the nostrils.

Some had even known the loving stroke of human friendship. Though not anymore as the outside world had forgotten them.

Ruhe had been at least six weeks old when she had been placed in his cell. She was just fertile, the only reason why she had been housed with him to begin with. Traum had long ago given up his natural need for companionship. However, the feel of another rat grooming his whiskers and coat stimulated memories of earlier days with his mother and littermates.

Traum let out a squeak much like a sobbing child, saddened that he had only one clear lasting memory of Ruhe. He had never been able to forget the look of fear in her eyes as the white-coats removed her from his side. The memories of her contact, the chance to interact with his own species and the visions of a better world outside the walls around them were brutally shattered as a scalpel sliced her open. Their innocent babies, no more than a week after conception, were collected as ill-formed embryos form inside her exposed womb. All the screaming and rattling of his cell door could not have made these humans stop.

Blood, bitter blood. So much blood from such a tiny creature.

The humans did not even allow her a grave of dignity after a life of hellish servitude.

All Ruhe got was a plastic rubbish bag.

A young reporter lent over the tiny bundle of white fur "It's dead!"

As the same reporter sat down that afternoon in his office over a coffee hardly sipped, he tried to come up with a catchy headline. However the only one he saw over and over again in his mind was the following he scrawled across the top page of the draft copy: Constant Offers of Hope as Government Spends Money on Fraudulent Research.