The Music of Vengeance

As human beings, we tend to overcomplicate how the world works and what constitutes success. We buy into the bullshit from leaders political and religious that we must work together for a better future and the hope of greener grass that lies just beyond the next hill or mountain. What leaders fail to realize is that some of us know what life really boils down to: keeping warm.

A decent coat can keep you warm enough to find your next meal and sometimes a pair of shoes that fit rather well. The only reason I lived through the night that alley rats ate my face was because of a woolen coat. I had no shoes that night, nor pants or underwear, for that matter. I only possessed a coat. When I awoke in the smell of my own vomit to see two rats fighting over some pinkish meat that turned out to be the bulk of my nose, I was as warm as a bear cub in mother's den. That was the Year of the Rats, when the rodents flooded my village; the same year alcohol was my bedmate, alleyways my bed, and filth my pillow.

Our scientific resources were--and still are--limited to the point of near nonexistence, so determining why rats overwhelmed our households, barns, and granaries consists mostly of guessing coupled with superstition. Whatever the cause, the Rat Catcher seemed to be the solution to our problems; a solution to a people who needed no more reasons to suffer from want, and a solution to me who wanted to be rid of Those Who Ate My Face. I learned to bridle my need for revenge on rodents because of Father Iyerliano.

An Augustinian monk--who eventually quit the priesthood--Father 'liano taught me the most valuable lesson that the generally fruitless enterprise of religion would ever impart to my brain and what might be loosely referred to as my soul or spirit: The music of vengeance can only be silenced by penance with teeth. The working proletarian translation: Revenge only goes away by actions that help others outside of your own personal orbits and habits. That is a goal worth fighting for, rather than illusory grass that possesses an impossible green that I will never see in my lifetime.

Before the wars turned most of our schools into burned out buildings and our teachers into trench-diggers and frontline targets, I devoured my education in the same manner those rats devoured my nose cartilage. I read every book I could find, a habit I still keep to. Yesteryear I read by lamplight in a warm room with the sounds of my father's snores. Today I read by the light from trash barrels further occluded by another luxury I cannot seem to give up: cigarettes. Father 'liano was my literature teacher and theology instructor the first six years of my education. The last time I saw him was in a pile of humans stacked room high. In the woodshed of my farming youth there were such stacks, and to see corpses relegated to a state of less value than firewood is numbing rather horrifying. If God exists, and He is merciful in any minute area of His infinitely big and hard heart, He had better damned well have seen that 'liano was cremated before rot set in further.

The reason I take pains to relay this information is so that the recipient of this tale understands the events that have lead up to now. Now, as in the now that burns hot with the fires of war that do not seem to be dying any time soon. A generation has been born in these circumstances, and those that survive know nothing except ignorance, want, and occasional tides of numbness. Souls akin to mine are tortured because we knew better times.

It is now that I am in pursuit of the Rat Catcher, once savior of our village and now stealer of our children. His services for rat-catching consisted of creating a sonar device constructed from leftover American electronics and Russian know-how. It lured the rats out of the city and right into the sea to drown, a fate they so richly deserved. Rat Catcher was highly celebrated with song, drink, and an allowance to bed our women as he pleased. When he had his fill and became bored, he wanted what every soldier-of-fortune fool eventually wants: money. After realizing we possessed little to no currency--a toilet-paper currency devalued by the ass-wipe of war--he exacted his own revenge. His sonar device was tweaked to lure our children, the littlest ones who could walk up to those who maybe four or five years survived; lured away and into the Rat Catcher's mountainside den. A ransom note written in the blood of one our little ones, so the Rat Catcher claimed, was tied to a dying horse he sent to our village.

The worst part of this story--a moment even worse than the events to come--is the time I glimpsed the general cowardice of my village. Men of prime age were mostly gone or were lame in the head or body. The remainders were worse than retracting hermit crabs; feigning illness as their jellyfish spinal column came floating to the surface. I was in the category of the disfigured-but-useful, my nose and right eyelid gone and into the bellies and excreta of rats. My cheeks bore the pockmarks of rat teeth rather than childhood acne. The scars on my arms were not bullet wounds but the aberrantly-healed tissue from rodent nibbling.

My three years as a special operations agent--code for dirty trickster--qualified me to do what nobody else would do, even if they could: track, locate, and destroy the Rat Catcher. There was an assumption he killed all of our children, but if I was to find them, certainly a reward would be provided equal to the value of the number of children I brought back. A man who does not kill himself after his face has been eaten away by rats is surely capable of surviving anything, let alone the sorcery of a sound engineer who has found a way to lure away lower brains.

The hike to the Rat Catcher's den in the mountainside was two days at a steady clip. I spread it out into three so that I would have time to think and pan for gold. "Panning for gold" is what my military unit called fishing for cigarettes in refuse, captured supplies, or corpses. My first day was punctuated by entries in this diary, and scavenging among the detritus of an ambushed platoon. It netted me fifteen cigarettes, a few disposable lighters (a rare gift) and enough dried bread and jerky to last for the hike to and from the den. The second day netted me some pistol ammunition and a large hunting knife superior to the rusty toothpick I owned. The third day netted me nothing but camping inside an overturned van as shelter from sleet that pounded the mountainside. It eventually passed, but I would be arriving at the den at dusk.

As I got closer, the mountain trail that skirted the den's entrance was decorated with crucified soldiers, those captured by the guerrillas and displayed as a warning to not continue to Nixutinu Pass. The pass was another three to five miles, and I had no need for that. The hole that was barely higher than a man and twice in width told me I was at the Rat Catcher's den. As I got closer, the flaming rat-head symbol was painted childlike on the walls of the damp and dripping entrance, the cold a frost giant's breath biting a witch's teat.

I put out my cigarette and paid attention to what I was smelling. Underneath the moldy heath and animal droppings, a distinct firewood odor came from deep within the cave-den, carrying with it desolation and the faint rancidity of fat-oil. Fat-oil was a last resort burning fuel to extend the life of firewood, because of the rotten stench emitted when burned. Even the most jaded soldier burnouts disliked the smell, soldiers who were used to rather horrifying sensations in their battlefield and marching experience. I removed the safeties on my semi-automatic rifle and revolver, as in all of my experience I was still slow at the single action of clicking of a safety and firing. I'd been taking chances with most things in this short and rather miserable life, let alone with weapons.

The rifle slung over my shoulder and the pistol holstered, I went forward, casting the small beam of a battery-powered lantern I'd found in the backpack of a dead teenage girl. Its pink Hello Kitty logo was a sharp contrast to the grey and green colorations of my dirty fatigues. Its beam was long enough to see five steps or so ahead. After a few minutes, I turned it off when I saw the first small flickers of distant torches. In spite of the many myths ascribed to him, the Rat Catcher could not see in the dark.

As I rounded a muddy corner is when I saw the first torch. Its light fell on the Rat Catcher. I recognized his well-fed and squatty physique from when the village first employed his services. At that time he was rather well-shaven and flowery-smelling. Now he was naked, dirty, and smiling with metal-capped teeth.

"I smelled you from a mile outside the cave, soldier. Your stink is worse than the rats that brought your village to its knees."

His appearance was sudden, and made me too slow in going for my pistol. Before I could draw it, he grabbed the torch and threw it at me. In ducking I slipped in the mud and fallen, ashes licking my face from the fallen torch. When I got back up and held the torch in front of me, he was already gone.

I proceeded forward to find him, pistol drawn. Cinders fell from the torch; fireflies displaying my sluggishness. I was cursing this when on the path below I saw metal grating wedged into the mud, a makeshift sewer-drain. The torch glow showed me what was below the grate. Writhing, squirming, walking on top of each other and squeaking, I stared into the faces of twitching and muddy rats for what seemed like many minutes when I realized that the faces were human, and those of children. Clicking the safety back on my rifle, I used the barrel to pry the grate upward with a sucking sound as freed from the mud. I helped up five children who were quivering and huddling around me when the metallic smile of the Rat Catcher flickered in the torch glow. I pretended not to see him as he believed he was still hidden out of glow-range, and after the first child screamed at him is when a flurry of actions took place.

My pistol exploded, the flare from the barrel momentarily lighting the cave as the Rat Catcher fell forward, reaching for my feet. I fired again, his head exploding and showering all of us in crimson and gore. I snub the nose on my bullets so that their entrance and exit leaves no sign of mercy. In a few moments there was only a crackling torch, whimpering children, and a twitching sound engineer who died in the recesses of his fucked-up den. Slowly the children began to approach him, pushing him, and kicking him. Their catlike bodies jumped every time his body twitched. Then they became bolder.

Soon, I knew what getting my face eaten by rats looked like. What I missed in a drunken slumber I witnessed in the cold dark of a cave that is probably worse than the hell I am going to someday. As the children began to consume him, I wondered if there were any more rats. Yes, rats. Because I was positive my mind re-worked history. Surely this man led our children into the sea, and my village sent me to bring the rats back he imprisoned. For the length of at least a dozen cigarettes and nearly all of the torch life, I witnessed the feast of the damned.

The feast of us. And the music of vengeance never sounded sweeter.