Tippler's Travels

Tippler's Travels



I opened my eyes to the largest rat I had ever seen sitting on the foot of my bed—to be fair, I had never seen any rat sitting on the foot of my bed so really had little means of comparison, but this one did seem quite the size of a smallish dog, fox terrier perhaps—wearing a flatcap and holding a large round flatbread between with its front feet.
I closed my eyes.
On opening them again, the scene had changed little. Large rat. Flatcap. Flatbread. However, the rat was now nibbling the bread, sending showers of crumbs down on the duvet—poppadum, I surmised. The bread, not the duvet.
I closed my eyes again. Kafka or Carroll? Rat in hat with bread that is flat. Seussian? One eye opened. No, this rat was very much a real rat even if outsized, no cartoon. Which ruled out Disney as well.
Tired of holding one eye shut, I let the other open. The rat was not me, I was certain, because I was at the top of the bed and wearing pyjamas—as I could tell when I glanced down—and no hat. I would have felt that. So I ruled out Kafka which left me leaning toward Carroll or a prank by one of my friends. That issue might be solved if the rat spoke.
The rat spoke.
“Are you going to just keep winking at me?”
As he opened his teeth to take a bite of poppadum, his whiskers swept backward, pressing themselves to the side of his face, sweeping forward again until they touched in front of his face as he bit down, sending another shower of crumbs bedward.
“Not winking. Contemplating your authorial existence.”
The rat paused midway to a nibble.
“I’m not fiction, you know. If you’d like proof, I could replace this poppadum with your toe.”
I drew my feet up, swearing I heard him give a low giggle, like the last of the water draining out of the tub.
“This day isn’t starting well,” I said.
“You’re telling me. I was just having a nice curry and now I’m in some bloke’s bed. Well, at least tell me your name if we’re sharing digs now.”
“Ewan,” I said, wondering why I felt I should spell it for him. I always did at banks and the post office but this was merely a rat. Well, hard to call him ‘merely.’
“Is that spelled like sheep or a celestial space?”
Despite having just wondered whether spelling it out was needed, my still fogged brain took a moment to decipher this. During the interval, he fixed his tiny eyes on me and took another nibble.
“Oh!” The fog cleared. “Like sheep! You are very clever for a rat, aren’t you?”
“And you are not what I hoped for in human intelligence so far. But I’ll reserve judgement until you rub some sleep from your eyes.”
I ignored the insult but rubbed my eyes.
“And what’s your name?”
“Rat.”
“That’s it? Rat? Not even Rat One or Earl of Rat or anything? I mean, there must be thousands of rats—although I’m not sure you’re a native rat; you seem a bit—” I didn’t want to insult him sizewise--“out-scale.”
His whiskers lifted in what appeared the equivalent of a shoulder shrug.
“Just Rat. We’re all just called Rat in my ‘hood.” I think he winked but I wasn’t sure.
“How do you tell yourselves apart?”
Another whisker shrug.
“Do you frequently confuse yourself with others? Do you not look at the friend on the bar stool next to you and recognize him as different from the bully who burned off your eyelashes in school?”
I turned this question around in my mind more than a few revolutions before answering.
“They are the same. No point in holding grudges, I say. But I catch your drift. Still…”
Rat sighed and nibbled then straightened out his whiskers in a gesture that could only mean ‘time to get serious.’
—————————————
“Look, clearly we have a problem here,” he said. “Even you must have figured out that rats in your world—” he paused, shrinking his tiny eyes even tinier—“or time or part of space aren’t the size of a fox terrier, don’t wear flatcaps and don’t eat poppadums. Well, they might. Scratch that last one.”
“How do you know?” I felt slightly offended by his assumptions about the skills of our rats no matter whose time or space we were taking up.
“Quiet. Just do. So I shouldn’t be here. Something happened—”
“Oh, so you’re saying there was a time warp or a space hole formed or—?”
“How should I know? Do I look like a physicist?”
Since he didn’t look quite like any rat I had ever seen before, I didn’t feel qualified to answer.
“Anyway,” he swallowed and continued, “Something must have happened to bring me into this space last night—”
“But doesn’t that mean something from here should be in yours?”
I glanced around the room and saw my dresser and the pipe sitting on it on one side and the window with its rather dusty blinds on the other.
“And it looks ok, except…” I trailed off, trying to let the image just to the left of my mental grasp form, sensing I was missing something of great importance. Before I had grabbed it with my hook and dragged the rampant image in, Rat said:
“Do you have a cat?”
I sat up in bed, staring at the spot the rat was sprinkling crumbs on, and hauled in my mental catch.
“Tippler! My beautiful orange tabby, Tippler!”
I called out, thinking maybe the dog-size rat had made him go hide and that he wasn’t part of some cosmic barter. No answer. And no matter how scared Tippler is, when it’s morning and his food hasn’t been brought by me, his willing servant, he will ‘miaou’ at a decibel that can’t be missed.
“Where would he normally be right now?” The rat asked it as a question but by the smug smile his emotive whiskers formed, I knew that he knew the answer.
“At the end of the bed. Where you are.”
I sighed. My Tippler had been swapped for an over opinionated cracker rat. I looked at Rat who was studying the duvet and moving the crumbs into various patterns with his long bald tail. His whiskers drooped, not looking smug at all. I was being unfair, I told myself. He didn’t want to be here, either.
“Will…will they hurt him?” I said. “Or…eat” This said in an almost inaudible whisper—but I’m sure rats have good hearing. “Or eat him?”
Rat’s eyes widened, his whiskers snapped to attention and he almost dropped his poppadum.
“Oh, no, he’s quite safe. We’re fond of cats, keep them as pets. Now, dogs…”
And a shiver of such violence the crumbs bounced on the duvet ran from the tip of each whisker to the violently swishing tip of his tail. He coughed a bit and then righted himself.
—————————————
“We have to fix this,” he said.
I nodded, trying to knot my eyebrows toward the center of my forehead in an attempt, no matter how unsuccessful, to look intelligent and as if I had a clue. I don’t think Rat was fooled.
“You’re no physicist, yourself.” His whiskers flashed back to his face and forward to his nose as he took out another chunk of poppadum. “But between us, maybe we can make an attempt. Tell me about your night. When did you get in? What did you do when you did? Maybe that will give us a clue.”
“Well—” I fluffed a pillow and settled back against it like a gran about to tell a bedtime story. “I went out with a couple of friends for some dinner and then…and then…maybe we went somewhere else with some other friends and then…”
Rat sighed again and, removing one paw from his bread, rubbed the back of his neck in a gesture that in a human would indicate frustration.
“You were out drinking. How much did you have to drink?”
“Oh, just the one wine with dinner. And, yes, I think Bertie bought us a brandy after. That’s it. Well, not ‘it’ exactly because when we met George and Wilson, we might have had a cocktail…”
I trailed off. I couldn’t remember drink for drink but as I explained it to Rat, it did sound like something more than ‘one drink,’ didn’t it? And I wasn’t sure whether that cocktail was singular or—now that I thought about it, if it were both a martini and an old-fashioned, it couldn’t really be just one cocktail. And somewhere the word champagne entered my head…
“So you were potted by the time you got home.”
I opened my mouth to protest but Rat’s horizontal whiskers made me shut it again.
“Hammered. Three sheets to the wind. Google-eyed.”
“Does all your knowledge of our culture come from the 1930s? In fact, how do you have any knowledge of our culture at all if you admit you don’t even know whether this was a time thingy that went wrong or a space thingy or a wormhole thingy or an alien experiment?”
He cocked his head to the side, whiskers in a decidedly questioning arc.
“I don’t know what you mean. That’s what we say when Rats overdo the lager.”
“Sorry.” That sounded inadequate given the situation. “I mean sorry that I can’t remember more. I guess I had a bit—”
“A bit?” His whiskers flicked the sarcastic message ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge.”
“—a bit more than I remember.”
I almost used the word ‘intended’ but judged that was incorrect. I may not remember it now but I certainly had intent the previous night. As much as I now burrowed to the neurons at the very base of my reptilian brain and then scrambled synapse over synapse up to my frontal cortex, I couldn’t remember coming home. No memory of fumbled scratching to find keyhole, of relieved click of lock. No dim image of flipping a light switch, slithering clumsily out of one outfit into the proper outfit for sleep—which I had done because I was now wearing one of my finer sets of silks but even those I wouldn’t have gone out to dinner in.
“Ah, well, that’s no matter now. I have a curry to return to and you have a Tippler who by now has been so fed and petted by a small Rat as to not be sure he wants to return.”
About to protest yet again, mouth open, I once again closed my lips and pretended to smile.
“Let’s see if we can reconstruct. You would have come in that door?”
I nodded.
“And done whatever you do to prepare for bed.”
“I always brush my teeth.”
“Bloody well hope.”
“And I would have changed into jim jams and slippers over there by the wardrobe and then would have come to the bed. Over and out. No traipsing around needed for this human’s bedtime routine.”
I got only a snort for response. Then Rat wrinkled his forehead and resumed the interrogation.
“So you would have taken off your slippers and then sat down on the bed? Or you sat down and removed your slippers?”
“I—I don’t know that I remember too well…”
“We’ve established that likelihood.”
“I hardly think your attitude is all that helpful.”
Not exactly what I was thinking. More like “you little twerp. How dare you question my much larger brain?”
“Your brain might be larger but not necessarily better—at least last night,” he said as if he heard my private insult. I had better stop thinking at all, I thought.
“You already have.”
This was getting unnerving.
“I normally would sit on the bed and take off my slippers,” I moved on quickly. “So I would have been sitting there.” I pointed to the left side of the bed, just a foot or two above the footboard.”
“Ah. We make progress. Finally.” I ignored that comment.
——————————————————
Rat gripped the poppadum with one paw and moved to look at the spot I indicated. He stopped, looked over the edge of the bed and jerked back, barely saving the flatbread from slipping from one paw and grabbing his cap with the other before it fell from his furred scalp. His eyes might be calm but his whiskers were all astonishment. He pointed over the side of the bed with his poppadum, then took a large bite and sat back. Still holding the covers up to my chin—for no reason since I was pajama from neck to ankle—I slid down, drawing my knees up toward my chin and peered the direction he had pointed. With a gulp, I slid back the other way.
What Rat had seen and I now had also was one slipper, the right, laying quite primly as expected on the floor beside the bed. The left, however, appeared to be doing a headstand, not on the floor but in it, the heel pointing up toward the ceiling but the toe invisible as though someone had pounded it into the wood like a heavy brad. We looked at each other, crept again to look over the side, looked at each other once more.
Rats cheeks puffed out.
“Oof,” was all he said.
I joined him. “Oof.”
I tried my voice again.
“Look, that’s just not possible. A satin brocade slipper. And quite an expensive one at that—”
“This is not the time for braggadocio.”
“I mean even a good slipper isn’t hard enough to go straight down into a cherry floor. That’s physics, that’s what that is. Even I remember that much from…”
“You’re starting to babble.”
“Well, wouldn’t you be babbling if you were me? Sitting here with an oversized talking poppadum chomping rat in a flatcap while my best slipper is impaled into my—only rented by the way—floor?”
“Continuing to babble.”
I shut up.
“Clearly, your slipper is where the breach is. And since it’s pointing down, I posit that you didn’t sit down but, after removing the right slipper, fell backwards on the bed, sending the left slipper flying off your foot and landing toe down in a…a worm hole or whatever you’d like to call it, that sucked up your precious kitty—”
“Tippler. Not precious but quite nice as a—”
“Tippler, then. And threw me from my innocent family and very well-seasoned curry onto his place on the bed. Now, that’s all well and good—”
“No, it’s not at all well and good—”
Rat stared at me, whiskers rigid, tail flailing crumbs up into my face until I stopped talking and sat with my back against the pillow. He did have a point. I was babbling and not being helpful. And once you’ve admitted to yourself that a large rat has more aplomb than you, shutting up becomes the top option.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Quite.” He relaxed his whiskers a bit, letting his tail rest. “Let me continue. The slipper—in what way, we shall probably never know—opened some…thing…and thus, the slipper is the key to putting things straight again. Do you agree?”
By now, I thought letting me give my opinion at all very generous of him. Not wanting to appear to not have a considered opinion, I nodded.
“Look,” I said, sitting up with my own version of a lightbulb shining over my head, perhaps a 30 watt. “Maybe all we need to do is pull the slipper back out. Wormhole reopens and Bob’s your uncle!”
The whiskers flicked downward.
“I don’t have an uncle.”
That was one up for me, so I graciously let it go.
“I just mean,” I repeated, “we pull out the slipper and you go back to your curry and Tippler comes back to his very bright owner.”
I should have seen the smirk coming and left the last part out. Rat’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling and he sighed.
“25 watt, at best. But not a completely daft idea.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“No, that you said aloud. We may as well give the pull a go.”
He didn’t move but signaled with his empty paw toward the floor. The ‘we’ meant me. A royal use of the plural. Scooting back down the bed, I let go of the cover and reached over the side.
“Well, it was grand meeting you and all,” I said as I reached for the heel.
“We’ll see.” Rat edged toward me, gripping cap and bread tight, whiskers pulled straight down to floor. He, too, hoped this would set things right, I could tell.
——————————————————
I pulled. The slipper stayed firm in the floor. I pulled again. And again. Both hands now gripped it and as I yanked with as much might as I had—which wasn’t that great, I would be the first to admit—I succeeded in ripping off the back of the shoe, tumbling with not much dignity onto my own back.
“My best brocade!” I looked at the fabric in my hand with as much dismay as if I had dropped a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.
“My curry,” Rat said, voice a whisper of regret.
————————————————
For several minutes we both just sat, each wrapped in our own tiny space of misery. I looked up from the square of silk in my hand and saw Rat, head down, whiskers flaccid, the poppadum dropped onto the coverlet and I flung the heel of my precious slipper across the room. What was a slipper compared to a curry? What was a wisp of easy to replace brocade to not sitting at table with your furry family again?
“Pick up that poppadum,” I said, straightening my back, command in my voice—where did that come from?—and flipping my 30 watt brain back on. “We’ll get you home, damn all. Now, let’s think through again. How would taking off my slipper have opened the…the…whatever? And how do we make it do it the…the…whatever again?”
Rat shook himself from the tip of each long whisker to the end of his naked tail, rallying to the cry, pulled at the brim of his flatcap and grabbed the crispy bread. After taking a generous chomp and chewing, whiskers ricocheting with every crumb that dropped onto the bed, he nodded, straightening his back as well.
“Righto. Let’s try again. If this happened because you dropped the slipper as you fell backward—”
“Then I need to rewind that scene, falling upward…” That didn’t sound right. I ignored myself and tried again. “Rising upward as though from a fall—”
“And kicking your foot back into the toe of the slipper—”
“Well, that’s all that’s left, so I don’t have much choice.”
“Quiet.” He gave me a stern waggle of his forehead whiskers—did rats have eyebrows?—and continuing. “No, not a rewind, not a rewind we need but a replay. You still need to fall backward but this time with toe in slipper—”
I bounced on the bed spraying crumbs around the room and making him grab at the coverlet to prevent his being sprayed around as well.
“As if putting it back on so it never flies through air, plummeting down through the wood.” I stopped, looking over the edge at the half buried slipper. I tried to imagine pulling upward against the wood, hard around the toe and could only see the bones in my foot shattering, not a neat opening in the space-time continuum.
“But…but won’t that be very difficult? I mean, I’m human. I have breakable parts—”
“We have breakable parts, too, ya know. Don’t act as if humans are so special. If you step on our tails, do we not scream? If you close the garbage tight, do we not starve? If—”
He broke off, perhaps realizing this was not the moment for poetic reproach and touched me for the first time, stroking my right big toe—the one that would survive to wiggle another day.
“You just need to believe you can do it.” He squinted, trying to look strong and encouraging but looking more like he was preparing to protect himself from flying bone fragments. I felt a Disney moment coming on and had no need for Rat to be my Jiminy Cricket.
“Right…right…” I looked at the little rat paw on my foot and tried to imagine waking up to the crunch of poppadum—for it never seemed to get any smaller, no matter how many bites he took—and being expected to prepare a curry every morning the rest of my life instead of waking to a purring ball of fur that extended full on from top to tip of tail rather than stripping to naked at the butt end. Tippler, a simple creature who seldom argued and settled for a tin of salmon twice a day, no mixing of spices required.
“Right! I believe,” I said. “We can do this.” Meaning ‘I.’
Closing my eyes, I willed myself to shove left toes into the remnant of brocade and rock back as hard as I could. As I pulled up against the wood of the floor, the will turned to whip lashes of pain.
“Owww…No…I can’t…” Where was my bravado now?
But just as I thought my metas were surely separating from my tarsals, I felt a little give, the slightest wobble in the woodwork, a squishiness that didn’t emanate from my own body part. I yanked harder and the pain left as I felt my big toe rolling upward toward me and a wave of energy, a lightness swept up from toenail to toe to ankle. My foot popped upward toward the ceiling, accelerating my fall back so I struck the mattress with a force so great that I saw Rat rising into the air, holding tight to his flatcap and cartwheeling in multiple turns from bed to air into a widening circle of light. Just as my head was about to hit the pillow, I saw him wave his poppadum, his whiskers fully extended, curving up toward his ears into a broad rat grin.
“Thanks, chum. I’m heading home to me—”
Then his words faded away, as did I, eyes closing, breathing like I had just run out of the scrum. I think I slept but when I woke and cracked one eye just open, the light floating in through the slats looked just as I remembered it before seeing Rat, before his cap, his poppadum, his sarcasm. And my hangover hadn’t eased one iota.
“Rat, were you nothing more than my pink elephant, my tremens most delirium, my reminder I’m not twenty any more?”
At my feet, the blanket rustled and something tapped my foot. Both eyes shot wide, then pressed tightly shut as I jerked upright, not sure whether I wanted to see or not. But I couldn’t squeeze my eyes shut forever, so I lifted one lid, then the other, wondering whether silky orange fur or a naked tail would greet me.
There curled tightly on the duvet, fuzzy tail slapping lazily slept Tippler, purring, one paw resting on my toe.
Wearing a flatcap.
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