Look Inside Vermin 2.0: Hunger Pains (Detest-A-Pest #1)

Airport

Four o’clock in the morning. The cloudless skies over Hunts Point twinkled with stars and the new moon made the Point just a little darker. New moons are an active time for rats at night. The cover of darkness paired with the lack of moonlight brought the rats out of their burrows in droves. From deep under the streets, rats scuttled through the dirt and slime-covered sewer walls, past rusting access ladders and grimy concrete conduits. Trash, long since forgotten, lined the old sewer walls as rats made their way to the streets in search of food.

Sam slept a fitful sleep in his ground floor apartment on Casanova. He tossed and turned in his bed, as if he could sense the rising tide of rats beneath him. He could hear their teeth forever gnawing, chewing through anything, his apartment door, his mattress, his legs and arms.

Sam’s scream woke him up in a cold sweat. His chest heaved like he had just run a marathon. He sat amongst his strewn sheets, and kept his body as still as possible. Sam listened and watched for movement. The air was still and all he could hear was his own breath.

He noticed that he had left his bedroom window open again. The past week had been uncomfortably warm, and Sam had opened his bedroom window during the day in an attempt to air out the place, but he kept forgetting to close it. But the sunshine and warmth sure beat the ice, snow and sub-zero temperatures of last January when Sam had moved in.

After five months a free man, he wasn’t used to the smells of normal life. Instead, he still preferred the antiseptic institutional smell of a prison cell. At least he didn’t have to deal with the body odor of other inmates any more.

He rolled off the bed, walked to the window, and paused to scan the alley. Sam’s sleep-weary eyes couldn’t spot any movement. He could smell Kingsley Fried Chicken & Pizza from one block over, his go-to joint, mixed with the funk of garbage from the overflowing dumpster in the alley. Fried chicken was one thing, but mixed with rancid garbage was quite another.

Sam closed the window and collapsed back into bed.

There are no rats here. It’s all in my head. Sam repeated his mantra and closed his eyes. He was desperate to relax. In twelve hours he would leave to meet the son he’d never known.

But there were rats here, outside, and they bubbled up all over Hunts Point. One rat emerged from a sewer grate and almost looked adorable if it weren’t for its wet, matted fur and long, greasy gray tail.

Rats are omnivores and opportunists. They’re intelligent and go where the food and water are plentiful. They used the interconnected sewers and catch basins of the Hunts Point Pollution Control Plant as their travel conduits. It was the perfect breeding ground. Rats multiply rapidly and produce a new litter of up to a dozen pups every three weeks. Many believe that there is a rat for every person who lives in New York City. Eight point five million. One of those rats was perched below Sam’s window.

The rodent caught a scent in the air, and scurried along the sidewalk’s curb and over to the alley beside Sam’s building. It was a familiar path for the rats in this area. Anyone who looked close enough would see the grimy paths painted onto the sidewalk from nightly food runs.

Up on its haunches, the rat paused, sniffed, and reassessed its chosen route. There was a different smell in the air, one that wasn’t entirely foreign to this rat, but also one that signaled caution.

Out of the darkness, a new, different rat emerged to block the other rat’s path. This newcomer was leaner but bigger, with clearly defined muscles and a white-tipped tail that flicked and seemed to glow, even in the moonless dark.

Being social animals, the first rat stretched its head forward. The rat’s cautious whiskers twitched madly, and it sniffed the new rat in a rodent greeting. The new rat remained motionless and held its ground. Its whiskers vibrated as it gnawed its own incisors down into sharpened points.

Chomp!

In a matter of seconds, the first rat’s head was clamped in the jaws of the second. The first rat began to squeal and struggle in a desperate attempt to break free. It curled its back around to try and kick the new rat, but the aggressor’s jaws remained locked in a death grip.

The screeching sounds of struggle lured new rats out of their dark hiding spots, new rats with white-tipped tails that flipped wildly. The swarm descended on the first rat with vicious intensity. They worked together to eviscerate the first rat’s body with quick precision.

The killers with white-tipped tails, provoked into a feeding frenzy by their blood lust, fought over the remaining carcass. Their snouts, soaked in sticky crimson, sniped at each other in order to win the ultimate prize of the last bite. The battle for the remains pulled what was left of the first rat onto the sidewalk and left behind a messy red smear, like the first stroke of a plein-air painting. The blood feast was cut short when headlights from a passing vehicle washed the sidewalk with light. The rats with the white-tipped tails and gory muzzles scattered and disappeared into the shadows. What was left of the carcass remained on the sidewalk, abandoned.

Sam was nervous. He had every right to be. Apart from the one photograph he had been allowed to keep during his fifteen years behind bars, Sam had no idea what his son Bradley looked like.

He pulled his wallet out of his front pocket and ran his hand across it. Black, smooth and thin, made of genuine leather. Unblemished, just like new from being stored in the property room for all those years. Claire had given the wallet to him on his twenty-fourth birthday. Now, he held onto it like an anchor, as if without it he’d float away, back into a life owned by the State of New York.

Sam flipped it open. The wallet contained a small amount of cash, his driver’s license (five months old), and his only picture of Bradley framed in one of its windowed pockets. Bradley had been one at the time the picture was taken. Sam remembered the day with ease. Bradley smiled on the kitchen floor as he played with a Tupperware Shape-O-Toy. Sam began and ended each day memorizing that smile. The photo was faded and worn on the edges from years of exposure on his cell wall, but intact, even after guards had tossed his cell, moved him to other cell blocks or thrown him in solitary. That photo was Sam’s only tangible link to the life he had known. He had received no updates or letters. Claire had seen to that.

After Sam was convicted Claire had wasted no time. She packed up and moved across the country to California and left no forwarding address. She had always hated New York. “Too crowded and dirty,” she had said.

The conversations were all the same: short-tempered, intolerant, and unforgiving. They all melted together in his memory, but as with all memories, bits and pieces would forever stand out. With Claire, it was the bad memories that floated to the top.

“You don’t deserve to know him,” she would say. “Once a drunk, always a drunk.” That was the death knell of the calls. After that, there would be no convincing her, even though he knew he would never touch a drop of alcohol again for the rest of his life. He knew this as surely as he knew his own name, but Claire would never understand.

Sam would protest anyway. He would claim to be a changed man, a better man (he was). Even after all these years, Sam could still picture Claire on the other end of the phone, as she shook her head and fumed silently. He used to find her reaction endearing, back when their marriage was young and he still had a life that resembled something close to normal, but now it just frustrated him. He just wanted to see his son, and maybe, if he was lucky, update his old and bleached photo of Bradley. From the little snippets of dialog he heard in the background, it sounded like Bradley’s interest in seeing him was mutual, but he couldn’t be sure. Claire would have none of it.

“Send him out for a week,” Sam remembered saying. “Let me hang with him for a while.”

“I’m not going through this again.” Predictably, Claire hung up the phone and that was that. It was the last time Sam would speak to her. When he was released five months ago, he had tried to call her, but the number was out of service. Not even Sara Armstrong, his parole officer, was able to track down Claire’s new phone number this time.

It was all a great unknown. When Sam got the unexpected news that Bradley would be visiting, his brain started tick-tocking in all the wrong places. It didn’t help his mood, either. The idea that Sam found himself falling back on and the only answer that made sense, was that Claire had gotten tired of Bradley’s questions about him and relented.

Sara had called Sam last week to let him know that Bradley would be visiting for the summer.

“For the entire summer?” Sam remembered feeling happy, stunned, and mostly scared.

“That’s what Claire said.”

“I said a week. I don’t know if I can handle an entire summer,” Sam’s mind raced. “What am I going to do?”

“Try being a dad,” Sara said.

“Yeah. Easy for you to say. By any chance did she leave a phone number?” Sam knew it was a long shot.

“What do you think?” Sara flipped through her file on Sam. “I already checked. She used a pay phone. That woman’s got serious hate going on for you.”

Serious hate. How can I fight that?

Sam pushed Claire and her bad energy to the back of his mind. He had other worries now, like how to entertain a sixteen year old boy for ten weeks.

Sam found himself at John F. Kennedy International Airport three hours early. He stood and waited in Arrivals, close to gate C38 in Terminal 8. He had looked forward to meeting his son all week and didn’t want to make a bad first impression by being late.

J.F.K. was a massive, busy complex and served more than fifty million passengers per year. He hadn’t set foot in an airport for the better part of two decades and Sam found the sheer number of people in one place amped his feelings of insecurity. Most days he longed for the solitude of a prison cell.

But three hours early? What am I, nuts?

Bradley was due to arrive on American Airlines flight AA-288, 4:35 pm. His flight had been on schedule for the past two hours, every time Sam checked the vertical display screens that listed arrivals. For the first hour of Sam’s wait, Bradley’s flight didn’t even show up on the display screen. He thought he got the day wrong but a woman at the information desk assured him that flight AA-288 was on its way and on time.

Sam checked his watch, then checked the arrivals display screen. His watch was two minutes fast every time he looked. As the time of Bradley’s arrival approached, Sam’s heart pounded harder in his chest. Even though he hadn’t drunk a drop for fifteen years, he would forever feel the pull of alcohol. A beer would take the edge off.

Sam distracted himself by checking his watch, then the arrivals screen, and back to his watch. He noticed a barely perceptible tremor in his arm. He raised his other hand up to confirm his shakes, then balled his fists.

Relax. Any time now.

Sam shifted his gaze to the sliding doors that separated arriving passengers from waiting loved ones, or in his case, an absent ex-con father who had no idea what his son looked like.

A deadbeat. Claire was fond of that title.

Fucking Claire. How else have you poisoned Bradley against me?

Cold sweat collected on the hairline of Sam’s closely cropped buzz cut. His long-sleeved flannel shirt had become damp from his soaked t-shirt underneath. He wiped his brow with his sleeve and his hand brushed against his coarse five o’clock shadow. He had forgotten to shave.

Great. I look like a god damned bum.

The first passengers began to trickle out of the arrivals gate. The sliding doors opened and closed with an audible shhhik. Sam scanned their faces looking for something, anything familiar. Soon the trickle became a mad crush. People flowed out and made a beeline for the luggage carousel. The sliding doors never had a chance to close.

Is it the kid with the USC t-shirt? Or the one wearing the Cincinnati Reds ball cap? Or the fat one there?

Sam couldn’t keep up. He watched the unknown faces move and squeeze past him. He was sure he had missed some, but didn’t dare check to look behind for fear of missing more people exiting the arrivals door. He felt his knees weaken under his anxious weight and had to sit down on a nearby row of seats. His lower seated position wasn’t optimal because people further back were more easily obscured.

I haven’t missed him, have I? Shit. Wouldn’t it be a joke to have to look for Bradley at the Lost and Found?

The numbers of passengers began to thin dramatically. Sam scratched his head.

For fuck’s sake, I missed him. Why couldn’t Claire have sent me a more recent picture? Bitch.

Sam stood up. He steadied himself on the seat back, and headed towards the sliding doors of arrivals, which were now closed. He looked down the corridor beyond the glass and spotted the pilots and flight attendants approach. The arrivals door slid open.

“Are you from flight AA-288?” Sam’s eyes flitted between the pilots and the attendants.

“Yes,” the taller pilot said. He shot a glance to his co-workers, then back to Sam. “Are you alright, sir?”

“Is anyone else on the plane?”

“The crew is always the last off,” the pilot said. “Do you need assistance?”

Sam shook his head and let out a sigh.

“You sure?”

Sam nodded, and walked toward the open arrival doors.

“Sir, I’m afraid you can’t go in that way.” The other pilot held Sam back as the doors slid shut.

Sam’s shoulders slumped, defeated.

Fuck.

Bradley’s flight was just over five hours. He hadn’t eaten enough before takeoff and was famished by the time the flight attendant came to take his order. The only meal options left were a Chicken Apple Sausage Skillet or a Kid’s Snack Pack.

“I’m not a kid, so I’ll take the skillet.” Bradley was curious what sausage made from chicken and apples tasted like. It couldn’t be all bad.

The flight attendant took the crumpled ball of bills from Bradley and handed him his meal.

The picture in the brochure always looked better than the real thing. His skillet was light on the sausage and heavy on the potato and scrambled eggs. He counted three pieces of apples. To be fair, the meal tasted fine, but it was hot in the center and cold on the edges. Bradley stirred it to give it an overall lukewarm temperature. For some reason, the flight attendant handed him a fruit cup as well. It was mostly melon. He hated melon.

Bradley had been up since five-thirty in the morning. At this point he didn’t care what he shoveled into his stomach. He ate like there was no tomorrow, wolfing down everything, including the melon, plus coffee and orange juice.

The entertainment offerings were lame, and he didn’t want to pay for Internet access. He had grown bored of the games on his phone and kicked himself for not downloading something new for the trip. He eased the seat back and managed to get an hour or so of shut-eye.

Claire had ruined his summer and his fitful dreams picked up on his anger and ran with it. He had wanted to get a job after school was out and earn some extra money for a new computer. He wanted to meet his dad, maybe spend a couple weeks with him, but the entire summer?

“I had plans, Mom!”

“Sam’s been on my case to meet you, so here’s your chance,” Claire said. “Maybe now he’ll shut up about it.”

“But ten weeks?” Bradley said. “I don’t even know him. What if I hate him?”

“Then that’ll make two of us.” Claire kissed Bradley on the forehead. “You’ll know for sure by September.”

Bradley fumed. “This sucks, Mom.”

“Give it a couple weeks,” Claire said. “If it sucks as much as you say it will, we can renegotiate.”

Bradley awoke in a foul mood, and angry with Claire. There was still two hours left in the flight. He tried to distract himself by watching one of the flight attendants. “Trix” was emblazoned on her lapel pin and he fantasized about getting hot and heavy with her. But Claire’s head kept popping in and ruining the scene.

“Do you love her, Brad?” Claire’s voice echoed in his head. “She’s not good enough for you, Brad.”

Jesus Christ, Mom, leave me alone.

He pulled his day pack out from underneath his seat and unzipped one of the pockets. He removed an old photo of Sam and Claire and studied it. The date on the back: May 28, 2000. Claire was kissing Sam’s cheek. He was looking up feigning surprise in a playful way. A happier time and a much more useful reference than the baby photo Sam had of him. Bradley pulled out his phone and took a picture of the old photo, just in case. He worked the digital image with his fingers to enlarge the view.

What would my family have been like if you hadn’t gone to prison? Would I have been happy like this?

Sam’s face in the photo continued to grin his goofy grin, as if he was averting his eyes from any other questions. Bradley shoved the photo back into his day pack without care and pocketed his phone, now pissed at both his parents. The summer was bound to suck, guaranteed.

He was seated beside the wings in the middle of the plane, not even a window seat like he had asked Claire for. When the plane touched down, he disembarked well-mixed with the rest of the passengers. His little black cloud followed him and kept his mood in a dark funk.

Bradley moved through the arrivals exit door and spotted Sam right away. His hair was shorter than in the old picture and he looked thinner, too. Bradley wasn’t ready to meet his dad, so he decided to have some fun.

He pushed his way to the outer edge of the surge of bodies and moved towards the baggage carousels, opposite Sam’s position. Bradley hunched down a little and looked to his left, which obscured his face from Sam’s view. When he was sure he was clear of the exit, Bradley doubled back and took a wide route. He positioned himself behind a support pillar and kept Sam in view with every step. He felt like a private investigator.

Bradley poked his head out and watched Sam crane his head from side to side, trying to find him in the exodus. The passengers thinned and Sam sat down. It looked like he was in a panic, which gave Bradley a small sense of satisfaction. A little bit of payback. If he had been asked why payback seemed important then, Bradley would have had no answer. As the last passengers streamed past Sam, the arrivals door slid closed with a shhhik.

Bradley watched Sam stand up, steady himself on the seat back and walk toward the arrival doors. He looked through the glass.

Sam took a step back as the flight crew exited the arrivals door. They talked but Bradley was too far away to hear their conversation. One of the pilots held Sam back as the arrival door slid shut. Crestfallen, he stepped back from the sliding doors as the flight crew walked away. Sam remained standing, and looked through the glass as if he expected something to change.

Bradley’s little escapade had done wonders for getting him out of his bad mood, even if it was at Sam’s expense. But it was time to come clean.

He stepped out from behind the pillar and began to walk towards Sam, but something stopped him halfway.

Sam sensed someone behind him and turned. When their eyes met, he knew it was Bradley in an instant. The fact that they were the only two people left in arrivals made no difference. He saw himself, he saw Claire all at once in his son’s face and eyes. Bradley’s day pack hung off broad, young shoulders.

“Bradley?” Sam’s legs went rubbery as he fought to maintain his composure.

Bradley nodded and offered a small wave. “Hi.”

Sam took a tentative step forward, then another. Bradley closed the gap between them. Now he stood face to face with his dad, a completely familiar stranger.

Sam didn’t know what to do with himself. “Do I hug you now? I’m a little rusty.”

“About as rusty as you can get.” Bradley offered his right hand to shake.

Sam took his hand and they exchanged a firm handshake. Overwhelmed, Sam pulled Bradley close and gave him a hug anyway.

“I’ve been waiting fifteen years to do that,” he said.

Bradley didn’t reciprocate. It was too soon for him. When Sam released him and stepped back, Bradley noticed Sam’s eyelids were rimmed with tears. He wiped them away before the tears had a chance to fall.

“It’s good to finally meet you…” Sam paused and searched his memory. “Do you prefer Bradley or Brad?”

“Brad. That’s what my friends call me.”

“Okay, Brad. Let’s go get your luggage.”

Sam lead Bradley past the entrance and into the luggage carousel area of Terminal 8.

Bradley took out his phone and tapped something into it. Sam studied his son absorbed by this small electronic device.

“Who are you talking to?”

Bradley looked at Sam like he had asked for his deepest secret. “I’m texting Mom.” He turned to hide the screen of his phone from Sam.

Sam nodded. “Cool.” He thought about asking Bradley to say hello for him, but the thought evaporated faster than he could say the words. It wouldn’t have meant anything anyway.

Bradley wore jeans and a leather jacket over a t-shirt with the words “Guess what?” and an arrow that pointed to a chicken’s rear end. A raccoon tail hung from his belt. Sam didn’t get it and made a mental note to ask Bradley about it later.

Baggage began to flow down from the ramp in the ceiling and onto the revolving carousel.

“Which bag is yours?” Sam scanned the bags that were already following their perpetual circle route. “What should I be looking for?”

“No worries,” Bradley tapped at his phone with his thumbs. “I got it covered.”

Weren’t kids supposed to respect their elders?

Not today. Bradley was engrossed with his phone. He ignored the baggage making its rounds, as well as Sam who stood by and waited.

“How long does it take to send a message to your mom with one of those things?”

“Mom already knows,” Bradley said.

“So who are you texting now?”

“Some friends.”

That was it. Sam had had enough, of the crowd, the delays, and the lack of respect. He walked up to Bradley and grabbed his phone out of his hands.

“Hey! What the hell are you doing?” Bradley tried to grab his phone back, but Sam shoved it into his front pocket.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Sam said. “Get your bags and I’ll give it back.”

Bradley daggered him with a look that promised revenge. “Uncool.” He sulked over to the carousel and started to look for his baggage.

Sam took Bradley’s phone out of his pocket and looked at it. One huge difference Sam noticed from fifteen years ago was how much cell phones had changed, and how much people relied on them. When he had began his prison sentence, cell phones could make calls, send texts and had monochrome LCD screens. Now they could do practically everything, but the technology was foreign to him. Not only could he not afford it, he had no interest in it.

Bradley looked back at Sam and saw him with his phone. “Hey!” he yelled back. “Don’t touch that.”

Sam put the phone back into his pocket. “Cool your jets, Brad.”

Bradley’s two bags slid into view. He grabbed them and dragged them over to where Sam stood. He held out his hand. “Give me my phone back.”

“Didn’t Mom teach you any manners?”

The muscles in Bradley’s jaws clenched in angry angles. “Give me my phone back, please.”

Sam dug Bradley’s phone out and handed it back to him.

“You better not have done anything to it.”

Sam grabbed Bradley’s shirt by the collar and pulled him close. “How about a little respect?” As soon as the words were out of Sam’s mouth, he knew he’d fucked up.

They exchanged angry gazes, both recognizing themselves in each other’s eyes. Sam held his hand out towards one of the bags.

“Let’s go.”

Bradley relented and handed over one of the bags. He was glad not to have to carry it, but he’d never tell Sam that.

“Follow me,” Sam said as he began to walk toward the exit of Terminal 8. Bradley followed a short distance behind, his eyes narrowed and a scowl on his face. The little black cloud was back.

That went well, Sam thought. Way to alienate your son in two minutes. Fuck, I’m shitty at this.

Sam found his beat-up old Ford F-250, flipped open the tailgate and hefted Bradley’s bag into the truck bed.

Bradley stared at the truck in awe. Its faded orange paint job made the rusted holes in the side panels harder to see.

“Holy shit.” Bradley dug his phone out and prepared to take a picture. “Is this thing safe?”

Sam reached towards Bradley’s other bag. “Come on. Let’s load up. And put that damn thing away.”

“Chill.” An audible click sounded from the phone. “I’m just documenting your life.” Bradley rolled the bag over to Sam, who waited at the back of the truck.

“Who said I wanted my life documented?” The notion of Sam’s meager existence recorded for all to see chilled him to the bone.

“I just thought—”

“You thought wrong.” Sam threw Bradley’s second bag into the back of the truck and closed the tailgate with a slam. “Get in.”

Bradley pocketed his phone and grabbed the passenger door handle. It didn’t budge. Sam reached over to unlock it from inside the cab. The door groaned and creaked as he pulled its dead weight open. Again, thoughts of safety wandered through his head. Bradley threw his day pack into the footwell and climbed into the truck. He closed the door behind him with a tired, mechanical clrunk.

“Aren’t you going to tie down my bags?” Bradley locked his seatbelt across his waist. He pulled his raccoon tail out of the way so it wouldn’t get caught.

“They’ll be fine.” Sam jammed his key into the ignition and gave it a turn. The whine of the starter rose up from the front of the truck but the engine failed to turn over. Sam repeated the sequence without success.

“Come on you piece of shit!” Sam turned and held the key’s position. The starter released a high-pitched grinding sound that reminded him of the metal lathe in the prison workshop. It was a case of third time lucky. The engine roared to life, then settled into a low rumble. “Know anything about cars?”

Bradley shrugged.

“Damn,” Sam said. “Was hoping you could help me with a tune up.”

Sam left J.F.K. and headed north on Van Wyck Expressway. Traffic was heavier today and the trip took longer than the usual hour. He chose to take Grand Central Parkway because he thought it was a more scenic route.

Bradley sat, silent and sullen under his black cloud. So far the visit hadn’t gone at all like he thought it would.

Sam wished he could have a do-over, but he accepted the consequences of his actions. The drive helped sooth him, and it was something he had missed in prison. But the heavy silence in the cab was overwhelming. Sam couldn’t stand it anymore.

He switched on the radio to Nash 94.7 FM. Carrie Underwood’s “Heartbeat” crackled over the old speakers.

“Country?” Bradley said. “Are you serious?” He reached forward and turned the radio off.

“What, you don’t like country?” Sam said.

Bradley sat and brooded.

They passed the New York State Pavilion. “Hey, remember Men in Black? With Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones?”

Bradley said nothing, but his eyes crept to look out the passenger window.

“They shot part of the movie there, the first one,” Sam said.

“I wasn’t born yet.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Sam did a quick calculation in his head. Bradley was right.

I can’t win for losing, he thought. Sam decided to keep his mouth shut for the rest of the drive. If this was how the summer was to begin, he dreaded how it would end.

Bronx

Hunts Point was divided by a bustling industrial park to the south and poor residential neighborhoods to the north. Once a vibrant and sought-after vacation destination for New York’s elite at the turn of the 20th century, the district had became more and more industrialized, pushing residents away and forming one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the Bronx. More than half of all residents lived below the poverty line.

The building Sam had called home for the past five months sat on the corner of Casanova Street and Spoffard Avenue. The neighborhood housed mostly Hispanics and African Americans and reminded him of prison, but he wasn’t one to complain. Sara had helped him secure an apartment and a job upon his release. His situation wasn’t optimal, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Sam was happy to have a roof over his head and didn’t mind the riffraff that came with it. The truth was he was riffraff as well.

When Sam moved in, he hadn’t expected to play host to Bradley. Otherwise, he may have held out for a less crime-riddled neighborhood. Prostitutes, drug addicts and dealers were within a stone’s throw from his apartment, or anywhere in Hunts Point for that matter. If Claire had taken the time to research the neighborhood and discovered that the Point was a red-light district, she would have never approved of Bradley’s trip.

It had shaped up to be a perfect June. All week the temperature had hovered in the low nineties.

Bradley hoped Sam lived in the heart of Manhattan. That was where all the action was. That would have made up for a lot. But the skyscrapers that shrunk in the truck’s rear cab window confirmed his fears as they trundled over the Robert F. Kennedy Triborough Bridge. Ahead, there were no skyscrapers, no excitement. He took out his phone and snapped a picture of Manhattan before it completely disappeared from sight.

“This is the Bronx.” Sam turned right onto Leggett Avenue from Bruckner Boulevard.

Bradley watched a 7-Eleven convenience store pass by followed by what seemed to be endless rows of auto glass, tire and body shops, some boarded up and tagged with graffiti. The truck hit a pothole that bounced the rear end. Bradley imagined his bags being flung out of the truck and crashing onto the street. He looked back through the rear window of the cab and was reassured when he saw his bags were still there.

“This isn’t what I pictured New York looking like.” Bradley framed a photo through the windshield.

“What did you expect?” Sam said. A quick glance revealed Bradley’s uneasiness.

“You know, skyscrapers. I saw them back the way we came.”

“I can’t afford to live in the big city,” Sam said. “This is all I can manage at the moment.”

“Everything looks so rough.” Bradley watched row upon row of warehouse doors pass by. Click went the shutter noise on his phone.

“You’ve got a good eye for detail,” Sam said. “Hunts Point is rough, but New York City couldn’t survive without it. It’s an important food distribution center, one of the largest in the world.”

Bradley slunked down in his seat, not interested in the history lesson that had begun to unfold.

Sam cast Bradley a sideways look. “You groan, but just out your window lies the three hundred acres that keeps the entire state of New York alive and eating, every day. All twenty million of us.” He looked at Bradley again. “Well, twenty million and one.”

Sam turned left onto Casanova Street and passed a woman dressed in a tight white tank-top, red hot pants and heels to match.

“Holy shit. Was that a…” Bradley turned to watch the woman through the rear window and snapped a photo with his phone. She caught his stare and waved.

“A hooker? Probably. They don’t call it Casanova Street for nothing.” Sam grinned and pictured Claire’s reaction upon learning that her son would be living in a red light district. “Don’t tell your mom, but Hunts Point has a certain…reputation.”

Maybe this won’t be so bad, Bradley thought, as he pinch-zoomed the photo on his phone and ogled the prostitute. The phone’s camera had caught her mid-wave.

All along Casanova, cars and trucks were parked and double-parked in a haphazard way. Some were even backed up onto the sidewalk. Sam pulled up to the curb and killed the engine.

“This is it.” Sam looked through the windshield at the rundown, three-story apartment building. Its red bricks were cracked and crumbling in places and a set of weathered concrete steps led to an arched vestibule. Around the entry steps was a set of locked bars that had the top tips sharpened and bent outward and down, which made climbing over them a dangerous, if not impossible task. Attached to the bars was a sign that read “Rooms for rent” with a phone number underneath. The building was bordered by a set of fire escapes on its right side over a narrow alley, and Spoffard Avenue to the left.

Bradley took a photo through the grubby passenger window of the truck. “Looks like a dump.”

“Yeah, well it’s my dump. It’s all I got.” Bradley’s words stung a bit. After five months, Sam called it home, even with a little affection. He unfastened his seatbelt and pulled the handle to open the driver side door. It stuck and opened on the second try. “Come on. Grab your bags and I’ll show you around.” He closed the truck door with a rusty clrunk.

“Gee, I can’t wait,” Bradley said.

Sam dropped the tailgate and pushed Bradley’s bags towards the back bumper. Bradley grabbed his day pack and slid off the old vinyl seats that were cracked and polished to a sheen from years of denim-clad asses. As he stepped down to the sidewalk, his foot landed on the sun-baked carcass from the previous night.

“The fuck is that?” Bradley looked down at the rusty smear that lead to his foot. Even though the sun had evaporated most of the moisture from the rodent’s ravaged body, its sinewy entrails and bones still stuck to his new Vans.

“Watch the language,” Sam said. “Just because you’re with me doesn’t mean you can spout off like that.”

“Whatever.” Bradley tried to scrape off the rat gore with the edge of the curb. “These are brand new Classics.”

Sam watched Bradley pull out a set of keys and dig chunks of congealed blood from the diamond-textured shoe tread. “We can clean them up inside,” Sam said.

Bradley continued to dig at his shoe tread. He was obsessive, just like his mom.

Sam pulled Bradley’s two bags out of the back of the truck and slammed the tailgate shut. He looked at Bradley as he worked up a sweat in his leather jacket. “Aren’t you hot?”

Bradley stopped and looked at him. “Aren’t you? You’re dressed like a lumberjack.” Bradley refocused his attention back on his shoe tread. “What’s with the long sleeves?”

Sam tugged his sleeve’s cuff in line with his wrist and ignored the question. “Okay…What’s with the tail?” Sam motioned toward the raccoon tail that hung from Bradley’s belt. “You a teen wolf?”

“Funny,” Bradley shook his head but remained on task. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Sam grabbed a bag and dragged it toward the front steps.

“Whose stupid idea was this trip anyway?”

“I don’t know. Your mom stopped taking my calls,” Sam said. “But I’m pretty sure it was her stupid idea to make it ten weeks instead of one.”

Content with his cleaning job, Bradley scraped remnants of blood off his keys with a discarded napkin he had found nearby, and placed them back in his pocket. He grabbed his second bag and followed.

“She just wants the summer to herself,” Bradley said.

“I guess we’re stuck with each other for a while.”

Sam pulled a huge collection of keys out of his pocket and picked through them one at a time. A cat appeared at the top of the stairs, alerted by the jangling keys, and sauntered down the steps. It squeezed through the bars in front of the stairs and snaked around Bradley’s legs.

“How much does a place like this go for?”

“Five hundred seventy-five a month,” Sam said.

“Holy crap,” Bradley said.

“It’s a steal.” Sam sorted through his ball of keys. “Most other places you’ll pay two or three times that.”

“What’s with the bars?” Bradley said. “Trying to keep the rats out?” He remembered the rubber rat in his suitcase that Claire had given him the night before he left.

“Give this to Sam,” Claire had said.

“Why?” Bradley had thought it was a strange request.

“It’s just a gift.” Claire had winked at Bradley. “Tell him it’s from me. Surprise him with it. He’ll appreciate it.”

Sam gave Bradley a grave look, then nodded at the cat. “That’s Piper’s job. He keeps the rats in line. Don’t you, Piper?”

“It’s just a dumb cat,” Bradley said.

“Maybe to you, but one less rat in this world is good in my books.” Sam found the key he was looking for and unlocked the barred iron gate. He carried one of Bradley’s bags up the stairs to the front entryway. “Close the gate after you.”

Bradley knelt down and gave Piper’s head a scratch. He rotated the collar around his neck to get a look at the tags. The vanity tag read “Piper the Scoundrel” and had a picture of Puss-in-Boots winking. The other tag was heart-shaped brass and had a name and phone number stamped into the metal. Bradley could hear Piper’s loud, instant purr as the cat nuzzled his leg. Claire didn’t allowed pets at home, so Piper was a nice discovery. However, Bradley kept that detail to himself.

“He should clean up after himself.” Bradley thumbed over at the crisping blood stain on the sidewalk before he closed the gate and followed Sam up the steps.

Embedded into the wall just inside the front entrance were the mailboxes for the six apartments in the building. Opposite that and a little further down the hallway was the door to Sam’s apartment. The hallway ran the length of the building to the back and was lit by weathered, antique wall sconces that ended on either side of an old elevator. A semicircular brass floor indicator topped the ornately decorated doors.

Sam stopped at the door to his apartment, 102, with “Building Superintendent” spelled out underneath in cobbled together press-and-stick letters of various sizes and styles.

“You’re the Super?” Bradley said.

Sam could hear the surprise in Bradley’s voice. “I’m not a good for nothing bum, despite what your mom says. Got to work for a living. It’s a perfect setup.” Sam jangled out his keys and unlocked the door.

Right beside the door was what would best be described as a mud room, without the room. A plastic mat for shoes, and various tools (a rake, a yard stick, a tool belt with a hammer) hung off a row of mismatched and misaligned wall hooks. On the floor next to the mat was a large toolkit and a rolling metal box with various tubes and cords. Bradley wondered why anyone would need a rake here, with no grass to be seen anywhere.

The kitchen was sparsely furnished with just enough to get by. In the center of the room sat a 1950s Formica table with four chairs, matching in both their vinyl covering and their state of disrepair. A single light bulb hovered above, one of those new compact fluorescent ones with the curled glass tubes. The sink had a window on the right wall, which offered a fine view of the alley if one didn’t mind turning their head when washing the dishes. On the counter top, right of the sink, sat a Mr. Coffee machine from 1974 and an old push-button telephone. To the left was a rusty hot plate and a tired old Frigidaire.

“Living like a king, huh?” Bradley said.

“You get used to life being a certain way.” Sam disappeared down the hallway.

Bradley scanned the drab kitchen, his repulsion seeped into a scowl. He tried not to touch anything. “You steal that table from Grandma?”

“Came with the place.” Sam’s voice emanated from another room off the hallway.

Bradley dropped his bag and day pack, and began to look through the cupboards above the sink. A few plates and glasses, some chili flakes, and crackers. He grabbed the shaker of chili flakes and looked for the best before date.

Sam returned to the kitchen. “Don’t worry, they’re fresh. I go through them like shit through a goose.”

Bradley returned the chili flakes to the cupboard. “So, where am I crashing?”

“Down the hall, last room on the right.” Sam said. “I dropped your other bag on the bed.”

Bradley grabbed his day pack and remaining bag and headed down the darkened hallway. He tried what he thought was the light switch before he realized that the light fixtures on the walls had no bulbs in them.

The bedroom was even more sparse than the kitchen, with a bed in the center, headboard against one wall, and an old dresser with a lamp on it. The bed faced the window and overlooked the alley. Bradley dropped his bag and his day pack in the corner and lifted his other bag off the bed. The mattress’s noticeable sag in the middle failed to spring back.

I wonder if his prison cell was as barren as this, thought Bradley. He deposited his bag with his other luggage, walked to the window and looked out. The dumpster in the alley overflowed with garbage.

“This sucks,” he said to himself.

He knelt down, unzipped one of his suitcases and reached into one of its interior compartments. Bradley’s hand brushed against something that felt cold and clammy. At first he didn’t know what it was, but remembered once he wrapped his hand around its cold, squishy body and rolled its rigid cord of a tail between his fingers. It was the rubber rat Claire had given him before he left. He turned it around in his hands and examined its realistically painted and textured fur. Its eyes were a bright red. It even had whiskers made of fine fishing line. A subtle and short-lived smile crossed Bradley’s lips.

Neighbors

Morning came fast for Bradley, but he hadn’t slept well. His back ached and he didn’t feel rested. The bed had the support of a hammock stretched to its limits.

Sam poked his head into the bedroom. “I got to run and get some supplies,” Sam said. “If you want to come, I’m going now.”

“Nah. I’ll hang here,” Bradley said.

“Suit yourself. Be back in about an hour.”

Moments later, Bradley heard the front door to the apartment close. He grabbed his phone, charging on the dresser beside the bed, and checked the time. He laid in bed and looked around the featureless room. All the walls were bare and it wasn’t hard to imagine what it would be like to live in a prison cell. Bradley threw off the covers and walked to the window. Apart from the sun and the shadows they cast, the same alley, the same overflowing dumpster stared back at him. He could see the browning blood streak on the sidewalk from yesterday and Sam’s truck was gone. Bradley changed into his clothes, pocketed his phone, and headed to the kitchen, drawn by the smell of coffee. He was ravenous.

There was a loaf of bread on the counter and the coffee machine’s carafe was half full. Bradley opened the fridge: ketchup, relish and an open package of hot dogs. That was it.

Does he even know the meaning of breakfast?

He grabbed a couple of slices of bread and, after they received mold-free approval, jammed them in his mouth. Bradley found a clean cup and poured himself a liberal dose of hot black coffee. It smelled better than it tasted, but the dry bread didn’t discriminate and soaked up the coffee like a thirsty sponge.

His hunger staved off for the moment, Bradley explored the minimal offerings of Sam’s apartment.

The first door on the right after the kitchen was the bathroom. It was narrow, not much wider than the door itself, and provided a tub/shower combo at the end by the window. Beside that was the toilet and a simple, free-standing sink. A mirrored medicine cabinet hung above it.

Bradley opened the cabinet. He expected to find medication, but was disappointed to discover only a tube of toothpaste, a well-used toothbrush and a Bic razor. For an ex-con, it looked like Sam lived a pretty clean life.

Between the bathroom and his bedroom was what Sam called the “TV room.”

Should have called it the unentertaining room.

The space was smaller than his bedroom by half, and lodged a ratty old couch and an old tube television. Bradley looked for a remote control, and wasn’t surprised when he didn’t find one.

He turned the TV on. It took some time for the picture to warm up and fade in. Bradley flipped through the thirteen channels on the analog dial. Ten of them offered hissing snow, and of the three channels the TV could pick up, nothing of interest was on. He turned the TV off in disgust.

A little later Bradley found himself sitting on the stairs leading up to the building entrance as he waited for Sam to return. Locked out, he watched the few people that walked by but spent most of his time playing games on his phone. He hoped to see another prostitute, maybe on the corner of Casanova and Spoffard. Instead, an elderly woman with a cane pulled a wheeled wire cart partially filled with groceries to the wrought iron gate. She unlocked it, stowed her cane in her cart, and began to climb the stairs to the front doors.

The woman shielded her squinting eyes with her free hand and looked up at Bradley. “Good afternoon to you now.” The woman spoke with a thick Scottish accent.

Bradley pocketed his phone and prepared to stand up.

“No, no, sit down, child. I’m fine.” The old woman waved at Bradley to sit. Her wrinkled hands looked soft and doughy, tipped with thick, milky fingernails that curved to subtle points, like those he’d seen in vampire movies.

“I’ve been climbing these stairs longer than you’ve been alive,” she said. “Still strong as an ox.”

“I’m not a child,” Bradley said.

The woman caught Bradley’s scowl. “Aye. Right you are.”

Bradley watched the woman struggle up the stairs, one step at a time, until she stood next to him with her cart on the top landing. She paused to catch her breath.

“Have you seen a cat around by any chance,” the woman said. “A tabby? Piper’s his name.”

Bradley kept his gaze locked on the street. “Actually yeah. Saw him here yesterday.” He pointed at the fading blood streak on the sidewalk. “See that? He killed a rat over there.”

“Piper! That blasted cat.” The woman pushed her cart to one side of the front entrance and eased herself down next to Bradley on the top step. She turned to look at him. “So, who do you belong to?”

“My dad’s the super.”

“You’re Sam’s boy?” The woman’s face lit up with recognition. “Now that you mention it, I can see it. You got his eyes.”

Bradley didn’t care. The woman could see it in his face and in the way he tensed up when she talked about Sam.

“Sam’s been through some tough times, I don’t care to know what, but he’s a good man,” the woman said. “He really looks out for us here…even the bad ones.”

Bradley knew what the woman was trying to do and part of him wanted to listen and believe, but old hurt won out.

“He’s a stranger to me.”

“Everyone’s a stranger once,” the woman said. “Give it some time.”

“I got all summer, unfortunately.” Bradley sighed.

Piper mewled from around the side of the concrete stairs. He poked his head through the bars in the railing and strolled up to join Bradley and the woman sitting at the top.

“Ah, there he is.” The woman smiled and made a nick-nick sound with her tongue. “Piper’s a regular scoundrel, and a handsome one at that, hey boy?”

Piper pushed his head under the woman’s weathered hand and she responded by giving him a head scratch.

“You got a cat at home?” the woman asked.

“No,” said Bradley. “My mom won’t allow it. She’s a bit of a square.”

“Maybe when you get home you can convince her to change her mind.”

“Maybe.” Bradley looked at the woman. She had managed to crack his foul mood, if only slightly.

Piper saw something in the alley, froze for a second, then was off with a start down the stairs.

“There he goes again. Damn cat.” The woman began her struggle to stand up. “I’d best be going now.”

Bradley stood up and helped the woman to stand.

“Thank you, dear. Say, what’s your name?”

“Brad.”

“Nice to meet you, Brad. I’m Mrs. Baxter, up in 302.” She held her right hand out.

Bradley took it and they shook hands. He was surprised by the strength of her grip. His earlier impression of her hands had been completely wrong.

“Come up and visit any time.” Mrs. Baxter grabbed her shopping cart. She located her keys and opened the front door of the building.

Bradley grabbed the door and held it open for her. She lifted her cane from the cart and moved through the door. At the end of the hallway, the elevator doors slid open. Two elderly men in their sixties shuffled out. Mrs. Baxter’s eyes narrowed and her demeanor flipped in an instant.

She leaned over to Bradley, as if to whisper, but spoke loud enough for the men to hear. “I’ll let you in on a secret,” Mrs. Baxter said. “See those two? Gus and Mel. You’d be best to steer clear of those arseholes.”

Bradley cracked a smile as the two men approached. Gustavo, the taller of the two, wore moth-eaten clothes and his bushy gray mustache hovered over a permanent scowl. Except for the overwhelming odor of booze and sour sweat, there was nothing memorable about Melvin except Carny, a little bichon frise that trailed at his feet. Reddish-brown stains surrounded the dog’s eyes, mouth and paws. At first glance, Bradley thought it was blood.

“Out of my way, Baxter,” Melvin said. “Your frozen dinners are melting.” As if to join the conversation, the little dog began to growl and bark with a high-pitched yip-yip. Bradley thought the dog was a joke.

Mrs. Baxter tapped Bradley’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You be alright, now, Brad.” She turned to Melvin and said: “Keep your hands to yourself, you bugger. And keep that rat of a dog away from me or I’ll string him up.”

“Same goes for your old, dirty pussy,” said Gustavo. “Oh sorry. I meant your cat.”

Mrs. Baxter’s eyes went wide like saucers. Melvin and Gustavo enjoyed her reaction and broke into hearty laughter. She swung her cane at Gustavo and missed him by inches.

Carny looked up at Bradley, his little body tensed in an attack pose. Bradley chuckled but it didn’t matter how he reacted. The dog took offense to anything he, or anyone, did. Carny began to growl. Bradley growled right back. Carny switched to his annoying yip-yip bark and began to lunge at Bradley’s feet. Bradley pretended to attack. He thrust his body forward and stomped his feet. The little dog backed up, scared, but maintained his incessant yip-yipping.

Melvin poked his head back into the building. “Carny! Move yer ass. Git!”

The little dog responded in an instant, and ran towards Melvin, yip-yipping back at Bradley at the same time. They both disappeared down the front steps.

“Put that thing on a leash!” Bradley said.

“Shut your damn mouth, boy.” Melvin’s response was muted only slightly through the front doors to the building.

Mrs. Baxter pulled her shopping cart down the hallway towards the elevator. She called back, “His bark is worse than his bite.”

“Thanks.” Bradley wondered if Carny had the courage to bite anything. The little dog would find out soon enough.

The elevator doors opened with a rusted, scraping sound. Mrs. Baxter stepped in and pulled her cart behind her. She turned and gave Bradley a small wave as the doors swallowed her up.

Eviscerated

A little later Bradley found himself sitting on the stairs leading up to the building entrance as he waited for Sam to return. Locked out, he watched the few people that walked by but spent most of his time playing games on his phone. He hoped to see another prostitute, maybe on the corner of Casanova and Spoffard. Instead, an elderly woman with a cane pulled a wheeled wire cart partially filled with groceries to the wrought iron gate. She unlocked it, stowed her cane in her cart, and began to climb the stairs to the front doors.

The woman shielded her squinting eyes with her free hand and looked up at Bradley. “Good afternoon to you now.” The woman spoke with a thick Scottish accent.

Bradley pocketed his phone and prepared to stand up.

“No, no, sit down, child. I’m fine.” The old woman waved at Bradley to sit. Her wrinkled hands looked soft and doughy, tipped with thick, milky fingernails that curved to subtle points, like those he’d seen in vampire movies.

“I’ve been climbing these stairs longer than you’ve been alive,” she said. “Still strong as an ox.”

“I’m not a child,” Bradley said.

The woman caught Bradley’s scowl. “Aye. Right you are.”

Bradley watched the woman struggle up the stairs, one step at a time, until she stood next to him with her cart on the top landing. She paused to catch her breath.

“Have you seen a cat around by any chance,” the woman said. “A tabby? Piper’s his name.”

Bradley kept his gaze locked on the street. “Actually yeah. Saw him here yesterday.” He pointed at the fading blood streak on the sidewalk. “See that? He killed a rat over there.”

“Piper! That blasted cat.” The woman pushed her cart to one side of the front entrance and eased herself down next to Bradley on the top step. She turned to look at him. “So, who do you belong to?”

“My dad’s the super.”

“You’re Sam’s boy?” The woman’s face lit up with recognition. “Now that you mention it, I can see it. You got his eyes.”

Bradley didn’t care. The woman could see it in his face and in the way he tensed up when she talked about Sam.

“Sam’s been through some tough times, I don’t care to know what, but he’s a good man,” the woman said. “He really looks out for us here…even the bad ones.”

Bradley knew what the woman was trying to do and part of him wanted to listen and believe, but old hurt won out.

“He’s a stranger to me.”

“Everyone’s a stranger once,” the woman said. “Give it some time.”

“I got all summer, unfortunately.” Bradley sighed.

Piper mewled from around the side of the concrete stairs. He poked his head through the bars in the railing and strolled up to join Bradley and the woman sitting at the top.

“Ah, there he is.” The woman smiled and made a nick-nick sound with her tongue. “Piper’s a regular scoundrel, and a handsome one at that, hey boy?”

Piper pushed his head under the woman’s weathered hand and she responded by giving him a head scratch.

“You got a cat at home?” the woman asked.

“No,” said Bradley. “My mom won’t allow it. She’s a bit of a square.”

“Maybe when you get home you can convince her to change her mind.”

“Maybe.” Bradley looked at the woman. She had managed to crack his foul mood, if only slightly.

Piper saw something in the alley, froze for a second, then was off with a start down the stairs.

“There he goes again. Damn cat.” The woman began her struggle to stand up. “I’d best be going now.”

Bradley stood up and helped the woman to stand.

“Thank you, dear. Say, what’s your name?”

“Brad.”

“Nice to meet you, Brad. I’m Mrs. Baxter, up in 302.” She held her right hand out.

Bradley took it and they shook hands. He was surprised by the strength of her grip. His earlier impression of her hands had been completely wrong.

“Come up and visit any time.” Mrs. Baxter grabbed her shopping cart. She located her keys and opened the front door of the building.

Bradley grabbed the door and held it open for her. She lifted her cane from the cart and moved through the door. At the end of the hallway, the elevator doors slid open. Two elderly men in their sixties shuffled out. Mrs. Baxter’s eyes narrowed and her demeanor flipped in an instant.

She leaned over to Bradley, as if to whisper, but spoke loud enough for the men to hear. “I’ll let you in on a secret,” Mrs. Baxter said. “See those two? Gus and Mel. You’d be best to steer clear of those arseholes.”

Bradley cracked a smile as the two men approached. Gustavo, the taller of the two, wore moth-eaten clothes and his bushy gray mustache hovered over a permanent scowl. Except for the overwhelming odor of booze and sour sweat, there was nothing memorable about Melvin except Carny, a little bichon frise that trailed at his feet. Reddish-brown stains surrounded the dog’s eyes, mouth and paws. At first glance, Bradley thought it was blood.

“Out of my way, Baxter,” Melvin said. “Your frozen dinners are melting.” As if to join the conversation, the little dog began to growl and bark with a high-pitched yip-yip. Bradley thought the dog was a joke.

Mrs. Baxter tapped Bradley’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You be alright, now, Brad.” She turned to Melvin and said: “Keep your hands to yourself, you bugger. And keep that rat of a dog away from me or I’ll string him up.”

“Same goes for your old, dirty pussy,” said Gustavo. “Oh sorry. I meant your cat.”

Mrs. Baxter’s eyes went wide like saucers. Melvin and Gustavo enjoyed her reaction and broke into hearty laughter. She swung her cane at Gustavo and missed him by inches.

Carny looked up at Bradley, his little body tensed in an attack pose. Bradley chuckled but it didn’t matter how he reacted. The dog took offense to anything he, or anyone, did. Carny began to growl. Bradley growled right back. Carny switched to his annoying yip-yip bark and began to lunge at Bradley’s feet. Bradley pretended to attack. He thrust his body forward and stomped his feet. The little dog backed up, scared, but maintained his incessant yip-yipping.

Melvin poked his head back into the building. “Carny! Move yer ass. Git!”

The little dog responded in an instant, and ran towards Melvin, yip-yipping back at Bradley at the same time. They both disappeared down the front steps.

“Put that thing on a leash!” Bradley said.

“Shut your damn mouth, boy.” Melvin’s response was muted only slightly through the front doors to the building.

Mrs. Baxter pulled her shopping cart down the hallway towards the elevator. She called back, “His bark is worse than his bite.”

“Thanks.” Bradley wondered if Carny had the courage to bite anything. The little dog would find out soon enough.

The elevator doors opened with a rusted, scraping sound. Mrs. Baxter stepped in and pulled her cart behind her. She turned and gave Bradley a small wave as the doors swallowed her up.

Sam dropped a pizza box on the kitchen table, Kingsley Fried Chicken & Pizza written in bold letters on the top and sides. The word “Pizza” was smaller than the rest of the words in the logo, and looked like an afterthought.

The smell that drifted out of the cracks in the lid caused Bradley’s stomach to growl loudly. He could have eaten the box.

“I’m starving!” Bradley had skipped lunch because what little food existed in the refrigerator wasn’t fit for eating.

“I told you to have a hot dog,” Sam said.

“Have you seen them?” Bradley opened the fridge and pulled out the package of wieners. “For one thing, they’re past the best-before date. But the worst part is they’re sticky and slimy, like they’ve been dipped in honey.”

“I can’t remember when I bought those. Most of the time I live on take out.” Sam nodded at the pizza box on the table.

Bradley took out a wiener and held it up over the sink. Semi-translucent fluid dripped off the hot dog in globs. “That ain’t honey. That’s nasty.”

“Okay, well chuck ‘em.” Sam grabbed two plastic plates from the cupboard. “Garbage’s under the sink. Now go wash up.”

Bradley tossed the hot dogs and headed down the hallway toward the bathroom, but made a quick detour to his bedroom. He reached into his suitcase, grabbed the rubber rat, and jammed it into his front pocket. He returned to the bathroom and gave his hands a cursory rinse.

“With soap,” Sam’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “What are you, five?”

Bradley grumbled at Sam’s keen ears, and washed his hands again properly. It was probably a good idea anyway, especially after he had handled that decomposing wiener.

“Who do you think you are?” Bradley said under his breath. “My da—” He stopped short when he realized what he had planned to say and was surprised and angered that he couldn’t say it. He dried off his hands and returned to the kitchen.

“How can you afford to order take out the time?” Bradley jammed his right hand into his pocket, cupped the rubber rat, and sat down. Under the cover of the table, he pulled out the rat and held it loosely in his hand.

“That’s the cheapest pizza in the Bronx,” Sam said. “It’s a chain. They’re everywhere.”

“And I guess it’s just coincidence that their initials are K.F.C.?”

“Guess so. Never thought about it.”

Bradley opened the lid of the pizza box. “Kingsley’s Best” it proudly proclaimed, and revealed a sparsely topped pizza with a crust as thin as the corrugated cardboard it sat on.

“Cheap is right.” Bradley sat down, grabbed a slice, and placed it on his plate. “You can practically see through it.”

“But it smells good, right?” Sam smiled. “Right?”

It did smell fantastic, but Bradley had no intention of agreeing with him.

“Want a Coke?” Sam said.

“Sure.”

Sam opened the fridge and grabbed two cans of Coke. While his back was turned, Bradley placed the rubber rat into the pizza box and closed the lid.

Sam returned to the table and handed one of the Cokes to Bradley.

“Thanks.” Bradley watched as Sam spun the box around and opened the lid.

Sam shrieked and retracted his hand. He hooked the pizza box with his thumb and dragged it off the table, dropping his can of Coke as he stumbled backward over his chair. The pizza box hit the floor on one corner and ejected the rubber rat out and towards Sam, now on his back, eyes wide.

Sam’s realization: it’s a rubber rat. He looked up at Bradley, now gazing over the far edge of the table. Sam saw the remorse and guilt on Bradley’s face. He knew he was in deep shit.

Sam collected his wits. He stood up, picked up the pizza box and the Coke, and placed them on the table. Bradley watched his every move. He grabbed the rubber rat by the tail and carried it to the sink. Along the way, Sam couldn’t help but notice how detailed the decoy was, with its finely painted fur, whiskers, and glistening red eyes. A shiver ripped through his body.

He opened the door under the sink. The hanging garbage bag attached to the door banged against it with a clunk. Sam opened the lid, stained from years of food and mold, and released his two-fingered grip on the rubber rat’s tail. It fell to the bottom of the garbage bag like it was made of lead.

Sam closed the lid to the garbage and the door under the sink and returned to the table. He righted his chair and sat down. He opened the pizza box. The entire pie had folded over onto itself and stuck together. Sam salvaged a slice and dropped it on his plate. He closed the lid to the box and revealed Bradley sitting across from him with a pathetic, sorrowful look on his face.

“Real funny, you little shit,” Sam said.

“Mom said you’d appreciate it.”

“Did she? And you believed her.” Sam switched his unopened Coke with Bradley’s and slammed it down on the table. “Just for that, you’re on garbage duty.”

“I guess it was supposed to be a joke,” Bradley said.

“You mean you don’t know?”

Bradley had no words.

“Shut up and eat.” Sam ripped into his slice of pizza, working hard to keep his cool.

Dinner was eaten in silence. Bradley found the pizza surprisingly delicious, but he had lost most of his appetite after the rat prank went off the rails. He felt ashamed for scaring Sam so badly, and angry at Claire for suggesting the idea. She had known what would happen. Bradley was sure of it.

After dinner, Sam moved to the TV room. Bradley cleared the table, and washed and dried the plates. The left-over pizza was deposited in the fridge.

Bradley opened the door under the sink. The garbage bag swung back and forth, knocking its wooden supports. He lifted the lid and looked in. Remnants of meals past festered in the bag and a fetid odor drifted up to meet his nose. Bradley considered rescuing the rubber rat, but dismissed the idea. The damage was done. He unhooked the bag and tied it up.

Sam had tuned in an old episode of Starsky and Hutch. Bradley appeared at the door of the TV room and watched him. He wanted to apologize but didn’t know how to begin.

“Need something?” Sam kept his eyes on the television.

Bradley held up the bag of garbage. “Where does this go?”

“End of the hall. You can’t miss it.”

Bradley hesitated at the doorway.

Sam looked at him. “Need something else?”

Bradley took a deep breath. “Sorry about the rat. It was a stupid thing to do.”

Sam continued to look at him, expressionless. He was still pissed, but he promised himself that he wouldn’t carry a grudge. After a moment, Sam returned his gaze to the television.

Bradley stepped out into the common hallway and wandered toward the elevator. At least the wall sconces lit the way. Without them, the spill of natural light from each end would have left most of the long hallway in shadow. The thought of the same unlit passage at night gave Bradley the creeps.

At the elevator, the common hallway joined a secondary hallway in a T-junction that spanned the width of the building. Windows terminated both ends. The left one looked out onto Spoffard and had steel bars bolted to it. The right one lead out to the fire escape and the alley.

To the left of the elevator was the emergency stairwell. To the right, the hinged garbage chute in the wall that led to the dumpster in the alley. This confused Bradley, since he was on the first floor, but the apartment was built on a slope. Sam’s apartment seemed higher off the ground than the apartment across the hall.

The garbage chute was beaten up and dirty from years of abuse. Bradley grabbed the handle and drew it back, repulsed. The handle felt sticky and unclean. In his head, he pictured slime threads forming between the handle and his hand. He hooked his index finger onto the far edge of the handle and pulled the chute door open. The smell of ripe and rancid food rose up to his nose. He fought the gorge that rose in his throat and stuffed the garbage bag into the maw of the chute. The bag slid down part way and stopped just out of reach.

“Shit.” Bradley looked into the gaping chute. There was no way he would lean in there to push the garbage further. He wouldn’t have been able to reach the bag of garbage anyway.

He poked his head into the hallway. “Dad!” The word just came out. Bradley hadn’t planned on addressing Sam as his “Dad” any time soon. He looked down the hallway to where the door to apartment 102 stood ajar, and hoped that Sam hadn’t heard him slip up.

There was no response. Bradley heaved a sigh of relief as he made his way back to the apartment. Sam hadn’t heard him over the volume of the television.

Bradley leaned back on the door frame to the TV room. Sam watched Hutch being bound and gagged by mobsters.

“It won’t go down,” he said.

In fading 1970s color, Starsky pulled his gun as he broke through a warehouse door. “What?” Sam said.

“The garbage,” Bradley said. “It’s stuck.” He stared at Sam, getting under his skin.

“Shit. That was a good episode.” Sam stood up and flipped off the television. He trudged past Bradley and into the kitchen. Bradley followed. “Can’t even do a simple thing right.” Sam grabbed the hanging rake from off the wall.

“I did exactly what you said.” Bradley rebounded off Sam’s angry energy. “It’s not my fault.”

“We’ll see about that.”

When they reached the garbage chute, Sam yanked the door open. The bag of garbage sat right where it had been when Bradley left to get help. Sam reached in and tried to push it, but it was a couple of inches beyond his reach.

“Hold the door open.” Sam grasped the rake’s wooden handle with both fists. Bradley pulled open the chute’s door and held it open.

Sam inserted the rake into the chute and pushed. The garbage bag slid a little more, then stopped. He pushed again, but the bag wasn’t going to budge.

“It must be blocked on the outside. Come on.” Sam extracted the rake and headed for the front entrance.

A mountain of garbage, about ten feet up from where Sam and Bradley stood, flowed out of the chute and into the overflowing dumpster. Something had clogged the chute’s exit.

“Hold this.” Sam handed the rake to Bradley and heaved himself up onto the lip of the dumpster. Skirting around the edge, Sam managed to reach into the chute’s exit opening. The clog was a little further up.

Sam beckoned with his hand. “The rake.”

Bradley passed the tool to Sam’s extended hand. He inserted the tines into the chute and pushed the rake back and forth. A few pieces of garbage fell past the rake’s handle and rolled into the dumpster. Sam rotated the rake and the tines hooked onto something.

“What is it?” Bradley said.

Sam gave another firmer yank. The clogged refuse popped free and barreled down the chute propelled by the stacks of garbage on top of it. The rake shot out of the chute and deep into the trash heap, its tines sticking up.

A barrage of frozen dinner boxes knocked Sam backward and off the lip of the dumpster. He hit the ground before Bradley could get to him.

Sam grabbed one of the frozen dinner boxes on the ground and tossed it out of his way. “Mrs. Baxter.” He grumbled under his breath.

“What?”

“The things I do to keep this building running.” Sam sat on the alley pavement to catch his breath.

“You okay?” Bradley said.

“A little help?”

Bradley forced himself to ignore the sticky, rotting garbage juices that covered Sam’s hands and grabbed his extended arm.

But some of it wasn’t fluid from the dumpster. “You’re bleeding,” Bradley said.

Sam looked at the palms of his hands. They were covered with chunks of clotted blood and fur. Bradley looked at the hand he had helped Sam up with, and realized with revulsion that some of the blood had transferred to his hand as well. Not wanting to wipe the slurry on his pants, he looked for something to scrape it off with but didn’t want to touch anything.

Sam examined his hands, and found no cuts or scrapes. “It’s not my blood.”

Bradley exchanged a perplexed look with Sam. Bradley’s earlier prank seemed to dissolve in the back of Sam’s mind as he faced a new mystery, his son on his side this time.

It was almost seven o’clock in the evening. There was still plenty of light out, but the shadows of the alley around the dumpster prevailed. Sam fished a penlight out of his pocket and focused the beam on the pavement. What he saw was blood and lots of it.

“Then…whose blood is it?” A shudder moved up Bradley’s spine.

Sam knelt close to the pavement and shone the penlight around the base of the dumpster. The trail of blood and fur seemed to lead to the apartment building. He followed the light of his flashlight to the base of the building, where it revealed a large, dark hole. Normally, the dumpster sat flush with the wall of the building, which was why he hadn’t seen it yet.

Sam crouched low and got his head close to the pavement and the base of the building. An odor of decay began to overtake the essence of blood mixed with rotting garbage. He fought to control his revulsion, and aimed his penlight beam into the hole. A gold flash reflected back at him, and a small sense of recognition twigged his memory.

“Do you see something?” Bradley said. “What is it?”

“I’m going to find out.” Sam wanted answers instead of more questions. He thought about rolling up his sleeves, but they were already soaked with dumpster juice. He laid the penlight on the ground. Bradley watched with a mix of fascination and horror as Sam’s right arm disappeared past his elbow into the hole. When his hand met the source of the blood, it felt like a rack of ribs. His fingers moved over the bony surfaces held together with cartilage and fleshy connective tissue, and found a flat metal surface with a point on one end.

“Got something.” Sam pulled the metal object out of the hole, and dragged whatever was attached to it out as well. “Feels like a—”

As soon as Sam pulled the object clear of the hole, even though it was covered with blackened blood and fur, he knew what it was. He cleared the surface of the flat heart-shaped metal object with his thumb. The crimson sludge slid off and revealed the word “Piper” on it. He didn’t need to see the rest.

“Oh Jesus.” Sam pulled the tag further out of the hole. What was left of Piper’s body slid out with a sickening shplop. The tag and the collar connected to it was entwined with Piper’s partially eaten corpse.

“What?” Bradley crouched to get a better look. His question answered itself when he saw Piper’s bloodied vanity tag flip out of the hole beside the bloodied collar. “Shit, that’s messed up.”

Sam unbuckled the collar and pulled it out from around Piper’s exposed neck. His small, tightly connected vertebrae was visible, even without the flashlight. The skull and what was left of the skeleton lolled like a rag doll.

Sam examined the collar and sighed.

“Want to help me deliver the bad news?” Sam looked at Bradley. They both were unenthused by the task ahead of them.

Bradley stood at the kitchen sink in a daze. He washed the blood off Piper’s collar, and his own hands in the process. Even though he had just met Mrs. Baxter and Piper, he felt a connection to them, and now a loss. He blotted the collar with a towel, leaving pink blood stains behind.

Sam entered the kitchen and placed his hand lightly on Bradley’s shoulder. “Ready to do this?”

Bradley nodded. They both left the apartment and walked to the elevator at the end of the hallway. Sam pressed the call button and the doors opened in front of them, screeching metal on metal.

“You need to grease these—”

“The doors? Yeah, it’s on my to-do list,” Sam said. “Not a high priority.”

The father-son duo entered the elevator. The doors closed and swallowed them up as it begun its creaky ascent to the third floor.

Bradley held Piper’s collar. He turned it around in his hands, stopping to look at the vanity tag once more. There was something about the picture of Puss-in-Boots that made him choke up a bit.

“You going to be okay?” Sam watched him.

Bradley nodded and looked away. “You ever have to do something like this before?”

“No,” Sam said. “First time.”

“I wish it was that yappy dog instead,” Bradley said.

“Carny. Melvin’s dog.”

“Yeah.”

Sam nodded his head in agreement. “True, Carny is damn annoying, but I wouldn’t wish what happened to Piper on him, or any other living thing for that matter.”

The elevator doors opened to the third floor. Sam and Bradley stepped out and walked to apartment 302, halfway down the hallway. On the door was brass knocker, a ring clasped in a lion’s mouth.

Sam looked at Bradley. He nodded back. Even though they were bearers of bad news, the task of informing Mrs. Baxter of Piper’s misfortune had solidified their relationship in a small, but noticeable way.

Sam grabbed the door knocker and rapped it three times. After what felt like a long time, they heard shuffling behind the door, fumbling with the lock. The door swung open and revealed Mrs. Baxter standing in a housecoat.

“Sam, Brad. This is a surprise.” Mrs. Baxter worked to blink the sleep out of her eyes.

“Sorry to bother you so late, Mrs. Baxter.” Sam held Mrs. Baxter’s gaze. Bradley couldn’t manage it.

“Nonsense. Come in.” Mrs. Baxter beckoned. “I’ll put on a pot of tea.”

“Maybe another time,” Sam said.

“Shot of whiskey?”

“I don’t do alcohol anymore, I’m afraid.”

Mrs. Baxter shifted her gaze from Sam to Bradley and back. She sensed something wasn’t right. Then she spotted the collar in Bradley’s hands and recognized it immediately. The color drained from her face.

“What is it?” Mrs. Baxter said.

“Brad and I found this out back.” Sam looked at Bradley. He had heard Sam but he was somewhere else in his head. Sam placed his hand on Bradley’s shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. This brought him back and he looked at Sam, whose eyes were on the collar in Bradley’s hands.

Things clicked and Bradley presented the collar to Mrs. Baxter, still damp from being washed.

Mrs. Baxter took the collar. “Piper, that scoundrel.” She tried to maintain a strong front. It was clear to Sam that her coping mechanism was talking. “He’s always losing his collar. I’m going to have to give him a talking to when he gets home.”

“I don’t think Piper’s coming back this time,” Sam said.

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Baxter tried to avoid the truth. Bradley turned his gaze to the floor.

“Something got to him.” Sam held Mrs. Baxter’s gaze. “I don’t know what. Maybe a dog.”

Reality began to crash down around Mrs. Baxter. She looked down at the vanity tag. A wide-eyed Puss-in-Boots stared back.

“Can I see him?”

“There was nothing left.” Sam realized the harshness of his words. “I mean nothing you’d want to see.”

Mrs. Baxter saw her answer in Sam’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said.

With the collar clutched in her hands, Mrs. Baxter turned to walk back into her apartment. Some of the sparkle in her eyes left her in that moment.

“You going to be okay, Mrs. Baxter?” Sam poked his head into her apartment and watched her disappear down the hallway to her bedroom. Bradley was struck by how warm and inviting her apartment was compared to Sam’s.

Sam closed the door. “I don’t want to do that again any time soon.”

Back in the elevator creaking under their weight, Sam and Bradley descended back to the first floor.

Bradley broke the silence. “Why does bad shit happen to good people?”

“Sometimes they bring it on themselves.” Sam recalled his own crime and sentencing fifteen years previous.

“Mrs. Baxter didn’t deserve that.” Bradley watched the elevator’s floor indicator spin back to one as the car bounced on its old, stretched cables.

The doors scraped open and Gustavo pushed his way into the car before Sam and Bradley had a chance to exit.

“Hey, my water pressure’s low,” Gustavo said. “Been like that for weeks.”

Sam was well aware of Gustavo’s water pressure issues. “It’s on my list,” Sam said.

Gustavo scoffed. “How about you put it on the top of your list?”

I’m so tired of your shit, Sam thought. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

“Kill any cats, lately?” Bradley eyed Gustavo as he moved toward the hallway.

Gustavo hooked a thumb at Bradley. “Kid’s got a mouth on him.” His ever-familiar scowl was back in full force. “Going to get him in trouble one of these days.”

“Well, did you?” Bradley wanted an answer.

Gustavo grabbed Bradley’s arm and gave him a once-over. He paused a little long on Bradley’s raccoon tail. “You accusing me of something, you little shit?”

“Back off,” Sam said as the closing elevator doors triggered on his foot and reopened.

Gustavo glared at Bradley and released his arm, then focused back at Sam. “I didn’t kill nothing.” He pointed at Bradley’s raccoon tail. “But it looks like you did.”

“Mrs. Baxter’s cat is missing.” Sam looked for any irregular behavior that might indicate Gustavo’s dishonesty, but either he was telling the truth or he was a very good liar.

“So? How is that my problem?” Gustavo stared after Sam and Bradley as they walked down the hallway. “I don’t give a rat’s ass where that cat is.”

Sam leaned close to Bradley. “Don’t respond,” he said, quiet enough so Gustavo couldn’t hear.

“What, are you spreading lies about me now?” The elevator doors began to creak shut. “Don’t forget about my water—”

The elevator doors closed tight, and silenced Gustavo’s complaints mid-sentence.

Visit

Sam lay on the couch wide awake, still dressed in his soiled work shirt and jeans. He wanted to sleep, but his body would not let it happen. The lumpy sofa combined with the evening’s events left him staring at the shadows on the ceiling. Over and over, his mind returned to the dumpster, where he and Bradley had used the rake to collect and deposit what was left of Piper into a black garbage bag. Soon, the cat would be on a truck on his way to his final resting place: a landfill in New Jersey. It all felt wrong to Sam.

Yeah, Piper was just a cat, but he deserved better in the end.

Mrs. Baxter had been denied the opportunity to say goodbye, to give his fur one last stroke. Sam wondered if people would act differently day-to-day if they knew for sure that a loved one was going to die. So many thoughts pushed sleep out the door, and if Sam had known that Mrs. Baxter had cried herself to sleep that night, there would have been no chance at sleep at all.

What he really wanted was a drink: beer, wine, whiskey, anything. By offering him a shot of whiskey, Mrs. Baxter had opened a can of alcoholic worms Sam managed to keep closed most days.

Just to take the edge off, Sam thought, but he knew that wasn’t an option. If word of him drinking ever got back to Claire, she would make sure that Sam would never see Bradley again.

A noise shifted Sam’s focus. He sat up and cocked his head to one side and waited. His brain canceled out muted traffic sounds that seeped through the window. The apartment air hung quiet and still.

There it was again, the same noise, followed by similar, smaller sounds of commotion, like pieces of wood clattering against each other. The darkness of the apartment seemed to amplify the noises and the hairs on the back of Sam’s neck stood at attention. He dug out his penlight and aimed its beam out the door of the TV room and into the hallway. The little light cut the darkness with its narrow beam. Bradley’s bedroom door was closed.

Sam stood in the hallway, stopping to listen and relocate the source of the noise. With each slow, careful step, Sam made his way to the center of the kitchen. The floor creaked with each step. He stopped and scanned the counter tops and baseboards, but was met with nothing but silence. He searched the kitchen one more time, under the table and chairs and along the front of the refrigerator.

As he turned to leave, something rattled close by. He redirected the penlight on the sink, then on the door underneath. Another scratching sound.

Sam approached the door, his hand outreached in front of him. The penlight’s beam locked on the door’s handle like a target. His periphery fell into dark unknowns, bringing with it rising unease. Sam didn’t like the dark. He’d experienced enough darkness from his time in prison to last him a lifetime.

He drew in a deep breath and grabbed the door’s handle. He pulled it open and stepped back at the same time, keeping his penlight aimed on the door as it swung open. The garbage bag that hung on the inside inherited the door’s motion and rocked back and forth as the handle struck the front of the counter. Then nothing but silence.

Sam froze. Something was there, inside the bag. He just didn’t know what. Sam took a tentative step forward and kept his penlight on the motionless bag. Then the bag moved. At first Sam thought he was seeing things, but the bag moved again, accompanied with sounds of rustling and chittering.

The bag began to writhe as a flood of rats flipped the plastic lid open and spilled out and over the lip of the garbage bag. Sam’s eyes bugged out as the rats, maybe a dozen or more, charged at him across the floor. Every fiber in Sam’s body told him to run, but the best his terror-addled brain could handle was a step backward. This proved to be a bad choice as he stumbled backward over one of the kitchen chairs. He hit the floor hard and knocked the penlight from his hands.

Sam scrambled to get away, but his socked feet and sweaty hands failed to give him any traction. In his frenzy to get away, Sam kicked the penlight on the floor. It spun and illuminated the kitchen like a rotating police cherry. With each spin of the penlight, the horde of rats drew closer. Sam froze, terror in his eyes.

Several rats climbed onto Sam’s feet, traversing up his legs and towards his knees. Others headed towards his crotch. Feeling their weight on his body sent him into a tailspin of panic. Sam’s chest rose and fell with heavy hitches, his face painted with sweat. The spinning penlight slowed to a stop, and back-lit the advancing rats with its blinding brightness. A mound of fur rose against the light, larger than any rat he had ever seen. For a brief moment, he thought he was looking at a cat, that somehow Piper had risen from the dead. Sam shut his eyes tight in hopes he was just dreaming it all, but when he opened them again, the smaller rats had advanced and the larger rat, clearly the leader, had crawled up onto Sam’s inner thigh. The smaller rats had parted to make way for the alpha rat, and Sam was the rodent’s red carpet.

Oh Jesus Oh Jesus Oh Jesus…Sam screamed in his head, but the words never made it out.

Bradley awoke with a start, having heard commotion coming from outside his room. He swung his feet out of bed and headed for the bedroom door. He cracked it open in a slow arc. Something was happening in the kitchen, but he couldn’t see anything except the glow of light and moving shadows cast on the walls.

“Sam?” he said half whispering, as he stepped out of his room and down the hallway in slow, determined steps. When he passed the TV room, he saw the couch with its makeshift bed sat empty. “Sam?”

In the kitchen, Sam heard Bradley’s approach. He tried to scream for help again, but his voice betrayed him again. Nothing but dank fear escaped from his open mouth.

The alpha rat moved up onto Sam’s chest. Perched there, it felt about the weight of a newborn. Sam would later estimate the alpha rat’s weight as about ten pounds, more than an adult chihuahua. Its whiskers vibrated and its long, oily, white-tipped tail quivered and flipped back and forth as it slapped against Sam’s legs. The other rats held back, as if they were waiting for a cue from their leader. The alpha rat extended its neck and smelled Sam’s face. It opened its mouth to reveal two long, yellowed and blood-stained incisors in silhouette. Sam caught a whiff of its breath, which smelled like a mixture of shit and spoiled meat. The alpha rat ground its teeth to sharpen its incisors. The smaller rats joined in. The sound reminded Sam of chewing tin foil as a kid, sending shivers up his spine and raising the hairs on the back of his neck once again.

“Sam?” As Bradley passed the bathroom, the floor creaked under his weight.

The alpha rat cocked its head and huffed at the other rats. They turned and scrambled back under the sink, just as Bradley rounded the corner of the hallway and stepped into the kitchen. He found Sam sprawled on the floor next to an upturned chair and Sam’s penlight. Bradley turned on the kitchen light. It buzzed, flickered and eventually lit up. The kitchen was cast in a cold, bluish white glow.

“What are you doing on the floor?” Bradley said.

Sam looked down his chest, over his legs and towards the garbage bag under the sink. Not a rat to be seen. He relaxed his head to the floor and panted heavily.

“Are you wasted?”

Sam looked at Bradley and sensed the anger that reflected off him. “Do I look wasted?” he said between breaths. Sam extended his arm towards Bradley. “Give me a hand.”

Bradley hesitated, then walked over and grabbed Sam’s hand to pull him up. “Ugh, you’re all sweaty. You weren’t…uh, you know…having man time were you?”

“What? No!”

“Then what were you doing on the floor?”

“Don’t ask.” Sam righted the chair on the floor and grabbed his penlight. He clicked it off.

Bradley wiped his hand on his shirt. “Believe me, I’m not going to.”

“See you in the morning.” Sam staggered past Bradley and down the hallway to the TV room.

Bradley looked around the kitchen for anything out of the ordinary. Except for the open door under the sink, with the limp garbage bag hanging off it, everything seemed normal.

Bradley walked to the garbage, raised the lid, and looked in. The bag was empty, just as he had left it after he had taken out the garbage earlier in the evening, except for a single strip of pizza crust in the bottom. Sam must have had a midnight snack.

Perplexed and still in a sleep stupor, Bradley closed the sink door, turned off the kitchen light and returned to his bedroom. As he drifted back to sleep, he tried to piece together what he had (or hadn’t) seen in the kitchen. It didn’t make sense. Sam was hiding something.

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