One October morning I went downstairs to start breakfast and I heard some scratching and clawing coming from the bathroom. In the tub was a rat. It was brown and grey with a bulbous nose, fat and dumpy, with a long naked tail. It couldn’t manage to climb back out of the tub. It was a hideous looking thing. Filthy creatures they are but I’m not cruel. I went and grabbed an old pot I never used and trapped the rodent underneath, scooped it up with a Tupperware lid and took it outside.
I walked to the back alley and slung the rat out of the pot and onto the pavement. It landed with a thud, just sitting there motionless. I turned to walk back to the house. I noticed I had left the door opened. The obese rat darted past me and back into the house. I ran after it, throwing the pot, hoping to knock it off course, but instead I hit the bottom of the screen door.
The wind picked up and the willow tree next to the house quivered, lashing its thin branches against the gutter.
A woman, clothed in a brown dress and a grey mantle came out from inside the house. She was clutching a knife in her right hand, and a white lily in her left. As soon as I perceived her, she dissipated with the wind.
I felt light-headed, dizzy. I passed out. I don’t remember, but somehow, I made it to my bed. Downstairs I heard scratching and clawing. I swung myself out of bed. Something from under the bed grabbed my leg, letting go as soon as I looked down. There was nothing there. My closet door opened; the lights flickered. Scratching and clawing grew louder. I ran downstairs there was another, or maybe the same rat trapped in my tub. I ran some hot water, this time hoping to teach it a lesson, not to do this again. I went outside to smoke a cigarette, while the tub filled to an acceptable level for escape, or drowning. The smoke was soothing, and the smell placated my nerves. I could hear the water running, and then it stopped. I went back inside the house.
Laying in the tub was a woman, with dead pale skin, in a blue dress and looking up at the ceiling. The bathroom door slammed shut behind me and the light bulb popped, casting me into darkness. I turned and grabbed the doorknob, but it was locked. There was a force behind it keeping the door from budging. I felt a freezing cold hand grasp my wrist and pull me into the tub and under the water. Water rushed through my nostrils and down my throat. I panicked and sucked in more water, thinking to gasp for air, where there was none. My lungs and stomach were bloated with water. I swung my arms violently, grabbing for anything, hoping to pull myself out of the dark abyss. Finally, I was free and able to sit up in the tub and breathe, panting and coughing, snot and water emptying from my nose. I tried to stand, but my legs were weak. I fell back in the tub, vomiting water as I went down. I was alone.
I finally got out of the tub and made my way to the door. Before I got to it, the door swung open. The house was dark and empty, abandoned. There were holes in the floor and walls, and everything from paneling to wallpaper had been stripped. Across the kitchen and in the living room I could see a solitary candle lighting the room. I was still wet from my near-death experience in the tub. A cold light wind blew through the house, pushing the little flame from side-to-side. The candle was my only light. I walked toward it. There was a smell of decay and rot coming from where the candle was burning. It was intense. It made me sick to my stomach. I fell to my knees, vomiting more water. There was an uncontrollable gag and a jerking of my stomach muscles. I felt something alive in my throat, crawling its way up and out. I felt hair tickling the back of my throat and brushing up against my tongue. With one last lurch, I expunged a rat from my mouth.
It lay on the floor, barely breathing, then struggling violently, until finally it stopped moving. Next to the candle was a symbol painted on the floor. It was a red circle with some peculiar writing on the edges. An unseen force grabbed me by my hair and violently dragged me to the middle of the circle. My muscles stiffened and I couldn’t move. Standing above me was the lady in brown. She ripped my shirt open and stuck the knife in my hip.
“Jacob wrestled God. We wrestle with Lucifer. There, a ladder to heaven, here a ladder to hell.”
She took the blood from my hip and painted another circular symbol on my chest. The candle blew out. I was alone in the darkness unable to move. I could hear breathing in the room, and someone scuttling across the floor as if crawling on all fours. And then it was on top of me, belly to belly, mouth to mouth, like Elijah the prophet on top of the dead boy. The boy’s body grew warm, resurrected from the dead, but my body grew cold, preparing for death. My heart slowed, and I could feel the other body on top of my body melting, the burden growing lighter. I was absorbing this whatever, this spirit of flesh. I could hear it talking in my head, with violent musings and thoughts of murder. There was a pain in my chest. I couldn’t breathe. My eyes were watering and I felt like I was having a seizure, banging my head against the hard-wood flooring.
The next morning, I woke up with a throbbing headache. I threw the covers off of me and checked my hip and my chest. No wound, no blood, my body looked unscathed. I got out of bed and headed downstairs. I started cooking some bacon, and the popping of the grease started to sound more familiar to something I had heard the previous morning. At first it was somewhat muted, but gradually it became unmistakable- it was a scratching and a clawing, louder than normal. I emptied the bacon onto a plate and carried the frying pan with me to the bathroom, but there was nothing in the tub, yet the scratching and clawing persisted, and persists to this day. I know something is in me, rattling in my head, speaking to me. There’s one body, but two souls. The one resembling a man, the other a destructive creature gnawing away at my sanity. Always, and every day, my mind is rambling, scurrying to escape the thoughts, but it’s no use, the vermin is here to stay.