It was my uncle’s fault for dying.
That might sound insensitive, but it’s the truth. Because if he hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have found myself in the unfortunate position of cleaning out his house. And if I hadn’t been cleaning, then I never would’ve had to deal with the rats at all.
Here’s the thing about rats. Most people just think of them as slightly-bigger mice—heck, I used to think that. In fact, I thought rats were pretty cool, and even wanted one for a pet when I was younger. But there’s a big difference between the cute little guys you see at Petsmart, and the real-deal, alley-and-gutter, will-chew-through-the-floorboards-to-get-to-your-pantry kind of rats. The ones that fester in the shadows, baring teeth that are way too long and glaring with eyes that are way too intelligent. The ones that hiss, and lunge, and scrabble around inside the walls—the ones that keep you up during the night, and make your life hell during the day. All I can say is, Ratatouille lied. Rats are not your friends. They’re mean. They’re scary. And they’re huge. I once saw one that was so big, I initially mistook it for a cat, and subsequently moved out of that apartment as quickly as I could.
Not that it did me much good. Because there I was, cleaning out Uncle Rob’s disgusting condominium and dealing with rats all over again.
Look, I truly don’t have anything against my uncle. I barely knew him, so I’m not about to go making a bunch of assumptions about his character. I’m sure he was a great guy—or, at the very least, wasn’t up to anything notably immoral. And the last thing I need right now is to be haunted by an estranged relative, so I really don’t want to risk “speaking ill of the dead” or whatever.
But there is absolutely no reason that any human being should be living in that level of filth.
When I say “filth,” I’m not talking about a sloppy bachelor pad. I’m certainly not the cleanest guy myself, so I can look past the occasional pile of takeout containers or stack of old beer cans. Weird smell coming from the sink? No big deal. Dirty laundry on the floor? That’s normal.
What’s not normal is the downright abhorrent living conditions of Uncle Rob’s place.
Literally every surface was covered in grime, mold, or both. A thick layer of dust was caked onto everything from the floorboards to the top of the fridge. Some sort of slime that I couldn’t quite identify dripped from the ceiling and down the wall in places, forming viscous little puddles where it reached the ground. The stove and plumbing were rusted beyond what should’ve been possible, and gaping holes punched through the walls to reveal pipes that were equally corroded. A few inches of brown, tepid sludge, trying its best to pass for water and failing miserably, pooled at the bottom of the toilet and the shower. Mountains of garbage transformed the relatively small condo into a twisted labyrinth. The kitchen sink was filled with what looked like clumps of hair mixed with human feces, and the insides of both the oven and the microwave were splattered with something equally foul. The withered corpses of spiders, centipedes, and roaches were sprinkled about like confetti, and as I walked through the house, they’d crunch under my shoes like the worst percussion solo you’ve ever heard.
And the smell…oh gosh, the smell. It was unbearable. That’s really the only word I can think of to describe it, and it doesn’t even come close to doing it justice. It was so bad that the first time I opened the front door, I nearly passed out from the sudden wave of pungent waste, the stench just about knocking me off my feet. Coughing, eyes stinging with sudden tears, I’d briefly wondered if maybe they’d forgotten to remove Rob’s body after they’d found it. But even a two-week-old rotting corpse couldn’t have smelled that bad.
That was the first time I considered calling up my mom and telling her that there was no way in hell I’d be cleaning Rob’s house, and it wasn’t the last. But there wasn’t really much I could do. I’d been taking a “gap year” for the past three years in a row, and the only thing I had going for me was my job at the 7/11. I didn’t have friends, or a girlfriend, or even a dog; my days were usually spent mindlessly scrolling the internet, watching TV, and making half-hearted attempts to figure out what to do with my life. Painful as it is to admit, I was an aimless bum, living paycheck to paycheck in a state of perpetual stagnation. So between my comparatively free schedule, and the fact that I only lived one town over from Uncle Rob and was therefore the closest, it made more sense for me to be the one to clean out his place, rather than any of my extended family.
(Plus, my mother said she’d pay me two hundred bucks. So. There was that.)
I eventually decided to just suck it up and get to work. The sooner I finished, the sooner I’d never have to go back. And I’d already resolved that throwing in the towel wasn’t an option; I didn’t want to give my family one more reason to make disappointed comments about me behind my back. Maybe completing this task would be a step in the right direction—or at least a tally in the “not completely useless” box. I just needed to get it over with. It wouldn’t take too long, right? It wasn’t like I was getting the place ready to sell or anything—just clearing out the trash, scrubbing off the mold, and boxing up Rob’s stuff. It shouldn’t have taken more than a few days.
A week and multiple Amazon searches for hazmat suits later, I’d barely made a dent in the mess. To make matters worse, that dent was just enough for me to finally start noticing the rats.
Before, there’d been enough junk piled up everywhere that I wouldn’t have noticed a moose if it was standing right in front of me. Not to mention, most of my conscious energy was going towards keeping myself from keeling over from the stench. (Airing out the place wasn’t working, and neither was Febreze. The only thing that mildly dampened the constant, sledgehammer-like assault on my olfactory nerve was my rapidly-dwindling supply of face masks, leftover from the pandemic. I guess Covid was good for something, after all.)
But as I gradually filled garbage bags and dumpsters, slowly but surely reducing those disgusting mountains of hoarded filth into molehills, I began to catch glimpses of them. A thin tail whipping around the corner of a teetering tower of moldy magazines. Beady red eyes gleaming from between torn strips of wallpaper, before suddenly winking away. Shadowy figures racing around in my peripheral vision. Bristly scratching beneath the floorboards, in the walls, from within the cupboards and couch cushions—the pitter-patter of unsettlingly tiny feet whittling away at my last dregs of sanity.
It only took them a couple of days to get used to my presence, and they seemed to decide that I wasn’t much of a threat soon after. Who could blame them? My decidedly unmanly shrieks each time I came across one of them made it clear that I wasn’t the one wearing the pants in this relationship. My prior experiences with rats made me particularly jumpy, and while I wouldn’t have called it a full-fledged phobia (at the time), they definitely picked up on my fear and unease.
So, they stopped bothering to hide. Instead, they’d hiss at me when I got too close to their nests. They’d pop out of the Swiss-cheese walls like jack-in-the-boxes if I tried to remove the goopy, rotten crud that I guess they were saving for later—they really didn’t want me interfering with Leftover Night—and they’d even charge directly at me on the rare occasion that I mustered up enough courage to take a swing at them with a broom. It got to the point where they were just leaping out and taking what they wanted, when they wanted it. Rats have been the devil’s Employees-of-the-Month for the last several millennia, and they weren’t about to stop on my account.
The worst part was, there was nothing I could do about it. I tried poison. I tried traps. I tried cleaning faster, hoping that cutting down on the trash would at least prevent more from coming. But no matter what I did, nothing worked. The rat problem just kept getting worse and worse. And with each rodential jumpscare, whatever remained of my sense of masculinity would slowly crumble away.
Finally, I decided enough was enough.
It was time to splurge on an exterminator.
I started by Googling “exterminators near me.” Apparently, life wasn’t done kicking me in the teeth yet, because if the house and the rats weren’t enough, now my phone was acting up. It took an unusually long time to load—almost five minutes—and colored pixels were flickering on and off the screen. I tried to shut the phone down a few times, but it wouldn’t even turn off; it just kept loading the search engine.
It finally finished buffering, and I nearly screamed when I saw that Google had given me exactly one search result. One. That shouldn’t even be possible. Clearly, my phone was infected with some sort of virus. I groaned—one more thing to worry about on top of everything else.
The map feature was glitching out, too, so I couldn’t even tell how “near me” this exterminator was. All I could see was the company name, and a phone number just beneath it.
“The Ratcatcher.”
I frowned. The name seemed a bit on-the-nose and hyper-specific for a professional exterminator. Then again, it was memorable and catchy, which is the main goal for any small business. And rats were my primary problem.
So, I clicked on the phone number. Despite whatever virus was currently wreaking havoc on my phone, the call went through, and a dial tone briefly sounded. Almost immediately, someone answered.
“You’ve reached the Ratcatcher, how can I help you?”
It was a man’s voice. He sounded extremely bored, and maybe even a little annoyed. As if me calling was some terrible inconvenience.
“Uh, yeah, hi. I, um…there’s, there’s rats. A lot of rats.”
I facepalmed as I spoke, mentally berating myself for being completely incapable of eloquent speech. Luckily, the man on the phone seemed to understand what I was trying to say.
“Alright. What’s your address?”
I gave it to him. I heard the click-clack of a keyboard on the other end, and then, “It looks like we already have your address on file.”
Just then, a rat jumped out at me from one of the many holes in the wall. I screamed and batted it away. It hit the floor with a thud, and hissed angrily as it righted itself. It scampered into the other room. I let out a shuddering breath.
“Sir?” the man on the phone was saying. Despite having definitely heard me scream moments before, he sounded as disinterested as ever.
“Yeah, sorry, I’m here,” I said. Damn rats…
“I asked if you’ve hired the Ratcatcher, the Pipeman, or the Electrician in the past.”
“No, I…well, this is my uncle’s place, so maybe he…” My brain finally caught up to his words. “Wait, what?”
“Family business,” he explained. “If you’ve hired any of them before, you’ll get a discount.”
“Oh.” It looked like weird names were genetic, then. “Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe my uncle did? I don’t live here.”
The man made a noncommittal hum.
“Make sure you’re there when the Ratcatcher comes,” he said. “Or you’ll have to reschedule.”
Then he hung up.
For a second, I just stared at the phone in disbelief.
He hung up on me.
What the hell?
I wondered if I’d somehow gotten scammed. But I hadn’t given the guy any payment information. An address, sure, but it’s not like there was anything in Rob’s place worth stealing. The absolute worst case scenario was some psychopath posing as an exterminator so he could kill me, and that didn’t seem very likely.
Something still wasn’t right, though. The man on the phone hadn’t told me…well, anything, really. Not rates, not availabilities—he hadn’t even told me when to expect the Ratcatcher, only that I needed to be there. What did that mean? Did I have to stay at Uncle Rob’s place overnight, until the Ratcatcher showed up? I didn’t think I could handle that, physically or mentally. Maybe I should just head home, use my laptop to find an exterminator that was less sketchy, and go from there. Or maybe the guy on the phone had simply forgotten to give me the rest of the information—everyone makes mistakes, after all—and I could solve the whole problem with another painfully awkward phone call.
I was seriously considering re-dialling the Ratcatcher’s number when three knocks sounded at the front door.
I looked down at my phone (which had finally quit glitching), then back at the door. There was no way the Ratcatcher could’ve gotten there that quickly. Then again, there wasn’t really anyone else it could be. I gingerly stepped over a pile of dead bugs that I’d swept up earlier, kicked at a rat that was gnawing on a strip of wallpaper, and opened the door.
I’d been expecting a middle-aged man with a beer belly, decked out in a jumpsuit and rubber boots, carrying—I don’t know, whatever exterminators carry—over his shoulder. Like the guy from Over the Hedge.
But the sight that greeted me could not have been more different.
The Ratcatcher was a girl.
Not just any girl—a cute girl. She looked about my age, maybe a year or two younger. Her honey-blonde hair was shortish with bangs, and freckles dusted her face. Her eyes were a bright enough green that I wondered if they were colored contacts. She wore a sunny yellow Guns N’ Roses t-shirt, a jean skirt, and faded sneakers.
“Hi,” she said, smiling widely. Her teeth were white—almost too white. Like she’d just walked off the set of a Colgate commercial. “You must be James (Last Name)?”
At the time, I didn’t think about how there was no way she could’ve known my name, seeing as I hadn’t even had a chance to give it to the man on the phone. I just nodded stupidly. As I floundered, trying and failing to form words into a cohesive sentence, she cheerfully bounced on the balls of her feet.
“You’re the Ratcatcher?” I finally stammered out. I immediately winced, realizing how it sounded a second too late.
Thankfully, she didn’t seem offended. Instead, she threw her head back and laughed. It was wonderful. It felt like the sun shining through clouds after it’s been raining all day, like your long lost dog finally coming home, like the first sip of soda on a hot summer afternoon, like—
“I get that a lot,” she said. “So, I hear you’ve got a rat problem?”
At this, I finally shook myself out of my stupor. “Yeah—yeah, it’s pretty bad.” I stepped aside, leaving the doorway wide open for her to enter. I turned around to show her into the condo, gesturing at the various visible rats as I went. “Sorry about the mess. I don’t know if the guy on the phone told you, but this is my uncle’s place, and…”
I suddenly stopped, trailing off. Something felt…off. I turned around.
The Ratcatcher hadn’t followed me inside. She was still standing on the doormat. Still smiling. She had her hands clasped patiently behind her back as she rocked back and forth on her heels.
For a second, I just stared.
“Uh…you, you can come in,” I said dumbly.
Her smile grew impossibly wider, and she stepped inside.
As soon as she did, there was a sudden scuttling sound. Startled, I whirled around. I barely managed to catch a glimpse of all the previously-unbothered rats scattering, disappearing into the shadows.
The Ratcatcher let out a whistle. “Wow,” she chirped, cheerful as ever. “I haven’t seen this many in a long time! I’ve got my work cut out for me, huh?”
Though she’d seemed politely hesitant to enter the house before, she apparently didn’t have much of a problem with it now. She stepped past me, peering around the room with her hands on her hips. I hung back, feeling awkward.
I tried for some casual conversation. “So, um…Guns N’ Roses,” I began, nodding at her shirt. “Great band.”
“Great Band”? I didn’t know the first thing about Guns N’ Roses. Almost as if she could tell what I was thinking, she shot me an amused grin. Then she returned to scanning the room.
Welp, that didn’t work. Something else, say something else! “What’s your name?”
She didn’t respond. After a minute or two of silence, I shifted uncomfortably—she must not have heard me.
Before I could work up the courage to ask again, she suddenly announced, “I’m going to get started.”
And then she lunged.
I yelped and jumped back instinctively, squeezing my eyes shut and throwing my arms over my head. (It was really a knee-jerk response more than anything, and in my defense, I’d been dealing with rodent attacks for over a week now. So I was understandably high-strung.)
Of course, nothing happened.
That split-second, irrational moment of terror was quickly replaced by a hot flood of embarrassment. As I prepared to give an undoubtedly pathetic excuse for my over-dramatic reaction, I slowly opened my eyes.
I wish I hadn’t.
The Ratcatcher was still standing in front of me. Rather than the tense, alert posture she’d held while searching the room only moments before, she’d returned to looking casually relaxed. When I met her gaze, she giggled, all sunbeams and butterflies.
I couldn’t smile back, though. I could barely tear my eyes away from her hand—or rather, the thing in her hand.
A giant rat squirmed and writhed in her perfectly manicured grasp.
I was gaping. I knew I was, but I couldn’t stop. She’d just…grabbed it. And she didn’t seem the least bit bothered by it, either, even as it frantically squeaked and twisted its head, trying to sink its yellow fangs into her delicate skin.
“How—” I started, fumbling for words, “you—how’d you—”
She simply shrugged. In the dimness of the condo, her eyes seemed to glow an even brighter green—the way a cat’s do when the light hits them.
“When you’ve been doing this for as long as I have,” she said, “you pick up a few tricks.”
She winked at me.
And then she bit off the rat’s head.
I don’t remember what my scream sounded like; if it was a stream of obscenities, or just a wordless cry. But I’m certain that I screamed. I screamed as I flung myself backwards. I screamed as I stumbled over a pile of junk. And when I landed flat on my butt, staring up at the creature that couldn’t possibly be a girl, I was still screaming.
The Ratcatcher paid me no mind. In her hand, the rest of the rat was still twitching, blood spurting from its neck and sending small droplets raining down on my uncle’s grimy floor. Her chewing was an awful sound, tiny bones snapping and flesh squelching, and blood ran like a river down her chin.
Two more bites, and then her hands were empty aside from the bloodstains. She swallowed and wiped her chin with her arm, smearing a crimson streak from her elbow to her wrist. She licked the blood from each of her dainty fingertips. Then she glanced at me, head tilted to the side curiously, one eyebrow raised. When she spoke, her perfectly white teeth were tinged red.
“You alright, James?”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. I just kept opening and closing my mouth soundlessly, a fish out of water. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. My entire body was shaking, trembling like a leaf. I wanted to run. I wanted to run far, far away—away from Uncle Rob’s disgusting condo and away from the rats and away from this crazed girl who bit the heads off of live animals—
But I didn’t. I just sat there, on the floor, paralyzed with fear.
The Ratcatcher gave me a knowing smile.
And she set to work.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur. At some point, I ended up on the rotting couch—it was clear of rats at that point, though there were brand-new claw marks slashed through the cushions, along with flakes of black nail polish that must’ve chipped off in the process—and I just focused on counting the various holes in the walls. Rats weren’t poking their twitchy little faces out anymore. I couldn’t bring myself to feel relieved about it.
Look. I hate rats. Hate them. Now more than ever.
But nothing deserves to die like that.
The Ratcatcher was ruthlessly efficient, I’ll give her that. She prowled from room to room, whistling a happy little tune to herself as she went. Sometimes, I’d catch glimpses of her pouncing with inhuman speed out of the corner of my eye. Digging her nails into soft underbellies and twisting. Biting off tails and feet, piece-by-piece, while the rats shrieked. That was the worst part; the sounds they made. The sounds she made, too. Crunching and slurping and splattering and tearing and laughing and gurgling and always, always the shrieking.
She’d occasionally throw out some commentary that I guess was directed at me—stuff like, “The small ones are fine and all, but they’re a little stringy, you know?” and “I like it when they’re not afraid. It’s more fun when they think they have a fighting chance” and “My brother’s come out this way before, but not in a while. He hates rats” and “Aw, babies! You sure you don’t wanna come take a look, James?”
I didn’t. I really, really didn’t.
Finally, she finished. She stood in front of me, bouncing on the balls of her feet just like she had on the doorstep when she’d first arrived. Her yellow shirt was splattered with viscera, none of it her own. Red speckles misted across her skin like a second layer of freckles. Blood dried stiff in her honey-blonde hair.
I looked up at her numbly. She beamed.
“All done!” she said in a sweet, sing-song voice. But there was a strange glint in her eyes, and I felt my pulse quicken once more.
“Now’s when we usually negotiate the price,” she continued. It was so fast I almost missed it, but I swear I saw her tongue dart across her lips. She took a step closer, and I involuntarily shrunk farther back into the couch. Her green eyes shone.
Her smile was just beginning to stretch into a toothy, Cheshire grin when suddenly, the opening notes of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” rang out, blaring through the still darkness.
The Ratcatcher paused. Something about her stance shifted, turning into something that felt much less threatening. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding as she pulled a cellphone from the pocket of her jean skirt.
“Yeah?” she answered, then waited as someone on the other line spoke. “No, not yet, I was just about—oh, really?”
She hung up, then reached into her other pocket. She pulled out a folded slip of bright yellow paper. She unfolded it, squinting as she read. Then she laughed.
“Well, aren’t you lucky!” she said, almost teasingly. She tore the paper in half and stuck it back in her pocket. “Looks like you get the discount this time! Thanks for keeping it in the family.”
She blew me a kiss with lips that, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think were smeared with too much lipstick. “Bye, James!”
And with that, the Ratcatcher skipped out the door, slamming it shut behind her.
While I might not know exactly what the typical “price” for the Ratcatcher’s services is, I’ve got a vague idea, and I’m glad I didn’t have to pay it. Sure, she did a great job getting rid of the rats. But she also left scratches, bloodstains, and a boatload of trauma that I don’t think going to a therapist will fix.
I guess it could be worse. Even if I could find the Ratcatcher online—seriously, it’s like she disappeared off the face of the internet, and even the phone number is gone from my call history—I’d be too chicken to leave a low business review. What would I say, anyway? “1/5 stars, made a mess, almost killed me”? As if anyone would believe me. I know I wouldn’t. At the end of the day, I’m really just lucky to have escaped the encounter alive.
Not as lucky as I could be, though. Because I think I finally figured out what made all those holes in the walls.
See, it looks like poor ol’ Uncle Rob needed a plumber at some point. And going by the long, grasping arms that are now reaching out from every pipe and drain and faucet, it’s not too difficult to guess who he called.
I’m pretty sure I know why Rob’s place was such a mess when I got here. Why he never did anything about the rats.
After all, her brother hates rats.