The Rat

CW: Includes themes of body horror

There is something in my house.

I can see it moving out of the corner of my eye. Barely there. It scurries past just as I let my focus slip… Then right as I try to turn and face it, it is gone – tucked beneath some dresser or wedged at the last second into a cabinet. I hear it scratching in the night. The clawing and tapping and chewing, echoing inside my skull as if it is coming from inside me. I cannot escape its gnawing. There is something in my house. There is something in my house. There is something…

The exterminator has been here three times. He told me there is nothing. He told me all is well. He told me there is no damage or droppings to indicate that there may be a rat or mouse. He told me that he checked… but if he had checked, he would have seen its matted grey fur, heard its clicking claws, smelled its rancid odor like something dead in the walls. He would have known that there is something here with us as we speak. But he swears each time that the only living thing in my house is me. My eyes sting a bit at this reminder. That I am alone. I have no one. All I have is an empty house. Except it isn’t empty. Because there is something in my house.

I am sure of it.

The more I reach out to specialists, the more I am denied. I am told it is the pipes rattling, the house settling, the disposal stinking, the lights flickering. I am told I am seeing floaters, hearing the neighbor’s kids, smelling a dry P-trap. I am told I am told I am told. But I know what I saw. I know what I heard. I know what I smelled. There is something in my house and I want it gone.

I try to coax it out with food, speak sweetly to it, hope that it will finally show itself so I can prove what I know to be true. So that I can see it with my own eyes and evict it from my home. It is as if it is toying with me. It will not eat the food. It will not come out. Any time I go looking it hides away somewhere that I can never find.

Until.

Until one night as I lie in bed, staring into the dark. Sleepless. Jumpy. My eyes parched from staring. Every shift of the blanket has me grabbing at my arms, convinced the movement is the dry and scaly tail of a vermin. But then. A form comes into focus in the darkness. A writhing mass in the corner of my bedroom. It seems to shift, never fully forming into a solid shape – Just a tangle of tails and tongues and fur crusted with grime. There are flashes of teeth, claws, entrails. The squelching turns to squeaking, and the squeaking into a monstrous chuckle.

And then…

It speaks to me.

“Silly child.” Its voice comes out wet and gurgling, like a man drowning, and it makes my head swim. “You search and you beg and you plead for someone to believe you. And still, they doubt you. Despite your desperation, your insistence, all they see is insanity.” The creature takes a step toward me, still shifting form. I press my body into the headboard, trying to put distance between us as he continues. “They tell you I am not real. They tell you I am not here. They tell you I am just in your head. Yet here I am. I have invaded your home, disrupted your peace, drained the energy from your bones. I live here now. It is my home, too. And now I would like to sleep.”

I watch in horror and disbelief as it slowly crawls into bed beside me. Within minutes, it begins to snore.

. . .

Days turn into weeks, and weeks into months. Still, the creature stays. Its presence has altered my life in so many ways. I am perpetually tired, I rarely go out anymore, and my friends have continued to pull away. They don’t understand. I struggle to make it to work, and when I do, I am far less productive and struggle to focus. I am constantly lightheaded and unsteady on my feet. The exhaustion is getting to me.

Some days, the creature stays hidden. I treasure these moments. Other times, it is a constant presence, following me wherever I go and breathing down my neck. I have begun to accept this new life of mine. This new houseguest. I resent its existence, but I have no way of evicting it. So, I adapt. I plan my days around its moods, with varying success. It can be unpredictable.

I swing violently between despair, anger, hope, and determination. I begin posting anonymously online about the creature, asking if anyone may know what it is or if they can relate. Mostly, I receive the same answers I got from the “experts” I hired to find it. However, one reply stands out to me. So much, in fact, that it makes me sit bolt upright, knocking the creature, who is always leaning its weight on me, onto the floor. A rush of adrenaline fills my head as I read the words:

“There is something in my house, too.”

I continue to read, sweat forming on my forehead.

“No one believed me. I asked everyone I could, but they all told me it was just in my head. I knew it was real, though. I did my own research and finally figured out what it was. Now I am able to manage it well enough to lead a semi-normal life. It still holds me back in many ways, and some days are worse than others, but it has made me feel so seen to find a name for what has infected my home. It will never go away, but there are ways to live with it. Here is what I found:”

At the bottom of the page, there is a link.

https://www.dysautonomiainternational.org/page.php?ID=30

I open it. And finally, I am seen.