Great, Big, Dark, Cold, Round, Small, Rubbery

One of my more fun classes at Hampshire was a fiction writing class. Here is one of my more enjoyable, if twisted, short stories from that class.

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Hari waited outside of the dining hall until it was close to, but not quite, closing time. He didn’t have any gripe with the students eating there, the fools! Let most of them leave. Then he turned his back to the door, and pushed through, holding his handgun before him. Passing through the inner door, he spun around and shot the woman who deducted dining dollars from your account.

Wham! It was louder than expected. It had been a while since he had shot indoors. Now he moved fast towards the staff area. An old man popped his head out of an office door, and Hari let him have it. Pushing open the door, he fired three well-placed shots from the doorway, and then spun around and ran on down the corridor. Ten feet in front of him, a student wearing the dining uniform stepped into the hallway. Hari paused, struck with doubt. Was this student really to blame for last night? Did he deserve to die?

The food had been livable last night, nothing really good, but edible. He had chosen some fish and a small salad. It was Tuesday, so it had been exactly one week since he had eaten a cake. The chocolate cake looked good, so he took one of the four remaining pre-cut slices and added it to his tray.

One of the tables in the far corner of the main dining hall was empty, and he sat with his back to the wall, observing the action though the salad and fish. The cake was special, however. It was there to lift his life, and he put his full attention too it after finishing everything else. First he nibbled around the sides, and then, holding it in both hands, took a big bite, chopping down on something rubbery in the goo of the cake. He jerked back from the cake, and pulled out a slimly black object with his teeth. “Phhth.” He parted his teeth and exhaled, letting it fall to his plate.

The rat lay there for a second. Then it pushed itself up, and rubbed goo from its eyes. Said it, “Lucky you didn’t bite my nose off. I’d have to kill you, otherwise.” Belatedly, Hari swallowed the cake, and opened his mouth. The rat interrupted the silence just before Hari could make a sound. “I think, how nasty those people, them doing that to me. Can you believe it? Harm I wasn’t doing to anybody and they yet just dumped me in the mix to rot away. Would you do that to me?” Hari twitched. The rat seemed to take the jumble of motion as negative. “Hari, you I find a good guy. You and me, let’s do friendly stuff. Friends do things for each other, right? I’ll do things for you, you’ll do things for me... Like making sure killing happens to those rotten bastards that dumped me in the mix.”

The rat remained with him for the rest of the night, and each time he appeared, Hari tried to lose him. Hari thought each time that he had lost him for good, but then the rat would whisper in his ear. Hari would turn his head, and the violet and orange little specs would stare back. When he tried to sleep all he could hear were the rustlings of things in his room, shuffle, shuffle, and crash! as something fell to the floor. In the morning, he and the rat formulated the plan, and never had Hari been so excited to carry out a set of actions.

Now, he wasn’t sure. Did the student deserve to die? The rat had deserted him when he entered the commons. He had nobody to turn to now. Nobody to tell him what was right, what was wrong. Only a gun and a fading plan. What loss would one more life-one more student- mean? He bit down on the hot steel, and pulled the trigger.