Rats of Bain

(a short story)

How long have I been here?

As I asked myself this question, I was beset by a sinking feeling. This had to be the question I asked myself the most. Or perhaps that title would belong to: ‘How many times have I asked myself this?’

My mind so loves to conjure questions. To try and reason, make sense of things. But as for how long it has truly been, I cannot say. Without the sun passing over my head and into the horizon, there was no sense of time. Time, needing observation to exist, had no place here. There was no time, only waiting. I wait, I wait for any sign that something else even exists. It didn’t have to be alive. It just had to exist. I have walked for hours, days, weeks in every direction. Somehow, I’d yet to even touch something so insignificant as a pebble on the ground. Or perhaps I had, and simply forgot what it was like to experience it. After all, I hardly remember what the sun looks like. What clean air tastes like. What water feels like. In this nothing, in this nowhere, there was no light. No smells. The only thing I ever hear is the sound of my own footsteps on the hard ground.

Or my breathing, perhaps. The thought crossed my mind as strange.

Raising my shoulders and opening my airway, I attempted to pull what I could into my lungs. A rasping, ghoulish noise rattled from my throat, echoing out into the darkness before disappearing. It was as if I hadn’t breathed in years. It sounded like my lungs were no longer functional from disuse. As I exhaled that awful sound repeated itself.

Was that what I sound like? Was a human supposed to sound like that?

I can’t really remember.

I’m pretty sure humans sounded… more wet? That can’t be right. More alive. But I’m sure that I’m not dead. I had a dear friend who’d once said to me something oddly profound and comforting at the same time.

“I think. Therefore, I am.”

At least I think there is someone who once said that. It’s entirely possible that there was no such person, and it was I who thought of something so comforting. How relieving though, to know I still exist. And by thinking, no less. How simplistic. Have I still the agency to conjure up an image, sentence, sound, or memory, I knew I was alive. Although I state that, as far as memory goes, I don’t have much recollection of anything.

If I were told to explain what my life was like before I was here, or nowhere, I couldn’t do it.

It has been quite long. So mind-numbingly long, at least I think. So long, that if I had to guess, I’d been in this circumstance for a thousand years, or even a million. That doesn’t sound very right though. I’m pretty sure a human would die before a thousand years went by. I suppose that means I’m not exactly a human. Given that humans don’t live a thousand years, there’s no way I could be one.

Then… what am I? A similar sinking feeling settled in my head, or at least what I thought was my head. This too, is a question I find myself repeating. For I felt rather certain that few beings, none intelligent, live for over a thousand years.

But what does exist? In the dark I’ve come to accept as the only true facet of my being, nothing but myself exists. There are no walls. There are no things. There are no sounds but my own. Actually, I suppose that’s wrong. There was one other thing.

There were rats.

I remember them. If anything could be considered a memory it would be the rats. They didn’t start out as rats. It was just a rat at first. I was standing right here, right where I’ve been for so long, and I heard the scrabbling of small feet on the hard ground. It was frightening, disturbing, unsettling, and terrifying; the mere idea that something I couldn’t see was in this place with me. It got closer eventually. I think it was drawn to my breath, drawn to my fear, drawn to my warmth. It sought to harm me. Devour me. Ruin me. I had to protect myself.

I had to kill the rat. I have to kill the rat. I have to kill it. I need to kill it. I want to kill it. I want to kill.

It was moving quickly, much more quickly than before. I had to kill the rat. It could smell me. I have to kill the rat. It knew where I was. I have to kill it. It was coming for me. I need to kill it. It was going to hurt me. I want to kill it. I want to kill. I wanted to kill.

“Then kill it…”

A voice whispered in my ear. Or what I thought was my ear. What was this voice? Was it my voice? It had to have been. There was nothing there but myself. I didn’t hear anything, I was thinking it. I thought it. This voice belonged to me.

“What are you waiting for…? It’s getting closer.”

I was right. The rat was getting closer. I could hear its breathing now. Its desperate, labored breathing driven by a primal, animalistic desire to consume. To consume me.

“There isn’t much time left. Kill it.”

I was right again.

The sound of scrabbling stopped. For a brief moment, the rat let out a squeal of excruciating pain. The sound of its body flaying into pieces echoed through the blackness around me. The rat was dead. I was sure of it. I killed the thing wanting to kill me. I felt weight leave my shoulders, or what I thought was my shoulders. I felt so relieved. The single thing that disturbed the peacefulness of this place or this nowhere, was gone. Without a doubt I was glad I listened to myself. If I hadn’t, who knows what would’ve happened to me. I couldn’t really say, but I’m sure it would have involved that small insignificant creature attempting to feed off of me.

But it was only the first. Not long after I killed that first rat, more rats came. Now that I think about it, it might’ve been quite a while from the time of the first rat and the second rat, seeing as few things occur here, or nowhere. But they came. They came in droves. Hundreds-no… thousands-no… millions of them. Millions of rats came. One rat was nothing. I handled it easily. But millions of rats all at the same time; it was bone-chilling. They came, drawn to the decayed flesh of their kin. They came for the first rat. I listened as the storm of little feet scratched the ground in violence, parting flesh from the carcass of the first rat. But they didn’t stop there. They frenzied. Like mad little monstrosities.

They cannibalized one another. After the first rat was gone, they weren’t sated by any means. They were ravenous. They killed and ate each other. To experience hunger such as that was beyond me. I hungered for nothing. Except perhaps their deaths. I detested them. I wished that they would all disappear. They were savage and putrid. I could hear them ripping away the paper-thin membranes wrapping their diseased bones. I could hear their bodies flensed to pieces from where I stood. But I did nothing. I couldn’t see them after all. I simply listened to the grisly spectacle with my full attention. It took only a short while, but it all ended when the last two rats fought to the death.

With all their kin dead or bloodthirsty, they had little choice but to fight and consume. After all, rats need to eat to survive. I expected them to come for me, as the first one did. But instead they were absorbed with absorbing one another. They were so consumed with consuming, that in the end, the last two fatally wounded one another in a final bid to be the king. A king of the corpse hill, to devour as they pleased. Yet, there was no victor apart from myself.

It was only I, who remained uninvolved, that was left standing in the end.