Rat Poison

Rat poison works by thinning the blood, the pest controller told me. It's an anticoagulant, which means the rats will will bleed to death through small cuts in their skin. They'll bleed internally, too. It's a terrible way to die, I tell W. on the phone. I'll hear them screeching in pain and horror, I tell W. 

The controller told me to smash some glass around the nest. That way, the rats will cut themselves on the shards and bleed to death, their wounds prevented from healing.

What cruelty!, I say to W. Imagine it: rats bleeding inside, their organs compressed all the way to failure. Rats, organs torn, whose blood has escaped from circulation and is pooling inside their bodies. Rats whose dark red blood streams from their arteries and veins ….

What a terrible way to die! What a terrible way not to be able to die. Because as they run, streaming, screeching in horror, they'll want only for life to end, for the pain to end. What else will they want but to bleed to death, blood oozing from their capillaries?

That's how we'll die, like rats, W. says. Like rats, running along with everyone else, screeching. The flaming sky, the sun come close, and the rats streaming, screeching across the baking earth …

When will it end?, I'll ask W. It will never end, he says. When will it stop?, he'll ask me. It will never stop.