Mr. Rodento I was lost. Hopelessly lost within a dark, dank, fetid labyrinth of tunnels, for decades dutifully carrying waste -- including me -- beneath the city into the mouth of the St. John's River and then out into the Atlantic. I was knee-deep in aqueous excrement, my trusty Bic lighter raised in the air as if saluting shit in concert. Thankfully, the ventilation system whistling through the blackness overhead prevented the open flame from causing a catastrophic underground explosion. The dim flickering painted the moss-covered brick with an eerie mosaic of hell-tinged shapes and colors, including the occasional grouping of beady red eyes staring hungrily from darkened crevasses. Meters above me, the city was blanketed in a pristine snowfall, huddled together cuddling against the frigid cold. Though dank and moist down there, it was reasonably warm -- which was good -- because I had been stripped to the waist before being unceremoniously dumped down a manhole cover into the putrid dark. While I was not a sewer worker by trade, some might contradict that statement. I was an attorney, feeding off much of the same human excrement as does the fetid, slimy bacteria I had been fastidiously attempting to avoid over the last several hours. The reason for my being sealed beneath the city streets was one of those bacteria -- metaphorically speaking -- one named Guido Provalone. I had been comfortable in my life of representing lower level drug dealers and pimps, hookers and addicts, the money was sporadic but okay; however, in the tradition of those schooled in the talents and propensities of my ilk, I wanted more! More money, more challenge, more notoriety! More danger? I wouldn't have thought so, but then, I started representing the Provalone family. It had started innocently enough, Guido's son Tony had been picked up on a DUI. Jim Lemke (or Limp Dick, as he was referred to throughout college) of the prestigious firm, Hawthorne, Jamison and Avers, had tossed this well-gnawed bone to me as a favor, thinking it was a plead-out no-brainer. Of course, being a fellow drunk, I argued this one with gusto, and utilizing loophole and nonsequetor legal precedence, kicking the shit out of the junior prosecutor in open court, ultimately exonerating the younger Provalone with what made a moderate media splash. Guido, although he instinctively understood my limitations, subsequently put me on retainer, a minuscule portion of his lucrative payroll. I became a family man. Guido Provalone might have been a stereotypic family boss, short, stumpy, greasy and gnarled -- except for one peculiar quirk -- he was an almost pathological fan of pirates. Not the Pittsburgh variety, no, but the yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum, peg-legged, eye-patched, treasure robbing, cargo thieving, Bluebeard kind. Instead of the expected Italian flag in his luxurious office, he hoisted the skull and crossbones. The chain of restaurants he owned were not Italian cuisine, but seafood joints,decorated with a nautical buccaneer theme. Arrrrhhhh! But for me, the money was phenomenal, the challenges considerable, the risks palpable. Reaching all new lows, I found myself capable of divining depths never before reached by a botton-feeder such as myself. I was able to graduate from K-Mart dress shirts on sale to Fifth Avenue designer shirts along with the cuff links (Guido's offbeat, custom-made skull and crossbone cuff links, of course), from my Yugo to a Mercedes 500 SL, from a rented flat on Broadway to a Hampton Roads Tudor. Life was good -- a grim, criminal pastiche of what it was supposed to be, but good nonetheless. Until . . . once again greed reared its ugly green, hoary head, initially in the form of a beautiful Justice Department agent, technically not much more than a common crack whore, sent to tempt the easily persuaded such as myself. Ultimately, it was not the sexual voraciousness of the plant (the Justice Department HAD chosen well, however), but the money proffered. They wanted Guido badly, it seemed, and would pay premium dollars to make that happen. That, along with the promise of immunity, relocation and a new identity, was enough to persuade me to abandon what little ethics I possessed to turn over certain damning information to make a deal. The J. D. Agent had also promised me unlimited sexual favors as well, until Guido's men stuffed her face into a urinal and blew her brains out through the front of her forehead. The case against Guido Provalone ultimately disintegrated, with witnesses vanishing, evidencegoing up in smoke as a result of fiery explosions, and prosecutors mysteriously losing their stomachs for the game. All that was left . . . was me. That's when they stuffed me down a manhole cover. Guido's version of walking the plank, I surmised. One of Guido's lieutenants suggested that he put a .45 slug in my brain before "flushing" me, but Guido opined that "he would jus' be dead when he joins the rest of his fuggin' rat friends down the shit-hole," so they threw me in alive. I could imagine Guido above posting guards along the manhole covers dotting the streets on the way out of the city, ensuring that I would not be able to escape (a rat from the maze) my horrific, excrement-lined tomb. A bullet through the brain might have been preferable except for the fact that I couldn't even budge the massive manhole covers anyway. So, I crept quietly, disgustedly along the slimy, offal-lined corridors, pessimistically hoping for a way out, an escape. Just one fuggin' loophole, as Guido might offer. One constant, other than the rotting stench, were the eyes -- eyes of the rats -- following me dumbly, instinctively, hungrily along my erratic path. "Skreeeeeeeeeeeeeee -- " one of them finally allowed, a terrifying echo that seemed to comefrom nowhere -- everywhere -- and excite the other ten thousand sewer rats to join in as back up singers. For a few moments, the squealing was deafening, maddening, and I covered my ears in self-defense. Abruptly, the frenzied screeching ceased, only an occasional far-off rejoinder bounced off the dripping, arched walls. I think this terrified me even more, as if they were silently massing on my flank, ready to down me, rend me to shreds with an incalculable number of tiny rodent teeth and claws, sating some ancient, obscene appetite, that was not merely hunger. Instead, they merely watched me -- watched me with those beady, stupid, ancient rat eyes, grating and gnashing their pointed teeth together as if sharpening them, awaiting some primitive, unholy feast. I had a feeling I might be the main course. Fear and hopelessness fueled my increasing paranoia (I'm sure Guido had intended this and worse), until I could scarcely even smell the sewage I was slogging through. That repugnant stench paled in comparison to that of my own palpable dread and desperation. I heard a seemingly innocent splash behind me and slowly turned around . . . Tens of thousands of rats of various sizes filled the tunnel behind me. Greasily crawling across one another, jammed together in an unclean communion of animal filth, instinctive hunger and basic mindless need. Unnerved -- that's a shade mild, because I pissed myself -- I retreated four or five stumblingsteps, and the rats advanced the same distance, keeping a respectable eight to ten feet between them and myself. Perhaps insane by this point, I decided to play with them. I took a few tentative steps toward them, and to my astonishment, they withdrew, maintaining their distance. Figuring this was some methane gas-fueled hallucination, I continued onward with a disgusted shudder, slogging through the waste of the city above me. Soon, I reached a junction in the system, and as I was deliberating on which route to take, the rats flanked me, filling the opening to my right with matted, greasy fur balls. As if I had an option, I took the tunnel to my left, the rats reassembling and following at their leisure, keeping the same polite distance as we slowly advanced. After several hours of this psychotic parade, I had become unaccountably comfortable with my entourage, as if I become the King of Rats or something. The muted rustling behind me suddenly became an uproarious frenzy as we approached some intake pipes which thrust themselves from the smooth walls, dribbling occasional gluts of sewage from them. The rats, though, seemed to have a different idea as I watched in astonishment as they clambered over each other, squeezing themselves into one specific pipe, powerfully driven by some unknown instinct, until amazingly, nearly all of them were gone. I could hear the echoes of them squealing, scratching their tiny claws against metal, gaining purchase through the pipe. After a few minutes of near silence, I heard what sounded like distant screaming, then abruptly the scuttling of my friends coming back through the pipe. I stood aside as they came pouring back out of the opening, a furry, slippery rodent spewage. I stared at them for a long, terrified moment, watching them as they writhed in some primal, ancient dance. After a while, they stopped, regarding me oddly. "What now, Boss?" I shook my head tiredly and proceeded down the corridor. After a mile or so, we reached a cavernous opening, bathed in light from the surface. I ran through the slime as best I could and found myself in a huge open cavern, the final watershed before exiting to the river and ocean. Should've been happy. Should've felt triumphant. Should've gotten the hell out of this place. Instead, I found the rats comfortably lounging in stagnant pools around me as I sat on the bottom rung of a corroded ladder leading to the surface. They chirped and screeched contentedly even as they kept their respectful distance from me. Finally one of them approached me cautiously. I wasn't afraid; in fact, I petted the enormous rodent on the head as if he were a golden retriever. He dropped something into my hand. A cuff link. A blood-dripping, skull and crossbones cuff link. It was then that I really began to like it down here. It seems like home; I finally feel I'm among my own kind. And I think I'm beginning to develop a real taste for cheese.
August 1999 HofP |