The Snaily Musk of Rotting Leaves

I've been writing poetry all evening, to serve as the script for a short comic I'm doing for a British horror rag. I'm meant to be recreating the spirit of The Zombie Ball*, but this is as far as I've got:

A sleeping rat gets lost in dreams
Of idle wilds and cunning schemes;
Of secret raids on honeycombs,
And hats he's nicked from garden gnomes.

His whiskers twitch as he recalls
The scent of moss on sunken walls;
The wind that carries, from the eaves,
The snaily musk of rotting leaves.

Some time in the next couple of verses, our rat's supposed to dream of seeing his own ghost, but I haven't found a good way to work it in, just yet:

"This is easy," said Stella's ghost. (Not her real ghost, of course, but the voice of reason, which I've begun to associate with her memory. It behaves in the same manner, jumping about and chittering when I'm trying to work.) "This is easy: a cloud over the sun, an autumn-smelling breeze, the caress of a dried leaf, and suddenly the dream turns grim. There's your transition."

"It's not very memorable, is it?" I complained. "I mean, there are a thousand others like it. Everyone uses those images."

"Everyone writes about rats seeing their own ghosts?"

"Smartass."

"Come on! You're writing a nursery rhyme for a horror magazine. You think they're expecting Shakespeare? Milton? Subtlety isn't exactly the horror fan's bread and butter. You could write 'Oh-Em-Gee, ghost!' and get the same reaction."

"I doubt it."

"Oh-Em-Gee! Ghost!"

"Where?"

"Gotcha."

"Uh-huh. Anyhow, horror can so be subtle. What about The Cask of Amontillado?"

"About as subtle as an ax to the head."

"The Lady of Shalott?"

"Not horror."

"The Birds?"

"I haven't seen The Birds. Neither have you."

"Oh. Right. Say, what can be enticing, besides the smell of food?"

(Dead silence.)

I ate an orange, reviewing the experience in my head for an imaginary magazine. (Packaging: mediocre--has a chemical taste when bitten, and gets your hands all sticky. Taste: first bite acidic, rather overpowering; subsequent bites sweet and delicious. Texture: firm and juicy in equal measure; leaves unpleasant stringy bits in your teeth. Satiation: instead of getting that pleasant full feeling, your stomach turns into a bag of acid. Overall: six out of ten.) I tried to incorporate the orange into my poem. Stella's ghost rolled its eyes. An insect came out of a crack in the wall, and I tried to write him in, too. When I failed, I squashed him, by way of revenge.

"I'll write the rest tomorrow," I said, aloud. Rat B (out of disgrace, by this time) woke up and stuck her head in my ear. "It'll be easier to write about dreams in the morning, when I've just had a few of my own." Stella's ghost didn't have anything to say to that. I imagined it flying out the window, leaving a trail of ratgrease and ectoplasm in its wake. "Should've written about Stella, eh, Rat B? The Singularly Unhelpful Ghost--what do you think?"

Rat B hopped off my lap, and into the dustbin.

* Found in the Fleshrot Halloween Special, printed by Frightworld Studios in September of 2004.