True Tongue

There was a dead rat out by the bins, this morning, mashed into a corner with his snout all crushed. It looked like he'd died in the middle of the pavement, before being footed off to the side by passers-by. Someone had stepped on his nose, tearing the skin away and unhinging his jaw. I think he was already dead, by then. There wasn't any blood around him, save for a few drops dried into his whiskers. Of course, it could've rained, some time between his death and my arrival. There could've been blood all over the place, earlier on. It could've been a regular rat gorefest, complete with arterial graffiti:

"Wot's it say, Inspector?"

"Looks like 'TRUE LOVE,' Constable. Yes. Definitely 'TRUE LOVE'."

"You get 'TRUE LOVE' from that?"

"Certainly. Br'er Rat, over here, has made clever use of a pre-existing rust-stain, to form the umbrella of the T. See, there, how the blood and the rust intersect? The big loopy bit next to that is clearly an R. You've got the stem on the left, and the loop, and the skirt, all quite proper and legible."

"A T and an R, eh? Where's the rest, then?"

"Well, if you look at the tail of the R, as it banks to the right--see that dimple? A less practiced eye might take it for a mere twitch--the faltering of a dying hand, sort of thing--but the way it comes to a point, there, before trailing off, clearly marks it as a U."

"Clearly." (Uttered, of course, in the heaviest of voices, with accompanying eye-roll.)

"And the loopy crack in the concrete, to the right of that, that's your E. And the L-O-V-E, well, look at the body. His heart's poking out of his mouth."

"I think that's his tongue, sir."

"'TRUE TONGUE?'"

"Not terribly romantic, is it?"

"No, not terribly."

"Shall we be off, then?"

"Rather."

I've been going out earlier, these days, hoping to avoid further run-ins with the Downtown Ambassadors. I looked them up on the Internet, after last month's incident, and it turns out they don't hit the streets till seven or eight in the morning. That means I'm free to bum about all I want, as long as I do it at night. The one drawback is the rubbish. Dead rats, for instance--you never see those, during the day. Or pizza plates, or breakfast-burrito wrappers. I hate to see that type of crap. It makes me sick just looking at it, all manky and grease-spotted, as it is. With the bins right there, you'd think folks could be a little tidier.

You don't get the rubbish after sunrise. The streets get swept first thing. I know it sounds unlikely, in this day and age, but I've seen it happening. I heard this "whishhhh! whishhhh!" the other morning, and there he was, some old fart with a broom, swooshing up Burrard. He was there the next morning, too (I got up early to check for him), and the morning after that. His hair looked just like his broom, all dark and bristly, and pointing in fifty directions at once. I noted him down for future mention.

He hadn't come yet, though, this morning, and there was a dead rat in the street. I got a good look at it. I was supposed to be looking at birds, of course, but there weren't any about. You'd think there'd at least have been crows, nibbling on poor Mr. Rat, but there weren't. These city crows are all soft. They think they're too good for carrion-eating. Why have some filthy dead rat, after all, when there's a whole trash smorgasbord for the pecking?

The rat didn't look awfully tasty, anyway. He looked old and unhealthy. He was thin, and his hair'd gone all that wispy way it does, when a rat's well into his third year. I could see his wrinkly skin underneath. Funny, that. You don't often see a street rat gone that way. Rats don't start losing their hair till they're closing in on the end of their natural lifespans, and wild rats rarely get the chance. They last six months, maybe a year, then a cat gets them, or they run afoul of a lorry. This guy, on the other hand, he must've been living here already when I got back from Sweden. He must've fathered a thousand litters, and had a million descendants. If the sweeping guy misses him this morning, one of said progeny might come and eat his body.

He probably died of old age, that rat. I imagined him preparing to dart across the pavement, following some familiar route, and never quite getting started. It was probably a lot like getting out of bed in the morning, when you don't really want to. You tell yourself you're going to get up, just as soon as the echo of the alarm clock's gone out of your ears. You stretch luxuriously. It's warm in bed, and soft, and pleasant. Outside, it's cold and damp. You close your eyes for just a second, gathering your faculties, and then you bite the bullet. You shrug off the covers. You pull on your socks, and wrestle a sweater over your head. You're out in the driveway, turning your keys in the ignition, when--"BRRRRRING!"--isn't your boss on the phone, wanting to know why you're not at work? You're still in bed, berk that you are. It must've been like that for the rat, but without the wakeup call.

Either that, or he got too old and slow, and somebody stood on his face.

I thought about getting a knife, so I could take one of his feet for pickling, but decided against it. People think I'm strange enough, already. Besides, I haven't got any good jars. I'd have had to keep it in the freezer for a while. Even I don't want dead rat parts mixed in with my food.