(Clarifaction: They are not actually rats)
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The boy was born out of wedlock.
The parents of the boy do not greet him.
This boy was not a fusion of love but a fusion of loss, the loss of the dove [1]who never saw them off.
On the rings of gas[2] they floated, in their sight was the home they refused to look at, else they remind themselves of life as man and woman.
The manrat and womanrat would torture the child with stories of Earth to curse him with a portion of their pain.
The child, he is lithe and small and his eyes have an anger that stands out among the others. Others know that they are merely rats and have no ability for anger, joy, or yearning.
But this boy had been deluded by the sick jokes implanted by the manrat and the womanrat that cursed him with birth. This child deluded himself human.
He ran his daily errands in the city of thieves, his birthgiver's interest in him limited to torture, for sustenance he must rely on himself.
Celestial bodies aligned, total darkness again as the boy walks the streets into a palace of sin. In there, rats of all kinds gathered to indulge themselves in the devil's poison.
A particular rat of ilk unnatural, in size and colour he is different from the others.
This was a man, not a rat, unlike the others on this planet, he did not belong in this underbelly.
The man sees the child, the young rat and expresses joy at the pathetic sight. A smile so wide, unnaturally wide, the crescents of his eyes the width of his mouth it irks you.
What be your problem, asks the child.
The man looks at him, and serenades him with prophecy, like a hunter seasoning venison. Child I see in you a prince of rats, fit to become a king to lead the mischief out of their cage, he chimes.
The young rat frowns. I am a human boy not a rat, he says.
He just smiles. That belief is what makes you special boy, replies the man.
The prince of rats gives the strange man a disdainful look.
A king of rats does not have to be himself a rat, let me show you how simple it is to lead these cursed closed-minded fools astray young prince, the strange man chided.
The man, in his pristine garments unfit for this place, walks up to one of the damned, a rat of average size and a face of ink. He whispers in his ear, that man in the table across from you, I saw him earlier today as I was making my rounds. The rat leaned in, interested in what the man had to say.
That man only touched down few cycles ago.
And so, what's it to me?
I saw him holding something, dry it was. Salted. Flesh by any other name. The man was practically salivating as he said the words, his wet serpentine tongue slivering devilishly.
The inked rat mimicked the devilish smile of the man, an eerie smile of two crescent eyes and a mouth unhinged.
The same face made its way across the room. Some of the rats in the periphery overheard the conversation and it spreads like fire.
The rats, devilish grins on their faces scurry their way to the pointed out rat.
Hey buddy, says a plump rat. Got anything you'd like to share with the rest up us?
The surrounded rat looks around in confusion. The fucks wrong with you lot?
Another rat, this one slimy and lanky chimes in, come on man no need to be shy, we all know what you've got.
The surrounded rat looks around in disbelief and rage. This some kind of sick fucking joke, huh, I haven't a clue what you fuckers are on about.
The mischief of rats don't believe a lick of what the surrounded rat says, and so they pounce.
The boy watched as the rats tore one of their own apart limb from limb at such simple coercion from the man.
One rat with a plump stomach took the lead and began pummelling the surrounded rat's head against the table, interrogating him again and again about where he was hiding it.
Thereafter more and more began joining in the public trial, demanding that the surrounded rat give it up. The boy wasn't entirely sure if the group even remembered what they were looking for.
A look of confusion flashes on the boy's face, he'd rather avoid conversing with the strange man but this query was taking up too much room in his mind, as if his brain were a soft balloon slowly expanding in a brick wall, a disaster was inevitable if he didn't alleviate the pressure soon.
How could such a simple reaction have all these grown rats acting this way, asks the boy.
The strange man simply glances at the boy, lets out a huff and tells the boy, don't you know boy? Dried meat is a commodity round these parts.
The boy gives him a dubious look, I feel like you aren't telling the whole truth he says.
The strange man leans back on his seat and shows off that terrifying smile again, the two crescent eyes and the smile that reaches wider than it should. With a guffaw, he praises the boy, not bad kid I should have expected as much from a prince, the truth is that they're simply doing this cause they enjoy it.
The confusion in the boy's mind only grew larger, if they wanted to pick on him, why didn't they do so sooner? The boy asks.
With a shake of the head, the strange man continues his explanation, because they didn't know who they were gonna pick on boy, that is why I decided to help them out and give them a target.
The boy grew increasingly disgusted by the pathetic sight in front of him, the urge to spit at the crowd grew incessantly but he knew better than to draw trouble to himself. A final question, is this what makes them rats and not human?
The man looks knowingly as if that question was expected, though unlike previous times, the strange man simply continued smiling and started on his drink, as if to say that only he could answer that.
The boy had had enough. He excused himself in a manner not too polite to seem weak, but not too firm to draw ire, as he had learned the hard way growing up.
As he exits the room, sniffing the permeating scent of violence, he looks back one more time and lays his eyes on the sight of the rat who was the center of attention, his blood soaked body paraded around the room like a prize.
The boy continued on his way home, as the absolute darkness lifted he puts his hands in his pockets, his fingers grazing the bits of food he'd nabbed from the establishment, but his mind was elsewhere, at the lessons that the strange man had imparted on him, if they could be called that. And mostly, his mind was on what the strange man had called him.
The Prince of Rats…
[1] Dove = motif/symbol for holy spirit
ie. they feel like they've been abandoned by the holy spirit and god
[2] Rings of Saturn