by Gregg Delcurla
I never knew my mother. Long before I was old enough to keep tabs on friends and relationships, my mother passed on. She had been in the city--New York City--where I am today.
I'm told that back then we lived in a small apartment on 3rd Avenue, just above Little John's Pizza and Gyro Palace. We were poor, but we were happy. Dad always said that it was like an adventure. Him, twenty-two and mother all of nineteen years. Unmarried, but planning on it, with an entire, healthy, lifetime ahead. We were the archetypal family--Man, Woman, and Child--assigned a common but clear future as if it had been written and played out millions and millions of times before.
As if it were a story in a book.
Of course, that's not how our lives actually turned out. For the record it's not how life, in general, usually turns out. I think that life is more like the movie version of the book. Same story, but different. It's fast and furious, all questions, no answers. Description is cut in favor of visuals and plot is simplified out of respect for the standard ninety-minute attention span.
Names are changed.
Locations moved.
And occasionally, characters are cut.
My mother was one such character and me, I was the baby that she left behind. And in doing so, she had taught me something, my first real lesson in life: that nothing is so simple, easy, or predictable.
Especially the weather.
I have been told that long before the Mars landing, the Millennium, and all this crazy weather, the city was a nice place.
Violent, yes.
Dark, yes.
But fun--I picture it like an amusement park. I can hear my Dad's voice repeating over and over in my head: It was amazing, Petey! There were coffee shops and theaters, performers on the street, and a tavern on every corner! New York, he told me, was the greatest city in the entire world.
Peculiar, that Dear Ol' Dad was in Chicago the day that it happened. Truly unfortunate. And though I don't blame him, I think that somewhere within me there resides an off-tasting bitterness. Because I can't help but think that maybe if Dad hadn't been away... Maybe... Well--just maybe.
In any case, I was there for the big event, though I don't remember it. The first storm--the one that started it all. A storm for which it would take scientists--meteorologists--three years to manufacture an official, technical name. But a storm the public had tagged instantly.
Rat Rain. Two simple words that practically tell the whole story.
My mother was killed by rats. The rats that came out of the sewers once the rainstorm went too far.
It will pass...
Move on...
…out to sea.
The experts had a lot to say. But it didn't do any of those things. And just when those fools claimed that it would turn out over the Atlantic, it did just the opposite. The storm stayed put. The rats, however, began to move.
Back then the ratio of rats to people was almost the same as it is now, about five hundred to one. It must have been terrifying for those people. At least this generation has seen the films and we understand the phenomena. We grew up with this rain, but back then…
Four hundred fifty people died and an unmeasurable number were injured. I picture all of those rats, all of those people. Rats--biting. People--stomping. Neither to blame for the ugly circumstance that brought them together.
It's weird, I know, but when I see a rat it doesn't bother me nearly as much as when I hear a clap of thunder, or the angry hiss of raindrops on concrete.
Like right now, for instance. I'm sitting here, in New York City, inside my apartment, only five blocks from where my mother was killed almost twenty-five years ago. Outside my window the rain pounds the streets and people are running for cover. While inside… The dry weatherman, inside my dry television, inside my dry apartment, begs to differ with the news that spews from both the skies and my ever-clouded brain.
The man on TV argues with reality--the reality of the rain outside my window. A reality that tells me that something terrible is about to happen.
Rat Rain.
My mother wasn't actually eaten by rats. I know that now. OK, I guess I don't know for sure, but it is unlikely. Most of the people killed during the storm fell victim to more pedestrian fates; ricocheting bullets, heart attacks, car accidents. But see, when I was a kid, nobody bothered to tell me how she died--only when and where. I think that they were trying to protect me from the truth. But a strange thing happened as a consequence: not privy to the details of what happened, my mind went crazy with speculation.
I pictured it, dreamt about it, lived it inside my mind. Tiny needle bites, puncture holes, gnashing teeth. Overwhelmed, devoured. There were nights that I cried for my mother and the pain that I had believed she had suffered.
Of course, looking back, I was probably mistaken. She could have fallen and broken her neck, been mugged, or she even might have drowned.
And does it make a difference? No. Truth, fiction… imagination, it is of no consequence. Whatever the reason, I grew up, screwed up--a kid whose mother had been eaten alive. How many people can say that?
I wasn't popular growing up. I didn't have a lot of friends. Quiet, nervous, strange--that's how people would describe me. I am a haunted person. The ghost of my mother, and a freak storm, and millions of drowned rodents, dance like poison shadows inside my mind. There are people that say that I'm crazy. And now I sit in my apartment, in New York, during a terrible rainstorm, waiting to be vindicated.
It's late, but the street lights illuminate. I look out the window and can see the hazy visage of Snarky's Tavern across the way. I listen; some ways off there is thunder and nearby I hear the damp percussion of heavy droplets. I smell the street oils and sense the strangeness in the air.
Across the street, gathered raindrops form tiny streams that run down sewer pipes beneath the city.
And from that opening emerges our first visitor. Black, wet--sly and shy--he stands for a brief moment, surveying the topside world.
He is the first, I think, and I am the first.
The weatherman denies the rain just as his brethren have yet to acknowledge the impending flood.
Rats--people, and an imminent war of circumstance.
And I look at him--the first rat.
And he looks at me--the first human.
Both of us afraid, each of us knowing--that something unthinkable will happen again.
| "Gregg Delcurla is a writer and software professional living in New York City. He is also the author of the AFM original series, "The Man Who Sold Marionettes." |
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