THE RAT CATCHER

The rain threw itself down into the dark streets: the heavy barrading on concrete pavements rumbled through the night. It was late now, and the usual criss-cross of hoards dashing from work to home, or home to work had died down to no more than an individual here, and a couple there, walking briskly onward as if somehow they could avoid the large drops of rain which were plummeting from above.

While these adventurers fled to the shelter and warmth of their destinations, they faded into a haze of blurred comings and goings for a creature watching from outside: that world of rushing and warmth and houses and families and beds and sleep.

For Shark there was no such world. He watched as though these people only existed in a glass bauble held before him: there for him to watch, but never to touch while he sat there on the outside, never able to break the glass and join the fantasy.

What did he care?

That world held nothing for him, he knew that: he’d been there once.

Oh yes, he’d been there alright. He’d lived there, he’d tasted its marvels, and he’d suffered its horrors. He knew that place better than he wanted: it is where he’d come from. It is where he had escaped from. He was safe here. Safer than there: that place he had run from.

He shuffled inward, as far into himself as was physically possible, as if somehow he could hide from the darkness which had crept in and was lingering all around him. This was his home now: this doorway of a shop which sold novelty items, and the sort of tack that tourists buy to prove to themselves that they have actually visited a place, and not just seen it on the front of a postcard.

It was cold now. It was still only October but winter was definitely on its way: Shark was sure of that. It would be a cold one this year: his second year, out here alone in the cold and the dark.

Not always alone of course. There were others. Others like him: outcasts, derelicts, and the psychologically scarred. All hiding in the shadows away from the lives they had abandoned, or had been abandoned by.

But on the whole he was alone. He kept himself to himself as much as he could. He had seen what happens to those that rely on others. Out here that would make you a target: easy prey. It’s very easy to get caught up in things, and Shark didn’t want to get caught up in anything that might do him damage. He was a survivor: a real one, and he had found the best way to survive out here was not to rely on anyone, and not to have others relying on him. Well, that was his theory anyway. As with all theoretical musings, the practical actualities can be something quite different. …