She was running down a dingy hallway
and encountered a dark green apartment door. She was looking for somewhere to
hide and didn’t know where the baby was. Bursting into a barely lit room, she
doubled over, breathing heavily. She felt a presence in the room and looked up
with a start. Two men sat cross-legged on the floor in the midst of chaos.
Rumpled piles of soiled clothes and dirty dishes lay in mounds all around them
as if their empire. They gawked at her in a hypnotized stupor, glassy eyes
shining like the glint of a wild animal’s gaze from the shadows of the forest.
They giggled together in slow motion, though their voices were high like
pre-pubescent boys. With long scraggly hair shifting across their faces, she
could not tell where their eyes kept wandering, until she realized that they
were watching small rats scuttle across the floor and through the trash that
surrounded them. She was stunned when she looked at the hands of the two men,
which were stained red and brown from dirt and dried blood. For they were
catching the rats in their bare hands and grasping them with such specified
force that the rodents slid right out of their own skin and fur, to land on the
heap of rubble, pink and naked. As she watched a few rounds of this gruesome
activity, she suddenly felt free to leave the room and walk away from the
ugliness. As she turned, the men began whispering to each other in slithery
little tones, mentioning what a shame it was that she was leaving them; that
they would have no one for whom to present their violent talents. But as soon
as they expressed their disappointment, their faces contorted into moldy clay
masks, and slid off to glide down their lean bodies. She exited the room and closed
the door firmly behind her.
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