Rat-eater

Rat Eater was a little boy living in a forest cottage with his family. His mother had beautiful golden hair and a large collection of kitchen knives to defend herself from her father. Rat Eater's father would attack her when drunk and once gouge out Rat Eater's left eye. Rat Eater's sister lay in the garden, deep underground. Rat Eater's father buried her after accidentally hitting her too hard with an old ashtray.

Rat Eater's family cottage wasn't large; it often ran out of bread. However, they say poor families live happily because they feed on love.

Rat Eater was always terribly hungry. One night, sitting in a gloomy, damp cellar, Rat Eater couldn't stand the rumbling in his stomach. With ferocity burning in his single eye, he lunged at a scurrying rat. He caught it in his tiny hands and a moment later, he was no longer hungry. However, he didn't notice the two red eyes staring at him from the opposite corner of the cellar.

The Rat Eater's father noticed that Rat Eater had eaten his fill the next morning, when it was time to let the boy out of the cellar.

"Son, you have an exceptionally round belly," said Rat Eater's father. "But what could you have eaten? A rat?" he added, then laughed, "ha, ha, ha!"

Rat Eater lowered his head, embarrassed. Now his father laughed again, but in a different, more unpleasant way.

"You ate a rat! You really ate a rat!" he repeated. "Ha, ha, ha, you're Rat Eater! Rat Eater, Rat Eater!"

That's how Rat Eater got his name. Before that, Rat Eater's father had never called him anything normal, like Tomek or Jurek. Instead, he called out: "slowworm," "gnome," "bastard!" But he never repeated the names, so Rat Eater couldn't claim any of them as his own.

Years passed, the wind repeatedly tore yellowing leaves from the dry branches, and Rat Eater's parents died. The boy grew up and set out into the world, where he took the name Konstanty Ratate, because no one wanted to call him "Rat Eater." Rat Eater graduated from a renowned university, found a well-paying job, married a pretty girl, got a cybernetic eye, started a company, seduced his secretary, divorced his wife, was abandoned by his mistress, went bankrupt, and lived happily in a small suburban apartment, working at a fish processing plant.

One day, Rat Eater returned home from a hard night shift. He went to bed without eating dinner, and when he awoke in the morning, he noticed he was missing a finger. The thumb of his right hand had disappeared, and where it should have been, there was only a small, ragged wound. Rat Eater shrugged and, hoping the finger would return to its place on its own, ate breakfast and headed to work.

The missing thumb didn't prove to be a good thing for Rat Eater. He found it harder to scale fish, which meant he didn't even make half his quota and was fired from his job by the factory owner—a fat, sweaty, unshaven Mexican with a cigar. Saddened, Rat Eater returned home and sighed as he looked at the dwindling supplies of sour milk and stale bread. He ate dinner and went to bed.

When the Dream Master stopped humming his mournful songs, Rat Eater awoke and noticed with alarm that he was missing the ring finger of his right hand. He rose from the dirty couch and scratched his head. "What could it be?" he thought. He searched the house all day but couldn't find the unruly organ. Angry at having wasted a day he'd intended to spend looking for work, Rat Eater fell asleep.

The next morning, his arm was missing up to the elbow.

"What the hell could this be?" he mused. "I'm definitely not going to find a job now. But maybe I'll manage to find a hand," he said to himself.

He devoured the last of his food and waited. He decided not to fall asleep, but to wait for the thief to emerge from his hiding place at night and reveal his wicked face.

Time passed and passed, and Rat-Eater grew drowsier and drowsier. Night fairies sprinkled sleeping powder on his eyelids, and Rat-Eater fell asleep, dreaming of faraway lands. The next morning, his eyes nearly bulged when he saw he had no legs.

"Enough of this!" he decided.

He crawled to the kitchen, heaved himself onto a chair, and brewed himself a large pot of coffee, which he drank for the next twenty hours. The thief, however, remained silent. The cunning Rat-Eater had to devise a new tactic—he pretended to be asleep, while listening. After half an hour, hearing soft thumping, he opened his eyes. Right in front of him stood a long, black rat. The creature was frightened by Rat-Eater, but it didn't run away.

"What are you doing here, Mr. Rat?" asked Rat-Eater.

"I came to bite your body off," the rat replied

. "Why? Why do you hate me?" Rat-Eater worried.

"I saw everything.

" "What did you see?

" "Everything. I saw you devouring my grandfather. Back then, in the basement. You're a monster, but you won't get away with it. I'll punish you by devouring you whole! "

Rat-Eater frowned.

"Forgive me, Mr. Rat, but I had to eat your grandfather. He saved my life. If it weren't for your grandfather, I would have starved.

" "It doesn't matter. You must be punished. "

Anger flashed across Rat-Eater's face.

"Never!" he shouted. "I'll keep watch!"

And he struck his fist right next to the rat, which in an instant fled and disappeared somewhere behind the furniture. The Rat Eater heard its ominous voice again:

"You have to sleep sometime..."

Gathering all his strength and assessing his options, Rat Eater crawled to a corner of the kitchen, making sure he had an eye on the entire room. He was certain the rat wouldn't sneak up unnoticed. Then he took a rusty knife from a nearby cabinet and waited. He was determined not to succumb to the animal's malice.

He waited, and waited, and waited, but the rat didn't show. Weariness overtook Rat Eater, but he knew he couldn't afford to lose his last limb.

Rat Eater didn't know when he'd lost the battle against the overwhelming fatigue. He fell asleep, and when he opened his eyes again, it was already noon. All that remained of Rat Eater were his head, left arm, and part of his chest. Anger seethed within him.

"I will have my revenge!" he vowed with an angry shout.

This time he couldn't fail. He promised himself he wouldn't fall asleep. But he waited two days and couldn't hold out any longer. He finally entered the world of dreams, where he encountered his father, torturing his mother with a table leg. After waking up, the Rat Eater was grateful for the dream. He couldn't sleep long and woke up just as the rat finished eating his head (avoiding the artificial eye) and was about to eat his hand, the last uneaten part of the Rat Eater's body. The Rat Eater's hand twitched and moved its hand. The rat fled. The Rat Eater wanted to hurl an insult after him, but he couldn't, because it had no head, let alone a mouth.

He tried to escape by crawling out into the corridor, but the rat had gnawed at the tendons responsible for moving its arm, and the Rat Eater could only move it with his hand. His hand wasn't strong enough to pull the whole arm. So he grabbed the knife and waited again. Minutes, hours, days passed.

After another twenty-four hours, the Rat Eater fell back asleep, from which he awoke as the only, smallest finger on his left hand. Now Rat-Eater was seriously frightened. He began to crawl, trying to escape the nasty rat. His finger reached the door and was about to slip through the crack beneath it. Then something tapped his nail. A moment later, Rat-Eater's finger heard the rat's master's voice:

"You're defenseless now, and if I wanted to, I could eat you right there. "

Rat-Eater's finger trembled with fear.

"Don't be afraid," said the rat. "I won't eat you. I'm not like you, who ate Grandpa with his tail. I'll let you go, but you'll have to learn a lesson for the rest of your life. You'll be a small, insignificant worm."

Then he fell silent and walked away. Rat-Eater sighed, but he didn't know what to do with himself. Saddened, he crawled out into the street and headed for the park. There he burrowed into the earth like a tiny worm, fearfully realizing that all that remained for him was the life the rat had predicted for him.

Fate, however, favored Rat-Eater and gave him another chance. Lying in the moist, warm earth, Rat-Eater's finger sprouted and soon grew into a beautiful, spreading finger tree, the most beautiful tree in the entire park.

The End