Rat Trap
© Carl Plumer

When we moved the rats to the back of the store, the end was as obvious as Jack-in the-Box sauce on a napkin. Kids want rabbits, kittens, gerbils. Foremost dogs. But rats had their day in the sun and now they’re having their day in a dark corner.

Mr. Pastranamus keeps a clean, if smelly, shop, and his decisions are final, ruling as he does, iron-fistedly. I watch him picking at his teeth with his pinky nail, palm up, like a reverse dive off a diving board – an unnecessary level of difficulty. I keep sweeping, but I keep an eye on him, too.

Mr. Pastranamus abruptly leaves his stool--he actually hops up to hop down, he’s a short man and smells of green onions. I keep him pinned to the corner of my eye as he heads to the back. Then I push my broom to the shadows in the far corner, where we keep the waterproof tarps, chicken wire and bleach. And now rats.

That’s when I notice the cages are empty. Rats are clever; they can squeeze through the tiniest of openings to be free. They’ve survived for thousands of years that way. I can hear Mr. Pastranamus struggling with Mother Nature, flushing and cursing, again and again. The pipes must be acting up, they sound like they're squealing.

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Carl Plumer is a graduate of the Masters Writing Program at Stony Brook. He received his BA in English from Fordham and studied writing with Thomas Flanagan and Robert DeMaria. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Blink | Ink, Black Lantern, Pulpsmith and elsewhere. Carl lives with his beautiful wife and four extraordinary children somewhere in the Midwest, sleeplessly plotting his imminent return to New York.