He has never seen a rat express fear before. But he can see it in the creature’s beady eyes, sharp little teeth, and held up hands.
“What the fuck are you?” he shouts, fists curled into the cotton of the store clerk’s shirt, yanked forward half across the counter and pushing the twelve-pack box of soda that is as familiar as he’s going to get into the collection of bagged treats scattered on the lottery display. With a jerk of his hands, he pulls the innocent rat forward, and though the creature says something, he cuts it right out. There’s too many unfamiliar-familiar things around him, too many buildings that look like they belong in some European tourist hub, too many things that look like they’re back on, ripped from, plucked from, built into what they’re like on Earth. Fuck, this isn’t Earth, or is it? Rats are fucking talking. The rats are FUCKING TALKING.
With coarse fingers and gloves cut from the occasional blade, he shakes the clerk again. “Are you a fucking—a fucking rat? You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?! I’ve already had enough bullshit flung my way today, so if this is someone’s joke—”
It’s a fucking rat in a fucking 7-11. What the fuck? What the fuck?
He pushes forward on the rat, making the poor bastard stumble back into a covered display, plastic slips hiding whatever cigarettes might be tucked behind there. Rats smoking. Rats driving. Rats that fucking talk. But his vision isn’t swimming, he isn’t looking with a heavy jaw and thick saliva into brilliant colours and rods of light, he isn’t anywhere he wants to be. So it’s real. But is it real? The beat in the back of his skull is absent. The sweet thrumming of psychedelic joy. Fucking absent. It’s a real rat.
No. Fuck that. Rats aren’t real. Sentient rats aren’t real.
He rubs knuckles on his eyes while the creature tries to encourage him to calm down. “Fuck off,” he spits like it matters, lifting his head and looking towards the door. He thinks to run outside, ditch the food and forget about picking through his wallet for the last of his cash, when a girl walks in. Human. Short and human and holy fucking shit, the humans are real too.
“You!” he calls to Amanda, and throws a hand in the direction of the cashier. “Look at this shit! Who the fuck is this?! Is this a rat? Do you see a fucking rat?!”
@rulessetno2
