Man Down!

Until today, I'd forgotten the story.   — 1987.  New York City. —   One of the local tabloids reported: MAN TAKEN TO HOSPITAL WITH RAT BITE!

My friends' reactions could be summarized in "What else is new?"  I was amused by the construction of the headline, 'with' indicating an object to follow.  I began substituting rat-bite with the names of objects. ... with handbag. ... head lice. ... ruby lipstick. ... with nylons stretched over his face. ... yapping dog. ... handgun. ... pizza slice lodged in his pie-hole.  I imagined a rat bite so vicious that the man was stretchered into the Emergency Room with a set of rodent dentures stitching up his leg.  

I read on.   — He was bitten, as British public school boys might say 'whilst downtrouting the loo' as if he were on some sort of fishing get-away, or, as the New York paper put it plainly, 'while sitting on the toilet'. 

Until today.

The face staring up at me looked serene.  The body, submerged, lifeless as something to be found in a biology lab's bell-jar.  Instead, it was in the toilet of my basement restroom.  The seat and lid, both down, when it emerged through the plumbing.  The bowl, offering nothing to cling to. 

I should have taken a picture.  The image would have been handy to have one on memory card rather than burnt into my memory instead, still, given pause to think 'what if it is still alive!' or 'what if it is just waiting for me to come a bit closer?'  A photographic still would have held it there forever.  Not exactly dead, but not alive either.  Over time, I would have set it aside, forgotten it. 

In the present, I just wanted it gone.  But, how to get rid of it?  I closed my eyes and, after a moment of hesitation, flushed the thought: what comes up must go down.

This just in.  A homeless rat inflicted with head lice pulled a pair of nylons over its face, intending rob the pie-hole of every last pizza slice.  He was dying of hunger, he was overheard to explain to an accomplice waiting in a get-away van.  Inside, sitting at a table facing the pizzeria's flat-glass windows, a yapping dog wearing ruby-red lipstick noticed the rat about to enter.  While barking her order at the waitress, she pulled a loaded handgun, unseen below the table, from her Louis Vuitton handbag.  The threatening rat was dead within seconds of entering the pizzeria, even before pushing his demands like a ventriloquist through his own still clenched teeth.  The dog was lauded as a hero by a cat who witnessed events and spoke to this newspaper's reporter on condition of anonymity.