The Devil in Silver

2) Human beings weren’t the only living things the Devil stalked. It fed on warm bodies and fostered fear; rats would do just as well as humans. The Devil had been wandering these halls for years—longer than LeClair had been alive. Dropping down into a patient’s room was the main course, but a passing rat might serve as an aperitif. The rats even had their own name for the beast. Not the Devil. What do rats know of such things? They called him “With Teeth.” Named for the way he killed their kind. He became a kind of legend among the rats, a tale told to make children cower in the dark. But eventually, the rats grew tired of such haunted grounds. They decided to leave Northwest. To flee from With Teeth. A mass exodus.

(Spiders and roaches and all other small life following not far behind.)

So that explains why the rats fled, but not why LeClair the Rat remained behind. That’s because he—LeClair the Rat—was the third reason the other rats all left, en masse. To put it bluntly, nobody liked the guy.

LeClair the Rat was profoundly intelligent. Unfortunately, he felt it was terribly important that every other rat in the world know this about him. He was a real bore and a pedant, but worst of all he was just a weenie. But so what, right? Why not just ignore a rat like that? Why abandon him? The problem was that LeClair was also a good scavenger. He foraged food, rummaged nesting materials—but when he returned with the goods, he wouldn’t share them freely. Instead, he’d force the other rats to sit around and listen to him—all his brilliant thoughts—before handing over the precious materials. You say you just want to know if those kernels of corn LeClair discovered were edible? Plebeian. You’d just hoped to use these bits of shredded newspaper to line a nest? Troglodyte. Didn’t you want to hear what LeClair thought about newspapers? And the dangers of how humans artificially increased the size of their corn? And, while he was at it, let him weave in the history of …

The point here wasn’t that LeClair the Rat was hated because all the other rats were dull-witted, anti-intellectuals. (Though, of course, some were.) The point was that LeClair the Rat had ideas, and he divided the entire rat population into two groups: those whose ideas agreed with his and those who had none. He couldn’t fathom that other rats might simply value different ideas and methods from his own. (That possibility was void, as Mr. Mack would say.)

As time passed, the other rats grew tired of their lives in Northwest: dodging the exterminators and their arsenal of poisons, cowering as With Teeth plagued the second floor, avoiding the increasingly sanctimonious LeClair. Some of the elder rats told stories of another world, someplace beyond Northwest. Outside. Where they might procreate and forage and procreate and die. What more could a rat ask for?

And eventually the rats did leave. Some lived in the wilds of New Hyde’s poorly maintained grounds; others found their way to the main buildings of the hospital; and others reached human homes beyond the fence line and their descendants still live there now. (Sorry, but it’s true.) But none of the rats ever told LeClair that they were going. He’d heard them talk about that place, Outside, but dismissed it as a myth. (If it was real, he would’ve been the one to think of it.) And one day LeClair the Rat found himself living alone on Northwest’s second floor. Nearly alone. Him and With Teeth. LeClair at least knew enough to keep his distance from that one. (In fact, the day he’d come crashing through Glenn’s ceiling was because With Teeth had been chasing him, trying to take a bite.)

He tried to stay brave in the face of his isolation. He didn’t admit to missing his fellow rats; instead, he cultivated a growing disdain for them. And that helped him make it through the year of solitude. But today, LeClair the Rat had to finally admit the truth.

He was lonely.

He’d tried, one last time, to find purpose in his work. He’d boldly leapt out, in plain view of the humans, and annexed a box of sugared corn. He almost got clocked, one of the humans chopping at him with a broom, but he escaped. And returned to the second floor. He’d felt pride in his daring, but could share the story, and the cereal, with no one. That’s when he came to realize that it can be honorable to stand alone, arguing for a righteous cause. But sometimes “taking a stance” becomes confused with “just being an asshole.” It had taken quite awhile, but on this late night LeClair the Rat finally accepted that, long ago, he’d turned into a prick.

But today LeClair the Rat was going to change.

Could he really, though? Hard to say. At least he might try.