From the corner of her eye, Charlie saw the now-familiar van come into view. Plain white, no logo. Not only were the days of Postman Pat and his shiny red van gone for good, even the idea of the postman actually working for the post office had gone the way of the dinosaur, and freelancers worked using their own anonymous vans, usually white. But she had seen this particular van often enough now to recognize it instantly. Quickly getting up from the kitchen counter, she trotted to the door, pulling her mask up over her face before turning the handle to open it. Outside, the postman, similarly masked, gave her a cheery wave before depositing a parcel at a distance from the door, and rapidly retreating to his van. She waved back, while scooping up the parcel, which seemed surprisingly heavy, given its relatively small size. Standing up again, she glanced around the street, empty now that the van had turned the corner, scanning the houses around her. She wondered what was going on behind all those closed doors, the blind windows. Then a curtain twitched at the house across the street, and she hastened to return to her ground-floor flat.
Safely back indoors, she peeked nervously through the window. No sign of any movement at the house opposite. She sighed. Lockdown was bad enough without living across the street from the gestapo. Hetty Williams had been tiresome enough in the days when she just headed up the Neighbourhood Watch, dominating the street’s app with alarms about strange, scruffy men hanging around (‘strange’ generally meant ‘not white’ and ‘scruffy’ that the person in question was wearing tracksuit bottoms), catty remarks about unlocked windows and unlatched gates she’d spotted, and virtuous monologues about her own security improvements. Since corona, she not only had a new crusade to sink her teeth into, but entire days at home in which to pursue it. Groups of more than two people, individuals suspiciously unencumbered by shopping bags or any other justification for being out of doors, dogwalkers going out for the third time that day – they all bore the brunt of her wrath. It was amazing the volume she could achieve through a face mask from 6 feet away. Charlie still cringed at the memory of the poor guy from down the street who had tried to save his physical and mental health by going out jogging. She herself hadn’t dared to set foot out of doors for a week without a cast-iron alibi.
Suddenly aware of the package still in her hands, she put it down on the counter. She had ordered so many things recently that she didn’t have a clue anymore which of her purchases the parcel contained. Confined to home, online shopping had become a way to both while away the dull evening hours and brighten up her life with some treats. Scented candles, nostalgic retro sweets, cosy bedsocks and new books to escape into. But there was no time to examine this package further now. Her laptop lay open beside her, the screen filled with faces. She sat back down, put on her headphones, and quickly typed ‘sorry, had to take in a parcel’, before concentrating hard to pick up the thread of the discussion again.
The next morning, she shambled into the kitchen alcove, eyes sticky with sleep and mind equally gummed up. Blearily, she fished out the old coffee filter and dropped it in the recycling bin, subconsciously noting an unpleasant smell and reminding herself to risk a foray out of doors to empty it. She measured out four scoops and four cups of water, slid the jug into the machine and hit the switch. While it was brewing, she wandered desultorily round the small space. She didn’t have much of an appetite after days of being stuck indoors. She hadn’t slept well, either. Since the lockdown she had got used to nights filled with vivid dreams. Her teeth all falling out, crumbled fragments lying on her tongue. Rushing for planes, trains, buses before realizing she had nothing with her, not even a wallet or a coat, sometimes not wearing any clothes at all. Sitting in a family gathering where everyone seemed to be furious at her for a very good reason known to all but her. None of them anything to do with deadly viruses, yet all of them filled with the same sense of impending disaster. Last night had been particularly bad, though. She had continually dreamed of being in her own bed, but with shadows moving round the room, and a feeling of threat. Opening her eyes, she had seen her room filled with dark, menacing figures, and started to scream. Before realizing that she could see every detail of the scene around her, whereas in reality she should see hardly anything without her glasses on. At that point she had really woken up. The rest of the night had passed in a similar way, so that by the time her alarm went in the morning, she was unsure how long she had slept and how long she had lain awake. Now, her head throbbed, and she felt muzzy and nauseous.
But she had to eat something, so eventually she put a few crackers with cheese spread and some dried fruit onto a plate. Now that trips to the shops had to be carefully rationed, fresh milk for her bowl of cornflakes was a luxury that belonged to the past. Pushing her laptop and the parcel out of the way to make space for her breakfast, the parcel tumbled down onto the floor. Bending down to pick it up, she stopped short. It was ripped open. Lifting it carefully in case the contents fell out, she blinked as she inspected it. The packaging was completely shredded down one side, tatters of red and yellow carton hanging off. It was completely empty, and looked almost – chewed. Charlie gingerly sniffed at it, and screwed up her nose in disgust, her intuition confirmed. It reeked with the putrid smell she had noticed the day before. Could she have rats? Shuddering at the thought, she quickly stuffed the box into one of the carrier bags that constantly drifted out of the plastic holder she had bought to contain them, and dashed out of the front door with it, shivering in the chill air.
She had just dropped the repulsive bag into the wheelie bin at the end of the drive, when a shape appeared at her elbow. Or not quite – six feet away from her elbow. Inwardly sighing, she summoned up all her politeness and said brightly, ‘Good morning, Hetty!’. ‘Charlie. Out again?’, was the cool, disapproving response. ‘Yes, I had to throw something away’, she replied, suppressing the urge to sarcastically ask when Hetty had joined the police force, or demand to know why she felt she had the right to monitor her neighbours’ movements. Hetty tutted. ‘Surely you could have saved such a small bag for later. I keep all my rubbish sorted in different bags, then I take them all out just once a week. Fewer trips, less risk. For everyone’, she added pointedly at the end. Charlie breathed deeply, before assuming the virtuous demeanour of a socially responsible person. ‘Ah, but this was a health risk, you see. Chewed by rats’. ‘Rats!’, exclaimed Hetty, and rapidly backpedalled to her own house, presumably to carry out a thorough rat check. As the door shut behind her, Charlie couldn’t resist a slight smirk. Rats, she thought, I’ll have to remember that one.
Back in her flat, shutting the door behind her, she thought she heard a faint scuffling sound. Imagining things, she scolded herself. Rats are nocturnal, she knew that much from various horror stories heard one evening when student friends had decided to swap infestation tales. Clothes wrecked by urine, going through drawers only to put your hand on a dead mouse, late-night visits with friends punctuated by the sound of traps snapping shut… She shuddered. Mind you, the rodents hadn’t been the worst. The memory of the gelatinous, pulsating ant nest one friend had described finding at the back of her kitchen cupboard still turned her stomach. Looking at the plate of food, she pushed it to one side, and reached for her laptop instead.
Switching it on, she reviewed the day ahead of her. Much as she missed her colleagues, she sighed with relief when she saw she had no meetings that morning. An online meeting was the worst of both worlds. You couldn’t get any work done, but neither could you grab a cup of coffee with your colleagues afterwards and have a good chat. Instead, most people rushed straight to the next virtual meeting room, and the rest left as quickly as possible, to claw back some time free from microphone malfunctions, washing machines/dogs/kids in the background, and a screen full of sheepish faces looking like the FBI’s Least Wanted. Now, instead of wasting her time, she could finally get down to some serious programming.
Soon she had got into a steady rhythm, writing functions, testing, debugging. It gave a sense of deep satisfaction, breaking a problem down and getting it working bit by bit, progress measurable by test results turning from an alarming orange to a pleasing green. Gradually, she felt better, and snacked from the plate beside her as she went along. Taking a break, she googled ‘signs rat infestation’, and was relieved that she didn’t have most of the indications mentioned – droppings, footprints, rat holes. Only that smell and the chewed parcel. Perhaps, she thought optimistically, there had just been something so irresistible in the parcel that a rat had come in to chew it, then left again. Still, she resolved to be on the look-out. Feeling increasingly hungry, she reached out to her plate, and was surprised to find it empty. She’d clearly been eating without even noticing it. Never mind, it was lunchtime. She put the plate in the sink and took out a bowl for some soup.
Lunch sadly marked the end of the pleasant meeting-free interlude. Charlie’s diary was an ominous, unbroken block of blue – back-to-back meetings for the rest of the afternoon. As time dragged on, her eyes grew glazed from focusing on the small screen, trying to decipher facial expressions and keep track of who was speaking, as small boxes with faces flickered, multiplied and shifted around her screen. As one meeting ended and another started, she entered the new meeting room to the sound of the threatening chime that indicated that the session was being recorded. Gritting her teeth, she put on an enthusiastic attitude, nodding thoughtfully at suggestions and mugging exaggerated sympathy as a colleague listed his battles with a software installer. Then, suddenly, he broke off and smiled, ‘Hey, Charlie, I didn’t know you had a cat! So cute!’. He resumed his monologue, as her eyes reflexively dropped down to the preview of her camera image, just in time to see a dark shape flash out of view. Looking frantically around her, she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary in the flat. Suppressing the urge to get down from her stool and carry out a full search, she forced herself to look attentive again. But she was barely aware of the rest of the proceedings, so engrossed was she in watching her own image for any sign of background motion.
When work was finished, Charlie clicked on the link for the meeting recording, and scrolled through to the moment that the dark shape had appeared. Frozen on the screen, the shape wasn’t identifiable. But it was big. Far too big to be a rat. Her stomach knotted up in fear and disgust, and she jumped at every sound, real or imagined. While on hold with the letting agency, she ransacked her flat for a suitable weapon. As she wasn’t the heroine in a Hollywood movie, she didn’t possess a baseball bat, nor a prominently placed knife block from which she could whip out a lethal-looking blade. In the end, she settled for a spray can of oven cleaner and a small but heavy-bottomed saucepan. A bored-sounding voice finally came on the line, to inform her it was utterly impossible for anyone to come round to deal with the ‘supposed rodent issue’ for at least a week. Corona, the voice said, invoking the magical formula for instantly defusing any argument or complaint. Charlie slammed the phone down. She spent the next hour gingerly prodding under furniture and warily opening doors and drawers, her pathetic arsenal at the ready. Nothing moved, and finally she relaxed enough to cook dinner.
She was too tired to do anything exotic, so simply chopped up some ham and broke eggs to make an omelette. She poured oil into a pan, turned the gas on, and fumbled with her lighter until flames shot up. As usual, the tiny hob took forever to warm up. As she waited, she regularly glanced over her shoulder, but each time the flat looked as normal, small and grubby but unthreatening. When the oil finally started to bubble, she poured in the eggs, and sprinkled in some herbs and grated cheese. Reaching over to the ham, she stopped short, and choked back a cry of horror. The plate, which was not more than a metre away from her elbow, was empty. In a reflex, she slammed her spatula on the counter several times, then spun around, eyes darting about in sign of any movement. There was nothing to be seen. Cautiously lifting the plate, her fingers encountered a sticky substance. Nearly throwing up in disgust, she flung it into the sink and turned on the tap full blast. She scrubbed her hands with soap and water until they were nearly bleeding – and a scorching smell made her realise that her omelette was burning. She scraped the contents of the pan into the rubbish, then filled it with water and put it on the counter next to the sink. Her appetite had gone, anyway.
Her heart was pounding, her hands shaking. Charlie poured herself a small tot of the eighty-percent rum she had brought back from her Christmas holiday in Austria. The alcohol warmed her throat and blood, but relaxation was impossible. She thought longingly back on the last time she had opened the bottle, at her New Year’s Eve party. She’d soaked a cone of sugar in the rum, then, propping it over a pan of gluhwein, she had ignited it with her lighter. Flames shot up almost to the ceiling, to cries of drunken appreciation from her friends. The memory of the cosy scene, the music and laughter, engulfed her in a wave of desperate loneliness. She wanted people there with her. Not onscreen in a zoom call or at the end of the phone line. Really there. Steph, who would methodically inspect the entire flat, the familiar slight frown of absolute concentration between her eyebrows, until she either had found the rat or could conclusively prove there was nothing there. Ivan and Marco, who would have her in hysterics with their slapstick imitation of a rat making bumbling attempts to steal food before meeting a grisly end at the hands of the wrathful flat-owner. Even her mother, who would freak out about the rat, harangue her for her poor standards of cleanliness – and then envelop her in a comforting hug.
Draining the last drops from her glass, Charlie slammed it down on the counter and decided something had to be done. Stuff the agency, she would ring an exterminator herself and then fight it out over the costs later. Nervous energy pulsing through her veins, she set to googling companies in the area. But after the fifth call, she flung her phone into the corner in frustration. Everywhere it was the same story, too many callouts, too few staff, corona, corona, corona. And what was she supposed to do in the meantime? Pacing up and down, she reviewed her options. They were depressingly limited. Her mother was shielding her father, with his heart condition, so she couldn’t go there. Her friends – Steph would usually have welcomed her with open arms but was now in a panic about her infant getting corona, Ivan and Marco had a flatmate who worked in intensive care and couldn’t risk infection – everyone she could normally have counted on was out of the running. She couldn’t even go to a hotel. She was on her own – except for the rat, or whatever it was.
Charlie shivered. Stuck indoors, she had got out of the habit of checking the weather report, and had failed to turn on her storage heater yesterday in advance of the cold spell. Now it was on, but it wouldn’t store up heat until tomorrow, and the temperature in the flat was dropping fast as the evening drew on. As quickly as she could, she pulled on a few extra layers of clothing, flinching for the few seconds that her jumper covered her eyes, dreading what might have appeared in the meantime. Going to the toilet and then cleaning her teeth, she nearly jumped out of her skin at a sudden movement behind her, reflected in the mirror. But it was only her towel slipping off the rail.
Keeping all the lights on, she bundled herself in her duvet and extra blanket, then propped herself up against the headboard. Her eyes scanned the room constantly, on the look out for any movement. She would stay awake all night if she had to. How could she sleep, anyway? But, as the night wore on, her eyes grew heavy. The furniture drifted in and out of focus. Scenes from films like ‘Gremlins’, and ‘Critters’, replayed themselves over and over again in her head. Then, she was back in high school, trying to explain to the teacher that she couldn’t hand in her homework, because it had been eaten by a rat, which was actually part of an invasion of aliens from another planet. Her teacher didn’t believe her, and threatened to expel her. Charlie’s mother turned up, and said, ‘Charlie, I’ll cry if you don’t tell the teacher the truth’. Charlie insisted she was telling the truth. Her mother started to cry, and Charlie felt so terrible, so guilty. Then, she remembered that she shouldn’t be in school anyway, because she was grown up, and had a job…
With a jolt, Charlie woke up. The room was in almost complete darkness, only a small amount of light seeped in through the window from the streetlight outside. She had a gasping sense of panic, but, for a moment, she couldn’t remember why. Then, she remembered the rat. Fumbling for the bedside light, it failed to turn on. Her hand traced downwards, along the cord, to a frayed, ragged end, sticky with some unpleasant sort of goo. The darkness seemed palpable, weighing down on her. Then, she realized that there really was something pressing down on her stomach. Something on top of the covers.
Slowly, it shifted, and started to move, further up towards her chest. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she could see something, an indistinct, dark shape. Eyes glistened, with a suggestion of red. A vague impression of greasy fur. She could feel small pressure points pushing down through the blanket, with a slight sharpness. As it drew closer, the streetlight seemed to reflect on small, sharp teeth. A stench reached her, as of foul breath, stinking rubbish, rotting meat. In just a moment, it would reach her face.
Charlie reacted instinctively. Her hands clenched on the blanket, then jerked up convulsively, in one swift movement, flipping the blanket up over the dark thing. Rolling out of the bed, she stumbled up, the weight in the blanket swinging to and fro. Staggering towards the kitchen, she tried to slam the bundle into every hard surface she could find along the way. Swinging it up, she flung her loathsome burden into the sink. Groping along the counter for any possible weapon, her fingers encountered a bottle. She swung it down, hard, and it broke over the blanket, shattering in an explosion of glass fragments and an overpowering smell of alcohol. There was a ripping sound, and a sharp claw lanced up through the blanket, thrashing about. Her mind racing, she fumbled along the counter for her lighter, then thrust it into the sink and depressed the switch.
The flames leaped up, and a horrible screaming sound issued from the sink. As the blanket burned away, she could see the loathsome form inside, and she grabbed the frying pan, banging it down hard on anything that protruded from the blaze. The stench of scorching fur reached her nostrils, and she retched with nausea, but she didn’t stop hitting until it was finally quiet, and all movement ceased. Then, panting, she sank down onto the floor, leaning her head against the welcome cool of the cupboard door.
She used every plastic bag she had in her holder to wrap what was left, until it was a formless lump. Then, she opened the front door and, creeping over the silent, moonlit street, dropped her hideous cargo into the wheelie bin. She glanced wildly around her, but the houses were all dark, and nothing stirred. Back indoors, she reeled into the bathroom, scrubbing her hands over and over again. Though nothing could eradicate the ghastly reek from her nostrils, she finally felt reasonably clean. Lurching to her bed, she slept like the dead.
Waking late in the morning, sunlight streaming through the gaps in the blinds, birdsong sweetly filling her ears, it all seemed like some crazy dream. She switched on the coffee machine, feeling dazed, and tried to make sense of the events. Had it all been a nightmare? There was a mess in the sink, but what did that prove? Perhaps it had all been a hallucination, some sort of lockdown psychosis. As the coffee machine rumbled on in its familiar, soothing cadence, she decided there was only one way to be sure. Pulling on her coat, pushing her cold feet into her slippers, sliding back the bolt on the front door, she stepped outside, and headed slowly towards the wheelie bin. It looked exactly as it always did, innocuous, mundane, holding nothing more threatening than a mouldy loaf of bread or a rotting piece of meat. Stepping closer, Charlie steeled herself to flip open the lid…
‘Good morning!’. Charlie nearly jumped out of her skin. Standing next to her, completely unnoticed, was the postman. Behind him, the doors of his van stood open. As Charlie’s pulse gradually slowed, as embarrassment took hold, and she fumbled for some polite response, something that would explain why she was out there in her pyjamas and slippers, her gaze slid past him into the back of the van. It was filled with parcels, in a distinctive but unusual red and yellow packaging. With growing horror, Charlie realized where she had seen that packaging, just once before. Swallowing hard, she made her voice work. ‘You’ve got a lot of those’, she said, trying to sound casual. ‘Yeah’, said the postman. ‘Reckon it’s some sort of morale booster, they’re going out to everyone. But you should know, you got yours yesterday, didn’t you? Something nice, was it?’. Charlie looked at him, unable to speak. He glanced at his watch. ‘Uh-oh, better be off’, he said. ‘Loads of these to deliver’. He stepped back into the driver’s cab, and headed round the corner to the next street.
Rooted to the spot, Charlie looked around the street. All those blind windows, those closed doors. What was going on behind them? At the house across the street, it was completely silent. Nothing moved. Even the curtain was completely still, hanging down lifeless and limp behind the glass.