Chapter 1

SAM While shopping at the store, I saw that bins were 50% off....That's a great price! I need those bins to store the Christmas supplies since Christmas just passed. The next day, I was putting the Christmas supplies into one of the bins and I heard a bang. "What fell"? I turn around and see a rat leaving one of the bins. The whole neighborhood heard my scream. I run outside the house, then nervously tiptoed back inside the house. I called my sister to come help, but she ends up laughing at me.  Sarah annoyingly said " Why are you calling me for this?"  I hung up the phone and a commercial popped on. " We are the Happy Rat Society and we catch rats from everywhere in the world. You got a rat, well we got the solution! Call 1-400-RATS". I thought that commercial came from heaven itself and automatically called them.  I called them and heard the automated voice. " Ding! We help rats go to the happy place. Press 1 if you want to report on a rat sighting in the city, press 2 for customer service." I pressed 2 and heard a chipper bright voice on the phone. "Hello, We are the Happy Rat Society and we take all rats to the happy place. How may I help you?" Customer Service said. That wasn't all creepy... I replied "I just saw a rat in my house and I don't know where it went in my house. It was in one of my storage bins. What's your name?" " My name is Daphine and how many bins do you have in your house ma'am?" Daphine cheerfully said. "Uh like 5 or 6 bins.. Why are you asking me about my bins?" I replied. "Rats like to hide in cramped and small spaces, depending on how many bins you have in your house, we can correlate to how many rats you got in your house" Daphine said. What is she saying? Does she think that I am a hoarder? " Daphine, this is like the first rat that I ever saw so it's a good chance that it is just 1 rat in my house. When can someone come out and look at it?" as I was dumbfound replied. "Ma'am we can come out tomorrow around 3 pm. Is that a good time for you ?" Daphine said. "Yes, it is a great time! What should I do in the meantime since rats are on the endangered list?" I replied. "Make sure our workers have enough space in the house to find the rat without damaging your property or hurting the rat" Daphine kindly said. "That's fine!" I replied She does think I'm a hoarder!!  I hung up the phone and looked at the mess that I still have yet to clean up. I start picking up the Christmas lights and putting them in the bins. It took all night to clean up the Christmas supplies. Then I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up to a loud knock from the front door. A light skin man with red curly hair stood on the front porch. As I looked through my window, he had delicate features. His body is slender, but fit at the same time. He looked like he was around my height. He could be like my little brother ....if I had a little brother.  I yelled "coming" and walked to open the front door. I opened the door and saw the man looking around the porch. I joked "uh hello, trust me there are no rats on my porch. My name is Sam, may I ask for your name?" He answered "my name is Travis like the president". I watched him laugh at his corny joke. "Travis, you are here for the rat, right?" I said nonchalantly. Travis replied "yes, where did you last see the rat or rats" Travis voice was too cheerful especially since we are talking about rats. I showed Travis the last spot I saw the rat. The rat ate through the bin and created a big hole. Travis said " uh-oh, we got a family of rats in this house. This is great, for us not you. Since the government classified rats as an endangered species, catching rats has become much more expensive. This looks like it would be 50,000 trafons." I replied "50,000 trafons? That is crazy" Travis solemn said " well it costs to catch a rat unharmed ma'am. We do have a payment plan so you can pay a percentage every month. Just talk to our billing department." I replied " okay, I will call them, but can we start finding the rat or rats?" Travis took out a bag of cheese. He started explaining how the cheese will lure them out and he would be able to catch them. Travis said " this is a special grade of cheese that attracts rats. The rats would want to eat the cheese, but once they eat the cheese, the rats will lose consciousness for a couple hours. Just enough for us to put them in cages and wrap everything up." Travis left out a piece of cheese on the floor and tells me to wait on the porch so the rats don't get scared. As we walked toward the porch, I began to wonder why they take so much caution when catching rats. I asked "why do you have so much caution when catching rats? They are just rats." Travis grimly asked " Do you remember how rats got on the endangered list? Back in 2049, scientists found out that the processed food we were eating was actually taking kligs from our bodies and slowly killing us. It started with the old people dying, but no one caught on because everyone thought it was natural like it was old age that was killing all of the elder population. Then it started killing middle aged people and the first ones to go were the ones that were diabetic or had high blood pressure. Everyone blamed it on not being healthy so you saw a lot of "get fit" campaigns. Nobody actually started caring until the first college student dropped dead in class. By then half of the elder population died off and ⅓ of the middle age folks died off. Everyone thought it was a virus so everyone started staying inside their homes. The scientists were going crazy trying to find out the cause, but kept getting it wrong until half of the entire population died off. You remember the cause of everyone dying off?" I said " of course, it was the FKB-218. It killed my grandpa. Scientists found out that the tub cleaners that were thrown into the ocean released a substance. The fishes digested it and everyone loves seafood." Travis replies "Exactly everyone ate the fishes which gave us FKB-218. FKB-218 goes into your blood. It starts killing the red and white blood cells. Humans had no way to fight the infection because the white blood cells were dying and the red blood cells couldn't help provide oxygen to the brain. Half of my family died because of that and now scientists have found a way to use rats to combat that infection and give us kligs. Well I think this was enough time for the rat to eat the cheese." Travis and I walked into the house and saw one rat laying down next to the cheese. The weird thing is that it doesn't look like a regular rat. It had long black scaly legs. The sharp claws are white and the mouth is black with black teeth. The head is round shaped with small white lips. The beady eyes are white, but it don't have any ears. The color of the fur is white with black straight lines all throughout the main body. I uttered "I have never seen something like that before, are you sure it's a rat?" Travis replied "I don't know, I have never seen something like this before in my life. I'm going to call my boss real quick alright." Travis nervously walked out the door. I said " okay, take your time." What in the world is happening? Why does he look so nervous? Why does this rat look weird ? Did I stumble on a new species of rats? I bet they will give me at least 100,000,000 trafons! I will be rich! I walked out to the porch to hear a little of the phone conversation, but he hung up when he saw me walking out of the house. I asked "So what's going to happen?" Travis replied "ma'am this is a new situation for us and if there's a creature like that laying in your house, then it's more than likely more in the house. My boss is coming here to talk to you about the next steps. I've been working here for 5 years and this is a first for me." I asked "what next steps?" Travis walked back to the house without saying anything. I started walking toward the mailbox to get mail when someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn around to see my neighbor standing behind me on the sidewalk. I smile and said "Hey Mr. Edwards, how's it going ?" Mr.Edwards answered "You know same day same shit, what's happening to you?" I responded "I found a rat in my house so they are catching it." Mr.Edwards replied "You better be careful, a friend of mine was in the same situation and they ended up buying her house. They bought it for 50,000 trafons. She couldn't even move her stuff out because they said it was contaminated." I asked "What did they find in her house?" Mr.Edwards replied "I don't know, she wouldn't tell me. I haven't seen her since she sold her house." Mr.Edwards was the person that no one took seriously in our neighborhood. I warily said "oh well thanks for telling me." Mr.Edwards usually jokes about all of these conspiracies. He looked scared when looking at Travis. This was freaking me out.  As Mr.Edwards left, Travis walked out of the house looking more nervously. Travis walked to the street and says "my boss should be here in 2 minutes." I replied "Are you always this nervous when meeting your boss?" Travis muttered "my boss is an eccentric man, you'll see." A black mustang drove down to my house and stopped abruptly right in front of me. He got out of the car and looked directly at me. He looks to be around 30 years old. He is tall, with a wide stature. He seems to have a stiff personality at glance. He have a bald oval size head with wide lips. As he is walked up to me, he looked wobbly like one bad move and he was gone. Travis introduced him "ma'am, this is Pue Dexter. He is the Manager of Operations in our company. He deals with any mistakes or rare situations like this one! He has been a manager for 10 years." Pue responded "Travis, I can introduce myself. Ma'am, I heard you have a situation on your hands. Don't worry we will make sure it is solved for you!" I excitably asked " Did I discover a new rat species?"  Pue responded "we won't know until I check it out". Pue walked into the house and his facial expression changed immediately. He said "ma'am we need to have a talk. Do you own this property? Are you looking into selling it to me?" I replied "Pue, selling the house hasn't crossed my mind. Is this creature dangerous? Are there more in my house?" I don't like this , Pue looks very scared / nervous looking at this rat. Wait! Maybe Mr.Edwards was talking some sense. Are they hiding something ? Uhh I don't like this, they got me scared now. Pue said "ma'am I only suggest you sell your house for your own safety. We don't know how many rats are left in the house because sometimes in these rare occasions, the cheese doesn't always work. We don't know if these new rats will bite you or spread a disease to you or even kill you. If you sell your house to us then we can get to the bottom of this and make sure that everyone is protected in the neighborhood. Do you want to be the reason why the people in your neighborhood start dying off?" I angrily replied"are you threatening me?" Pue answered "no, but we are suggesting that you sell us the house." Pue hand me a business card and told me to call him if I change my mind, then walked out the door. Travis put the rat in the cage and walked out the house. He stopped in front of me and said"I suggest you listen to my boss, at least for your own safety." I asked "why are you so nervous around him?" Travis turned around and give me a sad look then walked out the door. I plumped down on the couch and tried to calm myself. I don't scare easily. That whole situation just left a bad taste in my mouth plus my nerves are everywhere. I texted Sarah to drop by the house tonight. Sarah have brown skin with dark blue curly hair. She is taller and stronger than me. She have thin lips with round brown eyes. She have a wide nose with dimples on both sides of her face. She is very clumsy and trips on her own feet. She is the most confident person I have ever known in my life. She always faces her challenges unlike me .... Sarah came over that night with coffee and donuts. Sarah walked through the front door in a rude manner. I said "Sarah, you ain't got to barge in my house like that...what kind of donuts did you get me? Sarah muttered "Sis, we go through this every time, my house is your house and your house is my house. I've been telling you that we might as well move in together." I answered "well you might not want to move in after I tell you what happened today." I told Sarah what happened and it looked like she is more freaked out than I am. Sarah replied "So they want your house because of a weird rat. That must mean that you either have more in or around your house. What was their tone when you said that you didn't want to sell the house?" I said " well his voice got lower and it seemed like he was trying to force me into selling the house, but in a nicer tone. My skin is still crawling from that situation." Sarah uttered "okay, give it a few days to think about this because on one hand this is your house, but the rat is a very big part to also think about ...YOU KNOW WHAT! Try to find more rats so you can send them somewhere to get analyzed." I replied "No definitely no, we could get in a lot of trouble. You know we have to report any rat sightings. We could get the death penalty. By not reporting, the government will see us as terrorists. We are basically hiding kligs from our OWN COUNTRY..OUR OWN PEOPLE SARAH." Sarah replied "Get a grip Sam, we don't even know if it is a rat. We got like 1/1000 th chance of us finding a rat. Finding a rat is like finding clean water to drink out of lakes. Let's find out the truth."