I recall with unrelenting clarity the beast we secured in a humane trap, rolling and sucking air in its madness, placed on the table in a mockery of polite dinner. It had a musky, unhallowed scent like some primeval mustard, its yellow teeth so long that it could not close its own mouth. Threading its ten fine fingers around the bars, it cried out "We crawl, we swim! We nest and gnaw! We are WE, AND WE DEVOUR!

I ran then, out of the house, turning in time to see that the entire structure - every stick of it - had been rats all along, rats piled atop one another in such a way as to suggest a house. The not-house boiled, exploding, a grey-brown wake of slopping pus and disease."