C26 I want the passwords of all your Offshore Accounts

As one rat came through the door, Chauncey opened his eyes to see another rat sitting on his chest. The light through the door blinded him, but it was quickly gone.

The house rat went to the table and lit a candle. The rat on his chest didn’t move. The house rat didn’t seem to care. It sat on the mat and watched Chauncey.

It sat back against the wall and studied some travel brochures. The house rat had found Chauncey’s silver metal suitcase in the trunk.

He always carried an extra million around. He did a lot of busi- ness in cash. He closed a lot of seedy deals with cash. Cash payments produced the easiest money he ever made.

The house rat picked up the Beretta and aimed it at the rat on Chauncey’s chest. The rat was exploring his neck now. The rat had lowered its head and was sniffing at his neck with a cold wet nose. Chauncey shuddered at the touch of short scratchy whiskers.

“He wants to bite into your neck,” the house rat said. “I’ve seen it happen to dead men on the street.”

Chauncey’s mouth was still taped. He couldn’t even beg for help from the house rat. He was afraid to turn his head. He was afraid to move his body. He breathed as slowly as he could through the single available nostril so his chest wouldn’t move. He hoped the rat would move on.

The rat didn’t budge.

“I can kill it if you want me to,” the house rat said. “But first I need some information.”

The house rat remained quiet for a long time.

Chauncey closed his eyes. Chauncey visualized his pound of coke in the big baggie which was somewhere in this hut. He’d give his right arm for a spoon of it.

Every cell in his body seemed a center of pain. He had been constipated for three days. He had stomach cramps. He had head- aches like a sledgehammer slamming his brain 24-7. He still had two lumps on his skull. He’d be glad to let the house rat shoot him up with smack.

The house rat leaned forward like the rat on his chest. It rested its elbows on the table, slowly leaning closer, the Beretta between both hands, still aiming at either Chauncey or the rat on his chest. Chauncey couldn’t be sure.

He had been in and out of a coma-state the whole time the house rat was gone. It seemed like he had survived in the dark for weeks now. He became convinced the idiot had left him to die.

For a moment, he’d come out of the coma and wondered if he had already died and this was hell. Demons came and went in the dark. Rodents ran across his body in the dark. The boards that held this hut in place constantly creaked as if the place would cave in.

He was continually petrified the whole thing would collapse on him. No one would ever find him. Chauncey Gibbons would die anonymously.

He lay in the dark silence of nothingness, wondering if the idiot would ever come back, or whether someone might find him before he lost his mind for good.

He’d give his right foot for a snort of coke. But he had no idea where he was. Near the Dumpster? Across the city?

The house rat might even have the wits to get behind the wheel of the Bentley and drive him out of the city.

He couldn’t be sure which was worse: the nothingness of the darkness, or the insane shadows that played on the walls from the little bit of candlelight, creating incessant ephemeral figures with no special identity, who seemed to appear and disappear and then appear again on another wall, changing from enraged beasts with huge teeth, to birds with lethal talons, to nightmarish trees, to houses with murders looking from every window, all infused with some evil spirit of lethal intent.

“Your name is Chauncey Gibbons,” the house rat began. “You own a private investment firm called Eagles Fly. You’ve been in business for fifteen years. You have a personal fortune of four billion dollars.” The house rat paused and cocked the trigger. “I want it all.”

Chauncey stared at the ceiling. He’d give his left nut for a snort of coke. He’d give his left nut for a three-dollar hit of crack.

The house rat pulled the trigger.

The boom was deafening.

Chauncey’s body began to convulse. The house rat had blown

the rat on his chest away. Its bloody residue covered Chauncey’s face. The stench of its entrails made him want to stop breathing forever. Chauncey lifted his eyes and turned his head. The house rat sat there smiling with a big grin.

It was wearing a new set of clothes.

It had gone to a hair salon.

Its odor of aftershave made him nauseous.

But he found himself grateful to the house rat for saving his neck.

The rats that crawled across him in the dark might have started feeding off him. The rest of the rats in the neighborhood might start showing up to feed off him. There might be rat wars over his remains. Chauncey saw the house rat in a different light now. The house rat was his only friend.

Chauncey couldn’t survive another endless stretch of darkness if the house rat left him alone again. He was at the mercy of the house rat. For a spoon of coke, he might devote his life to the house rat.

“I used to work for you,” the house rat finally said. “I worked in the accounting department. I was a CPA. I had a beautiful wife and three beautiful little girls. We had just bought a house. We bought a second car. Our lives were about to blossom. You laid me off on Christmas Eve. You did it by email. Here’s your pink slip, pretty boy, you told me. You sent me a check for ten dollars that was called a Christmas Bonus in the note you attached. You told me not to spend it all in one place. You called me a chump.”

The house rat leaned on the table again and held the Beretta between both hands. It aimed it at Chauncey, the same way it had aimed it at the rat. It cocked the trigger.

“I want the passwords to all your offshore accounts,” it said.