(Reader Discretion Advised)

The journalists had already hounded the hospital for that information, not that it mattered. The damage was done with or without him being alive; the video of him walking home – and of course he had a respectable job as a custodian of an elementary school, which the news outlets were loving so they could paint him as defenseless never mind the fact that he had been walking home from his mistress’ house four hours past curfew – and then disappearing under a mound. A mound of rats. The video, which was from a surveillance camera in front of a bank across the street, was black-and-white and grainy, so upon first watch it looks like a wave of sewage water encased the elderly man, rolling over him and leaving him stunned lying on the concrete sidewalk leaking blood. But, once you squinted, you could see their eyes. And their tails, which were light enough to register as a milky white on the camera. A pack of rats jumped on top of him with the precision of an assassin squad and, in seconds, took him out. It had taken a few days to find another video but, with a new angle, the world saw that, after the rats had finished with Mr. Reed, they dispersed back onto the streets; they had come together as a writhing mass of spiky grey fur for no clear reason other than to harm him and then they disappeared into subway tracks, pipes, ripped open garbage bags – any dark place where they could find food.

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