Feral Rat

Chapter 1: Camembert

Beep beep. The alarm rang at 6:30 am on the dot. The same time it rang every day. Remi reached blindly for the snooze button, hoping to give herself five more minutes. Remi always loathed getting up for school, almost as much as she loathed school itself.

She knew if she didn't get up soon she would miss the rusty, rickety old school bus. As much as she disliked school, she disliked walking there much more. So she proceeded to drag herself out of bed and take her dog out to do a shit before it shit on her bed.

She was already tired by the time she got to first period. It was English and the teacher's dull lectures were enough to put anyone to sleep. Thankfully she had Emille in her class, so it was never too bad.

Emille was one of her very few friends. They were alike in many ways. However, one big difference between them was that Emille was content with her life here and always played things very safe. She never did anything outside the rulebook.

So when Remi developed the habit of snorting ricotta cheese and cutting class last term, Emille did not follow suit.

"Are you okay?" Emille questioned Remi , obviously concerned the ricotta cheese was affecting her brain.

"Yeah, just tired is all," Remi replied, tired of Emillie's consistent concern.

"I know I've said this before but I wish you would stop hanging out with the cheese snorters," Emille said quietly , clearly nervous for how Remi would react.

"Please stop nagging me, I enjoy snorting cheese, end of story," Remi snapped. Although she knew Emille's intentions were good, she was sick of her judgement. She never understands how cool snorting ricotta cheese is.

"They don't care about you! They are just using you because you always bring the most ricotta to the cheese parties!" Emille raised her voice, earning a glare from the teacher.

Remi rolled her eyes and decided she would skip her next class. In fact, she decided she was already done with school today and arranged to meet the cheese gang.

She ran up to them when she saw them gathered at the back fence of the school, whispering excitedly.

"What's up?" She asked, curious to see what the whispering was about.

Gustavo, one of the boys in the group, held out his hand to reveal some crushed up camembert, answering her question.

"Camembert?, isn't that hard to come by?" She asked. Although she was a competent ricotta snorter, she didn't feel ready to move on to stinkier cheeses.

"Yeah, Gustavo broke into the cheese warehouse about an hour south of town," Colette replied. She was one of the more advanced cheese snorters in the group and had done camembert before.

Part of Remi knew she shouldn't be doing camembert and part of her was scared of the consequences. But she swallowed those fears and was the first in the group to snatch the camembert and snort it up her nose.

(Heyo I'm stonksaphone and this is based on the true story of a girl who is possessed by a feral rat.)