Heads and Tails - A Short Story

Part 1

   The basement of Hardy's Book Emporium was still damp from the flood two summers ago. Water had seeped into everything that sat on the floor,  turning boxes of paperwork to sludge and rusting shut the filing cabinets whose drawers now shrieked under the pain of opening. Hardy's had fallen on rough times and, like many little bookshops before it, was fatally suffering under the crushing weight of a large corporate competitor down the street. Mr. Miser, the store's owner, had a week to clean up and clear out. As incentive to his employees, Miser promised a bonus to those who helped. Meager though it was, Daniel jumped at this chance to earn some extra cash before the flow was throttled and cut off.

   On the first morning of his last week at the bookstore, Daniel clocked in as usual, and headed immediately to the basement door to avoid the morning trickle of customers. He couldn't remember ever seeing the unfamiliar, shiny silver latch secured to the frame, but there it was, flat against the door. He flipped it open.

   The door swung into dead space and bumped the wall. Daniel hesitated at the top of the stairs, staring down into darkness. The storage room below was cold and mostly windowless, except for a broken one which had been boarded up. He hated the way the sound of his footfalls echoed like another set of footsteps against the wooden stairs. The wave of cool air was nice though, and he was grateful at least to be escaping the stifling storefront. So down he went, his nostrils assaulted by the sweetly pungent moth balls and mold. He pictured the state of the store's neglected underbelly, crammed with tons of abandoned advance reader copies, its floor caked with soggy promotional materials... and crawling with rats.

   He felt certain that an old building with a basement like this one had to have rats, which is why he rarely ventured down. The thought of small, wriggling vermin skittering between his feet made him queasy. A childhood memory fought its way into his mind, one in which he was helping his mother clean out the soiled shavings from his hamster's cage. He placed the furry thing into its hamster ball and watched it take off across the hardwood floor. When the time came to return his pet to its home, the plastic sphere was empty, its lid wide open.

   He eventually found Fuzzbutt on the morning of School Picture Day, when he was getting dressed. His mother had laid out dress pants, and a sweater she had knitted for him; it was black with a smiling green dinosaur on the front. He tugged the sweater over his head and felt his face brush against a bump of fluff, what turned out to be the decomposing, matted fur of his hamster, whose frail body still clung to the folds of the material. He flailed around, trapped in the garment while the tiny corpse of his beloved pet swept against his cheek again and again. His little eight-year-old chest fluttered and thudded until he was in the throes of a full-blown panic attack. His mother kept him home from school, murmuring on the phone to the family doctor as he lay curled up in bed. There was no school picture that year.

   Over time he had buried the incident away, until last week when, to his horror, he discovered mice had nested in the bedroom walls. He laid awake listening to the tick-tick, tick-tick of tiny claws and imaging their little bodies scampering through the insulation. The next morning, one of the nasty, oily things poured into his bowl with the rest of the cereal flakes. It glared back at him with black pebble-eyes, whiskers twitching. Daniel broke into a sweat, and tossed the bowl -- flakes, mouse and all -- out the closest window without a second thought. He spent the rest of that day scouring all his dishes and pots, setting mousetraps with globs of peanut butter, and sealing up any cracks along the baseboards with a caulking gun. He slept very little that night.

    At the bottom of the bookstore's basement stairs, Daniel swept his hand along the wall, pressing the flat switch. The basement lights blinked to life, slowly tagging one after the other until all were lit. The cement was not squirming with rodents, as Daniel feared; there were only loose scraps of discoloured paper, and rows upon rows of ancient box towers, a veritable cityscape. Somewhat relieved, he unfolded the flaps of the closest box and got to work.