Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 A Rat's Tale

   by Ozmanga

   I had `cased the joint', as we criminals are supposed to say, and it had
been unoccupied.  It was unfortunate that, in the very short time between
my reconnaissance and the `heist', the fifth Mrs Frolichmann had decided to
move in.

   The house sat in an acre of walled garden, on a private road, out of
sight and earshot of the highway.  Justin, the interior designer who had
been commissioned to redecorate the 1930s mansion for Frolichmann's latest
bride, had informed me that the young lady had consigned most of her
predecessor's art collection to a box-room, to await collection.  The art
works were, for one of the `big F's' former floosies, remarkably tasteful.
They included two charcoal and white pastel sketches by M.  Edgar Degas,
twenty centimeters square, stamped and signed, properly framed by a
professional conservator.  When last on the open market in the mid nineteen
eighties, the drawings had fetched about a quarter of a million dollars
each.  They would be worth considerably more today, even on the restricted
market I catered for.

   I planned to steal the Degas drawings and substitute two copies, which I
had made and framed just like the originals.  With luck the duplicates
would go undetected for some time.

   Toby, a young would-be artist who had once been a Golden Gloves
contender was my accomplice.  Alas, a blow to the head had put paid to any
sporting future Toby may have had and he now earned a modest living as a
caretaker of a group of disused warehouses in the old dock area known as
Docklands.  He had converted the offices at the seaward end of one of the
least ramshackle buildings into an atelier.  The situation was quiet, the
views over the Docklands picturesque, and the rent negligible.  The only
problem, to my mind, was the rats.  They swarmed throughout the warehouse
complex.  They were big, brown and as bold as bombardiers.  Toby kept them
in check by the periodic setting of poison baits and traps, but he was
fighting a losing battle.  I'm told that rats and humans are the only
mammals to rate fornication above feeding in their list of good things to
do.  Toby's rats bore out this theory.  Their population seemed to grow
exponentially - just like ours.

   Toby and I had met at my second one-man exhibition.  He liked what he
called my "nineteenth century references" and asked me to help him with
advice regarding his drawing and painting.  He was an excellent pupil and a
good copyist.  He was delighted when we sold one of his little water colors
as a, "Turner (?) Study for Harlech Castle - unsigned, undated" for $1000.
It would have been a perfectly legal transaction, had we not known that
Toby had finished it only a week prior to the sale.

   Toby's van, our transport on the unlawful occasion of the Frohlichmann
Manor robbery, was garaged alongside his studio.

   Dressed in black track suits and wearing dark colored balaclavas, Toby
and I looked like a couple of ninjas bent on assassination as we moved from
midnight shadow to shadow across the lawn of Frolichmann Manor.  The
security system was antiquated.  I disabled it in under thirty seconds. 
Toby was impressed.  Once inside the house I climbed the staircase to the
top landing while Toby fossicked, starting on the ground floor, for
marketable knick-knacks.  These he stowed in a large sports bag brought for
this purpose.

   The box room was unlocked but was chock-a-block full of pictures and
furnishings and it was only after a search lasting several minutes that I
located the Degas drawings.  They had been stuffed in a chest of drawers. I
quickly substituted my copies and had turned to leave when to my intense
surprise the landing light snapped on and the doorway was blocked by a slim
blonde woman holding a large caliber automatic in a two handed grip.

   She was wearing a thin negligee over an equally insubstantial baby-doll
night dress.  The light behind her revealed a very shapely silhouette and
picked out the gleam of light blonde hair and the blued steel of the
automatic.

   "Ah!" I said, "You must be the fifth Mrs Frolichmann, or perhaps in her
employ?  Good evening!"

   "Shut the fuck up!" she snarled.  "Put those pictures down, then put
your hands on your head.  Move very slowly.  I'm within my rights to blow
your fucking head off, and don't think I won't, Mister!"

   I thought it inadvisable to expound on the doctrine of reasonable force
as it applied to unarmed housebreakers and meekly did as she ordered.  We
stood for a minute or two.  It was clear she was uncertain about what to do
next.  Before she decided on any radical solution, like squeezing the
trigger and claiming I'd jumped her, I helped by suggesting she had better
call the police and asking her whether she knew that there was a telephone
in the hall.

   "Why are you being so goddamned helpful?" she snarled, a second before
Toby, who still moved like the boxer he had once been, very quickly and
quietly, leant over and plucked the cannon from her slender fingers.

   "What now, Boss?" he grinned, as I grabbed her arms.

   "Don't scream or I'll gag you!" I said to the struggling woman.

   She started to yell abuse, so I gagged her with the only material that
came readily to hand.  I thought Toby looked shocked as I ripped off the
frilly panties of her baby doll nightie and tried to jam the material into
her mouth.  He was always fumble-tongued and shy when the girls were about.
I thought he may be a bit of a puritan, or perhaps gay.

   "Don't worry," I told him, "I'm not about to rape her.  Just get the
belt off her gown.  I'll tie her hands behind her." The big fellah just
stood there staring at the wriggling blonde bundle I was trying to control,
so I did it myself.

   "Out of the way!" I said, "Let's get her to a bedroom and tuck her in
for the night while we make our getaway."

   Toby still didn't move.  The three of us were stuck in the doorway. 
Toby was facing the blonde who I was trying to push along.

   "She's ...beautiful!" he sighed and I realized Toby wasn't being shy or
embarrassed.  He was merely consumed by lust.

   Now the overhead landing light was on her fully I could appreciate
Toby's reaction.  The fourth Mrs Frolichmann - for it was indeed she - was
a real collector's item.  She was a top-of-the-line Barbie-With-Boobs, from
her perfectly groomed ash blonde hair to her pink, buffed and lacquered,
toenails.  Unlike Barbie she had full breasts and a tight little pudenda, ,
which parted slightly to show a hint of her labia minor, below a neatly
trimmed golden thatch.

   "She's got skin like ...  like porcelain!  So clear!  And yet so pink!"
Toby burbled.

   Toby reached between her legs to stroke the pinkness.  I stepped back
dragging her with me.

   "No!" I said, with as much authority as I could "Leave her be!  We are
in enough trouble as it is.  Let's not add sexual assault to aggravated
burglary!"

   Toby paused and grinned and blushed.  "Okay," he said and stepped back
to allow me and my squirming burden through the box-room door and onto the
landing.

   "Get the paintings," I said.  "We'll get this termagant into her bedroom
and ..."

   After that point I remember very little.  The blonde was wearing
stiletto heeled mules ...  steel stilettos.  She first kicked backwards and
crushed my testicles with a savage upward blow, then drove the metal spike
down my left shin, gouging out a broad bone-deep channel of skin and flesh
from knee to ankle, before driving her heel through the top of my left
foot. The metal heel broke bone and sinew before punching a hole in the
sole of my shoe.  The shock and pain put me out like a light.

   I came to briefly on a carpet by a bed on which Toby was struggling with
the woman.  I think I said "I need a doctor!" but can't be sure as Toby's
reply was "She nailed you pal, so now I'm gonna nail her!  Just listen to
the bitch scream!" This was an unlikely response from the gentle Toby I
thought I knew and I was still trying to work out what he was talking about
when I passed out again.

   In the van I recovered my senses for a moment.  I was on my back, my
left leg was throbbing, the injured foot and groin were twin knots of pain.
I was sweating.  I looked across the floor of the van to see, about twenty
inches away, a pair of lavender blue eyes glaring hatred from a mess of
blonde hair, white frilly lace and duct-tape.  I started to ask, "What the
hell is she doing ..." when the van hit a pothole in the highway and waves
of pain again swamped my consciousness.

   The Doc - he's a disbarred vet really, but asks no questions and accepts
payment in small oils "in the manner of Stubbs" - confined me to bed for a
week after seeing to my injuries.  It took two before I was able to hobble
about with the aid of a walking stick.  A few of my friends dropped in, to
keep me company and Effie, one of the girls who poses for the monthly life
class I hold, decided I needed a live-in cook-housekeeper.  Of Toby, the
Degas and the Steel Heeled Barbie, I heard nothing.

   I phoned Justin, who was busy redecorating the Frolichmann Manor, and
asked casually how things were going.  Justin is one of those earnest souls
who, if asked politely, "How are you?" will give you their full medical
history since puberty.

   After an hour and ten minutes listening I discovered that Saratoga
Frohlichmann (the name of Frau Frohlichmann IV) had apparently called in to
the Manor on her way to a health and beauty retreat from which she was due
to return in a week or two, but had not had the common courtesy to let
Julian know she was in town!

   The box room had been emptied and Justin had almost wept to see the two
delightful little Degas sketches consigned, along with a parcel of other
quite respectable pieces, to storage in some, no doubt perfectly secure and
climate-controlled, dungeon!

   All carpets had been lifted and all wall paper steamed off.  The
tradesmen were already working on the painted surfaces.  The interior would
be fully cleaned and prepared to give Justin a pristine canvas for his
latest creation, destined to be featured in Home Beautiful spring issue!

   Next I tried Toby.  His studio phone had been disconnected.  His
caretaker's office answering machine asked me to leave a message and
assured me that he would reply shortly.  I did.  He didn't.

   I drive an automatic, so reaching the warehouse complex was no problem
despite my wounds.  Getting in was, but once I was able to lean against the
gates and use both hands, the padlocks were little trouble.

   His van was parked where it usually was, beside the warehouse.  Both the
large door and the smaller one set in it were locked.  I broke in through
the smaller door and started to limp across the fifty meters or so to
Toby's studio.  Half way there, my erratic progress disturbed a pack of
eight or so big brown rattus-rattus squabbling over something bloody,
wrapped in cloth, on the concrete.  I waved my walking stick and they
moved, sulkily it seemed, to the protection of the shadows along the
warehouse wall.  When I reached the studio door they scampered back,
chittering, to resume their dispute over the vile looking mess they had
been dining on..

   Toby's studio was a tip.  Normally he kept the place spotless but now it
was filthy.  There were unwashed dishes in the sink and on the small dining
table.  Two garbage bags spilled their contents onto the kitchen-area
floor. Dirty underwear decorated the couch and easy chair.  The living
areas were squalid but it was the work area which shocked me most.

   Toby had always been a meticulous and careful worker who knew the value
of his tools and cared for them.  The work area now looked as though a
kamikaze kindergarten had enjoyed an open day.  Brushes, some with dried
paint in the bristles, were scattered about.  Tubes of paint, pallette
knives - one of which was razor sharp - pencils, chalks, pens were heaped
in no sort of order on every work surface.  A couple of books were propped
open with boxes of pastels and an bottle of linseed oil.  Only a double-bed
mattress in the center of the work space was uncluttered.  This was covered
by a blue chenille bed cover.  It was heavily stained.  Paint, semen, and
red wine but not blood, I noted with some relief.  A prepared canvas sat on
Toby's big easel.  Some faint charcoal marks suggested that Toby had made a
start on the work.  I was trying to decipher these when I found his sketch
book.  They could have been studies for a Saint Joan, naked and surrounded
by a ring of fire, or perhaps a terrified Andromeda still chained to her
rock, unaware that Perseus was on his way.  The door to Toby's bunk room
opened and my young accomplice shuffled out.  He was naked, but for a towel
wrapped around his waist.  He was unshaven and bleary-eyed.

   "Boss," he said evincing mild surprise, "it's real good to see you! 
How's the ...er...  injuries?"

   "I'll recover!" I said shortly.

   "Er ...  good!" said Toby.  "The vet said you'd be out of harness for a
week or two with the foot.  He wasn't too sure about the other."

   "Still a bit sore and twice their usual size," I reassured him.  "But I
believe nothing vital has been affected.  I'm disappointed in you, Toby. 
You could have enquired about my health at any time during the last
fortnight.  Perhaps at the same time you could have delivered the paintings
and whatever else we hoped to sell.  You do still have them, I hope?"

   "Yes.  No problem.  Er..."

   "Where are they?"

   "In the van, Boss." Toby looked a bit sheepish.

   "A bit of a risk, Toby," I said, understating the case.

   "Yeah.  Look, I meant to ..."

   "But ...?"

   "Sara ...  the woman ..."

   "What about her?" I asked remembering the unpleasant heap of offal I had
skirted on my way in.  "What have you done with her?"

   "She's in there," said Toby indicating his sleeping quarters.

   I limped through the debris on the floor and looked into Toby's bedroom.
At the foot of his single metal-framed bed was a large cage, made out of
the wire mesh that Toby used to fashion rat-traps.  Inside the cage, naked,
on a mattress, lay the blonde I had last seen two weeks before.  She had
changed.  Her hair was lank and uncombed.  Her nails were chipped and
filthy.  Her skin had a grey pallor and was streaked with dirt and dried
seminal fluid.  Her breasts were bruised and marked.  Her lips were
swollen. The biggest change was in her eyes.  The whites showed all around
her violet pupils.  She stared wildly at me, then at Toby.  When she spoke,
her voice no longer confident but pleading.

   "You wanna fuck me again, honey?  We only just finished, but if you
wanna ...?"

   "Not yet, Sara," said Toby.  "Hey!  You recognize this distinguished
looking gentleman?"

   She didn't, of course.

   Sara looked distressed.  "Oh!  Honey ...  I ...  I don't know.  Do I? 
You tell me, Toby!"

   "The last time you met him, Sara, you kicked him in the balls!  You
really hurt him, Sara."

   Sara started to cry.  Silent tears tracked through the dirt on her face.

   "I'm sorry!" she said.  "I don't remember I'm sure I didn't mean to hurt
you!  Honest!" She sounded like a little girl.

   "He should punish you!" said Toby.

   "Nooo..." Sara wailed.

   "Perhaps you can make it up to him.  Kiss it better.  Eh?"

   Sara nodded eagerly.

   "Come on then!" said Toby.

   Sara wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.  She opened one end of
the cage, looked around the bedroom and stepped out.  She quickly closed
the cage behind her.  She patted the bed.  "Please," she said, "sit."

   I glared at Toby.

   "This is quite unnecessary.  I don't ..."

   Sara started to wail again.

   "Do it, please," begged Toby.  "She's very good!"

   The situation was so bizarre that I didn't protest further but did as I
was told.  Sara knelt and unzipped my fly and gently eased my swollen
gonads clear of my boxer shorts.  "Be careful," I said as she took my penis
in her mouth.  The caution was not required.  Sara gave the best head I had
yet experienced in over thirty years of dissolute living.

   When I had climaxed I thanked her.  She looked pleased and said, "You
won't punish me, then?" I assured her that I would not and she scuttled
back into the cage as Toby and I left the sleeping quarters.

   I was furious with Toby.  I let him know I liked my women to be willing
partners not sniveling slaves.  I demanded that he tell me exactly what
drugs he had used to reduce the fifth Mrs Frohlichmann to such a state and
asked what he proposed to do with the woman - the bride of one of the
richest and most powerful men in the country.

   No drugs, Toby explained, just rotten luck and a set of circumstances he
hadn't foreseen.

   Immediately after Saratoga had downed me with her steel heeled mule,
Toby said, he had knocked her out with a blow to her solar plexus.  He
carried her to the bedroom where he had tied her to the bed before he tried
to treat my injuries.  He said he was angry and upset at what she had done
to "his old friend and mentor" so he decided to "teach the rich bitch a
lesson".  In short he fucked her as soon as she came to.  She did not
respond with gentle sighs and kisses.  Her stubborn resistance made him
angrier and hornier.  So he fucked her again.  Her frigid response was a
challenge to him.  She managed to get a hand free and went for his eyes
with her pink buffed nails.  He K.O.ed her again, loaded us both, and the
loot, in the van, and drove away.  I was taken to the Doc.  Toby and his
living doll went on to the warehouse where he was sure that he could
persuade the woman to return some of the animal passion - he called it
"love" - he felt for her.

   For the next two days she resisted Toby's persistent, if clumsy,
attempts to woo her.  The harder Toby tried, he said, the more stubborn
Saratoga became.

   "She'd just go all floppy, like a rag doll or one of those plastic
blow-up sex dolls, but only half-inflated, you know?" Said Toby.  I didn't
know and wondered again about Toby's previous sexual experiences.

   "She cursed and swore all the time.  She kept on calling me a `dockside
rat', among other things.  So that evening, I stripped her bare, dragged
her into the warehouse through there," Toby indicated the studio door, "and
tied her to one of the upright girders that support the roof.  I was so
pissed off with her I wanted to beat her into submission but I doubt it
would have worked."

   "Probably not," I said.

   "I put a ring of candles around her feet and lit them," Toby said, "And
explained that the little points of light she could see in the shadows were
in fact the flames reflected in the eyes of some real dockside rats.  I
told her when the flames died down it would take the creatures only a few
minutes to realize that she was vulnerable.  They'd probably start with her
toes, I said, but by morning there wouldn't be much of Saratoga
Frohlichmann left at all!"

   I was horrified.  "You left her in the warehouse, naked, bound and
helpless, with those ...  those monstrous creatures, at night?"

   "I was watching, of course!" he protested, reacting to my tone of acute
disapproval.  "Not that she knew.  I even did some sketches.  Now, where
did I put them ...?"

   "Don't bother I've seen them.  How long did you leave the wretched woman
in that terrible state?"

   "I don't know.  She started to howl almost straight away.  She promised
to do everything I asked.  She begged and pleaded, wept and yelled.  It was
quite a performance.  I guess she meant it in the end!  When I did cut her
down, just before the candles went out she was entirely mine!  Body and
soul!  My very own beautiful blonde sex-slave!"

   Toby sounded sick.

   "But ...?"

   "Yeah!  'But' ...  she'd changed!  No more the rich bitch.  Just Toby's
prize whore.  She'd fuck and suck like a porno queen on those videos, you
know?" I nodded.  "But she was too eager, too keen to please and always
looking around to see if the rats had got in!  I couldn't leave her alone
for more than a few minutes before she'd have a fit of hysterics.  I built
her that cage so I could try and get some work done."

   "So, no more thoughts of `love'?" I said.

   Toby shook his head slowly and then turned to me.  Tears were rolling
down his cheeks.  I didn't like the look in his eyes.  "Christ, Boss, what
can I do?"

   I was not sympathetic.  However, if I was to save anything out of this
disaster - particularly my own skin - I needed Toby to snap out of his mood
of self-pity.  Nor did I want him to do anything rash like chopping up his
erstwhile lady-love and feeding her to the rats.

   "Right!" I said briskly.  First things first.  Both of you take a bath.
Cleanliness is close to Godliness and we're going to need all the spiritual
help we can get if we are to survive the wrath of Sara's husband.  I'm
going to get her some clothes and make one or two inquiries.  In the
meantime, Toby, dig out your passport and any easily redeemable goods to
facilitate a new life elsewhere."

   "What do you mean?  We're going abroad?"

   "I certainly am, Toby.  I suggest you do the same.  But first take a
bath..."

   As I limped out of Toby's studio I heard Sara's voice raised in a
breathless whine, "You gonna fuck me again, Sugar, in the bath?"

   I picked up the loot from Toby's van and hurried home to make
arrangements.

   I was in luck.  The Doc knew of one or two discreet establishments which
specialized in catering for the disturbed wealthy.  One of which was run by
a friend of his, a hypnotherapist, whose joy was a select collection of
works by the French Impressionists.  For two original Degas drawings he
would be happy to take the fourth Mrs Frolichmann into his care and treat
her for whatever ailed her, drugs, alcohol, irrational fears - you name it,
for the Degas, he'd treat it, no questions asked.  I reckoned that would
give me about a week's start before Frolichmann's goons came looking for me
and Toby, wherever he was going to be.

   Next I raided Effie's wardrobe for underwear, shoes, a skirt and silk
blouse for Saratoga.  She and Effie were about the same size, I guessed.  I
packed a little suitcase with a change of underwear and some toiletries. 
Pleased with my progress made, I headed back to the warehouse and Toby's
studio.

   As I hobbled through the door I stumbled over the bloody corpse of my
late apprentice.  His throat had been cut from ear to ear and a major
artery had been severed.  The studio was now elaborately decorated with
splashes of bright red.  So was Saratoga.

   I got her into the bath, which had not been emptied, and sponged her
clean.  She seemed calmer than she had been earlier in the day.  She made
no sexual advances towards me.  The wild wide-eyed stare I had noted that
morning had gone.  If anything she seemed too composed, given the blood
splashed room and the grinning corpse I had discovered on my return.  It
was easy to dry her and she needed no encouragement to dress in Effie's
plain outfit.

   "What happened to Toby?" I asked quietly as she buttoned up her blouse.

   "He said he didn't love me any more.  He said he was going to send me
away."

   "That was a good thing, surely?" I queried gently.

   "He didn't mean it.  I could tell.  I know what he was really going to
do!"

   "What was that, my dear?"

   "He was going to give me to ...  Them."

   "Them?"

   "The ...  rats!" The look of panic was coming back animating her pale
face and causing her violet blue eyes to widen again."

   "So I got that thing," she indicated the pallette knife, "and killed
him."

   "I can't blame you, Mrs Frohlichmann," I said, carefully - so as to
preserve the finger prints - slipping the bloodstained palette knife into a
plastic sandwich bag which I tucked into my jacket pocket, "but what you've
done is murder."

   "Are you going to call the police?"

   She didn't seem concerned.

   "Perhaps later," I replied, "What Toby did was wrong.  Perhaps he
deserved to die.  You haven't been yourself these past two weeks.  I've
arranged for you to have treatment for the trauma you have endured.  When
you've recovered and had a chance to think about things, we can decide
whether to contact the police.  Do you understand?"

   She nodded.

   "You're not mad at me?"

   "No.  Can you help me walk to the car.  My leg ..."

   The girl-guide instinct must have been strong in Saratoga, for she
helped me shuffle across that rat infested warehouse floor with barely a
shudder.

   There was no need to involve the law.  Saratoga had forgotten to shut
the door to Toby's atelier and his body, when discovered, had been reduced
to a mess of gnawed bones.  The "accident" was reported briefly in the
local press.  "Rats Kill Drunk" was how Toby's demise was the headline on
page eight.

   Saratoga left the clinic in time for the opening of her refurbished
mansion.  I saw her picture, with a smug looking Justin, in "House and
Garden".  I spoke to her by public from my temporary accommodation in Peru.
Her memory of the time spent with Toby was mercifully vague, but she
remembered the pallette knife.  She was interested to hear I still had it,
and was sure her husband would never learn of her adventure with the young
artist or his mentor.

   The ship wasn't sinking.  I could safely return.