Ratticus Maximus
i.
Tamás was steadily progressing towards the gutter and destroying his liver for years when he decided to look at shelter dogs on a whim. The dog was thin and quiet, with the same gauntness that Tamás often saw looking back at him in the mirror.
The dog shied away from Tamás initially, like a small autistic child, but his ears perked up when Tamás gently cooed his name: Ratticus.
It was love at first sight. He signed the papers and brought Ratticus home.
“You’re really not going to change his name? You can’t be serious,” his friend Rachel told him.
The name would remain unchanged. Tamás hadn’t chosen his own name, so why should the dog be any different? A man who churned greyhounds through a machine of suffering and pain for a living had already decided this one would be called Ratticus — and so it was. Besides, the dog answered to it.
“His full name is Ratticus Maximus, actually,” Tamás said.
Rachel groaned.
Tamás knew that Ratticus must have had a difficult life. For starters, there was an indentation in his skull from wearing a muzzle for years on end. Tamás wanted to give this black rat of a dog a softer life — a place to rest after years of abuse and exploitation.
Ratticus’s steady presence forced Tamás to change. He was now responsible for a living creature. He had to get up in the morning to feed and walk the dog — fewer hangovers, less time drinking himself into deep, dark ruin.
When Ratticus leaned his long, skinny body against him in silence, Tamás felt, for the first time in years, that life was worth living. He quit drinking. His neighbours began to greet him in the street instead of avoiding him. And Ratticus thrived; he gained weight, his legs and ears twitching as he dreamed, his paws in the air and his little black belly exposed, like a cockroach.
ii.
Seven years went by. Ratticus slowed, his black coat whitening. Tamás no longer had to scoop him up like a baby whenever they passed a cat. In the past, the dog’s high prey drive had made this necessary to protect the cat — or, as Ratticus once discovered, to protect himself.
One day, as they both rounded a corner, Ratticus spotted a cat. Before Tamás could react, the dog had the cat in its jaws. A horrible yelp and the cat was free, leaving Ratticus with a cut across his face. Tamás carried his dumb sweet rat-dog home, applied iodine and cursed him gently, his foolish cat-killer.
“You fucked around and found out, didn’t you, mate?” Tamás said to his dog while gently patting his head. The dog’s eyes closed shut.
iii.
Ratticus stops eating. Tamás tries to take him for a walk, but the dog is unsteady on his feet; he collapses and Tamás has to carry him down the stairs. During the short walk, Ratticus looks confused. He stumbled around searching for a corner to hide in.
Tamás knows what’s coming. He doesn’t want to face it. He cooks Ratticus a meal of boiled chicken, something easy to eat, breaking it apart with his bare hands and feeding it to him, his last meal.
A few hours later, Ratticus is dead. Tamás spent one, two hours slowly stroking the sedated dog, gently cooing, “Your mother still talks about you to the other dogs. She loves you.” He told Ratticus this as the dog panted and blinked slowly, his large wet black eyes following Tamás.
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“Don’t go,” Tamás whispers to Ratticus, who was falling asleep for the last time. “You’re all I have.” The poison did its work, and that was that.
“He doesn’t look dead. Are you sure he’s dead?” Tamás asked the vet.
Ratticus’s eyes were wide open. With a gloved finger, the vet touched an eyeball. It did not close.
Shortly after, another person came into the room with an EFTPOS machine.
iv.
On the way home, Tamás stops off at a bottle shop. Just a few beers, just to help him sleep, he told himself. Then another couple to get through the morning. Soon he was drinking as soon as he woke up and continued all day.
Tamás discovered that time travel was actually possible and it involved a shitload of beer, vodka, Cointreau, gin, whisky, rum, and whatever else he could get his hands on.
Neighbours began avoiding him again. Mistakes piled up at work: missed shifts, angry outbursts for no real reason. He recognised the path he was on, he’d been there before, but he didn’t care.
When he came home at night, there was no one waiting for him. Ratticus had been the tether holding him to reality, and with him gone, he was free to rot and fall into ruin without resistance. He pushed everyone away, became isolated, weird — “weirder”, which for Tamás, was saying something.
He meets Rachel for coffee and they take a walk together.
“I think you should see a therapist,” Rachel tells Tamás.
Tamás keeps walking, sipping his coffee. Rachel repeats herself.
Tamás groans. “What kind of name is Rachel? Maybe you should change it.”
Rachel freezes, staring at him in disbelief.
Tamás doesn’t want to say it, but he does. He is no longer in control.
“Wasn’t Rachel a barren woman in the Bible?” he says. “I guess it makes sense why you’re named after her, then.”
He never sees Rachel again.
v.
The apartment was a tomb falling apart around him. He moved through life as if petrified by a loud noise. The empties piled up. Time travel became more frequent and time itself would become blurred; he would wake up without remembering who he’d harassed or lashed out at the night before.
He drank until he stopped feeling, stopped remembering. In his stupor, he remembered Ratticus’ trusting eyes, the way he snuffled and snorted in his sleep, the gentle way he leaned into him. For a moment, Tamás felt shame for his behaviour. Then the shame vanished, replaced by something black and monstrous, drowned beneath it all.
Life goes on, as they say. More greyhounds put through the meat-grinder, some get rescued. Tamás doesn’t care. His world had shrunk to the size of a beer bottle. He was finally at home in the ruin.
