Breakfast

“Mel, you don't happen to have any rat poison on you, do you?”

“What'd you mean by that?”

“Well...it's a kind of poison that you use on...”

“I know what rat poison is, Ed.”

They were at the counter of AL'S DINER, eating their breakfasts.

“You don't need to get upset.”

“Look, Ed, I'm trying to finish my oatmeal.”

“I know. But I asked Marge already.”

Marge was the waitress.

“She said they didn't have any to take care of the rat that's been running around the place this morning.”

“What?”

“The one there...That one, by your foot.”

From Guest Contributor David Sydney

On The Plane

Passengers on a flight from Dallas to Los Angeles reportedly freaked out when they spotted a rat on board. No one airborne wants to see a rat running around. And yet...

Mel, one of the passengers, turned to the man sitting beside him.

“Mel's the name. I'm going to a dry-cleaning convention.”

“Dry cleaning, huh?”.

Otto Franzblau had forgotten to pick up his dry cleaning before the flight. As he explained to Mel, he was giving a paper on medical laboratory experimentation in Los Angeles.

Dry-cleaning? Laboratory experiments? Could anyone blame the rat for trying to get off the plane?

From Guest Contributor David Sydney

Tableau

The protracted screaming was unnerving. I thought a rat had been caught by one of the local dogs allowed loose around the estate. It was Creggan in the nineties, where all sorts of mixed breeds roamed freely.

I pushed aside the lace curtain and gaped.

Pinning a dunnock to the ground with its talons, a sparrowhawk majestically scanned for potential interruption, its ribbed breast an exotic cuirass.

I caught its eye, heart strained in macabre tug-of-war between awe and horror at the continuing shrieks.

The raptor blinked like its distant ancestor, stooped, and ripped the voice from the little hedge-sparrow.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid