Chapter 2

Toxic Rats in Abandoned Chinese Construction

It was 4:35 a.m. I decided that since I couldn’t sleep anyway, I’d go stand on the balcony, stare at the ether. In the inky sky, I could see whirling patterns passing by, patterns passing into a sidereal distance; vivacious, complex patterns, patterns of colored gemstones, tropical flower banks, Scottish stained-glass windows, mogul arches and suicide doors, peacock designs. The patterns flickered and glowered brighter than animated billboards, then disappeared like groups of penguins trudging into an Antarctic blizzard.

The street below was empty, graveyard quiet, save for the gentle rumble of a passing truck or the lowkey buzz of a motorbike. I’d never seen downtown Bangkok so desolate. I recalled complaints about legions of uncouth continental Chinese tourists trashing Thailand, and COVIT seemed like their perfect closing act.

I yawned, then sucked in a steamy breath of the outside air. I’d say “fresh” air, but the air is never actually fresh in Bangkok. It always carries a faint effluvium, and often packs a stink; a stink of diesel fumes, a stink of sewer smells, or that distinct smoky stink created by local farmers slashing and burning nearby rice fields.

Again, I considered shapeshifting into a water monitor lizard. I seriously began to identify as a water monitor lizard. I saw myself in scales, saw myself with green skin. I saw myself with a forked tongue, claws instead of fingers, and my blood cold as ice water...

Night still hung like a cape over the city. I stretched and yawned again, then crossed my arms and leaned forward on my balcony’s railing and saw out to an abandoned building nearby. The building site, the development, was intended to be an audacious luxury condo, aimed at the continental Chinese market, but construction had been halted, and so it sat abandoned and half-built, its windows staring absently, such as the eye sockets of skulls in an ossuary.

Nowadays the abandoned luxury condo project was occupied by rats. Infested by rats. Big, ugly gray rats. I’d been seeing colonies of big ugly gray rats scurrying up the half-built building’s walls. Rats running around its hollowed shell. Rats living on its ossified floors. The rats really were gargantuan too, almost the size of small dogs.

There were packs of stray cats living on my street, and I wondered if the cats could tackle, maul the rats, do whatever cats do to rats, but I wasn’t so sure. The stray cats were thin, brittle-looking, and some were tailless. And those rats were fucking monstrous.

The rats seemed to be growing larger, too, by the day. Perhaps the rats were a result of an experiment gone wrong or toxic waste, like the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles. Somehow I didn’t see any physical confrontation between the hulking, toxic rats and the emaciated feral cats being a fair fight.

I imagined a feral cat being circled by rats, torn to shreds, the same way a hornet is swarmed and annihilated in a bee’s nest. Then I wondered if the rats would die of “COVIT.” Maybe that’d do them in. The rats, in an abandoned Chinese building, dying of COVIT. Sounds plausible and strangely inevitable.

I stepped back inside, into the tingly chill of manufactured air, and returned to bed. I’d been experiencing trouble striking the right balance with my new a/c system. It was always too hot or too cold. Never just right...