The Town Whispers: Season 1

Chapter 17: The Misfortunes of Luck

JAMES: Heads, I chop wood. Tails, I deal with the rat traps.

[coin flip]

James watched as the coin spun in the air. He loved that split second in time as the coin spun so fast it looked like it stood still - just hanging there in the air - right when it hit it's apex before falling - gravity pulling his lucky coin out of it's little pocket in space and time where the laws of the universe seemed not to touch it's pitted metal edges.

He relished the way it stung his thumb - he could feel the spot where his nail struck the coin for minutes after - it was uncomfortable but it was his discomfort, his coin - in a world where he owned little else.

And then there was the anticipation - knowing the coin had made its decision - sitting there in his palm - just waiting to reveal his path.

James loved that excited anxiety - knowing his fate had been decided - and there he stood waiting for it to wash over him.

Finally - with the finality that each ticking second passing in time brought - the birth - life - and death of a god gone in the blink of an eye - James slapped his lucky coin to the back of his hand - and slowly peeled back his fingers.

JAMES: Rat traps it is.

Not his first choice-

But his lucky coin was never wrong.

The church was well kept and maintained but worn-in and shoddy mostly everywhere a person could look.

The gutters, held fast to the eaves with the reliability of overzealous and enthusiastic craftsmanship - but they were constantly filled with leaves and spilled water from unintended places when it rained.

The front steps were large laid stones - the marks of their master's chisel still proudly presented on the face of the rock but the tops look like green bowed wood that looked as if there should be give to them as you walked up the hill to the front doors but they were cold and unforgiving underfoot.

And despite Heaven Hill - The name which the townsfolk affectionately called the mound of dirt which the church proudly sat atop - being home to more than a couple stray cats - and despite the backbreaking work that James went through to keep the meager grounds clear.... There were always rats.

Fat, and loud - James could hear them nightly scampering in the pitch black of night - which admittedly was his own fault as he for one reason or another had taken to dragging his small blanket and pillow out into the pews and sleeping in the warm and well loved wood benches.

Had he stayed in his closet-like room, they'd probably be less of an issue James had concluded. But his room was claustrophobic, suffocating, just from the heat of his breath with no window, and it's tight walls would be blazing hot by midnight.

But out on the pews James could breath - the breeze which seeped into the main congregation area was soothing, and when it rained.... Oh when it rained the sound of those tiny wet hammers striking the roof was heaven.

A subtle drone, consistent drone - it never failed to send James to sleep.

James decided to start outside first - and work his way in. So with his recycled burlap sack in hand - he began to rummage between amateurly kept hedges looking for those awkward rectangular shaped boxes.

He pulled the edge of the foliage away and gingerly tapped his toe about peering in as he searched.

It wasn't the edge of the box he found first though - James could feel the rubber-feeling tail of a dead rat under his boot.

Smelling it as he reached down - he grabbed the trap by the rubber tail sticking awkwardly out below the spring shut door. The rat was clearly dead - it's fur slick with wet grime trapped tightly in the box - as James with bare hands pulled back the spring which held the door shut - he could feel the tail start to pull uncomfortably against the wet and malleable skin of the rat like wet paper.

[Gag]

James hated cleaning the rat traps - and as a rule left it for Albit or some good samaritan looking to score points with the big fella upstairs - but it was his own mistake for leaving the choice up to his lucky coin. Once his fate had been chosen he would not, and could not choose otherwise. That was the rule - break the rules, face the consequence - a steep price to pay for the magic of his lucky coin.

That was the game he played when he was left all alone as he was so frequently - and to break the rules would be to break the game and to break the game was no fun. So James played along with his own make imagined game of fate.

Once the 3 traps in the hedges were cleared he moved to the back of the church where the woodpile was not so neatly piled against the back wall and did the same choosing instead to grab the traps instead of any possible appendage poking out from the trap but emptying those slick dead rats into his burlap sack all the same.

After he was done outside - he moved to clearing the traps in the church - which admittedly meant his job was more then half done but the bag was getting awfully heavy and the heat of the indoors made the rats stink in a special way that was even more repulsive than the wet slick grime that covered the rats that were otherwise preserved in the cold outdoors.

Last, but not least, it was time to go into the cellar.

The cellar, oh god - had there ever been a cellar that existed in the whole world that didn't send shivers up spines James wondered, as he moved into the room behind the pulpit through a often forgotten door where a large wood stove that heated - or attempted to heat the congregation on Sundays sat otherwise unused and neglected most of the week.

To the right of the furnace sat a trap door with no wood covering.

James never knew what had happened to the door part of the aforementioned trapdoor and he'd never asked - instead enjoying the mystery of it.

Trapdoors were a mainstay in the tension filled stories James loved reading in the odd copy of The Argent that filtered its way into the donation box at The Church.

Despite her age - it was always Ruth MacMillian - the elderly widow who owned The Fort's one and only Knit Shop aptly named Ruth's - who donated those pulp magazines to the church. He thought it was weird that Ruth of all people was the one donating copies of The Argent - a magazine filled with revenge filled war heroes, and ghosts, and overly descriptive romances - but as if to ground her scandalous reading choices of course she always tossed it in with a sweater, a toque, or a pair of socks which she'd knitted.

There was an edge to Ruth - James liked to imagine - a young woman stuck underneath all those wrinkles and the weight of time that begged to be taken from The Fort to live out some forbidden romance plagued by a legion of undead which sought to tear them asunder.

Either way, James loved those well-read, and well-worn copies of The Argent and stole them before Albit could use them as fire starters any time he saw them. And it was those stories published in that pulp magazine that fueled his imaginative speculation regarding the missing door to the trap...door.

In preparation for church the next morning - the wood furnace was already blazing hot - which meant that he would have to get uncomfortably close to the furnace - feeling the scalding waves of heat batter his face as he lowered himself into the basement.

The furnace was clearly placed with little thought to the entrance to the cellar, and the room itself was not built with a furnace in mind - it of course being a later addition to the church.

James heaved the burlap sack off the ground - groaning from the weight. Eyeing the furnace what seemed at the time to be a brilliant idea came to him.

Popping his hand into a makeshift glove to protect his palm from the head of the furnace doors handle - he opened it feeling the full force of the heat rush at him. Gingerly he opened the bag and reached in - grabbing a rat by the paw he pulled it out trying not to dirty his hands any more then he had to and flung the first dead rat into the flames of the furnace.

He could hear the wet of the fur sizzle, and then what he imagined to be it's eyes giving two little pops in between the crackling of the flame.

Then James threw in a second, and a third, and a fourth dead rat - the bag was half full when the sound of the cooking flesh was loud enough to register in his mind.

It sizzled and hissed - and with a wave of panic James for a second thought they were alive and screaming with their tiny voices through the flames before realizing it was only the sound of the fat beginning to burn.

Either way he felt regretful - and resolved to uncharacteristically bury the rest once he was done.

Regret or not - the bag was lighter and easier to heave down the makeshift ladder into the cellar.

The ladder having been built with less attention to detail than the gutters or the stone steps leading to the front door - creaked loudly underfoot, threatening to fall apart with each step down.