The House of the Three Rats; Garden Party

I saw/was a man in a small, spooky town was looking around his affluent neighborhood and realized there was something wrong. I narrated to myself, "It won't be too long." People wore pale clothes, old-fashioned suits and long white dresses. It was a coastal town. I went down the coast to a shabby house where a grubby boy was standing by the fence. "I need to see your mother," I said. The boy set up a sort of laundry-line transport, a long, frayed string would pull me to the house. The string was thin and soft under my hands and I thought it might break but I didn't care. I went through the quiet, sunny pine trees to the house. "Someone told me she'd dyed her hair." I knew this meant the widowed mother of all the children was desperate.

In the kitchen of the house, an older, homely woman with dyed black hair was cooking. There was a little girl with her. It was actually hard to tell how old she was. I knew that the woman was planning to sell or give away the girl because it was too dangerous to stay here. Other children kept walking through the kitchen, getting something ready.

An older boy, teenaged or in his twenties, caught my attention. He seemed confident even though there was a disaster coming. He wore a black vest and there was a tattoo on his shoulder of three rats. I went to him and asked him about it. He stood in the hallway right by the back door, almost out of it. He was leaving on a mission, but he stayed to tell me. "Our house is full of rats and bees. We tell a story about taking a bee's stinger and stinging three rats. The first two kept running and fighting until they burned off the poison, but the third one hurt so much he just wanted to lie down. That's what made him die." I knew he was telling me that we could leave and survive. By now I was myself, and I kissed him and licked his tattoo. We went outside.

It was a beautiful garden party. My friends were there and gave me a crazy pair of red sunglasses. I knew we would be safe.