• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Ahhh,” said Roscuro. He pulled his head back, away from the light. But, alas, he did not close his eyes, and the flame exploded around him and danced inside him.

“Has no one told you the rules?” said Gregory.

“What rules?”

“Gregory’s rope, rat, is off-limits.”

“So?”

“Apologize for chewing on Gregory’s rope.”

“I will not,” said Roscuro.

“Apologize.”

“No.”

“Filthy rat,” said Gregory. “You black-souled thing. Gregory has had it with you rats.” He held the match closer to Roscuro’s face, and a terrible smell of burnt whiskers rose up around the jailer and the rat. And then the match went out and Gregory released Roscuro’s tail. He flung him back into the darkness.

“Do not ever touch Gregory’s rope again, or you will be sorry.”

Roscuro sat on the dungeon floor. The whiskers on the left side of his face were gone. His heart was beating hard, and though the light from the match had disappeared, it danced, still, before the rat’s eyes, even when he closed them.

“Light,” he said aloud. And then he whispered the word again. “Light.”

From that moment forward, Roscuro showed an abnormal, inordinate interest in illumination of all sorts. He was always, in the darkness of the dungeon, on the lookout for light, the smallest glimmer, the tiniest shimmer. His rat soul longed inexplicably for it; he began to think that light was the only thing that gave life meaning, and he despaired that there was so little of it to be had.

He finally voiced this sentiment to his friend, a very old one-eared rat named Botticelli Remorso.

“I think,” said Roscuro, “that the meaning of life is light.”

“Light,” said Botticelli. “Ha-ha-ha — you kill me. Light has nothing to do with it.”

“What does it all mean then?” asked Roscuro.

“The meaning of life,” said Botticelli, “is suffering, specifically the suffering of others. Prisoners, for instance. Reducing a prisoner to weeping and wailing and begging is a delightful way to invest your existence with meaning.”

As he spoke, Botticelli swung, from the one extraordinarily long nail of his right front paw, a heart-shaped locket. He had taken the locket from a prisoner and hung it on a thin braided rope. Whenever Botticelli spoke, the locket moved. Back and forth, back and forth it swung. “Are you listening?” Botticelli said to Roscuro.

“I am listening.”

“Good,” said Botticelli. “Do as I say and your life will be full of meaning. This is how to torture a prisoner: first, you must convince him that you are a friend. Listen to him. Encourage him to confess his sins. And when the time is right, talk to him. Tell him what he wants to hear. Tell him, for instance, that you will forgive him. This is a wonderful joke to play upon a prisoner, to promise forgiveness.”

“Why?” said Roscuro. His eyes went back and forth, back and forth, following the locket.

“Because,” said Botticelli, “you will promise it — ha — but you will not grant it. You gain his trust. And then you deny him. You refuse to offer the very thing he wants. Forgiveness, freedom, friendship, whatever it is that his heart most desires, you withhold.” At this point in his lecture, Botticelli laughed so hard that he had to sit down and catch his breath. The locket swayed slowly back and forth and then stopped altogether.

“Ha,” said Botticelli, “ha-ha-ha! You gain his trust, you refuse him and — ha-ha — you become what he knew you were all along, what you knew you were all along, not a friend, not a confessor, not a forgiver, but — ha-ha! — a rat!” Botticelli wiped his eyes and shook his head and sighed a sigh of great contentment. He set the locket in motion again. “At that point, it is most effective to run back and forth over the prisoner’s feet, inducing physical terror along with the emotional sort. Oh,” he said, “it is such a lovely game, such a lovely game! And it is just absolutely chock-full of meaning.”

“I would like very much to torture a prisoner,” said Roscuro. “I would like to make someone suffer.”

“Your time will come,” said Botticelli. “Currently, all the prisoners