THE RAT MAN
He used to be a little boy, living in a lavish house with his strict and arrogant guardians. He had a pet whom he loved, a little mouse he found in the fields near his home. He fed and cared for it, and called it his friend, but when his parents found it, they took it away from him. “Filth!” They said, “Filth that does not belong in this house!” The boy was distraught, but he found another mouse to call his friend. Every time his parents would find his new pet, take it away, and kill it. But he just kept finding more. Eventually, the two had enough. They dragged the boy to a graveyard, and imprisoned him within a crypt vault. With the intent to leave him there to be eaten alive by rats, they drove away and returned home.
The boy was scared at first, but soon he found many, many rats within the vault. They were larger, and more menacing than the field mice he was accustomed to, but they treated him like a friend just the same, for the mice had put a good word in for him. But the rats were… malicious beings. They told him to do away with his clothes, until he was left with nothing but a loincloth. They fed him rancid meat from the recently dead brought to the graveyard. And though it took time, the chain of his iron collar was bitten and chewed through, and he was free. By then, he was no longer a little boy. Many years had passed, and the vault had changed him. He was tall, and he had spindly limbs and jagged, filthy hands and feet, with prickly fingers. He was emaciated, living on nothing but the meat of the dead. His eyes became wide and their lids shriveled, leaving him blind. His nose became flat, but still worked as it was intended to. His grin stretched into a thing of evil, never dropping, and his teeth became giant and menacing.
One night, when his parents were old and withered, the boy – now calling himself “the Rat Man” – returned home with his many rat companions, all of them quite hungry. They laid siege to the parents’ opulent mansion, infesting it, and devouring them in their beds. The Rat Man merely stood there and watched. As he left the mansion, he saw the field mice, and approached them. But they fled from his sight, horrified by the monster the rats had turned him into, no longer the little boy they called their friend.
The Rat Man, disheartened by the mice’s’ retreat, returned to the crypt vault. To this day, he feeds on the remains of the bodies the rats bring him, and he still very much enjoys their company. He remains a gentle soul, but grave robbers and miscreants meet their end when he prowls the cemetery at night, with his legion of rats at his side.