Larry the Rat was just finishing up his dinner when he heard a knock on the front door of his home.  Who would be visiting him now?  Maybe it was a package.  But it was late for package delivery.  Larry was suspicious.

He’d only moved into this house recently.  It was a long move from his hometown, but sometimes long moves are needed.  Long moves can be good.  A new start, right?  He didn’t want to be called Larry the Rat anymore.  Just Larry would be fine.  And when he started making some new friends, that’s who he would be.  Just Larry.

When Larry was back in his hometown, he had what a lot of people would consider a thankless job.  It wasn’t a good job or a bad job, and by that I mean, he didn’t work specifically for the good guys or the bad guys.  He worked for both.  He was a rat.  Larry the Rat worked his way up the chain.  You wouldn’t think a rat could get away with the same trick twice, but the good guys did enough to keep the bad guys guessing and Larry was never the one to blame.

But, Larry the Rat didn’t feel he was compensated well enough for the amount of risk he was taking.  He was in the system pretty deep.  Both systems, in fact.  Larry had a special gift for living two lives.  And this last summer, he determined he was going to live one life for the rest of his life.  No more helping anyone.  A free agent with a clean record.  The good guys told him it was a smart career move and provided some excellent clean record assistance.

As you would expect for a professional like Larry, he told no one where he was going.  Not the good guys, and certainly not the bad guys.  He bought a typical house on a typical street in a typical neighborhood in Nowhereville.  The perfect place to ditch his rat surname.

But the preparations didn’t end there.  He built a panic room in his new house – completely impenetrable.  And although it wasn’t obvious from the outside, all the windows of the house were reinforced.  It would take a very large-caliber rifle to blast through on a first shot.  Any other attack would require multiple shots, which no one would risk putting in that kind of time in a neighborhood like this one.  At the sound of the first gunshot, Larry would be squirreled away in his panic room, calling the good guys for a quick favor.

Not only the house windows, but the doors were completely reinforced, too.  No shooting through them, no way.  He’d also seen enough drug raids to know how battering rams worked and what was effective in slowing them down.  Again, just more time to get to the panic room.

Tonight, the massively-reinforced front door was being knocked upon.  And Larry the Rat was suspicious about that.

Walking silently, out of the view of the reinforced windows, he came up to the front door.  Larry listened closely for any indication of who it could be, friend or foe.  The heavy door gave no clues who was on the other side.  Larry looked through the security peephole in the door.  It was black.  Larry saw nothing.

The knock came again and Larry started, jumping in place.  “Damn it.” he cursed himself.  Did he make any noise?  If he did, should he just man up and ask who’s there?  Should he turn on the outside light so he could see who was out there first?  Either one would expose his location.  Larry looked back to where the panic room was.  How many windows were between the front door and the panic room?

Larry calmed his mind for a moment.  What a crazy vision.  The whole mafia lined up at each window, blasting away fruitlessly at the thick glass while he dashed down the hall.  His house was more secure than most any bank.  He had time to live.

His calm was immediately broken by a sheet of paper slid partially under the door.  He pulled it through.  Legal-sized paper?  It had an advertisement on it.  In big, bold letters at the top: PEST REMOVAL.  The logo was an upside-down rat in a cage.  Larry dropped the paper without seeing anything else.  He didn’t want to see.  But curiosity got the better of him.

Larry moved back to the peephole.  Still black.

Without warning, although the delivered flyer should have been sufficient warning, Larry’s eye was pierced.  A long, thin, metal rod fired through the peephole, into his eye and with enough force to spear his brain and exit dramatically through the back of his head.  Larry’s shock denied him a scream of acknowledgement that his assailant had hit his mark.

The man outside was quite aware of his success as he watched his end of the rod shudder and then incline as the section inside the house was pulled down from an unseen weight – the weight of Larry the exterminated rat.

Inside, Larry was trying to bargain his way out of his imminent death.  “Next time, reinforced peep hole.  No, external cameras.  Yeah.  With night vision.  And maybe… maybe… hmmm.”

Another workday for Randy.  He gathered up his racks of snacks and drinks and cheerily set out on his daily route.  He did love his job.  He loved meeting all the people, people busy doing their own jobs.  And he was glad he could provide them with a little daily happiness.  Maybe the happiness was coming from his cans of Coke and Pepsi and bags of Doritos, but Randy liked to think they enjoyed his friendly banter each day.

“Having fun yet?” Randy queried the first person he met in the office.

“Every day,” the random person replied.  Randy didn’t need to know the details.  He just wanted to show he cared enough to ask.  Another person was up ahead.  Randy prepared his next witticism.

“Working hard?”

“Hardly working, Randy.” Aw, that guy got him good.  It’s almost like he was ready for it.  Randy chuckled to himself and entered the break room where his machines were.  Without any care, he replenished each machine in turn.  He did this every day, the process was quite routine for him.  He liked filling the machines, but the machines didn’t have that same interactive quality he got from people.

Randy reloaded his truck and went on to the next stop.  Another office building – he liked the people there.  “Hey, working hard?”  “Having fun yet?”  And more machines.  More change in his large canvas bag.  Boy, the banks were annoyed when Randy showed up.  He was either asking for a bunch of change or was giving them a bunch of change.  Always such a hassle.  “Working hard?”  Absolutely, Randy.  You make us work very hard.

Heading home from another productive day, Randy found himself in a bad situation on the interstate.  A semi truck had swerved to avoid a reckless car cutting in front of it.  The semi weaved back and forth, then began to topple over, right onto Randy’s truck.  The accident was over in a flash.

The next morning, Randy woke up in his bed, ready for work.  It was another workday for Randy.  He had people to meet and machines to fill.  He arrived at his first stop on his route and went to the break room.  A man was sitting in the corner at a small round table.

“Hey!  Having fun yet?”  Randy announced his arrival to the man.  No response.  Oh well, Randy thought, not everyone is as happy at their job as me.  He went to the machines, but they weren’t his.  Well, they looked just like his, but his key didn’t work.  He looked them over and determined they seemed stocked well enough for another day.  He’d bring backup keys tomorrow.

Randy went to the next office on his route and engaged the first person in the hall he saw. “Working hard?”  Again, no response.  Geez, must be a Monday, thought Randy as he continued on.  But just like the last place, his keys wouldn’t turn in the machines’ locks.  Randy thought something was very strange about all this.  Had he been replaced?  Was there another Randy on his route, filling his machines and cheering up all the workers?

Randy ventured out of the break room and into the office halls.  Everyone he met had no response for his witty queries.  “Having fun yet?”  “Working hard?”  “Having fun yet?”  All met with silence.  Most just kept right on walking.  Was this a prank?  A conspiracy?  Randy got more agitated with the workers.  “Working hard?”  “Hey!  Working HARD?”  “Having FUN yet?”

Finally, Randy had enough.  He stood firmly in front of a man walking in the hall, blocking his path. Pointing accusingly, he demanded, “You!  Having fun yet?”  The man paid him no mind and walked right through Randy.  Randy’s eyes grew wide.  His memory slowly began filling in.  The drive home on the highway.  The truck.  Then waking up in his bed again.  The reality dawning on him brought a sadness.  The thought crystallized that this was all he knew in life and he had taken it to the afterlife.  It was his afterlife, forever.

Randy woke up the next morning in his bed.  He wasn’t excited to do his route today.  He grudgingly arrived at his first stop and trudged his way to the break room.  “Having fun yet?”  “Working hard?”  No response.  Randy was learning a thing or two about working hard and having fun yet.  And his lesson would go on and on.

Terrence was having a pretty good day. Today was sunny and bright, but not uncomfortably hot. He moved along slowly in the grassy park. After all, he was not really in a hurry. After all, he was a slug.

But a slug still had things to do and places to be. Terrence was no different in that regard. He knew where he was going: to the other side of the park, where he knew he could have a great meal. Slugs aren’t too particular about where they eat, unlike some people who demand that everything is organic. Organic is everything in a slug’s life. Terrence didn’t know there was a such a thing otherwise and didn’t even know anything about people to know otherwise either.

Terrence arrived at the edge of the flat-park. Sometimes, the flat-park was very hot and he would have a difficult time crossing it to get to the grass on the other side. Sometimes it was cool, which was nice. He’d even crossed the flat-park once when it was wet. Not wet like his track – smoother, softer. That was the best. He liked wet a lot. Today his body told him the flat-park was warm and dry. Not the best, but not really bad, either. He made his way, post-haste. But for a slug, post-haste is… I’m sure you understand.

His senses told him he was more than halfway across the flat-park, almost there to the grass. But then, the hail started. Terrence’s day was suddenly not as good. He didn’t detect there would be any bad weather soon. And he could still feel the sun, so Terrence was mightily confused. But the hail kept on falling.

This was no usual hail. This hail stuck to him, instead of bouncing off. And it burned. It burned badly. Terrence wrapped himself around, trying to wipe off the hail stuck to his body. His efforts were only partially effective. Where the hail had landed, it still hurt. The mysterious hail had sucked the life out of him, it seemed.

As the hail continued to fall, Terrence was torn between trying to make it to the grass – and hopefully safety – or to fight out here in the open to clean his sluggy body. His pitiful brain became overwhelmed with the fight or flight decision and his body started thrashing around on its own. Terrence was becoming scared. If this hail kept falling, he wouldn’t get to the other side and he wouldn’t be having the meal he had been looking forward to.

But the hail did keep falling and falling. Terrence’s body was becoming covered in the white flecks of hail, and it hurt so much. He felt himself getting tighter, losing his sluggish mobility. His thrashing slowed down and Terrence felt so tired as the burning covered his entire body. His senses were useless to tell him anything other than he was stuck. He could no longer move.

As Terrence felt the weight of more and more hail on his body, and the pain screaming over his entire paralyzed length, he wondered if there was a god. Slugs don’t pray for success or salvation, but Terrence, in his final moments before he expired, attempted a simple communication with whatever power was above him, raining death down upon him on this wonderful day. “Why?”

A small, round-faced lad hovered over the scene on the sidewalk, his tight curly red hair framing his face like a simmering fire. The lad grinned as he sprinkled Terrence’s doom upon him. The lad could never had heard a slug ask him for his motivation, but with improbable and impeccable timing, the lad chuckled and said, “Salt life, bitch.”