Free 1503933547 by Paul Pen Page A

little cuts on the skin. The baby opened his mouth to scream again. The animal’s tail slithered between his lips, and its snout stopped for a few seconds on the boy’s left eye, sniffing, the whiskers quivering over it like grotesque eyelashes.
    I pulled on the baby with trembling hands. A muscle in my back sent me a stab of pain. The animal clutched the boy’s head, bending the neck at an unnatural angle, before jumping back into the crib. It escaped between two bars. The tail disappeared into a corner of the room.
    I kissed the baby’s forehead, which was resting on my chest. I held his head from behind to keep the neck straight. Two drops of blood slid down his face.
    “Is that child going to shut up, or what?” my father yelled from the kitchen.
    I sat on the floor, my back resting against my grandmother’s bed. With one of my thumbs, I cleaned the drops of blood from the baby’s face.
    “How hard can it be?” Dad asked from the other room.
    “If he’s hungry, bring him to me,” shouted my sister.
    My throat was so tight from the shock I couldn’t answer.
    I sat there waiting, until I heard my grandmother’s footsteps in the hall.
    “What is it?” she asked as she walked in.
    She bumped into me. A sparse eyebrow arched, taut with worry.
    “Hey, what is it?” She knelt beside me. She searched for the baby with her hands. “Is he OK?”
    I swallowed. I opened my mouth but couldn’t utter a word. I swallowed again.
    “A rat,” I managed to say.
    “No,” she responded. She pressed the little boy’s head against her chest. “Where?”
    “In the crib,” I said. “A huge rat, it came out from under the sheet. It walked over his face. Grandma, it scratched his face.”
    Mom appeared in the room. Behind her, my dad and my brother. They crowded around us.
    “What’s happened?” Dad asked.
    “What’s happened, you ask?” My grandmother held the baby out for my mother to take him, then she stood up. She spoke very close to Dad’s face. “Rats. I told you they’d end up giving us a fright.”
    “Rats?” Mom covered her mouth.
    “There’s poison in every corner,” Dad explained. “Maybe with the delay it took a bit longer for—”
    “Sure, blame it on him,” my grandmother broke in. “Is there any more with today’s things?”
    My father left the room without answering.
    My sister then appeared in the doorway. She parted a lock of hair caught in her mask’s artificial nose and examined the tips. “What’s happened?”
    My brother grabbed my sister’s arm. He pulled her toward the baby, which still cried in my mother’s arms. He pushed her till she was down on her knees.
    “Don’t touch me!” she yelled. “Get off me. Don’t touch me.”
    My brother’s fingers went white around her arm. “You should have”—he choked on a syllable—“have been looking after him,” he said.
    She groaned.
    “Leave her,” Mom said as she stroked the baby’s face. “It was an accident.”
    “It was an accident,” my sister repeated. “This place is full of rats.”
    My brother let go of her arm. She massaged it.
    Dad returned to the room. “We’ve got another box,” he said.
    He shook it so my grandmother could hear it. It was red, smaller than a cereal box, but the same shape. The black silhouette of a rat was printed on one side, inside a yellow circle.
    “Someone bring me the antiseptic from the bathroom,” Mom asked while blowing on the baby’s face.
    My sister sat on the bed. She chose another lock of hair and smoothed it using two fingers like scissors.
    “He’s your son,” my mother said. “Won’t you go?”
    “How about his father goes?” she replied.
    I ran to the bathroom to find the first-aid kit. Screams came from the bedroom. I also heard a slap.

    In the afternoon I sat by Mom on the brown sofa in the living room. She was mending one of Dad’s shirts. On the sofa’s arm was the sewing box she’d used to help my sister after she gave birth. It was really