By Sam Huang

A few weeks ago, they appeared. I hadn‚t before seen them. No one had. I had heard them, however, and their irritating scratching through the wall. I mistook them for rats. I set up traps, anticipating to catch a large, vile rodent. And I did.

But I did not notice that it had been pierced through the chest already. It was a bloody mess when I found it, its neck crushed between the metal rod and the wooden base. I had thought that that‚s what happened when rats were trapped, that it resulted in a large puddle of blood. But they told me only bones break. No skin.

And they were right. They demonstrated the process to me, taking one of their bred rats and snapping it before me. No blood. Only bones. They enacted the demonstration quite a few more times, killing at least five more of the vermin. They took unhealthy pleasure in doing so, and I wondered if they had any knowledge of ethics or remorse. I didn‚t mention it, however, but I did ask about their need for rat breeding. One replied in a heavy-accented soprano that „all household rats had been captured in order for colonization to occur safely behind the walls.‰ I was a bit startled at that assertion, and even more so when it said that all human-caught rats in the last decade were in fact carefully planned by them.

I was on the toilet when the first ones arose from the sink. I had thought them vastly intriguing initially, but I was naive. I picked one up and it cut deep into my index finger. I gave a loud cry at that, and smashed it against the wall. It was dead, surely, and I relaxed by cleaning off my injury. But then more started to come. From every sink, they poured out, like a miniaturized army of fearless warriors, undaunted and vigorous. They ran toward me, if that‚s what would you call what they were doing, and they used their tiny weapons to jab into my feet.

I finally collapsed. Prostrated across the floor, I was vulnerable. They swarmed on top of me like hungry locusts, digging into my skin and tearing at my flesh. With long pieces of salvaged twine, they managed to shackle my feet and hands together.

They told me that they neared the grand sacrifice of humanity. They spoke to me often, telling me their plans, their history and thoughts, mocking me. They mocked me, these small ugly creatures. Their average height reached not even two inches, and yet they mocked me. They mocked my height, my mind, my voice. They mocked humanity. They mocked us because we were naive. Because we were ignorant. Because we had once dominated the world. The irony! We humans were to be extinct!