The rat scurried along a low-hanging branch to cross the violent river. Go rat, go! You can make it. From fifty meters away, Zlata watched, and her camera’s autofocus brought the rodent into razor-sharp definition: the glint of cold moonlight off droplets on the whiskers, a light blinking on its collar. Zlata bred rats, trained them. She named them—this one Rupert—but that intimacy saddened her when they inevitably got fried.
Worthless sentimentality. Better to make it impersonal, to assign letters, R for Rupert, R for rat. No letter for her daughter. She’d given her a gentle name, of smiles, of enduring joy, and hoped she would have a better life, one with less hunger, less fear of men wanting to take from her and keep taking.
“Rat deployed,” she said.
Her earpiece crackled with her spotter’s voice. “Copy.”
The collection unit tethered to the camera sizzled and the light turned red. Moisture had shorted out something. Careful to stay hidden in the underbrush, Zlata wiped the connectors with an oil-stained rag that stank of petrol and the threat of conflagration. The light’s color changed to green and a 2 appeared on the digital readout. A few more weeks of hunting souls and she’d have enough to trade for passage out of this shithole.
She uncovered the flash, a compact array of lights she had rigged, more duct tape than glass or metal, and so bright it would scorch your retinas. The trick was to get the target to look straight into the lens. Kill the electricity, pop the flash to draw their attention, take the shot, and—boom!—they drop, the body nothing but a husk, soul gone, captured by the camera and transmitted down the wire to the collector.
She raised the viewfinder and focused on the house. The drapes were open. Thank God.
Lately, people had become guarded, with shielded transformers and circuit boxes, perimeter alarms and blacked-out windows—tech-proof vigilance. Using rats had been her idea. They could sneak past any security measures, knock out the power.
Behind the window’s glass, in that other, safer world inside the house, there was a warm light and a man lounging on a couch, reading a book, a Jack Russell terrier curled up on his lap.
“Target isn’t in sight yet,” her spotter said. “Hold position, Z.”
“Copy.” Even she had been reduced to just a letter.
That man wasn’t the target. The client never told them who to shoot until Zlata was in her nest, aiming her camera. She lowered the lens to the burbling waters and found Rupert on the other side of the river. Once the rat reached the house, it halted and waited.
Her spotter said, “Target entering.”
The rat peered across the ravine in her direction, clasping its tiny hands as if in prayer. Time to get to work. Zlata pressed the button on the remote to send the signal and the light on Rupert’s collar blinked faster. The rat chewed the wiring at the base of the house and the window went dark. A deceptively simple task, but quite helpful. Thank you, Rupert. Mission accomplished, you magnificent, winsome creature.
Inside the house, the man lit a candle, and a little girl walked into the room. She fidgeted and showed him a pink notebook. That girl was so like Zlata’s daughter before the attack, with an open look on her face, a look that said she wasn’t aware the world would hurt her.
***
When she’d been that age, Zlata had lived in her diary. Mostly, she drew, but she also wrote letters to her father, who was far away, with God. She was sure he watched over her from heaven after the sniper shot him.
Mama had described Sarajevo as a former jewel of cultural tolerance—majestic, distant words for a home Zlata remembered only as hell, a city and people destroyed when Yugoslavia broke apart and sank into war. Even with blackout curtains, they couldn’t risk having lights on once night had fallen, so she’d drawn by the flickering illumination of a lone candle.
***
“Target acquired,” the spotter said. “The kid, triple bounty. Go!”
Children were worth more—innocence and all.
Zlata closed her eyes and remembered her daughter breastfeeding, her first tentative steps, the blood on her ten-year-old face after the attack.
She flipped the switch on the flash. Batteries charged the bulb, and the sound rose in pitch, in urgency, a countdown to an explosion. Zlata lined up her shot. The girl was intent on her notebook.
***
All those years ago, when she had fled Sarajevo with her mama, Zlata left her diary behind. It was full of the past, anyway. The final drawing she’d done in those pages had been a rat’s nest of angry scribbles that shredded the paper.
She no longer kept a diary.
***
For the breadth of a breath, she paused.
Aiming.
Trembling.
Redolence of decaying autumn leaves. Her guts in turmoil, stomach cramps. Bone-deep cold. Tears. Blurred vision.
That sliver of a moment captured her life, her war with herself—shoot, don’t shoot—her desperate need for her daughter to do more than merely survive, for her to flourish in a land that wouldn’t crush her body and spirit as the Balkans surely would.
Anything other than despair.
Hope.
Zlata hated that to secure her daughter’s future, she was forced to take from others and keep taking.
***
She fired the flash and the scene lit up—a lightning strike, all revealed in a millisecond, a still life: the river, whitewater frozen in time; pines skirting the bank, needles stabbing outward; across the ravine, the rat, fried from chewing the wires; the house, brick and cracked plaster, a rusted-out satellite dish aimed at heaven; and inside, so like Zlata, so like her daughter, a jump-scare look on her face—the magnificent, winsome little girl, staring straight into the lens.
Matt Hollingsworth is a member of the neurodivergent community and an award-winning color artist for Marvel, DC, and Image Comics, a job he’s done professionally since 1991. He’s collaborated with the likes of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Mike Mignola on titles including Death, Hellboy, and Batman. He spends most of his free time reading, writing, brewing beer, or with his family—a wife, a son, and a collection of furry friends. He’s a filthy American, but has lived in Croatia since 2006. This is his first published prose. He has a story forthcoming in Interzone, to be published in March 2024.
You can find him online:
matthollingsworth.com
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/matthollingsworth.bsky.social
Published 2/14/24