arm yourself, because no-one else here will save you. (au & rw)
The scratching behind the walls hadn't stopped. It hadn't gotten quieter, or easier to ignore; if anything, over the last few weeks it had gotten louder and more insistent. Everywhere Aster went, whatever she was doing, whatever she tried to focus on, she could hear it in the background. Little teeth, ripping and tearing at the insulation. Little feet with little claws clicking on the ceilings and support beams. Little scaly tails dragging in the dust. She could picture them in her mind, peering around corners at her and vanishing as she turned around, lurking behind doors and scuttling under furniture. She'd started tucking the edges of her quilt under the mattress, obsessively keeping them from dragging on the floor; she'd started sitting with her feet up every time she took a seat, just in case something ran over her shoes or up her pant leg. None of it really helped. With all the chaos she'd been able to distract herself a little, focus on the creepiness of the disappearances instead of the somehow more horrifying creepiness of the sounds of rats, but the fact remained that she'd been living in a state of quietly escalating fear for the last month or so.

And a week ago it had gotten worse. A week ago she'd seen one - a quick flash across a doorway, dark and low to the ground, gone by the time she worked up the nerve to go and look closer. Since then she'd seen them everywhere; glowing eyes peeked out at her from the darkness of her closet, hairless tails darted out from under the rec room couch. They were getting closer, getting braver. They were coming for her, that's what was happening - on some horrible level she was sure of it, and she was pretty sure she would just faint dead away when they finally came close. Aster had nursed a quiet horror of rats for as long as she could remember; having someone's pet rat unexpectedly put in her lap had reduced her to hysterical screaming once, and that had been just one, sitting tamely and washing its face. How infinitely worse would it be when the wild, scratching horde she could hear behind the walls finally came crawling out? She couldn't even imagine, and for weeks now she'd been trying. She'd tried to picture them racing out with little party hats on, tripping over their own tails and falling flat on their pointed little faces, skidding on a slippery floor, anything to make them funny instead of horrifying, and it had only given her nightmares. It was embarrassing, waking up in a cold sweat from a nightmare about rats or leaping out of her chair with a shriek because she thought she saw a scaly tail, but there was nothing she could do about it. That cold, creeping fear just wouldn't go away. When they came, she was sure she would freeze on the spot for as long as it took them to crawl right up her legs and eat her face.

She'd started carrying makeshift weapons, for all the good it might do her, finding an excuse to carry a heavy textbook or a baseball bat everywhere she went. Lately, that excuse had simply been 'the rats are getting closer'. There was no point in pretending, she knew other people could hear them too - they just didn't care as much as she did, they just didn't know how awful it was. Instead of picturing the rats falling on their faces, she pictured them getting squished under a projectile or a boot. It was disgusting, but it left her feeling just the tiniest bit powerful, maybe even a bit more able to handle this. They were horrible, disease-carrying little bastards, they deserved to be crushed before they got a chance to bite her and make her sick - or eat her alive, she'd had that nightmare too. Tiny teeth pulling flesh away from the bone, leaving little bloody hole after little bloody hole. She kept telling herself that she could do this, that she was stronger than a bunch of stupid rats, that if it came down to them or her she would be the one to win. And she'd had almost six weeks to convince herself, she was almost there. That didn't mean she didn't shake like a leaf every time she heard a scratching sound, but then she pictured the rat, and she pictured it dying, and she shook a little bit less.

When the first rat finally came, it was such an ordinary moment, just a Wednesday evening in the kitchen - one second she was pouring herself a bowl of cereal, and the next she was frantically scrambling up on the center island as a rat scurried boldly out onto the kitchen floor. She didn't start shrieking until after she was safely off the floor, before that she was too unnerved to breathe. The rat came closer, sniffed the air, scanned around the room - and then squeaked shrilly, like an alarm or something, and stopped. In the walls, she could hear them massing, scratching and squeaking less than ten feet away. It must have been a signal, that squeak, because they all came pouring out then - hundreds of them, oh god, hundreds swarming across the floor and toward her. They were everywhere. She couldn't even see the kitchen floor anymore. And they were piling on top of each other, reaching higher, reaching toward her.

Aster didn't freeze. Still shrieking at the top of her lungs, she lunged for her heavy textbook and threw it as hard as she could into the mass of rats - a few of them went down, crushed under it, but the rest kept coming. She looked around frantically, searching for some other weapon to use, and wound up with nothing better than a thick plastic cutting board. It would have to do, it was all she had. This time she didn't throw it - she leaned down, swung it like a bat, and sent a rat hurtling through the air toward the wall. Only one, but still, that was one more down. She hadn't stopped screaming yet, and she wouldn't until her throat went raw, but at least she was fighting back. Right? At least she was going down fighting, that had to count for something. Aster swung again and again, desperate and wild, sometimes connecting and sometimes not. All around her, the rats swarmed upward, reaching for her countertop with their little clawed feet and their twitching whiskers. One scrabbled at the edge of the island, pulling itself up, and without even thinking she kicked it right back off - for a second there, her terrified shrieks turned into a battle cry. More found their way up, and she kicked and stomped as fast as she could, trying to take satisfaction instead of sickening horror at the way their furry bodies crunched under her booted feet. Again and again and again she brought her feet down, sending them flying; the countertop grew slick with rat blood, but it still didn't stop the onslaught. They just didn't stop coming, there just wasn't an end to their numbers. She fought back, harder than she'd ever imagined she could, but it just wasn't enough.

Eventually they overwhelmed her, massing up the edges of the island and up her legs, carrying her off her feet and down into the roiling mass of rats on the ground. She went down fighting, kicking, tearing, biting, screaming in absolute terror and absolute rage. These disgusting creatures might take her down, but goddammit, she wouldn't stop fighting until she stopped moving.

Aster woke with a strangled cry, still fighting - tangled in the sheets of her dorm room bed, her limbs heavy with disuse, her throat too sore now for any more than that one pathetic little yelp. Her frantic, aimless flailing carried her out of bed before the adrenaline wore off, IV needle ripping out of her arm as she moved, those tangled sheets cushioning her fall a little. Sweat-soaked and hyperventilating, she made herself look around the room for rats, made herself really look and take stock. She didn't see any. She felt like absolute hell, her heart was racing, she couldn't stop shaking now that that first adrenaline rush was gone, but she didn't see any fucking rats. Her lips curled up in a smile, and maybe she was just hysterical and post-nightmare crazy, but she started to laugh.

"Fuck you, you little vermin bastards. I win."

(NARRATIVE)