CRITIQUE

(317 words)

Somebody critiqued a part of one of my stories the other day. The thing he asked was can you really see fear in the beady black eyes of a rat?  It made me think of where I got that line from.

It was what I call back in the days. I was training race horses that winter in Miami. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was thirsty. I pulled into this bar's parking lot, it was full of motorcycles.  The name was The Dew Drop Inn.

After a couple of hours of drinking double shots of Jacky D with a Southern Comfort side, I started chattin' up this girl that kept lookin' at me with wet eyes. You know what I mean, the look the girls give you when they want to jump your bones. The only other thing I remember about her is, she had big breasts.

Now anybody who’s been in a bar knows that a girl like that always has a boyfriend. It wasn’t long before a toothless guy in a chain-laden leather jacket and a couple of his buddies started messing with me.  I remember them pissing me off and that I started the fight. The rest is all a blur.

I woke up the next morning in the alley between the bar and the adult book store. There was this huge rat sitting on my face licking the blood from my busted lip. I grabbed it and slammed it against the wall. I picked up a broken pool cue-- the one they must have used to beat me with. I cornered that rat and I looked into it’s eyes and it was scared shitless. Seeing that fear I figured F_ _ K IT, and I let him go.

So to that critiquer, I say YES you can see fear in a rat's beady little black eyes.