Now, sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, she lowered her hands from her eyes and looked at the box with tissue paper blossoming out the top of it. That festive touch was so incongruous with the contents it had to have been planned that way as part of the joke.
Joke? No. This wasn’t funny. It was malicious.
But she couldn’t think of anyone whom she had offended, nor of anyone who would hold her in such contempt. Would Rocky Van Durbin, even having Sleazy as a middle name, do something so low-down and dirty as to send her a dead rat?
Slowly she worked her way up the wall, sliding her spine along it for support as she unsteadily came to her feet. Standing, she was able to see the rat nestled in the shiny paper. She tried desensitizing herself so she could look at it. She tried to objectify the corpse, but because each of its features was so grotesque, they seemed extraordinarily detailed.
She swallowed bile, chafed the goose bumps on her arms, and by force of will pulled herself together. It was only a dead rodent, after all. Rats were a common sight in the subway stations. Seeing one scuttling along the tracks had never caused her to have this kind of violent reaction.
She would replace the lid on the box and carry it to the garbage chute at the end of the hall. Then she’d be rid of it; she could forget about it and go on about her business, having refused to let the prankster get the best of her.
Steeling herself, she took a step forward, and another, and another, until she was almost upon it.
And then the rat’s tail flicked.