My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
will_stiles goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as Giant Rat.
doug_ramsey gives you 12 yellow banana-flavoured nuggets.
john_movinon tricks you! You lose 4 pieces of candy!
kon_man gives you 6 mottled green grape-flavoured jawbreakers.
mutantwatch tricks you! You lose 4 pieces of candy!
shaman_x gives you 12 tan grape-flavoured pieces of bubblegum.
siryn_song gives you 11 mauve evil-flavoured jawbreakers.
tm_aurora tricks you! You lose 3 pieces of candy!
tm_magik tricks you! You get a broken balloon.
tm_northstar gives you 13 blue raspberry-flavoured wafers.
will_stiles ends up with 43 pieces of candy, and a broken balloon.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

I don't think I'll be going out for Halloween. Socrates and I will probably stay in and watch cartoons instead.

I really don't think that anyone has ever considered hiring me to be a spy. I'm not exactly James Bond. I forget things. I trip over my own feet. I'm not good at talking to people. I definitely couldn't seduce anyone to get information.

I guess this would be a pretty good cover story, if I were really a super-fit, super-confident hero. The whole point of being a spy is to make sure that no one notices you, after all, and I don't think anyone's noticed me my entire life. Even my own mother forgot I existed sometimes.

Socrates would be a good spy, don't you think? He's smart, and he can get pretty much anywhere. I'm working on being better. I know I can be confident. I've done amazing things that I didn't think I had the guts to do. The problem is being that way all the time. It's Socrates that does it. He makes me be more than myself, because I know he has faith in me. He doesn't know that I'm just this nobody earning minimum wage. I'm his whole family, his whole world. So when I concentrate on not letting him down, I end up not letting myself down, too.

"That's something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings." -- Alice Munro

It's a nice thought, isn't it? I think it is... being happy, like that. Ending the story on a positive note. Maybe it doesn't happen in real life very much. I don't know many people who died happy.

I'm 28, and I haven't done much with my life. That's what everyone kept telling me back in LA. I didn't go to college. Lived with my mother. Never made any money. Never had a social life or a girlfriend. I've made some changes lately: moved out to New York, and got a new job. I'm still not making much money, but at least I like the work. And I'm doing some classes at night.

The thing is, I should have done all of this ten years ago. I can't help thinking that, by the time I'm thirty, I'll still be in the same position: no house, no family, nothing. My mother, if she were still alive, would be saying exactly the same things: "Where's your ambition, Willard?"

Maybe some people aren't meant to have happy endings. But it's still a nice thought, isn't it?

They didn't have any white rats, and my hair hasn't been as blond as that since I was a little kid. But anyway...

Joan found me online and emailed me, which was nice. She was a temp at my last job, and really the only friend I had in that office. She was really nice. Except she bought me a cat which, you know. It's difficult to tell people that you keep rats. They think you're a weirdo from a horror movie or something.

Um. Living with Terry is working out really well. Socrates and Tripod seem to get on okay. At least, they haven't eaten each other.

We're going to go to the zoo this weekend, I think?

Work is quiet, apart from John getting hurt last week. I've signed up to take proper accountancy classes in the evenings. I really like it. It's... not exciting. But I don't really like exciting. I like it when things add up.

Um. And that's about it :-)

If you could be in the Olympics (summer or winter), what event/sport would you want to do most? Why?

I'm really not an athletic person at all. I've got no coordination, and I forget things. If I was asked to do the relay race, I'd probably drop the baton and then fall over it - and trip up a few other runners for good measure.

I didn't learn to swim when I was a kid. My family's all sort of pale and blond, and I don't like the sun much so I didn't hang out at the beach. I thought that rats couldn't swim for ages, too, but actually they're pretty good at it. So maybe I'll have to take the plunge sometime. It gets scarier when you get older, though. And I'd feel really embarrassed being with all the little kids in armbands or whatever.

Um. What else? Definitely not gymnastics or weightlifting. I mean, it would be great if I was flexible or strong, but I'm not. Cycling? Not really. Judo? Just... ow.

What am I good at? I'm okay at mowing the lawn. Don't think there's an Olympic sport for that, though.

*sigh*

Maybe I'd better stick to watching it on the TV, and make sure that in four years' time I actually have a decent response to this kind of question.

I guess a few years ago it would've been easy for me to say my mother. Who isn't scared by their parents, really? When you're small they rule your entire world. They're the only people keeping you from starving, from sleeping in the cold at night. You live only because of their kindness, and that could stop at any moment.

Even when I grew up, when I was a foot taller than my mother, when I was the breadwinner, she still had a hold on me. She ate me up with guilt. Why wasn't I doing more? Why couldn't I get promoted? Why hadn't I stopped Mr. Martin from taking my father's business and killing him as a result? Why, Willard, why?

Socrates and Ben taught me not to be afraid. I could be in control. I could stand on my own two feet and do what I wanted. I could make my mother scared of me. I could make Mr. Martin plead for his life. I'd never felt so good.

But, in the end, it was Ben who scared me the most. Just a little guy. A rat no bigger than my hand. Most guys would just call an exterminator. He took my entire life away. He would've killed me if he could. And it wasn't him that scared me, so much as the idea that I'd been in control once, I'd been the master, and it had been stolen from me so easily.

I don't know if I'll ever really stop being scared again.

I think it was probably Queenie who taught me about respect. Before I met her and her family in the rock garden of my parents' house, I had only thought that I understood respect. Really it had only been fear.

I'd gone to work and completed my assignments, and even taken work home and worked on the weekends, all out of fear. I was afraid of failing my parents, afraid of losing my job, afraid of being a nobody with no purpose in the world. And, one afternoon, I met Queenie when my mother had sent me out to kill rats.

It was a life-and-death situation. Not something that happens very often to a boy from the LA suburbs, but I could have killed all of them. I told Mother that I had. But I spared them. I couldn't bear to watch innocent creatures being crushed like that. Someone could so easily decide to crush me like that too.

When Socrates was born, Queenie respected me enough to know that I would look after him, that we could be brothers, he and I, struggling against the world together. And Socrates does respect me, too. He listens to me, and I listen to him.

And maybe that's really what respect is - listening, and seeing the world from the other person's point of view. Once you've walked a mile in their shoes (or paws), it's hard to hate or fear them at all.

For most of his life, Willard had lived in the Stiles family home - a huge mansion of a place that should have been the crowning glory of the neighbourhood, a focal point for parties and celebrations, and a place where he would have grown up feeling like a prince. And it had been like that for a while. Always a shy boy, he had sat alone on the staircase at night while his parents entertained, knowing that one day, he might be allowed to join them.

He never had been. After his father had died, the money had stopped as well, and the mansion quickly fell into disrepair. He'd still had some kind of respect for the place, as if mending broken faucets and setting the correct time on the old grandfather clock had been enough to stem the tide of time. He can imagine that he might have stayed there forever, even after his mother had died, just him and Socrates and Ben and all of their friends. He might have died there.

But now he lives thousands of miles away, in a modern apartment in New York City. Even though everyone keeps telling him that he's only ever ten feet from a rat, the only one he's ever seen in his apartment is Socrates. He's been sleeping on the couch for weeks but, now that Doug's leaving, he can sleep in a proper bed and feel like he's not just someone else's guest.

Still, Doug's warned him that it's not good for him to be alone (Socrates apparently really doesn't count). So he's looked at some ads on Craigslist and composed his own ad:

Seeking clean, quiet roommate. Close to local shops, bus routes. Share kitchen / bathroom. Male or female ok. Non-smokers. No pets. Must like rats.

And that, he thinks, just about sums it up.

Things are very quiet.

I used to like it when things were quiet. People used to yell at me a lot. I guess, now that things are better, and people don't yell, it's a little eerie when it's quiet.

I miss Terry. We went shopping for clothes a while ago, so now I have something to wear for work, and to be social, but I don't really have anything social to do. And there are lots of people I have to talk to at the Center, but not really talk. They just want to talk at me, not with me.

I need to get a library card.

To: Terry Cassidy
From: willard Stiles
Subject: Er

Hi Terry.

Are you okay? I saw the news reports, but you didn't pick up your phone when I called.

...

Well. I hope you're okay.

- Will

Willard's car wasn't even in style the year it had been made, which had been a considerable number of years before Willard himself had been born. But he had bought it in a rush, with hardly any funds, and - for those circumstances - it isn't bad at all. It has a certain retro feel that might be appreciated by people who know nothing about cars. It doesn't have bits falling off it. It doesn't have a CD player, which is good because Will doesn't have any CDs. And it fits in quite nicely with Will's outdated haircut and dress sense, too. Growing up with no company apart from his ailing mother had really done nothing for his socialisation process.

It's Saturday, though, and he has something of a date with Terry Cassidy. She's his boss, but she's so nice and friendly that she reminds Will more of Joan than of his old boss, who had mostly yelled and thrown things at him. Terry actually thinks he's doing a good job. She likes him. Will hasn't really figured out what to do about that.

He's put on his one pair of jeans, and his one t-shirt, which he usually wears for chores, but which Doug has assured him are better to wear than a suit. Socrates is munching on a biscuit in one pocket, occasionally sticking out his nose to see where they're going.

He finds a parking place near Terry's building, and hops out to press the buzzer at the door, next to CASSIDY. It crackles.

"Um, hello? Terry? It's Willard. I'm here."

Who decides what's appropriate? Who could possibly decide that?

I read a book once. A good one. And the one thing in it that really stuck out was this line: You can never judge someone else's pain. Now, the guy meant it literally. Even if you personally wouldn't find something painful - I don't know, skinning your knee, stubbing your toe, giving birth - you can never say, "oh, you're being a baby - that doesn't hurt!" because you don't know how much it hurts the person going through it.

People think murder isn't justified. It's in the Bible, you know. Thou shalt not murder. But it is. Even the law says it is. It's okay if it's in self-defense. It's even sort of okay if you were mad at the time. If you didn't know right from wrong.

But what if you do know right from wrong? What if you know it so clearly, so completely, that it's exactly why you have to kill someone? Because justice doesn't work. Because men who manipulate and steal and drive innocent men and women to their graves, and then try to steal their son's house right out from under him aren't punished. Society even likes them. "Oh, he's such a successful businessman!"

No, it's not appropriate to be unkind. But sometimes it's necessary.

It's strange how silent and empty a place can seem, just because you know there used to be something more.

Douglas is traveling. I don't know when he'll be back.

I'm still sleeping on the couch. Maybe I should buy a folding bed or something. I'd get an inflatable mattress but Socrates would probably bite it.

Thinking of taking a course on tax law for the Center. Maybe I can train to be a real CPA.

Sometimes, in the small hours of the morning, Will wakes up to the sensation of rats crawling over him, tiny claws digging into his legs through the fabric of his pyjamas. Usually it's nothing, just the remnants of a dream. Sometimes he finds Socrates down there, happily exploring the cushions of the couch in search of cookie crumbs or bits of lost mac & cheese.

Doug's apartment isn't a bad place to live, even if he has to sleep on the couch, and he's really too tall to do that. It's big, and roomy, and quiet, and Doug never has loud parties. He never has people over, either, which Will was a little afraid of - afraid that Doug's boyfriend would show up far too often, and he'd have to spend the night in the bathroom. But Doug's boyfriend has been dead for a couple of weeks, now, and even if Will's not exactly relieved, well... yes, yes he is. He needs somewhere to sleep, after all.

Now that he has a job with the Center, he should maybe start looking for his own place, particularly if he ever wants to have any guests over of his own. He can't imagine asking anyone back to his place, when all that amounts to is a couch Doug uses part-time for playing video games. Besides, Doug says it isn't good for either of them to be alone, now, and Will mostly understands what that means, or at least what Doug thinks it means:

Don't be alone, Will, or you might start collecting rats again. You might go a little bit more crazy than usual and start killing people again.

But that's not it at all. It really isn't. Because Will knows he's out there, somewhere, even if it's thousands of miles away. And, one night, those tiny claws on his legs might just be for real.

No one's at the Center.

Should I just... go home?

When I was younger, one of my father's friends was a psychiatrist, and I thought that it would be a lot of fun to be mad. No one would expect anything of you at all, and if you achieved something really simple like not bashing your head against the wall, people would be pleased with you. I guess it was like wishing I was still a really little kid, when I didn't know anything about my parents' problems, when I didn't know about work and money.

Some people probably think I'm mad now. Not many people talk to rats. Definitely not that many people get on better with rats than they do with humans. But looking after Socrates and the other guys is nothing to do with being a little kid again. They're not toys. It's more like growing up, becoming a parent, taking on responsibilities. I have to look after them, and to do everything I possibly can to make sure they're safe.

Is it mad to care more about rats than I do about people? Well, most of the people I've ever known have only wanted to hurt me.

Why on earth would I want to care about them?

The Health Center's accounts are very... um... confusing. It's as if Socrates has been through them, chewed them to bits, and now they're a jigsaw waiting to be put back together. It's interesting, though. It's like a puzzle. And no one's yelled at me yet. Ms. Cassidy is very nice. She reminds me of Joan.

I've been meaning to write her a letter. But... well. How can I tell her that my house burned down and I moved to New York and I've got a new job working with mutants? I don't think she even believes mutants exist. I'm not sure I do either, but if rats can do amazing things people don't expect, then why not people too?

Some people asked me already if I'm a mutant. I don't know if it's a bad thing not to be one.

I miss Socrates. I hope Douglas is looking after him okay.

First day at my new job today.

...wish me luck?

Doug bought me a rat to take to the office, because I can't take Socrates.

It's not the same, obviously, but it's okay.

Um. Ms. Cassidy? When do you want me to start?

I guess it's fashionable these days to call people insane if they commit murder. I don't think it's true. Some people deserve to die. Some people more than deserve to die. My last boss, Mr. Martin, stole everything from my family - a business my father had built up for his entire life. That killed my father, and my mother was never the same.

My mother used to warn me not to judge, or you yourself shall be judged. I used to agree. For a long time I thought that I was the one to blame, that I should've been strong enough to stand up to Martin, that I should've seen what he was doing. I blamed myself for my father's death for years. But it wasn't my fault. It was him. Socrates and Ben helped me see that.

I'm not afraid of justice. I wish there was more of it. I'm absolutely sure that the police or the courts would agree with me. What do you do to a man who murders your parents, and then tries to take your house and your friends from you as well? That isn't insane. That's completely normal.

Mr. Martin killed himself before I could be tempted to really do anything. But if I had, it would have been the most normal thing I'd ever done.