the bridge to reality is a mere hop

I can hear them scurrying downstairs. They have grown, the rats. They are plump with life and they are freaking me out a little, to tell you the truth. I closed the door on them yesterday, after another one of them gave birth to a dozen squirming ugly pink creatures, writhing, like a pool of maggots. And then it happened. I saw one of the elder ones take a bite. There was a weak little squeal and I quickly turned my head in shock, too disgusted and terrified to interfere. When I looked back, there was one little body less in the pod. A nauseous wave came over me, forcing me out of the cellar. I locked the door behind me, flew up the stairs and out of the house and drowned out any thoughts of them needing food or water until the guilt stuck its little teeth into me the next morning and argued back and forth with the disgust and the growing fear and the noise penetrating the cellar wall.
I make my way down the steps slowly, juggling little trays in my small hands. I stop at the door and hesitate for a moment, but I can’t block it out anymore. The screeching is getting too loud and I swallow hard as I place my hand on the doorknob and turn it. There is pressure on the other side. I push a little more, create a gap and a line of rats falls through it, followed by more, pushing from behind, creating a flow as high as my waist. They have multiplied and I feel sick in my gut as the door opens now to reveal a massacre, a room of doom. Bloodied walls enclose corpses of pink hairless rats, squashed, grey bloody ones on their side and chaos and terror and I can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe and I’m suddenly sitting up straight in bed, my hair clinging to my face and gasping for air.
‘What’s up babe, did you have a bad dream?’
He rolls over and lets his arm drop over my lap.
‘It’s o.k. babe, I’m here, go back to sleep.
You worry too much’
I get a drink of water and curl back up into his body, my heart still racing until the alarm goes off and pushes me under the shower, dazed and prickly skinned. I catch the peak hour train from his place into the city with bodies pressed against me from all angles until we all spill out as if the train were punctured. We pour into the streets, into the chaos, into the swirl and confusion and my stomach matches itself to the sickness I felt a few hours earlier. As soon as I get to the office, I book a weekend getaway for us in the country, far, far out of the city.