The City of Vermin

Once there was a city, a glorious place that sat at the mouth of a river that led into the center of
the island it lay on. The city was very rich from all of its trade with others and controlled the
whole island. Yet while many people were rich in the city, there were the extremely poor as well,
living in the bowels and the fringes of this rich city. Many of them had been wronged in their
lives and so blamed those who controlled the city, the rich. One day, a ship from a foreign land
came. The people aboard had different skin color and came from a place very very far way. The
richest of the city met with them over a month long period where they exchanged maps,
language, ideals and knowledge. They also gave each other great gifts of precious stones,
metals, and old books. Yet before anyone knew it, these people left. Yet they had given that city
a gift which no one wanted. Rats, several of them, had crawled from the ship into this new
environment and instantly sought out the darkest places. Now, the city and the island it was
upon had never encountered rats before. Yes, the island had its own rodents such as the
bamboo rat and zokor. However such creatures were larger and more obvious than the small
and resistant rat. So a seed was planted into the city.
When the rats fled down to those dark places, they encountered people who felt the rich of the
city had wronged them. They saw something in the rats, perhaps their appetite or the pack
mentality of the vermin and so they began to feed them. They believed that they could create a
new threat for the city and control it enough to pay those back whom had ruined their lives. They
often gave them the dead and diseased, which soon the rats took to eating with gusto.
Eventually, there were many many rats, and the scavengers thought it was time to hurt the city
whom had wronged them. When the time of harvest arrived, all the crops bloomed and rose up
almost overnight outside of the city. Glorious fields of grain, pumpkin, rice and fruit trees filled
the countryside, reflecting the sun as it began to rise into the sky. Yet then a sewage drain was
opened near the citys wall and the rats fell upon it all. In several hours, they consumed
everything in the fields, even the farmers and their families as they just began to rise inside of
their homes. A dead, brown wasteland remained once the rats were done, anything not eaten
was trampled into the mud produced by their wet bodies trailing droplets of water into the earth.
Briefly after the rats returned to the sewers where they had even more children. Suddenly, the
poor and destitute people that had helped them breed and grow realized what terrors they had
created, fleeing to the surface. It was far too late for them however.
That spring, the rats began a reign of terror. They emerged from the sewers in massive swarms,
eating everything in a large radius before slipping back down into their filthy home. By summer
time, the city was empty of all life except for the rats. The people had fled in their boats, going to
other parts of the island and even to other islands. All their wealth and riches lay in their homes
and manors as the rats crawled over it all. Soon though, the rats turned against themselves
after anything that could possibly have been eaten was. They began to eat each other in a
sickening cannibalistic manner, not one was safe from the other. Thus it was soon that the city
itself was soon empty of the vast swarms of rats that had once ruled it. Yet no one would dare to
enter the city for what remained of the rats were the strongest, most intelligent and largest of

their brethren. Thus the city was renamed The City of Vermin and would serve as a reminder
forever.