That Night, in a Sewer Beneath Oslo

THERE ARE BIG animals in the sewers that run every which way beneath Oslo. So big that you probably wouldn’t want to bump into them. But if you pick up a manhole cover on one of Oslo’s streets and shine a flashlight down into the sewer world, it just may happen that you’ll see the light catch the teeth in the jaws of one of the huge, slimy beasts before it scurries away. Or before it sinks its teeth into your throat. Because they are quite speedy beasts. And we’re not talking now about the regular, innocent Rattus norvegicus, i.e., little Norwegian rats, but about properly beastly beasts. Like Attila. Attila was an old Mongolian water vole who’d lived for thirty-five years and weighed more than thirty pounds. If you want to read more about water voles, turn to page 678 in Animals You Wish Didn’t Exist.

As it so happened, Attila liked to eat a little Rattus norvegicus for breakfast, and it was the king of the Oslo Municipal Sewer and Drainage System. That is to say, Attila thought it was, until now. Attila’s reign had started many years ago, but this water vole hadn’t always been king. When Attila was a few months old and was a cute, tiny fur ball weighing only a few ounces, it had been bought in a pet store by a family in Hovseter, Norway. They bought the Mongolian water vole because the fat little boy in the family had pointed at Attila and yelled that he wanted a rat like that. And his parents had done what the little boy ordered. They had fed Attila fish balls, the worst thing Attila knew of, and put a metal collar on the rat with the name ATTILA engraved on it, and the fat little boy had tormented the poor water vole every single day by poking sticks into the cage. Every single day, until the day Attila had gotten so big from eating fish balls that it needed a new cage while it could still fit out the opening of the old one. Attila had been looking forward to this day. And when the boy stuck his hand into the cage to drag Attila out, Attila had opened its mouth as wide as it could and sunk its teeth into the delicious, soft, white human meat. This was a totally different kind of meatball! And while the little boy screamed and his blood gushed, Attila was out of the cage, as fast as a Mongolian water vole could go, out of the apartment, away from the above-ground part of Hovseter and down into the sewer. And from there the water vole had found his way to downtown Oslo, where its beastly behavior had quickly earned the water vole respect. Attila was feared by Norwegian rats citywide, from the manhole covers at Majorstua subway station to the sewage treatment plant at Aker.

But on this night, deep beneath Oslo, while Lisa and Nilly were sleeping like babies, it was Attila who was gripped by fear. The vole was sitting in the corner of a sewer pipe, shaking. Because in a flash of light it had seen something right in front of him. A glimpse of teeth. Teeth even bigger than its own. Could the legend he’d been hearing for all these years in the Oslo Municipal Sewer and Drainage System be true after all? Attila felt its Mongolian water vole heart pounding in fear and it was so dark, so dark. And for the first time, Attila realized it actually smelled pretty bad down here in the sewer and that it really would prefer to be anywhere else besides this sewer pipe right now. Even its old cage in Hovseter. So Attila tried to comfort itself. Obviously the legend must be made up. An anaconda? What bologna. An anaconda is a boa constrictor that is found in the Amazon, where it lives off of huge water voles and such, not here deep beneath Oslo, where there aren’t any water voles at all. Apart from the one, that is. Attila contemplated this briefly.

And while the water vole was thinking, something moved toward Attila. It was huge, like an inflatable swim ring, surrounded by jagged teeth the size of ice-cream cones, and it was hissing and had such bad breath that the rest of the sewer smelled like a flower bed in comparison.

It was so frightening that Attila quite simply squeezed its eyes shut.

When the vole opened them again, something was dripping and dripping all around. And it was excessively dark. Just as if Attila weren’t sitting in a sewer pipe but inside something that was even darker. And it was as if the walls were moving, pulling in closer and slithering. As if the water vole were already inside the stomach of … of …

Attila screamed at least as loud as that fat little boy he had bitten so long ago.