Rats are teenagers for thirty-five days. I watch Mr Rollo for signs of errant behaviour and tantrums. But he climbs around my neck, swims laps of a shallow bath, chews cardboard tubes, never escalating his behaviour into risk-taking high jinks. You make it look so easy, I tell him, his whiskers trembling in sleep. Where is the rage, rebellion, revolution? Upstairs the ghost of my fifteen-year old wreaks havoc with his disaster-zone bedroom, scathing answers to everyday questions, odours of cigarette smoke. He torments me by never replying to messages, failing school tests, sneaking home late at night. The ghost of my fifteen-year old shrugs off questions about the company he keeps and never stays in the same room as me for longer than he can help it. The ghost of my fifteen-year old is a pain.
Mr Rollo is sure-footed on his thick, coarse rope. Mr Rollo can navigate a maze, running with darting feet this way and that. Mr Rollo is contained in a safe environment and my fifteen-year old is loose in this bad, wild world. I stroke Mr Rollo’s head and count down his teenage days on the calendar. I keep him safe.
One day Mr Rollo pauses as he nibbles, eyes glittering, nose twitching. Upstairs we hear a door shutting gently, quiet footsteps on the stairs, dishes being steadily emptied from the dishwasher and placed in cupboards. I watch something in Mr Rollo’s pupils change. He rattles his cage. I let him out and he scrabbles up the curtains and sits aloft the pole, spitting pumpkin seeds down to the carpet while I glare wide-eyed at him. The ghost of my fifteen-year old calls a pleasant goodbye to me as he closes the front door calmly behind him, somewhere else to be.
Catherine Ogston writes flash fiction, short stories and longer YA fiction. Work has been published in Bath Flash Fiction, National Flash Fiction Day anthologies, Flash 500, New Writing Scotland and others. Catherine has been shortlisted for the Exeter Novel Prize, Kelpies Prize for Children's Writing and is the current trophy holder for the Scottish Association of Writers Flash Fiction prize and summer short story contest.
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