The city sleeps.
 
A nightwatchman dozes over his work.  Behind him, one of the great
warehouse doors opens slightly, throwing a thin stripe of moonlight into
the cavernous room.
 
Three figures enter.  The watchman is knocked unconscious with his own
flashlight.  One of the robbers starts the forklift.  The others wait
nervously in the gloom.
 
A flash, a blur seen out of the corner of the eye.  "Hunh????"
 
The forklift crashes into a wall.  The driver slumps senseless over
the wheel.
 
Suddenly: a caped figure, manlike, mansized, yet surely moving too quickly
to be human.  It spins before them, its red mouth agape, leaping like a
ninja and shaking like an unbalanced Maytag, chortling an odd and eerie
chuckling sound that echoes off the warehouse walls.  "Hoock-uh!  Hoock-uh!
Uck-uck-uck!!!"
 
The thieves are wide-eyed terrified, momentarily mesmorized by the sight
of this devilish dervish.  They shoot, but cannot predict the figure's
lightening-fast movements, until it suddenly bends to gnaw on its own leg.
A bullet catches the cape.  The startled and enraged creature suddenly
sidles sideways toward the two, who scream: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
ARRRRGGGGGHHH!"
 
A horrifying and putrid odor fills the room, then quickly dissipates, and
there is no movement in the warehouse except for the watchman slowly rising
to his feet.
 
The next morning: a black and white television in the Waardenburg home
blares the local news report of a foiled robbery at the Los Angeles Pier.
The police found the thieves, trussed and traumatized by bites on the back
of the neck, stuffed under a couch in the manager's office.  The thieves'
target: hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of computer equipment
destined for the Asian market.  Although they were unsuccessful, a
manufacturer's sample case of advanced CPUs was apparently missing.
 
Harry Waardenburg, orphan of anonymous philanthropists hounded to death by
the California branch of the Fishin Gang, uncurls from a deathlike, deep
sleep and slips from his hammock to the floor.  He lays on his stomach,
closer to the TV than would be good for his eyes ..  if those eyes had been
the eyes of a normal person.
 
His mind wanders to the briefcase tucked under his couch.  He feels guilty
about stealing it, but he couldn't help himself.  He could never help
himself.  The kleptomania was part of the Waardenburg Curse, along with the
wide-set eyes, the lock of white hair, that terrible, consuming Itch, and
the hearing loss that muffled his world -- a loss compensated only by his
amazing ability to read lips.
 
On the other hand, he consoled himself, the CPUs were needed for The Cause.
And they were just samples, for chrissakes.  And they were shiny and wrapped
in bubble-pak.
 
His attention snaps back to the TV as the nightwatchman is interviewed.
 
"Smelled somethin turrable, but sure am glad it came when it did.  Looked
like a big rat or something", the old man says.
 
Waardenburg's eyes narrow, and he glares at the TV.  He lays there, still
as a speedbump, for a long time.  Abruptly, his body tenses.  He springs
to his feet, twists around to chew on his leg -- Migawd, the Itch!!!  --
then runs to the balcony.
 
He trembles.  He shakes.  He raises his fist to the sky, and screams
in a scream no one would ever want to hear twice:
 
"I ...  AM NOT ...  A RODENT!"
 
Next:  The Origins of Ferret Man.
[Posted in FML issue 1452]