I'd just dozed off after a hectic day at the wheel when it landed on me. It felt like a straight-right to my sternum. My head jerked up, and there it was, staring at me, its eyes like a couple of light emitting diodes - a rat. A mean, muscular rat, the size of a full grown Chihuahua. I deal with tough people all day. People threaten to kill me, they swear at me, they cut me up. That's a London bus driver's lot - you like it or you lump it. I don't rate myself as hard, but I can stay cool when things get hairy. My father had no time for sissies. As a kid, when I fell off the teeter he said, "Stop yer greeting ya big girl. It's just a wee cut." But you should have seen me that night. I screamed like a choir boy with his foreskin caught in his zipper. I'm glad my Da wasn't around. I've still got the scar where his signet ring caught me on the temple the time I yelped when a spider fell in my bath. It's amazing how efficiently the mind works when it's got to. I pulled the duvet up to my chin and quickly jerked the corners out so the rat flew into the air. It shot up about a metre, its tail going like a helicopter rotor-blade. There was a thump as it landed on the floor and a scrambling of claws as it scampered out the door. I switched on the light, my heart thumping. There, above my bed, was a hole the size of a brickbat. The rat had gnawed through the gypsum board. I thought about going up to the loft to take a look, but decided it would be best to leave it till the morning. It took six cans of Super-T just to steady my hand. I sat through the A-Z Of Wagner, an Open University programme on the census, and The Haunted Fish-tank without even blinking. Before I knew it, an anaemic dawn was filtering through the louvred blinds. I fetched the aluminium steps from the cellar and set them up under the loft hatch. I eased the hatch to one side, wary of any predators that may be waiting to pounce on me, and popped my head into the musty interior. The loft stank of damp cardboard and pigeon shit. I shone the flashlight across the ceiling beams. I didn't see anything, but I could hear the skittering of some small beastie. That's all I need, I thought. Chanel coming for dinner on Friday night and I've got a rat problem. I fished an old copy of the South London Press out the recycle bin and looked in the classifieds for exterminators. Half an hour later a man in a lab-coat from Pest Patrol was on my doorstep. "You got rat problems?" I nodded and let him in. "They've gnawed a hole through my ceiling. Last night a rat this size jumped on my chest." "Rat's teeth grow at four and a half to five inches a year. They've got to gnaw. They don't gnaw, they die." He fixed me with his goldfish eyes and continued. "We, at Pest Patrol, offer Integrated Pest Management. An ounce of common sense is better than a gallon of toxic chemicals. We prefer to caulk cracks and crevices to cut off paths of entry or to apply screen wire to the right places - down-pipes, for instance. Poisoning, gassing, all that. It just doesn't work. Look what happened at Engebi in the fifties." "What happened at Engebi?" "They dropped a nuclear bomb on the island. When the American scientists got there, not a thing was left alive on land except the rats. They lived off crabs. Bit their legs off and corralled them. Kept them as a source of fresh food . . . now if you'll show me where you think the rats are living." This man sounded like he knew what he was talking about. It took him three hours and a dozen trips to his van before he was satisfied. "Good thing you called us," he said, closing his bag. "Rats carry the plague, typhus fever, jaundice, trichinosis, food poisoning, meningitis, rabies and rat-bite fever. That'll be ninety quid, including VAT, please." ~*~*~ Friday night. I stood in the kitchen preparing my favourite dish – karahi chicken, while Chanel sat on top of the bachelor fridge, rolling a joint. I took a deep toke of air. A melange of garam masala cooking in ghee and Leb black filled my nostrils. I was in heaven. "So this kid – about ten years old, right – this kid says to me: ‘I come in your face’. Just ‘cause I told him to pay the fare. TEN YEARS OLD. Where’s the innocence? I stopped the bus till he got off. You should’ve heard him then." Chanel shook her head in sympathy. "Take a toke of this," she said. "It’ll take your mind off work." I met Chanel at the Bus Driver's Summer Ball, just a couple of months ago. She came with this meat-head, Stan. Drives the 109. He got smashed on Red Stripe, then snogged some hoofer from Birmingham. I was standing at the bar, nursing a JD and Coke, watching the storm brew. Chanel strode over to me. "He's a right prick. Don't know what I ever saw in him," she said, pinning me to the bar counter with her mons venus (I learned that one in biology lesson). That night she left with me. Chanel counsels battered women at the Mary Kaplan Trust. She’s fancies herself as a bit of a shrink. Loves psycho-analyzing people. Lucky for me, she also has a fetish for London bus drivers’ uniforms. I took a pull on the joint, held it deep, then slowly exhaled a thin pall of blue smoke. My head began to warp. "Jesus, this stuff's got a kick." I gave the joint back to Chanel and turned to stir the onions. That's when I saw it again. It had a breast of chicken in its powerful jaw. It winked at me, I swear it, and scuttled off. I just stood there, slack jawed. The vermin had returned, and this time it winked. "Did you see that!?" I pointed at where the rat had just jumped down. "Did I see what?" "The rat. Did you see the rat? You must have seen it. It just legged it with a piece of chicken." Chanel started laughing. There is no stopping her once she’s got the giggles. Tears coursed down her cheeks. "No, I'm dead serious. Look!" I held up the chopping board, which now had just four pieces of chicken. Eventually Chanel caught her breath. "What?" she said. "There were FIVE pieces on here . . . you don't believe me? OK." I took the lid off the bin and started rummaging for the packaging that would vindicate me. "All right, all right, I believe you." Was it such a bad thing that she didn't believe me, I thought. If I convince her, she might just leave. I carried on as normal, although my heart was going like a mink in a snare. The dinner went down well. I wolfed down bottle after bottle of Cobra beer. Not because the food was hot, but because I needed to steady my hand. "Why are you wearing a kilt in this picture?" Chanel held the picture for me to see. "Because I'm Scottish?" "You haven't got much of an accent." She placed the picture back on the welsh dresser. "Do you still see your family? It's just you've never mentioned them." "Not really." This was not a route I wanted to go. "You don't get on?" I saw what she was up to. I busied myself emptying the ashtray. "Do you want to see my new duvet cover? I bought it at IKEA." "Ooh, I love a man with a good chat-up line," she said, smiling. Chanel prefers being on top. She likes to control the pace, the rhythm. I'm lazy, so it suits me. We were banging when suddenly the rat stuck his head through the hole in my ceiling. The rat said to me, "That lassie's got a face like a skelpt erse. Can't you get yersel a decent bird? Not surprising, you're an ugly wee shite." It spoke with my father’s Gorbels accent. "Just fuck off!" I shouted at it. "Why don't you just leave me alone. Just piss off and leave me alone." Of course, Chanel thought I was talking to her. She leapt off me, pulled her dress over her head and bolted out the door. I grabbed my dressing gown and chased after her. Shouting for her to wait. I stood at the door calling her back. When I looked down, I saw my erection was peeking out the dressing gown. I slammed the door and ran upstairs. "I'm going to kill you," I shouted at the rat, who was still poking his head through the vizzy-hole. "What a slag. She didn't even take her knickers." I flung one of my DMs at it. I missed, knocking out a chunk of cornice instead. With tears in my eyes, I got the steps and went into the loft with my baseball bat and a flashlight. "Here I am." Kathwump, went the baseball bat, missing the rat by a mile. Kathwump, kathwump. Then he disappeared and I was left with a ceiling looking like gruyere cheese. I fell asleep that night, the dark hole above my head. Around 3am I awoke to hear scratching in the ceiling. I glanced round the room, reaching for my bat. There, next to the bed I saw a pair of red eyes staring straight at me. I jumped out of bed and, like a samurai, brought the baseball bat down on the unflinching creature. There was a horrible crunch, not the soft yield of rat-flesh I'd been expecting. I flicked on the light switch. My answer phone lay in pieces. The Message and Receive lights shone amidst the wreckage. The next morning I rang Pest Patrol from the payphone at the bus depot and gave them a right bollocking. They promised to send someone round, right away. It was a different bloke, this time. He gave a cursory glance at the ceiling, opened and shut a few cupboards, checked the wire-mesh in the loft and, dusting his hands on his lab coat, informed me: "You don't appear to have a rat problem. Looks more like you got a vandal problem." "What do you mean?" "I've checked the loft, there are no rats up there. The diamond-mesh is in situ and there is no evidence anywhere in the house of rat excrement. I reckon you got different problems, but not rat problems." We argued about the warranty. "Well call your lawyers then," was his parthian shot. Slam went the front door. The following weeks were hell. The rat tormented me. It ate all my food (except the white flour, which it just shat on), tore up my settee and gnawed through the phone cable. I rang Chanel from the call box next to Mr. Wongs, the local chippie (where I now ate most nights). "Chanel, I'm really sorry, but I swear I wasn't talking to you. Please let me just explain, face-to-face. It wasn't what -" "No, you listen. Get your head sorted out, then we'll talk." Click. Bzzzzzzzz. I felt like I was losing my mind. No one would believe me. I knew I had to kill it. When I got home the rat was in the kitchen throwing empty cans around. "Waers the fucking food," it said. It was now the size of a labrador. I ignored it and fetched the Yellow Pages. Under 'hunting and hunting accessories' I found Wholesale Hunters, stockists of all major brands of crossbow. Wholesale Hunters was on The Old Kent Road, next to The Gin Palace. The shop-door was painted black, as were all the windows. I rang the bell and was buzzed in. The glass-fronted counter displayed an array of knives: butterfly knives, lock-blades, bowie knives, stilettos, you name it. I told the heavily tattooed bloke behind the counter what I was after. "You know you need a license, don'tcha?" I said that I did, but he eyed me skeptically. When he saw I had the cash, he was more ready to do business. An hour later I was back home and loading the first titanium tipped bolts into the breech. A QUAD-300 with 45 foot pounds of energy. "Come out," I shouted. "Come out, wherever you are." Silence. Sweat tickled my nose. I kicked the bathroom door open. Empty. My palms itched with fear. I heard a crash behind me. I ran downstairs on aspic legs. There he stood in front of me, taking up the entire doorway, a wall of muscle and fur. Rivulets of saliva ran down the sides of his mouth and dripped from the ends of his yellow fangs. His tail swished like a coach-whip ready to crack. On one of his bunched fists he wore a signet ring. "You think you're man enough, eh Sonny Jim?" he said. "Too right I do," I said. Calmness descended on me like a warm blanket. I drew up the crossbow and took aim.

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Clint Witchalls lives in Brixton, London with his partner and two children (Liam and Juliette). He writes, he says, whenever "I can snatch a few minutes, which is to say, not very often."