Knick Knacks and Little Rats

Written for the class "Public Relations Advanced Writing"

I sit on a Queen-sized bed shoved in the corner of the bedroom I share with my girlfriend. The room is painted an awful asylum-white except for the yellow mold growing in the corner. Bleaching it is on the top of my ‘To Do’ list.

To combat the lackluster white, the walls are covered in an assortment of shelves filled with knick knacks collected over the past few years. The head of a wooden giraffe, I purchased as an anniversary present, hangs on a hook by our mirrored closet doors. I remember being concerned by the sheer quantity of mirrors that fill the apartment, but they have proven to be quite a convenience. These mirrors double the room’s size, while cutting down on the time my girlfriend and our roommate spend in the bathroom.

A varnished shelf holds a wooden block puzzle that will never be attempted, a row of portraits of each of my girlfriend’s cousins, and a large figurine of the Red Baron. The ornament was purchased for my sister by an ex and was plucked from the garbage to find its place on my shelf. I adore Snoopy. Above the shelf hangs a black rose, a symbol of my girlfriend’s dark sense of humor.

The walls are crammed full of our furniture and even now the room can be suffocating. Two bureaus, one brown and one white, take up most of the wall space. In one corner sits a rat cage large enough to fit a Labrador Retriever. Usually buzzing with the tell-tale sounds of our three rats nibbling on puffed wheat, the cage is ominously silent. It regularly gives off the faint smell of urine. Since the cage was cleaned recently, I sniff and relish in the pleasant lack of odor.

While sitting, I hear the muffled sound of my girlfriend in the bathroom across the hall. She is reassuring our three rats as she gives them their weekly bath. I imagine Sophie, an albino rat, is probably timidly sitting at the edge of the tub, while Ada, a gray-hooded rat, sticks her head playfully into the water with Daisy, a tan rat just reaching puberty, following her every step.