THE TOOTH RAT

Once upon a time, there was a liar. He wasn't malicious, or evil. He was just afraid of the truth. His name was Nadal Iker Cortez, or just Noddy for short. He'd failed his eighth year at Slate Middle School, in New Prezzo, British Alberta. He'd been made to take Summer School to make up his grade, and by only a scrape, he'd managed to qualify for grade nine. His mother, Maraña, was from Catalonia, and she'd lived very differently as child than he had. In her country, people still ate meat on the holidays. Not because anyone sold it, but because the hunters would search their backwoods for rabbits, deer, and wild cattle. Here, hunting was banned entirely, except for spiritual ceremony and the national holiday, Harvest Hunt. They didn't eat the meat themselves, they just fed it to their hunting cats and kept the pelts. Dogs had been bred to survive on meatless feed, but cats couldn't be changed and still keep the pounce in their paws, and the cut in their claws. They were obligate carnivores, and without that trait, somehow, they just weren't cats at all. Sure, there were vegan cats now, but they weren't quite aggressive enough to meet the demands of the forests, nor the rocky mountains. And especially not the tough deserts. Dogs had become all-too friendly as well, without their original hunting instincts. They were practically useless for guarding a house, so they were kept as dopey, fuzzy friends. A lot of people these days had domestic mountain lions chained up in their yards, for exactly that reason. Docile enough to pet over the fence, but agile and vicious enough to deal swiftly with any intruders whom they didn't recognize. Lion-tamers were required to have their mailboxes out of their pet's reach, for that exact reason. They ate lab-formulated kibble, as a supplement between mice and birds they would catch in and outside the yard. If one got loose, it was a job for animal control to wrangle them back – but, as with the dogs, domestication of the vicious cat had made it less of a threat. Children knew that a stray lion meant big cuddles, and messes of feathers in the alleyways. A pet lion would be no match for a wild one, except with training. The only dogs who could match them were a special breed of police guard dog, who was fed raw steak every single day. It had to be frozen and flown in from Onitoba. On that note, Noddy always found it funny that British Columbia and Alberta had joined to make British Alberta, and that Manitoba and Ontario had joined to make Onitoba. (They'd almost called it Manitario.) The leaders wanted to fuse provincial services, and balance out elective ridings, or at least that's what they said. But when Catalonia was finally annexed as a province of Spain, in 5302, the farmers said it was because the larger nation had run out of land and resources. It was almost more like Spain was being bought by Catalonia, to save it from itself, while retaining its royal name. It looked like much the same situation, between the resource hungry Alberta and Ontario, and their nature-rich neighbors, who'd preserved their ecology through policy instead of burning through it. Anyway, it was funny because Saskatchewan was still just Saskatchewan. The only difference was people didn't feel like saying the entire word, so they just called it 'Skatch'. Each province had to come up with new crops to make up for the old ones falling out of circulation, like trading wheat for hemp, and swapping sugar cane for modified white beets. There was no more animal agriculture, except in the worst parts of the world – it was seen as depraved, filthy, and it bred disease. Some of the worst pandemics humanity had ever faced came from sick meat, and now, anyone who wanted some would be risking lifelong illness. Still, tradition was tradition, and cravings could often be stronger than reason. That, and it's not like produce didn't sometimes harbor disease, as well; like the cornpox, which swept the globe just ten years ago. That was the beginning of the fall of the United States of America, as far as many historians were concerned. Here in United Canadia, they didn't even eat regular corn – they'd bred a new kind, which was completely devoid of any and all pseudogluten. It didn't taste quite the same, but it made one hell of a taco shell, and an even better tortilla. It was, however, too bitter for chowder, without serious flavor compensation. And it stained everything it touched, a deep dark blue.
Noddy missed the flavors of home that he'd grown up with, thanks to Maraña's secret pantry stash... which had run out three years ago. But he enjoyed the relaxed feeling in his gut, which told him that what he was eating now was objectively good for him, as long as he didn't overeat. So, as far as Noddy was concerned, things were good. Not just with food, with everything. Slate was an excellent school, and the dorms were well-equipped with facilities and amenities. He could sleep and wake whenever he needed, and do so with privacy. There was a curfew, of course, but no rule against playing cards in the lounge past midnight. It was supposed to just be for fun, and they didn't want to get shut down; so instead of money, they were betting arcade tokens. The dorms didn't have an arcade, but the mall nearby did. Noddy didn't actually care much for it, but it was nice to spend your victory doing something fun. He had an excellent poker face, and nobody could ever tell when he was bluffing – still, the cards were dealt how they were dealt. He won as often as anyone else, but he always made it to the final round.

Noddy didn't live exclusively at the dorms, because he knew his mother would turn to drinking if left alone too long. She didn't get it from the local stores, which only carried 1% alcoholic wheatless beer, 2% vegan wine, and other similar concoctions. They were inexpensive and tasty, but they didn't 'fuck you up' the way they did back in the old country. So she brewed her own 40-proof rum in the basement, and sold it to her neighbors, to help pay her mortgage. It was only half as strong as what her mother had drank, every morning before work. Her validation job at the parking lot downtown didn't exactly bring home the big bucks, and she didn't have a formal education from this nation, nor her hometown. In fact, she was a high-school dropout who'd been seduced by Noddy's father, a college graduate, into being his housewife. He was a man who could not be named unless it was absolutely necessary, for both his cartel ties and his unforgivable abuse. After ten years, the man had left his wife pregnant and homeless on the side of the road, with his younger girlfriend switching over from the back seat of his lamborghini to the passenger side. The girl, still in high-school herself, closed the door and spat a big wad of chew-tobacco out the window. It had landed just a foot away from Maraña's face. Hearing that story for the first time had put such a fire in Nadal's guts that he could barely sleep for a week. If Nadal ever met his father, he was going to kill him.
So, now that she was in a better place, she could go to school again; but she'd need grants and loans, and the time it took to go to classes would leave her unable to work. So Maraña sold rum, and whatever was left was hers. At his mom's, he knew there'd be rules – endless rules, all born of fear. She was scared of wind, of rain; no opening the windows, ever. She was scared of fire! She didn't own a stove, or a microwave, or even an oven. She ate what the pizza delivery man brought her, every night. Then it was cold cereal for breakfast, and salad for lunch. At least she wasn't afraid of the cold; he always liked the mini fridge, that sat looking like an island, barely fitting the space where an oven should be. It was always full of iced tea, and apple juice in cans. The same food, the same drinks, every day... though the Flying Saucer Pizza Parlor was always coming up with crazy new things. Like the whipped coconut cream churros, or the scrambled beggs (bean-based 'egg') and vecon (vegan bacon) pizza. But it was still junk food, and would make him sluggish and sore. He ate much better at the dorms, where everything fun was had in moderation. They still had scrambled beggs and vecon, they just didn't eat it on top of a pizza.
Noddy's favourite time to spend with his mom was the holidays, when she'd forgotten her fears. All those days were long passed this year already... even his fourteenth birthday, which was on March 21st. The next holiday was Halloween, in October, and that was one he planned to spend at the school. He loved going around the neighborhood to collect candy, dressed as a mephistan devil, mustache and goatee painted onto his face. The candy was another product of Canadian science, somehow almost as sweet and yet devoid of all the sugar that characterized it for almost all of its history. The chocolate was more bitter, but the filling was more scrumptuous. The hard candies tasted like real fruit, and melted a lot faster. Even the soda was pretty much just carbonated juice. Ironically, some of the fun was dulled by that... how are you supposed to feel like you're getting away with something if it's all pretty much good for you, anyway? But again, his stomach told him it was for the best. He'd had a belly-ache from 'traditional' candy before, and it made the Canadian stuff look like health food. As far as the taste went... eh, it passed. Nobody else seemed to mind, because it was still more of a punch to the tongue than what they usually ate. With all their other food more flavorful and less bland, thanks to international collaboration on time-tested recipes, nobody really cared too much about candy anymore. It didn't exactly satisfy them, compared to a good pinto-walnut pâté, with red cabbage and french onions (which made it somehow taste like beef, altogether). Or a frozen mango smoothie.
The holiday after that was Christmanukkah, as it was jokingly called, for it extended Christmas and Hanukkah traditions into each other until they were practically the same holiday. But Maraña was having work friends over, and that meant she'd probably be drinking herself to sleep with them. Would he be a burden, if he went anyway? Or worse: a decoration. He could see himself, posed on her front lawn in a tube cap, holding a shovel. Still, for all to see, for all eternity. He shuddered. Would he even have a room, he wondered, or has it gone to her big, old, smelly cat? The one that always bit his toes, and clawed his bare legs. Would he be forced to share a room... with its litter box? He frowned, disgusted and dismayed. He just wanted to keep the only family he had safe, from the hauntings of her past. And from herself.