Part III - Hamelin

"I will have to get moving soon."

Winston does not want Julia to go. She is a tiny little thing but she is warm - which is more than he can say for the rest of the room. The wind creeps in through the gaps in the window, and the walls are damp and cold. The thin blanket does nothing, yet for the past hour, Julia has been nestled against his side, and that is enough. She goes to get out of the bed. He grasps her arm.

"Curfew is at twenty-three in my building, I've told you," she says.

"You still have half an hour," he reminds her.

"Let me at least get dressed."

She squirms out of his embrace and throws back the covers. As she reaches for her clothes, he cannot help watching her. She is not especially beautiful, but she is different. She is different and she is his. Out of her blue overalls and red sash, she could have been a remnant of the distant, hazy past, or of a future without Big Brother. In her nudity, she is free. Once she is in those clothes again, and they have left this room, Airstrip One will reclaim them. But here - this bug-ridden, dilapidated cramped space - is a strange kind of haven.

Winston pulls the sheets back over the bed. He has longer until curfew at the Victory Mansions. He can afford a few more minutes. That mundane laziness, reminiscent of another time, is thrilling. Again, he wonders if this was once normal - laying around with nothing to do but sleep, make love and be at liberty to do as one wished. Here, they can pretend it still is.

The aura is broken when Julia suddenly hurls a boot across the room. It smacks against the wall with a loud crack. Winston jumps. "What was that?" he asks, alarmed.

"A rat. I saw him poke his nose out."

"A rat?" Any momentary delirium vanishes and Winston is tugged back into the present. The dream of this little building being a safe shelter for them turns to dust. Big Brother returns at the thought of the rats.

"Yes, but don't fret, I'll board up that hole as soon as I can. The dirty bastard isn't getting in here."

Winston swallows. It almost doesn't matter if Julia closes the gap up or not. The beast has already made its mark. Without thinking, he glances around the walls, looking for any more vulnerabilities that the creatures could squeeze through. The familiar crush of paranoia and suspicion strangles him again.

Oblivious to his dread as she dresses, Julia is still talking about rats. "There are hundreds of them in our hostel. I am the best rat-catcher of all the girls. The rest are all too squeamish to deal with them. But you can't just let them run amok. Did you know they steal babes from cradles if they are left alone in the prole areas? I've heard of them stripping the poor things to the bone -"

Winston shivers and wraps his arms about himself. The images are bad enough when he is on his own in his bed, but here, being told in such a brazen way, they somehow seem more real. He swears he can feel them gnawing at him, trying to tear off his flesh, just like Julia says.

"I have a strategy to catch them," she continues. "You cannot merely chase them and grab them - they're too quick for that. You have to make sure they have no way to escape. Sometimes you can trick them - they're only dumb creatures, after all. Just the other night, I cornered one. A big, black fat one. He could have taken my hand off easily. But I managed to get him where I wanted him."

Winston is beginning to feel nauseous. He wants to stop listening, or he wants Julia to stop talking, but he cannot get away. The awful visions swarm in his mind. "I had a knife and a net," she says, pulling on her overalls. "I forced him into the corner, and blocked off any way he could run. They get scared, of course, and try to writhe away, but eventually, they give in. I caught him in the net and killed him outside - the girls don't like me doing it inside. But you've got to do it, otherwise the bastard will just come back. Sometimes I think there must be a whole swarm of them lurking about underground or something - hordes and hordes waiting to come in. What a horrid thought -"

Winston can't bear it anymore. He shuts his eyes tightly, and begs, "don't go on!"

Julia stops. He hears her voice, softer now. "What's the matter, dear? You've gone quite pale."

Gently, she cradles his head and presses it to her breast. "My love, you're shaking. Don't you like rats?"

He tries to focus on her arms around him and the softness of her skin beneath the open overalls, but some sickening dream keeps coming back to him. He is in front of a tall, black wall and does not know what is on the other side. All he can tell is that it is something dreadful - a nameless fear that rises from the deepest, darkest places. And then that other image flashes before him - the empty decrepit bedroom of his childhood, populated by waves of fighting, sharp-eyed rats, writhing and scratching, getting closer and closer. He trembles violently and clings to Julia like she is keeping him afloat in that furry, brown sea.

She strokes his hair soothingly until he has stopped shivering. And then she eases him back carefully, as if he might break now he is separate from her embrace. He catches his breath and when the panic begins to drift away, it is replaced by a sense of shame. Part of him wants to tell Julia about his nightmare and his mother and sister, but she would not understand. "I just don't like rats, that's all," he says instead.

She doesn't ask any more questions. "Well, don't worry. Like I said, I'll sort that hole out as soon as I can. And I'll kill the beast if he comes in here again."

It doesn't make Winston feel much better. Julia is so unfeeling about taking the creature's life, and distinctly ruthless with her capturing strategies. Not for the first time, he wonders if she is a member of the Thought Police.

As if nothing has happened, she returns to dressing. Winston watches her again, but now more guardedly than before. Eventually, her bare, free guise vanishes and she turns back into the regular Party comrade. When she ties her red sash about her waist, she also ties a knot in their rendezvous for tonight. Yet at the door, as always, she pauses. She looks back at him and says, seriously, "I love you."

Winston echoes it. And then she is gone.

He still has a while until he has to move. But, with Julia out, all that remains in the room is him and the rats. Sitting, naked and alone in the bed, he feels horribly vulnerable. If one of the animals skitters in now, he thinks he might die.

He dresses quickly and leaves the shop in more of a rush than is normal. The eyes of Big Brother follow him through the night. Suddenly, he does not feel he can escape them in that little room with Julia. Like the rats she kills, he thinks he is running between hiding places. But eventually, he fears the net will fall over his head and the knife will skewer his stomach.

So I'm sorry this took so long to update, I've been working on other things and have shamefully kept abandoning this haha. This was the third part of the '5+1' format, based on the scene at Charrington's in the book (though with some differences!). There is two more parts to go and then the extra part! Feedback always appreciated c: