Soup.

I did not have this book in my loft. Image by spike55151 via Flickr. The soup wasn't too bad actually. All things considered, Max hadn't done a bad job. He'd managed to get out of the attic, explaining the locks were only really effective against rats anyway, and was seated opposite me. It slipped my notice at the time, but if one were to observe us, they would notice Max had no  soup in front of him - even though he got through last night with only books to eat (The rat bit him and escaped in what he called a "hamster helicopter")

 Anyhow, I asked Max exactly how he was now the owner of a wooden arm, since the whole rat-attic joke situation - which Max spent two days working on - didn't answer the question.
 He explained the rats, of which he had obtained many, had chewed his arm off while he was distracted by television. I didn't really know how that could happen, but I no longer cared. Max would only explain what'd happened if I asked more questions anyway.
 "What happened to the rats?" I asked.
 "Oh, after they bit me, I hit them with a mallet!" He replied. A fear began to grow inside my tum-tums, spreading up to my neck and down to my loins.
 "Then I put them in the soup. Seemed tidy, and damn efficient."
I nodded, putting the soup spoon down sadly.

Still, I was hungry, and I'd been a student. Deciding I'd probably eaten worse, I picked the spoon up again.

 At least it wasn't tramp...

Rats in an attic... Sorry, it doesn't have the same feel to it at all...

"So, what happened to the arm?"
"Oh, rats." Max replied non-plussed.
I hesitated. I didn't really want to know, but I was curious. That was why I got the goat, after all. Anyway, to my eternal regret, I questioned Max. He inferred he would show me what he meant.
 I asked. He didn't mean he would have rats chew of my arm. That, at least, was a relief.

Image via WikipediaWe arrived at my attic door. I hadn't checked the attic in my sweep of the house earlier - it was upstairs, and I'm very lazy. But, looking at the door, I noticed there were far more locks on the outside of the door than I remembered. 17 locks in fact. I'd replaced this door last year, and had no locks fitted. Mathematically then, there were more than 142 times the amount of locks on the door than there had been previously. I began to worry - had Max locked away a painting containing his very soul? Was I about to be murdered Basil Hallward-style and destroyed by science. Probably... I knew science would come back to get me one day.

But I digress... Max, huge ring of keys in hand, stepped forward and began to unlock the door. After 15 minutes, the door opened before us, dust and decay and the smell of imprisoned clowns (Those were already there. Creepy bastards) drifted into the hallway. There was a table set up in the middle of the room, that was new. On it, a pile of books, and beside them, a small mound of what looked like chewed book parts. There was a giant rat seated next to the books, looking very full, with a small torch taped onto its back.
 "What have you done this time?" I asked.
Max grinned widely, pointing at the scene.
 "Literature!" He exclaimed.
I waited. He repeated, slower and with emphasis:
 "Lit-eh-RAT-chewer!"
I took the keys from Max and left the attic. Doing up the locks, I headed out to try and buy some explosives.