Taking the car in for an oil change is always an act of bravery for me.

I never go in expecting that I’ll pay less than 100 bucks because our car is used and apparently was driven pretty hard before we bought it. Not the most mechancially minded person in the world (to be generous) I know full well that I am outside of my element. I don’t know what a car needs and when. When discussing the state of my car with a mechanic, I do the male thing; nod, grimace, groan hmmmm, and grunt approval when it seems appropriate. But I’m always suspicious, of course, that the boys down at Grease Monkey are trained to push additional filters, services, and mile-centric recommendations.

With temperatures dropping, having avoided the inevitable for a few months too long, I decided it was time for the quarterly oil change.

The monkeys went to work as I sat trying to read a novel in the waiting room. Within minutes, a blue jump-suited gentlemen came in lugging an air filter. Ah, here it comes. I braced myself.

“Looks like you’ve got a little problem,” he says empathetically. Revealing the square filter lined with be-smudged white rows.

“Yeah…?”

“You need to go down to the auto shop and buy some pellets.” The filter, I notice, was pock-marked with quarter-sized bits of gray fuzz. Splotched throughout, the bits looked like lint removed from a commercial dryer.  “Looks like you’ve had a rat in your engine…”

Rat!?!

In an instance I’m whisked down surreal corridors of time, through immigration stations, luggage counters, buses, planes, and taxis. I’m back in the People’s Republic, biding my time in the coal-room in Jianzha, twirling a long bow-staff, jumping at the shadows, as the rat hordes taunt and torture me from their demonic enclaves. I see traps, poison, decapitations, shovels whacking down on their rodent spines. That all happens in an instant, causing me to question reality, and scrutinize the face of this oil-patron like he might be some glitch in the “matrix”.

“Yeah, it’s quite common,” he says. “They crawl up into your car because it’s warm in there and they’ll build a nest. The pellets will kill them though. Just spread them on your engine…”

“Rat?!? Really?” I can’t keep up with this conversation, still struggling with belief that any of this is real. “So, they crawl under you car in the evening and then they just leave during the daytime?” I sound a bit like a kindergardener now, the macho-male persona quickly evaporated.

“Or they just stay in there,” the man says matter-of-fact, “We’ve opened the hood to some cars before and a few rats have just jumped out!”

“What?!?” I’m wondering about our apartment parking lot now. Bewildered at the lack of garbage, clutter, or other rat-friendly environs. I’ve never set eyes on a rat since leaving China. I’ve been writing extensively about rats over the past few months though–working on my MFA application manuscript. It’s all been about rat-hunting and rat-species data. Now all those pages of research and writing are stoking my superstitious nature.

What if by writing about them, I’ve somehow resurrected these rats into my conscious waking world? It’s voodoo. Magic. Dark arts. In putting these words on the page I’ve given life to the very beasts that haunted me all those months in Jianzha…

“So do you want to get a new filter then…?” the oil-monkey scratches his face and stares at me as if I’ve suddenly grown a long tale and long whiskers.

“Yeah, yeah. Of course.  Wow. Rats.” I’m back in the room, but I feel pale, transparent, ghostly. The battle, once thought to be over, begins again.

Climbing back into my car, the words of Charlie Brown murmur through the closets of my mind, “Oh, rats…”

Rats.