Lincoln loved two things above all else: His pet rat Cinnamon and making money. His family was in there too but that was a given, wasn't it? Even though Johnny could be dumb and annoying, and even though Mom dragged him to junk shops and yard sales, and even though Dad was a straight up goof, Lincoln loved them.

But, again, that went without saying.

When it came to money...who doesn't love having it? You can puff yourself up about greed and money not buying happiness, but the only people who do that have money. You never hear a poor person go "Yeah, money sucks, dude, it's pure evil." I mean, it's kind of funny when you think about it. Look at the people who hate capitalism the most. The majority are middle and upper class white kids who benefit from capitalism more than anyone. They talk about money like it's the Devil (or Donald Trump), but you better believe they don't go without it. Just look at their iPhones and Starbucks cups. Nice 50 dollar Che shirt. If capitalism is so bad, why not give me your money, huh?

In one of the Godfather movies, Al Pacino says that "contempt for money is just another trick of the rich to keep the poor without it." And if you asked Lincoln, that was true. The only people he had ever known who snered at money and talked about how dumb it was had never in their lives gone without it. They were spoiled little preps who dressed well, had nice things, and so out of touch with the working class that they might as well be on the other side of the galaxy.

Why did they hate money? Lincoln didn't get that. Like...were they taking it for granted? Did they have some childish and romanticized vision of poverty? Did they look at broke, bohemian writers and artists and think "Wow, that lifestyle is so cool." If so, they only saw the nicer parts. They didn't see someone struggling to pay the bills and stressing because they couldn't come up with the rent and didn't have anywhere to go except a park bench. And it's in the middle of winter.

Before Dad got his current job and bought the house four years ago, Lincoln was as broke as you can possibly be. Some nights he went without dinner, and one of the earliest games he remembered playing as a kid was "be quiet and pretend you're not here because the landlord's at the door." Being poor isn't fun, it isn't cool, it isn't noble or romantic, it's freaking awful. Imagine being slowly suffocated. That's the crushing feeling of poverty.

Lincoln wasn't greedy - he wouldn't steal a dollar from a baby or something - but he liked his money and the breathing room it provided.

It's true that money can't buy you happiness, but that's where Cinnamon came in. A normal rat with glowing eyes and two tails instead of one (the more the merrier, y'all), CInnamon was Lincoln's best friend after Johnny. Most days, Lincoln carried his little buddy around in the breast pocket of his jacket and fed him a diet of Doritos, pork rinds, and, Cinnamon's favorite, corn chips. He only showed him to people he trusted, like Sid, Stella, and Liam. He hadn't shown him to the Louds yet because he didn't trust Lisa to not want to run some kind of horrible experiment on him.

You see, Cinnamon was no ordinary rat.

It all started at the beginning of last year. It was a warm, sunny afternoon in late September, one of those days where the light in golden and the air cool with the first faint hint of the coming autumn. At lunch, Stella sat her backpack on the table, unzipped it, and pulled out a music box with ornate woodwork and dancing ballerinas in bass relief. When you opened the lid, a light, tinkling melody played and a handcrafted ballerina on a track danced around a miniature clock face. "My grandmother sent it to me," Stella said with a hint of pride.

"From the Orient?" Liam asked.

Stella favored him with a blank stare. "No. Calgary."

"I didn't know your grandma lived in Canada," Johnny said.

"I have family all over," Stella said and returned her gaze to the box. She lovingly stroked it like a Bond villain petting his favorite cat, her eyes crossing as the ballerina completed her loop.

Lincoln didn't personally see the appeal in a music box, but whatever. To each their own. Different strokes for different folks. Stella obviously adored it and it was clearly important to her, which was all that mattered. Sure, it was kind of dumb, but whatever.

At the end of the day, Stella stowed it in her locker, and she, Lincoln, Johnny, Sid, and Liam walked home through the amber sunshine, each one breaking off from the group and going their own way until only Lincoln and Johnny remained. "I wonder how much that music box cost," Johnny said.

"I dunno," Lincoln said, "it looks like her grandma made it herself."

Johnny hummed.

At home, Dad, dressed in a crusty wife beater and whitie tighties wrestled around the living room floor with a Stone Cold Wrestling Buddy. He caught the Texas Rattlesnake in a Crippler Crossface and made it tap the carpet. "That's for turning heel and joining the Alliance, you double crosser!" Spittle flew from his lips and his voice broke, getting higher and more girlish. Shame and embarrassment colored Johnny and Lincoln's faces. Johnny, having finally had enough of their father's childish BS, threw his book bag down, shrugged out of his jacket, and grimaced. He ran over, slapped his elbow, and dropped it on the back of Dad's head. Dad screamed in pain and Johnny put him in a sleeper hold. "You wanna wrestle so bad? Let's wrestle."

So quick that Lincoln almost missed it, Dad bucked Johnny off, got to his feet, and hit him with a clothes line. Johnny fell back against the end table and went down; the lamp shattered on the floor and the couch moved a couple inches. Dad grabbed Johnny by the front of his shirt and heaved him off the floor, putting him on his shoulders for an F5.

Thinking fast, Lincoln ran over and speared his father. Johnny dropped from his shoulders and he fell back, hitting the floor with a thud so hard it made the dishes rattle in the cabinets. Panting, Johnny climbed onto the arm of the couch. "Alright, old man, here it comes," he said, "here it freaking comes." He did a moonsault, but Dad rolled out of the way at the last second. Johnny hit the floor and moaned.

Dad lay on his back, chest rising and falling. Lincoln put him in a figure four leglock, and it was over: Dad pounded the carpet and cried, "Uncle!"

Lincoln let him go and he and Johnny stood over him. "How was that?" Johnny asked smugly.

"It...was...awesome," Dad panted. "We should do it more often."

Sigh. They really should have known better.

Leaving Dad to drag his shattered remains back into something resembling a human form, Lincoln and Johnny went upstairs to cool out. Lincoln relaxed with a comic about a vigilante in New York City who wore a welding mask and burned bad guys up with a flamethrower and Johnny looked up cat videos and music boxes on the desktop.

The next morning, they got to school fifteen minutes early and went to the cafetera for breakfast. When they got to their usual table, they found Stella with her head hung and her hands pressing against her temples like she was trying to keep her brain in. Sid wore an expression of concern and patted her back. "What happened?" Lincoln asked.

Stella took a deep breath like she was going to speak but lost the willpower and choked back a sob instead.

"Someone done stole her music box," Liam said.

"They did what?" Johnny asked disbelievingly.

Liam nodded grimly. "They burrowed in from the back and took it right out."

Wait.

Burrowed?

Lincoln and Johnny exchanged an uneasy glance.

"What?" Liam asked.

"This has happened before," Johnny said. He looked around to make sure no one was listening and leaned over the table. Lowering his voice to a furtive whisper, he continued. "Stuff's always going missing out of people's lockers. And every time, there's a hold in the back wall, like something dug its way in from the wall."

A look of confusion crossed Liam's face. "Who would do such a thing?"

Again, Lincoln and Johnny looked at each other. Before either one of them could answer, Sid spoke up. "Not who...what?"

"I reckon I don't follow," Liam said.

Taking a deep breath, Johnny said, "There's an old urban legend. It says that there's a rat-beast living in the basement. At night, it moves through the walls and steals things, and sometimes, if it's feeling really ornery, it comes out in the daylight and does stuff."

Liam swallowed. "What kind of stuff?"

"Clogging toilets, pulling fire alarms, attacking people."

"Attackin' people?"

Johnny nodded. "Rumor has it the Rat-Beast once ate a kid on his way to the bathroom. He got a hall pass from second period marth and never came back."

The color had drained from Liam's face and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down. "W-What's the Rat-Beast look like?"

"Dude, it's terrifying," Johnny assured him.

"It's, like, ten feet tall," Lincoln put it, "and has glowing red eyes."

"Don't forget the tails," Sid said. "It has...what, five of them?"

Johnny thought for a moment. "Last I heard, it was six, but it may have grown a couple since then."

For the first time, Stella lifted her head. Raw misery misted her red rimmed eyes and her bottom lip quiver pitifully, making her look much younger than her eleven years. "You really think the Rat-Beast took my music box?" she asked.

"It fits his MO," Lincoln said.

"I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that it was him," Johnny said.

Stella bit her bottom lip thoughtfully. "You think we can get it back?"

Johnny opened his mouth but closed it again and looked at Lincoln. "Get it back?" Lincoln asked. "No. That thing will kill us."

Sighing, Stella hung her head again.

There were three things Lincoln hated. Being broke, professional wrestling, and seeing his friends in pain. That music box meant a lot to Stella. Part of him demanded that he do everything he could to reunite her with it. Another part, the part that had common sense, told him to sit down and stay in his lane. You WILL die, Lincoln. And you'll probably wind up in hell, condemned to watch Wrestlemania 11 for all eternity.

That was even more terrifying than the Rat-Beast.

But what kind of friend would he be if he didn't at least try?

Well, a living one, for starters…

"Dude," Johnny said, "I think we could do it."

"How?" Lincoln asked.

Johnny swallowed around a lump in his throat. "The old fashion way. By looking for it."

That sounded like a good way to get themselves killed, but the pain in Stella's eyes came back to him and that decided him. "Yes," he finally said. "We can find it."

Over the course of breakfast, Johnny and Lincoln hatched a plan. Sid and Johnny would go looking for the beast while Stella and Lincoln gathered intelligence. "Norm the janitor probably knows something," Johnny offered. "The guy's here almost 24/7."

A tall, lanky man with thinning blonde hair and a thick, '70s tier mustache, Norm had been cleaning the hallowed halls and lauded chambers of Royal Woods Middle School since time immemorial. He was as dedicated to maintaining the building's cleanliness as Dad was to being a wrestling loving doofus and often stayed late into the evening. He was friendly to all the kids, greeting them by name and giving them sticks of gum, and had always struck Lincoln as a real stand up guy. If anyone knew anything about the Rat-Beast, it was him.

When the bell rang, Lincoln went to his first period class, on the look out for Norm the whole way. He spotted him cleaning up a spill outside the gym, but couldn't break away from the flow of traffic to talk to him.

At the end of first period, Lincoln met up with Stella and proceeded to the bathrooms at the far end of the hall. He hid in the boys room and she in the girls room until the bell rang and the corridors cleared out. Lincoln crept out of the stall, stopped to admire himself in the mirror (looking good, bro) and opened the door just a crack. Across the way, Stella poked her head out. Lincoln nodded, and moving as one, they tiptoed into the hall. On both sides, the passageway stood empty save for puddles of frosty white from the overhead lights.

Lincoln held his finger to his lips, urging silence, and Stella nodded. She fell in behind him and followed his lead, darting from locker to trash can and hunching over to make a smaller target.

They did this for nearly twenty minutes, dodging teachers and other students.

Norm was nowhere to be found.

They looked in the gym, the cafeteria, the auditorium, the bathrooms, empty classrooms, they even went outside and snooped around the parking lot. His truck, a battered and rusted out Ford, was in its normal spot, so he was here, but where?

After searching for almost half an hour, they found him in the janitor's closet. He was sitting in a straight back chair and eating corn chips in front of a portable TV. He was so engrossed in The 3 Stooges that he didn't know they were there until Lincoln spoke. "Hey, Norm."

Norm jumped a foot and the chair went out from under him; waving his arms and letting out a sharp cry, he spilled to the floor, landing hard on his butt. Lincoln and Stella helped him to his feet and dusted himself off. "I didn't hear you come in," he said. He bent, snatched the bag of corn chips up from the floor, and held it out. "Corn chip?"

"No, thank you," Stella said.

"We need to ask you a couple questions," Lincoln said.

Norm sat, the chair creaking under his weight. "Sure. Shoot."

"Someone - or something - broke into Stella's locker and took her music box."

Was it Lincoln's imagination, or did Norm tense ever so slightly. "They did?" he asked. "Gee, I'm sorry to hear that. It happens from time to time. There's this -"

"Rat-Beast?" Lincoln asked.

Norm's jaw clenched. "There's no such thing," he said. The lie was clear in his eyes.

"But -"

"It's just superstition," Norm said. He got up and stood over them. Lincoln had never thought of the kindly redneck as intimidating, but in that moment, he was. He raised his arm and Lincoln and Stella both cringed. Instead of hitting them, however, he jabbed his finger down the hall. "Now get back to class."

"He's lying," Stella said as they walked away.

"I know," Lincoln said, "but why?"

Stella started to reply, but stopped herself. "I don't know."

Instead of going to class, they waited for the bell to ring, then asked around to see if anyone else had had anything go missing recently. As it so happened, a lot of kids did: Pencils, books, snacks from their lockers, even coats.

At lunch, Lincoln and Stella met with Johnny and Sid. Lincoln told them what they had found out, and Johnny listened intently. "I think it'd be best if we go together," Lincoln said. "It's too dangerous for just you and SId."

Johnny nodded. "Yeah, probably."

They agreed to meet up in the gym after school. They'd hide and then go into the basement when everyone was gone.

At the appointed time, Lincoln put his things in his locker and went to the gym. Earlier, he scouted a comfy spot between a big bin of dodge balls and a wall. He wedged himself in and sat down. No one would be able to see him unless they leaned over the bin and craned their necks.

Slowly, the normal school sounds faded away until an eerie and deafening silence held sway, broken only by the echoing clang of closing doors and distant footfalls. Lincoln waited fifteen minutes, then slipped out of his hiding spot and linked up with Sid, Stella, and Johnny at the door to the hall. Johnny checked to make sure the coast was clear, then motioned for the others to follow him.

In a line, Lincoln bringing up the rear, they made their way to the basement door. Ahead, Norm pushed a wheeled trash barrel out of the main office and everyone froze.

Caught!

Without looking in their direction, Norm went into a classroom and they breathed a collective sigh of relief.

A long set of concrete stairs led to the basement, a place of dank darkness and the whine and roar of machinery.. Lincoln and Johnny turned their phones' flashlights on and shadows scattered to the corners. A maze of corridors led into the bowels of the building. Lincoln looked for a light but didn't see any. Darn it.

"Stay close, guys," Johnny whispered.

The four of them clustered together and slowly went down the hall. A cold, stale draft blew through the gangway, stirring cobwebs in the corners, and water dripped from the ceiling, beads hitting Lincoln in the face. Strange sounds rang out from ahead, and Lincoln's heart raced. A thousand terrible images flickered through his head, all of them involving him and Johnny being eaten alive by a giant, blood hungry rat.

Eventually, they came to a four way intersection. Lincoln shone his flashlight around, and the beam illuminated something lying on the ground. "Guys," he hissed, "check this out."

The others came over.

A pile of shredded paper and empty chip bags sat on the floor like animal droppings. The bags showed signs of having been ripped and clawed.

Johnny gulped.

A trail of paper led down one of the halls, and walking carefully as if in fear of booby traps, they followed. Ahad, a sickly white light bathed the wall in ghost-like effervescence. Their steps faltered and icy dread flooded Lincoln's stomach.

Suddenly, a shadow appeared on the wall, small at first but growing bigger and bigger, its features more twisted and deformed.

More rat-like.

Stella grabbed Lincoln's arm. "There it is!"

The shadow was bigger now. Ten feet tall, twenty, its mouth snapping and its teeth jagged, sharp, perfect for breaking through plaster so that it could steal from lockers...perfect for rending flesh and breaking bone.

Lincoln watched it come, his body locked in terror. Finally, his paralysis broke, and, screaming, turned and ran. Sid, Stella, and Johnny followed, Johnny's phone dropping to the floor. Lincoln rushed headlong toward the stairs, his screams trailing over his shoulder. He didn't remember where he was or how to get out and panic overwhelmed him. He turned down a hall and tripped over his own feet, landing face first on the floor. Sid, Stella, and Johnny fell over him like dominoes toppling over and they all scrambled over each other to get away.

It was too late, though. The Rat-Beast was right behind them. Lincoln could sense it.

Without warning, a light fell over them, blinding their eyes. "What are you kids doing down here?" Norm asked.

"The Rat-Beast!" Johnny yelled.

"It's going to get us!" Lincoln screamed.

Something touched his leg and he sat up.

A regular sized rat with glowing eyes and two tails sat on his lap, its head cocked quizzically to one side. "B-B-But," Lincoln stammered.

"There's no Rat-Beast," Norm said. "There's only Cinnamon."

"Who's Cinnamon?" SId asked.

Norm sat down and crossed his legs. Cinnamon, he told them, was once a normal rat who lived as a class pet. Norm used to feed him corn chips and carry him around "for company" when he worked overnight. One night, Norm forgot to close the cage when he left. Cinnamon got out and went looking for corn chips in the janitor's closet. Somehow, he got into the chemicals and something something grew another tail. It was convoluted. "I brought him down here because I was fraid the government would do tests on him or something."

Cinnamon crawled into Lincoln's pocket and started eating a piece of pretzel he found. He then curled up and went to sleep.

"He likes you," Norm said.

And that was how Lincoln wound up with a pet rat who had two tails.