Aunt Greta Mystery #2

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Aunt Greta awoke to the sound of fingernails scratching at a doorknob. After a brief moment of half-asleep panic, she realized that the doorknob was, indeed, the one on her bedroom door and the fingernails were attached to her cat, Benny, who was trying to let himself out. Unfortunately, Benny had not gotten the hang of doorknobs yet. She stumbled out of bed and followed Benny as he bolted out into the kitchen, closing the door behind her. This was fortunate, since the thing Benny was running from also had not yet figured out the doorknob.

"Good Morning, Henry," Aunt Greta said after she'd gotten a chance to shower and brush her teeth.
"Good Morning, Greta," the Leper responded. These days, though, it was getting harder to tell what time of day it was in their kitchen, since Henry kept the curtains drawn at all times he was in the room. Not that he could be blamed for a bit of paranoia, he was, after all, the subject of a massive manhunt after the "Nuclear Bomb" scandal. Aunt Greta had agreed to put him up until the heat died down, since the old house did get quite lonely with just her and Benny. That, and it really wouldn't do to have him tell the cops where he'd found all that Uranium, anyway.
The bedroom door banged in response.
As soon as this thought passed through Aunt Greta's mind, she realized how silly it sounded. After all, a bedroom door couldn't really respond to anything, much less a conversation going on in another room. Besides, a door really couldn't bang itself, it had to be pushed by something, slammed by the wind or something. Then again, the sound had certainly been a bang, rather than a slam…
Fortunately, before Aunt Greta could continue this fruitless train of thought any further, she was interrupted by a second bang on the door.
"What is that?" she asked in frustration.
"They're inside the house," Henry responded, grabbing a fire-axe from the counter and backing away from the bedroom. Looking at her leprous housemate's expression, Aunt Greta immediately understood their situation:
"We're in a horror movie. Great."

After they'd made this deduction, it became clear what they had to do. Henry pushed some furniture against the bedroom door, which struck him as somewhat odd, since the door opened inward. Meanwhile, Aunt Greta unplugged every phone in the house and gathered up the flashlights. This one seemed a bit odd to her, since it was still quite early in the day, and there was plenty of light in the house.
"What now?" She asked Henry as he finished barricading the door.
"We go down to the basement, wait until the coast is clear, and then get startled when he's still around."
Greta pondered for a moment. "I don't think I like that plan, is there anything else we could try?"
"Well, we could go down to the basement and expect it to still be here when we come back up," he suggested, scratching his scalp thoughtfully and losing a patch of it in the process.
"Will the fire-axe help?"
"Yeah," Henry guessed. "They usually don't attack people who are armed."
The door, apparently irritated that it had been left out of this conversation entirely, squeaked, banged again, then started making scratching noises. Henry and Greta put on their "this is gonna suck" faces and headed down to the massive underground complex that Aunt Greta called her basement.
By the time they'd gotten comfortable down there, Greta was glad she'd brought the flashlights. Something had chewed through the wires. Something large, with lots of pointy teeth. Henry set to work nailing the door to the ground floor shut while Aunt Greta looked around. Now that she was paying attention, it looked like something had been chewing on almost all her equipment. Even the walls…
"That's funny, I don't remember putting a tunnel in there," Greta muttered, peering into the two foot wide crudely carved tunnel in her south wall. The tunnel responded with a shriek and a scuttle not unlike claws scratching across a hard floor. Yes, it did sound quite a bit like Benny racing across the kitchen floor, if Benny were a good 200 pounds heavier with six inch claws. As Aunt Greta pondered this she played the flashlight further down, well, actually up the tunnel, as it set off at quite an incline towards the surface, paying no heed to the 200 lb.-giant-clawed-Benny-running-away noises, which must have been more akin to "Benny running here" noises, as they were getting louder by the second. It was only by chance that her flashlight happened to catch the reflective eyes of the creature making these noises as it barreled towards Aunt Greta.
It was at this moment that the leprous Henry hefted Aunt Greta over his shoulder and bolted for the cellar door. Fortunately for everyone involved -- except, perhaps, the pursuer -- Greta had outfitted her housemate with a prosthetic big toe to replace the one he'd lost burglarizing her house, allowing him to run without balance issues. As such, he still barely had time to reach the top of the stairs and brace himself against the door as Greta collected some boards and started nailing the door shut.
"There's two of them," Henry observed as he helped Greta with the door.
"No, dear," Aunt Greta said, glancing at one of the mouse holes in her kitchen. "There's only one."
She picked up her purse and started for the front door.
"What are you doing?"
"I have to go to the pet store, I'll be back in a few minutes." Henry started after her, then remembered the whole "hiding from the cops" thing
"Greta, I don't think that's such a good idea," he said as she opened the door, paying him no heed. "Greta, we can't split up the--" the door slammed, "party…"
Henry sighed and plopped down on the couch, trying to ignore the banging from the basement. This became a whole lot easier when he slipped with the fire axe he was holding and lost his left hand. "Oh, that's not good," he astutely observed. The basement door banged in agreement.

"You wouldn't believe the hassle they gave me at the pet store," Aunt Greta complained as she walked in half an hour later. She turned and saw Henry in the kitchen, attempting Kung Fu while still bleeding profusiously from his left hand, wait, no, stump. "For heaven's sake!" Aunt Greta stormed into the kitchen.
"Thank goodness you're back!" Henry exclaimed. "I really need to get this thing cleaned up, but he…" Henry gestured to the four foot rat that had been sparing with him. "…and I really don't want to upset him…"
Aunt Greta took out the boxes she got from the pet store. "Leave the poor man alone, Theo, he's wounded. Besides, I brought you new friends."
The Giant Rat peered into one of the boxes, squealed in delight and raced down the hole he'd dug in the kitchen floor with the presents.
"Let me get you a band-aid, dear."

"You see," Greta explained as she dressed the wound. "Benny's always loved hunting. Unfortunately he was so good at it, he started running out of mice. I hated to see the poor thing so sad, so I started buying mice from the store for him to chase after. After a few weeks of this, the man at the store suggested that I move up to rats, since they'd last longer. I bought one rat from him, Theo, and set him lose in the house. Benny has caught that rat 57 times, but either Theo's too tough, or Benny enjoys the chase too much to kill him. That's how I knew there was only one rat." Henry nodded absentmindedly. "I hadn't seen Theo for a few months, and I was getting worried, but I guess he just got into my Uranium supply and was horribly mutated." Greta took a sip of her tea.
"What did you get for him?"
"Hmm?"
"At the pet store," Henry prompted her. "What'd you get for the rat?"
"Oh," she chuckled. "I just got him some turtles to play with."