A young man hosts a party for his roommate Monroe, a sculptor, after his girlfriend from college leaves him, where they get drunk. The next afternoon, the man wakes up to a rat eyeing him from across the room, eager to come and bite him. The mill they live in is overrun with rats that they shoot with a .22. After the narrator shoots and misses, hitting the rat’s leg, he and Monroe start the day off with more booze and coffee—to offset any hangovers. Monroe laments over the sculpture of a naked lady he’s created, how she demands he clothe her and buy her a car and that if he couldn’t provide for her, she’d leave. He smashes the taunting naked lady into a clay pancake and the two load into their old lemon of a truck and head to a nearby pool hall to gamble and win some money. After Monroe wins some money off the pool tables, they head to a local boxing ring where Monroe hits on a woman who turns out to be the girlfriend of a martial artist. To avoid a fight and Monroe’s certain death, the man drags Monroe to a railroad bar. At the bar, Monroe insults a gang of bikers and knocks one them unconscious; the two narrowly escape in their truck.

When they arrive back at the mill, the man puts a sawed-off shotgun to Monroe’s chest, remarking that he’d kill him himself if he had a death wish. Monroe assures him that he doesn’t want to die, and the narrator tells him to go sculpt a naked lady to make himself feel better. Rather than sculpt a naked lady, however, Monroe sculpts a striking bust of himself and starts to make money for his work. Later, to get rid of the rats, the pair release a snake in the mill. They soon loose track of the snake.