Rat 1:- Well, we were saying that his life was spent phlegmatically in that sad cave; he saw life pass by that dirty window and from time to time he heard the news on an old radio…; until one fine day, an absent-minded person passed by the hardware store to ask something and dropped a strange book…

Rat 2:- A book, you say? And why didn’t he return it?

Rat1:-Because when Pietro realized it was too late… and that book didn’t have any address or anything to locate its owner; so he thought they would come by and pick it up if it was important. In the meantime, Pietro would have it well stored…

Rat 2:- but what book was it?

Rat 1:-It was called “The Fantastic Flight of the Kite Man” by one Blinky Rotred, an autobiographical novel of that kind. It told the story of a man who did everything possible to make his dream come true: to fly in a kite, to change his destiny at will!

Rat 2:- Oooooohhh, but that’s nice, I want to grow up to be a bat!

Rat 1:-You’re gonna be dumb your whole life even if we put wings on you or a turtle shell!

Rat 2:-Well, okay, okay, don’t be mad… what happened with Pietro then…?

Rat 1:-…Because when he read that story, something moved inside him…something he had sleeping woke up…and they say he had a vision!

Rat 2:- A mystical vision like that?

Rat 1:-But do you know what the mystic is…..sewer rat? Well, he had a revealing vision… I don’t know! The fact is that he saw himself in a very strange way, almost monstrous… he saw himself in such a way that he was terrified at first… But after a while, somehow, he realized that it was a way to go, because it was HIS WAY.

Rat 2:- How when we smell the good stuff?

Rat 1:-Something like that, because although scared, in that apparently sinister vision, he saw himself happy!

Rat 2:-And what did you do to follow that path…? How did you tell your mother?

Rat 1:-The thing is, it wasn’t two days and something set the hardware store on fire…

Rat 2:-And his mother?

Rat 1:-His mother survived by the skin of her teeth, not from the fire, from the disgust!, but with the money from the insurance Pietro gave her a trip on one of those endless old age cruises… and although she resisted, she finally accepted… and so happy!

Rat 2:-And Pietro… what did he do?

Rat 1:-He built himself a little traveling theater and prepared a good number of Storytellers, specialized in flying stories…, I don’t know if this man really wanted to fly or what the hell, but apparently with his stories, he helped many others to achieve it…

Rat 2:- Well, when I grow up I want to be a pigeon… who they say are the rats of the air…

José Luis Serzo. Madrid 2005-2009