SARA GRAÇARats and Calendars

On election night, a couple of rats invades the living room where everyone is waiting for the final results. The scenario is desperately gloomy and, in order to ward off demons, Jane Doe tries to ward off the animals with a broom. She fails and passes the broom to Jules Doe, who, obtaining the same results, passes it to Joe Doe. In vain. In the distance, the sound of breaking news invades the room. Three more rats join in, and Joe tries, out of breath, to push them away. Josh and Anna gather, but the results do not improve. Jane manages to slightly touch the fifth rat, but without the intended success. The creatures are in an uproar on the right side of the red sofa and gradually leave the scene in celebratory movements while Marianne and Andreas try to quiet the anger of the self-titled Does family. The anger has been successfully suppressed and the terrifying creatures leave the scene.

Eight people live together. They all built their rooms. When the eighth person entered, she too had to build a room. Raising the last wall, the eighth person gives in and falls. The wall then falls, cushioning the fall on the eighth person. Hearing a crash, the seventh person appears to see what is going on but, when she raises the wall, she falls and the wall, falling, cushions the fall on her. A sixth and a fifth character enter the scene to raise the wall, but they fall, and the wall cushions the fall on them. As the rest arrive the process is repeated, at the same time that the first ones to fall start to rise. Sometimes two, sometimes three, then four, five, six, seven try to raise the wall together, but it always falls and every time it cushions the fall on them. When the eight try, all together and in one single movement to raise the wall the same happens - the wall falls on them. As they lifted their heads after the fall, a group of fucking filthy rats danced to their moans.

Someone fell into a mousetrap while landing in the garden of the building of a secret lover.

In the years of the crisis, Manuela got a cat, Smokey, to keep her company on cold nights and protect her from unwanted rodents. As these years faded, Smokey became accustomed to a better and more peaceful life. One day, unexpectedly, Ritaz Ana appeared. Approaching Smokey she attacked him, only to, after immobilizing him, enjoy a series of small tortures carried out on the furry belly of Manuela's Persian cat. A revenge that ended only when Manuela, upon arriving, exclaimed: “Uuuuuuuuuuu…*****”. Ritaz Ana, with her striped fur and the slender legs of a more experienced rat today than she once was, fled, aware that the terror had been planted.

It is summer and at dusk Jane and Joe Doe walk down North Street towards the hidden park. In the diversion of passing the bottle they brought to each other, Joe gets distracted and a high-pitched and unsettling “ihhhhhh” is heard. As he looks down, he sees a small rat running wildly. Joe realizes what was that spongy body he had just stepped on, while Jane is petrified with an “aaeewwwww” expression.

At the house, the eight discuss on which terms the next party will be held. Everyone agrees with the exception of Roberto who, in an increasing heat, explains his reasons for opposing the unlimited celebration proposed by everyone else. Igor, Jane, Marie, Josh and Anna disprove and refute Roberto's argumentation. The dispute lasts several minutes in a register worthy of a tennis match or rave, in which the heads shake from side to side. Roberto has all the blood rising to his head and suddenly he bangs the table with his fist. Bad luck that, when he turns his back to leave the assembly, he steps on the Victor Electronic Rat Trap and gets his foot electrocuted. Lucky for the other seven that he wasn't home when the party happened.

Lipa, a fanatic of virtual war games, was one day interrupted in one of her missions by winds that inhabited for some time the filthy place her suburban room had become. Turning her attention to these noises for brief seconds, when she returned to the game, she had already been hit by three bullets and a multitude of them was yet to come. Faced with the inevitability of the end, Lipa, possessed by the anger of betrayal and the despair of her lack of concentration, threw the keyboard at the wall screaming in torment: “u damn raaaaatssszzzzz”. 

One year, Mar had some problems with the days between the 12th and the 16th of each month. There were always two or three that escaped her. Every day, when she woke up, she consulted the calendar she had in the kitchen and, sheet after sheet, month after month, the gap remained. Mar could not understand how it was possible that in those 7 months the joke would be repeated uninterruptedly. Though easy, the explanation is not at all obvious. The day Jane had offered her the calendar, and after leafing through half a dozen pages, they left it at the kitchen counter on the bag of bread. At night, when Augusto arrived home coming from a night out, he went to the kitchen and, coming from a night out, when turning on the light, coming from a night out, he saw two spots, coming from a night out, coming down the broom handle, coming from a night out. A little stunned, he turned off the light, acted as if nothing had happened and, forgetting the event, went to sleep. In the morning, preparing breakfast, he noticed that the bag of bread had two holes, just like the bread had two holes, just like the calendar had two holes. Suddenly, a flashback from the night before and zááááás: double rat.

Pedro Huet with Sara Graça

Room Sheet