Underground Rats’s Jazz Festival

This story drives you surrealistic pathways. Somehow, Underground Rats’s Jazz Festival have so many guest in your mind…

One day, I couldn’t sleep. I went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water. I was waiting for the heat to tire me out and knew how water could soften the body and bring on a faint drowsiness. With my eyes closed, I sat beneath the stream of water in a lotus position.

After a few minutes, I stood up and began to watch the tiles on the wall. There were thousands of water which droplets beyond eachother and trying desperately to hold on. But all of them, slowly, inevitably, were making their way toward the drain. They were doomed to it. Those higher up were just a little luckier, timewise.

Looking at the wall, I felt as if I were seeing an entire humanity. People disguised as water droplets clinging to the tiles, sliding over one another, only to merge into the drain. The sight captivated me, and I took my eyes off the wall and looked down at the drain.

Moreover, this time the droplets had transformed into swarming ants, piling on top of each other. I bent down and looked closer. Sounds were coming from the drain. The ants seemed to hear noises rising from underground and were running as fast as they could to reach the source. A complete frenzy.

It was as if there was a concert going on down there, and the rats in the pipes were waiting at the door, ready to collect tickets for this unique spectacle.

For a moment, I felt my soul—tired of my body—wanting to evaporate and slip down the pipes. Yet my body stood there, a heavy mass, while my soul raged with impatience. It wanted to tear through my bones and skin, to escape—just for a moment—to join them, as a droplet or an ant.

In matter of fact, it was an extraordinary moment. That sound rising from below enchanted my soul so much that it was on the verge of sliding right down that opening. It wasn’t like any sound I’d ever heard before.

Underground Rats’s Jazz Festival: Timeless Route

Actually,the music of our generation was never Bebop or Rock ’n’ Roll. It was something more mystical, more ritualistic. Slow and deep. Like the sounds coming from the city’s underground network. Or the sounds that run behind the walls above ground. The music of the water heater, the oven, the extractor fan. Particularly, it was grotesque and resonant.

By the time, I felt the blood drain from my body. And at last, after this entire cascade of sensations, my soul finally left my body.

What was left of me shattered like glass and fell to the floor. My soul, standing at the edge of the drain, turned around for one last look and saw my body crystallized.

Now I was passing through the pipes and running toward the music. And I could still hear the sounds from above. The strokes of a broom as the cleaner gathered up the pieces of my broken body. Those shards didn’t sound like broken glass—they were heavier, noisier to collect.

As I moved through the pipes, I saw the filth of the entire city. The way the crowd dirtied this place with their waste, their excrement. I wondered how the underground society endured all this.

No matter what’s going on in my mind, I kept going, through intertwined, twisting pipes, a true labyrinth. In one branch of the pipe, I saw a group of rats talking. One of them argued for reducing the population—after all, fewer intestines meant less filth.

Finally, I saw the gate where the festival was happening. Two rats in tuxedos were selling tickets. And just as I was heading toward them, I drifted into sleep…