Rat

A woman becomes furious when her husband arrives home from the local pub and turns into a rat. Dublin deliveryman Hubert Flynn feels peaked. Home from the pub, he lies down; while his nagging wife Conchita looks on, he turns into a rat. She's chafed at how inconsiderate he is: hardly touching his food the next morning and leaving droppings on the good doilies. With curiosity seekers outside the flat and a writer at the door offering to help Conchita turn her story into a book, she calls a family meeting. Her seminary-bound son Pius wants to kill the rat; other family members are ambivalent. They opt to hurl Hubert over the fence of a maggot farm. Christmas approaches; an exorcism is in the cards, and the book becomes the Holy Grail. What of Hubert's conversion? —<jhailey@hotmail.com> In Dublin, one day Hubert Flynn leaves the pub and turns into a rat at home. On the next morning, the writer Phelim "Felix" Spratt visits the family and offers to write a book about Hubert. His wife Conchita Flynn accepts the offer and Felix moves to Hubert's room. His son Pius wants to kill the rat while his daughter Marietta has a dilemma whether she introduces her boyfriend to her father or not. In Christmas, Uncle Matt proposes to leave Hubert in a maggot farm. What will happen with the rat? —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil