Insurrection

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In no more than 250 words write a storybeginning: The world thought it had seen everything until...

Insurrection

The world thought it had seen everything until that night of April 2019 in the Folies Bergère, Paris, when a line of rats wearing can-can dresses joined the dancers on-stage, stood up on their hind legs and started flinging these same legs about in time to the music.
Naturally, the human dancers fled and the music stopped, while the audience sat with mouths hanging open, as a crowd of smaller rats stomped onto the stage carrying placards declaring, ‘RATS HAVE RIGHTS’.
A large rat detached from the dancers and strode to the front of the stage.
‘Mesdames et Messieurs,’ he began – he was a transvestite rat – ‘we are ‘ere to warn you. Unless ze city of Paris immediately abandons plans to tear down Notre Dame after ze terrible fire and build a modern cathedral, ze rats of France will rebel.
‘Think back to ze destruction of ze famous market, Les Halles, in 1972. Millions of rats were made ‘omeless in zat regretted act of vandalism. Thousands upon thousands died. We will not allow zat to ‘appen again.
‘Ze city of Paris must begin reconstruction of Notre Dame at once. We ‘ave studied Albert Camus’ famous book, and we know ‘ow to make Ze Plague a reality. It will be catastrophic. You ‘ave been warned.’
With that, he turned to the conductor – ‘Maestro?’
As the music struck up, the rats ceremoniously can-can-ed off stage.

And that, Mesdames et Messieurs, is (possibly) how the reconstruction of Notre Dame was decided.

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