The dump was where Sewerville met the human's city. It was where the majority of rat and mouse scavenging parties rifled through the discarded goodies and brought them back underground. This somehow made Jerry feel worse. The idea of throwing something away was to the rats and mice of Sewerville as silly as a person buying a car just to crash it.

Jerry arrived at the dump, guitar in one paw, amp in the other, his feet getting heavier with every step. He went straight in. He passed mountains of shopping trolleys and beds, hills of old forlorn toys, discarded mounds of notebooks with long-forgotten homework, and stories about the life of a penny. Gulls circled overhead, squawking in a horrible din, as they searched for tasty tidbits that the rats and mice had missed.

In the distance, the dump's guard dogs barked their vicious bark. He could also hear the sound of bulldozers and trucks ferrying and pushing the scrap and waste the humans brought in daily.

Jerry walked deeper and deeper into the dump, some force inside him just couldn't let him throw away his guitar and amplifier, he could have dropped them anywhere. The more he thought about it, the tighter his grip on the two things became. Soon he realized he was lost. "Today can't get any worse," he thought to himself. He tried to find his bearings.

He heard something. A rock riff? Yes, despite the faintness of the sound, Jerry's ears having been trained by hours of listening to music, picked out the sound among all the ruckus of the dump. The riff is sweet, tasty, crunchy, and bouncy, melodic, and rhythmic.

He did what Jerry always did when he was lost or didn't understand the world – he followed the music.

The melody kicked the fact that he was lost out of his head, and lured him deeper, and deeper into the dump. The sound twisted and changed with the path he followed. Sometimes it got heavy and fast, and then the player toned it back to something bluesy and overflowing with emotion. Slowly he got closer; the music now seemed like a breadcrumb trail leading him. The music got louder and louder and louder until Jerry came to a small clearing.

A rat was playing guitar, but this rat was like no one Jerry had ever seen. His fur was both as black as night in some places and white as snow in others. On his head, he wore a red broad-rimmed hat, with an eagle's white feather sticking through one of his ears like an earring. His Jacket was like the type marching bands wear in black and white. His trousers were green and his shoes were cream. He wore a purple frilly shirt.

His guitar was the color of an exploding sun, with strings the thickness of steel wires, but that didn't slow down his fingers. As they raced up and down the fretboard, he finally hit the crescendo, bending the strings up with his right hand, as he attacked them with the left making the guitar scream, his tail moving the tremolo bar, his back arched, eyes closed. He made a face like someone had dropped something on his foot, as he pointed the guitar skyward as though shooting at the Sun.

Jerry had arched his head back, air-guitaring with his arms, manipulating an invisible whammy bar with his tail, as he told the story. Ger was impressed with how invested his subconscious was in this hallucination. If he hadn't been so into the story, he might have detected the irony of watching an imaginary creature, imagine things. Of course Ger wasn't imagining anything. There was a talking mouse telling him a parable. Jerry continued the story.

The rat slowly let the note go, and eventually, the sound faded and the silence afterward made the world feel a little emptier.

The rat opened his eyes and glanced around like someone suddenly coming back from another place, and getting back their bearings. He saw Jerry, standing in awe in front of him. He tilted back his hat, let his guitar drop to his side, hanging down on its strap, which looked like the skin of a rattlesnake, and looked right at him and said "Can't I get just a little peace? Turn around son, I don't feel like showing down with yea."

"That was amazing! Can you teach me how to play like that?"

"Teach? Kid, do you know who I am?" the rat asked.

"Why? Have you forgotten?" Jerry answered.

The rat laughed. It sounded like a chainsaw chugging along on a tough tree.

"Well if it's not to challenge me, what are yer doing here, with that?" the rat asked nodding at Jerry's guitar.

"My dad's making me throw them away."

"Throw away your guitar! Don't you know where the pawnshop is?"

"Prawn shop? What's that?" Jerry said.

"Mouse, you're green, ain't ya?" the rat looked at him as he spoke, as though he was trying to look deep inside Jerry's soul.

"Play me something!" he said to Jerry after an uncomfortably long silence.

Surprised, Jerry plugged his guitar in and started to play LOUD! When he stopped, the rat looked at him with his beady pink eyes, with a look that searched deep into Jerry's soul.

"I'm not very good," admitted Jerry under the rat's scrutinizing gaze "but nobody wants me to practice anywhere near them."

The rat continued looking at him for a short while, before seeming to make a decision.

"What's your name kid?" asked the rat.

"Jerry Lee Mouse."

"My name's Jimmy Halloumi. Follow me," he said and turned around and swaggered away.

Jerry picked up his guitar and amp and followed Jimmy.

"So, ya want to rock, do ya? Well, kid ya gots ta practice," Jimmy said.

"Yeah, but people don't let me practice and my dad said..."

"Don't fret, you can come here, and practice every day," Jimmy replied, as they turned around a corner made from scrap and newspapers, they came across an old cabin. Its walls were made from wood badly cut into irregular shapes, the roof was made from an aluminum sheet. A crooked porch contained a doll's house rocking chair, an upside-down takeaway coffee cup that seemed to be a makeshift table, and several other guitars.

The rat turned round to face Jimmy and struck a pose, legs spread with his guitar's body between them. It was the coolest pose Jerry had ever seen. "Play this," Jimmy said. He raised his hand, with which he held a plectrum made from a coin bent and honed into the triangular shape. He made a simple chord of three notes and played it, bringing down his right hand across the strings, the sound ringing out and echoing through the dump.

Jerry played his guitar again and played the three-note chord.

"Now this," Jimmy instructed, showing him the same shape of two fingers but further up the fretboard. Jerry copied him.

"And now this," Jimmy continued, again playing the same chord shape but again in a different key. Jerry copied him again. "And now this and this," Jerry copied the sequence.

"Play it again," Jimmy commanded, as he sat on his rocking chair, put his feet on the upside-down bucket, and pushed his hat down over his eyes.

Jerry played it again. He played slowly it, with no real sense of rhythm and even though the chords only had three notes he couldn't always get them to ring out clearly, and there were long uncomfortable pauses between each chord. After his third attempt to play the simple melody, Jimmy started a metronome on the table beside him. It ticked out a slow steady rhythm.

"Play it again and follow the beat," he said.

Jerry practiced the riff again and again, trying to match the slow ticking of the beat. He practiced until his fingertips blazed in agony, as the strings dug into them, and his arms became tired. Finally, as it started to get dark, he could start to hear a coherent melody coming from his instrument.

"OK kid, leave your guitar here and come back tomorrow," Jimmy told him.

Despite the pain in his fingertips, the tiredness in his shoulders and arms, Jerry had never felt so elated. He had made real music and nobody had told him to shut up.

"OK! Thanks so much, Mr. Halloumi!"

"No problem kid, Just call me Jimmy. Keep on rocking!" replied Jimmy as he watched Jerry happily walk back home.

Suddenly, Ger's phone buzzed in his pocket, which made him jump. High as he was, Gerry had forgotten about his phone, and he had been too angry to answer it before. He answered and heard Ariana shouting down the phone at him. When she'd gotten that out of her system, he explained where he was and Ariana said that they would come to find him. When he hung up, to his relief the talking mouse had disappeared, he guessed the drugs had to be wearing off, although part of him wondered how the story continued.