The Mysterious Man

“The Mysterious Man” is one of the outstanding stories of the first biannual International Short Story Contest 2018 written by Diego Rodríguez, El Cole de Los Pekes, Spain.

The Mysterious Man

One day, in my town, my mother Carlota and I, Federico, saw a strange shadow. It was the shadow of a person who was trying to inject a needle to a dog, it jumped and bit the man, but the dog injected the needle to himself and he fell down.

- I'm going to see what happens with the dog -my mother said. Come, we have to go home I AM thinking of what happened to the dog.

The next day I went to the place where the dog was with my friend Manolo, but the dog was not there. I was thinking where the dog could be. I look at the floor and I saw foot prints, I followed the foot prints, but they stopped in front of the door of a black, big and disgusting house.

We tried to open the door but we couldn’t, we looked for a bell but the house didn't have bell.

I thought: - who could find the man? Suddenly I felt little stones on my head because the man was throwing them to me. I turned around and I saw a shadow, I thought that it was the man so I ran to catch him, I saw a curve and I said to my friend: - come, run! If not we are not going to catch the man.

He ran in the curve, we followed the man, we looked for him but he was not there so we went to my house and we made a plan. –“When we see the man, we call each other and we capture him – we decided. Later we will ask questions about the dog...

Later my friend went away and me too but I didn't take the mobile phone and if my friend called me I wasn't going to listen to my friend. Thank God I saw him and I ran. I said hello, he said: -look! The man is there! I told him to go to the other way but he stopped and turned around. Suddenly he was in front of me and I saw that he had a gun and I thought: -“Friend, come here! The man has a gun! But he didn't listen to me. I covered myself behind a house and I ran. I was far away from the man but the man listened to me! Thanks god that my friend heard me shouting.

We went back to my house and made a better plan: - we are going to dress up as dogs and we are going to do something different than what the other dog did but we are going to go and bite the man in the leg and later we ask the questions. This time we were going to be together because if not it’s going to happen the same as before. We found the man! Now! Come! We had to run and bit him –“come, yes – I said, we bit him and he fell down. Later we took the man and we asked who he was, he didn´t answer, but we had a trick: we asked other questions and we added in a second the question of who you are and he said: - I´m your father Angeliño...