Once upon a time there was a little girl named Rica. She lived in a big house and was very happy, until one day she, inadvertently, made a very serious mischief. Overnight, she fell in misfortune, as her parents never forgave her and from then on treated her very badly. Time stopped for her the moment of the misdeed.

The girl never grew up, like the dolls that stay forever young, rosy and unwary. She dedicated her life to the happiness of all the little girls around the world, sewing the most beautiful, most dazzling doll outfits that were ever made by a human. Her only companions in life are the evil beetle, which appeared in her windowpane and started putting frightening thoughts in her mind, along with a very old lady and a skinny boy.

We don’t know how this story ends, simply because Rica is still alive, moving among us in Athens 2008; she is a plump, strangely dressed 50-year-old woman, and you may have come across her in the neighborhoods of Kypseli, Pangrati or, late at night, at the bridges of Attica Road. Everything, however, indicates that if and when time comes for this tale to end, it will not be with the cliché “and they lived happily ever after”.