Rat

Our island was small and pristine, filled with mystery and evil that seemed to rise and increase with the arrival of the missionaries. In opposition to them, or because of them, I could not tell at the beginning. Though they were full of obvious concern for the island’s people, our anguish became palpable and increasingly desperate with each inroad they made. The charmers and sorcerers seemed to lash out at us in reaction to them. All manner of spells and conjuring fell upon us like rocks. We feared the magic men, though they were our only source of personal power.

I was once a man, standing tall on two feet, and unafraid of the sunlight. I worked my job as a fisherman with ease, pulling dinner from the sea and catching the eye of many of the town’s maidens. One delightful young woman turned on me however, telling her witchdoctor uncle of my affections. He did not approve, for I was just a laborer, and not in the family business like he.

It was days before I realized what was happening to me. But deep in the night I sensed it with heavy grief and unimaginable horror. I would never look at her again, I swore, but to no avail. My fate was set. I awoke in the darkness breathing in a shallow, stifling stench. My arms had shortened, my legs shrunken and bent. The hair on my chest had spread to cover my face, my back, every part of my body except the long skinny tail emerging from my backbone, the only part of me the original color of my flesh. The black magic of the witchdoctor’s spell had transformed me, from a figure of virile strength and manhood, to this, a rat.

I scurried. I hissed. I squeaked, unable to sound the alarm any other way. My voice was permanently silenced, though cruelty kept my mind intact.

In a panic I headed to the witchdoctor’s hut, a mere mile from my own. I was desperate, gnawing at hope, lapping at the dirt, snarling and shuffling, but inside screaming like a man trapped in a nightmare. I hid and jolted, scampering to avoid being stepped on, run over, destroyed. I looked at the other rats, rodents, even dogs and wondered if they too had once stood tall and mighty. I couldn’t tell.

The voyage took me many days. As I approached the simple wooden shack of my adversary he saw me and laughed heartily. Sneering and standing tall over me, he bent down and spat. He had known I would come and beg. He had known I had no way to fight him, no power, nothing. He knew I was at his absolute mercy and he was not merciful.

His niece, my would-be lover, stood at his side and shrieked. She had no idea who I was. She seemed relieved when he kicked me away effortlessly.

I scuttled across the street and into an opening in a wall. I was at once in darkness and safe from darkness. Above me, through a crack in the floorboards I heard people talking. I recognized the voices quickly, one was a prostitute I knew well enough, the other her madam, a woman with a thick accent and ill-intent. I crawled up and looked in more closely. I could hear faint music in the background, a flute maybe and an organ. The prostitute, a shy young woman whose name I had never asked, stood with her head bowed and her eyes on a book. She was reading, slowly and quietly, but I could not make out the words. The madam, standing alongside her, translated sharply and loudly to a group of women sitting before them. I looked around. This was indeed the house I remembered. These women, most if not all of them, were fallen (like I, apparently). But in her words I heard resurrection.

This was no longer the place I remembered. It had changed as much as I had. But I was a monster, a creature despised, and these women, fallen, broken, diseased, were renewed. I looked at them with awe. So enraptured was I that I failed to notice I was being watched. One after another gasped and pointed. The madam turned to me and for the first time since my ordeal began I was looked at as though I mattered. She, with eyes that had seen it all, seemed to know right away I was not what I seemed. She squinted and bent down to get a closer look. Puzzled and uncertain, she turned to my prostitute and asked, “What is this?”

 “Issa,” one of the girls cried out. Not to me, I observed, though that is my name. She seemed to be calling someone else.

Without entrance a man suddenly appeared in the room, between my prostitute and her madam, as though he’d been there all along. He was angry, but not at me, somehow because of me, for me, on my behalf. He was enraged and defiant. My savior stepped forward and I was covered in the light of him. Just that the brightness fell upon me would have been enough to change my fortunes, but he threw it at me. He held me up, within him, and brazenly, like a prize-fighter, bludgeoned the darkness until it let me go.

I changed instantly, growing, stretched like a painter’s canvas on a frame, a renewed life created with colors I had never seen. I was a being again, no longer a rodent cast aside. I was a man! My arms elongated, my legs became pillars of muscle and sinew, stronger than they had been before. They lifted me up and I stood, joyously, gratefully, eye to eye with Issa who had saved me. He met my gaze, serious and direct, as if this was the crux of his entire being, his purpose, his destiny to transform me from animal to man.

I stood, awkward and naked among the sisters. I thought I should explain, but they’d seen it all. One reached out and simply handed me a cloak. I looked up to see it was someone I could not even name. I was ashamed at their compassion for me, but overwhelmed to be human again.