King Animal

King Animal

He lived but knew he was not of them. The whole village was a tribe that turned to beasts at night. It was the curse, the pact so ancient. It protected in the days of war, and among men he was dejected until he made a decision, knowing somehow he didn`t belong. In a village faraway, he would procure a charm —a charm that would make him invisible—unseen by eyes of men. Sufficiency for each day: for he would steal; only what he wanted he would steal. 

The “native doctor” made it clear that Ossai  was so high he could tell the rest of the world what the weather was like  up there. The charm would be prepared. It was fate. He couldn’t escape being turned into a beast one way or the other — as a matter of fact, in this case, not the distorted thing his people shift-shaped to, but a pig. The witchdoctor`s best bet it was . He had agreed to turn into this astral pig so he go outside the radar of the enemy. Some couldn’t go higher, and some couldn’t go deeper, either. 

He had to go to the market place in the night, when ghosts also came to trade, and the uninitiated couldn’t tell the natures  apart. The pig he had bought he had  banged on his laps and mounted a commercial motor bike. That was to be the astral counterpart of him— a second personality. It was remonstrating. His pig-self somehow managed to wrench off and went scampering. He chased and got it back alright. The native doctor told him he had to accept his fate and let be made this pig and eaten; that way he would be lowered hell-ward, where with his abilities gained he would acquire powers truly incredible, including invisibility. He was predestined to rule.

 Right in front of him the painted-eye ate the animal up, and he had to spend the night at the sanctum. And that night he had another dream.  He was at school and was accused of a certain offence. It was not clear… something about poke-nosing. He was to choose to let be flogged and remain in the school or be expelled. He chose to rather leave. Then he woke up.

To the street he took it but it wasn’t easy to know whether it was business as usual, for a young man no one loved. The first person, no notice. He could pick up a melon to see if the dealer by the stand would notice, but he hated to steal. Second person. This time a man. He greeted, the man responded. So the pig ritual didn’t work. I was meant to be unseen. He would  be busting the pseudo soothsayer when he saw him again. However, when he got to the shrine, the witchdoctor asked him if he had any strange experiences he didn’t tell, especially the night he slept under the watch of the carved gods. 

The native doctor stared at the young man in front of him. Now he knew he was dealing with a psychic leftist. When Ossai first came to him, he told the sorcerer his right foot kicked when he received a bad sign. To everyone else, it was the left foot. As the young man narrated his dream, he knew this man was truly a glitch. He chose leaving the school over a little whipping? “You ruined it. Going back to school means being set back, getting flogged means being relegated to the level… to be a pig. And you resisted?” Pulling himself together, he shooed him out. What nonsense. 

But he was back at the soothsayer`s.  This medicine man who  couldn’t send nothing  to Hades.  They spoke over the phone: since his stubborn soul insisted on soaring, he was going to prepare him another charm, this time with a kite. Just soar but come down once in awhile, you oaf. Again he set out to get the kite. The kite he brought was a female one… oh you’re a bloke, or didn’t common sense tell you the kite was you? Symbolism – that was the essence in medicine making. Why didn’t he just specify from the outset? Is this idiot not just biding time?  

He left the “jazz man’ again and hid all day with a boat that ducked by the swamp near the river. There he made a fire. As the fire blazed and swooshed in the south-west wind, he saw the hawks begin to soar. Then he smoked and waited.  

 The male kites were a little more catchy and bigger. It was in one of the low trees of the mangrove and one of them must be caught when it came to roost. So he waited for it to come, and shot it. When the entrails were prepared, he would  tie the charm around the waist. Needless to say, it didn`t work.. .

He had learned to use the internet by now and could work from home— in seclusion. Then a séance told him he needed a DNA test, for it was obvious he was not of that clan. Even at that, if he found out his father was not his father, how could he find the real one? And his father hated him. The black sheep. The disgrace to the darkness. Even then he still refused to die, availing his father the backseat in the coven. He couldn’t come near him, how much more take a DNA sample.

The last time he went to the Medicine man, to tell him the kite thing didn’t work was when he knew he had to strangle this wizard; they were all the same . How could this juju dud tell him to kill and get the two hearts of blood twins. He watched that filthy, cola nut-stained mouth say it would mean linking him simultaneously with the above and what`s below. Balderdash. Now where is the money? He would throw the rest of the things outside until these villagers came to settle stuff. But he knew what they would say.  They`d say to return so the elders could talk and decide when the seeker would get back his money worth about a thousand US dollars. But he knew he wouldn’t last a minute there if he returned . But with his condition, with his village people, he  was dead anyways. Two villages against one man. 

Pretending to be operating the phone to check a text message, he put the device on record and videoed the illiterate repeat himself about murdering innocent kids. He got him. This was going to the police unless he gave him back the ritual charge. He turned to go, looking resolute, knowing he got this man and who would beg him to wait.

 “Wait… At least I know how to make you find your clan. Never can tell why your late mother never fit in. Only…only a woman can tell who her son`s father really is,” he said raising his hands. Finger nails, son. The hair, a drop of your blood. Don’t think I`m crazy. I could do a check right now. It`s… going to work, my…my friend.” 

Now this idiot is going to perform a DNA test here . in spite of himself he was going to laugh. Now he was going to conjure some advanced lab test here while labs couldn’t still test samples in Nigeria. His blood, his nails, his —. All in a clay platter. Three animal skins. His thoughts were faraway.  He could hear the witchdoctor telling him he was lucky that he belonged to any nation on earth, at least. He was trying to be funny, asking if his mother was too beautiful to stick to just one. He could punch him.  

He hovered the animal skins and his feeble frame almost fell over. Then he saw his young blood begin to act, turning black— first, under the skin of a monkey, then the skin of a dog, then the skin of a python. The medicine man looked up with veins snaking his face. “You’re lucky, he said. At least you will find your people.”

 He was still to process it . What did the hides of animals have to do with this? Was this evolution theory? He had been told the spirits of man incarnated in the wombs of highly developed apes who kicked them away once they realized these offspring with five fingers rather that four had the knack for standing erect. Now the dog and the snake— What? Blah, blah, blah… Where? 

 The old man seemed detached. He looked a little startled as though his client shouldn’t still be here. Speaking with so much adore he said, “ they tell you in your bible that the blood is the soul, and you wonder why. it is the means by which the spirit expresses — through your blood radiations. The soil you belong to… I know exactly where you come from. There`s only one class that doesn`t eat the three. In that place you will find peace. These three things you should abstain from: the monkey, the snake, and the dog.”

So near the campus where he found students from all walks of life, ate monkey meat and drank gin, out in the ghetto, at the bush bar, where some of the tribesmen from the Niger delta sold dog soup, in the farm, where his Ghanaian friend farmed snakes, he had been eating his life’s existentialistic answers.  

The witch doctor said only royalty forbade the three and he had the birth right to kingship: as blue-blooded as they come. it couldn’t be his own king. But wait… he heard the story, how his mother claimed she ran from the house to save a two-week old pregnancy from the battering husband, and then returned looking pregnant. And this old flame`s must still be some pagan and uncivilized kingdom; for in this era, who abstained from anything? He couldn’t be a pig; he couldn’t be a kite, but at least he could be a caveman.  

He had abstained from “meats” for ninety days, and then in a kind of...It wasn’t a dream. I wasn’t a trance—an experience, if you like, but he saw it: a dream quite right for dynasty.