Rats. Screaming and scurrying. Searching frantically for food. Eating everything that they could and then moving onto the buildings, then people. Savaging children and babies and making nest in men’s hats and woman’s clothes overpowering the speech in the streets and making the people of Hamelin despair. This continued until the people, while weakened and encompassed in the misery created by these rodents , made their plight known to the mayor, who, decided, that there was, nothing, that he, the mayor, could, possibly, do. Through the flying doors appeared a strange hooded multi coloured figure colours burning the mayors eyes with their ferocity a bone flute to his lips pressed the mayor instantly spellbound to this magician of music.
I am the answer to your rattish problem my lord.
What? Who are you?
As I said previously my lord, I am the answer to the problem of this town.
How did you find out about the rats?
Sir. I have been around the world searching for those i need of my talents; I freed the Japanese of their dragons and cleansed the mosquitos of England .Give me a thousand gilders and it will be as though the problem had never existed.
One thousand? If you’ve done what you say you have done and get rid of the rats I will give you fifty thousand gilders.
Done.
Bone flute resting on his hips he walked past the broken doors, away from the stunned leader of Hamelin and out onto the road. Moistened lips. A breath of cold air. A glance at the starry sky. A neutral tone emerged from the end of the bone flute, gradually building in complexity until its tone became indescribable to the on looking populace. But the rats understood. Screaming and scurrying. Searching frantically for the source of the sound, they ran to the multi coloured man who, kicking a boy out of his way, then at pace ran away from the village towards the river Weser. Where all rats jumped. One survived.
I was promised food and drink to my fill. That the rats should rejoice as the world had become one big larder that we the rats owned. I’m the last rat. I’m the only rat.
Laughing hysterically at the state of the sodden rats corpses the man started his journey to a cave to spend the night, he did not eat. Or drink. For why would a person such as he require such sustenance. He would return in the morning to the village, collect his reward, and then be free of pain, free of need, until his service was required somewhere again.
Rain poured down upon the town of Hamelin but even this could not keep back the celebration. Their scourge had been appeased. The children where happy beyond words as they ran around screaming in excitement, searching for food and sweets to celebrate with. A congregation appeared including the mayor and other elders of the village. All where smiling as though their wildest wishes had dreams had come true. Upon a rooftop another figure had emerged.
People of Hamelin. We are finally free of the rats! Go to your homes and houses, clear the nests and repair the holes. We will never be under the control of these vermin again!
I hope you have my money my lord.
What? Who said that?
The solution to the rats. The reason that they are gone!
Ah yes you.
Do you have my thousand gilders?
You see what we agreed in council was hasty, instead of a thousand let me give you fifty?
Sir do not go back on your word so easily.
Well either take it or leave it, your job is done and you've nothing to make me give you the sum for which you ask.
Then my lord mayor, heed my warning, I will return, and you had better be ready for when I do.
The figure of colour faded into the darkness, as though he were one with the nothingness. The mayor however knew that nothing could come from their meeting, for what could a man with a flute possibly do? Days passed and the mayor forgot about the strange, many coloured man. The village of Hamlin became a normal community where the children were looked upon by all as the joy and life of the village.
A figure emerged. Dressed in black armless hooded hunters clothes. Dripping red fluid as he walked. Contempt spread across his face. Pain visible in his eyes. And the bone flute at his bloody mouth. They had done this to him. Fluid lips. His life blood fuelling his flute. No breath was needed as a cry emerged from within. The sweetest noise followed, and then, so did the children, their parents tried to beg them to stop, but, the music stopped all motion for them. Parents paralyzed and with smiles of joy cut. Across their faces, the children were happy and so followed the sweet sound until they saw the musician, his flesh decomposing as he moved. But they only saw the deliverer of their promised dream. Away the children danced in the road, the demons lure pulling them along. The eyes of every adult in Hamlin stuck on the sight of the hunter garbed figure, corroding, melting away, and revealing his true nature. He was not the answer to the village’s problems. He was the scourge.
Up the streets danced the children along up to the river where they stopped. Looking into the Weser’s waters only to jump and skip on up the path to the mountains. As the children walked up the mountain path they heard the music splutter and begin weaving pictures in their minds of tree’s in full blossom and fruits floating through the air to them, of a wondrous life where no wrong could be done and that their happiness was all that matterd in a world of dreams. The path they were walking on had become dark; the darkness was creating a tunnel to a place below. They were losing control; deep in an emotionless slumber they were walking, dead to the world with only the lucid dream created in their minds to comfort them.
They stopped, though the children knew no difference, and the thing before them blowing into his bone opening a gapping cavern the darkness clawing towards them. Death was at hand, he made the children march into the opening; these would be his payment, his reward. He would drain them and become himself again, able to walk the earth once more until someone else refused him of his payment.
He forgot one boy. One small boy with a limp. A boy kicked by a man with unusual strength while walking out the town with rats on tow. This boy had walked behind his friends, the dream was not real to him so he had stopped listening and hobbled along at the back of the exodus, watching with wonder at the stages of the pipers physical state, how the man had started looking like a man just ill, then the skin had melted away and muscle had fallen as he was walking, playing the bone flute, his clothes forming a cloak while all that remained of the man was his bones. As the procession moved into the darkness the boy had stopped, knowing who it really was who had taken away his friends. The boy watched as the death took his friends into the cave. Staring back at the boy stood the skeleton, his bone flute in its hand, while a cacophony of screams emerged from the cave. After a second they ended. The skeleton however was changing, muscles winding around its body, organs bulging in between, beating as his movement returned, skin then covering the corpse. The clothes had changed into a many coloured garb. And as the boy started walking backwards the paralysis of fear leaving him, the figure put a long finger to his lips and disappeared.
The boy never saw any of the other children again but the memory of death haunted him, knowing that one day he would have to meet him again.
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