Audio editing by Austin Colwell
35 Days Before They Disappear
We kiss our families goodbye. The family that won’t come with us. They cry, and do not understand why we are leaving. Our grandmothers give us baked goods for the road but sob when we go. He told us it would be this way. Some just aren’t open to the idea that there could be a better way of life. One that frees us. But we are the brave ones. We pack what we can carry and leave our world behind. We trade our homes, jobs, and neighborhoods for His promises and hopes of Hamelin.
30 Days Before They Disappear
Unpacking is easy. We hang a few pictures and unravel blankets that still smell like home, tucking them into the corners of our bunk beds. We make the most of the small rooms. The mothers scrub the white walls and cover water stains with family portraits. They sweep the floors to reveal another layer of grime and scrub till they need to sweep away the residue. They plant vegetable gardens on the porch that will sprout when the weather warms up. The only issue is the rats. It is snowing in Hamelin even though it is spring, leaving the once-hibernating vermin confused by their internal clocks. The rats burrow into our cornflakes and saltine crackers. We get creative in how we attempt to get rid of them. They die for a little splotch of peanut butter.
We wake up to the sound of the 9:00 whistle. He has taught us the importance of gratitude. Every morning we are allowed 15 minutes to prepare ourselves and our families for the services. The children meet under The Tent for their lessons, and the adults gather at The Centre. The Centre is simple. There is a single altar, a pedestal and no chairs or pews. By 9:45, the room is glowing with shards of red and yellow from the sunlit mural of Him playing His piccolo and dancing with the children. He sings, we dance. He speaks, we cheer. He exists, we thank Him.
14 Days Before They Disappear
The snow begins to melt, exposing a layer of muddy sludge. Hamelin is coated in muck. Even the rats leave little tracks on our floors, like guests that forgot to take off their shoes. The sludge clogs our drains as we rinse off our boots and backs up our drainage system. The air goes from earthy to pungent, and the mothers teach their children to cover their noses with scarves as they wade through the thick mud to morning sessions.
7 Days Before They Disappear
Some of us start to leave. We whisper, Is this really what we left for? Some of us miss the people we left behind too much to stay. He arranges a meeting to tell us that we are free to leave if we want to. This convinces most of us to stay.
The rat problem gets worse, and we discover they are blind and deaf. They can only navigate through scent. We watch them run into one another, blinded by the potent, muddled air. This gives us some sympathy towards them, although they will continue to chew holes in our walls and wake us up with their scurries at 2:00 am. We start removing the coils from our peanut butter traps.
A woman who lives alone takes in two orphaned rats and begins to treat them as children. Rumor is she’s widowed and her children sent her to Hamelin as a free alternative to an elderly home. She names them, sings to them, and tears her bed sheets to build them nests.
3 Days Before They Disappear
He tells us there’s something coming. He’s been dreaming about the music; a single note, F#, when he is in the state between waking and sleeping. He tells us, It is a sign. We are going to fast and have a three day service. Today we begin by giving up our food. A mountain of bread, eggs, and fruit accumulates on the altar of the Centre. We have faith, but some of us keep a few crackers for safe measures. The woman who lives alone hides a peanut butter jar underneath a loose floorboard. But the rats, blinded by their noses, migrate to the thin walls of the Centre. Her children leave her, and she cries.
That night, we sing for hours. We take our boots off at the door and line them up against the wall. Our knees and foreheads kiss the beige, carpeted floor. He leads our prayer. His fingers cover the first four holes on His flute. We all cry in unison.
The Day They Disappear
We haven’t seen the rats for days. Their silence makes us question their existence.
Today is the day. He tells us He feels it; something vibrating in the floors and buzzing through the walls. This time when He plays, we screech. Like a single creature, we breathe with no inhalations. We only need the sound. It will sustain us. We will drink and never thirst. We will be filled past being filled. The sound reaches an intensity that quakes our bodies. We don’t realize we are dancing, as much as we don’t realize each other’s convulsing bodies.
We do not stop singing, humming, dancing, feeling.
We do not hear ourselves, our deafening wails.
We do not see our children, sleep-walking through the sludge.
We do not smell the rats, rotting in the walls.