Superstition
I was raised in a Catholic orphanage until I was thirteen. When I was taken from my brother...brought to live among the men who would one day look on me as if I were the Devil himself...this was when I learned about the babalawo.
One of the men often consulted him, this priest of Ifa, one of the deities of the Yoruban faith Orisa. The Catholic priest at the orphanage taught that the gods of the land were figments...they were not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. My faith in God was still strong, then...in a way, it never really left me, only changed as I did.
The man, Heru, he brought me with him once to see the babalawo. He was an unscrupulous man...a reader of fortunes. He took a lot of money for plying his trade, and said only what others wanted to hear. Such is not how the true faith is practiced, but Heru was not what I would call an intelligent, or a pious man...simply superstitious and incredibly paranoid.
The babalawo would consult his divining chain, and by that he would tell Heru what his future held. It was how Heru came to me that fateful day, I learned...boastfully, Heru proclaimed as we sat before the shifty looking old man that the babalawo told him a child would one day lead them all...one as black inside as he was out.
I sat through the ritual as Heru had the Orisan priest read my fortune. He told me that I had scars on my soul...that I would fight a great war, and a great darkness would strike me dead. He told me that after I died, I would rise up again to walk the earth.
The prophecy seemed to please Heru, who gave the babalawo an extra wad of cash for his work. He laughed and clapped me on my shoulder and told me I’d toughen up yet, that soon I would no longer miss the orphanage.
Before I slept that night, I said a rosary on my fingers and prayed for God to save me, to take me back to Yemi. Fearing the babalawo’s fortune meant I would one day rise like a zombie of those who made walking corpses of the living in the outskirts of the villages, I prayed for God to protect me, to save my soul.
In time, I eventually stopped praying when I had no soul left to save.
Years later, I would fight my war against the demons inside me...against the hungry specter of my brother’s restless, murdered spirit.
And a great darkness did strike me dead...I had to face my own past within the shadows of the island ‘monster’, and stare at Yemi’s dead face before the monster I had been could die...and the man I was born to be could rise up.
I know now that I can pray again...because there is no soul that cannot be saved.
Muse: Mr. Eko
Fandom: LOST
Words: 504