My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola

in this doorless room who was ill-treating me like that. Immediately my eyes opened there I saw about a thousand snakes which almost covered me, although they did not attempt to bite me at all. It was in this doorless room which is in underground I first saw in my life that the biggest and longest among these snakes which was acting as a director for the rest vomited a kind of coloured lights from his mouth on to the floor of this room. These lights shone to every part of the room and also to my eyes, and after all of the snakes saw me clearly through the lights then they disappeared at once with the lights and then the room became dark as before.
    After a few minutes later that these snakes disappeared, there I saw that this doorless room changed to a pitcher and unexpectedly I found myself inside this pitcher and at the same moment my neck was about three feet long and very thick, and again my head was so big so that mylong neck was unable to carry it upright as it was very stiff as a dried stick. Another two eyes which were as big and round as a football formed and appeared on this head and both eyes could be easily turning anywhere that I liked to look or see and I did not know where my normal eyes which were on my head before went. But as I was in this pitcher then all of these ghosts were visible to me and at the same time all were knocking the big head with sticks, but I had no hands to defend it because only my head and neck appeared out from the pitcher.
    After some minutes they left knocking the big head, but I began to feel hunger as if I had not eaten anything for a year, so when I could not bear this hunger I started to cry out—“I want to eat.” And immediately I was saying so there I saw on my front the food which I like most or which was exactly the same as the kind that my mother was always cooking for me in my town before we left. But as it was on my front my head could not reach it as my neck could not bend anywhere as a dried stick, of course when I tried my best and overturned the pitcher the head fell a little distance from this food instead of touching it, but as the neck was unable to bend or move the head, and the head was also too big for the neck to lift up, I tried all my power to touch the food more than thirty minutes before my mouth could reach the food and when I was about to start to eat it my mouth changed again to the beak of a small bird unexpectedly, but the food was still in front with its good flavour. When this beak disturbed me eating the food then I wanted to cry because I was feeling hunger as if I would die soon, but I cried out like a small bird instead of a man and whenall these ghosts that surrounded and looked at me as I was trying all the while to eat the food heard my cry as a small bird’s cry all laughed at me at the same time.
    So after I had tried all my efforts on everything and failed, then I was thinking in my mind that it is better for me to die now than to be in punishment like this, so immediately I finished these thoughts the beak disappeared together with the food and there was a mouth as usual and without hesitation I was moving together with the pitcher along the floor of this doorless room, but I saw nobody who was pushing me on and also all these ghosts which surrounded me disappeared unnoticed. At last I found myself where several roads meet together, the place was about one-third of a mile distant from their town, but all these roads were foot paths. After I moved to the centre of these roads by an invisible mover then I stopped. It was an open place, except the bush which spread on it. There I remained till the morning without seeing a single creature.
    When it was about eight o’clock in the morning all the ghosts and ghostesses with their children of that town came to me with two sheep and two goats and also with some fowls. Having reached there the first thing they did was that the whole of them surrounded me, then all were singing,