The Headmaster sat at his desk in the dark of his bedroom, brooding over his New Year's Resolution. How was he ever going to do this?

Was it his imagination, or was the room even darker? Looking around, the Headmaster couldn't identify any actual difference, but it somehow seemed darker. After a moment, he identified the issue: it wasn't the light but the sound. The muffled sound of his wife and her guests listening to the Times Square celebration of the New Year had vanished.

"Are you seriously determined about your New Year's Resolution, my young man?" came a still small voice.

The Headmaster was having serious doubts now.

Nevertheless, when school resumed after Christmas Vacation, the Headmaster announced his firm New Year's resolution to return education to strict conformity with the Bible.

"You are all upstanding young men, and your Teachers and Masters are upstanding Christian... men... and the Lord bless you all."

"`Let there be light and there was light'," said our science teacher Dr. Westheimer, out of the blue sky and green pasture during class. "This passage from Genesis refers to the Big Bang."

I nervously lifted my hand. "Yes, Clarkson?" said Dr. Westheimer, giving my last name.

"Genesis tells us," I couldn't help stammering. Terrified, I pressed on, having to push hard. "The earth was created before `Let there be light.'" I paused to breath and compose further words. "Astronomers say the Big Bang made all matter as hydrogen, and everything else come into existance only after, like, uh, formed from hydrogen, by stars."

Dr. Westheimer was leaning forward, visibly discomforted, and I was scared of getting into trouble. "Thank you, Clarkson. Yes, McPhearson?" Dr. Westheimer indicated another student, even as he perceptibly darkened and deepened bit by bit into shades of purple and blue.

"According to astronomy, the earth was created along with the sun, a star itself -- closer to the present time than the original creation." He spoke with more strength and resolution than me. Dr. Westheimer headed to his desk while the second student spoke.

"Thank you. Meanwhile", he wavered, definitely changing, and not merely his color. "Read Chapter 18, and begin the assignment once you've finished. I'll put it on the whiteboard."

After reading that chapter, I copied the assignment on the board into my notebook, and began work. I finished right at the end of class, and handed in the assignment as I walked out of class. Dr. Westheimer had by now developed the purple-and-blue form of a thin girl with sparkly stars, patches of light blue-green crossed with stripes of white, and blue and purple layers of hair extending almost to her waist, also speckled with stars. Her eyes had grown huge, wide, and pointy.

Wednesday morning, we always had Chapel before the first period of class. We began with a hymn, followed by Notices and Admonitions. This time, our Headmaster stood at the podium.

"Proverbs 16:20 Whoever gives heed to instruction prospers, and blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD." This Proverb is of critical importance. A few of us have undergone surprise transformations. Unwanted as they may be, remember to trust in the Lord. One of our teachers, Master Westheimer, has undergone such a transformation himself. Remember, in whatever form he may occupy, he is still your science instructor."

I sort-of fogged out, or forgot what followed. The next thing I remember was this: "We must recognize the sheer importance of Isaiah's prophecy of the Christ. The State of Judah was surrounded by warfare on all sides, and itself was under the threat of warfare. Despite this immediate threat, Isaiah prophesied the event that would occur around seven hundred years in the future: the Virgin Mary would bear a child and call him Immanuel. While his mortal name was Jesus, Yeshua, or Joshua, he was in full reality Immanuel, `God with Us', the Son, the face of the Holy Trinity present among us.

"It must be thoroughly understood that the Lord's sense of importance may not resemble humanity's sense of importance. Humans tend to view the immediate situation, while God, the All-Knowing and All-Wise sees beyond the immediate into the future." The headmaster seemed to be twitching and shifting, while trying to maintain his pose and posture.

"I shall now turn over the service to Chaplin Johnson." The headmaster turned away, leaning forward, visibly uncomfortable, and left the stage.

"Gentlemen," said Dr. Westheimer a couple weeks into the term. By then, *she* was resigned to her new form and *we* were resigned to a blue-and-purple apparent anime teen girl, wide-eyed and very pretty, teaching science. "I am exceptionally pleased to announce that a student has volunteered to give his first term presentation. Regenbogen?"

The student strode up and wrote "The Rainbow" on the whiteboard and faced the audience.

"The Rainbow," began the student. "This is about the bow that we often see in the sky when it rains. The rainbow appears in the Bible, given as a promise after the Flood that God would never send such a flood again."

"... Green, blue, and violet have a progressively greater index of refraction in water, and all are greater than red's. That's why their light-rays are bent more. The index of refraction is about 1.3, and the variation is in the next digit."

Um, what was happening to the speaker? Was it my imagination, or was he turning a faint sky-blue as he spoke?

"The outgoing rays go in different directions. For the light to hit your eyes, different drops have to reflect different colored light into your eyes." He drew the red light hitting an eye. Then he drew another circle, but this time the green light hit the eye. "That's why we see the rainbow, with different colors in different directions."

My imagination was really working overtime now. His eyes seemed to grow out wide and end in points.

"... It doesn't matter how far the raindrops are. They could be rain up in the sky a couple miles away, or they could be mist sprayed in front of your car as a truck drives by. What matters is the direction of the light scatters from the raindrops into your eyes."

By now, I knew it wasn't my imagination. His hair was growing out, fluffing up, and turning multicolored -- the colors of the rainbow, in fact. I glanced around to see others apparently mesmerized by his change.

"Sometimes, one can see a circular rainbow when walking by a sprinkler. It's the same phenomenon."

"... And *that*, my friends, is how we get the rainbow. But what the -- questions, anyone?" he brushed green and yellow hair from his eyes, his piercing voice having risen about two octaves. Nobody answered.

He -- or was it she now? -- was only a head shorter, but a whole lot thinner. Her rainbow hair extended down in back almost to her waist. Her black slacks had turned rainbow-colored, as had her open jacket, and her white blouse was decorated with rainbow lightning bolts. Her skin, what was visible, was a light sky-blue.

The student returned to her desk, muttering something barely audible about something very wrong. "Psst Regenbogen," whispered a student as he passed by. "Are you supposed to be Rainbow Dash?"

Another student gave a speech about Judas's betrayal of Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, and the prophecies thereof in the Old Testament. The speech consisted mostly of passages from the Bible.

Matthew 26: 14, 15 Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, and said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.
 

Matthew 27: 3-5 Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? See thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.
 

Matthew 27: 6-8 And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day.
 

Matthew 27: 9, 10 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy -- that's how Matthew called Jeremiah -- the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; and gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me.
 

Jeremiah 19: 1 Thus saith the LORD, Go and get a potter's earthen bottle, and take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests;
 

Jeremiah 19: 6 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter.
 

Jeremiah 19: 10 Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee.
 

Jeremiah 32: 6-10 And Jeremiah said, The word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Behold, Hanameel the son of Shallum thine uncle shall come unto thee, saying, Buy thee my field that is in Anathoth: for the right of redemption is thine to buy it. So Hanameel mine uncle's son came to me in the court of the prison according to the word of the LORD, and said unto me, Buy my field, I pray thee, that is in Anathoth, which is in the country of Benjamin: for the right of inheritance is thine, and the redemption is thine; buy it for thyself. Then I knew that this was the word of the LORD. And I bought the field of Hanameel my uncle's son, that was in Anathoth, and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver. And I subscribed the evidence, and sealed it, and took witnesses, and weighed him the money in the balances.
 

Jeremiah 32: 15 For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land.
 

Zechariah 11: 12, 13 And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.

By the end of his speech, the speaker was a dark metallic girl with dark metallic clothing and flashing sliver hair. His eyes matched his hair.

I realized much later how his change had pushed aside my own confusion about the Jeremiah passages and their connection with Judas's betrayal of Jesus.

Late one afternoon when I returned to my dorm room to prepare for dinner, I couldn't help gawking in amazement and arousal at the girl, hyper-attractive with her pair of five-inch-long inch-thick fangs extending far below her chin, large pointy ears that kept twitching, and claws at her fingertips.

It took a few seconds to recognize the young, um, person there as my roommate, his own features underlying the catgirl's, who appeared perhaps eleven, twelve, or at most thirteen. "Not you, Al," I said.

"I spoke about felines in Biology today," she said, her ears twitching at random. "That's when this happened."

"So how old are you now?" I asked, unable to think of anything else at the moment.

"I'm fifteen," she said with a snarl. "I've lived for fifteen years, so that makes me fifteen years old. Don't believe the nonsense that fifty-year-old man who gets a three-year-old body is three years old."

"You're body isn't a three-year-old's," I said stupidly.

"You know what I mean."

As the end of the semester approached, Al asked, "Do you think our Reverend Headmaster is... expectant?"

"After all this?" I'd noticed a distinct bulge in his waist as well. "Should anyone be surprised? Maybe it's an immaculate conception. Perhaps whatever did this implanted a uterus in him."

Heed well, Ladies. The Devil can read the Bible as well as you.