Batta is a fictional character from the horror short story "Winged Death", by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald.
Biography[]
Batta was a domestic servant who worked for Dr. Thomas Slauenwite at the small trading post of M'gonga, close to the Ugandan border. In 1929, Slauenwite coldly decided to use Batta to test the lethality of his hybridised devil-flies, which he intended to use to kill Dr. Moore. On August 10, Slauenwite secretly arranged for one of the flies to get loose and bite Batta. Soon afterwards, he recaptured the fly alive and placed it back in its cage. He gave Batta some iodine for the pain, for which Batta was grateful.
On August 25, Batta started to feel pain on his back, where he had been bitten. One week later, he was already showing signs of lethargy and claiming that "his back aches all the time". Over the next week his condition deteriorated and he correctly guessed that the fly that bit him was a devil-fly. Slauenwite only pretended to treat him, as he wanted to see how the disease would develop. Batta, who believed in the local legends about the devil-fly's ability to "steal" the soul of its victims, asked Slauenwite to kill the insect, but Slauenwite lied to him that it had already perished.
When Batta died on November 17, his consciousness was transferred to the body of the devil-fly. As soon as Slauenwite entered the laboratory, he saw that the fly was acting frantic, but stopped once it noticed the doctor's presence and stared at him "in the oddest way". When Slauenwite returned after dining with Allen, he saw that the fly had beaten itself to death on the sides of its cage. (HPL: "Winged Death")