The Story of Michael

by Damien Dsoul

  As we stood there a sentry alarm went off in the camp. They were coming for us.

  “It’s now or never,” said Hugh.

  At that moment I regretted every listening to him. I should have turned back and ran to the hostel and pretended I hadn’t been a part of this motley crew. But I was afraid. The Masters had detected we were on the run, and they probably would know I was one of them even if I could head back to the hostel and back to my room ... and that’s if I could find my way back in time through the darkness we just came through.

  “Oh Jesus,” one of the other white boi-slave moaned, shaking like a leaf. “What’re we going to do now?”

  “We make a run for it, fool,” Hugh silenced him. “Now come on, all of you! Dig in some balls for once in your slavery lives.”

  He ran past the Iroko trees into the land of unknown with his pen-torch leading the way as he pushed past the thick bushes. The three of us watched him go and then we too followed suit.

  CAUGHT

  The alarm was still sounding off. As we pushed our way through the dense bush I could hear the sound clearly as well as what sounded like dogs baying for our blood in the distance. I couldn’t tell how far away they were, but hearing them didn’t make me feel happy about our chance of escaping. I could hear my heart thumping like it had horse’s hooves and felt at any moment it would burst out my chest and race far ahead of me. I couldn’t make out where the others were in the bush though I could hear trees rustling and knew they weren’t far from me. I was too busy pushing tree branches and whatever else that stood in my path out of my sight, trying to keep sight with Hugh’s torch light which was about the only means of hope I had out of the insane decision I’d just made of venturing into this escapade.

  I heard one of the white boi-slaves make a loud noise and then fell to the ground; he was a short distance from me. He cried out for help; neither of the others cared to stop. I hurried to his aid and he was moaning because he’d twisted his ankle a fallen tree branch. I asked if he could walk and he muttered that his foot was probably broken. I wrapped an arm around him and we kept on pushing ahead with him grunting and groaning every step of the way.

  Behind us the barking of the dogs were getting louder. Their sound seemed to grow nearer and nearer to our position; the fear in me didn’t want me to turn back to find out. I looked forward and couldn’t make out Hugh’s torch anymore. Panic had long already settled in my head but not seeing Hugh’s torch anymore brought it to the forefront. I yelled out his name, told him to wait on us. I don’t know if he heard me and if he did he probably didn’t pay any mind except hurrying to be out of this forest.

  “Ugghhhh ... Auuhhh ... fucking hurts ...”

  The white boi-slave I pulled along wouldn’t stop groaning from the hurt that was his twisted ankle. I should have left him there and kept running. Maybe if I had it would have saved me from what was going to come to me.

  We came into a clearing and I couldn’t tell in which direction Hugh or the other slave had ventured off to. I was turning my head everywhere, my heart and just about every nerve fibre inside me raging with panic and mounting fear. My arm was aching from pulling the white boi-slave along and he wasn’t making things any easy for me the way he kept trying to slip and fall. Behind us the barking dogs were getting closer. I turned to look behind me and saw bright torch lights cutting through the forest and knew it wouldn’t be long before they’d be upon us.

  “Fuck ... we’re fucked ... we’re so fucked ...” the slave kept murmuring to me. It was getting me mad I yelled at him to shut up. I knew we were fucked already, just didn’t need him to keep reminding me.

  I took to the right, figuring Hugh and the other must have gone straight ahead.

  I walked into what looked like a swamp. The ground felt soft under our feet and with the white boi-slave’s combined weight we kept dragging behind and I kept slipping along with him. The barking of the dogs were louder now I could even smell them. I couldn’t see much of anything ahead of me and thick leaves and branches kept scratching at my face, arms and thighs. Then suddenly the ground gave way and we fell into what felt like murky water and it had a fetid smell like a sewage. I lost my grip of the white boi-slave and was trying to flounder in the water, not knowing what I’d fallen into. I was blubbering with awesome panic; I could hear the slave’s voice screaming for help. He was drawing the overseers and the dogs towards where we were. I tried to stand up in the water, I tried to swim, but realized I couldn’t. The water felt thick around me and fear gripped my brain when I realized instead of staying afloat, I was actually sinking - I was in a quicksand. Every effort I made got me to sink deeper into the murky water’s depth. I couldn’t feel my feet except for the fact that I was paddling and kicking out with my legs but wasn’t really going anywhere. One minute I would raise out of the water and the next minute I would sink in. I was moving forward but it was hard work, and since I didn’t know in which direction I was heading to - I was moving like a blind man.

  I heard the sound of men’s voices coming in our direction, pushing through the bush, their feet crunching on dry grass and dead tree branches. Obviously the Black Masters have heard the other slave’s cries and knew where we would be; I could hear the sound of their voices. One of them left off a gunshot. The wild barking of the dogs grew ferocious. I saw lights heading in our direction and still I couldn’t move except struggle in the quicksand which now had me up to my chin. My face suddenly went under and all I had were my hands waving in the air above the surface.

  I held my breath under the murky water, too scared to open up my eyes. Then I felt something fall on my hand and like a man reaching for anything to dissuade death from coming I reached for whatever it was, hopping it would save my life. It turned out to be a rope. Someone pulled at the other end; my face broke out of the quicksand. Now there were hundreds of lights shining down at me. The lights lit the entire scene and just about turned the forest into near daylight. People were chattering all around me, dogs were barking above the mêlée. I wiped dirt out my face and saw two Overseers at the edge of the quicksand both of them pulling at the other end of the rope that I held on to. Two of them were doing the same to the other white boi-slave whom I’d been with and the rest held onto the Dobermans which were dying to take a bite at us and they pointed their assault rifles at us. They pulled me out of the quicksand and let me fall to the ground, gasping for breath, my body covered in mud. One of them stood over me shining a torch down at my face, looking down at me like God about to crush an insect.

  “Where are the other two, slave?” he asked.

  I was still fighting to catch my breath what with the harrowing escape of Death I just had. Eventually I shook my head. “I don’t know, Black Master, sir ... I swear ... I don’t know.”

  “There’s going to be plenty of time for you to swear, white boi.” He sneered.

  He landed a booth at the side of my face. I passed out.

  ***

  My head was swinging from side to side. It felt as if the gods were playing badminton with my brain. My eyes came awake and then closed back again and awake again with me drifting in and out of consciousness. Everything seemed to be upside down. I turned my head to the side and looked up and saw that my hands and feet were tied to a long stick like a wild pig that had been caught in the field. I was being carried by two white boi-slaves, each lifting one end of the stick while I dangled from the middle. My head was still ringing from the kick the Black Master had given me; I tasted blood on my lips.

  We were still in the bush and as I gazed up in the sky past the tree crowns I saw that it was starting to lighten with dawn. I thought about Hugh and the other slave who’d ran with him and wondered if they had been caught as well. I looked to my side and saw another pair of slaves carrying the other injured slave I’d been with; he was still hurting from the pain of his ankle. Other Black Masters followed behind
us.

  First light had appeared on the world when we stepped out of the forest and into the camp. Plenty of slaves, male and female, crowded the path as we walked past them. They looked at us with not a word or look of sympathy from their eyes. I looked amongst the crowd of watching slaves for Eamon and didn’t sight him around, but I reckon he was awake too and knew I’d been caught. As I remained dangling on the stake my mind tried to picture whatever sort of punishment would come to me for daring to escape. I tried to look at where they were taking me to but couldn’t see much. Also the kick the Overseer had landed my face still hurt each time I turned my neck.

  “Alright, that’s far enough,” a Black Master brought our carriage to a halt. “Drop them down and loosen their binds.”

  The white boi-slaves lowered me and the other injured slave to the ground and then cut us from the binds. I lay there on the ground sweating all over and muddy with dirt, feeling the morning sun on my face. I felt weak and tired. This was all a dream, I told myself. I would soon come awake from it.

  Two Overseers came to where we lay and rudely pulled us to our feet and spurn us around.

  We were in the middle of the white boi training field, where we usually had our morning exercise and almost every white boi-slave and bitch-slave in the camp was there to watch whatever was about to happen. Black Master Ghandi stood before us and next to him stood twin wooden contraptions the likes I feel had been in existence back in the 16th century when white men in plantation farms had black men for slaves.

  The contraptions were spherical in shape and enclosed in another round spherical structure with arm and feet locks. It was the identical contraption knife throwers often used in circus when they would chain one of their buddies to it and have it spun upside down and the other would then throw knives to see how well he would hit the bulls-eye without actually harming his chained buddy. Panic and fear pumped into my head and what I reckoned they were going to do to us. I shared at look with the injured slave and he too must have read my mind at what was going to happen to us and he tried to run but one of the Overseers pushed him back with his rifle and he landed on his bad ankle and fell to the ground howling from the pain.

  “Get up, slave!” Master Ghandi kicked at him mercilessly. “Teach you both to try and escape. You’re going to learn what it means to go against my words. Lock them up on the Spinning Wheels.”

  He said this last statement to the other white boi-slaves who’d carried us there. They came and took hold of my arms and marched me towards one of the Spinning Wheel while two others helped the other slave up his feet and did the same that was being done to me. They made us face away from the crowd and strapped our arms and legs to locks on the Wheels. We stood with our arms and feet spread on equal distance from each other. I couldn’t see what was happening behind me but I could hear Master Ghandi’s footsteps. My body was already cringing with what was about to befall both of us; the other slave let go of his bowels and I looked to his side and watched his urine run down the side of his legs. He was feverish with fear. He looked at me, his lips blubbered with fright yet I couldn’t make out if he was saying anything or not.

  “Take a good look at these two white boi-slaves!” Black Master Ghandi boomed out at the gathered slaves that had formed a wide circle and stood quiet watching me and the other slave chained to our individual Spinning Wheel. The sound of his voice made me cringe. He circled around us, pointing his finger at us while he addressed the crowd. “I want you all to take a very good look at these two insignificant dregs of human pettiness. These two, along with two other just like them, disregarded my law against running away from this camp. Last night they did just that. They absconded from their hostel and took off into the forest, thinking they were going to be free. But they thought wrong.” He came and stood before me and the other slave, his eyes burned back and forth at each of us. “Tell me something slaves, did you ever think you could waltz out through the north-east part of the camp and think you’re not going to get caught? Where would you have run off to, I ask? Disneyland? We’ve already caught the other two maggots, and I’m going to teach them the same lesson I’m about to give you both.”

  He indicated at two of the white boi-slaves who’d chained us to the Wheels. They placed something in our mouths - wooden pegs. Master Ghandi unbuckled his belt and let it unfurl into a deadly-looking horsewhip with multiple heads. It levelled off his arm like a lengthy snake and then he came around to our back. Two slaves stood at either sides of our Wheels and began pulling at the contraption, making us spin on our heads and then back up again like we were in a prison circle. There came the crack of the whip and it snapped on my backside. I hollered out but my scream was blocked by the peg in my mouth. The whip cracked on the other slave’s backside and he too scream even louder than I did though muffled just like mine. Still the white boi-slaves kept spinning our wheels and Black Master Ghandi kept on flogging our backsides one after the other. I’d never known anything more painful as that which I was having right there. It was excruciating. What made it worse was us spinning back and forth on our heads, watching the world go up and then back down again.

  Still the whip whacked our backside bringing pleasurable pain. I could feel my skin flaying. Everything seemed to merge together: my yelling cries and the world spinning round and round before my eyes. I was losing consciousness before I even realized it. The peg slipped out of my mouth and fell to the ground.

  I couldn’t have known what happened afterwards, how long Master Ghandi continued to whip us and when he decided to stop.

  Someone doused my face with water. I came out of my unconscious state and coughed out water that had been splashed upon me. I was lying on the ground beside the Spinning Wheel from where I’d been on earlier. My backside felt as if it were on fire and I couldn’t help but scream as I sat up from what I thought was the ground but when I looked around me I saw it was a wide spread tarp on which a riverbed of salt had been laid out on. I wanted to roll off it but Black Master Ghandi lashed the ground with his whip and barked at me to remain as I was. I looked to my other side and my other slave escapee too was lying on his back and moaning. Whether it was from the lashing we’d both had of that he too like me was lying on a bed of salt, I couldn’t tell. Master Ghandi stood there at the tarp’s edge with his arms akimbo grinning at us from behind his aviator shades with the two white boi-slaves, both holding buckets in their hands stood back awaiting whatever command he gave. The crowd of slaves were still there watching the spectacle. The sun was now halfway up in the sky blazing in my eyes.

  “Alright, white boi, get up and be on your knees.” He motioned one of the slaves behind him. “Go douse that other bastard slave and get the fool on his knees too.”

  One of them came around with bucket in hand and splashed water over the other slave’s face. Just like me he too sputtered and coughed and blew water from his face as he came awake, groaning from the bout of pain he felt. Both of us came on our knees and then I saw what Master Ghandi wanted us to see.

  They had caught Hugh.

  I don’t know how they did but there he stood with his arms chained behind his back looking miserable and downtrodden before us with other Overseer’s guarding him. Master Ghandi approached him and swung a punch in his mid-section. Hugh doubled over and fell down to his knees but somehow managed to pull himself back to his feet. A look of defiance lit his face and he stared back at the Black Master.

  “So good having you back in the camp, white boi,” Master Ghandi said to him. “Now, be a good white boi-slave and tell me where the other bastard ran off to. Do that and maybe I’ll spare you the same treatment as what I just gave these other fools.” He indicated at us.

  Hugh, without expectation, did something right there and then that no other slave had ever dared to do: he hoicked and spat on Master Ghandi’s shirt. The crowd seemed to jump back and a murmuring sigh of ‘Ahhh’ went round amongst them at t
he sight of this happening, even I too was moved by what I’d just seen and couldn’t believe Hugh would dare make such an attempt. It happened so fast and nothing ever could take it back. One of the Overseer’s wanted to lunge at Hugh with his rifle in hand but Master Ghandi remained in control of the situation and motioned for the officer to remain where he took off his aviator shades and looked at the sight of Hugh’s spit on his shirt. Dead silence fell on the camp. Everyone stood anxious at what was about to happen.

  Master Ghandi fell his head backward and laughed. His laughter rang out so loud no one knew what it meant. Then just as it had began, it came to a stop and his eyes weren’t smiling or laughing any longer.

  “Finally, here’s a white boi-slave who wants his freedom so badly,” he addressed all of us then turned to Hugh. “You willing to fight for your freedom, slave? Better answer now or don’t speak anymore. You up for a challenge, white boi?”

  “I challenge you,” Hugh said to him daringly.

  Master Ghandi smiled and clapped his hands. “Very well, white boi. I’m going to give you the right to earn your challenge. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to get you out your shackles and have them put on me. If you can kick my ass, then you’re free to walk out of here and take anyone in here you want with you. No one’s going to stop you.”

  “And I can take you by your word?” Hugh asked.

  “I’m a man of my word anytime, white boi. You whip my ass right here and now, and you’re a free man, and neither of my men here will stop you. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Another momentous gasp and murmuring talk travelled amongst the on-looking crowd that was there. They were seeing something happen for the first time - a white boi-slave daring to challenge a Black Master to a duel.