Alive At Crepusculum ✓ [TPL Book One]

XVIII: Eleven-Thirty

By eleven-thirty, the rain was torrential all over the nation. Dark clouds were barnstorming in Bayland looking like puffs of smoke from a feverish smoker. Ships berthed at docks or touching cheek to land tipped and tumbled like on rambunctious open sea. The water below sprayed salt and churned gray and black as harsh raindrops upset the surface. Waves crashed on the rocks or hit the sides of ships with a mighty SLAP.

Despite this chaos, people of the coast were used to this kind of weather. On such days, for some old tradition with long-lost meaning, they consumed bread. This gave coastlanders the description of being moist and crusty. 

Moist, for the obsession with water and playing in it no matter the weather. 

Crusty, for their obsession with toasted cheese on crust for these particularly rainy days. The white part of the bread was used in oily meals and never consumed on its own. God-fearing outsiders called it blasphemy. They said the seaside dwellers were denying the body of Christ.

But coastlanders called it 'the body of crust' and it was not frowned upon. Not in their churches. At least, not as far as they knew, and they didn't know very much. Education was not a high priority in the south. Homeschooling and tutorship were abundant, and the churches taught children about the how the earth began with just a man and a woman committing sin. Kids learned sin was okay because they had God and Jesus, and in the end, everyone went to heaven as long as they didn't kill anyone, at least, not for a good reason.

And so, it came to Lousington, a plantation town southwest of Bayland, at the strike of eleven-thirty on the dot, a gunshot rang out. Sizzling dynamite exploded in a plantation mansion killing all the Arcans inside. Even the children. Roktions slaves shouted,

"Free our brothers and sisters. Kill the Arcans!"

It had begun. Sugar fields, cotton fields, and mansions burned. Startled Arcans leapt from their chairs to grab their guns only to find them missing. Slaves who had no guns used whatever garden tools or kitchen tools they could find. One wealthy man was stabbed in the throat with a fork. Children wailed and babies cried, but everyone died.

As the slaves flocked the streets of Lousington, those with guns stole horses and galloped ahead of the group to Sawyer. The plan that circulated was to not shoot the commoners, but many slaves believed every Arcan was in the wrong. Abused for so long, the slaves were angry. Anger turned their pale skin red with rage and red they made. Blood splattered on walls as they shot the heads of passerby. Police came with guns to shoot down the horses and whip the slaves, but soon a mob was upon them.

"Hang them!" the slaves shouted. "Whip them!"

"Freedom! Freedom!"

As the rain came down to wash blood into the gutters, more and more slaves retaliated after many years of abuse. One young girl turned on her mother master, shoved her into the furnace, setting her on fire. The girl tore off her slave's clothes, gathered up the knives and handed them out to anyone who needed them.

"Snatch your freedom!" she shouted and ran back inside the house to kill the father master and his sons who raped her.

And so, the slaves stormed Sawyer, burning houses, stores, and shooting any Arcan they saw. Child slaves threw rocks into windows. One rock wedged into the eye socket of an elderly man and out the other side. He died instantly as his granddaughter looked on horror bludgeoned to death.

Under the dark sky, pale-white faces of Roktion slaves young and old, men and women, contorted with madness and twisted joy. Water flattened their hair and dripped down their faces like tears. They roared like lions and tore through towns and cities without rest, for they have waited long enough.

No more would they face the whip or starvation. No more would a woman spread her legs for greedy Arcan men. No more would parents be separated from children. No more would they be treated as disgusting objects to use and throw away. 

Each and every one of these Roktions were people and they all believed, as the abolitionists supported, that Arcans had no right to control their lives. 

They were free.