Freedom?

Chapter 2: It gets worse

Chapter 2: It gets worse

 Days went on; more people came and put in the cages. Most of them were men, women, and young children; like Zuri and Maalik. I started to recognize some people, like my old friend, Safiya, back at our village. We have known each other since we were babies; she helped me take care of Maalik and Zuri when my mother was very ill. 

“Safiya! Safiya!”I yelled through the bars of the cage to where she was.

“You there shut up! There is strictly no yelling here!” I kept yelling to her wishing that she would just turn around! Crash… the whip right in front of my face

“I thought I said no yelling!” The whip strikes again but this time closer. That shut me up; I backed away from the bars.  

“Kami?” I heard a whisper. I turned around. Kai! Safiya’s little sister.  She’s about the same age as Zuri but she’s soo adorable!!  She has dark brown skin and chocolate eyes. “Kai” I whispered back. “How are you? Are you__”

“Safiya? Where is she?” she interrupted. She looked really scared. I didn’t know what to tell her. You can’t talk to your sister because the guards aren’t letting us talk to her. But I can’t tell her no.

“She’s other there.” I pointed to where her sissy was. “But don’t ye__”

“Safiya! Safiya!” Oh no! Shhh…. But the guard didn’t turn around. It looked like he was dealing with someone else. Safiya turned around. There was blood streaking down her face. Oh my gosh…. They whipped her. Not once but twice.  She looked at me and then at Kai and then at me again. And then she burst into tears. I felt really bad for her.

“Safiya, are you ok? What happened?” I asked. I couldn’t really comfort her since we were in different cages. Kai started whimpering next to me. I would be the same if Zuri was hurt in a different cage, away from me. Poor Kai. Poor Safiya.

“Zuri, why don’t you play with Kai and make her feel better?” I asked Zuri. By the way if you haven’t figured it out they untied us so that we could move around.

“Hmm…sure. Come on Kai.” Now I have some alone time to talk with Safiya. Oh I hope she talks to me.

“Safiya, please tell me what happened.” I wasn’t expecting an answer just that she would hear that I’m worried about her.

“They whipped me.” Well I got that far. “I was trying to some food for Zhair.” Oh ya. Zhair is Safiya’s baby brother. Well he is really a baby, he’s 2, but needs a lot of food for him to grow. But why did she get whipped for that.

“I got whipped because I stole some food from them since they just walked away laughing.” Whoa. Did she just read my mind or what?  More days went by in a blur; we were given little to eat, just like Safiya said. I begged the guard to give a little more to the young ones, but he just laughed and walked away. Guess who was the guard who laughed?  Yep the one who works for the whites! People were dying all around us. I was even more afraid. What if we get sick? The cages were filthy; we weren’t able to get out of the cage to walk around or anything. More and more people were but into these cages there were about 400 of us in total. What do they want us, what did we do to them?

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The next day, I saw people being boarded on a big boat. I was watching as people were getting on. It didn’t look that bad. Looks better than where we are now.

I met someone who speaks both languages. He has dreamy brown eyes and a dreamy name, (its Travis…he’s 13. He said he’s name is American and his ‘master’—whatever that is—gave it to him) he’s really strong and… sorry, the point is that he works for the bad guys. I turned around to see what happened. I saw a women struggling against one of the guards. I tried to see where she wanted to go. SPLASH! “My baby, my baby he’s gone! He’s gone!” Sobbed the woman. The guy threw her baby off the ship! Now I’m terrified! What if they threw Zuri off or Kai! They can’t swim! We need to get out of here and now! But how the only way what was through the door—the point of no return. And it was locked.