Caged Bird Screaming

Fear

"I'm not a Negro you hear me." Harriet laughed drunkenly. "I am the mistress of this household." She laughed again and twirled her hair around her fingers. She sat on a chair in the drawing room staring straight ahead as if she was talking to someone. Problem was there was no one there.

"No. No. No." She stood up and began moving away from the chair. "Don't touch me! Don't come near me. Oh no...Don't you dare!" She began screaming and fell to the floor trying to cower away from the unknown person in the room. "I beg you don't come near me. I'm the mistress. I'm not a Negro!" Some slaves came running in to see what the fuss was about. "Stay away from me! I said stay away from me." She began crying and kicked one of the women who dared to come close to her. "Stay away from me witch!" Harriet screamed. She grabbed a flower vase from a nearby table and threw it at the woman. The woman skilfully ducked as the vase spiralled in mid air before crashing to the ground breaking into hundreds of small fragments.

The woman looked at the other slaves in confusion. She didn't know what to do. They could either tell the master what was going on, or they could leave their mistress on the floor.

"What do we do?" She asked. The slaves shrugged.

"Let's leave her alone. She said she wanted to be left alone. We have to obey her orders." One of them replied as she turned on her heel and left the room. The others followed behind her. The woman shrugged and looked Harriet in the eye one more time.

"Yes mistress I shall let you be." She walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.

Harriet trembled and began to convulse as she sank further and further into darkness. She screamed but no one heard her. She tried to escape from the black hole. She tried to run but the darkness caught up with her and swept her off her feet. She could see nothing but black. She could feel nothing but emptiness deep down her soul eating her, devouring her slowly, savouring her weakness.

She could feel her body break apart crumbling into ash. She could feel the bones in her body snap like a twig in an instant, suddenly disjointed and removed from their rightful place. Harriet jumped when someone heavy dropped from nowhere onto the ground beside her. She sat still not knowing what to do. She waited for the object to move. She waited for something to happen...nothing did happen. She grunted and moved close to the object. It didn't take long for her to realise it was child lying in a foetal position.

Harriet touched the child's head and screamed when it rolled over and looked her in the eye. Its mouth was open, its face deathly pale as if in excoriating pain. Its blue eyes pierced her own and its small body seemed to cave in like a disfigured, contoured, mangled sculpture.

She tried moving away from the child but her legs refused to budge. The child's skin started to stretch and weaken, like a dry worn out leather. Its bones poked out of the thin layer of skin slowly and painfully making the child's face twist and turn as if it was being overtaken by a satanic spirit.

Harriet's knees felt damp and for the first time in her adult life, she feared she had wet herself out of fear. She looked down. It wasn't urine that made the bottom half of her dress wet; it was blood flowing out of the child's chest.

Harriet moved away from the child when it began to decrease in size and turned into a foetus. She covered her mouth in horror when she realised who the child really was. Flash backs of the events that occurred the night she lost her child came rushing back. Harriet's knees began to weaken and she collapsed on the floor. It was her child. It was the child she had miscarried that lay on the floor before her in its pool of blood.

"Oh God. Oh God." Harriet said over and over again. She said the words over and over again hoping somehow, someone would hear her and help her escape from the nightmare she was in. It didn't matter how many times she called out to God. He didn't hear her.