Notes: In will honesty you don't have to read the first part but it will add to the context in the main story.
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Thomas was ten when he remembered he was a slave plantation owner.
Children were all taught, always, what reincarnation was. Taught like walking, everyone knew, it was a simple fact of life. Like bright pop songs, children would sing the possibilities of what they previous lives held. Almost like pirate treasures they digged.
He was no different.
New York was the place where one could be a new man. You are a face in the crowd and to beg that no one would recognise you and force you into the pedestal in the spotlight.
He was just that, working at least three minimum wage jobs as, taking the New York streets as a teen, in and out of school. Not that they had nothing to offer, he already knew this. Knew that, and this and that. Spoke too many languages, and seen too many things.
So the guilt of always seeing the red Virginian hills drip behind his eyelids drove him to the city he once help found.
He was ten when he woke his single mother up from a chilling scream in a chilly September.
The American Department of Reincarnated Peoples would pick your name and spin you a tale based on paper and ink.
He was ten when the sound of whips and blood flooded his sense so much he couldn't breathe. The sense of time is lost and you drift before it unfolded, an awareness that he has never felt. It like a fire that set your brain into a rain hell of fire.
He doesn't know what else to do but to scream like an animal being strapped down and being gutted alive. His mother, so scared and petrified, only pulls him into her lap and starts to sing a happy tune.
He really doesn't know what happening or why his mind was made of abstract and bright lights.
So he remembers as his hands- other hand, too different- hold so much blood. As women fall under and he can't stand to watch.
He wakes up as was a supernova behind his eyelids and he can't stop the vomit that burns his throat. He is no longer Tomas Jackson- even when he will legally change it in many years to come- he is now Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father of the United States, Slave owner, rapist, murder.
So he cries in the shoulder of a woman he knows is his mother, as her voice is in your ear. He takes comfort in her voice, unbelieving deep and beautiful, as its vibrate echos the center of his ribcage.
Even if it drive away the bad memories just for a few hours. Even when years later the self-hatred will sometimes him over the edge.