Shattered Happiness
By Hailey
It was bright and sunny and Matthias could hardly wait to leave the cottage beside the harbor to go hunting. As he reached for his bow and quiver full of handmade arrows, a wicked howl sliced through the air. The tomcats were fighting again.
"Matthias!" cried his mother, "hurry up and split up these outrageous animals before they maul each other to death."
"Yes, Ma." Often times, Matthias just thought it better to leave the two nasty cats to their fighting so that one would either win or lose and the fighting would be over. As he bent down to pick up one of the cats, he saw big white clouds out of the corner of his eye. For someone at the age of twelve seeing the big white sails of a ship would seem awkward to someone who had never seen any before but Matthias took it as a sign; a sign that something bad was going to happen. Continuing with quick, quiet haste, Matthias scrambled through the brush and retrieved an arrow from his quiver. Pulling on the string and preparing to take aim with an unsteady hand was very difficult but Matthias' breath gradually became rhythmic again and he was able to shoot the buck right in the heart.
Soaked in sweat from running, Matthias' clothes stuck to his scrawny body. Out in the distance, he could hear screams of terror crying for help. Dropping the buck from his shoulders and running once more into the brush, Matthias was horrified to hear a gunshot ripple through the air. Behind him, he could hear footsteps moving at a fast pace and catching up quickly. Matthias dashed in and out of thickets, around trees and through ditches but nothing could take the stalker off of his heels.
Throughout the trees came more sounds of crying and yelling and gunfire. Unsure of the not too distant future, Matthias just kept running. As he rounded a corner, a big, burly object stepped in front of Matthias and he ran right into it.
"Hold it there, fella. Where do you think you're going?" inquired a booming, gruff voice.
Matthias struggled to come to his senses. Looking around, he realized that his family was sitting in a circle, blindfolded in a little clearing. There was Kitty, Ma, Pa and Johnny. Unanswered questions floated in and out of Matthias' mind. "Who are you? What do you want? Is my family okay? You didn't hurt them…did you?"
"Uh…boss? This kid wants to know who we are. Can I tell him?" requested the loud hairy man.
Across the clearing, a tall man with dark hair and broad shoulders nodded jerkily in the direction of Matthias and the bulky man. "Go ahead, Aken," he replied confidently.
"We're slave traders, aren't we boss?" informed Aken as a toothy grin spread across his wide face.
"Yes, we surely…"
"You're what? Slave traders? But I don't want to be a slave!" cried Matthias.
"It's not whether you want to be a slave or not, son. It's the fact that we need slaves and you just happened to get lucky," the boss laughed cruelly.
A few days later, with nothing to eat, Matthias and his family made their way down into the hold of the ship with big white sails. It stank. Along with rats scurrying around the bottom of the giant boat, large white eyes stared at Matthias through the darkness. He shivered as the hole in the roof was covered with a trap door that screeched as the hinges slid into place and the latch was lowered. It concealed all of the chosen slaves in the dirty, dusty darkness.
One hundred bodies, essentially, should not fit in something so small at the bottom of a ship that echoes the darkness around it. Howling with terror and sadness, Matthias made his way back to what he thought was the rear of the ship and stiffly sat down. All around him death seemed to acquire a liking for the elderly and then a figure standing beside him swiftly collapsed. Matthias screamed. All he ever wanted was to grow up free. Now these black slave traders had to snatch him from his life and shatter all of his dreams. He was only twelve; he wanted to live his life out in the world with family and friends away from all of this. Matthias didn't know why white people were shunned upon. Determinedly, wanting to know why, he made up his mind that he was going to figure it out. These men stole his freedom and he was going to steal it back.