Episode One: Diary
Chapter Two: The African Sideline
The vampires prowl the night away in the streets until Drusilla suddenly stops and wiggles her fingers in the air. She senses something.
Drusilla: I see a man. He is near... oh... dries like deserts.
Darla: Male, near, babble... got it. Anything else?
Drusilla: He walks with the wolves and tears the wool in a pack. But where is the shepherd?
Spike: A bit fuzzy, but hey, got our boy!
Darla: Note to self; lose the crazy, buy crystal ball.
o o o
Africa, sometime during the late 19th Century. A fire dances fiercely in the night's horizon. We notice ebony-skinned men chanting around said intense flames. The elder commands his people to stop, merely raising his palm to them. He looks at one of his men, who then comes kneeling to him right away. As we witness the chief immersing his hands into a cauldron of hot blood, we find ourselves next to shadowy figures murmuring in the far bushes.
The leaves shuffle which intrigues a tribe man, but his worries vanish as fast as they came. The dark silhouettes are commanded by one of their own to move out, and so they do, all the while remaining well hidden. They close in stealthily on the tribe. The beefy black tribe member who kneeled has now been marked in blood with tribal signs. As the chief says something in Swahili, he takes his feather crown and lowers it on the head of the one he respectfully calls Zareb Akuji.
War cries erupted from the wave of slave hunters jerking out of the bushes. Ambushed by all sides, the tribe goes into panic. Guns fire, nets are thrown, tranquilizers are used, whips crack... On the defensive side, the Africans run to the artillery: they shoot tranquilizer darts, get the machetes ready, throw rocks, spears and rocks attached to ropes which break bones as they entangle on the occidental invaders. The westerners torch houses to force those who hide to come out.
A man stands out from the hectic crowd. He grips two whips in his murderous hands and commands the assailants. This intruder's face reminds us of someone we glanced upon before. He is the one they call Whipper. Fascinatingly enough, he bears no patch nor scar going down his oculus. Zareb's thoughts clear enough to make him come to the fact that the man who he lays eyes upon is the leader.
The blood gushes freely, tiny little red drops of rain splashing, soiling the land. It never stops, for the mad swinging of his machete slicing whoever gets in his way is relentless. As he runs towards the leader in a fiery rage, Zareb is shot by one, two, three tranquilizers before he clumsily finds himself face to face with the culprit: Whipper, the leader. This one smirks nastily experiencing no greater satisfaction than when he starts cracking his whip at the drugged man. Rapid, cruel, impetuous slashes, the cuts blankly appearing on his derma as out of nowhere. The whip; his weapon of choice where no other weapon would do. It holds no secret of its control. Dancing the violent combat string into the air, a sudden rush of enthusiasm ran through his entire body As he openly, disgustingly exhibited his obvious apprehension towards the wounded man crawling before him, the one incomprehensibly punished remained courageous all the while, but alas, crumbled down in the dirt, a smoke of dust rising at his fall.
"Ashes to ashes, dirt to dirt... where you belong."
The redneck bastard impishly kicked the sedated man into his ribs as he walked around the body. Before he fully submersed into deep, forced slumber, Zareb painfully looked up and gazed at a woman and child running in the hostile savanna. He smiled at their victorious freedom, but the last thing he saw of his homeland was his family crumbling down to the ground after malicious gunshots were fired. His heavy head hit the ground, his face shamefully hitting soil
Chained like a rat, he dreams nothing. As he does his chores in inhumane and sickening conditions, he barely has the strength nor will to carry on. He did not see freedom in this continent of proletariat; he saw hell. America is hell.
The sun broke down on his back all day as he was obliged to do things no man would. Of all the atrocities that could happen, one toped them all; the slave hunter never left the rich country property to which our slave friend was brought to work on, bought by the owner like commodities. As if to torment poor Zareb even further, one might think he followed him. The slave hunter did not sell his merchandise and leave, for he was also of them so to speak: that Stone family. Whipper was their guest and considered a hero. So long as he would hunt for them, he would remain fed and taken care of.
Inside the main residence and in all the unfairness, the tenants complain.
Matilda: How intolerable this heat has become!
George: Yes, it has! I swear if ever it is to rise again, we'd be nose to nose with the sun, really. It is simply enough to drive one mad!
The front lawn, covering a fair large amount of land, was being labored by the pain-struck slaves, and for three square meters of land, there would be a slave working his life away... and there was roughly a good seventy-five square meters of land for the front lawn alone. From inside to outside, through glass windows which set them apart, they saw but moving things, as the opposite would feel envy, yet a great amount of angst and disgust towards their owners.
Of all the qualities one could have, innocence is the lightest and purest of all. It is a gift, shared by few and gone by adolescence. The young Tommy of the Stone family was smart enough not to let anyone get him to change. Although pure of heart, it was borderline naïveté.
The boy waited patiently for the superintendent, the slave hunter from before, who sweated bullets rocking his chair nonchalantly on the porch, to fetch something to drink from inside the guest house. Backed against the white hangar, he leaned to spy on him. When he finally entered the house, it was the boy's time to take his legs and run... fast! And he did. He ran and jumped into one of the deep holes, backing up against the dirt, hiding. The toiling slave shocked still.
Whipper came out with a glass of water and scanned the field before him for any abnormalities that could have occurred in his short absence. The slave next to the boy was no other than Zareb. He didn't know what to expect but jittered thinking if ever he were to get caught. He'd be to blame, no doubt about it. Stunned, he was... and the slave hunter noticed. He saw his uneasy glare in the distance, and so he fixated him like a hunter to its prey, like a bullet piercing through flesh. The slave tried to work casually the best he could to keep suspicions off of him, but he knew eyes were burning him. He finally let go of eyeing the "worker" when he sat back in his chair, getting back to his post.
Zareb knew nothing of the language of those white men. The anger he had built up, how he was scorned... all vanished looking at the kid hyperventilating from the obvious thrill he just experimented. As for the kid, he grinned and looked at the black man with a wide, genuine smile.
Tommy: Hey! So... you must not like it here huh? Who would? My parents are so dumb to have prisoners. You should be with your family.
Zareb, all the while shovelling, was clueless to the young boy's jabber.
Tommy: Fa-mi-ly, you know.
In the dirt, he draw with his index a matchstick mom, dad and child. And he smiled in a caring simplicity yet again. Zareb was bothered, and not by the silly drawing which he perfectly understood, no, but simply bothered by the painful memories which came flooding in. Tommy acknowledged his pain with the clearest and most sincere facial expression.