Antebellum (28 page)

“Ain't no use in stoppin' now. Gots to be strong, Roka.”

He turned his gaze away from her and moved up a half step to my knees. Again, he curved his back into an arch, and flung himself forward, breaking my kneecaps.

I screamed in a voice that was unfamiliar to me. Roka's log may as well have been an axe. It felt as though every limb he hit was coming off. I began moving muscles I didn't know I could, trying to get away from him.

The two slave men standing near my head grabbed me by the shoulders, and Roka threw the log off to the side. Thinking it was all over, I let my head fall back onto the bed and my eyes close. My screams came involuntarily.

Suddenly I felt my arm being raised. I figured it was to help move me to another position, and the agony I felt from my waist down prevented me from looking to see what was going on.

A firm hand ran up and down my arm until it found the spot where the previous break had been. Two hands then grabbed my arm, one on either side, and yanked it in opposite directions. I heard the snap over my own screaming.

By the time Roka had gotten over to my other arm, my eyes were already starting to roll back. I was covered in sweat, and my heart was beating fast enough to power a small engine. The breaking of my last arm came over me in a wave, like jumping into a swimming pool. The agony washed over me like ocean water on a beach.

My screaming came in short bursts because I was having a hard time catching my breath. I began seeing two of everything, and then three of everything, and strange colors flashed in front of me and disappeared into people's faces.

“It's time! Quick, put 'is head back!”

I felt the two slave men grab my head and try and pull it back so that my mouth would open. Aunt Sarah stood over me with her new concoction. My vision and my coherence were fading fast.

The next time I opened my mouth wide enough to scream, she poured the thick liquid into my mouth. The slave closest to her
slammed his palm down over my mouth so that I couldn't spit it out, and I swallowed it all in one gulp.

There were a few things about my new medicine that became immediately evident. First, it had a taste that would cause a tongue to jump out of its owner's mouth. Second, it numbed my throat as soon as it went down. The liquid seemed to hit my stomach, and then expand itself slowly throughout my entire body, like a peaceful fog. I realized I wasn't hearing myself scream anymore, and I could barely hear anyone else. I also didn't feel any pain whatsoever. There was a strange tingling sensation in my arms and legs, but the agony was gone. I began to giggle as the effects of Aunt Sarah's potion became stronger. People's heads began to blow up to huge sizes while their necks, chests, and legs shrunk, making them completely disproportionate. At first it was just the slave man that was closest to me, but soon enough, everyone's body had been transformed into these hilarious balloon-headed figures. I laughed so hard I began to urinate on myself. I would have tried to explain to them why I was laughing, but they wouldn't have understood me.

“Dis happen right?” Roka turned again to Aunt Sarah.

“Yeah, Roka, he on 'is way. He be fine.”

The disproportionate people surrounding me continued to stare at me as I laughed, and then their skin began turning different colors. Roka's marble skin turned canary-yellow as I stared in wonder. Aunt Sarah looked as if someone had painted her in the brightest orange paint they could find. Bennie, Nessie, and Liza turned off and on like lightbulbs, alternating between green, blue, and red hues. I stopped laughing and covered my eyes as their skin grew increasingly brighter, as if they each had a bomb inside of them waiting to explode.

“You're too bright!” I tried to yell out to my observers. “You're hurting my eyes! Turn it down some!”

But all that came out was a mouthful of gibberish.

The light from each of them had gotten so bright that it began to burn through my skin. I looked down at my hands and saw the skin disintegrating from my fingertips. When I tried to look up at Aunt Sarah, her light shoved my head back down to the bed.

I was dissolving into nothingness. The dust that was left of my fingers blew around the room and disappeared. By this time, I could feel my arms and legs beginning to turn to sand and blow themselves around the room as well. I tried to scream out again, but the light had stolen my voice. When all that was left of me was my chest and head, Aunt Sarah walked back to me. She placed her hand on a shoulder that was almost gone and leaned into my rapidly disintegrating ear.

“Remember what you promised me...”

And then, in the last hurrah of the storm, an explosion of flurries blew themselves all around the room, and when they settled, I was gone.

I couldn't remember how I'd gotten here, but I was glad I'd arrived.

The Platinum Palace club was one of the most lavish I had ever seen, and I'd seen a lot of them. This one set itself apart, though. The door to enter the club was one-sided glass. Everyone inside could see who was trying to get in, but no one outside knew they were being watched and laughed at until they were permitted to enter. Tiny diamonds ran along the outline of the bar, as well as the tables in the VIP section, and there were plasma screen televisions that adorned the walls and showed a constant stream of provocative music videos.

None of that was what made the club so impressive to me, though.

I had just finished the last performance of my “Hoes In Da Attic” Tour, and I'd killed it. The crowd was crazy, the music was on point, and the energy in the stadium was so thick you could pour it on your pancakes. I came back on stage for two different encores, and even after the second one, the crowd stayed for another half-hour chanting my name, hoping to get a third blessing. People were already starting to call my show the best they'd ever been to on their Facebook and Twitter pages.

I didn't think things could get any better, but it turns out I was wrong. Deez Nutz Records had rented out the club, the Platinum Palace, to hold my afterparty. Without my knowing, they had directed the club owner to set up a motif for the venue that would celebrate the “Hoes In Da Attic” tour.

The entire club looked like a pimped-out cellar. Instead of chairs, everyone sat on shiny trunks that seemed to be lined with diamonds. The ceiling had been blocked off in a V-shape, to resemble an attic. Their were four large sets of stairs, two on either side of the space, that were set up to look as though they led to a lower level. Each set of stairs had a woman dancing on it that would give the most experienced video vixen a run for her money. There were cobwebs made of tiny silver chains and diamond spiders sprinkled randomly around the room, and there were golden storage boxes that seemed like someone had just tossed them and let them fall where they may.

It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I just couldn't remember how I'd gotten here.

I was drunk before I realized where the VIP section was, and by the time I got comfortable, there were four empty bottles of expensive vodka decorating the table in front of me. I looked around the spinning room to tell Brian to go and grab another one, and I realized that he wasn't here. None of the crew was here. Neither was SaTia.

“Wh...wait...where did...how did I...?”

That's when I realized there were three women around me. All of them had on little more than the tops and bottoms of lingerie sets, and the three of them together were enough to make a man cry. The first one was dark-skinned. She had an hourglass figure with more time at the top than on the bottom, short hair, and skin that glistened in the dim light. The second woman was brown-skinned, and had more time at the bottom than on the top. Her weave fell down to the small of her back, and when she flung it over her shoulders she looked like she was doing a shampoo commercial. The third one was light-skinned, and as close to perfect as I'd ever seen. Her curly hair fell to her shoulders, and her hourglass was as balanced as a scale.

The women crowded around me, and wouldn't let me move. They grinded on me and used their tongues to tease my skin. I was confused, but my hormones outweighed my distress. The light-skinned one stuck her tongue in my ear, and what inhibitions I had disappeared. When the women saw and felt my reaction, they stood up with smiles on their faces and led me to the back room.

I hadn't even noticed that there was a back room until they guided me toward the doors. Following the motif, the entrance looked like the folding doors of a closet. Had I had the use of all of my faculties, I would've known that this was no ordinary closet. Alcohol, having already taken its effect, however, I truthfully expected to see a small room of coats and scarves when we walked through. Instead I saw a large room with enough drugs in it to land us all in a federal prison.

“Hell yeah!” I drunkenly yelled out as the three women continued to lead me to a couch in the corner. A sober part of me heard my drunken outburst and warned my brain of just how stupid I sounded.

The three women lay me down gently on the couch, and then proceeded to slowly peel their lingerie off piece by piece.

I'd been in situations like this before. I'd been in hotel rooms full of video chicks who were either stimulating themselves while anticipating some action from me, or starting the party on the labia of one of their friends. I'd had more sex than a porn star.

So I couldn't figure out how I could be so enthralled with these women. I literally could not take my eyes off of them. Every paper-thin piece of lingerie that flew by my face made me less and less in control of myself, and before any of them had actually touched me, I had already moaned aloud and glued the crotch of my jeans...and it still didn't help! I was so aroused my breathing became short and I broke out into a sweat. Confused, embarrassed, and believing I was going to have a heart attack, I turned my head to compose myself.

The most perfect of the three women walked up to me and grabbed my chin. She turned my face until I was facing her, and then kissed me deeply, allowing her tongue to do jumping jacks in my mouth.

“Don't worry, Nigga,” she said as she pulled away from my lips. “You can have every part of us, any way you want us. You'll never run out of it here...”

The other two women joined her by my side. All their clothes were off as they took turns showing me the parts of themselves that they wanted me to enter. Some guttural sound released itself from my throat as I exploded again, while slamming my hand against the couch repeatedly.

“Don't waste anymore, daddy,” Brown-skin said. “We only getting started.”

She reached down, unzipped the fly of my jeans, and began to reach into the abyss.

That was when I heard another woman clear her throat.

It stood out because it didn't have the tone of the other voices in the room. Hers was softer, more innocent. Even with a hand snaking itself around my genitals I had to look up to see where it had come from.

She was standing ten steps away, but directly in front of me. Her eggnog-colored skin and blonde pigtails seemed to shine through the darkness of the back room. She was as white and innocent as anyone I'd ever seen. Her yellow sundress with flower prints going around it swayed as she clasped her hands in front of her and rocked herself back and forth. Her ocean-blue eyes provided their own light. She could have stepped off the cover of a greeting card—leaving behind her mother to take apple pies out of the oven and place them on the windowsill by herself, opting instead to step into this den of sinfulness just to do what? To see me...

I signaled for all of the other women around me to leave as I kept my eyes focused on her. They seemed hesitant, but after sharp glances and a shove or two, they finally moved. Innocence stood staring back at me, bashful but visibly excited. I motioned for her to come to me, and she approached me slowly. When she was close enough for me to smell the sweet shampoo she'd used in her hair, I held out my hand and she sat down on my lap.

“What's your name, sweetheart?” I asked.

“Umm...I guess you can call me Miss.” Her slight Southern drawl altered the words she spoke. She twirled the end of one of her pigtails with her index finger and thumb.

“Miss, huh? Well, Miss, what brings you up in here?”

She giggled before she answered and turned her head away. “Umm, you, Nigger...”

I shrugged off the unintentional insult. She obviously didn't know what she was saying.

“Me, huh? What you tryin' to do, babygirl?”

“This...”

She reached through the open zipper of my pants and pulled out a prize. My eyes fluttered like butterfly wings. She smiled sweetly and climbed off my lap and onto the floor, stroking me the entire time.

“O-M-G! I cannot believe I'm about to give The Nigger head!”

I started to say something, but she shoved her mouth down on me before I could utter a complete sentence.

“Said...ahh...my name wrong...mmm...”

She went up and down like her neck had a motor in it. When she finished, she giggled again, and climbed up on my lap and began to slide down on my instrument.