Crack! Another lashing. Another scream. Another snigger from Salem. “Give me another one!” he commanded.
I have to escape this hell! Even though I have been branded, even though I cannot escape my past, I am as good as dead in this place. Hell has already showed itself to me as this plantation at Mont Royal, and the devil himself is Salem Jones. The persecutor, the executor; the man that is slowly destroying our souls. He is the rot slowly eating away at the life of the slaves at this plantation.
Slaves. I look up at the sky and wonder how such a thing can exist, how I could be the property of another human, another being that calls himself a man. A man that has the power of God-the power to kill and to sustain life. What a cruel, cruel world! I have to escape this place.
Where shall I go? Who in this mean world would help a wretched slave like me? What can I d? Wait! Semiramis always talks about the beautiful white lady Madeline Lamount at Resolute, the plantation next to ours… Could she possibly help me? Could she be at the door that leads to my escape?
Even though the answer is probably no, I have to reach her, I have to try. What do I have to lose? My escape could either mean freedom or a quick death, and my stay can only mean a slow and excruciating wait to die as a slave. My quick heart beat was telling me I had already made my choice; I knew I had to escape that minute, that very second. My body shot out of bed, and I was outside under the safe cover of darkness.
I don’t want to live in darkness anymore, I want to be free. Free from the shackles that bind me. Free from the whip that keeps me down, free from the word ‘slave’. Madeline has to be the light that saves me. She has to be the beautiful ray that gives me hope, a slim desperate chance to grasp my freedom. As I ran faster away from Mon Royal, the sound of Salem’s whip is fainter and fainter and my blood runs warm. My blood, the only reason I am a slave, warmed me and urged me onto my freedom, on my only hope of living as a free man.