Songs for this chapter are:

I've been...  - Andy Mineo

I'm fine - Gawvi

Bed of stone - Asa

Closer - Goapele

Cassandra

The sliding door rumbled up. Behind the man's silhouette, the ocean's broad expanse glistened in the moonlight. He must have pulled over at one of the many open beach access turn-offs along the highway. I don't know how far this stupid journey must have been, but I knew I was very far away from home now, and I was in a lot of danger because I was on my own.

I had passed out during the journey and mostly slept off to catch up for the oxygen I'd been deprived of for a couple of horrifying minutes.

During my sleep, I dreamt that I'd been home and a police officer had caught this monster, gunned him down, and had taken me home to my parents. I remember thinking how tantalizingly close to freedom I felt when I saw the ocean as if there was no way that some thick ropes could keep me from just fleeing out onto the beach and into the dark of the night. But of course, they could. And besides, I was dreaming. I wasn't even anywhere close to home.

And even if I'd slipped the ropes, the man was over six feet tall and of good shape, so he would be able to stop me quickly. What power could a nine-year-old possibly have? He was capable of shooting me because this man seemed to have no heart at all.

I was getting sick to my stomach, thinking about what was going to happen next. I couldn't see very well in the darkness, but suddenly, I heard a dull whacking pop. I had a strong feeling by the moonlight that he'd shaken out a new plastic garbage bag.

He put it straight over my head.

"Stop," I yelled, which was stupid because I knew at my age that nothing I said was going to stop him from doing whatever he wanted to do to me.

I struggled under the bag as the man unwound a length of duct tape. In a quick motion, I felt the tape wrapped around my neck so that the bag's black plastic suddenly tightened over my head. I couldn't breathe. I started thrashing around the ropes, trying to get the load off, but I couldn't.

Out of sheer panic, I was nearly incapable of breathing at all, and I wasn't strong enough to burst the plastic with just my lungs as I'd thought of. I started hyperventilating inside the bag.

I felt the man's massive hand on my shoulder

"Open," he said.

I had no idea what he meant. His voice was calm.

"Open," He repeated the word just as he'd said it the first time, like a dentist about to examine someone's teeth.

I opened my mouth.

I felt the man grab my chin. Suddenly the plastic around my lips and teeth tightened.

I felt him push something into my mouth through the bag.

The plastic stretched, and finally, it burst. Something salty and rough grazed the surface of my tongue.

It was the man's thumb. He'd punctured the bag himself, so I could breathe.

He pulled his thumb from my mouth, and then I heard him stand and step away.

I did my best to catch my breath. It wasn't easy to get enough fresh oxygen from the relatively small hole as I'd been suffering from a lack of oxygen for practically the whole day. I didn't even know which was worse; having particles of dust restrict your breathing pattern or having a garbage bag accumulate all of the carbon dioxides you breathe out hence making you take in the same air you've breathed out.

The air inside the bag was already warm and moist. My hair was dampening with sweat and clinging to my eyes.

The minivan's sliding door rumbled down and slammed shut. The engine started.

*
I saw his face at last. He wore a faded bandana. A silver handlebar mustache covered his lips almost entirely. His sleeves looked like they'd been cut off decades earlier. His cargo pant pockets, bulging heavily, were filled with ammunition.

Then I'd realized that the only reason I could see his face now was that we were already at the strange place. The place where he had planned on taking me to all day; this place was the reason we had passed through the oceans, the rocky hills, and steeply roads, that was why I suffered for hours without end, suffocating and struggling for any kind of oxygen I could get.

I don't know how many days I must have spent being in the minivan, gaining consciousness for a moment and losing it the next due to dyspnea, but it must have been roughly five days.

I was hungry, weak, smelly, and highly fatigued. The monster hadn't even considered giving me any drop of water talk, more of a spoonful of a meal.

When I'd opened my eyes sleepily to get a view of the face of the man who had held me captive for five days, I was scared, but I had no strength to flinch, neither did I have the might to pant. I sat still at the edge of the minivan, hanging my head sideways as it rested heavily on the right side of my neck.

When my eyes had slowly gone down to his bulging pockets full of ammunition, I knew there was no point fighting or trying to regenerate any strength in me that no longer existed because I knew he was going to shoot me or stab me or strangulate me to death without having to flex a bicep forcefully.

This was my fate. I had to take it as it was.

The area was so enormous, wide enough to constitute a colony of its own. It looked like a palace, a vast accumulation of royalty, justice, and everything pleasantly imaginable; pillars adorned with topaz, onyx, and sapphire, queens, and princess decorated with jewels of ruby and gold.

Only that this place was the exact opposite, where people gnashed their teeth and faced inexplicable pain under the sun's harshest rays, I knew this was what this place was like already without stepping my feet into it.

Approximately five meters away, I saw a massive field consisting of several crops; maize, yam, barley, and a few other carbohydrates that I could see. I could spot enormous weeds growing amongst the crops as well, but these things didn't move me until my eyes fell upon a group of grown-up people who wore similar clothing, more like a uniform that looked soiled and stained. Maybe it was the sun scorching hard that had prevented me from not seeing the faces of these people, but their faces didn't matter either until I was able to see what they were doing.

They were uprooting the weeds with their bare hands. I'd seen another one of them wipe the sweat off his forehead for a second, and I'd seen another one pause for a while to inspect her palm as though there was something weird in it. I couldn't tell because I was standing far away from her.

My mind subconsciously went back to the graphic illustrations in some of the nursery and primary school textbooks that I'd read in the past of people who looked similar to the people I saw now. I remembered how I used to cry a lot on getting to know what these people went through. Some of these people were burnt to death while the rest were bound in chains, tilling the earth under those chains; going through extreme pain and discomfort.

These people were slaves.

I adjusted the way I had sat, my posture had changed now, and I could feel some of my strength resurfacing, adrenaline rushing through my system, making my palms extremely sweaty. I was suddenly no longer tired or weak, nor hungry, when I had realized to my extreme horror that I was going to be one of these people.

I'd turned to the monster next to me. His body was resting on the minivan as he dipped one of his hands into his pocket, holding a cigarette in the other. Then he pulled out a pistol from his pocket.

I knew this was the end of it for me, so I screwed my eyes shut till my eye sockets began to protest painfully against my eyelids until I'd heard him cock the gun and fire the bullet. I had expected to find myself on the floor, clutching on to my chest in pain, or holding on to limbs or to wherever part of my body he must have shot until I slowly opened my eyes on realizing that I had felt no pain whatsoever.

When I'd opened my eyes fully to see why he had pulled the trigger, I flinched this time around, wishing he had shot me instead because what I'd seen was worse.

He had shot one of the slaves, and before my eyes, I'd seen a fragment of his skull being dismembered from his head, then he'd fallen right onto the field afterward, his head tilting to the side as he fell.

Blood was oozing onto the portion of the grass where he had fallen upon. The other slaves who were uprooting the weeds earlier on had continued with their work, as though absolutely nothing bad happened, as though someone had not just been murdered at this very second. They didn't even flinch.

While I didn't know when I'd screamed on top of my lungs and had begun to cry, I turned towards the man beside me, and he'd dipped the gun back into his pocket and was now inhaling the smoke from the cigarette and puffing it out through his nostrils.

Then he spoke. His voice was spirited even.

"When next you gasp like that, you'd be the next to have your brains blown out. You don't scream here when someone dies. The dead are to be forgotten and ignored. When a murder happens before your eyes, act like you didn't see anything."

" How? W-why did you sh-shoot him?" I asked amidst my sobs in a whisper, afraid that he'd hear me, but he'd answered me anyway.

So this was why the other slaves had acted as nothing had happened. How could they have been such perfect actors? This must have occurred severally before their eyes, and many slaves must have been rendered scapegoats to the others; dying in vain just like this slave had passed, and once any of the other slaves wailed or flinched, he'd died too. What on earth was this?

"That bastard has been busy smuggling food from the borders of Cotonou, and he's been slacking. I've been watching him closely and, I decided that I will kill him for the slightest reason because I let the significant reason slide. He doesn't work hard for the amount of money his pauper of a father owes me even though he smuggles food.

He just eats and eats and then wipes off his sweat every minute of work like some pregnant woman. Such a person isn't useful and is unable to work hard for the loan which couldn't be refunded. Hence I had to get rid of him. In life, if you refuse to be valid, you become useless automatically."

How did he expect the slave to work so tirelessly without looking for a means to eat. I couldn't blame the slave for doing what he did because the monster had starved me for five days, and I'm still at awe as to why I'm still alive.

"Now, don't ask me any questions. You're going to become one of them, and you can ask the fellow slaves; I don't care about anyone, so don't think because you're a child, I'd let you go scot-free once you become naughty. I'd shoot you straight in the head just like I did to that guy, and no one would act as they had just seen you die. They would ignore you and forget you just like that guy."

A shiver ran down my spine as he'd uttered these threats to me. I covered my mouth, ensuring my sobs remained unheard for fear that he'd shoot me, but my eyes were teary, full of fear and apprehension, uncertainty and aggressive anxiety. The guy that just died was a scapegoat for me to learn from. Hence I knew there would be no more of such warning for me any longer.

I would be the scapegoat to someone else the next time.

Now he'd pulled me by the hand, dragging me into this Broadway of Hell under the daylight. A place where I was going to abide as a slave for reasons I knew not of. But it was my fate. I was here to suffer from the slimmest chance of ever getting out of here alive if I ever get out of here. It was my fate allotted to me to suffer and be damned forever. I was far away from home now, with absolutely no one to save me...

**

The building at the center of the massive field was magnificent, in all honesty. The walls and pillars within were high, spirals of stairways cascading from the top of the demarcation to the ornate floors. Bright chandeliers hung from the tops in silvery and golden dynamical aesthetics. All I could do was move my head.

My eyeballs were turning sideways and round, upside and downside, since I was held captive by trepidation. The monster had tied my hand and my legs in ropes, and I was brought to my knees, struggling and wriggling to free my limbs from the strings, entwined and with a duck tape wrapped around my lips.

Then I'd heard his footsteps, then the clicking of a stick against the marble floors. Then I came face to face with him, his physique standing in between the light radiating from the chamber ahead. This man was ugly. There were so many scars across his face, more like souvenirs from grotesque fights. Fights that I'm sure must have been from victims trying to defend their lives and those of their loved ones.

He was so ugly that it scared the living daylights out of me, and I'd felt the urge to cry.

Before he could utter a word, a woman in her fifties, dressed corporately in a suit and skirt with a pair of stilettos, had hurried up, standing next to the man with her head bowed, which made me wonder if this man was a king or something. What sort of system was this? This was some authoritarianism at its peak.

"Take this girl to the prison yard and lock her up where the other slaves are. Make sure she's dressed in a uniform that suits her body size. Don't give her food, not even a spoon whatsoever. Make sure food doesn't get to her when you share amongst the other slaves," he instructed the woman, and she nodded in obedience.

"Yes, your majesty." She gave a bow and then turned towards me. She went on her knees and peeled off the duck tape sealing my lips.

Then she helped me get on my feet. There was no way I could move on my own since my hands and legs were tied heavily beneath the ropes. She propped my back with her arm, following me every step of the way as I limped, struggling hard to move my limbs at all limping.

My lips were charred, and a slight crack on my lower lip had begun oozing blood. My stomach was grinding against itself, churning loudly, desperate for some nutrient. I felt like I'd been sliced in half by an electric fan at warp speed.

And my heart? It was sore and heavy. I'd felt my heart do funny things that I had so desperately wanted to clutch onto my chest to stop whatever was going on, but it aches so badly, maybe it was aching from the intense disappointment from the fact this, after all, wasn't some nightmare. It was real.

Why me? What did my mother do? Why was I going to be a slave for no just cause? Why was I there? Why was I not in the arms of my brothers and sisters or my dad? If I was at home now at this time of the day, I most likely would be disturbing my brother David asking for what we would eat for lunch. Since he loved to cook a lot, I loved to watch him prepare meals. I had this little exercise note I would use to write about the ingredients I could recognize. The ones I could not recognize, I would describe them in the ways they looked to me and in the easiest way in which I could remember them.

One of the ingredients I had described as a light bulb turned out to be onions and I could remember the smile on my brother's face that afternoon as he pats my head, telling me how important onions were as an ingredient, hence I had to know it by its name.

Never did I think for a split second that one day, I would wish to see my brother smile again because I thought I would get to be around him forever but I was in a cold place now. Far, far away from home.

The woman who was walking next to me had said nothing at all and behind that bland look on her face, I could tell that she was sad; pitiful even. I knew I could ask her a few questions without having to fear what her reaction would be. She was a woman and most likely a mother so she was compassionate. Whatever it was that must have brought her here, then she had no free will nor foresight to prevent it from happening; just like me.

"Ma, how often do the slaves here get food to eat?" I asked shyly, as we had now approached a chamber, I could not possibly figure out how I had gone up the stairs with ropes encircling my legs but I guess it was thanks to this woman walking next to me.
"The new slaves here don't get food to eat for the first ten days after their arrival. His majesty starves the new batch of slaves for this period to know if they are capable of hard work and long-suffering. If any of the slaves fall sick during this starvation period, his majesty kills the slave, deeming him as unworthy to labor."

A jagged pain shot through my abdomen. My stomach churned louder. I wish I could squeeze some of the folds on my stomach to get a hold of it and to stop it from grinding so violently.

The woman and I shared a short gaze then she cleared her throat, acting like she hadn't just heard that.

"Why does he do this? Why do these people work for him? Why do you call him 'your majesty'? Does he rule the whole world?"

Now we'd entered the room in the inner chamber. There were wardrobes of different sizes and colors; racks and stacks of clothing of fine silk and embroidery; robes, linens, and taffeta. I was guessing these clothes belonged to the monster. As I looked around, I had realized that this place was filled with nothing but wardrobes. It must be the dressing room.

"Look kiddo, I am in no position at all to answer your questions because I'm in the same state as you currently are; even worse. All I would say to your question is that we ought to regard him as 'his majesty' because it's what we ought to do. Everything that happens here ought to happen according to his will. Anyone who objects dies. We are made to follow his domain because it's what we ought to do. We have been made to do so. No opposition," she said in a whisper for fear of being heard. She adjusted the half-moon glasses on her face and heaved a stifled sigh. "Now let's get you dressed in your uniform," she continued quickly.

I had badly wanted to know who she was and why she was here but I had to accept that this was no place to satisfy my curiosity or ask all of the questions that came to my mind. Things here were best left unsaid and insinuated...

**
It was an old, dampened dungeon in which I had been locked in; with a minimal hollow square for a window, allowing the light to peep into the dewy, secluded place. The area was void and dark. My hands were now bound by handcuffs, with their chains linked to the bars segregating me from the other dungeons.

I began to sob. I wanted to go home. I missed sleeping in my bed. I missed my dad and I missed my mummy too. I wasn't too sure if I missed my mummy any longer, though, because the loan shark had mentioned her name to me in a way that had aroused my suspicion. But I still did miss her. I missed my neighborhood. I missed the last elating moments I had experienced just before the minivan pulled over. I missed the wind I felt slapping through my face, making my eyelids watery as I ran. I missed the neon sign inscription on the mart that I had seen just before I suddenly could not get to see it any longer.

I never thought this day would come when I'd begin to miss the minutest things that signaled home. It felt like my childhood had been stolen from me forever and I would never get to retrieve it neither would I ever retrieve the feelings and benefits that came with being a child; the innocence, the mirth, the freewill, the stubbornness, the sheer inquisitiveness. I would never get to feel or do any of these things again.

I looked down at the brown, ugly pinafore I had been made to wear and I looked at all of the bars close by. My eyes darted to the other slaves who wore the same clothing as mine and sat behind those bars like I did; they were hopeless and seemingly irredeemable as they clustered together, each trying to get a slice from the meager piece of meat that had been served to them.

No one in their right senses would eat an improperly cooked piece of meat but what choice did these have? It was a matter of survival.

The film of tears over my eyes blocked my vision for a moment. I sniffed hard.

My stomach churned.

It'd been six days now and I had gotten no food whatsoever to eat. I had four days left before my tongue would come in contact with anything edible. I was excruciatingly hungry but eating did not seem like a pleasurable activity to look forward to either because I would have to share some disgusting meal with the other slaves who were older than I was and would most likely use that factor to cheat me out of my share. I couldn't blame them because they had to hustle but it was a hustle I knew I couldn't win.

I just might never get to eat after all so I would just die from starvation since I could barely even move due to weakness and dehydration.

This place was worse than a prison yard.

And in a few minutes, I would be made to work in the fields just like I had seen the other slaves do. The field was the place where the sun scorched the hardest. How was I supposed to do any work at all, uproot any giant weed amongst the barleys when I hadn't even had a drop of water go into my system at the very least?

How could I possibly survive this? God, where are you?! Please come to my rescue! I'm dying here!

A few minutes had passed by, my head was hanging limping to the side. I'd stopped looking at the other slaves. There was nothing I could do to help myself. I knew I couldn't beg them for a piece from the food they were eating. I couldn't cry out to be let loose either because that would be pointless.

The next best thing for me was to try to get some sleep and then wake up to the same excruciatingly painful feeling of hunger. At this point, the churning had stopped, and all I could feel was a sharp pain across my abdomen.

"Hang in there," I said to myself. I closed my eyes, praying to God to, at least, grant me the luxury of drifting away from this world, and started dreaming of running into my father's arms, letting his warmth seep into my body using his heartwarming embrace. I needed an escape from my reality badly.

I had only closed my eyes for a few minutes when I heard the jiggle of a bunch of keys, then a screeching, assaulting sound of the bars being opened, causing friction between the iron bars and the ground. I opened my eyes to face my nightmare.

The same woman who had taken me to the dressing room to get into one of the uniforms was the same woman who was here to get me.

It was time for me to work.

It was nearly impossible for me to get on my feet so she held me by the hand, pulling me slowly to help me get on my feet. She'd unlocked the handcuffs from my hands and had now chained them to my legs. My hands needed to be let loose since I was going to be making use of them.

The grasses and crops on the fields outside were an array of green and yellow colors. More like a bright yellow topping on a slimy green surface, which was disgusting to imagine but it had looked like that because of the sun radiating brightly on the fields. As I glanced around, I'd seen the other slaves trooping out of the dungeons in groups.

It was time for us all to work.

What was all this?

"That place is your portion. You should be done before seven o'clock," the woman instructed me as she pointed towards the section where yam crops were planted and amidst these crops were the tallest set of weeds I had ever seen. Now I understood why she said I had to be done before seven o'clock in the evening.

It was that monster who had given us that order because he knew for sure that five hours would never be enough to uproot all of these weeds with our bare hands or even if five hours were enough, the lack of stamina within us would make it extremely hard for us to keep working. Besides, these weeds were taller than I was! How was I supposed to conveniently uproot them?
A tear dribbled down my cheek as I dragged my feet towards my portion, the grasses nearly brushed me in the face, paving a way as I tried to move. The woman followed closely behind.

Just who on earth was this woman?

When I'd finally gotten to where the yam crops were, the woman turned to leave just like that. I don't know what must have made me imagine that she'd give me a farm tool to use in operating the weeds instead of leaving me to use my bare hands or that she'd tell me I was exempted from the other slaves since I was still a kid but she had left me to myself, as she approached the other slave's scattered across the field.

I had to get to work.

I didn't know what made me jolt but as I'd bent down to get a grip of the weed's roots, an arm wrapped itself firmly around my waist, and in a swift motion, I'd been pulled backward, My buttocks landing on the bed of grass that carpeted the ground.

And the weed I'd forcefully uprooted? The uproots had left the sandy leftover landing on nowhere else but my face but thankfully, I was able to wipe them off swiftly.

My mind was reeling, my heart was pounding hard, and my eyes had begun tingling with tears.

I'd turned only for my eyes to meet with a guy's. I didn't know what to think. He wasn't wearing one of the slaves' outfits so I knew he wasn't from here.

Oh, God! I wasn't ready for this! I was already a slave so I didn't get how someone would be trying to kidnap me again. I stared at him in fear, but he said nothing. His arms remained wrapped firmly around my waist as he sat behind me. His mien was calm but I was still very scared.

I was going to lose it very soon but I needed to know what was going on before I did.

"Who are you?" I asked him.

****************
Psalms 55:12-14 - "For it is not an enemy who reproaches me; then I could bear it. Nor is it one who hates me who has exalted himself against me; Then I could hide from him. But it was you, a man my equal, my companion, and my acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked to the house of God in the throng."