Slave's Nightmare

When at last I did wake—gasping, sweating, the iron collar cold against my throat—the first thing I saw was the master’s boots, standing by the door. Polished. Waiting.

Elijah tried to scream for his wife, Sarah, but when he opened his mouth, no sound came out. He reached for her, seeing her standing by the cabin door, but the space between them stretched infinitely. The harder he ran, the further away she drifted, her face blurring until it became indistinguishable from the smoke of the burning fields.

Then, a cool hand touched his forehead.

The nightmare here is the internal struggle to maintain a sense of "I." To remember one's ancestors, to cherish a secret name, or to hold onto a forbidden belief was an act of psychological warfare against a system designed to turn a person into a machine. 3. The Terror of the Auction Block slave's nightmare

He tried to hum the song his mother taught him, the one about the chariot swinging low, but the air was too thin. The darkness began to crush his ribs. He felt his identity slipping away, melting into the nothingness of the wood and the nails. The ultimate horror of the nightmare wasn't the pain; it was the erasure. The terror that his soul would break before his body did.

He looked around the cabin. The walls were rough-hewn wood, but they were not moving. The door was shut, but not locked from the outside—they had a rare master who trusted the lock on the inside, though it was a meager comfort.

Elijah knew the box. It was the coffin-sized crate where they put the "troublesome" ones. A place of stifling dark, where you could not sit, nor stand, nor lie down. A place where you were left to forget who you were. When at last I did wake—gasping, sweating, the

Elijah swallowed, his throat dry. "The box," he croaked. "And the horn. And... I lost you."

I tried to wake. I always tried to wake. But the dream had teeth, and it would not let go. The boots in the boy’s hands became my hands. The lash on my back became my breath. The horn became the only music.

But then, the auction block appeared. He was standing on it, stripped bare. A man in a fine silk coat pointed a finger at him, not to buy, but to condemn. Elijah tried to scream for his wife, Sarah,

For a moment, the nightmare lingered. The shadows in the cabin looked like the slats of the box. The heat felt like the weight of the earth.

He looked up to see the horizon. In reality, the horizon was a line of pine trees and the distant blue outline of the hills. But in the nightmare, the horizon was moving. It was a wall of iron chains, slithering toward him like a metallic snake, rattling with a sound that drowned out the birds.

She lifted a finger to where her lips would have been. Shh. Then she pointed to the corner.