Obsidian Shards: Afro-Horror Tales

Mitochondrial Assimilation (Long Version)

"They fixing to eat us, they fixing to eat us, they fixing to eat us," Old Maurice whispered to himself. With each slow, creaking step he took, his head bobbed up and down and his entire body shivered. It was so peculiar to see him with his hands wrapped around his body like he was comforting a baby. When I was a boy, Old Maurice looked like a giant to me. He was a mighty Goliath that no man could shake nor rattle, and I respected him for it. Guess thirty years can change a lot.

"I heard some talk 'bout that some years ago from my mama," Samson said to me. "My mama's grandmama came straight from Africa, you know. Story is that fore she was captured, she'd hear adults talk about the white slavers coming round, gathering up all the Blacks and taking 'em off to never be seen again. Mama said in those days, Africans thought that white men were eating us."

"White men do eat niggers," a little boy in front of us said, slowing down a bit to turn back to Sam and me, "Miss June told me. Back when she worked down in Mississippi, she saw them do it. Walked in on a bunch of white folks standing round a table with one a her friends on the table with his body all cut up. And she ran out the room screaming, and they caught her n' beat her n' told her not to tell nobody what she saw."

"She was telling you a story," I told the boy, then glared at Samson.

"It was true!" The boy cried out.

One of the overseers rode up on his horse and shouted at us to stop talking and keep walking. Because of his shotgun, we sped up. But even that gun didn't scare us enough to stop our talking.

"If they ain't taking us to be eaten, then what you projecting they want with us?" Samson asked.

I shrugged, "When white folk ever got a reason to do what they do?"

Samson nodded and added, "But that's the problem. The less reason they got, the worse that thing usually is. I think this is it, Leroy. I think if we don't run now-"

"Keep your voice down you idiot!" I snapped at him. He shut up immediately, and I regretted losing my temper with him. I didn't like being angry, but Samson, Old Maurice, and the kid had all gone insane for thinking we could just talk freely with owners and overseers from the six largest plantations watching our every move. Talking bout white men eating us was risky enough, there was no way in hell that we could even think of gossiping about running away.

"There's too many Negroes out here in the middle of the night, that's undeniable," I began. "But eating us? That don't sound reasonable to me. No, I'm thinking all the bosses got together and decided they need us for some work. Maybe some trees fell when that storm came through couple nights ago, and they need us clearing the roads."

Samson nodded, but I could tell he didn't agree. We'd left the road behind about half a mile back, after all.

Eventually, the popular rumor made its way up to us. Somewhere further down the line was a man that had gone through this before. According to people that claimed to have talked to the people that claimed to have talked to him, the white folk was taking us to some kind of ritual.

"He say God ain't in heaven tonight. He right here in these woods. These white men gonna baptize us in His glory, and God gonna give us freedom and anything we want. Ya'll gotta start thinking of your wishes now, cuz you only gonna get one."

I looked at Joe, the one that had told us all this. The skinny fella had always been good for a laugh around tough times, but was otherwise a rational, straight talking kind of guy. He was one of the few people I felt I could really depend on to use his head. For him to believe something as crazy as that made me wonder if there was some truth to it.