Christina

Differences

         "Let's just say he didn't bring you in as a charity case, but you're going to wish he had." I couldn't tell if she was being sincere or if she was just enjoying the fact that she was setting me on edge.
        "How dare you! You have no right to speak of your master as such." I could feel my face heating up as I yelled the words at her, but upon hearing them she simply shrugged her shoulders.
        "I'll send Nat up to show you the house." She turned to leave but stopped to add, "perhaps you'll believe him." and then she was gone.
        I choose not to go back into the putrid room and sat down in the hallway faces toward my pathetic door. I had only been waiting a few minutes before a man appeared down the hall; he wore a pair of beige pants that seemed to have been a moths dinner more than once. While his shirt on the other hand seemed to be fairly well patched but held a color similar to the one residing on my bed.
        "I'm here to show you the house?" He, like Annabel, seemed to not understand the differences between them and I. Yet still I was excited to see the house and he was my ticket to that. So I hid my annoyance and stood up to join him as he began his speech. "This is the slave quarters, the door to your right is Annabel's and th-" it took a moment for his words to sink in and when they did my mind began to race.
        "I-I'm sorry did you say the s-slave quarters?" My voice shook as my mind tried to come to grips with why my room was up here.
        "Yes'm."
        "Why is my room up here then, why did she show me the wrong room?"
        "No ma'ma."
        "Then Why Am I Up Here!?" I was practically screaming at him by now and could feel my eyes blurring with building tears. A few doors in the hallway had begun to crack open so that the people on the other sides could hear more.
        "You really don't know do you?" his voice held a notable sadness to it, and I was scared of what I would hear next.
        "Know what?"
        "The reason your here. Why he offered you the chance to live here. He expects you to work, when we're the only ones here, and act like a trophy for him when he has guests."
        I wanted to both scream and cry but my body stood frozen. "I will not be somebodies trophy! I'm a human being I don't deserve this!" Once the words left my mouth I saw a noticeable change in his eyes.
        His eyes held a raging fire in them.
        "And you think we deserve this! Do you honestly think WE'RE not human!" On the word 'we're' he had waved his arms around and I realized all the people who had been standing behind the cracked doors. Had at some point came out to join us in the small hallway, and in their eyes they held the same look of the man in front of me.