Indebted (working title)

Bound (Part 2)

"Wow!" Amobi said, examining his hands, skeptical that someone could deduce his profession by signs he himself had never even taken note of. "Care to tell me what you did before all of this? I'd just embarrass myself if I tried to guess based on your hands or something."

"I hunted," Ekon said, hoping that his eyes did not denote that there was more to the story. These days Ekon found it hard to think of hunting without thinking of men like Shakale... and men like his uncle, Kofi, back home who preyed on their fellow man like Ekon himself preyed on the beasts of the earth. There was a time when the renown he'd earned with his skills was a good thing, and the work he did brought him pride, but not anymore. Afterall, it was that renown that had landed him here and that pride had been replaced by shame.
Amobi, not noticing Ekon's internal conflict of emotions, smiled and began to say something before being distracted by a conversation that only he could hear. Focus crept across his face as his gaze went skyward. Directly above Amobi and Ekon's place in the hold, two men discussed a captured woman and a man who'd scarcely been seen by the prisoners below. The man was the captain of this ship, William Melody, and the woman was the latest in a long line of victims he'd pulled from the female section of the hold.

"He's making a mistake with that one," said one man in a voice that Amobi thought sounded particularly youthful.

"Do you want to be the one to tell em' that?", Said the other man, who Amobi was fairly certain was the ship's chef.

"You know that I don't."

"Then don't!", Said the chef. "Trust the captain's judgment."

"I do!" The younger man insisted, "I just don't trust her, there's something about her... she's dangerous."

"They're all dangerous, and if you wanna keep breathing, you shouldn't trust any of em, and you definitely shouldn't tell melody you're questioning him; it won't end well for ya."

"I'm not questioning him!" said the younger man, his voice cracking as he issued his protest. "I've seen her looking around the ship like she's searching for something, she isn't like the rest of them, she's got... this look. I can't put my finger on it. She shouldn't be allowed to walk around up here".

"Louis," the chef said, his voice wrought with both sincerity and aggravation. "You have to let this go, in two weeks you'll have made more money than you've ever made on a trip, you can put the captain and all of his... proclivities behind you, drown yourself in boos and women at the port and rest easy knowing that you didn't let that girl or the boss's interest in her, cost ya".

"How can you be so calm about letting... them walk around unchained. I mean, you lost an ear on this trip!".

"And I'd gladly give the other one if it meant getting paid what melody promised. Could it be that you want this girl to yourself?"

"No! I--"

"Oh, calm down, Louis." The chef said with a hearty laugh. "I don't blame you. She'll probably be pretty easy on the eyes once the boys get her cleaned up.

There was a long pause, and a few stammers as the man known as Louis struggled to overcome his inexplicable embarrassment at the accusation and reply. After a moment, he accepted failure and stormed off, his angry footsteps slowly fading out of range of even Amobis, hearing. Amobi waited for a moment, ensuring that the conversation had ended before breaking his silence to summarize it for Ekon.

"I wonder who the woman is," Ekon said.

"Hard to say," Amobi replied. "The man in charge, this... Melody, picks a few from the women's section every week or so and then tosses them back like small fish in a big haul".

"It sounds like you miss the ocean, Amobi."

"I can't miss it if I'm still on it.".

"Yes, but don't you miss seeing--," Ekon froze as his eyes landed on Amobi's cloudy pupil. "I-- I, just meant..."

Amobi laughed and said, "It's fine, I know you meant. My sight left me when I was young... fever took it. The gods saw fit to give me some vision back in my left eye after a while, but my right...", He looked away and then squinted as if straining to pull a memory from somewhere his mind had blocked off long ago. After a while, his focused expression gave way to a smile. "My sister used to say that she envied it... the blindness. She would say, 'some things aren't worth seeing.' That my 'ignorance' was a gift. Then I woke up one day, and the world was just... there. It was blurry but, it was there. The sun would sting my eye when I looked up, and the sea's blues were so deep that I thought I'd drown just by walking into the shallows. When I told her, she just kind of laughed and said, 'All this time, I thought the gods liked you better than the rest of us... guess I was wrong."

"She sounds like she's seen a lot, maybe enough for the both of you.", said Ekon. "She's probably really strong."

"She was," Ekon said, his words coming as a hiss in a long sigh. "Bitter and tired but strong... and good. She was good."

"Was," Echoed in Ekon's head, and though he never met the woman, the finality of her implied death struck him with a sort of internal pang that he could neither explain nor relieve. It festered as all wounds did in this place, bringing pain that dulls only with time and marks that never fully heal. Ekon looked around the hold. It was alive with suffering, as it always was, but something was different now. All at once, one hundred thirty-seven people became one hundred thirty-seven stories. The pain, the fear, the death, the sickness, it was no longer self-contained, no... It was a thing that radiated, a thing that bled into the waters outside the ship and into the world around it.

There was a vile unspoken sin this ship had committed, and it was an evil that Ekon had only now become aware of. Within these walls, this rotting creaking cage, the essence of humanity had been stripped away so absolutely that even its inhabitants struggled to find it amongst each other. The pang that Ekon felt after hearing about stranger's dead loved one was a reminder that the person across from him was human and that he was human himself, and as he sat there ashamed and brimming with a quiet rage that made him feel as though someone had buried hot coals beneath his skin, he wondered when the creatures upstairs had made him forget those things.