Demons of Slavery

Prologue

Prologue

Mzilikazi Road, Nkwame street
Location: Unknown.
A warehouse somewhere in the middle of an expansive space of land.
A lone Jeep parked outside.

A blanket of hopelessness covered the entire hall. Hundreds of girls stood packed inside, with barely enough space to breath. Some were crying, some weren’t. The ones who cried had processed everything, came up with conclusions and had deduced their fates. The ones who weren’t were either too shocked to process anything or were still in denial.

Occasionally a man stepped into the hall, grabbed a random girl and took her with him, banging the door on his way out. The ones who were closer to the door scurried away squeezing through the crowd and those who became exposed at the front had nowhere to go. Those were the ones who cried the most, for their fate seemed defined right before their eyes.

The cries of those girls were alarms of what was happening, what could possibly happen to the other girls.

There was an adjoining door into the hall through which the man came in and took some of the girls away. The screams and cries from the other side of the door the girls could not see were usually accompanied by a bout of raucous laughter and jeering from what sounded like a large group of people.

Sometimes a shot rang out and there was silence afterwards, then a few moments later the door was opened and another girl was taken.

Other times, there was just a series of deafening screams, then there was silence. In moments like those, the man returned covered in fresh blood.

Sibu stood in a corner at the very front, too scared to move an inch. Her eleven year old body shrunk into itself, her head bowed and shoulders shaking in silent tears. She had no recollection of getting to the place she found herself in. All she remembered was being driven to dance class and everything else after that became a blur. All she remembered was waking up and finding herself in a huge hall, with older girls than her, and sometimes even younger than her, being shoved into the hall.

She didn’t understand what was happening but she gathered the fact that none of those girls were there of their own free will and that what was happening, whatever it was, was bad. Really bad. She figured that papa was not going to save her on this one and she was all on her own. So she began crying and she hadn’t stopped since then.

The mean man came back again and she shrunk more into herself. She had heard that awful sound from the other side of the door, and the laughter that had accompanied it.
What was happening in there might have been fun, she concluded, but she was having no part of it.

The man’s glance swept all over the room, then finally rested on a girl who seemed a bit younger than Sibu. The man curled his lip in a twisted sort of way that almost resembled a grin and beckoned her with his finger. The girl began moving towards him, shaking like a leaf in August and her face a mixture of tears and snot. Fear was practically painted for all to see.

As she advanced, the man’s gaze swept over the room again, and because she was at the very front and closer to the man, Sibu noticed the glint in his eye. He looked evil, almost like the villain in a number of the Disney shows she had watched. She inhaled sharply and that seemed to get his attention as he looked down at her. He narrowed his eyes and she flinched back. He grinned then.

Sibu was very sure he was grinning but it was not the kind of grin her father gave her, no, his was sinister, it injected fear into her very system. She slightly backed away but it was without effect as she was in a corner already. Just then the other girl got to the front and the man was quick to grab her with his one hand whilst the other one reached for Sibu and tightened on her arm. They were both dragged through the door.

Sibu  could feel a sinking feeling in her stomach. Something told her that door was the entrance to her hell and she was going to burn to ashes, until there was nothing left.

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