By slaveobjectx

The Court

‘Ten years slavery with hard labour in a chain gang, no remission, take him down.’ At first I thought I’d misheard the guy. He was old and kinda mumbled through a dirty grey beard. And he looked so bored when he said it, like it was no big deal or nothing. Then I thought it was some kind of joke, like a local way of saying, ten years community work, part time, something like that. Because slavery was abolished long ago, and chain gangs were too. Apart from that, the duration of my imprisonment would be in no proportion to the crime I was thought to have committed. Therefore, at that moment I heard it, I was quite sure, it was either a mistake or just an old-fashioned way of speaking in this remote provincial town, (which was behind the times in juridical terms), and most likely both.

So I guess you can say that I was surprised when, as soon as I was off the stand and down into the lower regions of the courthouse, a burly guard snapped two handcuffs, connected by a short chain, onto my wrists and shoved me into a cell. ‘Your transport will be ready for you in about ten minutes, boy,’ he said breezily and stomped off, his boots echoing on the stone floor.

I grabbed the bars of the cell and yelled after him, ‘Hey man, what’s all this shit? Come on, let me out! I ain’t done nothing! I’m innocent!’ No doubt they’d heard all that before — it sounded corny even to my ears, but it was true. I’d been framed for a robbery I didn’t commit. I was just the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time and presumably I was the same height and build as the guy who had pointed the gun at the cashier and made off with the money cos the cashier had picked me out no trouble at the parade. It was laughable really and a decent lawyer could have got me off, but I couldn’t afford one and the whole case was so stupid I hadn’t taken it seriously.

I shook the bars of the cell and then took to kicking them, trying to make as much noise as possible. But a quarter of an hour passed before the guard returned, with two mean looking guys in prison warder uniform just behind him. ‘Here’s the new one waiting for you,’ the guard said to the other guys.

‘Ah good,’ one of them reacted, ‘What’s his crime?’

‘It’s a young street-robber. He’s earned a stay in the correctional camp for ten years.’

‘Ah very well. That’s plenty of time to make a docile slave out of him. Some hard work in solid fetters will sure do him good. Seems that little criminal doesn’t quite agree with his destination. But I’m sure the whip will teach him to agree.’

‘You’re getting off to a bad start, boy,’ said the guard, turning to me. ‘That sort of behaviour don’t go down too well with guys like these.’

‘I don’t know about that, Bob,’ said the taller of the two warders. ‘I kinda like ’em frisky, makes it more fun to break ’em.’

The burly guard unlocked the cell and Bob, the heavier of the two warders, made a grab for me, pulling me out of the cell by the collar of my shirt. Sticking his face right into mine he snarled, ‘Listen, you little punk and listen well. Any trouble outta you and I’ll whip your ass, you got that?’

‘You can’t do that,’ I stammered but with little conviction, ‘there’s laws against that kinda thing.’

All three laughed. ‘Where you’re going, punk, there’s only one kinda law and that’s our kind. There we make the rules and you fucking obey or you regret it. And you can stake your fuckin’ miserable life on it that we know how to teach you to obey. Understood?’

‘OK, OK!’ I said, backing off a little. I thought it wiser to say nothing more now, and to complain later to the prison-governor about the heavy-handed behaviour of his staff when I’d get a chance to ask for revision of the sentence. I was grabbed again, slapped hard across the face as he shouted at me, ‘The correct response is “Sir, yes Sir, understood, Sir.”‘

I hesitated a second too long because he slapped me again and shouted, ‘Understood?’

‘Sir, yes Sir, understood, Sir!’ I replied, because I didn’t want to be slapped again, not because I agreed.

‘That’s better, boy. Sooner you learn how a slave behaves the easier it’ll be for you. Right, let’s get going.’ I decided to ignore their coarse language for the moment, although I can’t deny I got a bit worried by their offhand way of talking about me as a ‘slave.’ Anyhow, the two guys frog-marched me down the corridor and out of the building while the burly guard called after them, ‘Enjoy him, guys!’

To be continued…