missing eye, sneered as he began pouring the oil into the grave, over Marina’s bound form and the gnarled roots that stuck out of the sides of the trench. She moaned out plaintively as the thick substance splashed over her, soaking into her clothing and into the earth around her.
“When we have a bad crop, or an infestation of something God-awful, how do we take care of it?” Albert asked, pulling the cigar from his mouth and blowing on the end.
“W-we burn it…” Jasper gritted out through bloody teeth.
“We burn it,” Albert nodded, getting up from his squatted position and walking over towards the pit. “Now the way I look at it, you planted some seed in bad ground. I figure, ashes to ashes.”
“No!” Jasper growled, being held down by one of the burlier slaves. Albert paid him no mind and took a puff off his cigar one last time before carelessly tossing it into the grave. The oil lit up, and for the briefest of moments the flames spread fast and erupted up from the grave like an active volcano. Then the screaming started.
Marina screamed as her clothes seared into her skin, her gag burning through to her teeth. She stood up and, with one good arm clawed at the walls of the grave trying to climb up and out of the blazing inferno she was captured in. The smoke, roiling off of the scorching earth, choked her quickly, causing her to descend into the flames, coughing as her skin blackened and cracked her fat dribbling out of her burnt flesh. Slowly, her clawing grew less and less fervent, her body wracked by the flames and seared into a meatless husk, the charring of the blackened bone apparent over the remaining flesh that was slowly being cooked to ashes.
Marina was no more, Jasper realized as he gazed through his one non-swollen eye at the rising plumes of smoke billowing out of the grave, the flames licking the lips of the earthen lip around it. She screamed until she could scream no more, her cries drowned out by the loud crackles of the flames.
Albert held onto the lapels of his jacket, jerking his head toward the pit. “Time for a dip into Hell, don’t you think?”
“Why? How?” Jasper asked as he was dragged forward, close enough to where he could smell the burning stench of his lover’s remains being seared into the unrelenting ground.
“I don’t think that matters anymore, do you? Whether you like it or not, you’re going into that hole with your dark-skinned lover, and then we’re going to bury you in your smoldering grave like the remains of a bad crop. Because that’s just what you are: a bad crop.”
“Go to Hell Albert! I swear to all that is good and holy that I will see the end of your line brother! I will haunt you to the end of your days!”
“That’s all fine and dandy, but what I’m going to tell the sheriff, after writing up a nice note, is that you ran off with your lover to the northern colonies, to be with her. Forever and ever.” Albert said with a wry smile. Looking to the muscled slave holding Jasper up, he nodded. “Dump him in.”
Jasper didn’t scream as he was thrown into the smoke cloud, into the flames. He didn’t even let out a cry of pain when he landed on his lovers bones. All he did was laugh, cackling like a madman as the flames licked at his flesh, lapping at his skin like a dog would its owner. The charring of his bruised skin was set back as his chest burst open from the heat, silencing him forever as his insides spilled out, sizzling in the summer night air.
“Now, my friends, let's go ahead and bury the two lovers, shall we-rk!” Albert said before being struck in the back of the head with a shovel, the knife-wielding slave having taken the liberty of striking the slave owner extra hard while he was enjoying his brother’s demise. Albert crumpled to the ground, blood leaking out his ear as his eyes rolled back up into his head.
The slaves, their breathing labored as they looked at each other, nodded one by one, each moving to take a shovel that had been tucked beneath the underbrush of the giant tree. Standing around with the shovels, they listened for a while as the man and woman burned within the grave, the black acrid smoke rising high into the air in a bilious column.
“So we toss him in too?” The slender slave asked, nodding towards the twitching form of Albert, blood pooling from his mouth.
The knife-wielding slave nodded. “You heard him. Old Testament, all the way.”
The whip-scarred slave grabbed Albert by the lapels, dragging him up until he hung him over the smoldering pit, the smoke causing him to come to consciousness enough to realize the position he was in.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Albert snarled, boxing one of the ears of the whip-scarred slave, who didn’t even budge from the blow. “Put me down this instant! You do this and you’ll all be dead within a week! No plantation owner within a hundred miles will let you all live after pulling a revolt like this!”
The knife-wielding slave walked forward, drawing his knife and flipping it open. “Who said anything about a revolt? We know our place in this society, however, despicable it is. We just want a change of… ownership is all.”
Albert gasped at the man’s feral smile and the dark chuckles that rang out from the men around him. “Y-you’ll never get away with this!”
“Yes we will. We’re deep in the forest, so deep that nobody will find a grave out here. Just think about it: just you, your brother and sweet Marina for all eternity.”
“You filthy traitors! You monsters! This is murder, this is rebellion!” Albert began to shout before a knife was rammed into his chest.
“Just shut up and die, Master!” The slave said with glee, shoving him free from his fellow’s hands and into the fiery grave, the knife having just pierced his sternum, nicking his heart.
As the slaves all stood around, listening to their dying master scream in agony, they all began to smile. True, it was horrible that Marina had to die… but she was holding the spawn of the horrible family that had enslaved them all for so long. And true, it was horrible that Jasper had to die, as he was an honest and good man… but still, he was their master.
But in no way was it a bad thing that Albert had to die. All the slaves present had suffered under his hand often enough, from whippings to half-rations, to time in solitary confinement. Tonight, they would bury the dead and head back to their tenements to sleep, just waiting for the taskmasters to realize that the masters of the plantation were gone. The note that was supposedly penned by Jasper was already written, and Albert, well Albert would just remain a mystery of the South, now wouldn’t he?
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