It helped to laugh – or giggle in an unhinged machine-gun staccato. I giggled constantly. You should try it some time. It makes all your troubles disappear. Hahahaha, I'm getting beaten again for no apparent reason. Hahahaha, there goes another screaming slave into the sarlack pit; I knew that guy too. Hahahaha, my gums are bleeding again, my teeth are falling out, and I no longer have sensation in the the right half of my body. Hahahaha. Hahahaha. Hahahaha.
Chocolate! Spiced with a soupçon of caraway and tumeric, and laced with a generous dollop of boiled liver and punctured bile-duct. Hahahaha. I giggled for a full day when I managed to pinpoint all of the complex odors comprising Greido's decaying body. The guards never bothered removing his body from our cell, perhaps to punish and make us suffer more – but more likely because they couldn't care less. Since no one could bring themselves to move the rotting remains that stretched over the entire back of the cell in one long skid-mark, a quarantine area grew around Greido's kill zone, forcing us huddle even closer in our cramped space. Hahahaha.
We all had our coping mechanisms: Mike gnawed on his fingernails, leaving raw-pink nubs at the end of his fingertips, which, on the plus side, made his fingers more sensitive and more skilled with his sewing. Initially, Alice found solace in constantly repeating Powaah mantras to herself, but that was brought to a heavily-whipped end when the guards overheard her; she then switched to repeating Master Fortuna's slave-rules, and was left alone to act as a reminder to us all and probably piss us off. Sally began systematically plucking out a lock of her hair every day and studying it for hours, as if scrying for the future; she only had half of her left to go until she presumably found the prediction she was hoping for. Relatively speaking, we got off easier than say, the face-slapping-with-disfiguring- sharp-objects person, or the head-banging-against-the-wall guy, or the chew-out-chunks-of-my-skin- and-eventually-flesh woman, none of whom lasted very long.
As more of us died through combinations of beatings and disfunctional derangement, there was some half-hearted attempts to rouse grief or other such appropriate sentimentality. But, in the end, nothing happened, as that would have required having sentiments at all, which we had ceased having after that fateful night of the lynching. Instead, we exhibited little beyond apathetic, powerless numbness that kept us from having to make the conversation that would inevitably remind us of our deeds or the eye-contact in which we would see our images reflected. The only sorta positive result was that all our past acrimonies and rivaleries were rendered moot by the communion of our guilt that stained us equally.
Hahahaha. As I assembled an endless blur of purses, I felt little need to slow my tenuous grasp on sanity. Riveting became a source of demented enjoyment, as I imagined my amazing crystal designs would induce appreciative awe in my slave bench-mates, then bring about effusive praise from the guards, and finally from Master Fortuna himself who would come around to give me a pat on the head and perhaps an extra ration... Hahahaha...
...Since that failed to happen in spite of my ardent hopes, I began to add secret messages through my cleverly patterned crystals that were not only extraordinary in their pulchritudiness, but also said “Hello!” or “How are you doing!?” or “Have a nice day!” or “I'm a desperate slave wasting away, please bring a quick end to my miserable existence!”
In my saner moments, anger dominated my mind, where I frolicked in fantasies of death and bloody retribution. I'd swagger up and down the aisles and force the slaves, who by then would be the guards, to work ever harder and harder, and whip them as I threw my head back in throaty laughter. Moohahahahaha! Then, I'd go over to Master Fortuna, who I'd have assigned to the bitch-tasks, and I'd flay his back until his skin would start stripping off and he'd be pleading me to stop, but I would say, No, you bastard! You'll take this and you'll fucking love it! All the while, Greido would be looking on with approval and nod at me, as I punished our slavers and tormenters, delighting in the rivulets of blood coursing down their backs in torrents that grew and grew until it washed everything away... Then... and then... the whippings would return to snap me out of my paralyzed reverie, and I'd begin giggling again. Hahahaha.
I was in the middle of my chef d'oeuvre – which I knew to be beauteous and extraordinary in its artful placements of staggered crystals whose subtle blinking variations foreshadowed the bold, sweeping statements of the centerpiece spirals – when the conveyor line came to a sputtering halt. Oh, dear. Seems like they were having maintenance issues up the line again. It was probably something to do with the old exhaust pipes that broke periodically and bathed us in toxic fumes. I didn't envy the lashings the workers there were certainly getting now, but, then again, the longer the delay we had, the longer we'd all have to extend our shifts to meet our daily quotas; and, if we didn't meet the quotas by the end of the day, no matter the reason, we'd all be given a lashing and one of us would be chosen at random for the sarlack.
A group of guards stormed up the aisle, forcing us to rush to place our hands flat on our work-areas; failure to demonstrate that we weren't concealing anything would be punished by the removal of digits. The guards paid no attention to us though, as they all seemed to be running to the other side of the slave-pit, from where I could hear some frantic yelling:
“Move, move!”
“Shoot the fuckers! Shoot them!”
“Shit! There's a breach!”
Sure enough, the sound of a deep, rocky, grinding tore through the slave-pit, ending in an dusty explosion that blew the ceiling apart and revealed the open sky. I found myself split between the thoughts that my purses were now covered by dust and it would take hours to clean and barely make our quota; and the thought that the clear, blue sky that I had not seen in who-knows-when was soul-piercingly beautiful and perfect. Through the din of the blaster-shots and screaming, I could see that many of the purses were ruined with oil stains, but that many were salvageable, so I went about collecting them as best I could...
...Wait. Blaster-shots? What was going on here?
Suddenly, a disorderly mass of guards came running past us again, and I quickly sat down and assumed my palm-down position. Strangely, however, I noted that this time they were running in the opposite direction of the commotion, which now seemed to be toning down. Looking over at my bench-mates around me, I saw that they were holding their positions, firmly keeping their gazes down. Ah, yes. A test. Of course. That's what it had to be. They've done this before: after disappearing for a few painful hope-inducing moments, they'd come back to see who was fool enough to have acted on their fantasies of freedom – and brought them back to reality with a brutally drawn-out beating for all of us to witness. Quickly returning my gaze to my work-area and sitting back down, I desperately prayed no one had noticed that I had been so brazen as to move and look around.
Oh, well. I resigned myself to the possibility of being mauled by the sarlack or, if I was lucky, of being ignored and continuing purse-making. The real bummer was that this long delay of our production was going to keep us working far past our shift; but, there was nothing we could do but wait it out. I occupied my mind by singing gaily in my head, and imagining how I would put the finishing touches on my masterpiece, which, thankfully, had remained pristine in all the commotion. Maybe a few pink crystals beside the blue ones as an accent? Or maybe the green ones? I could always do a little more layering...
A firm hand grabbed hold of my shoulder, shaking me gently from my artistic meanderings. Still, I looked down, waiting for an order, knowing better than to look a slaver in the eye. A familiar voice, however, came to me that I couldn't resist and couldn't dare believing was true,
“Tim, it's ok. You can get up.”
Could it? …Could it really be... I looked askance as much as I could dare, but then... “Leah? Leah? Is that you?”
“Yes, Tim. It's me. You're free now. Come on! Let's get you out of here!” said Leah, brandishing a blaster in her hand, as she pulled me up from my seat.
“I'm free?”
I blubbered, blinking my eyes at the massive cognitive dissonance, barely registering the sight that many other slaves were being coaxed up from their seats, tentatively at first, but then with tearful excitement and delight.
“It took us a while to find you in Jubba's slave pits, but Louke, Haan and I managed to fight our past their security!” Leah smiled, encouraging my withered body to begin moving on its own.
“You found us? You came back for us?” I could barely shape the words through the joyful, unbelieving crying that I had no control over. They came back for us! The saved us!
“Of course, we did, Tim. We are one with the Powaah. You're part of our family,” Leah gave me a light hug, as she guided me to the growing ebullient group of ex-slaves gathering amidst tearful hugs and back-slapping. Soon, I found myself in fierce hug with Mike, as we laughed and cried. All around us was a mixture of dazed happiness and weak cheers that struggled their way out of disused voices.
In the darkened corner that held the sarlack-pit, Master Fortuna and our former guards stood surrounded by Haan, Louke and a group of smiling Rebel soldiers striking heroic poses with their blaster-rifles. Even through this drastic turn of events, Mater Fortuna still bore no expression on his face, standing impassively, as those former slaves who dared came by and spat on him in defiance. I made my way to spit on him – but had to run quickly away as I taken over by the sheer terror that he might still strike at me.
We demanded their deaths, of course, but were admonished by Louke's wise frown, saying that they would be punished appropriately, but not through anger – and anger was not the way of the Powaah. Of course, of course. That made sense. We should be thanking the Powaah, be grateful for its wisdom, and find patience, strength, love through it. Yes, yes! Of course! I see it now! Praise the Powaah! Praise the Powaah for having found us and freed us!
Jubilant cheers rose up, celebrating our freedom and the toppling of oppression. Yes! We were together again! My heart swelled in joy and hope, as I joined in the chants,
“Down with the Empire! Down with the Empire! Long live the Rebellion! Together we'll beat them!”