Heat

When I was seven, I stared at my fair and fleshy palms, red

and today turned towards the kitchen, flooded with light - the satiety box - and from within the cavernous depths of the cupboard directly below the sink, sprawled a grand, rotund belly, Black. I hovered over, still staring at my palms, red in the sun. He was beyond comprehension, Old Brain, wisdom that transcends books - the kind his young daughter of a second wife, does not have - jabbering away. Bolts, washers, and a torch littered the cheap tile floor. He's let himself go, volumes of fat spill over his belt buckle as he turns the screw. Reebok basketball shoes, old, flail in the sunlight. I stand over, staring at the black pepper grinder.

Mr. C was fixing the faucet, when his digestive tract got caught, the heat lulled the great gut: an extension of the kitchen pipings it became. I bent over the sink, and turned on the tap. Behold, his breakfast gushed out first, then his innards, running red and black. I gasped in excitement, biting my tongue.

Now, I am cloaked in a white apron. Hovering, floating over, as the gut-pipe, convulses in spasms of fear, four hundred years, blood wells up and over, covering my face, like a triumphant warrior, I bring down my foot on his body, stamping out his dignity. Forever a slave.

"How long will the trial last?"