The Psalms

“Kneel, boy,” said his master to him.Very slowly, he went on his knees.“The Psalms sayeth,” he continued, “Let destruction come upon him at unawares; and let his net that he hath hid catch himself: into that very destruction let him fall.”

The slave looked down at his hands, neither raising his head or speaking.“You filthy boy,” master spat, “I paid some good fortune for you and you choose to be useless?! Never!”

The slave murmured something.“You have something to say boy?” Master said, bending over to hear what it was the slave was saying.“…into that very destruction let him fall.”A drop of sweat trickled from the back of his head to his neck, a neck darkened by long hours in the sun. He raised his palm to wipe it off. Had it not been his own hands, he would have thought someone rubbed his neck with tanned leather.

“Speak up I say!” said the master.And speak up he did. And so, speaking with the only thing he had learned to speak with from long years on the plantation, in a quick motion, he acted. He rose to his feet, driving his fingers, the ones that had grown tough from constant breaking and healing, into the belly of the master, just below the rib cage.He dug upwards as master gaped, past his diaphram, to the lump of flesh lodged between his lungs. He dragged the lump, just in time for master’s friends to pounce on him.

As they continued to bludgeon him till he looked as plump as the still beating lump of flesh in his hand, he clenched unto it tightly, gazing at it with surprise. Surprised that master, just like other human beings, had a heart.