Majority: An Ode To Lynching

!!TRIGGER WARNING!! THERE ARE DEPICTIONS OF GRAPHIC VIOLENCE & LANGUAGE!!

Susie ran. She ran under the bed and hid with her dog, Wellington. Her father screamed, “Everyone hide now! No matter what you hear, don’t make a sound. Remember, I love you all.” Susie was 10 years old. She understood what she had to do, but didn’t want to accept the fact of what may be coming. They had lived a sheltered life from everyone. She never thought that the horror stories told to her would meet her in real life. Secluded deep in the woods, it just seemed like fairy tales. Stories of war and people slaughtering each other felt unreal. She believed they were just stories told to her to scare her into behaving. She felt safe in her bubble that her family had created for her. Her mother, father, older brother, and pet dog were her shield. They were her happiness. They loved her so much. Why wouldn’t others do the same? 

She stood still. A silence fell under the house. Nothing moved. Susie held her breath being careful not to breathe too loudly. Minutes felt like millennia. What was coming? It was within that instant that she heard her front door slam open. It had been kicked down. 

“Search every inch of this house! If there is anyone white here, do not allow them the gift of breath. If they beg for mercy, show them none!”

The loud voice bellowed across the house. Susie thought to herself, “White?” Susie and her family were all white by definition. Her father told her that she was. It was just the color of her skin. It never played a part in anything before. Was being white wrong? 

The rumbling started. It was like a million feet were rummaging through the house. With each piece of furniture overturned and each dish broken, Susie felt her life disappear. She knew the life that she had existed no more. It had been shattered and broken with everything in the house that had been destroyed. 

“Ahhhhhhhh! Get your hands off of me! What did I do to you?!”

Susie’s mother had been found.

They grabbed her by her hair and flung her across the room. She hit her head against the wall and began to bleed out on the side of it. Susie’s father then emerged from his hiding spot and hit one of the soldiers in the house across the head with a piece of firewood. His acts were in vain because within seconds, the father was restrained on the floor with a gun pointed to his head. 

“Who all lives here?! This house has five bedrooms. All having signs of being lived in. Did you and your Becky of a whore have the audacity to procreate and make more white devils?”

Gun to the father’s head, the soldier pushed it harder into his skull.

“No one else lives here. Even if they did, I would never tell a nigger like you where they would be. Kill me, you filthy nigger!”

The soldier, infuriated, cocked back his gun.

“Stop, Soldier!”

The deep voice echoed through the house. Susie felt her heart sink. She was paralyzed. She couldn’t move. She wanted to but couldn’t. She held onto Wellington as if her will to live was dependent on her attachment to the dog.

“You seem like a smart fellow. Perhaps we can make use of you. Take him and his whore to the truck!” There are no children here. If there were, they got a head start in outrunning us. Let’s try to catch them.”

The voice was so powerful, that it scared Susie and she imagined the person speaking to be one of those demons that her brother would joke about. He would claim that if she didn’t go to bed on time that demons would emerge from the closet and take her away. Maybe the person speaking was a demon. Maybe she should have not stayed up late those late nights and played games. Perhaps this was her fault. Susie began to cry. Within minutes, she heard footsteps run outside the door. She heard her mother yelp as she was dragged out by her hair. She heard her father resist, but they got the better of him. Soon, the house fell silent again. Susie was paralyzed in fear. She refused to move.

“Susie!.....Susie!”

The whispering voice of her brother, Brad, fell into her ear. Susie felt a spark of energy and emerged from under the bed with Wellington. Hearing her brother’s voice granted her the strength to want to get up. 

“We need to get out of here Susie. They may come back. Grab only the important things we will need. We leave in the next five minutes. We will take dad’s car he hid in the southern part of the woods.”

Susie did as she was told. Her mother and father were already taken and she didn’t want to be responsible for anymore demons taking away her family members. She grabbed a duffle bag full of clothes and her dog's leash. Taking her brother's hand, she walked through the backdoor of the house.

“See, I told you they would fall for it.”

The deep voice of the demon Susie imagined boomed through her ears once more. There he stood. Six foot five with the muscles that made him seem like a deity. He had a deep, dark colored skin that was smooth. On his face, stood a well-kept beard and mustache that connected across his face. Susie was terrified and stunned at the same time. She had not seen such a man before. He was beautiful to her. Was this the demon? 

“You must be the offspring of these two?”

The man pointed at Susie and Brad’s parents tied up on their knees. Susie was petrified. She didn’t understand why this was happening. Before she knew it, soldiers jumped her brother and took him. Two soldiers held Susie in place. They need not to because Susie was too scared to even try and run. The dog ran to her father and began to try and lick the father’s wounds. The soldiers laughed at the action. Soon, the brother was tied up beside both parents. One of the soldiers then shot the dog. It gave out a slight whimper and died within seconds. A stream of tears fell down Susie’s face. 

Soon after, a gun was pointed to the front of her brother's head. The soldier did not hesitate and pulled the trigger. The blood of her brother flew across Susie’s face.

It was the mother’s turn now. A soldier gripped her by her hair and pulled back her head exposing her neck. With one stroke of his blade, he slit her throat. She bled out until she collapsed dead.

Susie’s father was red with anger and sadness and tried to escape his bounds but couldn’t.

“Oh, you are a froggy one, aren’t ya? It’s so funny how you feel powerless now. Now you know how those oppressed by you have felt for generations. Even now after the war, we are still working to exterminate all of you. Since you are so energetic, I have a better idea.”

The man with the deep voice, gun in hand, walked to Susie. Susie knew then that she was gonna die. The beautiful man was gonna kill her and make her father watch. The man knelt down and took Susie by the hand. Susie confused, terrified, and with the blood of her brother still dripping fresh off of the top of her forehead, gripped his hand back. Both of them then walked over to the father. The beautiful man then handed the gun to Susie and pointed at her father.

“Shoot.”

The man's deep voice came across calm yet assertive at the same time. Susie, terrified, lifted the gun to her father’s head. The words her father expressed before this chain of events occurred rushed across her head, “Remember, I love you all”. The father, heart broken, nodded his head in submission. He knew that if she didn’t do what she was asked to do, she would die. He gave up.

“So that's all it took for you to give up. Where is all of that energy and fight now?”

The cocky voice of one of the soldiers infuriated Susie. She turned to the soldier who made the comment and pulled the trigger. Nothing emerged from the gun. It was a blank shot. Susie was confused. She then turned to the man she found beautiful and terrifying and tried to shoot him. No bullet emerged once again. The man began to laugh. Susie was now angrier than ever. How dare he?

“Go ahead. Point the gun at your dad and shoot. Humor me.”

The voice of the man remained calm yet what he said was playful; saying Susie was confused was an understatement. Just to prove a point, she pointed the gun at her father who had completely submitted to the situation. She pulled the trigger and instantly felt the blood of her father scatter across her face and splatter into her mouth. The bullet shot right through his head with ease instantly killing him. Susie dropped the gun and fell to her knees. What had she done? She had been tricked. The man then walked to his truck and got in. 

“Grab the girl! We are gonna take her back to base with us. We can always use an extra set of cleaning hands.”

The man's voice boomed into the microphone he spoke in. A soldier then snatched Susie up by her left arm and threw her into another car. Where was she going? Susie had no idea what to do. The car then pulled off and the drive to their next destination began.

A few hours later, she looked out the window and saw so many destroyed monuments with flags that had stars made in the shape of “X”s on them. She remembered her father had a similar flag, but he never explained what it meant. She had no recollection of the name of the flag. She remembered its colors though. Red and blue with the stars in the shape of an “X” being white. Were the fact that the stars were white the reason it had been destroyed. Were the whiteness of the stars the reason she was where she was headed now? She had no idea.