Short Story - CHAINS

Inspired by this piece by African artist Clara Aden.

This was my first time having a sensitivity reader, and I’m so grateful. Thank you, Torry Colvin for listening to my story.

Torry is a novelist and screenplay writer, and I’ll be interviewing him in January!

Without further ado…

CHAINS

It was supposed to be a teaching moment for those who’d never spared a thought for the suffering of slaves.

Like the Passion of the Christ, Ty walked the stage carrying the weight of other’s sins, head down and wrapped in heavy chains – a piece of theater art to teach the ignorant masses – yet the person who was learning the most was Ty himself.

Panic gripped him. Not stage fright, he’d whittled that out long ago, but a sincere fear that tensed his muscles. He was sweating, the metallic tethers slipping and gripping in equal measure, making it hard to move. Hard to breathe. Is this really what it was like for his people?

His white colleague yanked him forward. Ty hadn’t even realized he’d stopped moving. It made the moment all too real, and he started to tremble. Something in him spiked. He started fighting, bucking back, bringing himself down to the aisle floor with a cry.

At first, he didn’t notice when the pulling stopped, too lost in his own mind, thinking of fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and all those who had come before.

Hands held him. Beyond his heaving lungs and tear-filled eyes, he felt the arms of his troupe surround him in solidarity. The audience was uncomfortable. On edge. For a painful, excruciating moment, they saw and felt what he did. The wrongness. The injustice.

He could only hope it stuck with them the way it was embedded in him.