The Dark Passage (Short Story)

You will be separated from your family. Your name will be taken from you. You have no rights. No identity. You will become someone else’s property. A slave.

The dim spotlights guided me along the dark passage. Echoes of footsteps clicking against the floor cut through the silence like a sharp knife. The walls separate each section, forming an almost labyrinth-like structure. I imagine the sound of the bare footsteps on wooden floors, the screaming and the faces of people that once were. Slaves. A lump clots together in my throat. I can hardly breathe. I swallow. Drops of sweat tinkle down my forehead and I can almost sense the heat wrapping itself around my body, as if the atmosphere and I merge together.

Thousands of pictures of people I could not recognize nor identify. Behind each portrait lie thousands of morbid stories I would never hear. Everyone looked the same; it was the same face repeated over and over. All mouths were closed to shape a lifeless expression and all eyes were gleaming, shouting almost, yearning for freedom. The pictures started to look trapped, as if the men, women, the children in them were encaged. All sets of eyes resembled those of wild, untamed animals wanting to break free, yet their posture was rigid. The words beaten, violated, raped, tortured reverberated in head. A cold shudder shivered down my spine. The tormented howls of pain and agony haunted my mind, my heart pounding faster, faster. My body felt like a broken recorded, playing the same dismal screams over and over and over.  And over…Another lump formed in my throat.

With a hypnotic, yet absent gaze I stare at each and every one of the black and white pictures. Then suddenly I see her, the photo of a black girl. Her blank, dark eyes stare into mine and the glass reflects my own image. We look each other and I swear I could sense a hint of red in her eyes, I felt tears starting to form in mine. I see myself: my mirror reflection.