229. The black midget ref

The black midget ref had kept his stumpy legs going for fifteen minutes but now the pace of the game was catching up with him. This was no pub team match. This was the big leagues and he was seriously out of his depth.

As he huffed and puffed towards the opposite half, he no longer heard the mocking laughter from the terraces. He could barely even see what the players were up, so amply the sweat poured into his eyes. All he could think of was why he had started his crusade in the first place.

Sure, he was black, and that was not easy. But on top of that he was ‘vertically challenged’ as the papers had wittily put it. A combination born to breed both uproarious laughter and overt discrimination. And as he had discovered, there is a saturation point. That bridge too far, where you have no alternative but to jump into the deep end and fight back.

So he had started his crusade against the Football Association. He had always been a ref in youth matches, and though he knew he was ill-fitted for the upper tiers, he would get his revenge on all those who had laughed in his face by shamelessly playing the discrimination card. Needless to say, the press had jumped  on the story like a voracious tiger, leaving the FA no choice but to give in on.

And now here he was, plodding along the pitch, with hardly enough energy in his small body to blow a whistle.

When he eventually went down, in the 23^rd minute, the terraces were laughing louder than ever.

They’d later tell their grandchildren.

I was there, they would say.

I was there when the black midget ref died.

 

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190. The negro boy

“The negro boy will assist you, miss.”

“Clemence,” the shopkeeper yelled.

Out came a skinny 16-year-old in ragged clothes, his eyes turned towards the floor.

“You will carry miss Fortner’s groceries to her home, you hear, boy?”

Clemence nodded.

“And you be on your best behaviour, now. If I hear you’ve been a bad nigger, there’ll be hell to pay.”

The boy took the groceries and followed miss Fortner out onto Main Street.

“You been in master Abernathy’s service long, boy?” she asked.

“All my life, miss.”

“Then why haven’t I seen you before?”

“Been working on the wheat fields near Goose Creek, miss. Master Abernathy only started my store training last week.”

“You enjoy it?”

“Master Abernathy don’t like me talking to clients.”

“I asked you a question, nigger. You will answer.”

“I prefer Goose Creek, miss.”

“Charleston a bit too sophisticated for your taste, I s’pose?”

“I don’t know that word.”

“Silly me. Here I was thinking you negroes were literate. You haven’t read a book in your life, boy, have you?”

Clemence did not answer. They had reached miss Fortner’s house.

“Put them on the porch. The help will take the groceries inside.”

She hadn’t taken a good look at Clemence till now. He was quite attractive for a nigger.

“You ever fucked a girl, boy?”

Clemence blushed. Miss Fortner slid her hand in his pants. He dared not react.

“You tell master Abernathy I want you to bring my groceries every Thursday from now on.”

Clemence returned home to his mother later that afternoon, scared and confused. But he did not speak a word of what miss Fortner had told him. He saw his mom had been crying.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“They’ve shot him,” his mother replied.

“President Kennedy is dead.”

 

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64. Coon. Dink. Eyetie. Kraut. Nip. Raghead.

Coon. Dink. Eyetie. Kraut. Nip. Raghead. The shape shifter had been called all of these in his lifetime but not the word that now escaped from the small boy’s mouth. It shook him to the core that a 5-year-old would even know the slang let alone that he’d slap him in the face with it.

It took the shape shifter a while to get over it. He was used to being hurt – whenever he transformed into a new being he did not just take its appearance but also its feelings and anxieties – but this one, it really stung.

He’d never harmed a person in his twelve centuries of existence. He’d gone out of his way not to offend or irk. All he wanted was, from time to time, to view history through another being’s eyes. He’d been one of the first of his kind and though their numbers had increased vastly over the past millennium, it was estimated now that shape shifters still only made up .42 percent of the world’s population.

“Another double,” he ordered the bartender, who shook his head disapprovingly as he put down a full tumbler on the counter next to a dozen empty ones.

It happened more often these days. Shape shifters were no longer allowed by the government to operate under the clouded veil of anonymity which made it easier for people to see through the disguise, many often not bothering to hide their contempt.

Like the young boy who’d just called him a spook-face.

Life as a shape shifter in 2089 suddenly didn’t seem all that different from his days as a black sugar slave in the scorching Louisiana summer of 1811.

An uprising was inevitable.

 

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