Creative Writing: Home

I woke in a cold sweat, gasping for breath. A low, raspy voice drifted through my window like a calm, quiet wind. It was the voice I had been listening for ever since the last full moon. He was singing his song. The song. The one every slave hoped and prayed to hear. “Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land; tell ole Pharaoh to let my people go.” I knew it was time. I leapt out of my cot and grabbed the cloth sack that had been hidden in the floorboards for the weeks that felt like years. With an agonizing sinking in my heart and tears in my eyes, I kissed my mother goodbye and set out to leave the place I had called home for 29 years. I was leaving my entire life for nothing but the distant hope of freedom.

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My tattered dress clung to my aching body like a

I can still feel the lingering touch of the soft sheets of a warm bed on my face. My stomach grumbles with the satisfaction of the first full meal in a long, long while. Even Moses seems as though he is dreading our departure, but he reminds us what lies ahead. “A hot meal every day, a soft bed each night. I know it doesn’t seem so now, but these are the things that await you in freedom.” All of a sudden, one of the men that we’ve been traveling with stops dead in his tracks with a wild look in his usually soft eyes. “I want to go back!”he shouts. “Let me go back. I can’t take this anymore!”. We all whipped our heads around in shock to see what our leader would do. Very slowly and with great care, he pulled a gun out of his dirty, torn cloak, pointed it at the maniacal, yet frightened looking man, and cocked it. We all held our breath and our hearts seemed to stop beating. In his deep, gruff voice, he spoke softly. “Go on with us or die.”. The man, now looking like a young boy, swallowed shakily and began walking on. We all began breathing again and slowly trudged on, a dead silence filling the air between