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About the author:
DAMIEN DSOUL was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He has written erotic novels such as ‘Brown Eyes, Blue Smile’, ‘The Story of Caya’, and ‘The Story of Michael’. He currently resides in New York City.
What inspired you to write your book?
After finishing the first installment ‘The Story of Caya’, and getting a lot of positive response from various readers, many of whom wanted to know what followed with the title character, I opted to diverge and bit and expand the universe of the story. It wouldn’t have been safe to write a continued sequel about the Catherine/Caya character. I wanted the story to have more depth, thus I decided to include the part about her boyfriend Michael and dedicate the next book to his character and role in finding his girlfriend. I’m not done with the installment. A third is already underway.
Here is a short sample from the book:
CAMP ALE-RUN
Where was I?
In the bottomless pit of the world. I was in darkness. Not a shred of light broke through the gloom. From out of this gloom my new world was born: it started with a sound. The sound grew in size and density … magnanimous. The sound broke through the gloom that was the darkness and from outside the darkness light began to appear, through cracks in its rim. The cracks widened and continued to break, merging with the sound till everything came down in a shattering scream.
Such was how I came awake into what was before me.
I was in the back of a caravan truck; the interior was dark but my eyes adjusted to the darkness and wasn’t all that dark anymore. There were slits in the containment and light came through. I was lying on the floor with my head resting under a rolled blanket. It was like being back inside the trunk of the car as I realized we were moving and the back of the truck bounced and jerked over everything on the road, bumping my head on the rough metal surface which was what had brought me awake. Other faces stared at me; human faces. White men, all of them and they were naked except for the piece of loin cloth that covered their crotch and they sat with their legs folded upright so they rested their heads on their knees while their backs reclined against the walls of the containment. I too was dressed the same way—my clothes, shoes, my wallet was all gone. I looked at myself, amazed that I was discovering it only then.
One of them threw his hand at me. I grabbed his hand and he pulled me up to sit next to him. I looked at his face and realized it looked familiar.
“Hi there, Michael,” Hugh Lawrence smiled me. “Glad to know you’re back with us.”
“What’re you doing here?” I said to him as if I couldn’t already figure out where we both were. I was busy wiping clumps of dust and sand off my body.
“First class comfy trip to the Taj Mahal,” he grinned at me. “But in your case and mine, and these other suckers in here, I really don’t know. But I’ve got an idea.”
“Yeah, what idea?”
I looked around the containment and counted the faces there. There were six of us. Four looked older—forties to fifties. The other two looked about my age. They all looked worn out and miserable. There wasn’t any remains of whatever I’d drank last night and I was wracking my brain trying to put together all what had happened that brought me here. If this was a nightmare it was the most vivid dream I’d had in ages.
The truck went over a bump in the road and it made us jump where we sat and fall back hard. Hugh appeared to be the only one having a ball from our situation; the others turned their faces away from him and seemed to resign to whatever fate they had coming.
“I hate to break it to you, Michael, but we left Disneyland back at the resort. Wherever it is they’re taking us to, I can only imagine it’ll be something worse.”
The truck was driving fast. I turned and looked out one of the slits in the containment. Everything seemed to speed past us like lightning. All I could see was open land space that stretched beyond hills and empty land spaces. There were trees, vegetation and wild bushes and rough earth and that was about it; it looked as if we’d taken a trip back in time and were now light-years away from civilization.
“See anything you like out there?” Hugh said to me, his words bursting my bubble of whatever it was I was hoping to find. “Let me know if you find a McDonalds spot or maybe a pub.”
“This isn’t fucking funny, Hugh,” I growled at him.
“You don’t see me laughing now do you, old boy. We’ve been on the road since dawn—possibly a night before—and like you we all woke up and saw that,” he indicated his head at the sight we were racing past. “The kid there,” he pointed at one of the young white kids who sat alone at the head of the containment with his head in his hands. “He’s been crying his head off since he woke up and only stopped before you came awake. No, Michael, this ain’t no joke.”
The misery, the predicament of whatever awaited the six of us seemed then to sink into my head. It was a crushing blow to me as I turned away from the slit in the containment cell and sat with my legs curled under me. I looked at the kid whom Hugh had pointed out, saw the way his face remained hunched behind his hands and the way his body shook I knew he was still crying. I too felt like crying, but what good would have come of it then. I thought of my life up until that moment. I thought of images of my home back in Buffalo, New York. The details of my bedroom danced in my head putting me in them as if I was back there enjoying my life until those two men from the State Department had shown up at my doorstep. I thought of my parents. They would be worried by now since I’d only written to them once since I arrived in Nigeria. I thought of Thaddeus Black and I imagined him worried about how far I’d come. I thought about the State Department guy, Clarence … I thought of Catherine.
I looked at the crying kid. I wanted to go over and comfort him but instead I remained where I was. I lowered my head between my knees and shut my eyes.
Evening was upon us when the truck came to a stop in front of a guarded gate. We all came alive and turned to spy out the slits at the sight of armed black men waving guns and machetes and talking back and forth in their language as they too surrounded our truck; some of them fired off shots in the air and we cringed from the sound; the boy’s whimpering cries seemed to escalate as he too heard the shots till the man beside him growled at him to pipe down and shut it.
Our truck drove through an opened gate and we entered a compound. Now we saw people and houses. I saw some white men and women on the street as we drove on, though they seemed to be in chains. Hugh noticed it too and we shared a glance as if trying to figure what we’d just seen.
We drove round a circle and then the truck came to a halt in the centre of the camp’s training ground. People approached the truck right away. The boy who’d been crying was cringing now as we heard them working on the containment’s locks. The doors swung open and they lowered the latch and we saw our captors for the first time, or at least it was my first. I was yet to know how the others came to be with me in the truck.
The black men looked violent and menacing. They carried guns, held knives and machetes and they yelled at us in pidgin English to come down from the truck. We did as they wanted and jumped down from the containment’s cargo space and they led us away from the truck to stand next to each other some feet away from the truck. Several of them fired their weapons into the air making us cringe with fright, cursing and yelling at us. One of them pushed a wheelbarrow towards us and the men took something that was heaped in the wheelbarrow’s mouth. They were a set of manacles with a small black ball attached to them. The same sort of manacles from slavery era. The men clipped the manacles to our feet; one of the white men appeared to revolt and tried to fight back but one of the men knocked him down with the butt of his rifle and still the manacles went to his ankles with the black ball dangling off it. We stood there as modern-day slaves with nothing left to our dignity.
The leader of the pack stood facing us. He was dressed in black camouflage and wore a black doo-rag over his head and aviator sunshades covered his eyes. He held an assault rifle in his gloved hands. He walked back and forth around us, sizing us up. His other men stood back and watched.
“I am Black Master Ghandi,” he addressed us. “This is Camp Ale-Run. You are in the black version of Sorbibor now, and in here my government is law. You all once were white men, but not anymore. Matter of fact, neither of you have ever the right to be referred to as men at all. Not ever. Here in this camp, you all are nothing but slaves. Every black man you see standing before you is your Black Master. Every black woman you come in contact with is your Black Mistress. You will accord either of them with utmost respect and servitude. If you are addressing either of them, you will refer to them as ‘Black Master sir, or Black Mistress ma’am’. Here in my camp, you all will undergo a rigorous training to ensure you remain forever as worthless slaves. If there’s any amongst you who feels he ought not be here, step forward right now.”
One of the older white men raised his hand and stepped forward. Master Ghandi didn’t waste time venting his law. He threw a back-handed at the man. It connected with his jaw with a loud smack and the man tumbled to the ground. Master Ghandi applied a kick to his mid-section and the man doubled up, clutching his stomach, groaning aloud and rolled over on his back. Master Ghandi spat on him then turned to observe us.
“Anyone else care to join him?”
Neither of us dared.
“Good. Let that be a lesson to the rest of you.”
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