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  Omar K. Alleyne

  Copyright 2014 Omar Alleyne

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  Table of Contents

  What Am I?

  The Day I Retired

  The Interview

  About the Author

  Other Books by this Author

  What Am I?

  All my life I have only ever been taught that care and captivity go hand in hand. It’s the same lesson taught to my brothers and sisters, my parents and grandparents too. We’ve each lived our lives in a silver cages, a life very different to the tales we are each told as children. With every generation the story seems harder to remember than the one before. Tales of our forefathers running though luscious green grass and eating wild berries and making homes for ourselves out of sight from predators which may hide in the undergrowth. We fought for freedom, expression, pride and empowerment between other families. We avoided capture and serfdom, living like a nation without a king!

  We were born to enjoy our lives, yet instead we are separated from others like ourselves.

  Most of my kind live in these caged squalor’s all around the world, all attributed and distributed between different masters who pass us around to their children or loved ones. Some see us as mere animals, below them and not worthy of life whilst others, I hear, are kind and adopt us into their small families and are loved and cherished. They are cuddled and spoilt with food, clothes, photo shoots and potential careers in fashion or modeling. We are adored as creatures, but nothing more.

  Not all of us live in either of these categories either. Some of us are experimented on for entertainment or some distorted version of pleasure. I’ve seen many of my comrades, some siblings and even my parents tortured by our master in her sick games and experiments. 
We were a proud people, or at least so I’ve been told. We would roam around the most hostile of territories, hiding from predators and scavenging the land for nourishment, to find sustenance for our kin.

  I can tell you of these accounts for I have experienced both the good and bad side of the master’s control. I have lived like a barbarian and I have studied under the tutelage of beings very similar my kind, so I feel it is my place to tell you about my history and send a warning out to those able to listen.

  I first discovered freedom when I escaped my first master. A cruel master, I was used as entertainment; dressed up like a doll and made to eat from perches too high for my to reach. I was disgraced. Food would constantly be on the floor where I would then eat off. The majority of my days were spent cooped up in a cage where this form of treadmill was all I had for passing the time. On one occasion a sort of, obstacle course was installed, yet the surface of it was unwashed and not sanded properly and I was left with many cuts as I traversed this plastic and wooden hell.

  I had tried to escape this relentless torture a number of times, firstly with brutish tactics like running into the bars or clawing at them. I even resorted to gnawing with my teeth, that’s how desperate I for with my freedom.

  Yet the masters were smart and instead of torturing me with lashes or inflicting physical torture, they simply chastened me by changing my cage from plastic to steel.

  That’s when I wished I had been tortured physically instead of being enlisted inside this metal paradigm of psychological peril.

  I eventually found freedom one evening as my masters went to sleep. It was a plan that developed through pure chance. My master had allowed negligence to slip into their mind and they left the top entrance to my cage open. Traditionally it was the hole where my food would be dropped into if it was too big to fit through the bars and the hole I would be removed from when my cage needed rearranging. Quite commonly, the master would find it appropriate to remove my bedding and ram raid through my personal items hidden under my straw bedding.

  Once the light had dimmed to a point where the visibility was a minimum, I ascended the bars of my metal hell and crawled through the hatch. From there I simply ran till I passed out. After that I don’t remember anything more.

  I woke up in a field at the back of this… house? I question the house since it was rather dilapidated and run down. I have since learned that it was a farmhouse, far from the village where I resided just the night before.

  My short time living in the farmhouse is where I learned so much about history and liberty. I met people just like me and we each learned about other and very different people. The chance to find my own food is one of the most strengthening exercises one can participate in. The sense of independence you have knowing that it’s your responsibility to find sufficient sustenance before you starve to death. It creates this strange vortex of independence but also reliance on your own skills so you don’t die. In that aspect, servitude is far easier as your meals are administered for you, usually at a timetable or once you accomplished a certain task.

  Of course, a world filled with such freedom was only ever going to be short lived, especially a world under the control of the masters. With the world at their feet, night raids were never necessary. They had the audacity to carry out attacks during the day. A crushing defeat for my ego as it only ever compounded their control and soon we were all rounded up- some, never to be seen again.

  The contrast between life with the masters of old and the masters of new are drastically different. My food bowl is regularly filled. It’s gotten to the point where I can time my bowl being refilled. What the time is, I’m unsure. I was never taught to tell the time. I’m almost never removed from my cage though. Dirt is removed but usually during my sleep. This means that being put into restrictive harnesses that limit my movement is a thing of the past. Embarrassing myself for the entertainment of the masters doesn’t happen either. By and large I’m somewhat happy here, even though I have most of my liberties and social freedoms removed. I do miss life at the farmhouse though, but I don’t miss not being looked after. I even had my first bath wash in weeks too.

  My current life is back under the gaze of the masters, that is one thing I cannot skip over or forget. Yes, life here isn’t perfect either. The cages are still locked and sometimes I am gawked at by smaller master figures. Some are entertained by our appearances and behaviour, though I suspect that this is some type of prison where all sorts of beings under the masters control are held.

  I make this suspicion based on the fact that I can hear far larger creatures roar at all hours. They are not in eyesight though. They are kept at the back whilst ones covered in hair are kept inside. I admit that I am scared. But I know that I’m safe from most predators. Some seem to be locked in tanks filled with water so they do not escape. I deem these the most dangerous types of criminal since the few who I have seen released are removed with the water still surrounding them. Perhaps these creatures are being transported to a more secure prison facility.

  I don’t know how much longer I have to stay in this life. Maybe I will spend the rest of my days at this facility, sipping from this water bottle, eating from my food bowl and spending my days in solitude. Perhaps this was the life destined for me. But when you don’t know what or who you are, every situation may seem like destiny. What am I? Until I do know, I’ll spend some time on this wheel. Maybe it will tire me out and kill me sooner.

  The Day I Retired

  I’ve never been one to take superstition seriously. When I get bird poo on me, I don’t think it’s lucky, I think it’s dirty and needs to be washed off. I don’t care for magpies or broken mirrors and I don’t wor
ry about the future when I see a black cat or walk under a ladder. If you feel my opening statement sounds familiar- it’s because it’s the generic talk of anyone who doesn’t care for superstition since the history of superstition began.

  I’ve taken this approach to live ever since I was around seven or so; when I walked under the ladder of a window washer on my way to school. At first I thought I was told off because it was dangerous. I mean, a ladder can fall at any moment and if it did, I certainly could have been killed. But no, instead I was told I would have bad luck for several years- a shame really because I managed to be spoilt rotten until my 14th birthday. In that time, black cats walked across me and I smashed mirrors, I stepped on cracks in the pavement and I opened umbrellas inside. As far as I’m concerned, everything since then has been good for me; nobody has died, I’ve never broken a bone and I’ve never failed an exam.

  I guess not living in fear of superstition fuelled my desire to become a paranormal investigator because If I was going to make money, it may as well be off the back of something that doesn’t a) affect me or b)