Savage Flames

His sweaty palm slipped on the doorknob, making it difficult to get the door open.

But finally!

The door creaked open!

The room was black inside. The shutters were closed at all of the windows, not allowing any moonlight in to bathe Lavinia’s body.

But that didn’t matter. He’d feel around and find her.

He’d climb into the bed with her, and should she try to fight him off, he was not too drunk to use his strength to subdue her.

“Lavinia?” he murmured. He laughed beneath his breath. She would be shocked that he’d ignored her warning never to open her bedroom door when it was closed.

“Sweet Lavinia, it’s time for you to put an end to your mourning,” Hiram said, weaving as he walked into the room, moving in the direction of her bed. “Ol’ Hiram is here to make sure you do. I’m gonna give you lovin’, Lavinia. I’ll show you what a real man is and how your husband lacked the skills of pleasuring a lady. Just you wait and see. Hiram is here for you, Lavinia. Only you.”

His knees made sudden contact with the side of the bed, throwing him totally off balance. He laughed as he fell onto the bed, his hands reaching out to stop himself from landing on top of Lavinia.

The strange thing was that he knew he had fallennear where Lavinia should have been sleeping, yet he did not feel her. His sudden untimely appearance should have awakened and frightened her.

She should be screaming. But the room remained totally silent. He couldn’t even hear Lavinia breathing.

“Lavinia?” Hiram mumbled as he steadied himself. He ran his hands all around him, searching for her.

It suddenly came to him like a bolt of lightning that she wasn’t there. She wasn’t in her bed!

And he hadn’t seen her downstairs.

If she’d been awake and heard his clumsy entrance, she would have scolded him for coming home drunk as a skunk!

The thunder rumbled again, and this time much closer, so close, in fact, that he could glimpse the flash of lightning through the slats of the shutters.

This tiny bit of light was all it took for Hiram to see that he was right. Lavinia wasn’t there!

Stunned to realize that she wasn’t in her bed at this time of night, Hiram stumbled up and went out to the corridor. He leaned against the top railing of the staircase and shouted Lavinia’s name.

He shouted loudly enough for her to hear him wherever she might be in the house.

But still there was only silence around him.

“Where are you, Lavinia?” he cried.

He felt a strange emptiness in the pit of his stomach. Had she left him and the plantation to seek a new life elsewhere?

That thought made him want to vomit at first. Then he was overcome by an anger he had rarely felt before, the sort that encompasses a soul.

He stumbled back into her bedroom, opened the shutters at one of the windows, then raised the sash and thrust his head out. “Lavinia, where are you?” he bellowed, his voice echoing back at him.

He gazed heavenward, glad at least that the storm had moved off.

Then he shouted Lavinia’s name, over and over again, until his voice was hoarse.

Totally exhausted now, and feeling strangely empty, he stumbled from her room and went to his own, where he fell across his bed. He soon passed out.

Outside, his voice had traveled to the slaves’ cabins, and they had gathered together in front of their homes.

They all huddled in one large group, trembling at the fury they’d heard in Hiram’s voice.

Fearing the man with every fiber of their being, and knowing that he would take his anger out on the black folk at his plantation, the slaves debated what they should do.