Sweet Bloody Sugarcane
Short Story | Horror | Retribution Can Be Sweet & Violent
The sugarcane fields do not smell sweet, they never have. There is blood in the soil, and so it smells of rust and subjugation. The steel cutlass in my hand feels like nothing but possibilty, even under the cold light of the hot Caribbean night. I can feel my heart, a hummingbird battering against my chest. It is a 10 lb muscle beating out Morse code. It says, “run girl. RUN. yuh tink you ruff?” My answer is a tightening grip on the wooden handle of my grandma’s old cutlass.
The sweat licks its way down my back, a river of anxiety and fear. I tell myself I am more than flesh. I whisper to myself the chants of a woman who knew women who knew spells. I whisper words of protection and veneration to my ancestors.
Grandmother protect me
mother protect me
great grandmother protect me
fanm ban mwen fòs
ban mwen kouwajé1
I repeat it. A refrain. Saying the words is not enough I have to believe it and so I spend the time making myself believe that I am stronger, faster, smarter, better, and more loved than the dark, disgusting thing that has planted its roots deep into my people’s land.
It has feasted on us the thing. Chewed our bones like tobacco and used our marrow as an offering to the gods of old and gold. I used to be deaf to the sound of the thing. Then I bled and was awakened. I felt its tendrils grasping at my ankles, trying to crawl under my skin. The entitlement of the beast made me nauseous, pregnant with distaste and a rage so thick it would stick in my throat and suffocate me if I had not had the guidance of my foremothers. They whisper to me the answer to killing the greedy beast plump with the flesh of their families, the ambitions rotted and mangled, the hope shiny underneath all the fucking silt, soil, and clay of the fields.
I sense it then. First, the sweat on my back dries as a chill descends. Then, the smell hits a mixture of burnt sugar and burnt flesh. The thing announces itself as if to say you are nothing but a fire away from being part of me. I cackle then. It scares even me. The sound of my laughter is the throats of the women before me barking at the moon. We cackle together, then at the thought of ever having been afraid.
The others rise from where they had knelt waiting for the signal, and it is funny to me then that the signal is my laughter and beast’s burnt sugar and burnt flesh scent. It is as if I am laughing at the absurdity of the thing having swallowed so many of my people.
It’s behind me. So I turn to face the beast its skin a pathetic imitation of the moon. It is grey and I can see that there are patches of it that are shades of stretch-dried brown flesh. I almost cry then. Instead, I howl, me and the throats of my foremothers. Me and the 11 other women who have cutlasses and the blood of warriors, healers, witches, the women that were quiet enough to survive. The women that plotted.
We circle the monstrosity still chanting spells genetically coded in our blood. The thing vibrates as if ready to explode from the melding of sound waves, of pain, or perhaps of rage to have finally been cornered by what is supposed to be prey. I do not recall who lunges first only that the sound the creature makes is a deep guttural sound like the crumbling of an ancient building or the sound of a heavy old chain breaking. Can you believe the thing bled gold? Real gold dripping into the fucking fields.
Sure, it rages, lunges, swipes its claws matted with dirt and blood history at us, but we are 12 and millions. We are cutlasses blessed and cursed by women with a history of hate simmering—they never burn the pot. It never stood a fucking chance. So we chant and we cackle. We stab, and it bleeds its gold blood all over the soil of sugarcane fields. When the deed is done, we rip off the skin that does not belong to it. We take the moon-skinned beast empty of its gold blood, a shell of itself. We set it aflame and we dance shaking the shak-shak2 and singing songs of liberation—great fortune. A call and response from the past to the present.
We dance until the sun comes up. Yes, we are covered in our own blood and the gold blood too, still we dance hips rolling like the wheels of time. We dance and sing until we are hungry and our throats are sore and the only thing to do is sit in a circle peeling sugarcane, chewing sugarcane, letting its juice heal generations of subjugation. Perhaps there is a sweetness to find there still I can smell it now.
Women give me strength
women give me courage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shak-shak
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I love this story so much. It’s so ancestral and I hope you got the same feeling reading it that I got writing it.
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What was your favorite part of the story? What was your favorite line? Tell me about a time the matriarch of your family gave you good advice or helped you when you didn’t see a way out.
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Wonderful, I absolutely love the combo of shamanistic ritual, feminist revindication and ancestral lore. I think this is without a doubt one of your strongest pieces and I personally would love to see much more of this kind of thing. Call it post-colonial folk horror or what you will, it's definitely a fertile ground for further exploration. (It's partly why I suggested bringing your lady vampire from NYC to the Caribbean, which still could be a possibility).
The prose style is graceful and strong, as the others have noted. I wouldn't single out a particular line as the whole thing meshes together so well.
Personal note: I never met a matriarch in my youth, as my grandmas died long before I was born, and my mother and aunts were all totally brain-fucked by the patriarchy of the Catholic church and instead of wisdom just repeated whatever they were told to by the priest. That only came much later, and so I do know a few wise matriarchs nowadays.
Fuckin dope. Really good.