Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/1761599. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage Category: F/M, Other Fandom: Django_Unchained_(2012) Relationship: Sheba/Calvin_Candie, Sheba/OMC Character: Sheba, Calvin_Candie Additional Tags: Racism, Racist_Language, Grooming, Misogyny, Childhood_Sexual_Abuse, Rape Fantasy, Revenge_Fantasy, Sexual_Slavery, Slavery, Knives, Cannibalism Stats: Published: 2014-06-09 Words: 656 ****** Life Being What It Is ****** by Dizzy_Eyre Summary A little look at Sheba. Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge - and has to content oneself with dreaming. ~ Paul Gauguin He taught me to read and write. Ain't it sweet. The benevolent master handing down education to a loyal and deserving soul. The Southern gentleman, extending his chivalry even unto the lowliest of his effects. His peachy cheek against my nappy little head as we sounded it out. My name, as it was back then, then fuck. And suck and cock and cunt. And bitch and pussy and teats. And nigger. Reams of filth. All the wordless things he did and made me do, there were words for them, his words. I was quite the turn. He'd take me to his club, ring for pen and paper, call the gang round. How they laughed. I'd dimple and flutter under his hand because I had been pleasing. Later I expanded my vocabulary. Sneaked a Shakespeare behind the dust jacket of Fanny Hill. What a peeling I'd've took if he'd found out. But he didn't. He died of a heart attack midway through his morning shit, and his wife sold me to Candieland. Monseewer was as enamoured of my tricks as his predecessor. As were his friends. Calvin what have you been teaching the gal, good God man you're incorrigible! Wasn't me, he'd say, flashing his sepia teeth, I just reap the benefits, don't I sugar? Dimple, flutter. There was always a lot of paper. One or two sheets would not be missed, rolled up small as a cigarette and tucked into my sleeve. Nor a piece of charcoal here, a pencil stub there. When I could be sure I was alone, a chair backed against the hole in the wall that Stephen thought I didn't know about, my bonnet hung on the door handle so it dangled over the keyhole, I'd unfold it. It was the same colour as the top of the milk. I'd lay my cheek against it, and my lips. Calvin named me Sheba. She's got some little claws on her, he'd say, but oh, how she purrs… So I was Sheba. I creamed my skin, I hotcombed my hair. I sassed him carefully in that way that he found amusing. I dressed like a white lady and did things no upstanding God-fearing gentleman would ask of one. And on the page, I fucked him with a cane-knife till his guts spilled out of his mouth. I opened him up like a hog and spat in his clouding eyes. I dropped him squealing into a vat of sugar, then served him up, crystallised - candied - in dainty morsels to that rancid old sow Miss Lara, and five bucks says that wasn't the first taste she'd had. I'd write small and turn both sides black. Cross bits out and add bits around, over, under, till the paper ripped. I'd think of a good extra torture and draw a balloon round it, with a string dangling back to where it fit in the main story. It was already in my head, off by heart, why take the risk? Because I had to. It had to be out of me and in the world, or God knows. God knows. I'd read my words over and over. I'd have to cram my handkerchief in my mouth because I would laugh till I cried, or the other way about. Glut myself on it, then burn it. I knelt before the grate and watched it turn to ash. When they came to the Cleopatra, the sweet, quiet German and his man, I knew. I knew the latter for one of my kind. I took a look at his game face over the top of my glass and saw that he was an invention, as much as me. He didn't have my imagination, but he had other gifts. He didn't have my words, but he wrote his own version, and oh. How it burned. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!