Monologue Of Maurice Stanley

They found Maurice Stanley’s decomposing body at the factory grounds. He’d been lynched, the media concluded. He must have deserved it, they whispered under their breaths, or said much louder. After all, a people as wretched as his kind did deserve no better fate…. but did they, really? Was their existence really so cursed, so pathetic, that mercy should skip them? That justice itself should forsake them? Or rather, did they have the curse thrust upon them? Like a leash of heavy brass that would never yield, Maurice Stanley found himself afflicted with this curse, and it cost him his life. At the crime scene, all the press seemed to care about was his brown skin. That seemed to bring all the commotion they needed. But isn’t it strange that nobody seemed to notice that his blood was red?
As the funeral progressed, it was the somber drone of an organ that filled the air with melancholy, and it was the candles that wept with the same grief that Dolores Powell felt. Why did he have to die? God, my Lord, I am much older. I am ready. Why should you not have taken me instead? He was just a babe, she thought. My babe. And as the agonized mother of this angel, this darling little boy, could do nothing but cry, it was her wails of sadness that swore justice on whoever did this to him. She swore, as she felt her boy’s soul take its place in heaven, that the monster who committed this crime would have hell to pay. But…. how? Dolores was born into a free black family in the North. But that didn’t mean that she was spared from racism. Sure, it wasn’t as bad as what the slaves had to go through in the South- but all the same, she was tethered to the same burdening leash that her son unfortunately inherited. Isn’t it funny? The whites got to inherit riches. Massive plots of land. While all the blacks seemed to inherit was the prejudice, albeit it always becoming ever so slightly muted as it was passed every generation, that their forefathers had to suffer through. And that they would as well. It was because of this that Dolores couldn’t take her case to court. The justice system was twisted- and she was not only black, but also a woman. The odds were helplessly stacked against her and her quest for truth. No such damned luck there, she muttered as she pounded her fist on a desk. She realized that to achieve any semblance of justice for her son, any little trace at all, she would have to figure out the method behind this madness. Indeed, she would have to now piece together the story behind his death. She set herself to this goal as she wiped away her tears, in a way not mourning only her son’s death, but her own as well. “Yes, Miss Rosa! Do another set for us!” “Oh, just you wait, boys! I’ve got it coming up right here!” They called her Miss Rosa, although her real name was Rosemary Burnett. …show more content…
Some knew her as the most notorious flapper in New Orleans. Some revered her cutting style and worshipped her beauty. But to some others, she was known as a woman with loose morals, a dame of decadence. She was that kind of woman whom Victorian housewives would desperately try to keep their little girls from becoming. And she relished it. She relished her controversy, her divisiveness. She reveled in the drama that she caused. The press ate up every studded step she took and she loved it. No doubt about it, she was a provocative figure and people had all sorts of opinions about her. Some thought of her as passion epitomized, while some saw her as a victim of jazz and liquor. But in reality, she was both in a way- Rosemary Burnett was a victim of her passions. Maurice first met this elusive Miss Rosa at the speakeasy a year ago. He would often be found there at night, wallowing in cheap gin and smokes. It was a form of escapism, somehow- a way to unwind and relish in a lovely, fantastic reverie for an