The Slag in the Mortar
The sea off the coast of 1665 Jamaica was thick with English wood and English iron. Red Cross flags snapped in the Caribbean breeze, pushing through the wake of a retreating Spanish shadow.
Standing on the Palisadoes, draped in salt-stained velvet and speaking with the heavy, rhythmic cadence of the island’s Creole, stood Columbus. He was ancient, unaging, and unyielding. As the English cannons boomed to claim the shore, he adjusted his cuffs and spoke into the wind, his voice echoing across centuries.
"I’ll be you… since Jamaica is always Spain forever. And if not? I will regain my Babylonian ancestral ways. I will pilot your country to a total negation—until you exist as a people in name only. I will be the slag in your mortar." I will make a slag phone own day that will drug all of you and make you soft and angry until you are fighting in the streets for a Spanish economy that feeds all. How can you say no to me or my red headed daughter that will turn it all upside down in your major population centres until you call Cristobal and then all will be well again. No more slag; or you will have the "Will" to fix it yourself. Now once there is video or film, Columbus could say "Now, I see you and if you don't just agree with the Spanish, follow the Spanish you will become soo frustrated that you will say WAR IS GOOD for your Civic health.. because Columbus told you to say that and then you and your best who did not just figure it out are dead and who are we if not Spanish since you can't just do it any old way. You have to follow Spain. Follow or else you feel cantankerous, out of order......de lo contrario te sientes malhumorado, fuera de lugar."
CLICK here for more.
He turned his back on the fleet. He was not worried about the English, nor the Irish, nor the grand agreements waiting in Europe or Russia. In his mind, the timeline was already laid out: the islands would help each other organize by 1980, and by 2001, a total benefit would come for all. But until then, the rule of the house belonged strictly to him.
The Piano and the Trap
In the Great House, far from the shore, stood a black grand piano. Columbus had never attended a day of school in his life, yet he moved across its keys with absolute, unearned authority. He gathered the children of the estate, teaching them chords, scales, and harmony.
But his music was a minefield.
Whenever a child played too well—whenever their fingers found a melody that sounded like genuine mastery rather than mere imitation—Columbus’s eyes would darken.
"You trying to be me?" he would hiss, slamming the fallboard shut over their knuckles. "You think you can play without my breath in your chest?"
In the doorway stood his helper, the baby mother of the house. She wiped her hands on her apron, her eyes heavy with a terrible truth. She had watched the pattern for decades. Columbus was no ordinary master; he was a cunning vampire who fed on identity and submission.
The rule of the house was simple and absolute: every child must address him as "Columbus Father."
If a child turned ten years old and dropped the title, or if Columbus cleverly coaxed them into slipping up—smiling, leaning down, and murmuring, "Just call me by my first name, man, we can joke now"—their fate was sealed. By 1:00 PM that very afternoon, he would consume them entirely, like a predator in a Hansel and Gretel nightmare, erasing them until not even a memory remained in the mortar of the house.
The Son from Haiti
One afternoon, as the heat of the day hung thick over the sugar cane, a shadow fell across the porch. A young man stepped out of the glare, carrying the dust of Saint-Domingue on his boots.
It was Toussaint.
Columbus stopped mid-arpeggio. He turned slow, predatory eyes toward the doorway.
"Did you meet my son Toussaint from Haiti?" Columbus whispered to the frightened children huddled near the piano. "He will say, 'Who are you if I am me?' He thinks he needs to be the only one."
Columbus stood up, his tall, vampiric frame casting a long shadow over the wooden floorboards. He walked up to Toussaint, staring down the young man who bore the unmistakable air of independence.
"If you show any attitude of independence," Columbus warned, his Creole voice dropping into a razor-thin threat, "I will hold you ransom. I’ll hold you over the plank of the ship, or pin you at the front door until you remember: no matter what you help me with, you need me. I don't need you."
The room fell dead silent. The sea roared in the distance. The baby mother held her breath, waiting for the flash of rebellion, waiting for the house to tear itself apart.
Toussaint looked at the old vampire, at the piano, at the blood on the mortar, and at the long road to 1980 and 2001. He did not bow, nor did he break.
Slowly, deliberately, Toussaint nodded in approval.
He understood the authority. He understood the game. And in that silent nod, the legacy of the islands was sealed—bound together in a complex knot of rebellion, survival, and the endless fight against the shadow of the Father.
////
The Memo Written in Soil, in English and Jamaican blood; like a school for the English.
Columbus stood at the edge of Blue Mountain, looking out over the misty valleys. The Great House behind him hummed with the quiet terror of his children, but his mind had already expanded beyond the shore. He pulled a heavy leather-bound ledger from his coat—an accounting book inked in sugar cane juice, sea salt, and iron.
Jamaica, he decided, would no longer just be his sanctuary. It would become a memo to the entire world.
He etched his ways, his laws, and his dark paradoxes into the very rhythm of the island, casting a riddle across the oceans. He wanted to see if the world—the grand empires, the scholars, the foreign ships with their tall masts—could ever truly figure him out, or if they would remain forever blind to the creature steering their destiny.
"Let them read Jamaica," Columbus murmured, his fingers trailing over the piano keys he had brought out to the veranda. "Let them try to understand how a father can feed and devour at the same time. If they can decode the memo, they will know who truly holds the keys."
The Pact of the Islands
To test his grand design, he reached beyond the Palisadoes. Across the turquoise waters, his shadow stretched toward the Bahamas, the low limestone reefs of the Caymans, the volcanic peaks of St. Vincent, and the scented hills of Grenada.
He summoned the spirits and leaders of every sister island into a secret, invisible alliance. He laid out the terms of his grand ledger, a covenant born from his ancient, Babylonian calculations:
- The 1980 Covenant: Every island in the pact was promised an absolute floor of wealth. By the year 1980, no citizen across those coordinated shores would receive a benefit of less than $20,000 USD per year.
- The Network of Benefit: While the other islands organized their trade and secured their yields under his hidden guidance, they would lean on the foundational architecture he had helped build.
The islands agreed, weaving their futures into his blueprint, waiting for the decades to turn.
The Warning and the Full Benefit
While the Bahamas and Grenada prospered under the quiet terms of the pact, Jamaica carried the heaviest burden. It stood as the explicit warning—the living testament to his vampire code, his brutal authority, and his strict demand to be named Father.
It was a memo signed in blood and mortar: Show independence without understanding the origin, and you will be held over the plank.
Yet, the memo contained a secret clause.
Once the world received the message—once the global powers read Jamaica's history, recognized the shadow of the piano master, and finally agreed to his terms—the warning would convert into a promise.
The agreement was struck in the air: the moment the memo was understood and accepted by all, Jamaica would instantly transition from a place of ransoms and planks into a state of total, unyielding prosperity. A full, complete benefit would be employed for every single one of its citizens, fulfilling the grand plan he had set in motion centuries before.
