Message-ID: <48745asstr$1091880603@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
Return-Path: <news@google.com>
X-Original-To: ckought69@hotmail.com
Delivered-To: ckought69@hotmail.com
X-Original-Path: not-for-mail
From: rache696@yahoo.com (Rache)
X-Original-Message-ID: <24fa9435.0408061806.6a6b919a@posting.google.com>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 02:06:52 +0000 (UTC)
X-ASSTR-Original-Date: 6 Aug 2004 19:06:51 -0700
Subject: {ASSM} The Plantation (True, Violent, Rape, Patay)
Lines: 254
Date: Sat,  7 Aug 2004 08:10:03 -0400
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d
X-Archived-At: <URL:http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/Year2004/48745>
X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation <story-ckought69@hotmail.com>
X-Story-Submission: <ckought69@hotmail.com>
X-Moderator-ID: hoisingr, dennyw

True Stories
By Rachael Ross

Copyright 2004 by Rachael Ross. Similarities to actual places and
people is intentional. I did not name the specific Barangay where
these events happened. Please do not post or repost without my
permission. I'm only putting this in one public place I think; it's
mostly an experiment for me. Thanks. -rr.17mar04 Negros Del Norte


Introduction

I have some stories to tell. They are not fictional, although I
doubtless added some things, and left out some stuff in the interest
of story telling. I guess a little intro would be good, since I should
start someplace and I can't figure out how to say what I want without
mentioning myself and some others, probably in more detail than I'd
like, but...hey. Someday, maybe, when I have kids I can tell them...read
these, and you'll understand me better. Although at what age I should
let my child read something like gen19 is subjective.

The Plantation

There is a large sugarcane plantation that we drive by almost every
day. Hundreds of hectares of it. It grows fast and when sugarcane gets
about 7 or 8 feet tall, the men go out and cut it by hand, using a big
machete, called a `pinuti' and then bundle it and load it on old and
worn trucks to be taken to Centrales, the big sugar mill. It is hard,
backbreaking work, and the men are both young and old, earning the
equivalent of $1.50 a day. (80 Pesos)

There are numerous plantations, but this one in particular stands out.
A large compound, with a great wooden house and numerous smaller
buildings, sits at the end of a long straight road lined with tall and
ancient cottonwood trees. It is beautiful, even though very rundown
and rustic in appearance, with a high fence topped with barbed wire
running around it. Our driver, a man of about 45 named Hendo, says
that when he was young, the house was very nice. At night the compound
is lit like a prison, I think, and 20-foot high steel gates are closed
and bolted from the inside. During the day it looks nice, after dark,
it looks terrifying.

I asked Hendo why it looks like a prison and he laughed and told me
the story. But not that night, because it is very bad luck to tell
such stories at night. This superstition recurs again and again, by
the way. There are a lot of stories no one will tell once the sun goes
down. So it wasn't until a few days later, sitting on the balcony of a
house we rented in the mountains, that I heard Hendo's story. He and
some other men were drinking `Tuba' which is a kind of coconut wine,
gathered every morning and sold before breakfast. It's warm and sweet
and strong. You drink it from a big glass, drinking it down fast in 4
or 5 large swallows. Very soon, everything seems really funny. Or
really sad.

A German man named Schauer, if I understood Hendo's pronunciation
correctly, owned the plantation. It might have been Scheer, but I
think not. This was about 40 years ago, when Hendo was a child, he
said. And this German was a hard man, very tightfisted with his money.
He barely paid his workers enough to survive and feed their families,
but everyone needs work, so the men did it. Schauer would walk through
the fields as the men hacked at the cane, carrying a short whip, using
it on their backs if he thought they weren't working hard enough. He
was cruel and the men hated him.

The German also mistreated women. He was married, of course, and his
Filipina wife lived with him on the plantation, with their children.
But Schauer also had a Mistress in the nearest town, who was very
beautiful and he visited her often. At first the Mistress' family was
happy, because this German was rich and they thought he would give
their daughter money, build a small house perhaps, where they all
could live.

But he didn't. Schauer seemed to take a perverse pleasure in driving
to the hovel where his lovely Mistress and her parents and brothers
and sisters, and even grandparents all squatted. He would walk through
the stinking and dark alleys, looking for her, because he would never
say when he was coming, and the German would find the girl (she was
only 18) doing someone's laundry, or chopping sticks into kindling to
make charcoal, or cooking a small bit of rice mixed with rough corn
grits for their dinner. Then he would laugh at her, and berate the
woman in front of her neighbors, dragging her by the hair into the
tiny room where she slept, taking her loudly so that everyone would
know she was a whore to this German who gave her nothing in return but
a few pesos allowance.

And even that was not enough for this man. He also used the maids at
his plantation. Perhaps in front of his wife even, although no one can
say for certain, but that is what they believe. He liked to beat them,
these maids, who were always young and beautiful. They came from towns
and villages far away, where the German would send his foreman to
promise a nice room and a good wage that the girls could send back to
their parents.

It seemed the foreman would go to hire a new maid every few months,
and no one could say what had happened to the old ones. Perhaps they
went back to their families, the men working the fields thought, or
the German might have sent them to Manila, to work in the fine house
that he kept in Laguna. Nobody knew, and this went on for many many
years.

Then a fisherman started talking about a boat that he had seen one
night, on Bala, which is an island some distance up the coast from the
plantation. He hadn't recognized it because the fisherman all stay
very close to their homes, so this boat had come from someplace else.
It was red, with gold stripes, like a tiger's on the bow and stern. It
had a motor as well, which was uncommon in those days, even for the
wealthiest fisherman. Someone who heard this story repeated it to
someone else, and so on.

Now Bala is a haunted place, as everyone knows. It is half-submerged
when the tide is high, leaving only trees and the largest bushes
sticking out above the clear water. And at low tide, the island can be
seen, rocks and mud and sand that shifts every day, so the ground
never looks the same. The tree roots are visible, like thick nets and
traps, twisting in every direction while coconut crabs skittle through
them chasing prawns and the tiny fish that live in the mud.

No one could understand why anyone would go there. You couldn't use
your nets, they would snag and rip and be lost. It was a big mystery
until some of the men who worked around the plantation heard the
story. The German had a boat just as the story described, although no
one had ever seen him use it. The large outrigger just floated at its
mooring, day after day. One of the men asked the foreman if he had
heard the fisherman's story of seeing Schauer's boat at Bala Island.
The foreman struck the man, calling him lazy and that he should work
more and gossip less.

This of course made the men working the fields wonder all the more.
They were a superstitious lot, but also practical. The German was rich
and one of the favorite pastimes in the Philippines is fortune
hunting. It seemed entirely possible that the German had buried gold
on that island, fearing that his wealth wouldn't be safe on the
plantation. The Huks, who had been fighting for land reform since
before WWII, were once again active in some places. Kidnapping
landlords, burning plantations, even killing a few people. Not close
to where the German's plantation was, but he would have been
concerned. The communist movement too, the New People's Army, was just
starting to gain support and they were stealing from landowners to
finance their revolution. Yes, the men agreed, the German must have
hidden some gold on that island, trusting in the superstitions of the
locals to keep the secret.

Some of the men decided to go to that island and look. They were only
a few, because gold or not, many of the men were afraid. Some feared
the ghosts who lived on the island, and others feared the wrath of the
German if he found out. So it was only a half-dozen men, loading a
small boat with picks and shovels, that set out for Bala Island.

The Island itself is small, only a hundred yards long, by 20 yards
wide perhaps, at low tide. And not even half of that at high tide. It
was a foolish adventure, as anyone could tell you. There were no
markers to be seen, nothing like a stake, or a man-made stone to
indicate this is where Schauer buried his treasure and had placed
something useful to find it again. There was nothing but the shifting
mud and gravel beneath the roots of the trees.

The men decided to dig anyway, however, since it had been a long trip
and they might even get lucky. They argued the merits of one place
over another, and finally found what was generally agreed to be the
most likely spot to bury gold. They started digging, sweating in the
heat and humidity, laughing and joking and cursing all the while. A
few feet down they found a burlap sack, one that was commonly used to
hold 50 kilos of rice, or corn. The men excavated it eagerly, using
their hands now and looking at each other with greedy eyes.

The sack had been eaten through, it was torn and dirty and seawater
filled the hole as they dug, but soon they'd pulled the remains of
that sack free. It was filled with bones, with the remains of a human.
There were bits of clothing, some corroded jewelry perhaps, of no
value. It was not gold. The men dropped it and stared, wondering who
would bury a body on that island, and certain now that Bala must
indeed be haunted.

One man looked at the skeleton more closely and saw around the neck a
crucifix. It was dirty and eaten away by the salt, but he could still
recognize it, for he had known the woman who had worn it. She had been
a maid to the Schauer household, one of the beautiful and innocent
young women who came from their villages to serve in the plantation
house. He told the other men and suddenly they began to consider that
it hadn't been gold the German was burying, but his maid. They dug
another hole, and another, and still another even as the tide slowly
came in. The men found a body everywhere they dug; it seemed the
island was one huge grave and they were frightened and angry as they
put the bones from the four women in their boat, gathered their tools,
and paddled away.

When they arrived back at the plantation, in the poor `payag' or
bamboo and thatch house that the German had provided them for
sleeping, all the men discussed it amongst themselves. The ones who
had gone to the island showed the others the bones and the bits of
clothing and jewelry that they could recognize. For how many long
years had the German been living amongst them? Abusing them, treating
them like animals and slaves in their own country, in their own homes.
They had seen him abusing his servants, heard the stories about his
Mistress, and felt his whip on their backs. The men grew very angry
then and they picked up their machetes and lit torches of dried
cornstalk wrapped in banana leaves.

The men searched for Schauer, hurting the German's foreman badly as he
tried to stop them. They found Schauer in the small servant's quarters
behind the house, in bed with one of the newest young maids. Several
men wrestled him out of bed, and they kicked and slapped him, stabbing
at his body with their flaming torches and cursing him, until he was
outside in the great courtyard. He looked around him and saw only the
hate filled faces of his workers and he tried to reason with them.

He offered them better wages, new houses, and fine clothes. He offered
to give them money, because he did not understand why the men were
angry. He thought it was because they had so little, while he had so
much. Finally one of the men brought the bones out. They'd been put in
a large sack and the man dumped them at the German's feet. They told
Schauer where the bones had come from, about how they knew he had
raped and then murdered his maids, only to procure new ones for his
sick pleasure. The German said nothing, he could only stare at those
pale bones, unwilling to admit his guilt.

The men, the German's former servants, fell on him then with their
knives, stabbing and slashing at Schauer until he lay in the dust,
dismembered and hacked and bled until the ground was black with it.
The men were breathless and wide-eyed with the excitement of it, their
nostrils flared with the scent of so much blood. They were covered
with the German's life and one by one they came to their senses and
realized the German's beautiful wife, who was from their own village,
was standing on the balcony of her house. She had held her children
and watched it all.

I thought that was the end of the story, but of course it wasn't. It
turns out there was a secret within the secret, that perhaps the
German had kept for love. Or perhaps he simply hadn't the time to tell
it to the men who killed him that dark night. But the foreman knew it
as well. The German had indeed raped many of his maids, enjoying such
sadistic pleasures intensely, but he had not murdered a single one.
The Dona Schauer, who was filled with jealousy and hated the women
with whom her husband slept, as only a wife who has been treated such
a way can, had killed them herself. She would enter a maid's quarters
late at night, after her husband had finished with the girl, using the
foreman's machete to butcher the young woman like a pig. She would
scream and weep and cut the women in horrible ways, particularly in
their bellies and between their legs, convinced that her husband had
made them pregnant to torment her further. The foreman, who some say
was the wife's brother, and other's maintain was her lover, would wrap
the body in the blood soaked sheets, dragging it through the dirt to
the German's boat, while the wife would return to the bed she shared
with her husband, secure in her position.

===

That story, very nearly exactly as I've written it, is true. The
buildings exist as I've described and there is a small private
cemetery where the German and his wife are buried, near the
plantation. I have been trying to get permission to visit it. I have
seen the island, but the man who's boat I was on refused to land me
there. The son of the German owns the plantation now, although he
lives in Manila and he has a foreman of his own to take care of it.

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| alt.sex.stories.moderated ------ send stories to: <ckought69@hotmail.com>|
| FAQ: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/faq.html> Moderators: <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|ASSM Archive at <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org>   Hosted by <http://www.asstr-mirror.org> |
|Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d; look for subject {ASSD}|
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+