The morning sun spilled gold over the worn wooden planks of the porch, and Seraphim stood at the screen door with her arms crossed over her white nightgown watching it rise. The year is 1920 and the July summer weather has already made everyone in Mississippi feel muggy and sticky before 8:00 AM. Cicadas had already begun their high-pitched hum, and the sweet, cloying scent of honeysuckle drifted through the air as it wrapped itself around her like the arms of a mother she’d never known.
Sera let out a small yawn while her bare feet shifted on the cool floorboards, the only relief from the suffocating warmth that clung to her deep brown mahogany skin. Scratching her head she let out a small and annoyed sigh as she contemplated if her father would let her go one more day without combing her hair. Having a head full of unruly burgundy curls and a face full of freckles, Sera didn’t look like most of her peers. And at 5’8, she was half a head taller than most girls in town, which meant she got stared at more often than she liked… especially when she wore her Sunday best and the boys from town leaned in too close during service.
But like the good preacher's daughter she is, she learned to keep her eyes low, lips tight, and her curves hidden beneath modest skirts that go past her knees. It was what was expected of her and she didn’t question it. Her body and life was not hers to own. She belonged to her father. She belonged to God.
“Seraphim!” A call for her presence from inside the house that sounded deep, gravelly, and lined with worry. The voice comes from the only person she’s ever spoken more than five words to, her father, her shepherd, the town’s chosen man of God, Pastor Samuel.
Without a second to spare, Sera turned on her heels and hastily made her way to the kitchen before trying to smooth out her ginger curls that are now framing her face like a lions mane. “Yes, Daddy?”
Seated at the kitchen table, Bible open, spectacles perched low on his nose sits a black man in his late 50’s that time hasn’t been kind to. Sera takes note of the five new gray hairs that seem to have appeared overnight on her fathers head and how he doesn’t bother to acknowledge her presence by looking up. Dressed in his typical uniform of a crisp white button up shirt Sera ironed the night before, black slacks, and black suspenders, Pastor Samuel looks like a God-fearing man that commands respect from all who gaze upon him.
“We’ll be having company for supper tonight.”
Something in his tone makes her chest tighten with nerves as she scrunches her face in confusion and immediately fixes it before her father notices. Moving slowly to the table, Sera takes a cautious seat across from her father before folding her hands like she was still a child in Sunday school.
“Who, Daddy?”
Still, he doesn’t look up. “Don’t worry bout’ the names, Seraphim. Just… men… come to talk men business.”
Her fingers curl anxiously into her palms. Sera is the picture perfect daughter and typically she doesn’t ask questions. She never does… Not since Mama left after she asked about—… But the set of her father’s jaw and the way his hands tremble slightly as he turns the page of his Bible, it told her enough.
The Klan has been circling their 5 acres of land like vultures lately. First, their sneering whispers at the general store. Then the burning cross not a mile from the chapel’s steps that sits on the western field of the land. They said the property didn’t belong to a Black man. Said God wouldn’t build His house of worship on stolen dirt with niggers dwelling on it.
But Sera knows her daddy didn't steal anything regardless of what the rumors say. After her mama left, Samuel made a deal with some mystery man and God helped him acquire the title of this lot. At least that’s the vague explanation he gives her any time she asks about it. Nevertheless, when he acquired the land the first thing he did was build a church with his own two hands. And now those hands grip the edge of the table as if it were all that kept him from crumbling.
“You’ll head down to Bo’s,” he said. “Pick up what we need. Chicken, potatoes, cabbage, buttermilk and flour for the biscuits. We’ll show them hospitality, like the Good Book says.”
Sera nodded silently and swallowed down the million questions that burn on her tongue. After three beats of tense silence her father finally looked up, and in his amber eyes that have started to develop a thin blue coating around the iris, showcases a tiredness deeper than age.
“And Seraphim?” he added gently.
“Yes, sir?”
“Comb that rats nest on your head and wear the pale blue dress. The one that don’t cling too close and goes to your ankles.”
Her cheeks heated with embarrassment as she nodded in agreement. “Yes, Daddy.”
Standing up from her seat and turning to leave, Sera’s steps are slow and heavy. As she gets dressed and stares at her reflection in the mirror she allows one singular tear to fall down her cheek before quickly wiping it away and closing her eyes to say a silent prayer. Protection for her father. Protection for the church. Protection for the land. And above all else, protect her body from overheating in this dress that was made with a little too much material.
As she adds the finishing touches to her braided updo and grabs the cash for her errands, the screen door creaks behind her like a warning. The walk to the store would be long in this heat, and every step would carry the weight of knowing that tonight underneath the fake smiles and polite prayers there’d be devils seated at her table.
And she’d be expected to serve them.
The road to Bo’s twisted like a long scar through the red dirt and brittle tall grass. Seraphim walked it alone, her steps measured with her basket swinging gently at her side. The morning sun was already fierce and burning through the brim of her hat while causing the pale blue fabric of her dress to stick to her back. No matter how conservative she wanted to appear today it seemed like the universe had other plans as dust clung to her skin like guilt.
Even with the possibility of a heatstroke on the horizon, Sera didn’t complain and instead she kept her head down and continued on her way as she let her mind roam.
Smoke and Stack have come back.
The words had been whispered like scripture behind cupped hands all across town.
It started with the undertaker’s boy, who said he saw them pull up in a shiny black car that didn’t belong to Mississippi dirt. Then the ladies at Sister Odetta’s beauty shop had gasped between hot combs and gossip and said the twins were dressed like city men, with gold chains and sharp suits. Their hands heavy with sin and the smell of Chicago money lingering on their skin.
Sera had barely known them as a child. They were already grown men when she was still being scolded for climbing trees in her Sunday shoes. Ten years her senior, they’d been the kind of men who lived in whispers and warnings. Men born on the wrong side of the tracks, raised on violence, and baptized in war before vanishing North with nothing but a reputation and a revolver.
She remembered seeing them once from the church window with their long limbs and sharp mouths, laughing at something no decent folk should laugh at. Her father had pulled the curtain closed and muttered, “Devil’s work.”
Now they are back. And no one knows the reason why.
Her steps slowed as she passed the old barn where she once caught her mother kissing a white man in the shadows. She hadn’t meant to spy. She was only seven. Her baby brother had just been born and Sera… too curious for her own good… had wandered too far from home one night looking for fireflies. What she found instead was the truth.
She remembered asking her mama, “Why’s he so pale? His hair same color as mine but he white like a peckerwood?”
Her mama had gone quiet. Two days later, she was gone.
Took her baby brother. Left the ring her father gave her in his favorite bible. And never came back.
Sera learned silence that year. How to swallow hurt without chewing. How to keep her eyes low and her voice lower. Her father never spoke her mama’s name again. Just preached harder and held her tighter.
The screen door to Bo’s creaked as she opened it, the bell above chiming like a warning. Inside, the air was thick with tobacco and the musty scent of aging wood. A few men loitered in the back as they sipped bottled pop and muttered low under their breath. They quieted when she walked in.
Sera could feel them looking. Could always feel when men’s eyes lingered too long on her like they had the ability to see beyond what she attempted to hide. She was 25 now. Unmarried, tall, full-figured and soft in the face but with too much knowing in her eyes. She tried to hide it all under cotton and decency, but men saw what they wanted. Even here. Even now.
“Mornin’, Miss Seraphim,” Bo called from behind the counter, his drawl friendly but laced with caution.
“Mornin’, Mister Bo,” she said politely, keeping her voice sweet and even. Something she mastered at a young age.
“Your daddy got you runnin’ errands today?”
“Yes, sir. Company’s comin’ for supper. Said I need ingredients to make fried chicken, mashed potatoes, sautéed cabbage… and biscuits too.”
Bo raised an eyebrow, nodding as he scribbled on a small notepad. “Hmph. Important company, I reckon.”
Sera didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
As Bo disappeared into the storeroom, she wandered toward the shelves of canned goods and piles of flour sacks as she pretended to browse. Behind her, the men began to whisper again.
“Smoke’s the one wit’ the gold tooth, right?”
“Nah. That’s Stack. Smoke’s the nigga that talk too smooth.”
“Did you hear what they did to dem boys up in Yazoo?”
Sera kept her back turned, heart thumping louder than the bell had.
“They say Stack got a scar down his side big as a muthafuckin’ butcher’s knife.”
“They say Smoke talk a man into givin’ up his mama’s land and thank him after.”
“They say they brought Hell back with ‘em, and they got money to burn it down. But I ain’t scared of them niggas.”
Sera gripped the handle of her basket tighter as she continued to listen. She knew it wasn’t proper to ease drop but she would ask God for forgiveness later. The SmokeStack twins were men of sin. Of smoke, flame, and ruin. They didn’t belong in her world of hymns dressed up in linen and bowed heads.
But for some reason… she couldn’t stop thinking about them.
Before more could be discussed, Bo returned with a paper sack filled to the brim with all the needed ingredients and a few extras. “Here you go, darlin’. Tell your daddy I said God bless him.”
Sera nodded, murmured her thanks, and stepped back out into the scorching sun. As she made her way back home, she tried not to imagine what it would mean if the SmokeStack twins crossed her path. She tried not to think about her mama and how the world could never make space for a woman torn between desire and duty. And she tried not to ask why, after all these years, something in her stirred at the sound of their names.
By the time Seraphim returned home, the sun had dropped just enough to make the sky blush. Her childhood home sat quiet on its vast land. An old two story farmhouse with peeling paint and wide porch steps that creaked like old grandma knees. She stood for a moment at the gate, looking up at it. Her home. Her father’s sanctuary. Her… prison.
Inside, she freshed up and tied on her apron and got to work. She moved through the kitchen with practiced ease and muscle memory passed down from ancestors she would never meet. She seasoned the chicken with salt, pepper, and a heavy hand of cayenne, just the way her daddy liked it. Rolled it in flour and dropped it into the cast iron skillet, where the oil hissed like a warning.
Next were the mashed potatoes she added cream and butter to until they were silk. Then she cut the cabbage thin and tossed it with smoked pork fat until it wilted. And finally she kneaded the biscuit dough, cool and soft beneath her fingers, like clouds in her palms.
Sera tried to quiet her noisy mind as she focused on making sure this meal was perfect. But her mind wandered back to the whispers in Bo’s store and to the heat in her chest that wouldn’t cool, not even with the open windows and the evening breeze coming through.
Her father was in his study, silent behind the cracked door. He hadn’t said who was coming. Just that it was “important.”
Important enough to fry a whole chicken? Important enough to cook a Sunday meal on Wednesday and be forced to comb my hair? Is Jesus coming?
Then a singular knock came just as she pulled the biscuits from the oven, golden and steaming. Pastor Samuel said nothing as he closed the book he was reading and left his study to open the door himself.
Her oven mitten covered hands froze over the skillet. Sera expected Deacon Haynes. Maybe old Mister Lockett from the train yard. But when her father opened the front door, the whole house seemed to still.
Two men stepped inside. One moved like a cautionary tale. The other, like trouble.
They were damn near impossible to tell apart at first glance. Both tall and standing at 6 '4, both dressed like Chicago royalty with midnight-black suits cut sharp enough to draw blood, gold cufflinks, shiny shoes that didn’t belong on Mississippi dirt, and different colored accessories. One dressed in a haunting blue and the other in a firecracker red. Their skin was a deep sultry brown and smooth, cheekbones high, eyes sharp beneath wide-brimmed fedoras.
But there was a difference. You didn’t see it. You felt it.
Smoke stepped in first. He moved like a closed casket… silent, heavy, and final. His expression didn’t shift. His eyes scanned the room like he was casing it. His face was like expressionless chiseled stone and Sera could’ve sworn his eyes never blinked.
Then Stack, right behind him with the same face, same build, same shine to his shoes, but grinning like he’d already kissed your sister and was thinking about your mama next. His smile was wide and wicked, white teeth decorated with gold flashing like a trap with sugar on it.
Sera’s breath caught in her throat.
“Well, well,” Stack said, tossing his red hat onto a nearby rack like he owned the place. “Didn’t know the preacher’s house came with a view.”
Pastor Samuel cut him a glare sharp enough to chip stone. “Mind your manners.”
“I am mindin’ ‘em,” Stack chuckled, eyes lingering on Sera. “Just admirin’ God’s work. Hallelujah!”
Smoke didn’t speak. He didn’t even look at Sera at first like she was a non interesting piece of furniture sitting in a corner. Instead he removed his hat and placed it on the rack next to Stacks. Something about him was fascinating to Sera. He was the kind of man who knew where a bullet might come from and how to send one back twice as fast.
Pastor Samuel cleared his throat. “Sera. Set the table.”
“Yes, sir,” she murmured, breaking herself from her trance and slipping into motion like her body was trying to protect her soul. The food went out hot and she moved quietly, with her eyes focused on her task, but she could feel Stack’s lingering stare sticking to her like honey on skin. Smoke finally looked at her. Just once and she couldn’t tell if his look was approval or disapproval of her appearance.
They all sat at the dinner table that was piled high with food as if it was thanksgiving. Pastor Samuel took a deep breath before bowing his head. “Lord, bless this table and guide our hands in the war to come.”
“Amen,” Smoke said softly. Stack said nothing due to his mouth already full of biscuit.
Dinner started civil. The knives scraped politely on china. Stack asked for seconds. Smoke barely touched his plate. And her father finally cut straight to the point. “The Klan wants this land but MY church sits on it. They plan to burn it or steal it, and I won’t have either.”
Finally getting into the grit of the meeting, Smoke leaned back in his chair and narrowed his eyes at Pastor Samuel before letting his hand linger over his pistol that’s tucked to the side. “You want protection?”
“I want justice,” the preacher corrected without missing a step. “But I’ll settle for peace. And peace only comes with fear, these days.”
Stack chuckled, licking the remaining food residue off his thumb. “So you brought in the big bad wolves?”
“I brought in men who make devils cross the street,” Samuel snapped.
Smoke went back to a relaxed position and finally picked up his fork again before taking another bite of cabbage. Sera didn’t mean to stare but she couldn’t help herself as she made a mental note on which food he ate the most of. “We don’t work for free.”
“I ain’t askin’ for charity… You can use the north field. Store what you want. Liquor, bodies, goods… I won’t ask what it is.”
Stack whistled low. “Damn. Preacher man got teeth.”
Samuel didn’t flinch. “I got a daughter who still believes in mercy. I’d like her to live long enough to keep believin’.”
That made Smoke pause. His eyes shifted back to Sera, who immediately dropped her gaze. She didn’t need to see the look to know it was heavy, not lustful like his brother’s, but something deeper and calculated.
Instead of sitting in the hot seat Sera busied herself with the plates. An excuse and a shield she knew would protect her during this tense moment. The dishes clinked gently as she stacked them, one by one, careful not to seem rushed, even as her hands itched to flee the room.
A quiet girl trying to make herself seem small in a world that wanted nothing more than to sing her praises like the church mothers during Sunday service. They always said she was “obedient,” “graceful,” “a woman raised right.” None of them knew how much it cost her to bite her tongue raw, how often she turned her rage into silence, her questions into prayers.
Stack leaned over the table, eyes gleaming with mischief and something darker. “Tell me, sweetheart… a girl like you ever get tired of bein’ good?”
She hesitated. Her fingers curled around the edge of a gravy bowl slick with fat. She kept her expression even and soft, almost dainty. Inside, something rattled. But she smiled faintly, like the perfect and polite southern belle her father raised her to be.
“No, sir,” she murmured, not looking at him. “Good girls sleep sounder at night.”
Stack grinned wider. “That so? Guess I wouldn’t know. Ain’t had a full night’s sleep since I lost my innocence—”
“Stack.” Smoke’s voice cut through the room like a blade dragged across glass. That single word, low and sharp, dried up all the amusement in his brother’s throat.
Pastor Samuel stood slowly. His eyes didn’t go to Sera. They never did when men looked at her too long. He spoke like a man reminded of the devil’s reach. “Dinner’s done.”
Smoke stood as well, deliberate and careful in every motion like a man who didn’t waste energy on anything unnecessary. He looked around the room once more, as if he was searching for something. “We’ll be in touch,” he said simply.
Stack bowed his head, eyes still locked onto Sera. “Thanks for the supper, pretty girl. You cook like a woman with a heavy soul. And look like a redheaded angel. Any man round’ here would be lucky to call you his wife.”
Sera didn’t respond. Just kept her eyes on the plates in her hands. She stayed quiet like a bunny cornered by a pack of wolves. Being quiet was the safest thing to do around wolves… especially wolves who smile so pretty they remind you that Satan was once an angel.
The screen door shut behind them with a lazy clap.
Only then did her shoulders fall before making her way back to the kitchen and standing in it alone as the lace curtains drifted over the open window. Outside, the twilight bled into the nearby fields, shadows stretching long like the hands of men reaching for things they didn’t deserve. Her father didn’t say a word to her, he just disappeared into his study, muttering about the Lord’s will, the price of peace and the weight of duty.
Sera washed each dish with hands that trembled just slightly. Not from fear but from curiosity.
She hated that part of herself, the part that wanted to turn around and ask Stack what it felt like to not care. The part that wanted to ask Smoke what lived behind his silence. The part that burned for something she couldn’t name without falling to her knees in shame.
She pressed her forehead to the cool windowpane and closed her eyes.
Smoke and Stack were back.
And the peace in her house was already slipping through the cracks.
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Well, well, well. Looks like we have another series on our hands. And guess what, chicken butt? I plan on actually finishing this one before we all die from old age. I’m a gen z boomer now so let me know if you want to be added to the tag list.
Shout out to my
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To all black girls who refuse to be subjected to prejudices and forced into a mold. I love you.
pixelskylines
stormborns
