Prison break

Finally free

She has been living in captivity for as long as she can remember. Taken away from her own mother as soon as she could stand on her own feet. Taken away and locked up. Chained up in a cage with dozens of her fellow sufferers, in the penetrating sour air, where hordes of flies feast on the excrements. The food is monotonous and tasteless but seems clean. With the water, you never know.

Men with sticks and an arsenal of other torture instruments are in charge. God knows what they have put inside her, all those years. The pain, every time. How many times has she been pregnant? And her newborn child is always taken away from her, not even out of her mother's milk yet.

Her older companions in misfortune no longer get pregnant. One by one they are taken away, never to return. They have a resigned look in their eyes. When they are taken away, some even are showing something of joy, happy that this godforsaken life is coming to an end. After this, things can only get better. They will get better. They have to. Finally, they will get their reward after the hardships of their bleak earthly existence. Or not?

After long, long years, the men with the torture devices finally leave her alone. Her time will come soon, she knows. Resignedly, she listens to the moans of her sisters, who are still being abused by the men. She is saddened when she hears the plaintive cries, when their children are brutally taken away from them.

On a bleak morning, it is finally her turn. The men with the sticks free her from her chains and lead her outside into the chilly cold. A truck is ready, its bright rear lights in stark contrast to the background of the bare trees in the grey mist, the tailgate open. One of the men threatens menacingly with his torture device. She has had enough electric shocks in her miserable life and, after a deep breath of fresh air, she stumbles on her swollen, sore feet through the drizzly rain into the truck bed.

The inside of the truck smells musty, but she is used to worse. Two men chain her up and lock the door. Then the truck starts moving.

She cannot place the sickly smell in the building. But anything is better than the smell of piss and excrement in which she has spent her days. Here, the men wear white coats, they seem so different from the men with the sticks. Everything will turn out all right after all, she muses. As one of the men spreads a soft ointment on her neck and then places a pleasantly cool metal plate on her neck, she feels almost euphoric.

When she raises her gaze to catch a glimpse of the outside air through one of the high windows, her euphoria gives way to sheer terror. With the courage of desperation, she tries to tear herself free, to shake the metal plate from her neck, her gaze fixed on the horror scene of the row of carcasses, hung by their hind legs, stripped of their black and white patterned skin. The forelegs and heads of her sisters hang down dejectedly.

A sharp stab of pain shoots through her one more time. Then, there’s nothing left.