Page 7 of The Butcher

The herder mumbles a few obscenities before blowing out a frustrated breath. “One stable, one row. He’s going to be pissed. How many more are there?”

“Not many,” the counter says as they stop across from my stall. “We moved most of them into this building when we realized there was a pattern present, specifically within a group from Generation K.”

My generation.

I was one of the ones they moved, me and maybe a handful of others. Ripped from what little comfort we had in the middle of the night, taken from our familiar stalls and thrown into new ones. Ones that smelled like other girls, stale sweat, and dry semen.

The entire building smells like that, honestly, but it’s an abrupt and rude awakening when you’re yanked from what is mostly your own scent and tossed into something that isn’t.

It makes every inch of my skin crawl, smelling the girls who were here before me, imagining what they went through while they were sitting where I am now. I’ve had to stop myself so many times from envisioning their last days, from digging deeper to pick up the fear that is no doubt saturating the remnants of their scent. Knowing the girl that had this very stall before me is gone in one way or another is enough to have me on edge but if I allow myself to think about what happened to her, I’ll go crazy.

Considering my anxiety is at an all-time high from simply living in a space that smells like someone else, I can’t do that. Especially since the reason I was yanked from my old stall is something that could give me a panic attack on its own.

I’ve been fortunate to avoid it as long as I have but I knew it was coming. I’d be stupid to think I could put it off forever,that I’d be special for some reason and while I might be a lot of things, stupid isn’t one of them. Especially in this place.

Being stupid gets you killed.

But the herder and the counter—we don’t get to know their names—don’t care about that, no one here does. They don’t care about anything except what we are and even that’s brief. We’re numbered omegas, inventoried and branded at birth or arrival, and after that we aren’t seen as anything other than a body to rut. No names, no faces, no thoughts or feelings. We’re just forced heat and manufactured perfume, and a hole full of phony slick.

We spend all of our time praying that we do what they want and keep them happy no matter how much we hate it, or at least I do, and when the terrifying reality ofnotdoing that sinks in, our prayers turn to pleas.

Begging and pleading with God and the universe that my number doesn’t get called.

Then it did.

I still wasn’t prepared, and that almost makes it harder to accept the inevitable along with being ripped from my safe space and thrown into the unknown.

The stall I had before wasn’t much, but it was mine.

It smelled like me, it felt like mine. I did what I could to make it comfortable; I moved the straw into one corner, tried padding it with the two pillows I’d inherited. The comforter I had was big enough to tear into two pieces, one I would wrap up in, the other I managed to hook onto slivers of wood to form a canopy of sorts.

It was the closest I could get to having my own space in a stall I was transferred to when…

I squeeze my eyes shut tighter and shake my head.

Don’t think about that.

Don’t think about her.

Pulling my knees closer to my chest, I try to push those memories down, to hide them away so I don’t keep reliving that moment.

The moment my entire world was turned upside down then taken from me.

“Here, this one next.”

My eyes snap open and dart to the door of my stall as the lock begins to turn, as the chains rattle and clank against wood. It rolls along the track slowly, the rusted iron screeching and scraping as the tiny wheels turn.

I press my back into the corner as I curl into myself tighter than before, quickly closing my eyes in hopes that maybe if they think I’m asleep they’ll leave me alone.

I know they won’t.

“Nice try,” the herder says as he steps into my stall. “I saw you looking at us. Not that it matters, I’ll do what I have to whether you’re awake or not.”

My stomach pitches at his words, the way I can practically feel them against my skin.

Which is when I remember I’m still bundled up.

I hurry to push my blanket off my shoulders, exposing everything from the waist up then brush my hair out of my face. Blinking a few times, I try to make myself a little more presentable, to show that maybe I’m not like some of the other girls.

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