Page 20 of Milk
“Susan… I can’t.”
“You… Can’t?” She asked, lifting an eyebrow. “What can’t you do?”
“I can’t process another one. I just can’t.”
Susan nodded slowly and she placed her coffee down. She wrapped an arm around my shoulder.
“We will just have Henderson deal with that one, okay?”
“Right, right,” I said.
“Let’s get you back to the surface. No more work today, understand? A break. That’s what you need.”
A break. That sounded nice.
Ihad fallen into a routine after my fight with Jen. I’d wake up in my stall and shortly after that Carter would be there to feed me cereal bars (by hand), and pet my hair. Some days, he would wash my whole body. He wouldn’t shy away from my private parts, my breasts, my thighs. Just like he didn’t on the first visit. On other days he would wash, dry, and brush my hair. The extra attention to my hair felt good. I’d always liked having my hair brushed and hated having it dirty.
I did beg him to let me go during the first two or three visits, but he simply ignored me. He would only respond to small talk or innocuous questions about things like cows and milk. It was obvious that he was passionate about those two topics. I didn’t really care about the answers. I just missed talking to someone, anyone. Any human that was not mooing.
Before I knew it, I got used to his visits and my desperate, bizarre situation. Carter’s caressing touches as he washed mebecame normal. His explanation of the difference between the Dutch and the German dairy cows and his voice in general became calming. I was still terrified, of course. I was still a prisoner and dreaded thinking that I’d be here forever. So, in this bleak situation, his visits became the highlight of my day.
Then, I woke up in a different place altogether. Not outside and free, unfortunately, but in a different stall. Instead of being attached to a contraption in a stall surrounded by other women, I was in an empty room. There was no door in front of me.
I assumed the door was behind me. The thought of anyone coming in, seeing me from behind was terrible, but there was nothing I could do. This contraption was just as tight as the first one, and I couldn’t break free or close my legs to hide anything. In front of me was a feeding tray, water, and a small round mirror in the middle of the white tile wall. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see the door behind me in the mirror – just myself. Hanging in a position I didn’t want to accept, at the mercy of anyone – everyone.
Why had they moved me here? Was it solitary confinement for punching Jen? That had been days ago and Carter hadn’t brought it up. They’d banned me from the Atrium and I missed the chance to stretch my legs, but that was it. Perhaps Carter thought this room was more private and more comfortable for me. Perhaps he thought it was a gift. I would have preferred an option.
I wanted answers, but my stomach growled, making me give in to the temptation of the granola in front of me. Leaning down, I devoured it like an animal while the bell around my neck rang. When I finished eating and drinking, I almost missed the annoying sound. It was the only break from hearing my own breathing.
Without other girls around my stall and with the lights always on, I didn’t know how time was passing. All I had to guide myself was how many times I fell asleep and woke up, but that didn’t seem accurate. I was constantly dozing off thanks to boredom. Eventually, I was sure it had been days. Days without Carter. My feeder was empty. My waste bucket was full. Why hadn’t he shown up?
I shouldn’t miss my captor, even if he was gentle. He was a monster! Wanting him around was disgusting, weak!
I was suddenly flooded with memories. Memories that I worked hard to suppress over the years.
I remembered the Amish community where I grew up, the cellar, where my father had chained me by the ankle to a pillar so I couldn’t leave. He came down the stairs without ever looking at me and pushed the plate of food towards me with a rod so he wouldn’t have to come close. Before that, I’d spent horrible days tied to my bed by my wrists and ankles as the community priest tried to exorcise the demon from my body. The evil that caused my ‘unnatural spots’ to appear, that filled me with gluttony. I was a child when the torture began. The abuse. They were ignorant, malicious, too locked in their beliefs to see differences as anything but evil.
I’d endured it all, telling myself they had done it for love. I repeated that to myself more than I wanted to admit. I kept saying it long after I stopped believing in it. Then Rumspringa came around, and I took my unexpected freedom and I ran.
I ran and I never looked back. I promised myself that I would never again be a prisoner. That I would never again allow cruel men to control me. To restrain me.
My tear-stained face in the mirror proved I’d failed. My promises had been useless.
It had been a little over a week since Tiffany had attempted to infiltrate Sunshine Sanctuary and I had captured her. For the first week, I fed her, washed her, took care of her, and I praised her at every chance, hoping that she could tell how much true beauty I saw in her. She still resisted me, resisted herself and the happiness I knew she could find in this place. She just needed to let herself enjoy it, accept it, and embrace it.
The last couple of days, however, Sunshine Sanctuary had demanded a lot of my attention. I spent a lot of time running the facility and overseeing the final steps for our biggest deliveries of milk since we secured a contract with a very large mega store. I instructed the farmhands to take good care of Tiffany while I was away, strictly stating that no one was to touch her unless it was strictly necessary. I hoped they were obeying while I stood in the warehouse watching the last of nearly twenty trucks depart full of freshly extracted Milk, ready to fly off the shelves.
I used my tablet to run the expected profit of that month. The numbers. Always so important.
I first found out what the family business was by finding some strange polaroids on my father’s desk. I’d tried to ignore them, but it was impossible. Strange mutated women, with milk pumps attached to their breasts, with misshapen horns and hooves, and spots of fur had caught my attention. It didn’t take much investigating to find the facility. I confronted my father about it. He didn’t deny what he was doing,
In fact, he was shockingly open about keeping, enslaving, and torturing those women to harvest their milk. I knew this was why my mother and sister had vanished. He’d told me my mother had left and taken my sister without any reason, but that had been a lie. She must’ve found out what he was doing and feared he’d eventually bring her or my sister to his twisted facility.
With cold-blooded calculation I pretended to accept it, only to come back later with the gun he had given me for my birthday and a plan. I entered the facility and took one of his guards, without being noticed, until I had a chance to put a bullet between my old man’s head. He said, ‘You don’t understand! I can explain!’ I didn’t believe him. Just another lie.
Once I was done, I went to those horribly mutated women. One by one, I ended their misery. A merciful bullet to the brain.
Until I found Susan.
