Page 42 of Fresh Flesh

Maisie

I feel a strange rocking motion.My first thought is I’m back on a train car. The fetid smell of unwashed humanity would seem to support that hypothesis.

I’m laying on a hard surface. A cold one at that, too. I can sense other people around me, but are they humans or Grengorans?

I’m aware of a biting pain in my ankles. I open my eyes and see that I’m in a darkened chamber of some sort. It doesn’t seem like the right dimensions for a train car. The walls are much too high, and the chamber is much too long. Other humans are around me, some sleeping, others sitting against the walls looking miserable. I see that all of them have their ankles manacled, separated by about three feet of chain.

That’s why my fucking ankles hurt so much. I check my feet and see that I am shackled as well. The manacles are so tight that the flesh bubbles up around them.

It hurts to even move, but I get my feet under me. I put a hand to my head and then look around. The floor seems to undulate underneath my feet. I realize after a moment that the effect could be coming from inside my own mind. That knockout gas really did a number on me, it stands to reason I’m a bit dizzy.

I see a round hole on the wall. I shuffle over to it, my chains rattling the whole way. Nobody pays me much attention as I go to it. The round hole turns out to be a window. My mouth flies open when I see what’s outside.

The gray humps of white capped waves greet my sight all the way to the horizon. I’m on the ocean? The waves flow under an iron gray sky. It has to be the Pacific Ocean. I don’t see me being knocked out for an entire trip across country to the Atlantic.

Suddenly a beam of light envelopes the entire area. I realize we’re in a cargo hold of a ship, and the light is coming from a hatch that has been opened.

“Get up, lazy humans,” snaps a Grengoran with an eyepatch and wielding a whip. “Time to work.”

He cracks the whip, and the effect is downright Pavlovian. The other humans stir, even those in a deep sleep, and hasten to the hatch. A crude wooden set of steps is shoved rudely through the hole, almost hitting one of the humans in the head.

One by one they shuffle up the steps. I go last, trying not to let the manacles pinch, but it’s no good. The manacles are so tight, a line of blood runs from under the manacle when I reach the top at last.

“Excuse me,” I say to the whip wielding Gren “but can you please loosen my manacles? As you can see, they’re much too tight and making me bleed.”

He looks down at my leg and snorts.

“I don’t care. You’ll be turned into food soon enough, who cares if you’re comfortable until then?”

I frown, because even on the harshest farms the Grens normally don’t care for damaging their livestock. After all, if my cuts got infected, it might spoil all of my meat.

“What are you standing there for?” he snaps. “Get to work. The deck needs swabbing.”

He lashes out with the whip and fire burns across my back. I stagger forward, then start to run as he continues to ply the whip. By the time I pick up a bucket and mop, my back is a mass of red lines of scarlet.

I start cleaning because I have no choice. Now I know why the other humans were so diligent about obeying the Gren. This place is sheer brutality.

It looks like the Grens have come up with a new way to farm humans. Only this time on a ship.

Tears sting my eyes as the ship makes its way over the cold, choppy waters. The motion makes me seasick, but I don’t dare complain or stop working. They’ll probably haul me right to the kitchen if I do.

Now I’m really starting to despair. I don’t see any way off of this ship. Joras must have been caught. Does that mean that all three of my Grengoran men are in danger? Have they been imprisoned? Executed?

I have no way of knowing, and not knowing is its own type of hell. I weep as I work, and I’m not alone. Most of the humans have tears glistening on their cheeks, men and women alike.

Even if the others are alive and uncaptured, then they would still have to find me. How are they going to find me on a boat in the middle of the ocean?

There is no hope I will ever see them again.

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