A creative commentary on factory farming

She lay on the wet, dirty floor, her skin caked with mud, her hair mangled and matted. Something wet and sticky clung to her bare bottom.

The woman, naked and cold, could barely move, not only for lack of strength, but because her prison cell was always completely crowded with women just like her.

Her eyes flitted down to her belly, loose and flabby. Every few minutes, her mind flashed back to the moment months before when they took her baby.

She remembered the agony of giving birth, the body shattering pain - of course this was just one of four she had given birth to. The hardest part was not the delivery, however. It was what came after.

Covered in an icy sheen of sweat, she clung to her baby with whatever strength she could muster, begging the men not to come.

Of course, they still came, as always.

“NO!” she wailed as they entered the prison cell, the other women backing away. “Don’t take him. PLEASE!” What she thought was a commanding tone, a booming voice, sure came out merely as a croak.

The man hit her in the face. With no energy left to fight, she let them take her son. As they did all three other children she had given birth to.

And now, the woman remained on the floor, days on end, as the women around her went through similar stages of pregnancy, birth, pregnancy, and birth. None of them even spoke to each other. They were all too depressed about their situation.

The first time her baby was taken from her, she had been confused. “Maybe they will bring him back after cleaning him up?” she had mused to herself.

The woman next to her replied in a bleak tone, “Is this your first time?”

“Um … giving birth? Yes…”

“Sorry to break this to you, but the babies always end up dead, one way or another.” 

The woman stared at her, horror-struck. “But … why on earth …?”

“It’s all about the money. Everything is about money with them,” the other woman replied. “Sometimes they let them grow up a bit, but they’re always killed. The boys at least. The girls are kept to become one of us one day.”

The woman couldn’t believe if, but the more times she saw other women give birth, only to have their babies stripped from them, she figured it must be true. She never saw the babies again.

The men always returned for the women to provide breast milk. This was their most regular duty which went on for months, sometimes years. 

And of course, inevitably, the men would come around, ready to make another baby.

She always heard the men before seeing them, as she tended to lay on the ground, eyes closed in a stupor. 

Her turn for pregnancy came as soon as her breasts stopped giving milk.

“Number 94 - I am looking for number 94! Where the hell are you!” called a gruff voice. 

As soon as she heard her number, she couldn’t help but release a few tears. She didn’t want to have to go through this once again.

The man banged on the cell and screamed again. The woman limply raised her hand. The dozens of other naked women around her just stared at her. 

The man walked into the cell and grabbed her by the arm, yanking her around so he could see the ‘94’ branded on her bottom.

“Alright. It’s time to have another baby.” 

She had no energy. She never had any energy. She let him drag her out of the cell and into an adjacent room.

As soon as he let go of her, she just collapsed onto the floor. This room had shiny walls, allowing her to get a look at herself for the first time in over a year. Cuts and bruises adorned every inch of her skin. Her hair, which had never been cut, was practically solid with the amount of dirt and blood in it. Her skin hung around every inch of her body. Bones poked out beneath.

The man strode back over holding a tube. She knew this process well.

“Here we go.”

He rolled her on her back and shoved the tube far up the woman’s vagina. She screamed with whatever energy she had left. She wanted to fight back, to tell him to stop, beg him to have a lick of humanity.

But it would never work. It was all about the money. 

He took her back to the cell with the other women, who gave her one glance then returned to their spot on the floor.

The woman would be dragged to and from that room every single day, with the tub shoved inside of her each time. This process would repeat until she became pregnant.

The woman knew that many of the other women imprisoned had dreams, fantasies of escape. They would imagine the day when they kept their babies from the man and ran off to have a proper life for themselves. 

But not for her. Each night before she fell asleep, the only thing she wanted out of this life was to end it.