Photo Credit: Jef­frey Row­land via Cre­ative Commons

Here are Part 1 and Part 2 of this con­tin­u­ing story.

*

I woke in a white room, sur­rounded by four walls and door cov­ered in red paint, which was incon­spic­u­ously absent of a doorknob.

The floor was rough and I’d never felt alone like this, not even when I was thrown in soli­tary for a few weeks, at least in soli­tary I could hear scratch­ing of mice and other things from out­side my cell.

There was an odd smell in air, which I thought might have been from some type of gas they prob­a­bly used to knock me out.

I have no rec­ol­lec­tion of what hap­pened after that hand grabbed me in the freezer, but I’ll never for­get the visions of those peo­ple hang­ing from hooks.

My pack and the rest of my gear lay next to me on the floor and I thought that I may be in wrong place, at least until the door slid to the left and the face of the man who put me in prison stood, light illu­mi­nat­ing him as if he were a prophet or mes­siah, I knew that was bullshit.

“Cap­tain.” He said, my face told him I was not impressed by his presence.

“Hello gen­eral.” I responded.

Lean­ing against the wall I saw he’d added another star since I’d seen his ugly face.

“Yeah, I added another star, but you…you, you look like shit.” He said.

“Well, some­things never change. You’re still an ass­hole and I’m stuck under your thumb. Tell me what the fuck is going on and what is this place?” I said.

He shuf­fled his feet as if he were try­ing to come up with the right words.

“It’s hard to explain. A lot of things have hap­pened in the world since you were gone. Your cousin should have told you this when he picked you up.” He said.

“He didn’t tell me any­thing and that place you sent me to didn’t have cable. I was in iso­la­tion and wasn’t allowed to watch the news, just repeats of nature and Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel doc­u­men­taries.” i replied.

“The world changed while you were inside. The gov­ern­ment needed to do things to keep the pop­u­la­tion alive, this town has now become one of those things.” He said.

“So, what you’re say­ing is this town was expend­able and they died because the gov­ern­ment said so?” I asked.

“The town was given what it needed, but every­one liv­ing here knew their lives were meant to keep the pop­u­la­tion alive. When they were of no use, they were killed and used. This was farm Cap­tain, that’s all.” He said.

I felt my skin crawl of my bones and set­tle on the floor next to me, it stared at me con­tem­plat­ing his words, and reat­tached itself to my skin, of course this was lit­eral, but that’s how I felt after he told me about the town.

“How many of these farms are there?” I asked.

“Enough to keep us alive for a while.” he replied with a nasty grin which made my skin itch as if it were to roll off my bones again.

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