An Hour of Freedom [Short Story]

Cw: death, graphic descriptions and imagery

If there was a time in my life when I wasn’t afraid, I don’t remember it.

It’s always been there. A lingering fear, stamped into my mind like the brand on my hide. I don’t remember much about how the brand got there. I only remember being small and trapped. I remember that the humans had something to do with it. And I remember that it hurt like nothing else I’ve ever felt.

The humans are the reason for my fear. They provide us with food, certainly, but they also burned that brand into all of our hides. They’re unpredictable, violent. There’s no telling when one of them will break that wall of false compassion to do something awful. Like this morning. They came outside, four of them, and surrounded us. We moved to the other side of the feedlot, but that only pushed us into their trap.

One of the others tried to turn back when he saw the truck, but that only earned him shocks from those prods the humans carry. Now we’re packed in here, riding in the dark to some far off destination.

The sunlight squeezing through the few slatted windows just barely allows me to see. There are ten of us, all bulls. We’ve been together for as long as I can remember, waiting out the months in that tiny feedlot, cut off from the rest of the herd. Now we’re crammed into an even smaller space, off to some unknown destination. A small, dark space like this truck can’t mean anything good. Especially not with humans involved.

The shriek of brakes comes first, followed by a sudden lurch to the side. The truck groans, and suddenly the floor is sliding under my feet, shifting, tilting. The wall becomes a floor. The ceiling becomes a wall. My brothers and I tumble with the walls, our cries for help drowned out by the sound of bodies hitting steel. Someone’s hoof pounds against my stomach, over and over until the wall-made-floor slams to the ground and his leg breaks under my weight. For a moment, everything is still. Then a chorus of groans rushes up from the pile of bulls beneath me, and suddenly everyone is twisting, squirming, swimming through the tangle of horns and hooves and legs.

Which way is up? There’s nothing under me but squirming bodies. I kick out, only to find what used to be the ceiling. We’re trapped. Trapped and hurt and falling. Frustrated, I kick again, and light suddenly filters in from a dented corner of the metal sheet.

I freeze. The bull next to me sees it too, and suddenly we’re both kicking as hard as we can, oblivious to the others squirming beneath us. They can’t see it, but we do. The way out. Freedom. Escape. What used to be the ceiling buckles, and light floods inside. I swim over the tangle of bodies, doing my best to avoid sinking. A hoof catches me near the eye, but I don’t dare stop. The humans will see what we’ve done at any moment, and when they do they’ll cut off our chances of escape. We have to go now.

I fall into a heap on the grass, but I’m back on my feet in less than two heartbeats. Another bull drops out of the truck behind me, closely followed by a third. I want to wait for them, but there’s no time. Already I can hear shouts from a human somewhere behind me, so I take off down the road at full speed.

Despite my fear, I can’t help but feel a sort of exhilaration. Freedom! The feedlot never had this much room to run. My hooves thump against the grass. Wind pushes against my face, but I push back, and I’m stronger. Nothing can stop me now. I’m free.

When the truck disappears into the distance behind me, I finally feel safe enough to slow to a trot. The entire world looks different from here. The feedlot I grew up in was bare and flat, but here I’m surrounded by trees and buildings. Some of the buildings are houses, which are where the humans sleep, but others are much too tall to be houses. Between the buildings are streets, full of noise and activity. Humans stare and cars honk, but they all keep their distance. And as long as they don’t bother me, I won’t bother them.

Wishful thinking. A new type of car whips around the corner, screaming at me with sirens so loud they hurt my ears. Two uniformed men climb out, shouting to each other over the sirens. I can’t hear them, but their intentions are clear. They’re after me. How did the humans find me already?

I take off in the opposite direction, but running in the city is slow and disorienting. Cars and buildings block my way, and there’s no telling what waits around every corner. I try to cross the street, but the angry honking of cars turns me back and sends me stumbling into some kind of paper stand. A nearby human shouts obscenities. To the left, more sirens scream toward me. I’m close to panicking. Where am I? How do I get out?

At the end of the street sits an enormous, low building with huge doors that slide wide open every time a human goes near. There, I think. I can fit! That’s where I’ll hide! I head straight for the building, dodging fallen newspapers from the stand. Sirens still shriek behind me, but I’m much closer to the building than they are. I slip between several rows of parked cars, then run straight through the building’s open doors.

The floor inside is slick, forcing me to slow down. Humans look up, then point and back away. Some of them only cast wary glances in my direction, but one screams, as if I’m the dangerous one. They all keep their distance though, and as long as those uniformed men don’t find me, I’m not worried.

The building’s interior appears to be a single enormous room, with row after row of aisles between the front door and the back wall. Perfect. The uniformed men won’t be able to see me if I can make it to the back. The idea of walking down those aisles makes me uneasy though, so I stick to the room’s edges.

Large shelves line the outer walls, and display cases of strange, colorful little objects dot the open spaces. Some of the objects look familiar, like the bundles of leaves and the round little fruits that remind me of something I once saw a human eating. I leave those behind, but just beyond them are a stack of odd little bins filled with something that looks like the grain we ate at the feedlot. What a strange place, I think. This must be where the humans hide their food.

A man standing near the bundles of leaves starts to shout, and suddenly a human voice booms from somewhere above, carrying on with long strings of words I don’t understand. I try to locate the source of the voice, but it’s coming from everywhere at once, and in my confusion I stumble into a case of food. It topples over, sending round little fruits bouncing across the floor. One of the fruits rolls against the leg of a child, who points at me, but his mother yanks him toward the door before he can say anything.

All of the humans seem to be hurrying in that direction, as if they can’t get outside soon enough. I can’t say I’m sorry to see them go. They make me nervous, especially when they get loud.

After a moment of watching the humans leave, I continue on toward the back of the store. The food cases are different in this area—they’re deeper, colder, filled with packages of red slabs of something. My chest tightens at the sight, but I’m not exactly sure why. I hurry past, only to find an even bigger case filled with an endless variety of the things. Neatly stacked rows of pink and red things that make my stomach turn, though I have no idea what they are. Little signs sit neatly at the front of each row, printed with strange human symbols: “New York Strip”… “Ground Chuck”… “Beef Brisket”…None of it makes any sense. Human symbols never do.

The contents of this case aren’t all wrapped up like the others I passed, and I can smell them. It smells like… decay. There’s no other way to put it. A tenuously contained rot emanates from the case, only barely masked by the cold. Worse, the rot carries a subtle hint of blood. Of death.

My blood runs cold as I realize what the chunks are. Body parts. They’re everywhere. Dead bodies mean danger—instinct tells me that much. I stumble away and turn to the back of the store again, but the squeak of a boot on the floor stops me. Slowly, cautiously, I turn toward the noise. Only a short distance away is another uniformed man, aiming a rifle right at my head. I’ve seen the work rifles do before, back at the feedlot. One of the humans got tired of crows getting into the feed, so he stepped out of the house with a rifle one morning. He pointed, the rifle cracked, and a bird dropped. By afternoon, every crow that hadn’t escaped was dead on the ground. It was haunting.

I panic, bolting out of the gun’s line of fire. A case of dead bodies gets in the way, so I hook a horn under the edge and toss it to the side like it weighs nothing. I’ve got to get away from here. Away from the rifle. Away from the men.

Another human steps into my path, hefting another rifle. Trapped. Not daring to move my eyes from the gun, I edge behind the case I just knocked over. The man says something, and he and his partner each advance. Desperate and afraid, I call out to them. Please! I want to live! Just leave me alone!

The crack of the rifle seems almost distant. Much louder is the sickening crunch of a bullet slamming into my shoulder. I scream and fall against the case, but only for a moment. Every fiber of my being wants nothing more than to run, so I struggle back to my feet and stagger forward.

I don’t even hear the second shot. Blinding pain tears through my face, shattering every sight and sound into a million tiny fragments. The bullet lodges itself deep in my skull, knocking me back against the case. I try to rise, but I only feel my legs slipping, my body sinking. No sound comes out when I try to scream.

A curtain of blood covers my eyes, shrouding the uniformed men in red. One of them steps forward, gun still angled at my face. I choke out a ragged breath, begging to know why he shot me, why the humans so badly want to hurt me. Why? Why?

Why?

Image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UejJc-eQiJQ

I wrote this story based on the story of a real-life bull who escaped and was killed in a supermarket. He was destined for the slaughterhouse, and his dead body would have ended up in a supermarket anyway. This powerful image of an innocent being lying dead in the meat section reminds us of the violent reality of what meat really is.

#cow #bull #death #meat #shortstory #graphic