Chapter 2
FLAYED OPEN FOR ALL TO SEE
Market Day. A day held once a month to keep us seronds feeling like we aren’t forever stuck between four barbed wire fences. They provide us with small treats to wet the senses, to make us think what we do is enough, that we will want for nothing.
It’s a trick.
There’s a crying out, a yearning for something more.
Even if my fellow farmers don’t want to say it aloud.
I see it in the hunger reflected in their eyes, the colourful irises, so different from the hollows’, screaming for a future where there’s more than this.
It’s hard to imagine what it could be. What’s the pull, the knowing that makes you inexplicably understand there’s a possibility for contentment, peace?
This truth runs through my bones with the zapping electricity of a strike. It has to be within my fellow seronds, too.
It must be. I can’t be the only one out here dreaming of more.
The only one angry.
The only one broken.
The hope is in the tree-lined distance beyond the flat, rugged plains of our factory.
We have to have one of the closest factories to the Fairy Lands.
They do not fight here, though, so close to us workers.
We’ve witnessed the odd stumbling man retreating from a fight, or a fleeing, four-legged beast, but we have yet to see any battles.
Foolish. We, the ones who see past their lies, are not.
We may not perceive the reality behind the tall, ethereal green trees that mock us, or the barren lands where Halo supposedly resides. Cloistered, we have been told our lands beyond these walls are dangerous, filled with disease, war, and insecurity. It has been enough to keep everyone subdued.
Market Day is the cherry on top. The day that lulls us into a false sense of security.
The sweet candy. The soft materials. The fresh fruits.
It’s all enough to make my fellow farmers stay in line.
Make them think that we are provided for.
Enough to make them forget again. As a child, the idea of seeing the latest new treat was all it would take for Nix and Mam to pull me into the looming, ashen factory walls.
Now, as I stand before a wooden crate of apples, seeing the brown and white soft spots and holes, I understand what this produce truly is. It’s the castaways, the food not fit for hollow consumption. More than suitable for a bunch of seronds working the fields.
Definitely suitable for a bunch of swine.
Spoilt food starts to look good when you’re on strict rations, colours barely making an appearance in our culinary repertoire beyond the range of beige, supposedly nutrient-packed dried foods we are offered as staples.
And if the food is decaying, what do the hollows care… When a few of us inevitably get sick or die from their offcuts, they will put breeding incentives in place as our numbers dwindle. Free crackers for a year. Water top-ups. Baby baskets.
I lied; we do get something for free. Baby supplies. They are obviously used goods. That doesn’t matter. On the arrival of a live baby, a basket filled with all you could need shows up at your door.
I’ve seen the odd basket over the years.
Mam once told me of a time, back when Nix was born, when grey woven baskets littered every doorway.
After the deaths of many lightning farmers due to a rancid batch of protein bars, the hollows required new workers.
At the time, Mam was seeing a boy across the field, and that’s how my brother came to be.
It wasn’t long after Nix was born that his father was taken by a strike.
It all happened so quickly. Mam never talks about it.
Grief wasn’t an emotion she could entertain when she had to tend to rods in between feeding a baby, her own parents having been taken by the rotten food.
A woman with neat orange braids walks past the rancid fruit stall, holding her rounded stomach.
An internal shudder goes through my limbs at the sight.
I’ve seen her before. The woman’s hair sets her apart from the rest of us.
It’s rare to find such a colour here. The rays from beyond the fog can be brutal, even with the mist blocking their full projection.
I’ve heard they send a lot of the fairer-haired workers to the mines.
Picking up an apple, I sniff it, a bitter note taking hold as I watch her sidle up next to a lean man about a foot taller than her, holding an unruly toddler squirming in his arms.
The woman reaches for the child, and they easily go to her. My heart starts to beat increasingly harder at the sight. The man with dark brunette hair and tawny skin goes down to kiss her cheek, a soft smile on his face.
I look away, the antagonising muscle in my chest thudding something chaotic.
Love. It’s rare within the fields. Most people pair up to reproduce. The free goods are hard to pass up. Affection when you’re a malnourished, overworked swine seems like an extravagance. Love beyond that of your parents or siblings feels unattainable.
“Storm, come on. We need to hit the dried meat before all the good stuff is taken.” Nix’s voice pulls me out of my reverie, opening up to the space around me, the bustle of dirty faces weaving around stall after stall, the permanent fixtures wrought from iron scrapes.
The ceiling is as tall as the rods outside.
I find his scruffy brown hair instantly, making my way to him with my backpack of crackers.
Since we produce electricity for Halo, we rely heavily on market days for food supplies.
I’ve heard that meat is actually a juicy product, much like the “fresh fruit” they charge a whole month’s electricity supply for.
All I’ve ever known is the dried meat we can trade credit for—once again, the parts hollows do not eat.
We are essentially their waste disposal. Halo makes me sick.
“Thief.” The word is boomed through the large warehouse, ricocheting off the metal walls like the dinging of a bell.
Everyone stops in their tracks. Silence descends, an eerie understanding passing through our community.
The keepers guarding us in full black hollow regalia cock their guns. A show of power.
Nix’s tall form is two feet away from me. We glance at each other, his head tilting to the left, directing me to move past the second-hand material cart we have stopped beside. I nod, following his body silently towards the back wall.
He sidles up to me against the chill of the steel. Before he can say a word, another loud voice reaches our ears. We both flinch.
“Each member of the energy factory is to vacate the warehouse and move into the yard NOW.” The hollow voice speaks, and the swine move.
Nix pulls my body into his, following the wave of people shuffling towards the doors that magically swing open to allow everyone easy access to the fenced-in courtyard outside, the rods of our farms sticking out like needles beyond.
A lone wooden platform sits by the double-barbed fence that borders the hollows’ parking lot. On market days, it is filled with black trucks.
After everyone has shuffled through the wide double doors, Nix grabs my hand, pulling me to stand at the back of the viewing area. He urges me to position myself behind him so I don’t have to see, but this time, I want to.
I need to feel the solence pumping through my veins.
I need to feel the simmering undercurrent of rage that makes me feel alive in this shitstorm.
I won’t let the numbness they prescribe swallow me whole.
Manoeuvring to the side and back, far enough so I can see the young boy, maybe no older than fourteen, being dragged onto the platform, I freeze, eyes plastered wide. The platform houses a large X, stained in red solence, big enough to strap a full-grown male to.
Stealing only warrants whipping. I repeat the mantra in my head. I don’t have the stamina for death today.
No one has been purposefully put to death for well over a decade, when a group of teenagers tried their luck scaling the fences. They barely made it to the top before one of the drones spotted them—the same drones that are timed to move around the fields and make sure everyone is on task.
I don’t know what possessed them to think they weren’t going to be caught by one. Those things see all. It’s how they keep an eye on us without having to station their precious hollow soldiers in the farming lands.
The thin, scraggly-haired boy’s hands are tied to each corner of the X, his back facing us.
They don’t even bother to remove his thinning grey overalls.
The ones they make all of us wear. The sting of the skin is one thing, but the sting of having to use credit for material to fix a broken uniform is a harsh blow.
I squeeze my hands tightly around the fraying grey sleeves of my own jumpsuit—a relic from my mother when she was closer to this age.
It’s easier to pass down clothes and repair them than to completely replace them.
That’s tantamount to a death sentence when you have to trade the majority of the credits needed for supplies that keep you alive.
A heavy crack rings through the air, my gaze whipping up. I stand on bare feet, stretching upwards to take in the horror before me.
The display of brutality should be enough to keep most people at bay for another six months or so.
I’ve discovered that there’s an expiry date on this sort of abuse after watching it all of my life.
After each whipping becomes somewhat of a distant memory, another person will try to steal again.
It’s inevitable. The riches we can barely afford that are dangled before us are too hard to resist.
A child a few rows up begins to cry, along with the wails of the boy. It’s sobering. My heart cracks open. An errant tear escapes that I’m quick to brush away on my soft sleeve.
This is exactly how they want us.
Scared.
This simple act is a continuous reminder to keep within our boundaries. Our parameters have been set, and if we step outside of them, we die.
We are swine. Seronds to their cause. Inferior beings.
The rage continues to fester inside me, like a wound unable to heal, constantly flayed open at the sight of this existence.