The first thing you remember is the stabbing pain – sharp, but quick – searing into the cartilage of your right ear – in, through, out, before you could blink, or realize what was happening, and then it was over.

In the nebulous span of time between then and now, you’ve simply been waiting. For what, you do not know. You barely even know how to stand, nor the meaning of the word itself, but that is all you can do. All you have room for in your cramped little enclosure. Cannot turn your body to observe your surroundings, cannot tuck your trembling legs beneath yourself to lessen the strain… can barely even bend forward enough to dip your tongue into the putrid foggy fluid that sustains your life.

At least, the ones who refused to drink went to sleep and never woke up. Held limply in their forced-standing positions until the tall ones came to take them away.

So you drink, or so you try. Sometimes, the stream that passes in front of your little space is overflowing, spilling over as the other caged ones attack it with their tongues, splashing against your irritated, tender, wounded ears (This is how you discover that you have something stuck in your left ear, too)… And sometimes you pull the weak little muscles in your mouth and neck, stretching, reaching for what little you can from the stagnant basin… And it is never enough. Never enough to soothe the sticky grittiness across your cracked tongue. Never enough to fill your roaring belly. Just enough to keep you alive.

And everything that goes in, must eventually come out. You see it happen to others, so it must be happening to you too. You watch them drink, you watch them whine, and you watch the fluid splash to the ground between their legs, more saturated and pungent than it was going in.

Your insides churn, from the sight and the smell, and from the very same process occurring within you. The fowl fluid turning in your stomach, roiling southward in clusters of dark, heavy clouds, eventually and inevitably purging from your other end, loose and raw and long-accustomed to the thunderous surge, soaking your thighs in an unrelenting downpour… Assaulting the sullied ground, spraying an unspeakable mess you can only estimate based on the sight before you.

Some of the caged ones in your limited line of sight appear to be even more confined than you are. Crammed into their similar little cages, and additionally, strapped into place, completely unable to move a single muscle. They consume and expel more fluid than you and the others, grow bigger than you and the others, quickly becoming plump and outgrowing their already-insufficient enclosures.

And then, the next time you have the energy to spare for the luxury of lifting your neck to look again, they are gone. One by one, disappearing, never to be seen again. Simply replaced by newer, smaller ones. But they, too, outgrow their cages, surpassing the growth of you and the others, only to disappear and be replaced just as quickly after a cursory spray-down of the inherited space.

And you might be distressed by this, if you had the consciousness or the energy to do so. And you have never known anything else. As far as you know, this is what it is, to be alive.

Irremediably vulnerable. Growing with decay. Caked in a hardened shell of your own waste. Empty in ways you will never understand.

And then the pain comes again. Different, this time. What was once quick and sharp, is becoming a persistent pounding in your right ear. Your first memory, the wound, never cleaned, begins to throb and ooze, burning hot, beating loudly in time with your overworking little heart.

(Heartbeat sfx in right ear)

You cannot control the drip of the pus, as you have no choice but to dip your head down, bones creaking, to drink from the retched liquid, unknowingly adding to the wretchedness with fluids of your own.

Infection spreads, and the oppressive cascade of pained moans becomes a constant acquaintance. It arrives with the companion of suffocating heat, emanating from tens of thousands of feverish bodies. Your caged neighbors on all sides become increasingly restless; the only form of control they possess, the volume of their cries. It is all they can do. It is all you can do.

Cry.

And drink.

And shit.

Until your consciousness fades, and you wake again to cry and drink and shit and sleep and repeat.

For so many sleeps.

Eventually, the throbbing pain fades, and so does everything else.

(Heartbeat sfx stops, pan slightly left for rest of the file)

Your right ear becomes nothing more than an accessory – useless to you, but still interesting to the tall ones, as they reappear to free you and your fellow caged ones at last!

Something is unlatched, and rough hands liberate you from your steel outer shell. They pull you, guide you, push you, shove you. You’ve never had to use your legs like this before. They shake, and you stumble, but the Tall Ones seem to be in a hurry. Visibly impatient and frustrated, herd you and the others with increasing force.

Through the swarm of bumbling bodies, the constant hum of moaning and crying is occasionally spiced with spikes of shrieking you’ve never heard before. You recognize that they are the voices of your fellow former caged ones, but what is inspiring these new sounds, you haven’t a clue. The only thing that is obvious to you is the hastening movement of the crowd.

Jostled side to side, and forward, forward, forward, moved with the stormy current, laced with the scent of something new and unpleasant.

And then it hits you.

The worst pain you’ve felt yet. Worse than the piercing pain in your ear, worse than the resulting agitation and throbbing burn, worse than the creaking ache in every one of your thin joints. A harsh lash of crackling lightning hits your lower back, and your body reacts without your own knowledge, lurching forward, instinctively evading the pain. That new scent follows closely behind you, lingering in your shadow.

The smell of the burn. Singeing the hair on your bare body, igniting your exhausted nerves, invading your nostrils. All you can do, all you are permitted to do, is move forward, step by step, as quickly as you can on legs that threaten to give up with every monumental feat.

The smell swells, and you can see now: the sticks in the hands of the Tall Ones, bright at the tips that touch you and the others, deceptively gentle taps that deliver complete momentary despair. The source of the smell, the pain that activates your muscles when you cannot. If it is not your body that gets stuck, it is your mind. Your senses are overtaken with the sudden commotion that tore you from the torturous, stagnant silence. Stole you from your life. Everything you’ve ever known. Every horror that you miss so dearly now, and will never regain.

You do not know what awaits ahead.

 

What awaits ahead, is an even bigger metal box. Similar to your former cage, but horribly, horribly different.

This metal box purrs. Emanates a chemical heat that warps the air and makes your head swim.

Ahead, you can see the Tall Ones using their sizzling sticks to force the others forward. To make them flinch closer and closer to the metal box, until they are inside, whimpering, but no longer a target. Free at last from the poking and prodding.

So, this box is where you can be safe, it seems. All you have to do is make it to the big box and the stinging harassment will be over.

Every step is a trek. Every breath is a task. Your body has never been able, allowed, to move like this before. It is suddenly expected to perform a miracle, and you are trying. You are trying so hard. You really are.

But your legs are becoming more and more rebellious. They’re not listening to your wordless pleading commands, and the grimy ground is approaching your nose.

A Tall One appears at your side, growling something you can’t comprehend, but you understand to be frustration. Anger, perhaps. It jabs you with its stick and barks at you, flailing its limbs threateningly, sometimes hitting you in the process. Accidentally, or on purpose, you aren’t sure… But either way, it doesn’t make a difference. Try as hard as you may, you cannot will your body to move.

The stick stings you over and over again, tingling waves burning through your body hotter each time. Your muscles clench and convulse under each hit, but they can’t achieve anything beyond the useless involuntary spasms.

The Tall one grips your bottom and uses it to push you along, but your legs keep buckling and folding. It balances on one of its lower, stronger limbs to use the other to punt you in the right direction. The impact hits you right on the bone, and you cry out, but that is the extent of your abilities. Can’t make it stop. Can’t plead for gentler treatment. Can’t even stand, as much as you might wish you could, just to make this beating end.

Eventually the Tall One seems to tire of this. With a huff, it bends over you, grips you high on your bony legs, and flings you straight into your new cage.

Your new home, for the next unknown amount of time.

The other Tall Ones seem to take inspiration, unceremoniously launching the other captives in your direction. Your muscles still won’t cooperate with you, so you can do nothing to dodge the onslaught of pelting bodies.

All around you, bones crack, cries echo, and the box rattles for the riotous movement. You can feel a low hum in the warm metal, can feel it buzzing through your organs, as you lay flat on your side, pinned under writhing bodies, stampeding and squirming as much as their weakened frames will allow in the mass hysterical panic.

It is a wonder how any of them can still stand, as there is no floor-space clear enough for firm footing without crushing someone else, even if they somehow have the strength try… especially when the big box begins to move.

In unison, all of your cage-mates stumble backwards, colliding into each each other, eyes widening in wild confusion.

The humming becomes a deafening growl. You and your fellow captives can hardly hear one another. It’s not like any of your cries have ever made a difference, though.

You, in particular, haven’t gotten much of a chance to cry yet. Pressed as you are beneath these wriggling bags of bones, lacking any space to expand your lungs, you can hardly breathe.

The box shifts, and everyone stumbles to the right, squishing together as they helplessly trip towards the same wall. The bodies on top of you roll off, and you can finally breathe…. A little.

One of them meets your eye, staring with big, brown, unblinking eyes. Something about their gaze feels… Different. From the rest. There is no feeling behind those eyes. No fear. No panic.

Those eyes aren’t really even looking at you, but blankly in your direction.

The giant cage jolts with several loud thumps, snapping your attention away. To… Where….? It… Actually does not matter.

You cannot see much beyond the walls of the cage… Cannot know what is occurring just on the other side. The gaps in the metal are small, and your cage-mates are too plentiful and obstructive. Too eager to attempt to see for themselves.

The only thing you can almost see… Is an unfamiliar, pale blue light, sporadically broken up by something green and blurry, but it’s gone too quickly to be certain if you actually saw something or not.

The blue light is…. Uncomfortable, in your eyes, but after some time, it morphs into something warm and golden, and then, fades into a gentler, much more familiar darkness.

You close your eyes. And you sleep.

 

You wake to the sight of those big brown eyes, wide awake and soothing in their comparative calmness.

While they stare at you, you crane your head to look around. You think you still wouldn’t be able to stand, even if you had the space or stability to… So you’re glad the Tall Ones aren’t here to make you try.

The light peeking in through the gaps of the cage is a light blue again, but there is something else. You can’t look directly at it, but it’s round, bright, and it makes your face hot. It’s kind of nice.

At first.

The round thing moves up, higher, and the whole box starts to feel hot. Nauseatingly so. The captives who claimed their space closest to the walls yelp and flinch away from the metal perimeter, and the group crams in tighter together in the center.

More yelping sprinkles across the group as limbs are stepped on and tripped over, but even with the awkward crushing force, many, including you and your brown-eyed acquaintance, remain still.

Still too tired to move. To care.

Someone even steps on brown-eyes’ neck, and they don’t even blink. You don’t think you’ve ever seen them blink. They just stare at you. Through you.

Unflinching. Strong. Unflappable. An inspiring presence in this mess. Something to aspire to.

Even when the tiny flying things crawl in between their eyelashes, buzz in their ears, and gnaw at their papery skin.

Even when the strange sounds outside of the cage grow in volume, type, and mystery.

The colors seeping into the box are bright, and then they are dark. Your fellow cage-mates are distressed, and then they are asleep. And then, they are hungry.

You are intimately familiar with that pang in your core. It isn’t as insufferable as it used to be. But you have not had anything to drink since you were relocated to this cage. You have only lost fluids in this time, as have the others.

Even brown-eyes has a damp patch beneath them. No one is immune to the natural processes within their body. Not even someone as implacable as your new friend here.

Some of your cage-mates have attempted to re-ingest the bountiful supply of waste, with no known alternatives or end in sight. There is no natural urge compelling you to do the same, but the desperation might.

You just might not have a choice. Perhaps this is your life now.

In time, you will adapt. You once believed your smaller existence in a smaller cage with smaller pains was all there was. Then, you learned a bigger pain, a bigger cage. And maybe you’d rather go back to the smaller suffering. Where you at least had something to drink. Where the only pains came from your own degrading body, rather than from the hands and sticks and bones of others – completely at the mercy of their emotions, and the rattling of this new cage.

Perhaps there will come a time, when you will mourn this opportunity to eat your own shit, as you now mourn the putrid fluid that infected your ear, robbed its ability to hear, and shredded your insides like razor blades.

Perhaps it could still be even worse.

Perhaps you should make an effort to adapt, instead of waiting for it to eventually just happen, right as it’s about to get worse.

The box lurches forward. It stops purring, like it’s done a few times before. Maybe it is alive. Maybe it needs to rest, too.

Several cage-mates perk their heads up in unison, as if they’ll be able to see or hear something this time. It seems unlikely.

 

And suddenly, one of the walls of the cage is fully lifted, and the box is filled with the largest flood of light you have ever seen.

Several Tall Ones appear at the new opening, once again carrying the scary sticks, and the cage’s occupants are once again scattering in a panicked frenzy. Some are limping, and some remain seated, like you and Brown-eyes, but look on with caution.

Immediately, the Tall Ones reach into the cage and begin to scoop and pull, using their sticks without a second thought at the slightest whiff of disobedience. They are efficient.

As they make their way through the group, you look down at your brown-eyed friend, who hasn’t made a move to prepare to comply. In the new illumination of the box, you realize that those eyes aren’t brown, actually, but a dusty gray. They don’t shine in the light.

Seeing Brown-Eyes at this new angle, you can see it now. Those nostrils do not flare. That belly does not inflate. That neck bends in a way that no one else’s does. That body will never move again.

 

The Tall Ones have no patience or interest in taking a moment of silence. Brown-Eyes is not the only one who did not survive the journey.

Roughly a dozen of cold, limp bodies are gathered and tossed into waste bins, flopping and dangling like string, as if they have never been alive; have always been objects.

You follow those big dark eyes, the friend you once admired and aspired to emulate.. They watch you back, from where they hang from a tall shoulder, but they don’t see you. They don’t witness your despair or your longing… The way your features distort around this new reality. They are nothing more than gray-brown marbles, expired and dull and worthless, on their way right now to the trash.

That’s what those big, beautiful, captivating and comforting eyes are worth to the Tall Ones. Inconsequential items they are eager to discard. Uncaring to discard.

Just foggy, gray-brown marbles that bulge and burble red around the edges as your old friend’s body smacks the edge of the bin with a wet crack and tumbles in. A distended rag-doll that will never again accompany you through your most difficult nights.

It is your turn to be herded now, and even as you obey as promptly as you can, your compliance is messy and distracted… You cannot refrain from craning your neck just to check… Just to see…. Maybe those brown eyes will peek up one last time… Tell you it’s okay, everything will be okay.

All of your muscles squeeze… Tightening all at once, locking up and twitching against your will, reminding you that you have no will. Your body can and will be used against your wishes at any moment.

The stick that just struck you is back again, its tall wielder growling almost leisurely, as if your resistance is merely a minor inconvenience.

It sings repetitively, jabs you rhythmically, until you find yourself in yet another cage.

This material is different from the harsh silver of your former cages. It is…. Prickly…. Where it restrains you. Holds you in place in a very specific position.

All limbs compressed at your sides, bent over, head secured by some sort of solid neck-hold, and oh…. All of your thoughts are immediately consumed by the oasis before you.

The others who are already locked into their new cages are passionately lapping it up, finally able to sate themselves. For a moment, everything else falls away as you drink… And you drink… And you drink.

Enraptured and so, utterly occupied, that you almost don’t notice the invasion. The long, merciless intrusion, pressing in… And in… And in…. Deep inside you from your read end. Where nothing has ever moved in that direction. Never wriggled around in the depths like this. Never in, only out.

It is a sudden, full sensation, and for a second you do think you might actually just be passing something you ate earlier, but the truth is, you haven’t “eaten earlier”. You’re empty.

Save for… Whatever that thing is, pressing into you, applying internal pressure in weird places.

You can’t help but squirm at the discomfort, and you realize why your new cage is so special.

It subdues you like none that came before. It holds you tight in a very specific way that allows no room for error. It is impossible to resist. It is impossible to accidentally interfere with your destined submission.

Even as your body writhes, your sides scrape and collect splinters, and the thing in your ass remains ever unrelenting.

And then, another intrusion. A whole other hole you never knew the existence of, and its first introduction is something cold and long and wholly unpleasant.

And then it’s over.

You want to look around to see if it is happening to the others, but your neck is fixed in place. You hear… Drinking… Sniffing… Heavy breathing… Some surprised yelps, but most of your caged neighbors sound perfectly unperturbed.

When you are finally backed out from this enclosure, your neck is reluctant to move, sore and screaming, but you manage to catch a glimpse of a row of cages. Many of them are empty now, and you wonder just how long you’ve been here.

You aren’t given more than this brief moment to look, as you are efficiently guided away, feeling loose with burning violation as you waddle where you are directed.

 

It isn’t long before you find yourself in yet another box – the biggest yet, with more captives of varying shapes and sizes. Not one looks exactly the same, but all are identical in several ways. Similar plastic and metal pieces punctured in their ears… Thin skin stretched over shaky bones… All contributing unique cries to this new ambience…. All equally nude and vulnerable, raw and pink, or red, for some, in the same place you were just stretched and breached.

Some limp around in circles, some simply stand in place, and some, you have never seen move from their concrete bedding. They return your stares. They remind you of a pair of big brown eyes. And then they blink and turn their head away from you, but remain seated.

You try to tour your new surroundings, but several of these stationary bodies block your path, and you quickly find that you are once again confined, tempted by the illusion of the broader space. Pacing around in your predefined path, you notice that these living obstacles collectively share rather rotund traits…. Knobby, decaying legs… Completely at odds with the bulbous bellies beneath the very same skin, looking mere moments from bursting.

Of course they never move. They are too heavy, and too skinny.

You almost worry that stepping too close to them will result in a terrible carrion explosion, so your circle of movement tightens.

There isn’t enough space to lay down and rest. You can barely find sufficient footing among the sparse gaps between bodies. Stepping into the empty circles formed by curled limbs, narrowly avoiding sensitive appendages and loose skin, futilely racing against your own anxiety.

Eventually, you will need to find a place to rest your legs, and it will likely be on top of someone else.

 

Somewhere beyond your little circle, someone is crying – guttural groaning you’ve never heard before. You cannot see where exactly it originates, cannot tell if the noise is coming from a fellow captive, or a captor…

Some of your new cage-mates mirror your curiosity. Most do not budge, as if this is a daily occurrence. A Tall One slips into the crowd, stick in hand, stepping over bunches of bodies with its long, strong legs without issue… With the aid of a few more Tall Ones, the source of the screaming is hauled away, leaving your sight far more quickly than it arrived: one of the larger captives, in all of their orbicular glory.

You wonder where the Tall Ones have taken them. If they are in a different cage now. If they are somewhere nicer, or worse. If they are destined for the waste-bin, like your brown-eyed friend.

And why the Tall Ones have taken them. They were crying the loudest, yes, but crying, why?

What will be the catalyst for your next move to your next cage?

Is that something you want? Or is it only going to get worse again?

 

You suppose this current cage isn’t so bad, actually… The ground is dirty, but unmoving… Your neighbors can move freely, although many of them do not…

Your feedings are fairly regular, and the Tall Ones seem to have less reasons to hit you with their sticks.

Your sleeps are sporadic, but your fellow cage-mates don’t seem to take too much issue with vertically sharing their space.

You find that you quite enjoy the company of the others, and they, yours. You are social creatures, it turns out, and the bonds you form are precious and long-lasting.

You reunite with some former cage-mates, from the purring box, and they seem like they’ve been eating well. No need for desperate measures to fill their bellies, which grow fuller and fuller every sleep.

You cuddle and you clean each other, or at least you try to, but the intention is nice, and you even create little games to entertain each other. For the first time, you experience the luxury of care. What it means to love and be loved.

You fall into a comfortable routine.

You grow and you fatten, and you find that it is more and more difficult to stand after every rest… You are still surrounded by constant cries and mysterious disappearances, sets of new strangers who come and go, but as long as you have your friends, you think you might be okay.

Better than you’ve ever been before, anyway.

 

And then you are torn from some forgotten dream, awoken by terribly familiar groans in a horribly familiar voice. One of your friends – the one with straw-colored hair – is curled up on the floor, panting, heaving hard, wheezing. Their belly, nearly a perfect sphere now, wobbles and warps in places you’ve never noticed before.

It looks like something wants to come out. This is it. That carrion explosion.

You are torn between wanting to hold and comfort your friend, and the instinct to seek cover from the offal rain. Ultimately, you know you have no choice. Couldn’t make it far in either direction, even if your body would let you try. The truth is, you hardly fit between the other bodies anymore. You can barely stand for the length of two steps before your body forces itself back down.

All you can do is watch your friend writhe in agony.

You think back to a pair of big brown eyes, rolling in a sheen of red, jutting out from an old friend’s skull, disappearing into a little box reserved for waste. Garbage. Useless trash. Discarded from existence, never to be seen again. You think of the others you’ve seen who cried out just like this, who were carried away by Tall Ones just like your straw-haired friend is now, screaming and moaning and flinching… Almost oblivious and uncaring of the absolute grasp of their captors, as if the cruel beings with those searing sticks that you have always understood to be your greatest threat, are meaningless. Little flying things in their eyelashes, compared to whatever is happening within their very own body.

Whatever it is that wants to come out.

Whatever is inside of your friend, torturing them so ruthlessly… Making them cry like never before… Louder than ever before.

You can still hear the screams, even as your friend disappears behind the walls of the giant cage.

And they just… Never stop. Your friend screams, and cries, and whines, and begs for death.

And then their screams take on an entirely new meaning. You don’t know what it is, but it feels like longing. Betrayal. Desperation. It almost sounds like two voices, dripping with equal measures of grief and yearning.

Your belly throbs with sympathy, and suddenly, all of your mind is down there with it. That inexplicable heaviness you’ve been feeling. The weight you’ve gained in your belly, while the rest of your body has become somehow even more emaciated. Firm and round and on the cusp of ripe.

No one is immune to the natural processes within their body.

And whatever occurred within your friend’s… It’s happening to you. All of you.

Sometime soon, you’re going to see the other side of that wall yourself. Whether you’re ready or not.

 

Even so, you didn’t expect it to be this soon.

Before you even make it to your next sleep, something stirs inside of you. It dominates your usual ability to function… bullies your bladder and kicks it loose… It punishes you every time you try to move. Not unlike the sticks that the Tall Ones use.

This pain is more localized, but it is similar; the muscles in your stomach, back, and thighs contract and spasm… It’s also really similar to the times your rotten diet wreaked havoc through your bowels… But also akin to the pressure you felt that day your holes were violated. All of this at once and more, dialed to the max.

It sends those grave, gravely groans spewing from your throat – familiar to your ears, but a stranger on your tongue…

There is no position you can contort your body into to alleviate the pain like you sometimes can with sore knees or a neck ache… It shoots through you at any angle. You are no stranger to the total loss of control over your body, but this experience still manages to be hopelessly, diabolically novel.

This is the worst pain you’ve felt. By far. Similar to so many others, yet entirely unique… All encompassing… You don’t even notice the approach of several Tall Ones. You don’t even have the brain bandwidth to understand what is about to occur. You have no idea why they are reaching towards you. You have no idea why you are whimpering. Why the world is moving. You don’t think about how you’re about to cross over to the other side of the mysterious wall, or the fact that you will never return to the comfortable life with your friends, who you will never see again.

It is your eyes that are brown, this time.

Staring unseeingly back into the cage as you are hauled into yet another one.

And when the Tall Ones position you this time, you have no idea which form it takes. No clue where your limbs are.

All you know is that you want this to end.

How long will this phase be? Your time spent in every cage so far has grown progressively longer… Will this new reality outlast the time you spent with your friends? Will this pain eventually end? Can you adapt to it this time? Will the next one be even worse?

You’ve believed you’ve known pain before. “The greatest pain of all” is a title that adapts faster than you ever could.

It still gets worse.

The internal murder continues, and something else – a most unholy stretch, right– right where– Ripping you apart from hole to hole. You can’t tell if you are pissing or defecating. Maybe both. Probably both. Definitely both. It might be humiliating if you had any feeling or attention to spare.

There is something else. A third mysterious thing, from that third mysterious hole. Too big. Too slippery. Too wriggly. Too horrible. Too horrible. Too fucking horrible.

You find yourself straining to push it out, get it out, make this end.

The thing clawing its way out from your guts through one of you smallest openings can’t seem to decide which direction it wants to go. Or maybe it’s stuck. You’re pushing as hard as you can, but your muscles aren’t exactly equipped for this task.

You–

With a sickening wet slide, the thing slips out completely. It makes noises.

Hesitantly, you look down…

And suddenly, everything has been worth it. Every second of suffering. Every painful punishment. Every loss. Everything.

Your consciousness floods with warmth. Affection. An uncontrollable urge to protect the little thing crying in between your legs, crying and snotty and covered in a colorful, disgusting mixture of messes.

A smaller you, looking up at you with wonder. With big brown eyes. Pure awe and unconditional love reflects in your gazes, bouncing and resonating and growing stronger and stronger, and–

And then your little brown-eyed dear is taken away.

Longing. Betrayal. Desperation.

Without thinking, you take chase. Movement feels like certain death right now, but you are willing to pay that price to protect the little one. So vulnerable. So innocent. So lost.

You can’t think right now. You can only act on instinct. Ignore your exhaustion, ignore your pain, ignore everything but the dire need to reach the little one, who calls back to you, with a comparable ratio of longing, betrayal, desperation.

Your chest throbs with each yearning cry. Seems to be growing heavier and heavier with every step.

You can’t breathe. Can’t feel your legs. Only the crushing despair propels you forward, long after your brown-eyed dear is packed away in a tiny cage inside of a bigger cage that moves so, so, very, far.. away.

Out of sight. But not out of mind. You will run forever if you have to… Drag your own dead body and all of its bloody parts that drag behind your step.

You are intercepted by a small group of confusingly calm Tall Ones, who corral you with sticks and fry you to submission. Punish you, until your body is a useless numb meat-sack with no connection to your brain.

Your throat is hoarse and spent. You scream anyway.

 

In between the fretful sleeps that follow, your cries don’t become any less urgent or helpless.

The loose sag of skin at your belly and in between your legs is a constant reminder of what you lost, in what feels like mere blinks ago. Every time you hear the purring approach of the strange box that stole your little one, you can’t resist the magnetic pull it has on your eyes, hopelessly hoping, awaiting a reunion that never comes.

The box approaches on round, rotating limbs… The Tall Ones open it up to reveal the tiny cage inside… Empty, every time. Until they fill it with someone else’s stolen little one.

Every time, you watch them chase and cry out, just as you did, meaningless pleas to the Tall Ones, useless frenetic promises to their fragile, disconcerted dears.

Inevitable separation.

 

In this newfound lonely leisure, the meaning of your calls is indiscernible, in both intent and effect. Not even you know whether you mean for your voice to somehow reach you little one, to reassure them that you are here… Or if you are just pointlessly chucking your useless emotions into a void.

Gravity pulls you down. Your belly, your inverted holes, your mood, your breasts… They’ve never been of much thought to you before…. before – just another part of your aching body – but right now it is impossible not to, as they swell and hang heavily from your chest. The heaviest part of your body… Tender to touch, to move… So you try not to.

Alas, the Tall Ones beat you back into a smaller cage once again, where the restraints don’t even need to hold your position of submission – down on your knees, bent over, arms restrained flat against your sides, head down. What’s the point in raising your gaze, just to see the horrors of your past, present, and your future? Your back hurts too much to try, anyway.

You halfheartedly drink from the offered trough, strategically set directly under your nose so you can’t miss it… Struggling to find the purpose of sustaining this life, but ultimately helpless to the commanding needs of your starving body. No one is immune to the natural processes within their body. It keeps you occupied enough …

While the Tall Ones unkindly tug on your breasts. To fit them into something cold, hard, unforgiving. It clamps, pinches, squeezes, doesn’t feel like it should fit around the part of you that is now most akin to something ready to burst.

You try to ignore the spark of intrigue that lights at the thought of more little ones… This pain is not the same… This time, there is no cramping or tearing… Just an odd, tight….

A harsh suction.

Pulling at your breasts, vacuum-pumping your delicate nipples… Compressing… Crushing… Juicing, sucking your breasts with the apparent intent to press them into flat sheets of nipple-free skin.

And interestingly, you feel a little lighter.

This is not the worst pain you’ve ever felt… It just feels… Wrong. There is an unexplainable feeling nibbling at the corners of your brain, that there is something very wrong with the relieving lightness in your chest. Like you were saving it for something… Someone…

You think about big brown eyes and your chest throbs. In more ways than one.

The Tall Ones are taking something from you. Again.

 

The awful sensation stutters to a halt, and your breasts are freed from the cold clamp. You are dismissed. Impatient hands pull you back out of the cage, into a more neutral position, and so, too, is your humiliation.

Still sore from the prolonged period on your knees, your steps are slower than when the Tall Ones brought you here. They, of course, read this as hesitation, or perhaps they simply do not want to wait for you, and “encourage” you to quicken your pace with their sticks of pain.

You’ve been getting a lot of practice pushing your body beyond its limits, lately. For as long as you can remember. It is expected of you.

So, even as your knees break under your weight, you run. Even as parts of your body are breached and removed and stolen, you follow the perpetrators. Even as your heart aches with desperate longing, you sob silently… If you sob at all.

You’ve shed all the tears you were born with, it seems. And now you’re empty. Empty belly. Empty breasts. Empty, gaping holes that make it difficult to walk. But you must walk. You must simply do as you are told. Immediately and perfectly. Even when your body creaks and croaks and bemoans the impossibility.

If you empty your mind too, its comprehension of the complaints diminishes. Makes the suffering a little less noticeable. So you do. You let go of the silly sense of injustice, and you just… Allow yourself to be free. As free as you will ever be. Empty. Empty belly. Empty breasts. Empty holes. Empty head.

Might as well.

 

You sleep, just to pass time.

And when you wake with an ache in your back, and throbbing, overfilled breasts, you wonder if the cold device was just a dream.

Perhaps you should know better than that. Believing there would be any modicum of reprieve from any one of your pains. The Tall Ones in particular, have never deigned to go out of their way to offer such comforts.

But then you are dragged away, on a very familiar path, to a very familiar cage. Your breasts throb with a wrong sort of anticipation. You don’t want to be locked up again. You don’t want to be confined. You do not want to be lowered to your knees again. Your back twinges at the thought of maintaining the bent position from what, as you are restrained and bound, you are now realizing was no dream after all.

You know better than to resist, but your body flinches – some ancient innate thing deep inside of you that was never allowed to awaken, turns over in its sleep.

But you are immediately shoved back into position and locked into place. Your eyes cross, confronted with the mocking visage, uncomfortably, unmistakably positioned to occupy your entire field of vision. A distraction.

Your heart sinks, meeting your rising stomach in the middle, as that frigid, unforgettably tight sensation envelops your breasts and squeezes. The pain is considerably worse this time, as it presses into the lingering bruises from your last encounter with this… Thing. This heartless device.

It compresses and pulses… Constricts and punishes… Replacing the weight of your breasts with sharp tingles, and eventually, sore numbness.

You hear, rather than feel, as the Tall Ones disengage the device. And then, just like last time, they pull you from this temporary cage so they can toss you back into your usual cage.

Empty and numb. Your breasts, your legs, your mind. Empty and numb.

 

You see your straw-haired friend again. They look so much older now, although it’s only been a few sleeps since you last saw them… You almost didn’t recognize them… Their sunken eye-sockets… Dirt clinging to dried unwashed fluids between their legs… Wrinkled belly, stretched and emptied just like yours… Deflated breasts that splay out limply on the floor when your friend gets the rare opportunity to rest completely horizontally…. Raw, chapped nipples that change size and shape depending on the fullness of their breasts…

It makes more sense now, seeing it on someone else.

The way your friend’s breasts change so completely, so rapidly… So different from the shriveled bags you accidentally stepped on once or twice… Rounded and heavy and bulging with big blue veins…

And after your friend is borrowed and returned by the Tall Ones, they sag once more. Flattened, swaying memories of breasts, red, angry nipples, so engorged they outsize and overshadow big brown eyes. Big red eyes, they are, dancing wickedly, looking for their own escape from this hell, with or without your friend.

And by the time you are returned from the next breast-squeezing of your own, your friend’s breasts are half swollen again. You, your friend, and all of the other captives of this particular cage, are periodically taken, emptied, and returned, aided in their travels out and back by the Tall Ones and their sizzling sticks.

You are coming to learn, as this becomes a predictable routine, that you can evade the treatment of the sticks as long as you move quickly, and perfectly upon the predetermined path. Too slow, and you’ll be stung. Step out of line, they’ll hit you even harder. You have to try to predict their preferences when they intend to lead you somewhere, and if you charge too quickly off of their imaginary track, they’ll roar and hit you even harder. Sometimes, they’ll even attack you with their own bodies, using the force to push you in the direction they want you to go.

This cycle of heavy breasts to empty breasts is regular enough for you to correctly guess where they plan to take you when they lead you away from the main group.

Some of your friends from the previous giant cage have been transferred to this new one, too. They also have wrinkled, sagging bellies, and an irrepressible anguish tinting their tears. They also enter the breast-squeezing routine, and you all take some comfort in being together again, in a somewhat predictable setting.

And then your straw-haired friend is gone. The first to move to this cage, and the first to leave. Your breast-squeezing sessions grow shorter each time, and then you are the next to be sent away without a chance to see your friends, knowing it could be the last time.

 

The Tall Ones return you to the other giant cage. The one where your holes were violated. Where you became fat and round with your lost little one. The returning memories are distressing, but your straw-haired friend is here!

The two of you rejoice in the relief of seeing each other alive, with the little energy you’ve retained, and together you wait for your other remaining friends to join you.

One by one, in between handfuls of sleeps, they do. But not before you are led away in a horribly familiar direction by the Tall Ones, where you are promptly bent over, strapped into a cage-like structure and double-penetrated from behind, yet again.

Once again, you can do nothing but kneel and accept the strange stimulation – Half of a Tall limb deep in your ass, and a rigid metal tube in that other hole. The invasion doesn’t feel quite as overwhelming as it did the first time. Less stretch, but still so, very wrong. This time, you are able to detect the release of something loose and wet from the innermost end of that tube.

It feels strangely, wretchedly, pleasurable. You shiver with a sick feeling as the Tall Ones grope at you and tug you back to the giant cage where your friends await their turn.

Some of them aren’t taken back until after several sleeps, but one by one, they are all taken, and they all return at the tips of sizzling sticks and with a slight waddle.

All together, you wait. You pace, you play, you sleep, and sure enough, your bellies swell.

Your straw-haired friend, however, remains gaunt, concave in stark contrast to your ever-growing convexity, regardless of their many return trips to the penetration-cage.

You worry for your friend. You’ve all lost the energy to play, unwilling to haul your precarious weight unnecessarily, and you frankly feel too nauseous to move, but your straw-haired friend, despite their relative leanness and agility, shows little interest as well. Even as they are guided away again, in the direction of you know what, as the Tall Ones poke and prod them with increasing hostility, your friend’s gait remains unaffectedly glacial. As if they can no longer be influenced by the debilitating pain anymore. As if they do not even feel it.

Slowly, they disappear around the corner, and your straw-haired friend does not return.

Between the following sleeps, you and your friends call for your straw-haired friend, almost echoing the voices you used to mourn your little ones.

This is not exactly the same pain, but just like your lost little ones, your friend never returns.

 

You aren’t sure if time is moving faster, or if your sleeps are simply becoming longer. You’ve been struggling to keep your food down, rejected and thrown back out through your fowl-tasting mouth, so you don’t have energy to really do anything but sleep.

And despite this helpless starvation, your belly feels bloated and heavy.

You have a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen soon.

Again.

And your idea is confirmed when your friends are taken away, again, screaming and groaning in that very specific way, only spurred by that very specific pain.

This time, you are the last one of your little group left. You are among many other captives, still, crowding this cage, and filling even more with constant new arrivals, but you feel so alone. You’re too tired to move, so the crowd shifts around you as if you’re simply a bump in the flooring.

Maybe if you’re still enough, quiet enough, you can stay down here, hidden under and between hundreds of legs… Birth your little one and keep them concealed at your side…

When the signature pain in your lower belly begins, you fight to silence yourself. Desperately biting down on your tongue, you redirect your vocal energy into your body, writhing and twitching and hoping the typical movement of the crowd will cover you.

It doesn’t work.

Inevitably, the Tall Ones come for you, and they find you.

They bring you to the place that haunts your every sleep, and you relive your eternal nightmare.

The pain rips through you, rips you open.

You don’t remember it being this long last time… But memory is a fickle thing, especially in a brain that has never been adequately nourished or stimulated.

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters right now. You must overcome this impossible task for a second time. This time, you know what’s coming. This time, you are determined to make a difference.

You will not let them take what is yours.

You curl and you clench and you have to remind yourself to breathe several times, resisting everything that will bring you to your loss. You cannot let go of this little one. You must keep them inside, where it is safe. Where the Tall Ones cannot take them, lest they cut you open. You fight with your life, but your life is nothing.

No one is immune to the natural processes within their body.

The little one fights back, not knowing that you are doing this to keep them safe. They want out. They want it now.

Every push and pull exhausts you, weakens your muscles and tests your resolve. The inevitable forces of nature don’t care about your resolve.

Ready or not, your little one is coming out. They are already hanging halfway out of your body, in fact, and no matter how furiously you think you’re holding on to your little one, sucking them back inside, it only takes one Tall One to step forward and yank them out completely.

It hurts like hell, yes, but your resulting yelp is more of a reaction to indignity, the audacity, the absolute cruelty to handle your little one with such lack of delicacy and respect.

Dangling from the Tall One’s hand by the ankle, your little one screeches, splitting your ears and your heart all at once. You limp as fast as you can, inch by excruciating inch… But once again…. All you can do is watch your little one tumble into a bespoke cage inside of the moving cage, suddenly silent. Bone-chillingly, heart-stoppingly silent.

You didn’t even get the chance to see what color their eyes were.

You do not know if they can hear you, or will be able to hear anything ever again, but you call out to them. You can’t not. It erupts from your throat like the food you couldn’t keep down while your little one was growing in your stomach – a worthy sacrifice to bring them life…. But perhaps no life at all would have been better than this.

 

And, again, you find yourself revolving through a repetitive routine. You sleep, your breasts swell, the Tall Ones squeeze them clean, and you repeat.

You are reunited with your friends once again, except for one, who is nowhere to be found despite the vivid memory of dusty hair departing in Tall hands… Familiar visceral screams that poured from this exact space, mere sleeps before your own arrival… Yet another missed good bye.

Even though your group is mostly intact again, there is… An inescapable somberness looming over your heads.

You’ve each lost two little ones. You’ve all been trapped in this cycle of violation and despoliation…

Penetration… Impregnation… Reproduction… Misappropriation. And repetition.

Once your breasts stop swelling, the Tall Ones return you, not to the squeezing cage, but the penetration cage.

And the cycle repeats.

Violation. Penetration. Impregnation.

And then, for several sleeps, nothing.

Until the tell-tale pain returns.

Another little one taken from you.

Abduction.

And the milk filling and expanding your breasts, made special for your little one, is never given to your little one.

Instead, it feeds the mouth of the greedy, ungrateful device.

Suction.

Another cycle within the greater cycle. Your breasts fill… Your breasts are emptied. They fill again… And the Tall Ones drain them yet again. And again. And again.

Repetition.

Starting all over again at the beginning of the cycle.

Violation.

Penetration.

Impregnation.

Reproduction.

Abduction.

Misappropriation.

Suction.

Exploitation.

Repetition.

It is all so inevitable.

No one is immune to the natural processes within their body.

And yours is oh, so useful.

To the Tall Ones, not you.

Never you.

They are the reason you are here.

The reason you are, unfortunately, alive. Allowed to live.

The reason all of these atrocities occur.

Again and again and again and again.

The natural processes within your body spare you. Subject you.

And they also degrade you.

Your skin is soft, wet tissue paper.

Your right ear is useless.

Your bones are withering away.

Your teeth are rotting in your skull.

Your belly and your breasts are soup.

Everything in between your legs is scar tissue.

Your remaining friends fare no better. One in particular, who was once so exuberant and playful, can no longer stand. Now, one of the many immobile captives who do nothing but sit, stare blankly, and restrict the pacing space of young anxious newcomers.

Their chestnut hair, a near perfect color match with the dirty floor, a matted blanket draped over their body, makes it so difficult to see them… You almost don’t notice their sudden disappearance.

And, to your devastation, your ability to grieve… To miss life-long friends, sights of friendly brown eyes… Has withered away. Your tears dried up long ago. You’ve long since emptied your mind.

Your life has been a series of cages and cycles and cruelty, and you can’t bring yourself to care anymore. Couldn’t imagine anything better, even if you tried.

This is simply what life is.

You don’t know if it will ever end. Just that someday, the Tall Ones will lead you away from the life you know, and you will disappear, too.

 

And that is exactly what happens.

When your belly no longer gets round, no matter how much you eat or drink… No matter how many fruitless attempts the Tall Ones have made to implant the seed of another little one… You think you might be able to just rest for a little while.

The Tall Ones come to take you away… Past the penetration cage… Further…. Further… Tapping you along with their electric sticks, because you’ve never been here before. Never been anywhere new since you were brought to this facility.

You can’t predict where the Tall Ones want you to go this time. You take in your brand new surroundings, partially trying to figure out the path they expect you to know, partially in awe of the sight of open space.

You hear a familiar purr… You cough on the sudden resurgence of a distant memory… a hot, chemical scent flooding your nostrils and splashing into your lungs with full force. How could you ever have forgotten…?

While the familiar fumes are hot, the rest of the air around you is cold. As you tiptoe onto the freezing metal of the ambulatory cage, a larger version of the ones that carried each and every one of your little ones away from you, you see a collection of completely new faces.

Only some of them bother to look up to see who is joining them. Some are still and asleep… They vary is shapes, sizes, apparent age… But they all shiver.

How long have they been here, exposed to this biting air? How long will you be steeped in this miserable temperature?

Since you are one of the last ones to fill the cage, the enclosure locks into place right behind you.

With a decently clear view through the narrow slats of the cage, you can finally see the exterior of the giant cage you’ve spent the majority of your life in. As you depart, you wonder if this is another good bye. You can’t bring yourself to care.

And then the purring cage turns around a corner…. And your breath freezes in your chest. You don’t know what you’re looking at right now…. A massive hole in the ground…. Massive piles of… Something inside of…. There is a faint scent of rot, but it is quiet under the chemical heat of the moving cage and the suppressive frost. The piles are lightly dusted in white, but as you look, you can begin to identify shapes… Familiar shapes… Head-sized spheres and limb-shaped sticks and…. Oh.

There is a small group of captives at one of the edges of the pit, accompanied with a smaller number of Tall Ones, equipped with little objects you’ve never seen before. Not the usual sticks, but something similar… Something that creates the same hair-burning smell as a Tall One presses it to the heads of the captives… And limply, they fall into the pit, one by one.

Emaciated bodies with wide, unseeing eyes fall hard onto the icy bodies in various states of decay. The sickening snap of bones is not accompanied by cries this time… No… The tumbling captives are calm and silent. They look exactly like an old brown-eyed friend. Your oldest friend. Who never got the chance to meet you.

One of the new additions to the pit rolls over a chestnut-colored mass, so very familiar in appearance and their unmoving nature. But this is not a practiced stillness. This is a helpless, gravity-guided limpness, equally unalive to the new cascade of bodies. But your chestnut-haired friend’s eyes… Are not as dead as the others. They move… Frantically…. As if they are making up for what the rest of the body cannot.

Visually dead, but visibly… Not. Your friend is alive.

Evidently, is makes no difference to the Tall Ones, who retreat back indoors now… Or they do not notice… Or do not care to notice.

There is nothing you can do for your paralyzed friend, even if you weren’t being taken somewhere far, far away in this cold cage. Your friend will simply have to wait for death. Catch up with their pit-mates, either by freezing, or starving, or catching disease from their new decaying cage they must now call home.

No one is immune to the natural processes within their body. Even the dead must still rot.

 

By the time you reach your destination, your next cage, for who knows what reason and who knows how long…. There is a foul metallic scent, thick and heavy on your tongue. It stubbornly clings to the air, sweet and sticky and cloying.

Your cold cage-mates have all huddled up against you. You think it lessens the chilly bite… although you cannot force your teeth to stop chattering and you can no longer feel several parts of your body.

As you are all escorted off and out, you see that someone’s toes have turned black and fallen off completely.

You check your own numb-spots to see if the same has happened to you… Your ears, your nose, your toes, your fingers…. They are all intact, as far as you can tell… But suddenly, it seems silly to even care about such an inconsequential thing as the state of your body.

It has never mattered before. Aside from whether or not it did what the Tall Ones wanted it to…. But they’ve never seemed to care about your ears or your nose or your toes or your fingers.

They guide you, now, again, into yet another cage.

A loud cage.

A wet, crimson cage.

Chunks of pink and white and weeping red hang in nearly identical groups. Their shapes are eerily familiar, but nothing exactly like anything you’ve seen before.

The Tall Ones usher you forward, and the horrible, disorienting, oppressive noise begins to unfold – layers peeling back with every inauspicious step, revealing the choral sections of this chaotic disharmony… Whirring mechanical blades clashing against the discordant notes of shredding sinew… Scattered soprano screams floating above the nonsensical noises the Tall Ones exchange with each other, sneaking into the hollows of cracked-open corpses… Accompanied by the sounds of skin stripping from flesh… Trickling blood collecting in tubs that are similar to the ones you’ve always known as serving platters…. Cursory spray-downs of various equipment and surfaces of varying textures… Unidentifiable rumbles… All accented by rhythmical beats of impact.

That is the bodies hitting the floor, before they are scooped up by the ankles and displayed mid-air… Dead-eyed and flaccid… Yielding and nonreactive to the swinging… The blades… The stripping of skin… The efficient, emotionless dismantling of everything that they are, down to their bones. Reduced and sorted into parts – chucked into tubs or hung to dry, alongside the matching parts from others… Nearly indistinguishable from each other within their respective groups. No longer living beings, but a collection of parts. Perhaps that’s what they’ve always been in the eyes of the Tall Ones. What you’ve always been.

The unrelenting shove pushes you closer to the commotion, quickly, so quickly, too quickly.

You are now close enough to see… The Tall Ones… Using tools that you’ve seen before, only once… Small, handheld little things that smell like their usual sticks of choice… They press them against the heads of your fellow captives, just before hanging them for slaughter.

This is how they make them so limp and pliant.

They press the metal to the head of the captive just in front of you. Their hand squeezes slightly… BOOM!… The captive is gasping and writhing on the floor in front of you. The Tall One seems annoyed by this, like it doesn’t usually go like this.

Carefully dodging the captive’s flailing limbs, the Tall One grips them by the hair, presses the tool against their head again, squeezes – BOOM! – and the captive tightens up all of their muscles, just before they flop flat on the floor for good. You don’t get a chance to see their eyes before a blade is dragged across their throat, unleashing a gut-wrenching spray of scarlet.

And then… Metal. Pressed firmly into the center of your forehead. This is– BOOM!

Head… Swims–

Too dizzy to–

Ache… Fog–

Muscles… Cramp—

Can’t… Move.. But—

Pain… Still…

Need….

Hit… again–

Please—

Still awake—

Need… Again–

Too… Much…

Slice….

Can’t… Breathe–

No.. this–

Worst.. pain–

Choking–

Blood—

Red–

Hot–

Burning–

Pound..ing–

Vision… Dark—

Skin… Pain–

Stings–

Why… awake–

Stop–

Make it stop—

No–

No–

NO—

 

…

 

No one is immune to the natural processes within their body. Not even the dead. Not even you.