By Maggie Keune

“94!” Gone.

I surveyed the area, the livestock I’ve been with my whole life were hanging around me, their skin, meat, and bones being put to use. A blanket of sawdust covers the ground, its main purpose is to absorb the blood, our purpose for it was to protect our hands and feet. The harvesters are the only ones in the barn who solely rely on their feet to walk and the only ones who communicate with each other. They are loud and firm, they repeat words over and over, “next” and “new batch” seem to be their favorites. To my right the feeding troughs are being replaced, and I can see last week’s food being cleaned out. Chunks of brown and greenish mix with the thick slop, a meal that was once known as a delicacy. I saw this meal but the smell came to me first, a smell that can only be described as wretched, but any food in the barn that was not a breeding ground for flies and maggots was a prize.

“95!” Gone.

To my left, I can see the steel box. In the summer’s heat the freezing steel box was the
only relief. Inside of the box are packages. The good meat would be weighed and wrapped with brown waxy paper and held together with twine. The piles and piles of packages were for the “real people”, as the harvesters called them, that lived outside the barn; we’re nothing more than crop. We were bred and fattened with viable food then separated by the hundreds, wrangled, beaten, and hurt. All because the famine started 8 years ago, before the first Gleaning was killed. A boy with little meat was the first meal given to the workers who bred him. Now, of course, the harvesters wait until the Gleaning are in their 22nd year to be useful for food.

“96!” Gone.

I am the 98th Gleaning in my batch, and I am now useful for food. Soon, my body will be held to the metal rods with twine, and if I have a sufficient amount of meat, the good parts will be sent away and my scraps will become the next delicacy in the thick soup. I had seen several hundred thousand Gleanings before me go, all in the same way, all in the same place. I knew my fate, I was to be shoved and trapped in a metal cage with no escape. I was to be called by one of the harvesters in their firm voice that surrounded me for years. In front of the hanging livestock, in front of the people in line, I was to be killed. The metal rod would fall from above me and slice through my skull. Finally, I would be useful for food.

“97!” Gone.

I would join my fellow livestock in the metal rafters, I would join them in the freezing
steel box, and I would join them in the troughs. I am pushed in the box and it’s cold, but it’s not summer so there’s no relief, just the sting of an uncomfortable chill.

I hear the voice of the harvester and it is, as always, loud and firm.

“98!”

Photo Credits: iStock