The Consumables

My life is not my own. An artificial pulse of fluorescent lighting governs my time. Flick it on, daybreak. Turn it off, nightfall. Only mundane cues remind me that I’m still alive each day: the sound of footsteps prodding down the cell floor corridor, the prick of a syringe, maybe a hosing down of my cell. I’m not hungry, that’s the good news. No, they would never let us get hungry. So, even though I know what it’s for, I smack smack smack the grainy brown food I’m served. I’ve been told of my fate, again and again, but I just can’t accept it. My existence is fleeting in this body that does not belong to me. 

I am expendable. I am property. I am a Consumable. 

I’m not sure how old I am. I’m not even sure what time of year I was born. The Factory maintains a steady temperature of seventy-six degrees, and there’s no windows in my cell block. Some of the other Consumables have told me that I’m still young. “You’ve still got some time,” they say. I guess age is relative. What does it matter anyway? One day, we will all be killed, and every atom in my body will be put to use. My fat, eaten. My bones, grinded. My organs, harvested. I’m even told they use our skin, although I’m not sure what for. Until then, however, my life exists in ninety-four square feet. I am given meals twice a day by the same people in navy jumpsuits (or are they coveralls?). They don’t speak the same language as I, but if they did, I would ask them if the rumors were true. Is this how the world has always been? 

The navy jumpsuit-wearers, or Wardens we call them, leave plenty to be desired. They’re abrasive and uncouth. Stand in the way, you’ll get whipped. Venture the courage to misbehave, you’ll get a shock of electricity. But, they’re not all bad. There’s one, a woman, that visits maybe once a month. She looks different, wears her jeans tucked into clunky green rubber boots and big bottle cap glasses on the bridge of her nose. She doesn’t visit my cell every time she comes, but I always watch her as she weaves in and out of the other cells with a cart full of who-knows-what and a clipboard tucked underneath her arm. Like the other Wardens, we don’t speak the same language, but I wanted her to have a name, so I named her Sally. Sally is the reason I believe there is more to this world.

 That I will escape my fate. 

Last year, Sally came into my cell when I was in labor. Yes, that’s right, I had a daughter. She donned long rubber gloves and sat down right on the floor beside me. She kept on talking, and I imagined she might have been trying to tell me what was happening. That is, why my insides were churned up in a tornado of sorts, with each new and increasingly painful contraction. No one ever told me I was pregnant after all. I’m not even sure how I got pregnant—maybe something to do with the injections—but, Sally didn’t really have to explain. A mother knows. 

Sally was gentle. She rubbed my back between my shoulder blades, and even caressed my face when it contorted in agony. Finally, after four painful hours, my daughter was born. She had the same inky jet black hair as me, beautiful big round eyes, and the longest eyelashes you’ve ever seen. I knew she would be taken from me, but I cherished those few moments welcoming her into the world. I nursed her little body and, for once, had someone to share my cell with. For a couple days, I told the others that maybe her life would be different than ours. They had been nice. They let me dream. They didn’t tell me I was wrong. 

After the Wardens took my daughter, each day was indistinguishable from the last. In my grief, I lost complete track of time. The Wardens ignored my cries completely. They didn’t even look in my direction when they passed my cell. I tried to starve myself. But, when the Wardens noticed my food had been untouched for several days, Sally came with someone I didn’t recognize and they pinned me to the ground. I writhed and sobbed, but then I could feel the sedative taking over my body as Sally stroked my hair. Even in my intoxicated state, I could feel the slippery smooth tube sliding down my throat. Sally had saved me when I wanted to die.  I tried to remind myself that maybe someone would save m­e again someday.

Yesterday, something unprecedented happened. I’d heard about them before—outsiders—but I’ve never seen one myself. See, everyone here is born in the Factory. But, supposedly, every once in a while we get someone from the outside, someone who has actually seen what it’s like out there now. I’ve been told not to take their stories too seriously. Most of them come in at the end of their rope, battered and loopy. We call them the Rogues, and one of them arrived yesterday.

This Rogue, I would soon find out, went by the name of Loretta. And low and behold she was assigned to the cell right next to mine. She came in with a bashed up mouth, bloody and raw, and a missing eye. Unlike the rest of us who had been conditioned from birth to behave, Loretta came in yelling and thrashing. By the time the Wardens got her into her cell, she had been partially sedated.  I inched to the corner of my cell and peered through the bars at her body heaped in the corner. 

“Hey,” I whispered, “You awake over there?”

“Just barely,” Loretta groaned. 

I waited quietly, unsure of what to say next. I studied her body. Her knees, worn and knobby, indicated she likely didn’t get to eat as much. I could see parts of her shoulders jutting out like jagged rocks. 

“Don’t worry, dear,” she breathed, “You don’t have to tell me. I know where I am.”

“Where did you come from?” I asked. 

“Out there,” she nodded towards a windowless wall at some intangible location I couldn’t quite imagine. 

The other Consumables had warned me to be wary of the Rogues. “You can’t trust them,” they would say. “They’re always drugged up when they get here, you know. Don’t listen to their tales.” But, I couldn’t help to be completely engrossed by Loretta. Bits of hair whitening just above her eyes and an open gummy smile suggested she was quite a bit older than me. Despite her exhausted state, she seemed eager to share where she had come from. 

“You were free?” I uttered, timidly. 

Loretta laughed, “No one in this world is free, honey. Not when you’re a Consumable. But, where I came from wasn’t so bad. The folks treated me pretty nice. Got to see the sky, feel the breeze every once in a while. What more can you ask for?”

“How’d you end up here then?”

“Ah,” Loretta pursed her moist lips. “Came here from the auction.”

The auction. It was utterly barbaric. I had heard about such a place before. Consumables getting marched around like merchandise sold to the highest bidder. Supposedly, now society had evolved, however. Now, we were born into captivity, shielding the outside world of what it actually meant to be a Consumable. Out of sight out of mind. 

“Don’t worry though, honey,” Loretta cooed as her conscious drifted, “There’s about to be a reckoning.”

“What do you mean?” I implored. 

“They’ll come for us, don’t you worry.”

“Who will, Loretta? Who will come for us?”

But, she was fast asleep. 

The next day, I was thrilled to see Sally had come to visit. She was here specifically to see Loretta. Even after Sally stuck her with a couple needles and stitched up her busted lip, Loretta agreed that she liked Sally too. I asked her if the people on the outside were like Sally. “Some of them,” she told me. “Many are nice, but they tend to keep their heads in the sand. It’s easier be detached, you know.” 

I imagined Sally with an army of rubber-booted women coming in to rescue us. “Do you think they’ll bring guns?” I asked Loretta. 

“Do I think who’ll bring guns?” 

“You said someone was coming for us… that there would be a—"

“Oh, Lord, honey, no. They aren’t that kind of folk. Don’t worry,” she assured me, “should only be a few more days now.” 

In the coming days, a whole host of bizarre events transpired. First off, a whole group of Consumables were moved out of the cell block. Not atypical, I had told Loretta, but what was odd is that no others came to replace them. Their cells had remained empty for two whole days. Then, came the men in the white suits. You couldn’t even see their faces underneath the opaque shields that encapsulated their heads. “They look like astronauts,” Loretta had cackled, but I had no idea what that meant. 

The suited men marched through the cell block, swabbing samples off the ground and cell doors, then sticking the long Q-tip-like objects in bags. Then, they came into our cells, where they shoved swabs up our nose that tickled our brains, and drew our blood like mosquitos from long hollow needles. “Don’t worry. It’s all part of the plan, deary,” Loretta smacked her lips. 

Then, one night (I knew it was night or at least early morning because the lights were still off), I was awoken by the sound of chanting coming from outside the cell block. Not just outside the cell block, but it sounded like outside outside. As in, outside the Factory. Loretta was already standing up erect in her cell. “Loretta!” I whispered hastily, “What’s going on?” But, I was interrupted by the sound of the cell block’s doors busting open. Then the chants followed, closer and closer. Of course, I couldn’t understand the words, but the voices crescendoed as nebulous, shadowy figures materialized in the darkness. 

The figures waved flashlights around, and flung open our cell doors. I was trepid at first. I had believed in this moment all my life, the turning of my fate, but now it was all so surreal. “Well, get those feet moving!” Loretta’s voice summoned me out of my stupor. The rest of the Consumables in the cell block had formed a line and were being ushered out by the chanting figures. I noticed that the ones who weren’t holding flashlights, held signs high above their heads with undecipherable symbols. 

I had been out of this cell block before, but only to another one just like it. After all those weeks, months, yearsof my life I had seldom stopped to think what life was like on the outside. Sure, I heard stories, but how does one imagine something they’ve had no context for? The figures led us through three blocks, the cells already vacant, until finally… 

I saw two giant double doors agape to an alien world. It smelled different. An odor I can only describe as crisp and clean replaced the familiar scent of decay in the cell block. Then, as I emerged through the doors into the outside world, I at once saw a new kind of light. Not just on or off, but somewhere in between. The world above me was drenched in color, pinks and yellows and oranges, and in the distance I saw a magnificent glowing orb on the horizon. 

I looked around for Loretta, but she was already far ahead of me. There were trucks, and the Consumables were being loaded on board by the dozens. The chanting figures were now more visible in the soft light of dawn. They weren’t wearing coveralls or white suits, but they did remind me of Sally with their warm and sincere faces. A few of them put wreaths made of something green, tiny, and delicate on the Consumables’ heads as they boarded the trucks, while others stood holding hands in a semi-circle. 

I soon realized that the chanters weren’t the only ones on the scene, and that their semi-circle had bifurcated us Consumables from another crowd of people. The other people had vehicles with lights that flashed brightly on top. I wondered if they were going to stop us, but they heeded to the semi-circle. There were also video cameras (I had seen this type of equipment in our cell block before), and a woman with shiny blonde hair waved her hand in our direction as she spoke into a microphone. Among the strange and foreign words, I heard her say E. coli, as I was escorted onto a truck. 

The ride was bumpy and uncomfortable. I was suddenly struck by how, in all those years staring at my cell mates, I had barely even touched them. Only when we were shuffled from location to location had I brushed up against them. Now, I was pressed up against another young girl my size, and I relished in the warmth and comfort of her body. Other Consumables on the truck whispered that this was the end, but I knew otherwise. Our fate had taken a turn like I always knew it would. 

By the time we had stopped, the light from outside was shining even brighter, penetrating the cracks in the truck’s walls. The door opened with a loud creak, and we deboarded one by one. There were people to welcome us, who rubbed our shoulders and patted our backs as we dispersed into the open space. Even though I couldn’t understand what they were saying, I somehow knew everything was different now. I scanned the new landscape, looking for Loretta. I walked gingerly through the silky, green slivers that emerged from the ground. Grass. Loretta had told me about it.  

Then, I saw her. I hadn’t noticed how fragile her body had become in those past weeks after we met. But, now I could see in the light of day that Loretta’s legs were withered to the bone, and her hair was thin, almost translucent. I watched her as she tilted her head up towards the warmth that radiated from the sky, and I knew that it was all okay. I would never have to look back on that horrid and putrid place ever again. So, with happiness coursing through my bones, I lowered myself to the ground, and curled my head to rest upon my tired, achy hooves.