Mira [On-Going]

CHAPTER TWO: PART TWO

I used to live in a small farm house with my family that stood just beside a river that separated our home from the rice field where my father and I spent most of our time together when I was younger, and when he was still among the living of course. He was a farmhand and he would spend most of his time tending the small portion of the rice fields that we owned. We also had farm animals: a pig, a couple of ducks and chickens, and a pair of turkeys, which he and I took care of before and after spending time in the fields. We used to have pigs, but were eventually sold to the local abattoir (which is just a fancier term for slaughterhouse) just like the other farm animals at home. I would always feel bad for the animals whenever Mr. Wagner, the transport guy (I used to call him 'trans-guy' but as I got older I realized that I really had to stop calling him that and just stuck with his name, Boris) from the abattoir, takes them to their inevitable cruel deaths. Though I wasn't like that when I was very little. It was only after when my father took me with him to the abattoir one time--it was there I witnessed, as a child, the horrors of what man is capable of and what they do in order to thrive. I had always thought that the animals were taken away to a better home because our farmhouse couldn't accommodate all of them and their needs. At the abattoir, I heard some of the most frightening sounds that I have ever heard in my entire life. Recalling these sounds never fail to send shivers down my body (and the hairs on my arms all stood stiffly while writing this passage). The hellish squealing of the pigs, the intense squawking of the farm fowls and the ghastly grunting of the cows were unbearable. I could not stand their cries for help. I wanted to rip both of my ears off, wishing for the squealing and the grunting and the squawking to stop. The sets of animal screams would stop for a couple of minutes and then would start over again and again and again like a never ending cycle. My hand tightly gripped the bottom hem at the back side of my father's shirt, while the other was doing its best to cover my ear, terribly trying to block out the screams (and I just noticed that this situation was quite similar to what I was experiencing just before writing all of this). I remember pulling dad's shirt and telling him that I wanted to leave. But all he told me was to wait for him outside. He was still waiting for Boris (the transport guy) was what he said. So I did what I was told and sat down on an old wooden bench just outside the abattoir. Sitting outside the slaughterhouse of horrors, I thought I would be able to escape the animals' dreadful howls but no, even the faintest of their screams still caused my hands to fiddle and shake. I saw small trucks that brought in cows and pigs, and men were carrying chickens in transport crates into the slaughterhouse. They had no idea what was about to happen to them once they entered those doors. I thought about how they were brought to their doom. Were they slashed to death? Their throats slit and left to bleed? Their heads lopped off like King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette during the French Revolution? Or were their skulls bashed in with a single blow so strong that it instantly killed them? Kill. Kill. Death. Kill. (These questions formed only a fraction of the plethora of thoughts of how the animals were slaughtered). I tried my best to endure what seemed to be the longest ten minutes of my life. Dad eventually came out the awful place with transport guy right behind him. They were carrying blue plastic crates labeled 'Khorolutsk' when they came out and inside them were obviously the meat and guts freshly cut and obtained from innocent animals. So I did not bother asking what was inside. And I was glad my father didn't bother telling me (He knew for sure that I was perturbed by what I had just witnessed inside). Transport guy drove us home in his little transport truck with me sitting on my dad's lap and the crates at the back of the truck. I don't think that that day scarred me for life but it did stuck with me for some time. I still think about them, the screaming and the shrieking, but they no longer torment me as much as before; but they're still here inside my head...

Enough about my childhood trauma and fear of loud animal noises (which, in my opinion, is a 'rubbish-tier' trauma), my hands are starting to feel a little cold from this rain. My pen's ink is starting to run out. It's making the letters I write look faded, but nevertheless still readable. I apologize to whoever is reading this. You might find it difficult understanding my hand writing.