Cotton Story

Cotton

My whole life I have been growing up in a cotton field as a small piece of cotton. Now it was my time to leave my old life behind along with my family, I must start anew. I had heard this happening before, my brethren had seen this happen. A strange unknown creature picks us out of our cozy homesteads and takes us away in a large soft looking container. My brethren and I have tried to communicate with them, but they just ignore us.

I can hear the creatures talk to one another, "Yeah, and Darla said 'Hey, give me that!'" I'm guessing Darla was one of these creatures' friends. Then I see one. It approaches me with a graceless body. Our bodies sit and wave with the wind, their bodies are too big to wave with the wind. I can tell it's going to pick me. It stares right at me, it almost glares at me as it moves. I try to say, "Hey! You don't have to do this, we can work this out!". But it doesn't listen. I know it doesn't understand, but it was worth a try. It grips me tight, squeezing me as if I don't feel it. It hurts, I feel like I'm going to pass out right then and there. I don't, I wish I could, but I can't. I have never slept a wink before. Some of my family has before...but they never wake up. I wish I could do that right now. The clunky creature puts me in a bag. The creature walks past my nearby family. My brothers and sisters scream for their lives because they can do nothing else. I watch my family as we pass them by, one by one, they look at me and my family in a silent farewell.

In the bag is the rest of my family. I just hear chatter from nearby though; my hearing isn't all that well.

"What's happening? Where are these things taking us?" said most of my family. But others just wanted to sit back and enjoy the ride.

"Calm down and think about your little cotton life."

Some cotton's just can't be helped. A lot of us have been going crazy lately, and the liquid from the sky doesn't help much. Nor do the lunky creatures that keep picking us off...they'll probably take us to a puddle of wet stuff and just drop us in. So in short, we're done for. Then suddenly, we're dropped in with a whole bunch of large containers with cotton. I hear the strange creatures communicate again. I wish I could understand them. We jerk forward, and we start bumping up and down, and side to side. Everyone of us is damaged now, our fibrous bodies being pulled apart by one another.

"Ow, is everyone okay?" I could hear a few ask. Many answered, but many didn't. They were either gone, or asleep forever, there is a difference. Asleep forever is when you're dreaming and can't wake up. Gone is, well, gone. In all the commotion, no one noticed that the motion had stopped and we were being raised onto a dirtless floor. The cottons around me were screaming, "Let us go! We don't want to go where you're taking us," they were saying. I didn't join in because it was no use. To us we were speaking words no other thing could understand, but to these awkward creatures, they probably just heard, "Whoooosh, whoooosh, whoooosh!"

I could hear even more chatter from the living thing, next thing we knew, we were all in a pile on a hard surface. The creatures' hands sifted through us pulling us apart and pushing us together, it hurt. It pulled me apart, over and over and over. I was still together, but just barely. When the creature took their limbs out of the cotton pile, that did it. I was in half, half of me was gone. It's now a non-living object that will be incorporated into the earth or wherever we are at the moment.

"Kai? Kai, is that you?" I recognized that voice. Was that-

"Myka. Myka! Where are you?" I yelled. I could hear the cotton chuckle, which meant that the cotton must be fairly close.

Before we were taken, before life had even started for us, we were best friends. we sung cotton songs, and we made cotton friends. We never left each other's sides, probably because we were basically attached to one another. We grew up together, our brothers and sisters were our only closely related family. I only knew what Myka looked like by the brown spot on its back. When some living things have mothers and fathers, we had roots and plants, it was impossible for us to have mothers and fathers. It's just not heard of in the cotton world.