The Disappearance of Cow Creek

Axe

It was nice, in an odd way, to be in the dark box for a while. After the stress of being scraped from our cage and then dumped into water, manhandled, involuntary haircut, and then powerwashed, getting to rest and dry with little stimulus was good, despite the anxiety of not knowing what was going to happen next.
We all huddled together, wringing out our now very short hair, and squeegeeing the water off of ourselves with our hands. The cold outside air seeped into our box through the cracks, but it was small enough that our combined body heat warmed everything up a bit. I could hear the alien shuffling around outside, moving things, dropping things, clanking things, and more. nobody knew what was going on, so tension did build.
This lasted for an hour or so, and we were completely dry by the time the alien opened the top of our box again. It peered in at us with an unreadable expression, then lifted the box over to somewhere else. It seems the box was set down in a sink-like hole, as there was a flat surface level with the top of the box. The alien rested its arms on said surface and looked at us again. This was starting to get unnerving. A few women started slowly backing up into a corner. The alien exhaled, and reached its hand into the box and grabbed someone. She didn't struggle, we had already been manhandled enough to know there was no point. For a moment, the alien held her down in the box, before lifting her out, and I gazed into her frightened eyes.
"Good god.."
she sighed under her breath, and was lifted up away from us.
I couldn't see the surface above us, or the woman who was now on it, only the alien, who towered high into the air. It was looking down at the "counter" if you will, and I heard a scuffling sound, and an
"ughf!", clearly the woman the alien had picked up was struggling against something, but I couldn't see what. I tapped a solid-looking tall woman, quickly trying to spill out my words.
"Can I stand on your shoulders to see out?"
"Yeah, climb up."
She stood by the wall and cupped her hands for my foot. I braced myself and then pulled my weight on top of her. She rocked a bit, but leaned on the wall. I slowly stood up on quivering legs. My head was still below the edge, so I reached my arms up to the top of the bin and pulled myself higher. The alien was there, holding the other woman on a metal surface, fiddling with something across from her.
What is that?
There seemed to be a mechanism of some sort to the surface she was held against. I could see her breathing hard, but not any looser from the grip of the alien. It was so much bigger than us, there was no hope of escaping from it through a fight. The alien reached for a handle on the edge of the metal surface, and I realized what was about to happen.
Oh, god..
Right as the horrific realization came to me, my arms slipped off the top edge of the surface, and I fell backwards.
"Aaah!" My hands lashed out reflexively for anything to grab, but there was only air.
"Uuf!"
Fortunately, the fall was short, and a couple of women had reached out to break my fall. I'm glad I didn't land on the woman who had lifted me up.
"What's happening?" I was pulled up as everyone crowded closer to me, desperate for an answer.
I stared blankly, my mouth opened and closed, but the words weren't coming. They didn't need to though, because right at that moment, there was a sickening thud.

Everyone knew exactly what had occurred, I didn't have to say anything. My head went light, and my limbs numb. I collapsed into a sitting position, with nothing to say. The alien seemed unaffected by what it had just done, and continued working on whatever it was doing above us and out of sight. A few other women sat around me. One started crying quietly, trying to muffle her sobs from the toothed alien, and most of us were just silent and hopeless. I sighed, and set my head back against the wall of the bin we were in, my mind blank and stunned. Suddenly, I heard an alien's shout, and saw the toothed alien whip around to look at something. It jumped back, and started talking in its freaky voice, and I then saw the head of another alien running up to it appear over the high rim of our containment. They seemed to be arguing hotly, and I then realized that this was the alien who was walking along the edge of the forest earlier that day. Another approached, it was the one who had peered into our box/cage through the gap this morning!
What's going on?
Everyone's attention was turned towards the commotion going on only ten or so feet from us and it was rather terrifying to have such huge creatures fighting right above you like that. Then suddenly, a fourth alien appeared, and snapped something onto the toothed alien's hands!
Is this law enforcement of some sort? A fight? A gang?
The toothed alien kept shouting things in its odd dialect at the other aliens, but was led away by the fourth alien who had restrained it. That left us with the two aliens who had been sneaking around this morning. They looked, seemingly in disgust, at the counter above us, and what I knew was the body of the woman who had been slaughtered. One turned, and looked at us remaining in the box, and said something to its partner, who nodded and walked off to get something. The remaining alien, the one who had been by the woods, had thick blue skin and a brown piece of gear on. It's head had three horns, like a chameleon, but angling away from its face. Its two bright eyes studied us with pity. It pulled out a small device, and pointed it at us, and snapped. I guess that was a camera. We were rather non-reactive at this point, just broken and tired. I stared emptily at the alien, who pivoted away from us to face its partner who had returned with something I couldn't see. The item was set on the ground, and I heard the short metal squeak of a door opening. The black-eyed alien stayed right by the item, but the blue one with horns turned and reached for us. Nobody even bothered to struggle, and I just stood there as the giant hands descended upon me. My body tensed and I shut my eyes to the harsh and hopeless planet we were stuck on, but opened them again when the alien picked me up with surprising gentleness. No firm squeeze, or pressure pinching my rib cage, or being held upside down, or anything. The alien had one hand gently around my body, and the other holding my feet up, so I could stand in a comfortable position. I looked down at its dusty blue skin, noticing small indents, like a golf ball, and the extra joint of its upper-arm-girthed fingers that were wrapping around me. I gazed up, but glimpsed the limp and already discolored, beheaded body of the unlucky woman. I shut my eyes, and turned my head away, gagging in terror and disgust. The alien holding me noticed, and quickly turned to block the sight with its body, but too late. It said something to the other alien, and I felt myself being slowly lowered into something, and set carefully on a soft, blanket like surface. I opened my eyes again, and looked around. I was in a small box, in maybe 3 and a half feet wide and 7 feet long, and tall enough to stand up. The sides were solid metal, but there were tennis ball-sized holes all along the top halves of the walls. Above me was a large hinging ceiling through which I had been lowered. It was shut for a moment as I looked at it, then opened again and the blue alien lowered someone else down in the same careful manner. She crumpled on the soft floor, her mind broken from the trauma we had gone through in the past year. Soon, all of us women were in this kennel of sorts. It was a bit crowded, but not too bad, and we all were clean from our rather violent bath. the aliens were talking, standing just to the side of us, and taking more "pictures" of the scene with that device I guessed was a camera of sorts. In the first apparent safety we'd had for a while, I was able to mull everything over, but I didn't need to for long. The slaughter of one of us that was interrupted just in time before everyone else followed suit had made the answer painfully clear.

We are animals to them. Animals to be slaughtered.

But this interruption and take-over of the toothed alien's processing of us posed a new question.

What now?