text: My world cracks with a sudden brightness and then goes dark. A great force, behind me or from within, seems to scoop me up like a wave and washes me onto a barren black shore. I try to scream out, but the echoing clamor of hundreds of terrified cries around me drowns the sound. “Hello?” “Where am I?” “Mother?” “What is this place?” The screams are increasingly frantic as more bodies dump in on top of us. My legs buckle underneath me as the weight crushes my shoulders. I climb out of the pile and gasp for air. Taking in the dark scene around me, I only have time to notice one thing: “We’re all children!” With a lurch and a shriek that pierces our ears, our cries unify in one giant plea for help as the floor shifts beneath us. I recognize my brother and crawl towards him, fear and the moving belt challenging my legs to keep the rest of me upright. My feet stumble over one another as I arrive at his side, and my face lands right onto the shoulder of his soft downy coat. Without a word, I feel the warmth of his embrace trying to calm my trembling body. “SHH, be still, little chick,” he says to me. I cry into his shoulder, silently wishing our mother were still with us to tell us what to do. Then, I remember our sisters. My head lifts and I dart my gaze around the clusters of sobbing children screaming for help. Cluttered piles of squirming limbs rise on either side of me, one body part indistinguishable from the next. I turn back to look at my brother, whose grim expression tells me without words the last thing I want to hear: *They’re on their own, just like us.* Right then, a rubberized claw reaches down and yanks my brother from my side. I have enough time to catch a glimpse of his thrashing legs as his dying scream disappears along with him. Now, I am alone. The others look at me with wild, frightened eyes. Tears stain their faces. Their legs tremble. Some of them have soiled themselves, the waste still unattended at their feet. *We’re just children*, I think again, and my own eyes drip with tears. Another claw grabs my neck and I nearly swallow my own tongue. My heart is racing. I hear the whirring sound of a motor near my face and then muffled screams of the others in line before me, when suddenly my mouth is met with the fiery kiss of pain. I try to scream, but all I can manage are muffled cries, my own weak warning to the child in line behind me. The fire feels as though it might start to dig through the bone of my face when the clamp around my neck whips me around and releases. Weightless, my body sails through the air, and I wonder if this is death. Not yet. I land on a pile of the other children, bits of white bone visible through their bloody mouths, and it occurs to me that only the girls are left. A small girl with round eyes and a shorter girl beside her inch towards me, and we all instinctively huddle together for protection. Our bodies all shiver in unison with our shared fear and pain. Before we can even look one another in the eyes, our hearts jump into our throats. One more time, we drop through the air until a grated plastic floor breaks our fall. More girls come tumbling in after us, their tiny scared screams drowning out my own, their faces twisted in the same terror. The tall walls bend and creak on rotating joints, and start to close in on top of us like a lid. I meet the round eyes of the girl beside me one last time before darkness stifles us into silence. **Day 31** When the first crack of light blinded us twenty-four hours later, we were in what can only be described as a concentration camp. I was never good with numbers, but there must be thousands of us in this large warehouse, pacing around in our own filth. Our captors bring us a bland food supplement which is keeping us well fed. It tastes maybe like corn but seasoned with something foul. Though, that may just be the smell of dead bodies tainting the flavor. Sassy and Clara have survived, the round-eyed girl and her short friend that I met right before the kidnappers sent us here. So did Fiona, the other girl who shares our cell. But Telly died shortly after we arrived. The infection in her mouth from the burning machine started small, but after a few weeks, her right cheek was bright red and sagging with pus. No one ever came to check on her, despite our cries that she was dying. Now, her rotting corpse sits in the corner of our cell, uncovered: a constant reminder of our own expectations. We still have no idea why they abducted us, what they want, or who *they* are. We only see an actual human being once or twice a day, but the rest of our prison is automated. Even when they do come in--to spray us with antibiotics to calm our festering wounds, or to unclog a feed dispenser--they seem immune to our sobbing cries. Covered from head to toe in protective polyester, they march by stone-cold stoic as they scan our cell blocks, riddled with dead children. Though, we are already starting to change. I had no idea at the time, but our kidnappers took us from our mothers just as we were about to reach our adulthood. This celebrated milestone of a girl’s life has, for us, become a horror under the microscope of captivity. They touch us, grab at our breasts, check for any signs of maturity, all the while, eying our bodies with hungry anticipation. Over what, I am still unsure, but it frightens me nonetheless. **Day 136** Just when I thought things were at their worst, our captors moved us to another prison. Here, we have become no more than objects. We have grown so fat without exercise or movement, and our tiny young bones break under the pressure of our weight. My ankle is healing, but Clara’s broken leg keeps her on her backside all day. Instead of healing us, they run experiments, take our gametes for who-knows-what. My imagination runs wild based on the torture to which they subject us in order to get them. The girls and I have been in this new prison for twelve days now. Sassy, Clara and I still share the same cell, but Fiona’s body was uncooperative, not producing whatever it needed to satisfy our captors. They came for her after only a couple of days. Two different girls we had never met before, also just reaching their womanhood, joined our cell the day we arrived, but at this point, Sassy, Clara and I have stopped learning new names. It just gets to be too painful to say goodbye. **Day 572** Something is happening! This morning, they came and took Clara without warning. Sassy and I watched up and down our cell block row as they hand-selected a few others to end up wherever they sent Clara, but we never saw them again. Now, they are packing the rest of us up to go. Where? I have no idea. Even though I have said this and been wrong before, I cannot fathom anything much worse than what we’ve already endured. Eighteen months of this torture and my body feels like a wet rag. I barely have the energy to look up at the masked-face captor as he grabs me by the legs and tosses me into a crate with at least twenty others. The air is suffocating. The others’ bodies are just as rotten and exhausted as mine, so we just lie there together in our own disgustingness, praying without real hope that this final move will bring an end to the abuse. An engine starts, the cage jerks, and our cramped bodies pinch one another. The crate bangs against others beside it as the movement jostles us around, and I know this means we are all packed in here together, the same scared little faces I watched grow up along with me over the past two years. I try to remember what life was like before that day when they dumped us onto the conveyer belt and took away the boys, but I have no other memories, only pain and torture from then on. The engine stops. I feel the transport vehicle shake and the back door creaks on its hinges. Light starts to break through as arms reach in to remove the crates from around ours. Then, fingers jam through the handles of our crate and we go flying through the air until slamming down with a crunch on top of another. Other slams jostle our crate two more times, and we feel our bodies soaring, though none of us can lift a wing. My eyes lift from the pile of exhausted chickens underneath me as we pass through a pair of swinging doors. I hear motors running, gears turning, a saw spinning, and screams. Our crate drops onto a table and another masked face appears as he peels back the lid. His goggled eyes meet mine, and I want to beg him to stop, but all I can muster is: “Please.” Without hesitating, the man grabs me by the legs and storms towards a giant machine. At first, being upside down and utterly drained from grief and terror, all I see is metal. Only as we get nearer do my eyes open to the horror. The other chickens, the young girls less than two years old who suffered at my side during our lives in captivity, hang in a row by their feet watching the others just ahead of them stunned in an electrified water bath so that the saw that comes afterward can more easily split their necks. They start to wriggle against their shackles as it approaches, but then they hang deathly still. Gushing blood rushes over their faces. I see Sassy ahead of me and I choke back tears, knowing we are next. The screams flood my ears and my wings start to flap uncontrollably. I think I might be screaming too as they clip my ankles into the assembly line. What am I saying? Anything! *Help! Can’t you hear me?! Please, I don’t want to die! Please, don’t do this! I don’t want to--”* When you pay for animal products, this is the kind of torture your money keeps in business. Without your support, the unnecessary slaughter ends. #GoVegan.