Let me introduce myself. My name is Angelica, and I rather not tell you my true last name. Just call me Angie Wethers. I always liked that last name, anyway, and all my family calls me Angie. I’m 16. I live in a very small farming community called Olive Grove. I won’t tell you exactly where that is either, but it is in the southern United States. Not much happens here, and the only thing that there is to do for teens is go to school. While I do live in the South, sadly we do not tip cows in our spare time like they do in the movies. Sorry.
Nobody really knows who my family is simply because we live such a secluded life. I have a few other siblings, even nieces and nephews, but we never really leave the farm because we have always been homeschooled. The only thing the town really knows is that we run the best pig farm in our region, and the rumors they create don’t even begin to come close to what really happens.
On a regular day, I usually go help around the farm with the animals. I milk the cows and the goats, and I feed the few cats and dogs that we have for catching mice. The only animals I try not to help out with are the pigs. That’s usually what my brother does, but our dad decided today would be a good day to force me to do it.
“Angelica!”
I open my eyes and groan at my mom yelling at me for the third time.
“Get out of bed and come down here! Your father said you need to feed the pigs!”
I swing my legs over the bed and stretch my arms all the way above my head. I really hated feeding the pigs because it always made me feel dirty afterwards. I had thrown a fit about it for years, but my father finally put a stop to it last night when he said I was either going to feed the pigs or be fed to the pigs. To avoid being pig feed, I get ready in a hurry and run down there. My brother is already there waiting with the bucket.
“Took you long enough,” he says while looking at me with a look of shame on his face.
“Not all of us are twisted individuals. Elijah,” I say while snatching the bucket away from him. I quickly regret snatching it when I almost spill the contents of the bucket on my legs. He snickers at my look of disgust as I put on the latex gloves I brought from the house.
“Make sure you don’t waste it. Took Dad a while to fatten up ol’ Betty for them. I was hoping we’d have her for ourselves, but you know how dad is. The other scraps are on the table in the barn.” He salutes me and then walks back toward the house. I try my best to ignore his comment and the feeling of dread in my stomach as I feed the pigs.
“This is normal meat. Nothing is wrong with this meat. It is just normal food for the pigs.” I repeat this mantra over and over to try and calm myself down, but my hands get so shakey that I almost spill the bucket on my legs again. I stop for a second, take a deep breath, and chuck the whole bucket in. I watch as the pigs fight over the scraps, and then I quickly run to the water hose to scrub my hands. I douse them in some dawn dish soap I grabbed earlier from the house, and I practically scrub the top layer of skin on my hands and arms off.
I forgot to mention that feeding the pigs is a two part job, but I find the second part way more enjoyable. I actually try to do this part as often as I can, but my brother tends to be stingy with it. My dad also found it unfair that I refuse to feed the pigs but beg to do this, but, as I told my brother, not everyone in this family is a sick and twisted individual.
I walk deeper inside the barn, towards the back, and move aside the hay covering the door in the floor. I grab the plates of leftover dinner scraps my brother left on the table and head down the steep stairs. I am instantly greeted by muffled yells, and I yell a greeting towards the makeshift chain-linked cells against the right wall. There are three on the right wall and two on the wall directly in front of the stairs. The room is longer than it is wide.
“Hey guys. It’s just me. I wanted to bring you some good stuff this time, but I’m sorry it’s only scraps.”
I turn on the overhead light and look at the faces staring back at me from their cells, three out of five cages full. Alex is on the left. He’s 23, and he’s been here almost 8 months. In the right cell is Miss Cora. I call her miss because she’s old enough to be my grandma, and she is the sweetest old black woman I’ve ever met. She’s been here the longest at about 11 months. I think dad has kept her here this long because of how sweet she is. The middle cell is where Celia is. She has only been here three weeks, so I don’t know much about her. The others are still trying to convince her to trust me.
I walk over to Alex’s cage and take the rag out of his mouth.
“Thank God. I thought if I saw your brother’s stupid smirking face one more time I was going to off myself,” he says while he rubs the lines left on his face from the rag.
I take Miss Cora’s out next after Celia backs away from me.
“Now Alex, honey, you know you can’t be saying those types of things for your safety.” Miss Cora kind of became Alex’s temporary mother figure while they have been trapped. You get pretty close to people if you’re locked in cages with them.
I walk towards Celia’s cage again and put my hand through the small makeshift hole that each of their cages has. “You can trust me. I won’t hurt you like they will.”
Alex walks towards the fence wall he shares with her. “She’s telling you the truth. She’s the only one of them that cares about us.”
I flinch at him including me in the “them,” but I wait patiently as Celia walks towards me. I carefully take the rag out of her mouth as she stares at me, doe-eyed.
“I promise I won’t hurt you.” I smile at her, and then I walk grab the scrap plates I had set down.
“Okay, so my mom made pork chops, string beans, and mashed potatoes last night. I tried to get you guys some good enough scraps, but you know how mean my brother can be,” I ramble on while I grab the plastic plates and silverware I keep stashed in the shelves. “He fed some of it to the dogs, and he wouldn’t even let me heat it up in the microwave.”
“I’m just happy to have your mom’s mashed potatoes again. And to have them on a plate. Kind of sucks when your brother just puts it in our hands,” complains Alex.
“He can be such a dick,” I say as I split the scraps evenly three ways. I hand each plate to them along with silverware. They immediately start chowing down.
“Oh shoot! I forgot to buy you guys some more napkins!” I smack myself on the forehead at my own forgetfulness.
“Oh no, baby. What you do for us is already enough,” says Miss Cora.
I smile at her, and we sit in silence for a few minutes while they eat. Celia starts staring at me when she finishes eating, but I ignore her until the others are done eating. She waits until I make eye contact with her before speaking.
“I don’t get it. Why do you do this?”
“Do what? Feed you? My parents tell me to, and I would feel bad if I didn’t anyway. I just put it on paper plates because you’re huma—“
“Oh, you don’t have to tell us we’re humans,” she rolls her eyes as she says this, “if you really felt like we were humans, we wouldn’t be locked in a cage. Why are we even here, anyway?”
Alex looks down at the floor as Miss Cora looks sadly at me, waiting for me to respond. I don’t know what to say however, so I stay silent.
“Well, are you going to answer? I can’t get a word out of these two about it, and I know they know. Am I going to die or not? I’m a big girl. I can take it. Not like being here is any better than death.”
I say the only thing I know to say: “I don’t know what my father wants to do with any you for sure. There could be any number of possibilities, but I don’t have the heart to tell you any of them. I never find out what his decisions are until they happen, and I don’t know how he makes them. The only thing I know to do is make you feel better about being here.”
She laughs at my response. Her eyes now are far from the doe eyes she had earlier. “Feel better? Look, little girl, I don’t think there’s any way to make me feel better about being in a cage.”
Alex quickly slams himself against the fence wall and grips it with his fingers. “Hey leave her alone! She can’t help that we’re in here! It’s not her fault!”
“She can let us out!” yells Celia. Then she turns to me. “Go on! Let us out! All you have to do is open the cage, and we all run!”
“Stop yelling at her!” Alex’s fingers have started to turn white with how hard he is gripping the fence. Miss Cora has turned away from the screaming and sits cross-legged on the floor. Celia continues to scream at me, Alex continues to scream at her, and tears begin to flow down my face. I finally lose it.
“Okay look! I can’t let you out and I’m sorry about that, but that’s just how it is!”
“Why? Are you afraid he’s going to kill you? Are you really going to put the lives of three people on the line for your own safety?” She stares at me with her hands on her hips.
I reach into my back pocket and pull the old flip phone I’ve had since I was a little girl. It didn’t work, but I kept it for one particular picture. I pulled that picture up and aimed it at Celia’s face.
She scrunches up her nose, which makes me want to punch her. “Who am I supposed to be looking at?”
“A picture of my older sister and I. An older sister I no longer have. When I was younger, she was supposed to be watching me. She fell asleep by accident, I came out here and released everyone we had then, and my father killed the people I released. Along with her.”
Celia stares at me while she takes in my story. I can see some sort of remorse in her for a split second, but then she goes back to scowling.
“If I hadn’t come out here and released all those people, I wouldn’t have lost my best friend.” I motion towards Alex and Miss Cora. “And now they are my best friends. I’m not releasing anyone until I know for sure that I can get them out safely, and that especially goes for them.” Alex and Miss Cora smile sadly at me, and Celia just scowls as she sits down in the dirt.
I begin to gather my stuff to leave. Alex and Miss Cora put their rags back in their mouth, and I scowl back at Celia until she follows suit. I shut off the light, and walk back up the stairs into the real world.
Someday, I’ll be able to set the people I love free. But until then, I have to try to keep them alive.