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NOTE: These stories are
intended for a mature audience.

Stalls
A "Vorare" Story
By
Ivan Ewert
Start at the beginning of the Vorare series

They had walked quite a way from the other outbuildings, away from the crop fields and toward a pigpen. The pen was fenced in, with barbed wire along the top and the delicate filaments of electrical wire running at intervals along its sides. The building within was long and low, with high, barred windows too narrow for even a child to slip through lining its eaves. The whole area reeked of animal waste and slops, even in the relative cool of Spring.

Paul tapped a button with one foot and the gates of the fence began to swing at a slow, measured pace. They swung inward, hooking into another pair of posts erected along the building, giving the impression of a broken circle or a drawbridge which had no moat. As it moved, forms appeared around the building ? a small group of hogs, grunting and squealing as the gates pushed them back. They pressed against the fences, looking to the men for whatever scraps the beasts of the Farm might be fed on.

Gordon took it all in without sensing a thing ? the sound of the axe had seen to that.

He had imagined himself past the ability to be hurt by anything that happened on the Farm, had steeled himself for any possibility; but the dull sound against his ears had proven him wrong. 'If she had screamed,' he thought, 'if she had screamed it might have been different. It might have provided some sense of normalcy.' Even at her death, not a whisper of humanity escaped, only the curiously flat sound of a sharpened axe cutting through flesh and bone.

The door of the building was fastened with both a dropped metal beam across it and a series of chains around the beam, fastened together by a single heavy padlock. Paul kept Gordon's delicate wrists held easily within one calloused hand, fishing a set of keys from his pocket with the other. A short, reflexive tug by Gordon brought him nothing more than a slow smile.

"Careful. I could break both wrists now and nobody would say boo. This pen is nobody's territory but my own, you understand? The Master Farmer doesn't care what happens to you until the day you call him to your side, and nobody else on the Farm comes near this place. You're all mine. So step carefully, and don't think about anything but your next meal."

The key went into the lock easily, with a practiced twist that said Paul was intimately familiar with every step in this process. A private jail and jailer, far enough removed from the rest of the Farm that screams would be of little use, far from any tall corn or wheat fields in which an escapee might hide, surrounded by hogs living in their own filth.

Paul flipped a switch, and the grinding wheeze of a small generator started up. Light came from the upper windows, and as he began to easily lift the bar from the door the sound of someone shifting came from within. Paul took Gordon by the back of the neck and brought him forward, that preternatural strength still obvious in the man's hands.

"Open," he whispered, and Gordon pulled at the door.

A lone man sat on the floor in the middle of the building, watching the door with neither curiosity nor compassion in his eyes. His clothes hung loose around his body, and Gordon could see the ridges of his cheekbones pressing against the skin of his face.

"It isn't feeding time," he said in a whisper, "why you here, Paul?"

"He's not food unless you want him, George. You hungry?"

"Go to Hell."

Paul shoved Gordon forward. "I'll be back in a few days to check for teeth marks, George. Afraid you're going to have to go hungry for a while as well, until this one wastes up a bit."

"Already hungry, Paul."

"That's as may be. After he gets a little skinnier, maybe you'll both eat."

George turned his eyes to the ceiling and did not answer. Paul turned his attention to Gordon. "When I bring food, you'll eat it. It won't be anything you wouldn't eat free, but it won't be nice, either. Just in case your new lifemate doesn't feel like filling you in, let me give you a little word of warning. No matter what your storybooks said in school, hogs aren't real friendly. They'll set up a racket if you manage to get out, and I wouldn't be surprised if they trampled you down into the mud.

"I've got classes to teach in a bit, so anything else you'll have to pry out of him. You made a big mistake, Gordon. I'm hoping you come to your senses soon. You could've been something here."

Gordon followed George's lead, looking to the ceiling and remaining silent. Paul snorted and closed the door behind him, leaving the two alone with the sound of the pigpen gates swinging shut again.

The buzzing of flies was the only sound for a while. Gordon watched them dance in and out of the ventilation windows cut along the top of the wall, envying their flight and freedom. Creatures of decay, moving freely above his head and through what was to be left of his life. His eyes darted toward his fellow-prisoner now and again, watching to be sure that the man was not making any moves toward him. He had never been in a prison, but he knew well enough that he did not want to let his guard down.

George was wasted with hunger; that much was clear. Even if he did make a move Gordon thought he could hold him off a while, but sleep ? what would come with sleep? The man had been here long enough to have anything at his disposal. A sharpened piece of metal, maybe, or a stone that could come down on Gordon's head in the midst of his nightmares. He might not dare to attack Paul, well-fed and alert, but a sick and sleeping man? It was possible. It was probable.

The flies moved in lazy circles, drawn to the smells of mud and confinement. The slops outside, the scent of the pen, the desperate sweat of an imprisoned man. Gordon closed his eyes to pray.

"I could, Gordon."

The voice opened Gordon's eyes. George had not moved from where he sat.

"What could you, George?"

"I could do anything while you slept. I could put you out of your misery with a hundred little tricks and tools stashed around this place, or I could make your misery even deeper." George's shoulders moved slowly with the effort of taking in breath, the wasted cords of his muscles rising and falling in fits and starts. "But the same holds true for you, doesn't it? I'm weaker than you, and I know it. So you can relax, is what I'm saying. I'm not about to try anything funny. If I got it wrong it would be all over for me, and then what chance do I have of wrapping my hands around Paul's fat neck? None at all. None at all."

"Yeah ..."

"Speak up." His voice was all but a whisper. "You don't sound like you believe me. Listen, Gordon. What is it you want to do when you get out of here?"

"Run," said Gordon truthfully.

"Never works." George shook his head. "They got the stalking horses and the meat wagons, the hunters and the hounds. Don't know which picked you up, but those little teams cross the roads and fields. They're a net you can't slip through, even if you were a woodsman ? and you don't look to be one. Forget running, Gordon. The farm's got too much behind it and too much at stake to let anyone reach the civilized world."

"Nobody's escaped?"

George shrugged. "Farm's still here, isn't it? If I got out with a mind to run first place I'd go would be a phone to call up the feds. Waco, I'd tell them, or Ruby Ridge all over again. Heavy armed militiamen holding kids against their will. Wouldn't say much about the cannibalism, I guess. Don't think they'd buy it. The papers might, though, so the next call goes to them. Even if the meat wagons got to me after that, someone would look into it. Someone would hear about it. Did you come here looking to know more? Someone warn you about what was going on?"

"No," said Gordon.

"No. Which means either nobody's escaped, or the folks who came looking went away missing or satisfied. I'm not laying money on missing ? press and feds are funny about leaving folks behind unexplained. In short, you best come up with another dream to keep you going. Because no matter how hard you run, it won't get you free." He paused. "Now, me, my dream is to kill Paul and all his pigs. After him, I dream about killing the Farmer." George's eyes closed, and the lines fell away from his haunted face in a thin-lipped smile. "Then everybody and everything else in this devil's kitchen. Burn it to the ground and walk away singing."

Gordon paused. That kind of easy speech about killing made him want to run even further, to escape from the madmen outside and in. "There's kids here. George."

"Raised as ghouls."

"There are women, too."

"Who work the meat grinders and split the bones for marrow-jelly." George's voice was sharp. "Don't be fooled by your outside morals, boy. There's not a single breath of innocence here. There's nobody that hasn't tasted the evil that's buried in this place. Even the crops out in the field are fertilized with blood and bone meal, and that don't all come from the local Farm and Fleet. I'll kill them all, and burn the crops, and burn the buildings, and I will walk away free in body and joyful in my soul. That's my dream. That's what keeps me going. That's why I haven't tried to bust down the doors and give myself over to the hogs outside, Gordon. The promise that I'll get mine and that the Farm will be wiped from the face of God's good earth."

"There are other Farms."

George nodded, the lines of exhaustion and hunger returning to his brow. "I know." His voice came over quiet again, tired beyond measure. "Weeds in the fertile soil, from sea to shining sea."

"What comes after you ... after you burn this place down?"

"I burn everything else, everywhere else, until they stop me. But if God's willing then I'll cripple them here before they do."

Gordon turned his attention back to the flies. Paul had said he would leave them without food for a few days, which meant that all of his attention would have to fixed on George over the next few days. The man was crazy, either from hunger or exhaustion or the horror that had taken Gordon over the past few months. He was violent, and possibly delusional, but he was weakened physically.

A different man might find a better answer. It was a whisper from within, a voice he had heard in the dark and the moon. A better man might find a different answer. He could be our ticket out...

Gordon shook himself, and George's pale gray eyes opened slightly.

"What's the matter, Gordon? Someone walk over your grave?"

There's another way, he told himself. Ally. Make friends where you can and help those you are able. Whatever measure you deal out to others, it will be dealt to you in return.

"George," he said slowly, "tell me how you're going to burn. If we can escape ? both together, hand in hand ? then I'll be able to help you bring judgment down."

"Maybe. Maybe." George considered him. "We'll see overnight. See how we do after a few days of hunger. I've been sixteen days without food, purifying myself, strengthening myself in the name of the judgment. We'll see how you handle a few days hungry, and then we'll find out if this is a prison or a pantry. See if we come out on our shields or a silver platter."

Gordon shook himself again under the cold grey stare, and turned his attention to the flies.

Story and photo by Ivan Ewert, Copyright 2006