A Mother

I was scared, terrified in fact. All my senses swirled around me, telling me "run! RUN!", but as the humans locked the steel gate behind me, I had no choice but to stay put. I turned my head in an attempt to see the humans that locked me in this cage. I couldn't. I tried to turn around, but I couldn't! Steel bars were all around me. At my sides, only a few inches from my skin, above me, in-front of me, behind me- even the floor was made of metal mesh!
It was cold. I couldn't tell if it was all this metal, or I was just so scared. I was shaking. Cold, or fear?

The humans had "impregnated" me. I didn't know what that meant. All I knew is the fear that clouded everything. Humans had never cared for me, I was just a pig. Just a lower being, and that is all I could ever be.

I could just see the pigs in crates to my sides, but only out of the corners of my eyes. Squeals of the other pigs were all around me, and clunking and grating of hooves and teeth on steel and bodies hitting against bars confused my instincts. Instincts were something I had been stripped of when I was a baby, and only when I was forced in that cage, they came back.

It was hours before I had become used to the sounds and smells of the new, dark room that I was in. I settled a little, but every now and then, a noise would startle me and I would start all over again, squealing and stamping. Every now and again though, the pig beside me and I would lean on the bars together at the right time, and our sides would touch. Somehow, the warm skin of my cellmate would comfort me a little, and make me feel more alive.

As the months went by in the cage I felt heavier. I chewed the bars of the cage. I was frustrated and bored. I would scream as a human walked by, hoping they would do something just mildly different to normal so that it might relieve my boredom. My mind swum with thoughts of strange things, of straw and warmth. Most of all, my chest weighed heavy with this thick, warm, moving feeling. It didn't weigh on me in a bad way, it was a good feeling, and it kept me going through each hour. That feeling was love.

About 4 months went by, but I found it hard to keep track of time. I felt pains in my stomach for a few days. I lay down as much as I could, but all I wanted to do was walk in a circle, and make a huge warm bed. Whatever was happening to me, where I was wasn't the right place for it to happen. I needed a nest to lay in when this strange thing happened. It happened though, regardless of my lack of preparation. On that day, cried and cried out, the need was so strong, I just had to break free. I rammed the gate, but it was no good.

Six baby pigs came out of me that day. And they were mine. Although I didn't have much to give them, they were mine, and they still loved me. I loved them more than anything or anyone in the entire universe could love anything. They were perfect. I could hear more piglets in the big room. Hundreds. They weren't mine though, so I didn't care.

I wanted to show them my love. I wanted to make them that nest that they would be expecting. I wanted to nuzzle them, cuddle them close to me, make them feel as though they could be mine. I couldn't though. The human's horrible contraption barely let my little babies suckle from me. As they suckled through the cage, I cried out more. it broke my heart. It shattered me on the inside to see them go without love and affection. My hatred for those humans grew every day.

My babies grew, and grew, and one day it seems, the humans deemed them worthy. They were lifted from my side, and I felt their warmth slip away. The only happiness I had ever had in my entire life, they just lifted away from me, like it was nothing. They were thrown in a crate together, thrown around like they threw around the manure in the sheds. The humans didn't care. I screamed, I cried and I grunted in a extreme anger.

"This one has a horrible attitude," said one of the humans taking my babies. He kicked me in the leg through the cage, causing me to whimper in pain. My babies squealed at seeing me hurt, "I don't know what her problem is!" said the man.

I knew though. I knew where my babies were going. And I knew this was the last I would ever see them. I remember, because I was one of those little babies once, being taken away from my mother. They would take them away, and cut of their little tales, and snip of their teeth, and for my little boys, they would castrate them. I remembered my siblings and I screaming when we had it done to us. Would they do it to their babies? Would they do it to another human's babies?

I closed my eyes. I had another weight in my chest. A horrible, sore, throbbing weight that beat with my angered heart. It was sorrow. The love in my chest had been taken away from me again, torn out with the same tools that would take my babys' tails. And in the hole it left behind was only sorrow, as I sunk down in my stall and wept. I didn't cry tears like the humans, but I could still cry in my own way.

I wondered what would happen to me now, but I didn't care. All I could ever care about, was the hate that I now harbored inside me, that was branded on my heart and soul, and would never leave.

I will never trust a human again.