The Bloodmaid's Tale

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

June sat on her cot looking into the darkness of the camp, the bland stale smelling room almost maddening as quiet whispers and coughs filled the silence of the night. She knew now her name was no longer June, but now Offred. They had taken even that from her. Her cot felt warm and itchy, and the nightdress all humans in the camp were given itched just as bad. She had been at the camp now for over three years, and had lost many friends to the monsters of the night.

They called it the Flesh Camp, but it was really an old high school, one of the many that were scattered around their northeastern town, another hollowed out building to keep humans in. It's old walls creaked in the middle of the night as the wind blew hard against the window panels. All the windows had been barred long ago when the buildings had first been made into the Flesh Camp, and all the doors were sealed to prevent escape. If she had known any better she would think this is what animals felt like in a zoo. She let out a sigh and looked next to her. Her little sister Sarah, with her mousy hair now shining in the moonlight, took long breathes that told June she was dreaming sweetly.

She was six now, barely even remembering their parents, or their brother Luke. And tomorrow she wouldn't remember June. She had been assigned a house, to be what the Order called a Bloodmaid, where she would be used for others to get their nutrition and youth back, and she would forever be separated from her family.

Those monsters.....

Beautiful horrible creatures of the night, they had overtaken the whole country by now. Vampires, Bloodsuckers, the Undead, whatever you wanted to call them, they were all the same. It had started when the president had been assassinated, some said it was the vampires themselves who took out the higher officials that ran the country, they had caused hysteria behind the curtains of a so-called structured government. Funny that it had been taken over so easily.... but it was also the same day June's parent's had died. She had been sitting in the living room, the white couch she loved to lay on where she had an afternoon nap right after school, when the breaking news poured over the television screen. Images poured over the government buildings being taken over as smoke filled the sky. She remembered being wide eyed and still, watching as looters took over cities. It was how they lived back then, as everyone had at the time. All the signs were there, but people ignored it. They ignored how government officials were keeping quiet about the deaths, about the disappearances of people. June hated them, ignoring wasn't the same as ignorance, ignoring takes work. Like a gradually heating bathtub, the human race had been boiling to death without even knowing it. There were rumors, but it was just that. When they slaughtered Congress, when they blamed organizations and terrorists, all while the vampires had been waiting diligently, watching us destroy each other until they came and took over. 

She remembered panic. Pure unaltered panic as she saw people outside her own home looting in the streets, people crying and wondering what had happened as they watched their loved ones dying left and right. Then Luke had come home, his tall frame shadowing the doorway as his blonde hair was swept back like it was whenever he was stressed. His dark blue eyes were hollow as he looked to her with despair while closing the door quickly to the chaos outside.

"Mom and Dad are gone" he whispered.

"What do you mean?" June said shocked as she got up from the couch.

"I mean they are dead June, this morning....oh God what are we going to tell Sarah?" he said holding his head in his hands "A car crash...it was a hit and run..."

June had been frozen to the spot that whole night. They had managed to keep intruders out of the house as they grieved. It all happened so fast...her brother had cried in her arms, and then Sarah. No tears had left her eyes though she had become a stone statue, unable to grasp that her parents were gone and it was up to her and Luke to take care of Sarah.