A Mother's Promise

She woke at the groaning of the metal bars signaling the arrival of the Uprights though she hadn't really been sleeping. She never truly slept these days, just closed her eyes and lightly rested whenever she could. But it was never a peaceful rest. Peace was long gone. Her body was sore and aching from the contraption she was hooked up to. She felt a flutter throughout her midsection and she knew it was the life inside of her. The baby she never asked for sent a gentle tap through her big tummy and she wished she could stay pregnant forever, wished that this baby never had to be brought into this world of horrors.

As always, she prayed for a girl. Boys were tortured then discarded. They kept girls though her daughter's fate would be no different than her own. She kept clinging to the hope that one day, some sweet miracle of freedom would save them. 

She had given birth twice already in her young life and made a promise through her protesting screams and tears to each of her babies, vowing that one day they would meet again as they were dragged away by the Uprights.

How she despised the Uprights. Her best friend told her not to. She was older and more mature and had taken care of her when she first arrived after she had been ripped away from her own mother. 

"It's easier if you don't fight it," her wise friend had told her.

"But how can you not hate them?" she had asked. "After they took you from your mother and your babies from you and... violate you over and over again?"

"I don't know. It's just easier not to. One day, this will all be over."

At first, she had found solace in her friend's words. But now she feared that she was beginning to catch on. She knew what happened when the girls were no longer capable of doing what the Uprights demanded of them. When their bodies finally gave out from exhaustion after so much excessive strain and could no longer produce milk, milk that the babies they carried would never taste, those girls were taken away, hauled off with horrified eyes that held silent tears. They knew what sort of brutality and pain awaited them. The screams from the next building over were hard to ignore.

Her own mother and daughters were somewhere in her building but there so many of them, hundreds of girls forced into motherhood again and again, crammed onto the hideous metal circles that hooked up to their bodies and pumped what the Uprights wanted out of them. Breastmilk, she had learned. This was all about breastmilk. All of this sadness, all of the torture, the mental anguish and heartbreak. For their breastmilk. It would never make any sense to her but still, she prayed she would be able to keep her promise to her babies. She prayed for hope, for salvation. For freedom.