The Man in the woods

The other side of the wall

After 6 hours of standing on your feet, anyone's gonna be tired, but the ladies falling asleep around me, they were so exhausted, they almost fell asleep right when there heads hit the straw beds. They would have too, if it weren't for the arrival of the food.

It was only stale bread. But these ladies acted like it was the biggest banquet that all of heaven had to offer.

I realized that they probably never got food, and when they did, it was something small and meager, like this.

Sure, my mom may have hated me, but I was always well fed. I realized that some of these ladies probably were too, at one time.

Someone brought me over some bread, but I told them to take it. It felt wrong to take a single mouthful from them. It was the little girl I had talked to, the one that looked to much like my sister.

All of the ladies fell asleep when the meal was over, but, it being my first night here, I didn't fall asleep for a long time. I was thinking about how my sister would feel without me there. She wouldn't have anyone to climb in bed with when she had nightmares.

My mother hated both of us once my father died. She liked my little sister a bit more than me, but only enough to give her a ride to school. Once upon a time, we were very much loved, by my father and my mother. Then, when he died, something snapped inside of her, and she hated us.

I finally fell asleep when the sky was just starting to pale.

****************

We got up when we were called, and we had breakfast, another loaf of stale bread and almost sour milk . As we went downstairs, I saw that the little girl I had talked to wasn't getting up. I went over to wake her up, but when I shook her, she just rolled limply over. Her eyes were glazed over. I realized she was dead.

An older lady saw her, and screamed for the man who had kidnapped me. He came running upstairs and made us leave.

As we started to go to work, I saw him carry her body through a door, that lead to the other side of the wall. I noticed the door that he went through looked like the doors that butchers use for their freezers.

The man came back in, and he didn't have her body. I sort-of pondered on this thought for a while, and then it dawned on me. He had left her body in that freezer.

That is what was on the other side of the wall, a giant graveyard.