Our Contract of Distrust

-- 25 --

It's finally arrived. Photo day.

It's nothing like school photos when everyone chatters in line as they wait for their turn to awkwardly smile for the camera. When everyone complains about how their hair or makeup just wouldn't work today, or lies that they forgot and didn't wake up a whole hour earlier.

This isn't a day for lamenting your lack of a natural model's smile.

This photo day more closely resembles cattle processing.

Line up here. Have your wrist tugged harshly and stamped with a number. Next.

Come into this room. Take the apron off. Roll up your sleeves. Let the stern-faced lady stab you with needles – one to take blood, the other a vaccination (Apparently. Though for what they never said). Stop wincing, pathetic wimp. Feeling faint? Well stumble faster.

No dawdling. Hurry up now. Head into this other room. Fix your shirt collar. Stand there. Toes on the line. No, she's too tall. Take a step back. Yes, that's right. Look at the black dot, and okay. Next.

Come into this next room. You mustn't mind as the rough wrinkled hands stretch your eyes open wide. Look straight into the bright light. Goddammit stop trying to blink. Goddammit. Next!

Write your number on this form. Hurry up. Fill it out. Why is your last name so uselessly long?! Birth date. Next. Come on, we're not trying to enter some damn writing contest. Next!

To the basin. You have three minutes. Get rid of that number on your wrist right quick. Scrub harder dammit. We don't have all day. Give me the soap you pathetic weakling. What the hell are you wincing for? You think this is a beauty pageant? Move along. Back to work.

"We waste even five minutes extra and you'll see it in ya pay, ya hear me?" Headcho hollers.

This is photo day.

When they do their best to make you feel a hundred times more worthless than usual.

Headcho curses. "Stop rubbing dem arms and start moving hands, ya hear me?!"

____________________________

By the time I make it home I'm physically and emotionally drained. My arms throb from the needles. I feel faint from the lost blood. And even now my arm is red and raw where it was scrubbed.

But what hurts most is the pride I thought had died off long ago.

Were we really on the same level as cattle to them? Heck, some people surely regarded cows more highly than we were.

People still protest about the injustice of abattoirs, I've heard. Yet no-one blinks an eye over the conditions of our factories. I suppose because no-one glances in our direction in the first place.

We might as well not exist in their eyes. But then our treatment is worse than that of something nonexistent.

I hate thinking this way. I hate taking on the role of victim.

But perhaps I was born for such a position.

Most of the evening passes in a cloudy ache.

Even after dinner finishes, I remain seated at the table. It feels like too much effort to move.

I don't even register Feodor's speaking to me until he waves a hand in front of my face.

"You okay? Did something happen at work?"

"No. I'm fine. Just a little tired."

"Did you need medicine or anything?"

I hesitate a moment. "I guess."