The Infernal Hunger Chapter 2 - Sylvia
By itchingmyknee
The baby farms are rudimentary at best. The beds are straw filled bags, stained with the waters and blood of many births. The young are fed on dried grasses and seeds, though the supplies are dwindling. Each year yields a leaner crop, the skies are beginning to darken with carbon dioxide as patches of green turn gradually brown. A scientist who was interested in such things would marvel that the appendix, that long-defunct organ, was once again stirring to digest the new diet.
Sylvia is 14 years old. She has borne three babies and is venerated amongst her peers for producing such healthy offspring. All of her children have grown at an accelerated rate, and already her first born has been sent to the Angels for processing. Humans fare better when the atrocities they commit come disguised by innocuous titles. The butchers in their abattoirs became the Angels in their Chapels, despatching their wards to eternal rest. A rose by any other name will smell according to that name. If Sylvia becomes head feeder on the farm, she will be awarded her own room, away from the sweat, pains and screams of her tribe. She was inconsolable when they took her first baby away, but now she has become more resigned. She only feels the slightest pang as she touches her now rounded belly, swollen with her fourth, at its imminent birth and removal. Her sister is a breeder. Sylvia has not seen her since her first period, when she was hauled out of bed and packed off to the farm. The only trace left behind is the droplet of blood on her mattress. Her body betrayed her to this fate. The Oracle has decreed that each bloodline has right to survive, and that one female of every family may be set aside for breeding. If her sister had bled first, she would be at the farm, and Sylvia could have gone to the Nursery, and kept her children. Unless, Oracle forbid, they were boys.
The threat of extinction has wreaked havoc with existing hierarchies and social norms. Now it is the females who are prized, males are viewed as a necessary evil. A minor component of the breeding process that would have been dispensed with had science proved successful. Very few are allowed to live, and they are on a careful rotation to ensure they do not breed with their own line. There had been a time years previously when people had experimented with frog DNA, to try and cut the males out completely. Certain breeds have the ability to change sex when needed. Should humans have this same capacity, a female could perform both functions, and even fertilise herself. The experiment failed, and spawned a generation of mutated beings. These creatures have been destroyed, and the earth has no more frogs, but myths still abound about this strange race, and their hatred of humans.
(To Be Continued…)
The baby farms are rudimentary at best. The beds are straw filled bags, stained with the waters and blood of many births. The young are fed on dried grasses and seeds, though the supplies are dwindling. Each year yields a leaner crop, the skies are beginning to darken with carbon dioxide as patches of green turn gradually brown. A scientist who was interested in such things would marvel that the appendix, that long-defunct organ, was once again stirring to digest the new diet.
Sylvia is 14 years old. She has borne three babies and is venerated amongst her peers for producing such healthy offspring. All of her children have grown at an accelerated rate, and already her first born has been sent to the Angels for processing. Humans fare better when the atrocities they commit come disguised by innocuous titles. The butchers in their abattoirs became the Angels in their Chapels, despatching their wards to eternal rest. A rose by any other name will smell according to that name. If Sylvia becomes head feeder on the farm, she will be awarded her own room, away from the sweat, pains and screams of her tribe. She was inconsolable when they took her first baby away, but now she has become more resigned. She only feels the slightest pang as she touches her now rounded belly, swollen with her fourth, at its imminent birth and removal. Her sister is a breeder. Sylvia has not seen her since her first period, when she was hauled out of bed and packed off to the farm. The only trace left behind is the droplet of blood on her mattress. Her body betrayed her to this fate. The Oracle has decreed that each bloodline has right to survive, and that one female of every family may be set aside for breeding. If her sister had bled first, she would be at the farm, and Sylvia could have gone to the Nursery, and kept her children. Unless, Oracle forbid, they were boys.
The threat of extinction has wreaked havoc with existing hierarchies and social norms. Now it is the females who are prized, males are viewed as a necessary evil. A minor component of the breeding process that would have been dispensed with had science proved successful. Very few are allowed to live, and they are on a careful rotation to ensure they do not breed with their own line. There had been a time years previously when people had experimented with frog DNA, to try and cut the males out completely. Certain breeds have the ability to change sex when needed. Should humans have this same capacity, a female could perform both functions, and even fertilise herself. The experiment failed, and spawned a generation of mutated beings. These creatures have been destroyed, and the earth has no more frogs, but myths still abound about this strange race, and their hatred of humans.
(To Be Continued…)
posted by bitingmylip at 2:45 AM
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