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Topic: <Hell on Earth> (Read 1047 times) |
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Foxes Mink too many names
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<Hell on Earth>
« Thread started on: Jan 28th, 2006, 6:53pm » |
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<The first thing you smelled was the shit; piles of it lay in wet, maggot-crawling heaps underneath each of the cages. The next thing you smelled was the dead heap, a tangled pile of skinned, bloodied bodies. It was kept well and away, in a sort of makeshift pit in the back, but no matter how far away the grisly reminder was, you could smell it everywhere; the neighbors down the road would complain in the weeks before the renderers came to haul off the heap. It was a country road, and neighbors were used to all kinds of smells, so that said something.
One thing was for certain; you couldn't smell the country air, the fields of grass, or the clumps of pine trees that were so close - yet so far - from the endless rows of cages that made up the farm. There weren't any pretty blue wildflowers growing here, no cattle munching away on bucollic fields of green. No, this was no man's land, long aluminum-roofed sheds - no sides or doors, just a roof to meat regulations - carrying on in countless rows, and within each at least 2 rows of hutch-like cages, stretching the whole distance. Next to all of these sheds, and all of these creatures, was the shed where they were killed, and a larger building for skinning and preparing hides. A small operation, just getting started, but well-equipped nonetheless. This wasn't what you thought of when you thought of the countryside.
Elsewhere, there were meadowlarks chirping merrily, prarie dogs toiling in the hot mid-day sun, butterflies flitting across the wildflowers, but not at the fur farm; wildlife knew to keep away from the smells of waste, death, and disease. But that wasn't to say the place was void of life; quite contrarily, there was life everywhere - skinny, dirty, frantic, pacing life. Life that chewed on bars with broken teeth. Life that fought over government-condemned rations of meat. Life that limped across wire floors on raw paws with overgrown nails. Life that was, for all intensive purposes, short, ugly, painful, and dull.
The population was as follows: 200 foxes for fur, plus 25 breeding pairs; 250 foxes total, arctic, red, and mixes thereof. Then there were mink, a new and just starting venture: 50 pair, 100 total, none for the market yet. There was, in addition, a very skinny Jindo bitch for a "guard dog," a sickly looking crow in a beat up bird cage just inside the culling shed; and a few scruffy chickens pecking about in the yard of the farm house, which was maybe 1/4 mile down a dirt road from the farm itself.
Rwundi, for one, didn't particularly care how many foxes there were, nor how many minks. She was not impressed by the skinning buildling, the cull shed, or the dead heap. She wouldn't have known, if you had asked her, just where the farm's owner lived. Nor was she aware that the farm she lived in was smack dab in the middle of a beautiful, verdant countryside, teeming with life. As far as she was concerned, she was in hell.
In fact, she spent most of her days curled in the corner of her cage, refusing to look at her cagemate, or try to find a way out. She barely gets up anymore when the meat is brought by, though when you're in a cage so cramped its near-impossible to exersize, caloric needs aren't a high priority. Then again, food in general is not a high priority when you spend most of your days waiting for the sweet embrace of death.
Next cage over, Pi paced wildly. He wasn't ready yet; he was only 9 months old. The clatter of the cage wire against his worn paws as he tore back and fourth across the short distance, pausing to chew the bars or alternately dig at the wire, was deafening. Now and then, he'd go into a wild spree of wailing and barking, frustrated with too much pent up energy. You could say that his spirit was not only bigger than his body, but vastly larger than the confines of the cage, the shed, and the entire bloody farm.
The same could not be said for his cagemate, Gabe. The male was only older by 3 months, but it could have been three centuries. He stared blankly from the cage bars, unblinking and stoic, with hollow, haunted eyes. Now and again, a twitch of one ear or a heavy sigh would spoil his disguise of being a statue, but it was seldom that he ever rose from his position to explore his confines or seek a way out. So far as he was concerned, there was only one way out: death, and he was ready to welcome it with open arms so that he might be rejoined with his beloved.
Perhaps only one fox in the whole place was louder than the youthful and defiant Pi, and her name was Starke. She was in an different shed entirely: the breeding shed. However, she hadn't been getting much breeding done these days. In fact, she was presently stading with her face shoved into the corner of her cage, screaming wordlessly and chewing on the bars. She would stop every once and a while, panting and out of breath, only to errupt once more into another rapid-fire round of screams, yips, howls, and whines. The only thing that tends to shut her up is when the farmer comes down to feed everyone; then she huddles in the corner and tries to dissapear. Sometimes, she thinks she suceeded.>
   
<Things weren't too different in the mink shed, but at least there not everyone was terrified of dying. Oh, they had their theories, the smell of death pervasive and the culling shed and skinning station within their sights. But some chose to believe that they were here for a different purpose entirely, reasoning that if they hadn't been killed yet, they never would be. Sometimes a good sounding lie is much more appealing than the truth.
Kapos and Veritas had no such cheery illusions; they had a cage right on the end, right where the foxes were electrocuted to death. Every day, they listened to the pleads and cries, saw the defiant snaps and the terrified urinations. The siblings knew that thier fate would be the same some day, perhaps even some day soon. It was only the male's promising coloring and the female's large and healthy size that had kept them here this long, but so long as they refused to breed, chances were it would not be a lasting truce with man.
Presently the duo were curled up sleeping on the hard wire floor, side by side. There was nothing else to do, after all, unless one enjoyed the thrilling art of pacing and ignoring the desparate desire for water to swim in. Some of the other mink were making mad dashes to and fro, driven to nueroticism by the sheer drudgery of their environment. Others still had gnawed the bars until their gums were bleeding and their teeth mere stumps. And some, still not convinced they were to die, merely relaxed and waited for the next meal, not realizing it was all leading up to one great tradgedy....>
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Simin and Co
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #1 on: Jan 28th, 2006, 7:34pm » |
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It was only a matter of time, she told herself. Only a little longer. Maybe only one more hour, minute, second. She didn't have to wait much longer for it to come; she knew it was coming, could sense it descending upon her like a predator, ready to torture her until she finally let go. But that was all all right. It didn't matter that she was in a cage much too small for her and her companion, that her stomach growled ferociously due to her own refusal to eat, and that any second now she could be brought to a death no creature should go through. For she knew she was going to die. And she wanted it.
The fox was sitting in her cage, looking pleased with herself for some reason. Her ears were perked, a massive grin on her face. Her tail swayed steadily, though it looked like she had recently decided to eat that instead of what she was brought. She was smiling among the blood, death, shit, maggots, and torture. She looked content. She looked happy. And she was definitely extremely disturbed. Every single second she wondered, was it time? Was it time to go? Was it time to finally get out of this hellhole? She was certain it would be, certain it would soon be over... And that was why she smiled.
Her cagemate was hardly as cheerful. It was a bad day for her. She had just woken up from her latest nightmare, screaming and chewing madly on the bars. Newly-bleeding gums and paws later, she was laying on the wired ground, shaking madly, looking around crazily. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Simin grinning madly, and immediately snapped at her, eyes wild. Simin just kept on smiling. Bristling, Gaia tried to rise, only to slip on the wired bottom and get her foot stuck.
She didn't bother getting up. She just laid in the cage, foot stuck, while she snapped, screamed, and barked at her companion. After all, no fox would smile like that unless they were planning something. And surely her nightmare had just let Gaia know that Simim was planning to kill her. Surely if she screamed for long enough, Simin would know better than to dare approach her. The eleven-month old ugly didn't seem to realize that Simin could barely hear her, and even if she could, she probably wouldn't have cared...
Farid was just trying to figure out why the hell he was being tortured for this long. He didn't know how long it had been, of course, but it felt like forever. The two-year-old was limping around his cage, having recently injured his paw in one of his running and shrieking sessions. His ears, which were tattered, were flat against his head, eyes glancing everywhere. Sometimes he would whirl around -- or try to, and end up moving slowly when his limp gave him troubles -- and bark at his cagemate for no particular reason.
He had been there far too long, he felt. His time should've come a long time ago. Why was he still here? To personally please someone? To keep everyone company? Why? The male barked at his companion again, flopping painfully down on the cage floor. He tried to lay down and relax, only to shake madly, ears flattening even further. He barked at his companion again, then again, and then suddenly he was on his feet, barking insanely at his cagemate. His cagemate whined and backed away into the back of the cage, staring with horror.
It was not a good day. No day ever was.
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Seven fox and one mink
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #2 on: Jan 28th, 2006, 10:06pm » |
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Das and Quen made ideal cagemates...one was dominant and sporadically violent, and one was submissive to the point of trembling and neurotic silence. The much larger male would stalk the short length of his cage repetitively, rubbing his beautiful marble-white coat against the filthy bars until it was unrecognizable. This was all fine until something...anything really...set him off. Quen would then be bombarded by screaming snarls and vicious bites. He would wait, ears flattened protectively against the back of his neck. He could deal with it. He knew it would pass. Das would go back to pacing, and Quen could go back to his licking. His right foreleg was nothing more than a blood-matted stump now, which had to be licked until his tongue was raw. Must not let the flies get it. It was as soothing as it was painful, and when the wound finally become numb, he would switch to the other leg. It could have been worse. He could have been going crazy like Das.
A little ways away, where the cycle of hell would come full circle in the mating/puppy-rearing area, Niko struggled to sprawl out in his tangle of siblings, but it was to no avail. All the pup wanted was some fresh air, but that was too much to ask here. All he could do was stare through his only area of clear vision and mindlessly watch a beautiful white breeding bitch pace in her cage. She looked so desperately sad, eyes staring sightlessly through the floor as she moved...but if anything stirred her from her thoughts, there followed a frenzy of movement and sound as she whipped around her cage, slamming desperately into every wall.
In one of the newer areas of the ranch, where the most recent batch of young arctics were being housed, one small fox was swiftly losing his mind. These cages were the smallest on the ranch, housing each valuable blue fox individually, with barely enough room to stand or turn. He was so young, Tixa could tell, just by the sound of his terrified voice. She couldn't see him...or anything else for that matter...but she could construct the image by her sense of hearing alone. He was trying to dig through the wall of his cage, screaming about the bugs. She could hear those too. Maggots making a clicking noise when there are enough of them. Her nextdoor neighbor however, she could only guess as to what he was doing. The large doglike arctic had an entire array of repetitive motions and sounds that made no sense to her. Though, her habit of rubbing her nose along the edges of her cage, obsessively feeling them out in her blindness and focusing on the bloody pain didn't make much sense either she supposed.
Any finally, there was the mink run. Though it was a new structure, some of the animals there were doing appallingly terrible. Take Hrissit for example...if his own self-harming habits of bouncing around his cage weren't bad enough, one of his cagemates had taken to attacking and gnawing at his head. The infections had already taken his hearing, and threatened to take his life as well, as wound after wound ate away at his features.
   
   
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Four Fox One Mink
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #3 on: Jan 29th, 2006, 9:17pm » |
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Timoti twitched spastically for a few moments before lapsing back into his normal, semi-twitchy state. His paws bled from tearing at the rust-and-feces covered bars of his cage, and his mouth hung open as he panted hard, each rasping breath painful against his screaming-sore throat. It had been the worst fit yet, him shrieking and gnawing at the bars of his cage, body slamming against unforgiving metal. Over it might be, but the effects of this fit- and the many before it- showed on the fox’s thin body. As he sat in a corner, ears flattened against his skull and eyes still wild, his mate- Raphael- wondered how much longer this could go on before her mate killed himself.
She only wondered for a moment, however, as it was the perfect opportunity for her to take her mind off of her captivity: “ah!” Thought she, “Yet another way to escape! If only we ask the earth to turn us into worms...” and so on and so forth, back to manic planning. Soon, Raphael had a grin plastered across her black muzzle. Having fully recovered from his fit- as much as he ever recovered- Timoti crept over to his mate, fluffy orange and grey fur on end.
“We’ll be getting out soon, honey.” Raphael assured him, smiling a smile that would have been sweet to the male fox, had their situation not been so bitter. Despite the fact that he knew she spoke lies, Timoti smiled at his her, leaning against the other fox’s warm and dirty side. The black fox pushed her face into his fur, bred to be plush, a grin lighting her small features as her red-brown eyes closed in pleasure. Tears brimmed in Timoti’s eyes, his insanity not the sort that allowed him to forget their current situation.
Kriemhild, located in the cage next to the pair, had watched Timoti’s actions with a mixture of disbelief and annoyance. Who was he, to make such a racket? Annoying bugger. She forgot everything after it happened, however, so that when the male finally calmed down, she couldn’t figure out why she was staring at the pair. They were snuggling again: normal enough. The female was being a bit crazy: escape?
The predominantly grey fox ran her nose along the edge of her enclosure, dug at one corner that seemed a bit faulty, but then forgot what she was doing. Why was she digging at the edge of this cage? Why was she in the cage? Oh well. Might as well wait for something to happen. Kriemhild sat in front of her cage door, nose wrinkling in disgust at the odors wafting on the air. What in the world was that? She didn’t have the amount of care required to look around, and soon her mind was completely empty.
Ing was occupied with crying himself silly. Curled up in a ball in the middle of his cage, fellow fox completely ignored, he was sobbing, whole body shaken with monolithic tremors. On occasion, he would scream, usually for someone in particular- mother, brother, sister. Pathetic, sad, and noisy, and it didn’t look like his terrified balling would end any time soon, judging by how loud he was being. Perhaps that’s why his sudden cheerfulness, as he bounded to his feet and hopped over to his cage-mate, laughing and bouncing, was particularly scary.
Gethsemane was doing about as well as any of the foxes, if not worse. She was hunched in the corner of her cage, teeth showing from front to back, eyes traveling suspiciously around her. At first, she had thought she couldn’t breathe the blood that fogged her vision and surrounded her, had thought that something horrible would happen if one of the skinned minks touched her, or if one of their hides wrapped around her body. Now she knew, however, knew that it would all be okay, that it would be best if she drowned, anyway. Still, she was ever so suspicious, snapping at any of her more solid nightmares if they dared venture too near.
She swore that mink over there, the one with the manic grin, with no skin at all... was that her sister? The mink twitched, snarled, charged furiously as she attempted to make the horror vision go away. It just floated through the liquid that surrounded them all, ignoring her aggression. Shivering, Gethsemane returned to her position in the corner of the hutch, returned to wondering why no one else was panicking about being surrounded by blood and undead bodies.
 Timoti
 Kriemhild
 Ing
 Raphael
 Gethsemane
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Rwundi Gabe Pi Starke Minks
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #4 on: Feb 1st, 2006, 1:49pm » |
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<Rwundi stared out the cage bars at Simin and Gaia, who lived in the cage one row across from her. The pair seemed, in her mind, to be badly mismatched; Gaia was always screeching and violently launching futile attempts to escape. Rwundi pitied her, having long ago learned that there was no value to even trying; death was an inevitable fact, and freedom a distant pipe dream. Despite the obvious, so many foxes still struggled to escape. Such a waste she thought, shaking her head slightly, watching now as Gaia as her paws slipped through the mesh and she errupted into a furious torrent of threatening barks at her cagemate.
Still, she would almost rather see pacing, bar-chewing, and nueroticism than what she saw in Simin. The fox was grinning as though today were the most joyous day of her life, and frankly, it was terribly unnerving. While Rwundi had given up the frantic attempts to escape long ago, she was certainly not pleased by her situation. If anything, she was more in a depressive state, too apathetic and downtrodden to care about her existance any more. This, in her mind, was a much better mindset for the situation than elation. The latter simply seemed to be a sign of the plunge into deep insanity.
Starke's cage was next to Liaori's, but unlike the white female, she had no kits to speak of. She had brutally attacked the last male they tried her with, and now there was a wait for her to go back into estrous. It was all fine and well; Starke had no desire whatsoever to mate or rear pups at this point. In fact, it wasn't certain that she was even entirely aware of her surroundings. She was sitting with her face pressed against the bars, closest to where Liaori was sitting, singing like a lark. The lyrics didn't particularly make sense of course, but then again, singing in general didn't make much sense.>
"Man versus himself, man versus machine, man versus the world, mankind versus me..."
<Every passing note became higher and more frantic until the tune dissolved into a high pitched, horrible shrieking, which in and of itself eventually dissolved away as the female very suddenly became quiet, eyes wide and ears pinned against her skull as though she were the one who had been screamed at.
Pi, located near the arctics with his cagemate Gabe, stopped in the middle of his pacing and freneticism upon hearing someone who was losing it just a little more than he was. The 9 month old ground to a halt, snagging his toe painfully for a moment as he came to stand on the wire floor and stared inquisitively across the row of cages to the small, squatter, thicker-coated foxes. One of them, small, younger, was frantically digging at the wire of his cage, wailing his head off for no readily apparent reason. Pi, being very irritable and energetic as a young male, listened for a while before becoming agitated. Even though he'd been making just as much racket earlier, he screamed across the way to the fox>
"SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
<Over in the newly added mink addition, Kapos was watching his "neighbor," a brown female mink (Gethsemane) with a mixture of curiosity and concern. She always had wide eyes like a terrified rabbit, trembling, panting, snapping, and alternately retreating from an unseen threat. He was beginning to wonder if she wasn't feverish or ill, and thus, hallucinating. If that were the case, he and Kapos had some reason for concern - he knew that some ailments spread, and tended to infect cagemates first, and then those closest by>
"Are you allright...?"
<He finally asked. Maybe if she revealed something about symptoms, he could determine if the ailment was catching or not>
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Seven Foxes and One Mink
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #5 on: Feb 1st, 2006, 5:28pm » |
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Normally Das ignored--or occasionally tried to speak with--his nextdoor neighbors, Timoti and Raphael. But every now and again the large fox suddenly became acutely aware of their presence. It wasn't Timoti's twitching and shrieking that put him over the edge, quite surprisingly. If anything, it was the silence that it left in its wake. In the void he could feel Raphael's voice, hissing and abrasive as it scraped itself through his mind well after she had stopped speaking. That feeling, and the sounds in his head after the voice repeated and duplicated itself until they grew lives of their own, that was what made him snap again. Whirling with a cry toward the wall that the four of them shared, he threw his filth-covered body at it, trying to kill the both of them through the wires. Quen simply blocked out the noise, licking purposefully at the growing sore on his remaining front leg.
Over at the breeding pens, Liaori was trying desperately to drown out the sounds of a puppy. He was calling to her from a group of similar black and white pups, begging her to feed and care for him.
I'm not his mother!!
Truth be told, neither she nor the lonely puppy knew if they were related at all. They could have been. But it didn't matter. The puppy had decided for now that she was indeed his mother, and she screamed in her mind that she was not. To get away from his plaintive crying, she hurried over to the wall near Starke, crouching down into the corner and letting herself be surrounded by the freakish song.
"Keep singing, keep singing, don't stop singing...please sing louder...louder damnit! I can still hear him!!"
Unfortunately the singing didn't last for very long, but at least when it died away so did the puppy's crying.
It was the sound Mylo screaming that made them stop.
He could still hear them, see them, feel the maggots all around him. When he closed his eyes he saw his friend's eyes open in the black, with pulsing white granules of fly-spawn spilling from the sockets. She coughed in his mind, gagged on the living bubbles of crawling bugs. Her pleading voice choked and gurgled, and she begged him to draw her near. It was surprising that he hadn't broken more of himself than he already had, and that he still had a voice to scream with. More horrified than any creature naturally could be, he clawed and ripped into the bars, shrieking in terror. When he had finally wedged himself as completely into the corner as possible, with paws oozing and muzzle jammed painfully through the bars, his screaming finally descended to a more normal volume, muffled by the wire bar clenched in between his teeth.
Tixa and Druso, the two arctics near him, remained silent and impassive. It was almost soothing to hear the young fox's self-destructive screaming and the chaos it had caused in at least one other fox, by the sound of it. Expressing themselves vicariously through him, they listened calmly and felt some of their desperation subside. It was numbing and frightening, and it was the only solace they had.
Thankfully Hrissit couldn't hear the wailing, even though he was in another section of the farm. He was easily frightened and he thought of his new lack of hearing as a blessing. He didn't know why everyone had lost their vioces, but he was certainly relieved. It made the pounding pain in his skull a little more easy to bear.
((I almost made myself panic typing about Mylo's phobia, because I have the same one. >.< ))
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Simin and Co
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #6 on: Feb 1st, 2006, 8:11pm » |
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Simin didn't care what anyone thought. Come to think of it, she didn't notice what anyone thought, or what they did, or anything about them. She had stopped noticing things a long time ago, around the same time an infection and her cagemate's insanity had reduced her hearing to a strange, incomprehensible buzz. Around that same time she had forgotten the use of speaking, escaping, or defending herself. When her cagemate then decided that if she never used her vocal cords, she must not need them, Simin had become even more convinced. There was no point in eating, drinking... Or living. Death was better. Death was the beginning of a new life. And death was what she always smiled over.
Gaia was in a horrible frenzy at this point, and it was getting worse any minute. At seeing Simin's grin get even bigger -- for the other had gone into a land of thinking about death and all it would bring her, which only made her happier -- the fox began to struggle in an attempt to free her foot. Her screams quited, reduced to whimpering, jabbering, and maniacal cursing as she tried to remember how to remove her paw without hurting herself. It seemed that the more she tried, however, the greater the pain became, the more stuck she was.
Her whimpers became cries for help and screams of panic. Now what would she do? Was she not only doomed to being in cage, but also to being stuck in one particular location? Would her foot get eaten by something below her, or rot off and fall to the earth? Or would she feel the maggots eating her paw, slowly devouring it like they would a corpse? Would SImin slaughter her slowly and painfully upon seeing her in such a state? Oh why oh why did she have to get stuck?! The female's wails began to rise above even the singing and screaming of the other foxes...
And her behavior was certainly not helping Farid. Oh no, it was not helping him at all. Screaming at his cagemate had calmed him down... For five seconds. The male's tattered ears went flat against his head as he paced more quickly, not seeming to notice how his limp made him get dangerously close to slipping and injuring another foot. His cagemate, Murat, whimpered and squeezed himself into one corner, before chewing madly at his tail. Farid ignored his cagemate's constant whining, for once, pacing more and more...
Then he suddenly threw himself at his cagemate, who let out a horrified whimper-scream before racing out of the way. Farid crashed heavily into the corner, landing on the wires heavily. He began to whimper, twitching badly, eyes huge, mouth hanging open as he stared blindly at Murat. Whining, Murat backed away from the other until he had reached the end of the cage. He then sat down and began to scratch as his already-bleeding left ear badly, staring with horror at Farid, who continued to convulse, look around crazily, and even salivate...
Meanwhile, another breeding arctic fox was having a moment's thought... About how to slaughter the next male fox brought to her, that is. She sat in the corner of her cage, head on her bleeding, furless paws, eyes halfclosed. She was completely still, not twitching a muscle, and probably seemed dead to most who looked. However, she was quite alive, quite stressed, and had only seconds before been clawing at the bars of her cage and whining madly at the foxes in the other cage... Just at that moment she was taking a vacation to her mind.
Aisling saw a male fox in her mind. He was what she considered a typical male fox -- skinny, insane, and dangerous. She saw him approach her with only one intent in mind... Then she saw herself pounce like a cat, clawing and tearing at his face. She saw herself destroy his eyes first, rendering him blind. Then she bit at his front legs and broke both of them so he could never walk again, then moving so that he would never be able to get another female pregnant again... Slowly, carefully, and painfully, giving him exactly what he deserved.
She had a slightly content smile on her face, seeming very relaxed and not noticing the filth coating her body and environment. She didn't notice her paws dripping blood, the screaming, the singing, or the destruction. All she noticed was her mind. And all she noticed was the nonexistant male she had just watched herself kill. It was disturbingly pleasant to think about. It was certainly not a good sign for the next time a male was brought to her.
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Seven Foxes One Mink
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #7 on: Feb 4th, 2006, 10:02pm » |
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~:Gethsemane startled as a voice floated through the ruddy murk, emanating from behind the bars (outfitted with corpses, skewered, broken corpses...) to her current right. Twitching, body scrunched into the tightest possible hunch, she chuckled to herself, the sound as dry as long-dead leaves stepped upon at the end of fall. Was she all right? What a question! She suspected the male mink- or, at least, she supposed it was a mink- was hallucinating, deeply ill. After all, what other type of creature couldn’t see the blood around them, the bodies floating so serenely or swimming madly?
That, or she was mad, and she was hallucinating everything. A very real possibility, that. The female mink had regained spirit in her madness, however, fighting-spirit, and refused to concede to being bonkers. A product of madness or not, she still saw the bodies and blood- it was just her luck that they would be real, not imagined. Let her guard down, and they might slaughter her, in all their thick and gooey and grotesque wonder... speaking of which, the bodies on the bars were writhing, twisting, snapping, at the inhabitants of the other cage. It was this that brought Gethsemane from her musing.
Snarling at the two dozen skinned mink floating, expectant, outside her cage (had to keep them thinking that she was strong, that none of them could defeat her, even if they ganged up on her) the mink slithered her way to the cage bars. Brittle fur was further covered in cage-floor muck, bony body swinging exhaustedly low as Gethsemane trotted forward upon short limbs. Petite eyes, black pits of madness, despair, and fire, glared at the corpses between her and prospective conversation.
Wonders! Today seemed to be a day of wonders- someone talking to her, and now the bodies ripping the bars from their own ribs, crawling into the adjacent cage. Of course, the pair of minks within no doubt did not appreciate sharing their space with a dozen of undead, skinned, guts streaming mink, but they weren’t reacting. How odd, swaying on her feet, gazing at the skinned mink as they cavorted upon hind-limbs, human-like, dancing, around the siblings...
Ignoring the mink within the other cage- now they couldn’t get her, which was just wonderful- yet keeping an alert look out upon her own retinue, Gethsemane replied to the male mink’s words- no doubt in a way that surprised him.
“M-my all right? You ask a-after my h-health? I would look into your own h-health, sir. H-health, very i-important.” She lost the train of her own thought, gazed, bleary-eyed, at the corpses until she discovered it once more. “C-can’t help but be a bit j-jumpy in this place. B-barssss, barssss, always the barsss a-and the bodiessss and the ssskinless-nessss and the b-blood.” Her voice rattled like a half-dead rattle snake within her throat, cogs of dialogue rusty and unused. Occasionally, her voice would flutter, a dying butterfly, before she picked up the word once more.:
:Raphael gazed, bewildered, at the large piebald fox as he flung himself at the bars, her ruddy brown eyes slowly widening. Her ears flattened as the deathly rage within his posture registered, and the mostly black fox slunk back a step, feet slipping and sliding upon smears of muck, sometimes scrabbling a bit as a petite foot missed its mark and fell between wire bars. Frightened, but not wanting to get to close to the cage behind her, Raphael whimpered. Indecisive, she wasn’t quite sure what to do.
Timoti would have simply stared tiredly at the larger male’s attempt to kill him, had his mate not reacted so badly to the other fox’s ‘attack’. In fact, the tired, psychotic fox would have been glad to simply sit in the middle of his cage, twitching and shivering, ravaged body stiff with tension as he vaguely hoped the other would break down the wall between them. Raphael’s fear, however, incensed him- how dare this foreigner, who sometimes tried to talk, but was mostly silent, frighten Timoti’s mate, his very heart and soul?
The male leaped to his feet, plush fur doubling his not inconsiderable size (but undernourished, abused). The orange that dominated his form seemed to light a flaming halo, the black, pitch-like, framing his too-wide eyes as he glared a challenge at the attacking brute. Bristled, he stood, teeth bared as his mind pin wheeled frantically: Don’t come near! Stop attacking! I’ll bite you, vermin- bite you! He said nothing, his voice box, used only once or twice in his life to actually speak civilized words, letting out a long rattle of a growl.
Seeing her mate so valiantly protecting her, Raphael sidled close to Timoti’s side, ruddy eyes still wide but her posture almost triumphant. ”Ha! Ha! He loves me, he loves me! We’ll escape together! Together forever, to have kits and hunt free!”. A supreme mournfulness entered Timoti’s eyes at his mate’s words: could she never be silent about escape? Must she always remind him, at every turn, in every moment when he might forget, that their world was a doomed one, their days together numbered, hope a squashed firefly, still glowing, beautiful, but smeared on pavement and irrevocably dead?:
:Kriemhild watched the door. Feeding time was coming, she thought, a mantra running through her head. Every time she thought it, she forgot, and thus she never became board with it: Feeding time is coming, men will come soon. Feeding time is coming, men will come soon... over and over and over again. At least, she thought this until Das decided to try and maul Raphael.
Turning to this knew distraction, the tortured sound of Timoti’s reprisal just close enough to grab her attention, Kriemhild’s jaw very near dropped in surprise. What was that fox doing? Obviously, he was mad! Trying to attack his neighbors! The mottled fox thought it a very good thing that the bars kept the three separate, preventing blood shed. Still, the noise was horribly aggravating, and pulled Kriemhild from her very important thoughts. Indeed, the noise was such that it had made her forget what exactly she had been thinking- the nerve! Whatever it was, she must have been contemplating something very important, to distract her from her environment.
”You! You f-fool!” She coughed- since when had her voice gotten so rusty? Didn’t she ever talk? Little did Kriemhild knew that she was one of many in the fox farm that had spoken about ten dozen, no more, words in her life- after all, she had little memory for even gross details. “Why do you attack this pair? Did they attack you first?” It was an honest question- Kriemhild couldn’t exactly remember what had happened, a moment ago. She frowned- had she mentioned to Das that he was a fool, for attacking Timoti and Raphael?
How did she know these foxes’ names? Had she met them before? They seemed to be strangers, now.:
:Ing came away from his (unidentified) cage mate after suffering a series of snaps and threats from the beleaguered and weary fox. The white, brown-red marked male couldn’t understand why the other male hadn’t appreciated the licks upon his head wound. Someone had to treat it, after all. A grimace of pain lit his mouth, teeth showing from white in the front to ochre in the back, body stiff with unhandled, somehow broken energy.
”Talk to me, talk to me some more!” Ing cocked his head, smile never leaving his face as he listened to the wails and cries of agony that filled the air: conversation, all directed at him, words waiting to be answered. His pink, leathery nose explored the air: a terrible bouquet of wonder, just for him to enjoy. He watched Gaia dance, heard her cry the lines to her show, and thought that it was a most horrifically joyful entertainment the female put on for him and her cage mate, the ever-grinning, ever-still one.
It was a good moment, at least in his head. Ing held to the emotions tenderly, as if they were a soap bubble: protecting but not popping was his goal. The male nearly convinced himself that the screams of all the other foxes actually were music, that the scent of death actually was beautiful, that Gaia really was putting on a play, that Simin’s grin was perfectly normal and that Rwundi’s (the mottled fox sat in the cage two away from Ing, an empty prison cell between them) half-interest, head shaking at a certain turn of events, eyes contemplating the mismatched pair, was perfectly normal.
He really, really almost managed it.
Then, the soap bubble burst, and Ing rediscovered all of the horrors. It was the manic song of a breeding fox, carrying even to the shed of the fur-beasts, and the cries of pups for their mothers, that set off Ing into his next fit. Bouncing to his feet, cackling madly, the small male jigged in place with a look of pure rapturous terror upon his face before collapsing back into a ball, crying for his mother once more.:~
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Foxes and Mink
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #8 on: Feb 11th, 2006, 12:57pm » |
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<The black mink frowned deeply at the first words that leaked from the fae's mouth. Her every sentence sounded posessed by a serpent, drawn out, weak, and obscure. The sound made something deep within auds uncomfortable, like someone crinkling paper against your ear. The urge to shake his head or draw back was difficult to control, but he could tell that the crazed female would only plunge back in to her terrifying madness if he walked away now. Perhaps she just needs someone to talk to.. thought the male uncertainly, hoping to somehow gloss over the obvious reality that the femme was probably well beyond help.
Waddling over to the bars and rearing up on his hind legs so that the dark pads of his hand-like paws were gripping the wire, he direted his beady black eyes towards the crazed female, sniffing at her with interest. She didn't smell unwell; perhaps her ailments were purely mental. Though, calling it an ailment was calling a hurricane a "strong storm;" she seemed deeply, profoundly disturbed. Indeed, in response to his simple question, she had prattled on and on in a panic, with nonsensical words about blood and skinless animals. It was true that these things existed here, but most were not even within good visual range, and certainly none were in the cages>
"I wouldn't worry.. I'm in perfectly good health, m'dam."
<He paused>
"My name is Kapos, and my cagemate is Vertias."
<He jerked his head towards the piebald female snoozing soundly, wound in a tight ball against the harsh wire floors>
"Who are you?"
< i glowered out the cage door at the arctic fox, who appeared to have not heeded his strongly worded call for silence one iota. Mylo instead seemed to be suffering the effects of some horrific hallucination ((at least I hope so! If that's really happening... ew)), errupting into frantic cries as he thrashed violently against the cage bars. Pi's ears were pinned back against his skull, teeth bared, and in frustration for the din, he too claws shrieking at the bars, incoherently shouting at the arctic, who had for whatever reason become the object of his agression. The divide between the cages would forever separate them from battle, but when the bars cut into his own gums, Pi was satisfied by the taste of blood.
Gabe raised his head from his forepaws where it had rested, staring absently at his cagemate as he knawed the bars and screeched his agression to the panicking fox across the way. His ears drooped slightly, bothered by the sound but not nearly so much by the 'dispute' itself. As far as he was concerned, only solidarity and compassion could bring any amount of solace to the chaos, and yet all around the foxes were warring with one another. The misdirected agression, the product of so much frustration, terror, and discontent, only seemed to fuel the fires of the group's private hell.>
<Rwundi shifted her weight on the uncomfortable bars, the metal chewing at her sides every time she laid her bony hips down for a rest. She rolled onto her side, face pressed against the shit-spattered wire, no longer caring about things like "clean" any more. Her legs splayed out and tail curled half-heartedly over her haunch, the fae's intelligent amber eyes watched the pair of foxes a while long. Simin was still grinning, manic and terrifying, and his cagemate was still in the height of freneticism. Both seemed to get worse by the minute, but in different ways.
She could not understand the male's unnatural grin as the she-fox pitched fowards against the wire, lodging her leg firmly and unable to escape. Rwundi had seen this before, foxes getting caught. Some of them broke their legs or chewed through their own flesh to pull free. Others starved and dehydrated to death with food mere inches away. Occasionally, cage mates would become cannibalistic at the opprotunity to have fresh, warm, live meat. And others yet had freed themselves, though the reward of a terrible life for escaping a terrible death was, in her mind, the lesser of two evils at best.>
<Starke, finished with her eerie song, finished with her manic cries, stared absently at Liaori, who was crouched before her, begging her to continue. The fox was immediately confused, having not even seen the white vix approach to begin with. Ragged pelt puffing out and eyes widening, she crouched with open jaws and let out a long series of belligerent yowls and screeches, trying to threaten the fox protected from her wrath by the same metal wires none of them had yet escaped.>
"Demoness!"
<she howled rabidly, convinced the female had somehow appeared like an appirition>
"Wretched spirit! Hellion!"
<She clawed at the bars until one of the overgrown, curling hooks adorning her forepaws caught in the wire and wrenched free from her flesh in a mess of blood and tissue. Surprised by the apparent injury inflicted by the cage, she let loose a disgrunted growl and backed away, pacing against the opposite side's bars before finally wedging herself in the corner, where she eyed the white fae spitefully>
<
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Foxes and mink Red
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #9 on: Feb 18th, 2006, 5:43pm » |
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((Sorry, I'm finding it difficult to track turn order...hard to tell my own posts even, heh.))
There were too many voices, all at once. Timoti's growling, Raphael's babbling, and the new voice of the forgetful female nearby. Blindly spinning away from the bars with a fox-roar, Das launched himself at the other wall of his cage, seeking out that new-speaking female. His muzzle met painfully with the wire mesh and one of his canines pinched the lip his maw as a result. Suddenly indignant at the small bit of pain, he left that wall to turn on Quen who, despite Das's belief, hadn't said a thing. The much larger male attacked with an unusual amount of brutality, causing the quiet Quen to cough out a yelp of pain as he was lifted by the fur of his neck. All Quen could do was try to roll out of Das's jaws, snapping this way and that, to absolutely no avail. Das just continued to bear down on his cagemate, tearing and shaking Quen like a three-legged ragdoll.
Meanwhile, the breeding pen was in the midst of an uncommon amount of violent behavior. The snarling noise between the two females he'd been watching had tired little Niko struck silent. He could only watch in horror as the white female tried desperately to get away from his own voice, only to be met by a hostile darker female. Liaori was also surprised at the accusatory shouts, quite taken aback for a moment. It wasn't until Starke managed to injure one of her own claws that Liaori snapped out of her surprised state. Frowning and baring spiteful fangs, the hair along her spine rose half-heartedly.
"What's wrong with you?! Scream at the demon puppies if you want to yell at something!"
Now that Mylo had wedged himself as far as physically possible from the real source of his fear, he found that opening his eyes really was a better option than closing them and exposing himself to the visions that lurked there. But even then, his fear still existed. It was coming from the neighboring cage, where the body of a female fox lay where it had been decaying for several days. She had been so pretty in life, so clever and hopeful despite their hellish conditions. But, she had gotten sick...and now she was nothing more than a fur-covered pile of maggots. At the returning thought and smell and sound of the bugs, Mylo felt the terror bubble up into his stomach and spine once more, turning his blood frigid and vision spinning. A horrified cry rose up in him again, tearing from his throat in a mournful wail, as if he was watching his very flesh be ripped from the bone. It was only one howl this time, as his stomach suddenly decided it had enough. Scrambling to his feet, the young arctic gagged violently, emptying the miserable contents of his stomach into the corner where he had been laying.
Soon afterwards he let his feet buckle beneath him as he was consumed with a fit of bitter sobbing.
Tixa hadn't minded when Mylo had been screaming. She preferred it over silence actually. But the crying. That was a different matter entirely. The screaming had harnessed her own horror and anger and took it along with the sound...and Mylo's tears were doing the same thing. She could hear her own desperate sorrow in that young fox's voice, and it welled up within her, yearning to escape.
It soon became too much and poured over the edge.
Tipping her head back, blind eyes stared up through the roof of her cage, Tixa began to howl in the best way that foxes can. Yapping and long whining, the primal sound of her pain and loss.
Druso, silently beside her, was frighteningly unaffected.
The mink run was beginning to blur. The whole thing, mooshing together and dripping down one side of the earth. Hrissit thought it very strange and it began to frighten him. Sitting up unsteadily, the haggard mink realized in horror that the entire world looked that way, no matter which direction he looked. A dry hissing whine escaped him and he crept toward the front wall of his cage, fearfully looking over the edge. Even there, near the ground, everything blurred and oozed toward the right of his vision. Little did the scrap-fur-bound creature know that an infection--similar to the one which had taken his hearing--was beginning to take hold in his right eye. He was running out of senses.
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Simin and Co
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #10 on: Feb 18th, 2006, 9:25pm » |
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Simin, for the first time, actually noticed her cagemate. It wasn't her panicked screaming, however. It was because the female was stuck in the cage, and acting like it was a bad thing. If the fox was stuck in the wires, then surely it meant that she wouldn't have to worry about living for very long. She wouldn't be able to get food or anything of the like, and would eventually be brought away from this world. Her cagemate was on the way to a better life... And come to think of it, maybe Simin should follow her example. But then again, it was hard to purposely get stuck in the bars, somehow...
Well, maybe she could assist her companion on the way to a better place, then. Yes, that would be nice of her; it would put someone else out of their misery, at least. And so Simin rose silently to her feet, her grin replaced with a sympathetic, gentle smile. Gaia, at hearing someone's paws scrape against the bars, turned only... Only to scream in fear. Simin was slowly approaching with the calculated, careful steps of a hunter, her fangs bared in a disturbingly gently, "I'm going to help you" way. It was the most terrifying thing Gaia had ever seen yet... Forget Simin's grinning, or the skinned fox bodies, or anything of that. Seeing her cagemate approach, ready to kill her, and looking so kind about it was a nightmare come true.
And so Gaia struggled even harder, which Simin only took as pitiful suffering due to still being alive. So she began approach more quickly to help the other. This only made Gaia worse, and suddenly the snap of bone came through the air. Simin made her leap to bring Gaia out of her misery... Only to get the fox's tail rather than her throat. The brown fox squealed and tore herself away, leaving Simin with a mouthful of her cagemate's tail. She spat it out, then looked over at Gaia with confusion. The brown fox was holding her leg pathetically, the bone sticking out through the skin.
"Why wouldn't you let me help you?"
Or that's what Simin tried to say. All that came out were a few scratchy, incomprehensible words. It caused Gaia to bristle and shout angrily.
"Leave me alone, you shit-covered monster! Do you hear me?! Go rot in hell and leave me alone!"
And with that Gaia limped her way as far away from Simin as possible and laid down, bristling and glowering at the other. Simin stared with confusion, having not heard a word the other said, but having read it from her lips. She was confused; didn't the other want help? Why did she want to stay around, anyway? How weird. The silver fox shrugged and returned to her place in the cage, leaving Gaia growling at the other side.
~~~
Farid was in the middle of having a seizure, something that seemed to only get worse as Gaia screamed and shouted. Once the two foxes quieted, however, he seemed to get a little better... Only to have more screaming erupt from other areas around the fur farm. He let out a low, viscious growl, saliva dripping onto the bars, his eyes glancing everywhere but seeing nothing. His body twitched madly, his paws clawing at thin air. The howling and sobbing of other foxes didn't seem to help the situation at all.
Murat was shivering with terrible fear. Seeing his cagemate convulsing, hearing the sobs and howls of other foxes, and everyone screaming was not helping his stress levels. In fact, they had long gone way too high, as was shown as Murat continued to scratch his left ear into even more bloody shreds. However, when Farid growled, the black fox yipped with fear and leapt backwards, colliding with the cage bars and falling to the ground. He soon found that in that position, he seemed to be farthest away, and in position to defend himself.
Still, he was terribly stressed, and needed to get rid of it. Tail squashed against the wall, he found he could not reach it to chew on it. He looked down at his toes, but he decided that that may actually leave a permanent injury that Farid could use against him. Only chewing on his tail or clawing his ears really seemed "harmless"... So he decided to just settle with chewing the bars on the bottom of his cage, a strange thing to try and attempt... But it kept him busy, at least.
~~~
Aisling's peaceful, wonderful vision was broken by the disaster surrounding her in the breeding pen. Granted, it had been that bad of a disaster for a while now, but she didn't notice until then, just when her imaginative world was getting particularly beautiful. Eyes snapping open, Aisling found herself back into the cruel world, alone in her cage. It caused her to sigh bitterly and rise to her feet to see what was causing such a racket. Perhaps the humans were preparing to blow up the building and something unusual like that.
She couldn't see what was. Sure, they were still stuck in horrible cages with no good social interaction and no freedom. Shit, blood, and nightmares were still all over the place. Someone was howling, two wolves were screaming at each other, some puppy was watching the entire thing with horror... Yeah yeah, same old, same old. Wouldn't they all get used to it some time soon? Nothing had changed, not in the year or so that she had been there. Why didn't anyone get used to it, already?
Shaking her head, the female got up against the cage and soon began to shout angrily.
"Oh, all of you, shut up already! Aren't you used to all of this by now?!"
She didn't seem to realize how she was acting just like everyone else, and "not being used to it" -- After all, if she had been used to it, she surely would find no need to shout at everyone, and would be a lot happier than she was. But it never crossed her mind.
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Four fox One mink
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #11 on: Feb 21st, 2006, 8:13pm » |
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Ooc: Ickickickick. Sorry about this post- brain blanked; I'm just movin' it along.
~:Gethsemane stared unwaveringly at the black mink as he assured her he was in perfectly good health, wondering how any creature could claim such in a situation such as their own. Indeed, it seemed to her that he glossed over the whole matter of health, perhaps feeling insecure with his inability to see the corpses. Blindness- even of such an exclusive sort- must make one feel quite timid. As introductions proceeded, Gethsemane forged boldly into her memories, poked around, got lost for several minutes (characterized by her staring seriously off into space) and then finally found something suitable to say.
“Pleassssed- very very p-pleasssed to meet you, K-kaposss. I'm Gethsssemane.” She offered a thin smile, a tired, beaten thing. “I assssume you ha-have been here a w-while?” Despite the fact that she had now spoken quite a bit, she had lost neither the rasp, stutter, or hiss.:~
~:Timoti sat down, mournfully tired, as he watched Das turn on Kriemhild. He sighed, a rasp that issued from his throat almost like a growl. Sitting down beside him, Raphael settled her small black form against him, dirty, blood-touched fur puffing out and squishing into his own still-raised hackles. The relatively larger male glanced down at his mate, frown saddening his feature further- Raphael didn’t noticed, simply went on smiling gently about her protector, her protector that would carry her to freedom.:~
~:By the time Das let loose his fox-roar, Kriemhild had once more lost track of her surroundings, sinking back into her own little world- when he slammed against her cage, she turned to him, blinking and smiling vaguely. ”Give me a moment, honey- I’ve got somethin’ on my mind. Oh, wait... lost it. Can I help you?” She turned a friendly gaze on the male as he attempted to attack her, not at all realizing that, without the cage bars between them, the other fox could have easily injured her.:~
~:Ing simply stayed curled in his little ball, body twitching spastically between form-racking sobs.:~
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Foxes and Mink
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #12 on: Mar 3rd, 2006, 9:45pm » |
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((Please note that we have magically fast fowarded into the night, because I'm such a cool admin that I have a time machine!))
< arkness had fallen over the fur farm, the stars twinkling merrily overhead, too beautiful for the ugliness they witnessed nightly. A cool breeze brought some relief to the hot and fetid cages, chasing away the shit-and-death reek of the place and ruffling the fur of the snoozing inhabitants. For once, the constant rattle of the cages was lessened, though not entirely silenced; many were, after all, nocturnal by nature, but had learned that night was the one time here safe enough to sleep. Humans never came by at night; it was only during the day that they came to feed the foxes, or alternately, kill them. It was a strange and terrible relationship.
Perhaps it is inaccurate to say that humans never came by at night; after all, there is always room for an exception. Tonight was one such exception to the rule. At the small and silent hour of 1:00am, Soo-Dae raised her head alertly, a growl rumbling low in the back of her throat. She could hear a car's tires rumbling up the long dirt road leading to the farm. No, wait, not a car; the sound of the tires on the soil was much too heavy, the engine much too loud. It had to be a van or a truck, but it lacked the sputtering, stalling gait of the farmer's abused old pick-up. This was a stranger's van, she was sure of it.
Rising to all fours, brisling from head to toe, Soo-Dae stared off in the direction of the approaching vehicle, legs stiff and expression game. Soon, she could see its headlights bouncing through the tall grasses that blocked any direct view of the road. Definately a van by the height of the lights, and the jindo had not seen one since her "rescue" from the wild, which was many years ago. To her, vans meant only bad things, and thus this one's approach did not bode well with her. Before the vehichle was even heading up the main stretch, she'd errupted into frantic, baying, primitive bark characteristic of a jindo on the defensive.
Poe was roused from his sleep inside the cramped and dull cage when Soo-Dae started barking. Opening a groggy eye in the nearly pitch-black kill shed, the crow tried to see outside with his lousy night-vision. The fact that it was night was mildly alarming; Soo-Dae always barked when the men came to feed the foxes, but there was no real reason for her to be barking at night. Hopping across his cage towards the direction of the window, the male peeked out, squinting and trying to see something, anything, that might account for the alarm.
Then, he was blinded by the brightness of two headlights, squawking and tumbling backwards while blinking profusely. Headlights? At this time of the night? Something was wrong. The crow scuffled back upon his perch, bobbing nervously up and down and letting out low cackling noises. This situation made no sense to him, and from living in such a small and controlled world, he disliked anything that deviated from the norm.
Kapos, his cage being fairly near to the end of the row and thus, to the kill-shed and entry road, had allready been awake long before Soo-Dae's barks. He always had trouble sleeping in this place. He had heard the distant van, but had thought nothing of it; who cared if it came thier way? It was too dark to be killing anyone, so at most, it would just be an extra meal or a cage check. However, as the van started up the driveway and Kapos could not recognize the vehicle, he started to have doubts about his origional interpretation of the situation.
Nudging Veritas, the mink tried to rouse the female from her sleep. It wasn't easy; the large female slept like a dead thing, quite the opposite of the easily stirred, semi-insomniac male. However, by and by - more likely due to Soo-Dae's rapidfire procession of boisterous, agressive baying - Veritas opened one small black eye and gave a languid yawn and stretch, glaring towards the guard dog with contempt>
"Does that stupid bitch ever shut up?"
<She asked, apparently too sleep-dazed to notice the giant, unfamiliar van and small crowd of masked humans stepping out of it. Kapos gave an impatient sigh.>
"Not when there are strangers here; she's a guard dog, remember?"
<He hissed, feeling the need to keep quiet for some reason. Veritas offered a confused look in response, finally looking over more carefully towards the source of light and the object of the guard dog's hatred. There was a group of five people, dressed head to toe in black with something covering their faces, unloading themselves from the van. In addition to a large catch-pole, presumably for the dog, they also were carrying boltcutters and other tools of destruction. They were also rapidly advancing.>
<i would have been hard pressed to find anything positive about this situation. So far as the nuerotic young fox was concerned, anything human was bad, and humans with large, intimidating weapon-like tools in their hands was doubly bad. He feared a secretive night-time assasination was about to occur, and this concern only grew as one of the people - a slender male - somehow wrestled Soo-Dae to the groun with nothing but a loop and a pole. Terrified, the fox dashed over to his cagemate, nudging him and whining loudly.
Gabe had been awake all the while, silently observing the goings-on. He was intruiged, not knowing the purpose of the humans and not really caring, but merely appreciative for a change in activity. When Pi approached in a frantic state, thinking he needed rousing, the male only stared blankly at his cagemate>
"Well, I don't see what you expect me to do about it."
<Rwundi was faking sleep. She could hear Soo-Dae barking earlier, and now heard her snarling and struggling while hushed human voices conversed. She could hear the sound of frightened fox and mink stirring in thier cages, but she did not care. The only thing that got her attention was the sudden vibrations and snapping metallic sounds coming from the front of her cage. Opening one eye cautiously, she peered out to find a human prying away a grey sheet of wire from the front of the cage, tossing it away like trash and leaving a great gaping hole in the cage front. The woman stepped back, staring expectantly at the fox, and when it didn't move, she reached one hand inside.
Rwundi, suspecting she was going to be killed and not particularly caring, was willingly dragged out, but much to her surprise, was subsequently placed on the ground. Blinking, the vixen crouched against the soil, unmoving, staring blankly at the maggot-riddled mountains of feces now easily visible from eye-level with the bottoms of the cages. The human nudged at her, even picked her up again and placed her down on her paws as if testing to see that she could stand and walk. Rwundi only slumped morosely to the ground, not understanding why they were playing this sick game instead of just getting it over with.
Then, Starke shot past her, a furious ball of matted fur, wild eyes, and the faintest reek of dried feces. The vixen paused only momentarily at Rwundi's side, skitterish of the human, and said only one word.>
"Free."
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More Foxes and Mink
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #13 on: Mar 9th, 2006, 01:26am » |
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In the blanketing dark of night, Tixa's dreams had been particularly turbulent as the evening hours ticked by. Though most of the others hadn't seemed to sense it, the sensitive blind creature had been feeling a strange sort of tension as sun disappeared. It had only gotten worse, and inevitably chased after her when she'd tried to escape through sleep. Of her nearby cellmates, she was the first one to wake to the foreign van-sounds, and she wasn't one bit surprised by them. Yes, they were totally unfamiliar and she couldn't even imagine what was going on, but their existence alone was unsurprising. Filled with a resolute dread the vixen crouched back in her cage to hide, oblivious to her blinding white pelt, and focused on the sounds.
The guard dog was barking and that god-forsaken bird was calling out, announcing the fact that, in their opinion, this all should not have been happening. Metallic clanks and hushed voices, the dog being violently subdued, all approaching rapidly. Then they reached the cages, and it sounded like the very world was coming apart, metal snapping and peeling back, foxes screaming and bouncing around in fear.
Das had awoken and was whipped into a frenzy almost immediately. It had taken very little to provoke him lately, and this was by far enough stimulation to do so again. He was cackling and racing around his cage, and woke Quen by trampling him repeatedly. When the black-cloaked men finally reached and disassembled their cage, Das rewarded them with one of the boldest barrage of snapping attacks they'd experienced here. Still in a rage that he wouldn't come down from for nearly an hour, he shoved and bit his way through the opening in the wire mesh barely before it was large enough to fit his body, and was running before he even hit the ground.
Quen was another story entirely, frozen in place with wide white-showing eyes. It took the sympathy of a large gloved hand to scoop up his trembling three-legged form and place him on the fetid ground to wrest him from his terrified daze. He wasn't one for standing often, and so hobbled away to the nearest vacant corner on shaking legs.
The arctics were next. Tixa and Druso remained silent and still, while Mylo pawed frantically at the cage door with bloodied paws, yawling loudly. It was as if he knew what was coming. He felt as though he'd tasted freedom long before, and would soon see it again. Desperate to get away from the wet and the bugs and the alone he forced himself to wait, whimpering plaintively as heavy wire snips were finally making short work of the wires. The door was soon lifted away and he paused momentarily to stare transfixed up at his demonish saviors, smelling the reek of evil-smells and scents of far-away. It only took one urging word from the man to send him rocketing out of his cage however.
Tixa, unable to see the chaos oh so near to her, was steadily losing her composure. The sharp sounds stabbed her brain, and the little running fox feet on the ground below conjured images of monsters and giant bugs racing around hungrily. Never had she wanted to stay in her cage so badly. Screaming cries erupted from her suddenly as the walls around her began to quake and bend, pings of snipped wire lighting like firecrackers in her mind. No amount of encouraging or prodding would entice her from the tiny world that she knew so well. Her tiny body had to be pried forcefully, snapping and yelping, from the mesh floor. Druso did as well, but this was due to the fact that he'd retreated so far into his mind that he found that he couldn't move his own limbs. Once both were lowered to the earth, frantic Tixa clung to his side, using the reassuring pressure to guide her.
Out at the breeding pens, everything was eerily silent, at least for the time being. Many foxes, including Liaori, stood stock still and terrified as they watched the rest of the ranch in horror and curiosity. It wasn't until they saw they sights of other foxes racing by that they joined in the chorus of cries. Desperate to escape her demons, Liaori wasted no time in racing out into freedom when her time came. The puppies were much more bewildered upon being freed, Niko galloping around on tiny legs, trying to follow anything that moved. Human, fox-kind, any creature instantly took on the appearance of a possible parental figure. Though a few of the activists paused to consider the adorable piebald pup following them around, he was ultimately ignored.
Finally, in the mink run, Hrissit was one of the last ones to notice the pandemonium. It was the vibrations that woke him, his neighbor's cage being manhandled open. He barely had time to react, hissing and scrunching up his bony body, before he too was liberated. Dumbfounded, he could only stand and find himself nearly tread upon by heavy boots as he looked around in dreamlike confusion.
The cursed blessing of freedom, which had danced on the dim memories of instinct in every creature, had finally come.
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Simin and Co
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Re: <Hell on Earth>
« Reply #14 on: Mar 11th, 2006, 8:48pm » |
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Something was wrong. Something was horribly, horribly wrong. And it was this sense that woke Gaia from a shaky, nightmare-filled sleep. Only she didn't wake into the not-quite-quiet night of foxes and minks sleeping. She awoke to a madly-barking dog, a squawking crow, and big bright lights staring at her. She let out a panicked yelp, shutting her eyes shut and giving her head a mad shake. Soo-Dae's frantic barking suddenly ceased, as the distinct sounds of people approaching became apparent. Finally her eyes no longer pained her, and she dared open them.
It was scary. Humans, dressed completely in black and unrecognizable, were approaching with dangerous-looking objects. Gaia let out a yelp of horror, one that this time woke her cagemate. They were coming to kill her! And they weren't going to take her to the room. No, they were going to make her slowly bleed to death. Gaia began to yelp and whine, panicked, hobbling in a circle on three legs in her cage. Simin blinked painfully, stunned by the bright light. She then finally noticed the source of Gaia's panic.
She could only smile. Well, it looked like it was finally time to go. Granted, she didn't think they were going to bring along such strange killing tools, but at least death had finally come to her. The blue-grey fox calmly walked by her panicking, crying companion and over to the cage. However, what she saw happen only confused her. The men were using the killing tools to break open the cages and... Let the foxes out. They weren't taking them away. They were letting them... Letting them...
No. No, they wouldn't. They just didn't like those foxes, that's all. She would be dying, certainly. She was too beautiful to be allowed to live. Her maniac grin fading, the fox watched as one of the men approached her cage, then began to work off the wire front. Her smile broadened; yes, it was time! She waited patiently as the man picked her up... Then plopped on the floor. Meanwhile, above her, Gaia was wrestled out of the cage and placed on the floor as well. Simin soon watched as her cagemate went surging away as best she could on three legs, screaming at the top of her lungs (though Simin couldn't hear it).
This wasn't right. Maybe the humans were going to stomp her to death. But no... No, as Simin watched, they began to move on to the next cage. Simin's grin faded, and she let out a soft whine. Why? Why wasn't she dying? Why wasn't the one thing she had hopeed for happening? It was... It was... Horrible. It wasn't supposed to happen. She should be dead, dammit! Within a few moments Simin was running around, yipping and screaming her frustration. She should be dead, dead! She shouldn't be running around free! This was all wrong!
Farid, meanwhile, was snapping and snarling at his poor cagemate, the stress getting far into his head. However, Murat would soon be saved from possibly being killed as their cage was opened next. Farid whirled around, then hurtled toward the cage. The woman jerked out of the way, and Farid went flying out of the cage, only to just be caught by one of the men. He was then quickly placed on the ground when he began to snap and claw at the person. Shaking madly, the fox looked around wildly, only to see Gaia going limping by. The fox snarled... Then gave chase, only causing Gaia to scream and run faster, allowing her bad leg to drag helplessly.
Murat trembled horribly, watching as the horrible hands reached into the cage and clasped his body. He shuddered horribly as he was forcefully dragged from the place. He barely managed to whine from fear when he was plopped on the ground. And once he was on there, he only collapsed on the ground, trembling and whining, watching as Farid chased Gaia in circles, snapping and snarling. The human knelt down and looked him over with concern...
But that was all Murat needed to get started. Seeing the human's eyes so close reminded him of Farid. Farid's eyes had alwasy been so big, so angry, and so insane... The human's eyes were just big, really, but it was close enough. Seeing Farid chase Gaia farther away from him only made it all worse. The black fox let out a terrified yelp and shot away as quickly as possible.
In the breeding section, Aisling watched with a disturbingly-calm matter as the entire fur farm was brought into pandemonium. However, deep inside, her heart was fluttering madly, and she couldn't figure out if she was excited or terrified due to all the action around her. When the humans came and undid her cage, she soon discovered which one it was. She rushed over and leapt at the human, but rather than biting, she acted dog-like... And slurped the human all over the face.
Too bad her "hero" didn't appreciate it. The human placed her on the ground, muttering very softly. Aisling looked up at him, then around her, seeing foxes running madly. Behind her, the human moved on to the next cage. Aisling glanced at him one more time, then began to run as quickly as she could away from the hellhole... Hoping to never have to return. As she ran, she could only think of one thing: No more males. No more breeding.
That was her form of freedom.
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