Horror Stories

I was born on a child farm

"There is no free will."

Those are the first words I ever read. I woke to them every day for many years. They were written on a sign. The sign was hung above the opposite row of bunks in the Sleeping Barn. I have no memories from before the farm; I assumed I was born there.

None of the children there knew why we were here or where we came from...nobody even knew how long we had been at the farm. Some children aged. Some didn't. I can't remember much, but that's what happens when you are not given too much to remember.

I remember always being deliriously hungry. We would be fed three small meals a day, but before every one Headmaster Ranon Xinon would make us watch him sprinkle a few drops of clear liquid from a label-less brown bottle on the food. Then he would serve behind a steel door and slide out each meal through a window so you never knew if your meal was poisoned. Most of us danced around the edges of their food. Nobody was eager to dive in, not when we had seen a dozen kids turn blue and die infront of us after picking the wrong meal. Several of us rarely ate the food; I NEVER ate from my plate. I would scavenge what little clean scraps there were in the garbage. I ate 4 crows (they are just as disgusting as saying implies) and I would go full Renfield and eat flies, ants, dandelions, cockroaches, clovers, pillbugs...anything living and somewhat edible. I would keep the spiders. I had a special place for those.

The 20 boys and 30 odd girls worked the fields that provided all the food to "the farm", a crumbling wood compound fenced by tall barbed wire and the surrounding woods. Past that, the wilderness. Even though there wasn't spotlights or guards, the farm was much more inescapable than a prison.

Every few weeks Headmaster Xinon would take the near 100 of us to the edge of his farm, where he would blow a strange brass whistle; bloodshot German Shepards sprang from the underbrush as if they had been waiting for his call, mouths foaming as they gnashed their teeth on the rusted barbed wire, threatening to break in and chew us alive as the Headmaster coldly smiled and spoke with a voice that sounded like gunshots fired far away:

"They're old guard dogs gone rabid. I have learned...through one of you!..how to train them so they only obey me, and if you run, they will kill you...or make you wish you stayed here with ME."

The farm never had answers. Very few people came, the rare delivery trucks, a prison bus, a black tinted window Thunderbird that made a powerful turbine roar, as if rocket engines were installed under the hood – and they only dealt with the headmaster. The only person to leave with the driver of the Thunderbird.

There was a rumor that we were not real kids at all, that Headmaster Xinon was a demon who crafted us all from blood and ash. We never dared speak to the Headmaster and asking a question was ludicrous, as a question would mean a touch from his hard, cruel hand, an hand that made the surrounding air a pin-cushion of pain that would sting your skin even if his hand grazed yours.

But above the poisonings, backbreaking labor and cleaning, scavenging for food and never knowing a single day what was going on, we feared the nights worst of all. Being exhausted from working in the fields all day wasn't enough to overcome the fear to sleep. When it was darkest and the air had fallen still, we would hear the headmaster's creaking footsteps just...appear in the center of the drafty barn without any kind of warning. Sometimes we would hear him walk on the roof. Up the walls. On the ceiling. I can still hear his breathing if I close my eyes, that sick pig's wheezing agonized breath that sucked air in and out in a guttural exhaust. The breathing and the footsteps would circle and circle until he heard someone cry. That's when the taken would give one last cry before they were gone, along with the Headmaster. The missing child would return to their beds in the morning bearing new marks- a glancing finger left a nasty red and purple smear on one's side, sometimes a black fingertips dotted their bodies. We would never say anything about these marks to anyone; we were always afraid the headmaster would hear, and give us matching marks to boots.