Tossed in the back of a rusty van. Pitch black. Returning now. My skin was brutally bruised and peeling like a harsh sun tan. I felt unusually weightless; something was beneath me; surrounding me to my neck. Frantic shrieks and useless pleas flooding from every direction; the confusion was overbearing. I unsealed one of my teary eyes and desperately wriggled; but success was out of reach. Murmurs; flickers of deep, patronising human voices seeped through the crack between the back and the driving seat. “Profit… “. “… 69p each… “. “Crates… ”

I unsealed my other eye and it took a while to adjust to the level of darkness. The rancid smell hit me like the blow of a drunken man in a bar fight. Suddenly the van halted. I slipped backwards and tumbled into the metal doors. My family told me this would happen; I remember the disturbed look on their face when informing me of this. Nevertheless, I never anticipated it would occur so young. The murmurs grew closer as they stepped out of the van and slammed the door. Rough voices met by tough movements. They jerked open the back doors and light flooded through and blinded my sight.

Ironically, I wouldn’t call it “blindness”; just one glimpse struck me with realisation. Thousands of them; of us, sitting in crates waiting for our turn. They yanked us out, crate by crate outside an unusually large building. We had no identity. We never spoke to one another. They were met by other bodies all dressed in the same uniform. Spotlights. Music. People. Strikingly calm. Nevertheless, as nerve-racking as it was it didn’t displace me. However, what did was seeing all my close friends and distant family being thrown onto shelves. I was enraged. I was a bottomless pit of fire. Unstoppable.

Over there, he was lying helplessly with his hair shaved. In the corner, she was sitting; breathing anxiously, shaking as if it was the middle of winter and the chills rushed past her. And opposite me, the harmless baby wailing in hope to be heard, but only deaf ears paid attention. Consequently I learned that I was being used too; they slapped a sticker on us “69p” as I remember. Is that our worth? A banner standing tall above my head “Juicy, cheap, sweet” written on it! People paced past us; some would stand with their ‘little metal cars’ and stare at us judgingly. Which one of us has the x-factor?

Others would pick us up and prod us, pinch us, squeeze us until they felt they knew what they wanted. One short, old, wrinkled lady squinted at me and swiped me off the crate. I never said goodbye. She took me ‘home’ as she says while trapping me in a suffocating bag; but I knew it was just another chapter to my eventful life. Didn’t even wait a second before she pulled me out and drowned me under the waterfall, but the feel of her soft fingers against my rough and dirty skin was soothing and relaxing. She cleaned me like a mother would bathe a baby, but before I knew it a huge knife was unsheathed.

The blade was sharp and lean, and light glimmered off it innocently. Chop. Chop. Chop. Slice. Slice. Slice. She separated me from my legs and arms and head and torso and threw me in a clear glass bowl. The pain was agonising. Unbearable. Excruciating. Nonetheless, my dying moments were met by some of my friends as they were tortured by the savage blade. Our blood joined. I failed to find my lips to deliver my parting words. However I will never forget what the old lady called this bloodthirsty war. I will never forget the word she used to describe the contents of the clear glass bowl.