Vivid Dreams of a Writer: Human Farm
Consumption [Act I]
A 23-year-old couple is going through "boarding" college together since they're still under guardianship age till 25. The two have been in school together since high school and love each other. They have a plan to elope from their school and start their lives without finishing university or any further higher education.
The man, Michael, plans to leave with her in the night and prepares the backpacks. While prepping, he finds access to a strange room no larger than a broom closet and a set of video tapes. Curious by their labels, he plays them.
After viewing the first video, he's left alarmed and confused and he moves to stay on their original night of their elopement. Thinking they're not ready anymore. In the morning he talks to Simone (with a S/C or P first name) and tells her something isn't right. She asks what but he says he can't explain. And that they need to wait.
In the afternoon, she finds him lingering near the large freezers out back and wandering back and forth, inspecting the locks. She comes up to him to ask what's going on and he states that there's human meat in the freezers.
Much to her alarm, she tried to explain away that maybe he was watching a horror movie. He shakes his head to her and says no, laughing sadly. She becomes very alarmed and sad but gets him to leave the chests alone, desiring the eerie feeling threatening the back of her mind.
The following night she sneaks out of bed to find him and quietly goes to the boy's dorm to see him sneaking out. Simone follows him quietly to the room he goes to and enters behind him. When the door closes, he's behind her and quickly grabs her, making her nearly yelp. Upon recognition, he lets her go and tells her to be quiet. She asks why he's sneaking around and he tells her -again- to keep quiet. The two of them proceed and he shows her the 'closet' and then plays the third night's video. One of four sets.
Simone is horrified by what she's seen. A very dark, yet clear video training someone how to butcher, filet, and process humans into quarters for the freezer. She wants to throw up but Michael won't let her pull away, telling her if she freaks out and they're caught, this could be them next.
Simone tries to tell him that it's a serial killer. Michael disagrees and tells her that there was a print out of names for those accepted to University and that all those people never came back. He suspects anyone that leaves is dead. Simone tells him he's scaring her and refuses to believe it.
At one point in the dream, I remember seeing through Michael’s eyes when he meets the bodach that is operating the freezers. It grins at him with two deep brown eyes, its face disfigured and the only noises from it are grunts, but Michael can only stare. He stares into its eyes before coming over to the freezer to stare down into it as the meat is all packaged and quartered nicely. The video replays in his head, ‘forearms, sectioned ribs will be placed along the second row of the left side of the freezer’ and chills spread over him. His hairs stand on end at how everything looks not much different than a visit to the grocery store, only he knows that this isn’t your typical grocery store butcher’s meat.
Before the images Michael sees end, there’s a brief moment he’s standing further away, straying further back from the bodach that resembles less of a human but more of a disfigured beast on two legs with a face twisted like a terrible man’s job of refiguring a melted clay figure’s face. Hot breath rolls from its lips and things end there.
Emaciation [Act II]
A group of families have shown up at the boarding school to drop off their kids supposedly. It's supposed to be the fifth night and they're leaving together, but Simone hasn't seen Michael all day today nor heard from him since yesterday evening.
Simone suspects Michael is dead. He managed to get Simone out but at the cost of himself and she's crying terribly over it on the campus grounds. She's hateful, angry with herself for letting him sneak off and now he's probably been murdered but she's too afraid to speak up. She glanced at security but they seem largely unfazed, or is it that they're not there to do what she thinks they are. Shivers run down her back at the thought and she turns away.
Two more years go by and she's twenty-five. Michael hasn't come back, but what she does know is that she's been a selected candidate for Study. The school has grown larger in recent years with the new students attending the boarding school and the University is saying they're full and putting a year long hold on acceptance awards. Simone isn't sure what to make of that but she is just happy her grades were never up there enough to find out what that meant.
As she enters the main office to prepare to accept her entry into Study, she sees one other family of a woman, and her two young teen daughters. They're told a counselor will pick them up and they're going to be sent to their destinations. Simone agrees. She glances up, thinking she sees Michael outside, but she can't break focus. She turns her gaze back to the man at the desk. He's got stone cold eyes and a flushed out face. He doesn't seem to mind her lack of attention and hands her the paperwork.
Leaving, she glanced over at the 13 and 17-year-old girls. She's not sure what got them into Study, but she hopes it isn't bad.
When they leave, they follow the counselor into a building and travel underground via elevator. Upon exit they find two other women, and a man. None are Michael much to her dismay. And they backpack deep into the cavern under the building as the aid explains the trials for the study. They state that they are curious if reintegration is possible, and that this small opportunity came up due to an overpopulation problem that has halted production of qualified individuals. Simone wants to ask what but she is afraid to draw attention. One of the others asks what that means and the slim man turns, much taller than them all, and through his squinty eyes, beams at them. "Why, for consumption of course. You are the set to be released. Batch 242 of seven. We have your course drop for Zone Zericias."
Everyone's face turns pale, but Simone's. She knew it. She looks away shamefully, but finally asks. "Then what does that mean you are if you're privileged enough to set us free?"
"Oh? So you believe me to not be human. How perceptive! That's right. I am what you call... A Ghost."
"Ghost?" A girl asks.
"A second level of being above your own and... Might I add, much stronger."
"Why are you telling us this now?" The man asks.
"I've always wanted to see your reactions. You little humans amuse me. So blissfully unaware of your surroundings. It's sickening."
And Simone hates it, but the silence that overcomes them all shows the discomfort in the room.
As they travel deeper, she finds less and less technology. Simone begins to wonder where they are but she can't bring herself to ask. When they get into the mine shaft, they are left to crawl between the thin walls of rocks, squeeze their survival packs through and get to the main mineshaft room and travel out. She has no clue what 'out' means but she's hopeful that she will to get to leave. As she puts her hand up, she does a crack to another room with something moaning in it. Immediately, she warns the rest of potential danger since the Ghost has gone ahead to another path split from theirs. Stating that they need to secure their exit before leaving.
Simone goes up the steps of what she presumed to be an old office made of wood boards and finds a very simplistic looking shaft with a broken elevator system. She glances at the wreckage and can tell that if they shove the side piece of the shaft over, they can slide down into the room below. She's just afraid of the thing moaning below. One of the others points out from the top that they see bloody footprints and Simone isn't sure what they're contending with.
Safe leaves the mother and two daughters to go back to find the two women and men that followed the Ghost in the parallel path that split from theirs. Upon returning, she sees a number of black packs similar to her own and the three standing next to the Ghost and talking.
The Ghost finally reveals his name to be Erebus. He tells them if they are curious, they can peek into the main quarters station by going through the chamber tubes and into the room from there. One girl, curious enough, goes straight in despite her female counterparts' protest. Her sister or mother? Simone isn't sure. When the girl goes in, the man follows as well. Also curious, but Simone stops and asks Erebus if it's safe. Erebus smiles deviously and tells her that anyone could take their seats at any time and the eerie warning is enough to her that their lives are not valuable. They were just the lucky ones till they left. If... 'out' really truly was freedom and she follows the girl and man for a glimpse of the world that used to run her old reality.
Upon entering, she's met with a computer room of humans talking incessantly. They're monitoring some sort of system and seem preoccupied with it but her eyes float up to the black figures with feet that seem to disappear under the wispy black smoke at their feet. They sweep across the floor unbothered with pale white faces like Erebus and beady black eyes. Some are horned, others with hair shaped into sharp features. There, she sees a human hurrying between them towards a room across the bustling hall. In fact. She sees several humans doing as such till she hears a slam that makes her flinch.
A human is flung against the glass, a Ghost turned on the scattered remains, snarling with fangs as sharp as daggers. Astonished, she sees everyone continue on as normal before the Ghost resumes his walk and she feels unsettled by it all. As she turns her head, she catches the gleam of a badge on the floor and picks it up. 'University Graduate 3766. Batch 00-2.A' and she wonders if this is where the graduates went. Then what about the freezers? She remembered the video she saw with Michael stating that 00-3.C and below were expendable. Was... Was that a ranking system for workers versus meat?
Simone turned to see the girl running back into the foil. A man was yelling at her and she figured it was time to go. As she made her way to the tube, she could hear him telling her to come back. That she didn't look authorized for this area and she was scared to find out what that meant. Simone hung back, watching him go back in the way she had come and crept in behind him, following him. As she went in, she could hear the girls frantic cry and then a low buzzing sound. Almost humming. The moment she got up on the situation, she tugged back right as the girl wiggled out of the tube with him cursing and wondering what the hell he found. As he wiggled in, Simone found that he struggled to get through and she was concerned about her place. In her quick action, she grabbed the humming thing he pushed back into his belt and pointed it at him. This was her chance to get out and she wasn't giving it up to some stranger who followed them back.
At the end of it all, Simone finds out the hobbling thing below the mine shaft is an injured man who fell the rest of the way down the elevator when it broke on him and everyone - minus the Ghost Erebus - emerges from underground into a dense jungle near a desert onto the planes of an Earth-like land above.