Flat awoke in the pitch dark. There were noises all around: voices, metallic bangs and high pitched squeaks. She felt confused and weak. She tried to raise her voice to the sky but could make no sound and could find no sky. Footsteps and voices were coming in her direction. There was a commotion all around her when suddenly, the canvas flap which covered the cage started lifting from one side. Light flooded in. Flat shuddered. With another motion, the entire flap flew off and Flat was completely blinded for a few seconds by a light far brighter than the sun in the veld.
“Here she is, all ready for work…” one man announced.
“You don’t think she’ll give any trouble?” another asked.
“Probably some” the first man replied, grinning, lifting up a rod and releasing a loud shock from its tip.
Several other men let out amused grunts.
The cage opened. Flat, fearful and weak, readied herself to charge, but the man with rod rushed to stab at Flat’s side, and the pulse of the rod nearly collapsed her. Laughter ensued. Flat’s mind filled with lights – the sun, the moon, thunder, the lights on the road. As she began to shake her body in frustration…another stab, another pulse and more weakening. It was hopeless.
More men entered the cage. They came with metal bars, cables and all manner of contraptions Flat did not know the purpose of. All around her the cables were tightened and her back was extended into large square platform. They modified her horns to look like two scorpion pincers. The men held a device which seemed to control these pincers by will. It could open and close, rise and lower, and turn in all directions.
“Diversity in the work place” one said and laughter burst out from all sides.
Only at the end, Flat’s mouth was muzzled. Not long after, she was sent out into the warehouse floor, whipped and lightly shocked from the back.
“I thought we were going to have her run?” one asked.
“Maybe later, let’s just see if the basics are in order” another replied.
Flat was led in the direction of a single crate on the warehouse floor. The entire place became silent as she neared it. Upon reaching the crate. Her pincers activated. Some gasps were heard. The pincers grabbed hold of the box, lifted it up, turned towards the platform on her back and laid it down gently. Thunderous applause ensued. The men surrounding Flat patted her shoulder. She wanted to charge ahead through a tower of similar crates. But the thought of the rod petrified her in place. This was to be Flat’s employment.
She was led to more crates - the same process, the same applause. Just as her knees felt it would buckle, she was led to a truck where the crates were offloaded. Then, more crates to lift and be offloaded again. This cycle continued for hours. Flat was continuously complimented by the man with the rod. She was told she was beautiful and powerful, an astonishing force of nature. With every cycle he pushed her to move faster and faster. Exclaiming “amazing” “you wonderful beast” “the star of the warehouse”. All the while, Flat’s eyes would intermittently drift towards the sight of the large opening where trucks rolled in. She could not see much beyond it, and for fear could not see how to reach it, but it’s rectangular shape became embedded in her mind.
After seven such cycles, an alarm went off, shouts all round and the workers began leaving their posts. Flat was moved to a small room. Her muzzle was removed but the other extensions remained. They gave her heaps of hay to eat and water to drink. As the men left the room, closed the large door, leaving one dim light for Flat to see her food. She was shaking, feverish, distressed and could not even think of eating.
Flat spent the second day at the warehouse engaged in the exact same task. The third day was no different, nor the fourth, but on the fifth day of her employment, something was completely changed. The applause and most words of praise ceased. She was still ordered from place to place, threatened with the rod – the cruelty was no more or less than before, but the workers’ amusement with her seemed to have dissipated. The next day, she was alone in her dark room, the warehouse was quiet. The slept nearly the entire day – she wanted to have thoughts, but her mind was blank.
The seventh day something was different again. Where the first four days Flat was applauded and the fifth day disregarded, this new work day murmurs passed through the warehouse all around Flat. There hung a sense of dismissal in the air. As Flat moved boxes to and fro, she began to notice the forklifts – how they managed to do all the work she did, if not more, in better time at that. The man with the rod kept an eye on her, but was mostly occupied with other work. At some point, when he came closer to inspect her work, another man exclaimed “Still tending to Gav’s pet, hey?” and in response, the man who acted as her guardian just sighed - “The man’s a visionary, you know” - and rolled his eyes.
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This was the second time Flat had heard the name Gav, but she never heard anyone address him directly and couldn’t know whether she has seen him or not. However, from these two instances, it was clear that her being there was inextricably linked to this Gav.
This second week continued under this pervasive atmosphere of casual contempt. When Flat was left in the dark room again on the off day, her extensions – the platform and the pincers – were removed. The next day, when the workers returned, Flat was left in the dark room. She was glad to have been relieved of her labor, yet the longer her rest extended, the more the she began to feel the toll this ordeal had taken on her body. With her every movement her joints ached tremendously, her head was spinning and her hooves felt as though it was cracking as she merely moved a few steps from the pile of hay to the water trough.
Outside this small room, the activity of the warehouse continued undisturbed, sounds that ranged from deep rumbles to intense screeches came to her muffled through the largest metal door and separated her from the workers. Somehow, even muffled as it was, the sounds felt more relentless and oppressive to her than it did when she was working in the midst of it. Of course the hope and possibility of escape had come to her before, but only now did it begin to take over her mind completely. Before, fear forced her mind on the work she was ordered to do, but now, she was thinking only of the warehouse’s big open door, a giant rectangle beyond which she could never see much as it was continually occupied by large trucks. All that she could make out, during times of the day when the light was not too bright, was the top of a mountain.
At the end of the work day, when the warehouse became quiet again, Flat pictured that rectangular opening, pictured herself running beyond it at full speed. This thought alone made her body ache, but her mind soar. She pictured herself running out into vast fields and away from any road until her body could run no more. She fell asleep with only this image replaying continuously in her mind. Night after night.
And so it happened that, one dark cool night, near dawn, Flat was awakened by her small room’s door opening before her. A hazy light shown in from outside, but she could not see much beyond the door. There were some voices echoing through the warehouse, all hushed and melted together. Hesitantly, Flat stepped from the room she was kept. She shut her eyes firmly, wincing in anticipation of a strike to her body. No such strike came and she opened her eyes. Still only the indistinct voices echoing over and around her, but she could she see clearer now. The large warehouse door was open, and outside it the silhouettes of structures, hazy lights - some white, some pale yellow, some stale orange. There was an immense force within her, a force directed at that rectangular opening - a sensation of her body stretched out from where she stood all the way to the large opening. It felt as though she was already outside, and at the same time - this sensation of being stretched made the task feel impossible - a strike, a powerful blow to her side would cut her in half, the room in which she was kept felt as though it would stretch along and capture her from behind. Yet, she could not make out a single person in the warehouse. There was no one to catch her and still she knew they would. Escape simultaneously felt guaranteed and impossible. She was locked in this trap until finally the force she felt, the sense of being stretched across the warehouse floor, took over and she was catapulted by it into a full sprint towards the door. No strike, no blow to throw her off course, she went forward only. Everything around her was dark and gray and hard as rock. The world of the warehouse continued outside, just without a roof. Flat had gone out the door, but it was no escape yet. She wouldn’t let up until all this was gone, until the ground beneath her feet was red earth and yellowing grass.
She did not cease her sprinting. There was no gate, no fence to stop her anymore. Soon enough the concrete of the warehouse yard gave way to tarmac and white lines. She sprinted along this road and would do so until it gave way to open land. It was quiet, but several cars did pass, most slowed down out of astonishment and some even came to a screeching halt at the sight of a buffalo in the city.
As she ran further, she felt she was only going deeper into the hard gray world of the city. More cars, lights, noises. . . the noise was unbearable beyond anything else - voices and machines as one. Dawn had come and the sky was pink like fresh roadkill. Flat ran on the sidewalks and across the streets. She turned corners and turned around. More corners, four-ways, lights and noise. As everything brightened the mountain towering over the city became more visible and Flat felt drawn to it as something like a familiar face. She turned herself fully towards it, fixed herself on it and began taking its direction. The fatigue she felt was of no consequence to the focus she now had. Sprinting in the manner of a dedicated march, Flat held firm through the shouting voices, the buzz of the ever increasing wave of machines pummeling forward upon the black streets. Everything around her took the shape of a tunnel straight to the mountain. She felt absolute unthinking certainty about this mountain, about her commitment to this line of escape.
But it would not be. Flat’s tunnel was crashed into from the side. And darkness bled into her clear sight of the mountain, until, within seconds, there was nothing.