Content warning may apply
animal cruelty, violence
an excerpt from a novel project by Luc Salinger
Chapter 1
Denmark
4th August 2020
The sky was grey. Man-made smog mixed with the clouds to the point where one couldn’t tell what was natural anymore. Through the thick tapestry, the sun was at its meridian and shone a little light on a small farm in northern Europe. The Hygge Fur Haven; the lethal was hidden in the name.
A faint rumbling shook Michael awake. His eyelids fluttered and the little tractor came into focus. Upon its saddle rode a man and as he drove closer, Michael got a big whiff of the contents of the container the little tractor pulled on its rear. His lungs were filled with the sweet-smelling decay of pig and chicken intestines that the man, now armed with a tube, sprayed on top of each of the cages. The mushy paste dribbled down from above. The minks from afar squealed in joy as Michael’s snout began to water. The man continued, slowly emptying the colossal tank. The eerie fluorescent light was as poignant to the eyes as the odour was pungent to the nose.
The closer it got, the more the smell of the rotting sludge made his little snout water, saliva dribbling out of the corner of his mouth. The fumes of the fermented food sent him almost into a frenzy, eagerly but softly scraping the thin metal bars of his cage. The minks around him were awake and hungry. They began to coil themselves around their own bodies and tuned into the stirring with Michael as if they were a little hungry orchestra, pulling on the cage like a harp. The tractor was getting closer now. The low rumbling of it rang in his ear.
The man was old and weathered. He looked tired, most of his face hidden by an old cap which he seemed to have been wearing for decades, and a facemask. His motions were habitual, as if he was a machine which maintained nothing more than soulless produce. He pulled the nozzle of the tube to the cages over Michael.
Michael had lived in the farm for two years, born and raised in Denmark. His cage, like so many others, was covered in grime and filth, not only from Michael, but from his predecessors. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of these cages, rising in towering columns, each balanced precariously on top of the next. His fur was dirty and matted. Although he could coil around his own body, the cage wasn’t big enough to properly groom himself. It used to be easier when he was a small kit.
Some of the rotten slush dribbled from the top cages down onto Michael’s nose. His tongue gingerly wrapped around his snout, slurping up the food and he started to disassociate. Away from the farm, where his only worth was his body and to an empty white box, where the only thing on his mind was the sweet and wretched taste of the food. Survival numbed him to the pain, but not to the bliss of satiating his appetite. He indulged fully in the fleeting moment.
The tractor moved on, the man methodically spraying the fermented feast over the rows of cages. When he was at the tail end, he swerved, going into another row to repeat the process. Michael knew that, once the man had sprayed the top of every cage, the inspections would follow. After that, the culling. Michael had hoped to not be picked so many times, but seeing his brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces shoved in a box, leaving nothing but an empty silent cage behind, haunted him. It made him realise that maybe there was a fate crueller than death.
The workers on the farm never cared for the bonds the mink shared. They were unfazed by the eerie screams and scowls they let out when they were ripped out of their cage by the scruff of their neck. They weren’t anything but hosts for the desired pelt. Some tried to gnaw and rip at their own fur, cursing their existence, but it was futile. The fur remained fluffy and pristine, regrowing and healing from the self-inflicted wounds.
The tractor’s rumble began to fade as the man reached the far end of the row where he had begun, driving away as another worker stepped into the place. Michael was still licking the last remnants of mush off his paws when a sound caught his ear. Not the familiar grunts of exhaustion that the minks would occasionally spurt from their lips, but something sharper, more urgent. A high-pitched whimper, followed by a sudden scuffle. His ears perked up.
He turned his head toward the noise and saw one of the smaller cages being flung open by a worker. Inside was a young mink. Not tall enough to fall under the radar of the workers usually. The little one squealed in terror, its tiny claws scrambling against the wire as the man grabbed it by its neck.
Michael tensed, trepidation surging through his body. He had seen this before. The young ones were supposed to be spared. They were too small to be of much use yet, but sometimes they disappeared when their health declined. Once they had left the cage, they would never come back. Michael would have shut out the screams like he always did, knowing it was just part of his little life. But something about this was different.
The mink’s eyes locked onto Michael’s for just a moment. Wide, terrified, pleading and only four cages away. The message was clear: Michael, don’t leave me here to die. Michael!
The worker’s hand was rough, seemingly indifferent to the fear in the screams, and with a careless yank, he pulled the young mink free. A sharp, bloodcurdling yelp echoed across the rows of cages as the worker tossed the small body into a sack slung over his shoulder, as if he were Santa Claus.
Locking eyes with that mink, knowing what was bound to happen to him, made Michael’s blood boil. He didn’t know why, for this was happening for the hundredth time now, but it was too much. No… Michael’s paws clenched the metal bars of his cage, claws digging into the grime that was stuck there. He had seen too many vanish like that. Too many brothers, sisters, cousins, stolen in the bright of day, carried away like trash. But this kit hadn’t been sick, hadn’t even been given the chance to grow.
Something snapped, something inside of him. The cold acceptance of his life in the cage, the routine, the quiet endurance, the fleeting moments of rotten pleasure, all of it shattered at that very moment. He couldn’t take it anymore and he wasn’t going to.
Michael growled in a low, menacing tone. It would’ve startled even him, but his mind was too filled with rage to care. It grew louder, a rumbling in his chest that soon turned into a horrendous snarl. The other minks around him stirred, glancing at him. They felt the same way. What was happening in front of them was unfair, but they were too afraid. But not Michael. Not anymore.
His eyes darted around his cage, searching for a weakness in the structure he used to accept as impenetrable. His claws scraped at the corner where the metal had rusted through the years. He had picked at it before out of mere curiosity. Now, fuelled by rage and fury, his claws worked with purpose.
The bars gave way with a snap and creak. He had his opening.
Michael lunged.
~~~
Germany
4th August 2020
‘We’d never use gas to kill minks. They are semi-aquatic after all. They can hold their breath for a long time.’ Fiola was trying her best to remain calm. In front of her were three girls from her class. They all wore a brown vest embroidered with a fish net, a dark blue skirt that went to their knees and black shoes with pointed tips.
‘So, what do you do to them?’ The girl in the middle spoke in a muffled tone into her pink facemask. Her name was Paula. Top of her grade and class rep. She stood there, crossed arms, with a venomous glare.
‘Well, we …’ Fiola glanced at the pocket knife the girl on the left was holding. ‘We induce trauma by blunt force. I know this may sound bad, but I have never had to go for a second hit. It’s a humane way to die.’
Without warning, Paula grabbed Fiola by the throat and jammed her head against the wall of a bathroom stall. Fiola felt the pain travel throughout her body, shaking her to her core.
‘You have no right to put the word “humane” into your mouth. You’re not human,’ Paula hissed in Fiola’s ear.
Fiola’s mind went to her home. Her dad, proud owner of the only Mink farm left in Germany, PELTOPIA written boldly at the entrance. The thousands of minks that died every year there and the thousands that were born. It was an endless cycle of exploitation, but for Fiola, it seemed more like a trade. The minks were born into what she saw as a kind of earthly paradise, only to ascend to a higher heaven a few years later.
Fiola wanted to say something, but her head hurt so bad from the impact that it was impossible to get a coherent word out. She just grunted. The girl on the left unsheathed her knife.
‘Fuck her up, Paula,’ she said and held the knife out to Paula, who quickly grabbed it. ‘They skin the minks alive, don’t they?’
‘Yeah, I saw that in the news,’ the girl on the right said. ‘They hold the animal by the neck and peel the fur off like it’s a potato.’
Paula grabbed Fiola again by her jaw, ripping her face mask off, then pulling her jaw up so her neck was exposed. She pressed the pocketknife against her skin, just over the throbbing vein that was pulsing in rhythm with Fiola’s heartbeat.
‘That vein you got there,’ her voice sounded cold and raspy, ‘that’s what keeps you going. Every animal, all the little creatures you butcher, they all have that little blue line, a pulse and a will to live. To you though, they’re just fur and flesh to tear apart, right?’
Fiola didn’t say anything, clenching her teeth as she felt Paula press the knife closer to her skin so that a little ball of blood blossomed on the edge of the blade.
‘You feel that?’ Paula mockingly asked the pale girl. ‘That fear? The panic, the feeling you’re about to die? Never spent a second thinking about what the minks feel when you skin them, did you? Only difference now between you and a mink is that I’m not as sick as you are. I have the choice to let you go, but they never have a choice, do they?’
Fiola’s pulse hammered in her throat. Paula’s words affected her, but it didn’t get under her skin as much as Paula was hoping. Fiola wondered how Paula’s brutality was different from the cruelty she claimed to be against.
She was a hypocrite, Fiola realised, but that realisation was meaningless, as she still felt the knife press tightly against her throat.
As the blade continued to let a bit of blood pool out of Fiola’s neck, Paula wiped it off with her thumb before it stained the shirt. Fiola’s heartbeat was racing, and she was panting, but tried her best not to move as to not sever the vein herself.
‘I really should hate you more than anything on this earth,’ Paula said, looking at her stained thumb. ‘And I do, but what drives me to hate you even more is the fact that you don’t seem to hate yourself. You stay at your stupid farm with your stupid dad, slaughtering poor animals like you enjoy it. You’re sick, honestly. Bet you’re getting a high off snuffing the light out of their eyes. Being your dad’s obedient little daughter who does his dirty work…’
Paula leaned in closer to get a better view of the girl’s neck. ‘Maybe you’re just too much of a coward to stand up to him. Too pathetic and weak to do the right thing.’ She gently pulled the blade back from Fiola’s neck. ‘I should just do it, for the animals.’ She stared at her, as a little droplet trickled down, leaving a little stain on Fiola’s shirt collar.
For weeks, Paula had glared at Fiola in the hallways. She didn’t hide how much she hated animal abuse and how much of that hate was projected on Fiola, but Fiola would never have expected Paula to hate her this much.
‘You make me sick, Fiola.’ Paula said, her voice hoarse, almost as if she was about to cry. ‘You’re disgusting. All of you is. You think you’re untouchable, don’t you? You think your father’s farm and the stupid laws in this country will protect you, that this pelt pandemonium you helped build won’t come crashing down on you one day.’
Paula stepped back a little, away from Fiola, but still glaring at her, enraged. ‘But it fucking will. Maybe then you will truly understand what it means to be powerless, like those animals you butcher. Maybe then you feel something, other than knuckle-dragging loyalty to your father.’ The knife fell onto the floor and the girl on Paulas left picked it up swiftly. ‘Let’s go.’ Paula commanded and the two girls beside her walked out. The girl on her right spat one final time onto the ground next to Fiola, who sat at the bathroom stall’s wall, holding her neck.