Published: 2025-11-01

It was Julia’s 13th birthday, and she was nervous. Her name was actually 1808926496, but nobody called her that; in fact, nobody ever tried to refer to her by name.

Although she never knew the day she was born or how old she was, she could tell today was the day. She hunched in her cage, as if trying to make herself smaller. Despite the poor conditions, she still had the ingenuity of a child.

The girl in the cage next to Julia’s had her 13th birthday around a year and a half ago. She didn’t move much these days. Sometimes she gave the impression of being dead, if only they allowed her to die.

Outside the cages, men in lab coats walked to and fro. They always seemed in a hurry, walking past the cages without even looking at them. Maybe they found themselves put out by the smell; keeping people locked in cages, forcing them to urinate and defecate in the newspaper-covered floor didn’t result in pine-scented hallways.

A bell rang, and the electronic food dispenser filled Julia’s plate with a bland mix of grains seasoned with antibiotics and growth hormone. Everything was rationed, from food to water, and even time in the sunlight.

The girl next to Julia’s cage didn’t seem to care that her plate got filled. She lay down in fetal position. Julia knew she was alive by how her torso expanded when she breathed. Julia paid little attention to her neighbor and started gobbling on the bland mixture. Caring for others was a luxury she could not afford. She prayed for the day to be only as miserable as the day before. It wasn’t.

Sleeping and death were the only escapes from reality she could get, and since death was not an option — at least not a feasible one — Julia spent most of her time sleeping. Energy was a precious resource, and being awake meant consuming it, proving to be an unwise decision.

The doors of the cage opened, four arms dragged Julia out of it. She resisted; everyone did, but her efforts were in vain. Her screams filled the room, and the inhabitants of the rest of the cages, with their faces glued to the metal bars, watched the scene in horror; some screamed too.

It was her 13th birthday after all, she could not escape her destiny.

The men in lab coats dragged Julia to an empty room. She had never been there before, but she had heard about it. It was there they took the girl next to her cage some time ago. That girl was never the same, nor would Julia be.

Moments later, another group of men brought a second person to the room, a man. The man was tall and strong, around five years older than Julia; he also seemed to be well-fed, and yet, the same sorrow was present in his eyes.

Besides the men in lab coats, Julia and her neighbors never ignored the existence of men. Of course, there was a reason for that, but they didn’t know.

The men in lab coats tied Julia to the floor and pushed the man of the sorrowful eyes towards her. Of course, Julia didn’t know how to read, but a sign on the door of that room read “insemination room.”

It had been a couple of days since Julia’s 13th birthday, she was still processing the events of that day. The explosion of violence, pain, and previously unfelt sensations mixed with the perpetual depression of being alive was almost too much to bear. Julia thought that now she understood the girl’s next to her cage pain; she didn’t even begin to understand it.

For once, they separated her from her child after birth. It was a male; thus, they threw him in a shredder. They didn’t even have the decency of killing him first, and why would they? It’s a business after all, and that was the cheapest way of dealing with the problem.

Things wouldn’t have been any better if her child had been female. With luck, they would have sent her to the same building as her mother and turned her into a milk-producing machine. In a worst-case scenario, they would have pumped hormones into her until turning her into a meatball in record time, then slaughtered her and sold her as meat. The commodification of carnivores’ lifestyle had taken her victims.

The girl next to Julia’s nipples have been bleeding again. Being milked for hours every day has that effect. Nothing that an ointment and an extra dose of antibiotics couldn’t fix.

Falling asleep has become a harder task for Julia; every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was the face of that strange man breathing heavily while the men in lab coats watched. Death was becoming more and more attractive with each passing day.

Julia lay on an operating table. Her legs were spread and tied up, her arms extended and also tied up. She gritted her teeth, her muscles tensed up, cold sweat dripped from her forehead. Julia never thought the type of pain she was experiencing to be possible. The mere act of being alive was already painful enough; this, on the other hand, seemed taken straight from the most sadistic of stories.

The pain stopped, her muscles relaxed, the torture was over. One of the men in a lab coat took the creature and examined it. Julia’s half-open eyes couldn’t see it clearly, but she knew what had happened: she created life. The miracle of life had happened in front of her eyes, even if she didn’t fully understand how. She was proud.

One of the men in a lab coat took the baby with him and walked towards the other end of the room, where a machine sat. Julia didn’t understand what happened. The machine turned on, roaring with animal force. The man dropped the baby into the machine; Julia screamed.

Many years have passed since Julia’s 13th birthday, now, they’re considering lowering the required age to twelve.

THE END.