Years ago, when I was boy and Mitch was a boy and we were the kind of boys who still had parents, we had a distant cousin come to stay with us. She was what other people called an activist and what she called “being sane.” She told us stories about animals in slaughterhouses, how eating their meat was one of the reasons we got weak as a species, more susceptible to illness.

“They’re terrified. Wouldn’t you be? Yanked from your mother, watching and listening to your relatives being butchered day and night? Smelling their blood in the air?”

Mitch and I huddled together on one big chair while she talked to us, leaning in like it was a ghost story at bedtime, which it kind of was.

“Some companies try to do things quick, to make life near the end less miserable so the animals won’t know what’s coming. But it’s not some kind of charity. No, like everything the bastards do, it’s for profit. Makes the meat better. Reduced fear equals better taste. Because fear is poison, and it gets transferred from animal to meat to human.”

When Dad told us about the call for healthy Indigenous donors in the early days, before some escaped with the truth, this was what I thought of: slaughterhouses. Now I wondered if the dreams from those who had walked in of their own free will instead of being dragged in by white vans, were better, full of sunshine and wingless flight.

“Just think about it, French. We can go back to the way things were. Even better. You can finally stop running.” I heard him stand. My eyes were closed, and I was already drifting off. “You can finally be still.”

He put a tentative hand on my shoulder. I felt it as weight and absence. I felt it for what it was, something meant to hold me down, to break me. I had to get out of here.

“Mitch, do you still dream?”

“It’s…quiet now. I’m not really sure.” He sounded sad. Or maybe that was just me projecting.

“I’d rather be dead.” It was no more than a whisper, and it didn’t matter anyway. He was already gone.

For hours, my thoughts alternated between hoping my family was on their way to get me and hoping my family stayed away. It would break me to know they were stuck in here; it would absolutely kill me to know that I was the reason why.

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Mitch slipped back in that night. The room was dark and marked with small constellations of electric lights from the machines, punctuated by the sobs and coughs of the patients. His outline perched in the chair at my side, backlit by security lights out the window. The yellow glare was softened by the frosted glass and cut the dark like rolls of old muslin unraveled onto bodies and machines alike. I turned my head on the pillow, my busted cheek settled now into a steady pulse. He cleared his throat and began his story.