the barn

Rosalee woke up to the feeling of her leg being on fire. She jumped out of bed and pulled up her pajama pants to see her birthmark glowing red. Rosalee ran out of her room down the stairs till she found her mother yet again passed out on the couch. She lifted her mother’s pant leg and her mother’s birthmark was not glowing. This was insane, she was only 11 years old, this should not be happening yet. You see, Rosalee grew up in a town called Comerla where everyone was born the same day as an animal in town. Their birthmark was a depiction of this animal. Rosalee’s birthmark was of a pig, and her mother’s birthmark was a turtle. It did not seem fair to Rosalee that a drunk and addicted mother would be able to live as long as a turtle while her future depended on that of a pig.

The glowing of the birthmark meant that her animal was in trouble and Rosalee had to find her before they both lost their lives forever. She ran up the stairs, threw on pants, tossed a shirt over her neck and slipped into her flip flops. She ran back down the stairs avoiding waking her mother and slipped out the front door and headed to the side of the house to grab her bike. She knew exactly where her animal was, not that she had ever gone to meet her. She turned through the hills of town until she hit the old red barn in the corner of town. As she pulled her bike up to the grass, she noticed at least six other bikes leaning up against the old barn. Why were so many people here?

Rosalee walked into the barn to see six other people sitting with their animals, and her pig laying in the corner of the barn under a sign that said, “Charlotte.” In the center of the barn were two men in suits.

“Please sit down. You are late.” One of the men gestured towards Rosalee.

Rosalee walked over to Charlotte and sat down next to her. Charlotte was sweating profusely. The two men in the middle of the room opened a suitcase on a table in the middle of the barn. In the suitcase, there were three glass vials with a blue liquid that nearly looked like it was glowing.

“The animals in this barn have been given poison as of 8am this morning. They will die if not for the antidote in these vials. They must consume the entire vial in order for you both to live. The town has too high a population and we must lower the numbers in order to survive.” The men closed the suitcase and started to walk out of the doors.

“Stop!” shouted a boy standing next to the horse on the opposite side of the barn. “There are only three vials.”

“Yes, we will be outside when you all come to a decision.” With that, the two men walked out of the barn with the suitcase into a town car that was parked outside.

Rosalee knew that they would all have to come to a decision. Three would live and three would die within the day. There were eleven hours left to make a decision. Rosalee looked around the barn. There was the young man, no older than herself standing with his horse. There was a younger girl that was laid over her sheep. There was an older girl in black combat boots sitting under a tarantula’s web. There was an old man in a wheelchair sitting next to the cow and there was a woman in her twenties that was holding a duck in her lap. How would they decide who would live and who would die? She knew that she should feel the will to survive bubble up inside of her but she did not see how her life was any more vital than the other people around her.

“Any volunteers?” The older girl spoke up from under her web. “I mean, there has to be a simpler way to choose three rather than just making sure there are only three left.”

“You only need to choose two.” The old man said solemnly as he took a gun from his waistband and shot the cow.

The room went silent. No one said a word. The old man had made a sacrifice but was that because he felt the calling of death so close or was it to save everyone else in the barn? No one knew any answers, half the barn had not even reached high school yet. There was only one thing that they did know, two more people in this barn were going to die in the next ten hours. How would they decide? Someone had to stand up and start making decisions. Rosalee thought about taking her pig and riding as far away from that barn as possible but she had no reason to believe that they just wouldn’t wait for her or the pig to die first. The young boy stood up and went to the center of the room.

“ I am the only son in my family. I am the only one who can take over my parent’s farm. I cannot die here today. So, who is it going to be?” The little boy postured as if to make himself appear older.

“I am a mother to three children, a single mother who needs to be here to take care of them.” The woman holding the duck began to have tears fall from her face.

“Well, I guess it's down to me and the pig girl.” The girl sitting under the spider smirked. “There’s not much that I can say about why I should be here. My mother probably wouldn’t even notice I was gone.”

“Neither would mine.” Rosalee stuttered through her words trying to search for some argument for her to live. The little girl by the sheep was barely of school age. Maybe she was the one who needed to survive.

“I am waiting for a new heart,” said the girl laying across the sheep, “so I guess it maybe should be me.” The little girl walked over to where the old man sat dead in his wheelchair and took his gun from him. She shook as she walked to her corner of the barn and shot her sheep. The little girl slumped again over her sheep, this time not to get up again.

The oldest and the youngest in the barn were gone. All that was left was the single mother, the young boy, the older girl and Rosalee. One more had to go. There were only three vials, eight hours left to go and four people sitting in the barn next to their dying animals. One more person had to die in order for three more to live. Rosalee felt an automatic movement as she stood up and walked towards the gun. She lifted it gently and pointed. She stood as gently as she could and lifted the weapon. There was a split decision that she had to make. She placed her finger in the trigger well and shot the horse.