Day 2,585

We didn't ask why the abattoir never sent any meat out, we just kept sending cattle in and loading crates of something warm onto the unmarked boats and lorries that came to collect every evening without fail. Most of the village works in the abattoir or the nearby farms, we're all connected to it but we don't know a damned thing about it.

The people who work inside aren't from here, they arrive in busses every morning and leave in them every night. Not one of them sets foot outside during the shifts nor says a word to those of us who work close as they'll let us - in the loading bays, the docks and maintaining the grounds without so much as a toe set inside.

Now most folks will happily go their entire lives never wanting to see the inside of such a place but when an entire village's livelihood is based around a place that won't let them know what they're exporting then imaginations run wilder than the dogs they set to patrol with us.

I, like the nine generations before me, could have gone my whole life not knowing more than the next person but one of the damned apprentices only went and dropped his half of the crate. Sent the whole thing crashing off the loading bay and splintering on the concrete floor.

Remembering much after that is a struggle. I know I saw something far more alive than what comes out of an abattoir ought to be but trying to remember the shape or sound of it makes my thoughts buzz right through my teeth. Hurts something fierce too.

As for what happened after, all I can say is that the interior workers came out with a fresh crate, jammed it back in and sealed it shut. We were given £200 each to keep quiet and carry on which we did, albeit quieter than we'd ever been and all pondering in our minds about what we're a part of.

Nothing's changed since then. We all clock in, stack crates til there's enough to fill the lorries and then let them carry the warm crates full of unnatural life away to places we don't want to think about to do things we can't even begin to imagine. For all we know we're killing thousands of people with every crate we don't burn.

All I know for sure is that I pity the next person to break a rate and see them with naked eyes.