#captivity
The room is, I admit, disappointingly theatrical. You awoke, chained by the ankle to that iron radiator in the scullery of your hive. Though, we both admit it has never been host to an honest meal. The radiator is hissing with civic spite. The floor is tiled in a pattern that suggests grief. On the stove, centered over a ring of blue flame, is a dented iron pot full of boiling tallow. Boiling. It pops and spits with a greasy impatience, exhaling the rich, animal stink of rendered fat. The pot itself has been welded to the stovetop in four ugly seams, each bead of metal thick enough to survive tan...Read more
It would seem as though my Handmaid has once again roused the unbearable indignity of employment. This is, of course, an amusingly charitable word for her arrangement. Employment generally implies that one may resign, negotiate terms, or at the very least be allowed the small spiritual luxury of believing one’s labor is not simply the maintenance of a cage with better branding. She has none of these things. She has instead been handed a role, a title, an audience, and a wallpaper pattern she has evidently grown tired of staring at between atrocities. Her mistake is not in wanting to be fired. He...Read more