I Was Born on a Child Farm

“There is no free will.”
Those are the first words I ever read. I woke to them every day for 
many years. They were written on a sign. The sign was hung above the 
opposite row of bunks in the Sleeping Barn. I have no memories from 
before the farm; I assumed I was born there.
None of the children there knew why we were here or where we came from...nobody even knew how long we had been at the farm. Some children aged. Some didn't. I can't 
remember much, but that's what happens when you are not given too much 
to remember.
I remember always being deliriously hungry. We would be fed three small 
meals a day, but before every one Headmaster Ranon Xinon would make us 
watch him sprinkle a few drops of clear liquid from a label-less brown 
bottle on the food. Then he would serve behind a steel door and slide 
out each meal through a window so you never knew if your meal was 
poisoned. Most of us danced around the edges of their food. Nobody was 
eager to dive in, not when we had seen a dozen kids turn blue and die 
in front of us after picking the wrong meal. Several of us rarely ate the
food; I NEVER ate from my plate. I would scavenge what little clean 
scraps there were in the garbage. I ate 4 crows (they are just as 
disgusting as saying implies), and I would go full Renfield and eat 
flies, ants, dandelions, cockroaches, clovers, pillbugs...anything 
living and somewhat edible. I would keep the spiders. I had a special 
place for those.
The 20 boys and 30 odd girls worked the fields that provided all the 
food to “the farm”, a crumbling wood compound fenced by tall barbed wire
and the surrounding woods. Past that, the wilderness. Even though there
wasn't spotlights or guards, the farm was much more inescapable than a 
prison.
Every few weeks Headmaster Xinon would take the near 100 of us to the 
edge of his farm, where he would blow a strange brass whistle; bloodshot
German Shepards sprang from the underbrush as if they had been waiting 
for his call, mouths foaming as they gnashed their teeth on the rusted 
barbed wire, threatening to break in and chew us alive as the Headmaster
coldly smiled and spoke with a voice that sounded like gunshots fired 
far away:
“They're old guard dogs gone rabid. I have learned - through one of 
you - how to train them so they only obey me, and if you run, they will 
kill you, or make you wish you stayed here with ME.”
The farm never had answers. Very few people came, the rare delivery 
trucks, a prison bus, a black tinted window Thunderbird that made a 
powerful turbine roar, as if rocket engines were installed under the 
hood - and they only dealt with the headmaster. The only person to leave
with the driver of the Thunderbird.
There was a rumor that we were not real kids at all, that Headmaster 
Xinon was a demon who crafted us all from blood and ash. We never dared 
speak to the Headmaster and asking a question was ludicrous, as a 
question would mean a touch from his hard, cruel hand, an hand that made
the surrounding air a pin-cushion of pain that would sting your skin 
even if his hand grazed yours.
But above the poisonings, backbreaking labor and cleaning, scavenging
for food and never knowing a single day what was going on, we feared 
the nights worst of all. Being exhausted from working in the fields all 
day wasn't enough to overcome the fear to sleep. When it was darkest and
the air had fallen still, we would hear the headmaster's creaking 
footsteps just...appear in the center of the drafty barn without any 
kind of warning. Sometimes we would hear him walk on the roof. Up the 
walls. On the ceiling. I can still hear his breathing if I close my 
eyes, that sick pig's wheezing agonized breath that sucked air in and 
out in a guttural exhaust. The breathing and the footsteps would circle 
and circle until he heard someone cry. That's when the taken would give 
one last cry before they were gone, along with the Headmaster. The 
missing child would return to their beds in the morning bearing new 
marks- a glancing finger left a nasty red and purple smear on one's 
side, sometimes a black fingertips dotted their bodies. We would never 
say anything about these marks to anyone; we were always afraid the 
headmaster would hear, and give us matching marks to boots.
Sometimes he would touch you with his entire palm, leaving a wrinkled
imprint as raw and painful as hot iron brand. I had a few marks as 
well, but I considered myself lucky that I only had a few marks, as far 
as I could tell.
I was one of 4 boys and 5 girls who cleaned the headmaster's home, 
the farmhouse. I cleaned the bathrooms and emptied out the shit cisterns
by slop-bucket and rope. I cleaned the bathrooms and eventually I found
a few loose ceiling boards above the toilet when I was scrubbing for 
mildew, standing on the windowsill. They were right above his toliet. I 
began thinking.
This was my life for what felt like many years- I swore I could have 
named 25 separate times the frost came, but we had no way to keeping 
track of time, not even by our ages. I swore sometimes we would see a 
kid go from looking 13-14 back down to looking half that. Time made no 
sense at the farm, and I knew that I wasn't going to get out by waiting.
When I had woke one morning to find a searing red hot handprint of 
headmaster Rannon Xinon on my upper arm, a hazy starvation-induced plan 
emerged from the fog of my brain.
I went to the “special place” by the cisterns where I had kept every 
black widow spider I had come across. I kept them behind a false brick 
on the side of the farmhouse, where I had once collected 8 of them and 
discovered that black widows were cannibalistic when grouped together. 
Only the strongest survived. I kept hosting “tournaments” until 108 
black widow spiders were reduced to 26 of the most toxic, twitchy and 
bite-crazy widows you never want to meet. I was bitten only twice, and 
came very close to an agonizing death both times. I knew one bite 
wouldn't do a monster like Xinon in. I was set- I was ready to enact the
last stage of my plan when everything changed on a cold day in early 
December when a helicopter as black as the Thunderbird made a couple of 
low circles over the farm.
Ranon Xinon went insane. He poisoned half of the meals the day after 
the helicopter came, and after breakfast, he took us all outside to form
a queue outside the chicken slaughterhouse. When he began leading us in
1 by 1, a few joined me and ran. Judging from the screams, he caught 
most of the runners, but he didn't catch me. I spent many nights 
fantasizing about this moment, when I wasn't listening to his footsteps 
of sick breathing.
I put the black widows inside an old compartmentalized chocolate box 
scavenged out of a wood pile, perfect for keeping each one locked away. I
went up through the floorboards and hid in the space in the bathroom. 
The Headmaster may not sleep through this paranoia, but everyone's gotta
go eventually, even monsters. Those cisterns didn't shit themselves.
It was dark by the time that he arrived with his candle. The sound of
him pulling down his trousers and his simultaneous grunt masked the 
sound of me moving the planks above him aside and pulling the lid off 
the box of 26 nightmares, showering the headmaster with ravenous, crazed
gladiators. My beauties began biting the Headmaster as soon as they 
landed. The terror of the child farm, the demon named the Ranon Xinon 
lied curled around his toilet, eyes swelling shut, a mouth locked in a 
disgusted, surprised outrageous gurgle of horror as spasms racked his 
whole body. Before his eyes swelled completely shut, he saw my small 7 
year old face peering down the hole in the darkness. The missing child. 
The headmaster began to cackle.
“I knew this could happen. There is no free will. It's fine. I lived 
ten thousand years already. I lived YOUR happy summers, wonderful 
marriages, fruitful successes. Your life was beautiful beyond compare. 
That's why I-” he smashed a few spiders scuttling around his face but I 
could tell he was fading fast. “...You and I are ghosts now” where his 
last intelligible words before the Headmaster's breathing stopped.
I hid for 4 hours before carefully making my way to the window; the safest place in the room. The spiders were done and gone.
The chopper returned with a convoy of armed men right before sunrise.
I was the only survivor of the farm. The captain of the operation was a
man named Clinton Moxley, Chief Field Investigator for the Hermetical 
Office. He adopted me, and I took his last name. He was the one who 
named me Howard.
I told my father what little I knew. He corrected me on a few things-
the headmaster's name wasn't Xinon, it was a man named Clark P. Ganes, 
an “anomalous individual”. The office he worked tracked the headmaster 
down here...my father was the one in the Thunderbird.
Elder Moxley had told me about the time the office had captured the 
Headmaster for study within one of their field labs. The subject grabbed
Frank Bernwiest's wrist, one of the team's eldest members. They saw 
Frank's 79 year old face twist and contort until the winkles disappeared
and the flesh had lifted up on his face; in a few seconds of agony, 
Frank was a middle aged man again.
My father said that he personally stopped the other agents from 
interacting, as they were gathering film evidence of the unique 
phenomenon associated with Clark P. Ganes. Frank was known to be a 
formidable fighter but was helpless to the touch of the Ganes. Every 
time Ganes's hand would land on Frank's bare flesh, Frank would scream, 
turning more pubescent every second. Clark only let go when Frank was a 
child again squirming in old man's clothes.
“He chooses victims who had good lives” my father would explain as he
would tuck me in, “His existence is the greatest evidence that Time is a
physical dimension, something that exists, and has always existed. He 
lives YOUR years in just a few seconds. Frank was left with 9 bad years 
out of 79. You would think being young again is a great, remember that 
he was left with the mind of a 9 year old, without care of friends or 
family...you know that pain well, Howard. The office didn't have the 
resources to care for Frank...we believe Clark Ganes is responsible for 
over a hundred thousand homeless children across the world. Frank was 
just one of them, another human with a used-up timeline..."
I asked the only father I knew why he adopted me. He brought me to 
the master bathroom's dual mirrors and told me to take off my shirt.
“Because I owe you. You were an old man once, Howard. You were my 
mentor and my partner within the office. You went into the farm by 
yourself to try to shut it down. I had hoped that you would 
remember... anything about your past, but, I see the Headmaster got to 
you too...” I looked behind me, using the set of mirrors to see my own 
back for the first time, and seeing it covered in handprints.
That was many years ago. True to Headmaster's words, I had been a 
ghost among the living since then. It's been hard even sleeping, 
especially now. 
  
For the past few night, I have heard both the Headmaster's footsteps and
rasping breath next to my old-man bed. My father never said they found the Headmaster's body. I know he wants me his farm back. He wants me back- he wants ALL his children back.  
centre|thumb|330x330px|Video by CreepsMcPasta
Category:Videos
Category:Reddit Pastas
Category:Military
Category:Places
Category:Demon/Devil
Category:Disappearances
Category:Weird
Category:Dreams/Sleep