Short (Dark) Stories

The Unfortunate Life of a Cow

This was another school assignment for English. I decided it was good enough to go on lovely old Wattpad. Here's yet another glimpse into the mind of Dark. Warning: there are some depressing elements, but this one doesn't have descriptive gore, just post-mortem experiences

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Molly's unused front legs wobbled under her weight as she tried to push herself into a standing position, copying her black-furred mother who was standing beside her in a layer of yellow hay laid across the dirt and manure flooring. A slick, wet coating moistened her dark colored hair, which was nearly identical to her mom's, and dripped off of her body as the little calf scrambled to her feet. The cow towering over her lowered her head to encourage Molly in her struggles to stay balanced on her four unsteady hooves, bumping the unstable creature softly in the shoulder reassure her of her capability to get a hang on walking, which only forced the young animal to stumble in the opposite direction, away from her dame. Her Angus mother excused her weakness with a loud 'moo' that Molly couldn't understand, due to her only being born for a few minutes total. The best she could do is copy the sound herself, and opened her mouth and loosed a much smaller, much cuter imitation of the sound. With that response, her accompanying head of cattle seemed satisfied with the progress of her tired youngster, and settled down onto her forelegs and sunk to the ground to rest after such an exhausting process. Molly tripped over her own hooves as she careened towards her resting dame, only stopping once she had rammed her hornless head against the older female's sullen shoulder. As an animalistic form of an apology, the young creature rubbed the soft, damp hairs on her head against the part of her mother which she so inconsiderately slammed into and repeated the quiet bellow she had copied from the other cow just moments ago. The old creature lifted her weary head, gazing at the life she'd brought into the world before sticking out that long, icky pink tongue that waited in her mouth like snake and licking a long stripe up the side of the calf's unsuspecting face. Molly closed her eye just in time to avoid giving the sensitive organ a tongue bath, and huffed a few times by blowing air out of her moist nostrils to display her annoyance at the action her mother preformed. The cow's mother responded with yet another moo--just another of the sounds a parent would share with their child and get them used to in case they ever were separated--before continuing her motions repeatedly, coating every exposed inch of her precious child's neck and face with smelly saliva from her mouth and cleaning off the sticky substance that first rested there in a coating over Molly's black fur, as pure in color as her parents'. They exchanged a few more bellows and grunts back and forth while the older cow groomed the entirety of her exhausted calf, who impatiently endured the incessant and unending licking while wobbling about on unsteady and strengthening leg muscles that shook from effort. Eventually, the small cow collapsed to her knees, laying upon her forelegs like her mother, which was surprisingly comfortably, and rested her furry head upon her mother's leg. An eyelid drooped over one of her brown optical organs as her head lifted back for a moment so her mouth could stretch as wide as possible as a miniature yawn left her jaws, then she went limp and quit moving. The mother settled her own head down, but didn't spontaneously fall asleep as her child did. Instead, she gazed blankly at the cement wall opposite her overused body, pondering the life she was going to lose, and how best she could prepare her calf for exactly that circumstance. She, like her mother before her, was always separated from the calf after a short period of weeks, and the cow was milked while her offspring was fed synthetic formula and raised to live out the same never-ending cycle of bearing a calf, having that kid's nutrition taken from her, and repeating until she was too old and to tired out to be useful to the dairy farmers any longer, than be sent to whatever hell the beef cows were sent to to live out the rest of their days without escape, or food, or contact. No one who had been sent away had ever came back, and Molly's mother suspected that she was nearing the time when she was to be taken on the large white trailer that took her mother and others of the herd who had outlived their use. With that suspenseful horror on her mind, the old Angus cow let her eyes slip shut, and let the tiredness of her day take the light from her mind and drag her into sleep.