The majority of eggs are sent to major cities, I’ve found out. A crate of eggs is easy to hide on board a cargo ship, retrieve after, and sell…cities are where most of the trafficking takes place. New York’s Chinatown, Houston, Las Vegas—check the major cities, search for the “call-prawn” numbers and you’ll find us.

It’s getting hard to show kindness to the others here with me. It can be so easy falling into the steady, unyielding rhythm of the phone calls, caring only about your own bruises, your own hunger and fear. I’ve been trying to avoid this and help as many as I can, however I can. But nobody trusts anybody here! Even the little ones, the ones barely Jack and Jill’s age. They’ve been beaten and starved and bound into this existence and can’t imagine anything else…I would talk to them more about the outside world if I wasn’t working all the time or getting beaten with that bloodstained pipe for “talking about leaving.” Talking about leaving—that’s all there is to talk about! No family, no friends, nothing to occupy your mind but those damn phones, the hordes of people willing to pay by the hour, the cat food that’s keeping you alive but just barely.

It’s heartbreaking trying to tend to their wounds when they are hurt, or trying to comfort them when they cry out at night, and having them strike out at you. They think you’re going to hit them…it’s like trying to pet a badly-treated dog. Their eyes…oh Vishnu, if you could only see their eyes you would understand. There’s no curiosity or light behind them, just wariness and sorrow. Elder eyes, in Poleepkwa that haven’t even seen ten years.

I keep thinking about Jill and Jack, all of you guys, and it helps. Knowing there’s someone who gives a damn about if you live or die, not because of the money they’ll lose but because they love you—that helps you keep a smile on your face even when you’re getting hurt. You have to keep smiling; you can’t cry because it messes with the john’s head and wrecks their fantasy. They won’t buy you, and you pay for it after. You make them happy and they make you happy.

I see children like Jack and Jill all the time here. I see them bought and sold like furniture, I see them beaten like dogs when they disobey—no, dogs are better treated. At least with a dog someone will try to stop it. Here we all just look the other way…we can’t do anything when Blue Fly hurts someone. I see my fellow Poleepkwa taken out behind the building and shot when they’re too sick to work; Blue Fly’s final method of dealing with the “rough trade” that isn’t making money. It happened to the Poleepkwa who had the sleeping spot next to me—I saw them handing the corpse off to another customer. The bodies are sold as exotic meat…there are people who eat us like we are cattle.

To Jake, Sherry and everyone: I read your comments on my blog post and Jake’s post. I can’t deny that what is going on here is immoral and horrible, but I don’t believe that there’s no hope in humanity as a group. I can’t believe that. If humanity is nothing but “the species that rapes,” then why the hell am I getting these people out?! If the majority truly is as corrupt as the people who buy us, willing to believe that labor and sex are commodities, exchanged and bought fairly with our consent…then there’s nothing beyond this but a place with different telephones, different owners.
You are better then this, not just individually but as a collective, and you WILL overcome this; we’ll all work together if we have to and things will be better someday. Giving up your kind for lost will do nothing but prevent that day from ever coming and justify more of these awful sales. Just do what you can, how you can and you’ll prove that humans are good.

These Poleepkwa need to have a better life then this, just as much as air and food, and they have to have hope. There has to be hope…