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Review This Story || Author: C. A. Smith

Meat

Part 6

Part 6

It was a long, long night. What do you do during the last night of your life? Do you sleep and hope for pleasant dreams? Can you sleep at all? Should you? Do you really want to sleep away the last hours of your life when an eternity of sleep comes with the dawn?

Blue had hoped that sex would ease her fear, lift her deepening depression. It didn't. The other side of ecstacy turned out to be a darkling despair, an enveloping sense of things she would never enjoy again: laughter in warm sunlight; erotic pleasures in the soft night; little mouths sucking at her nipples; little eyes taking in the wonders of her face.

She had read somewhere that in certain parts of the world, where government and religion were the same, the females on the breeding farms are taught that God has ordained them with a special status, a vocation that sets them apart from ordinary humans in the outside world. They're brought up believing that they are the chosen handmaidens of God, chosen by God to spend their sixteen or twenty-two years within the “sacred circle” of the breeding farm grooming their bodies to be worthy offerings to “the heavenly hosts” — the Gatherers. The most favored handmaidens — those who presented God with back to back baby handmaidens right up to their twenty-two allotted years — were guaranteed eternal bliss in Paradise. Blue took “eternal bliss” to mean perpetual orgasms with hunky studs forever and ever. On the other hand, if a Handmaiden faltered in her faith and became disobedient or tried to run away, God would turn her miserable mind to mush and send her back in shame to be punished. That wretched girl would be hung up by her wrists in the hot sun to die in agony and be eaten by buzzards. No eternal orgasms for her.

Blue had always had a hard time imagining how anyone could fall for such garbage, even though she knew the reason for it. On the other hand, she knew that most breeding farms forbade their female livestock from learning how to read, as she had done, especially in those parts of the world where even free women were legal chattel — bound to father, husband or some other male. So how were illiterate “handmaids” to know that the Gatherers had nothing to do with some egocentric deity? How could they guess that the ‘heavenly hosts” were simply meat-eating creatures who had decided that homo sapiens made a savory addition to their diet? What did ignorant farm-bred girls know about human avarice and the mutually profitable symbiotic relationship between man and Gath: food in exchange for security and wealth. A hundred million or so of their sisters sold every year as meat to save the skins and fatten the coffers of free mankind.

Not that religion was unknown here at Foxbush as a means of helping the livestock accept their role in life and be prepared to go gracefully to their final call. Attendance at church was required up to the age of twelve. During those years they got the same kind of mumbo-jumbo propaganda about their special place in heaven if they obeyed company rules and submitted beautiful and healthy bodies at the time of their harvest. But it all rang hollow for Blue. Free women somehow managed to please this same God without getting eaten at sixteen or cranking out one or two babies a year to earn an extra six years of life.

The priests at Foxbush sang the same tune as their counterparts elsewhere, albeit with slightly different lyrics. “God expects different things of different people,” they explained to the girls and boys of their congregation. “Free people in the outside world find the journey to Heaven as difficult as passing through the eye of a needle. But you,” they smiled, “have only to have good manners, obey the staff, enjoy lots of good sex, make babies and proudly present a well-kept body to the Gatherers at the time of your harvest.” Many of the girls at Foxbush (and at other breeder farms, she assumed) bought that scenario. They were the ones praying right now with the special fervor of last rites. She knew the words well: “May the beauty of my body and the flavor of my meat be pleasing to the Gatherers, O God, that my soul may be acceptable in your sight.”

But what if their bodies were not acceptable? Punishment, of course. Same as here at the farm. Bad free people spent eternity burning in hell. Unacceptable livestock got an eternity of brutal canings, or were locked up forever in a small metal box. Blue looked at her own body. She had worked hard to keep it well shaped, but repeated stretchings and bloatings from growing, kicking babies had inevitably wrought unwelcome changes. She glanced around at the perfect, svelte figures of the sixteen-year-olds. Was commendable baby production as pleasing to the Gaths as narrow waists, flat bellies, unmarred skin, taut boobs and pink virgin nipples? Would they take into account that those elegant young bodies had never had to make room inside for a new human being the size of a basketball? That those proud, firm tits had never had to carry a heavy load of milk? Would the flavor of a well-endowed mom be as acceptable to God and the Gatherers as that of a fresh young teen?

Probably not. But why be concerned? Eternal damnation was horse manure. The stick that went with the carrot. If her body wasn't good enough or tasty enough for God and the Gaths, tough shit. She hadn't asked to be harvested. She'd prayed her last prayer to that two-faced, unjust, make-believe “God” at age twelve. What all those praying girls in this holding shed didn't know and would never accept was that their destiny was not the plan of some absurdly unfair God; they were merely the victims of a self-serving deal struck generations ago by desperate humans in order to save their own asses.

All Blue needed to help her through this final ordeal was the sweet memory she had just created with a man who had accepted her body and being unequivocally and made love to it with a furious, end-of-time passion.

As she lay in his arms, her thoughts drifted to a subject that had often worked its way into daily conversations in the dorms, nursing rooms and dining halls of Foxbush. What would she taste like? How would she be cooked? Cannibalism was still taboo, even on the breeding farms, so humans did not partake of the human meat they were raising, and the Gaths were characteristically silent on the subject. That left lots of room for speculation. Was girl meat sweet or gamey? Was the texture more like pork or beef?

And for the millionth time she wondered what it was like to live like free people with no preordained destiny laid out for them, with no idea where all those future years would lead. She had always begrudged them their long, long lives — lifetimes three or four times her own — and the freedom to spend those years exploring the wide world and its many exotic treasures, adventures she could only experience vicariously on CompuTV.

She thought about the wasteful way free people buried or burned up perfectly edible flesh that the Gaths would probably pay good money for, if offered. But it was never offered. Why, she wondered bitterly, was it good business to breed and raise humans to sell to the Gaths for meat, but unthinkable to sell the meat of freshly dead free men and women? She knew the answer, of course. It was the caste system of the Gath era. Free citizens were real people. Farm-raised humans were not. Like all other livestock raised to be food, they were kept strictly out of sight and comfortably out of mind. The only free people who ever came in contact with Blue were the Foxbush staff and the occasional outside stud who paid handsomely to fuck pretty, young, anonymous human females. There was no official record of her existence outside the Foxbush Genetics Department because there was no need for it. The laws that applied to real people did not apply to her in her fenced-off stockyard. Her invisible life and profitable meat were merely an insignificant part of the happy deal that enabled free citizens to live long, self-important, unthreatened lives, indulge their pretensions and congratulate themselves on the elegance of their accommodation with the Gaths.

Eventually sleep did come for Blue, but there was no rest in it. She was locked in an iron cage and the water was rising. Then she was pursued through an endless chain of rooms, chased by unseen men with steak knives. She was trapped at the top of a stone tower where flesh-eating birds circled overhead, their razor beaks clattering. Seven children had tied her to a stake and were piling kindling at her feet as they discussed whether she would be best rare or well done.

With each emergence into consciousness came a more intense awareness that time was slipping away. She wanted to crush herself against Rush, absorb the comfort of his body there in the narrow bunk. Yet she would not allow herself that solace. For some reason it seemed more important to appear strong. Was aloneness strength?

Rush was battling his own demons in the form of a massive black dog leaping at his throat. A fierce anger welled up in him and he swung a fist at the beast, determined to kill him with his bare hands. It was Blue who caught the brunt of his rage, crying out as his hand slammed into her arm. He awoke with a jolt and in a moment she was gathered into his arms, being rocked in a torrent of kisses and apologies.

That led, as Blue hoped it would, to a rejoining of their bodies for one last indulgence of love-making. As darkness dissolved in the brightening glow of morning, their thrusting was slow, tender and rhythmic, their touches gentle, caressing. Their fingers memorized the curves and textures of their bodies, Blue's tears seasoning their kisses. They climaxed together, his hands on her breasts, hers over his, her ankles locked behind his back, pulling him into her as she cried out in her ecstasy. Gradually his spasms became more erratic, less urgent. Then ceased. Yet she would not let him go. They remained enjoined though a long bittersweet afterglow, their eyes closed against the light streaming through the barred windows near the top of the room, ushering in their final hours.

All her life Blue had known the number of her days. Even if she had been allowed to carry one more child she would not have seen her twenty-third birthday. It was not permitted. The Gath's weren't interested in mutton. They wanted young, tender flesh, mostly female. Every month past a girl's twenty-second birthday meant a huge reduction in what they were willing to pay for her meat. From the company's point of view, the bottom line did not justify an eighth baby from Blue. She had become more valuable for her meat.

Blue thought about this as she lay quietly gazing up at Rush's beautiful face, milking the wilted rod of his manhood with her sperm-slicked vaginal muscles in the sweet hope of reviving it. Her demotion from mom to meat as a matter of economics had been no surprise since it had been scheduled irrevocably from the same moment she'd been declared a breeder, but it had started her thinking about another economic mystery that had never been solved.

The Gath's paid for their harvest in gold bullion. Where the hell did all that bullion come from? No one had ever figured it out. At this point, of course, no one really cared any more. Human livestock was easy to raise, and obscenely profitable. Special contracts with the Gath's had enabled entrenched rulers to empty their prisons and get rid of political opponents at a profit. For better or worse politically, the world was a far more peaceful place. When insurrections or hostilities of any kind broke out, entire armies, militias and armed bands would disappear. Individual terrorists fared somewhat better, temporarily; but when the Gaths showed no reluctance to depopulate huge regions to cure the disease, they soon faced exposure by frightened friends and neighbors. When even one member of an organization was made known to the Gaths, it wasn't long before all members, along with their entire extended families, would gather together and disappear, leaving their clothes behind. The whistle blowers, however, were not only spared but showered with enough gold bullion to live out the rest of their lives in magnificent luxury. Another carrot and stick that had worked so well terrorism had long ago ceased to exist.

In the midst of her reflections, Blue felt a sudden tingling in her head, and with it an irresistible urge to strip naked. She and Rush broke their embrace simultaneously, rolled out of bed and quickly shucked their white robes. Indeed, the entire room was instantly filled with activity. The clattering and squeaks of emptying bunks blended with the rustle of terrycloth as robes slipped off eleven hundred young bodies and landed in soft bundles next to bare feet.

It's begun, she thought. Shouldn't I at least try to resist? She struggled to ignore an overwhelming desire to walk to the center of the room, but the need was too great. She could no more stop herself than fly. Everyone in the room was pressing toward the center and she went with them.

She noticed that it was a little difficult to see, as though they were in a light fog. She looked for the infamous gray wall but saw only the walls of the holding shed. Why would she have expected otherwise? The wall always formed outside of the building during harvests. A part of her mind was amazed that she could think these rational thoughts and at the same time be unable to resist irrational urges.

It had become impossible to move. Bodies were packed tightly around her, all females except for Rush directly behind her. She tried to turn so she could face him, but it was too late. The crowd was too compacted. She couldn't move. She looked over her shoulder and he caught the dismay in her eyes. He kissed the back of her neck and forced his hands around her until he was able to slide them over her breasts. When she tried to thank him, the words wouldn't form in her mouth. She could only nestle back into him and wiggle a little, letting him nuzzle her hair, mussed into a blond tangle from their multiple liaisons during the night and this morning. Her breasts were already beginning to ache with the need to be emptied, but she said nothing, even when he squeezed too hard.

Groans called her attention to the outside perimeter of crowded nudes. Something invisible seemed to be tightening around the entire group, constricting them into a circle so tightly packed that she could barely inhale. Is this how they were to be slaughtered? Death by overcrowding? Didn't make any sense. A clumsy way kill eleven-hundred livestock. Un-Gathlike. Didn't fit the profile. Struggling to breathe, she hardly noticed when the walls of the shed disappeared.

What she did notice was a sudden relief from the press of bodies around her. She staggered a little as the crowd shifted. A painful brightness blinded her, forcing her eyes shut. She gulped in two lungfuls of air, placed her hands on top of Rush's to hold them to her breasts and gradually opened one eye into a narrow squint to see what was happening. Nearly everyone had clapped their hands over their eyes against the incredible brightness. The world had changed. The walls, ceiling and floor of the holding shed were gone. The bunks were gone. The pale gray fog was gone. The whiteness was so dazzling it took her a while to realize she was looking at walls. New walls. Rush had buried his face in her hair to protect his own eyes since Blue would not relinquish his hands. Gradually the pack of humanity loosened as they expanded outwards, squinting and blinking against the intense light.

Blue felt a new tingling in her brain and a moment later was caught up in an overpowering need to go through a doorway. She glanced around trying to locate a door. There were several along one wall. For two seconds, maybe three, she ground her teeth and tried to resist, but it was hopeless. Rush was gently trying to free his hands. She released them and walked away from him, toward the doors. One part of her wanted to turn, kiss him, tell him goodbye, but the need to go through one of those doors was as strong as her need to breathe. Stronger! It was urgent! It was terribly, terribly urgent that she go through a door! It didn't matter which door! Whichever one she could get through the fastest! She scrambled forward, shoving her way through the crowd of girls, every one of them intent on the same purpose, some of them crying, torn between their burning need to reach the doors and the dreadful knowledge that the doors led to death.


Review This Story || Author: C. A. Smith
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