A Good Wife.

By DX

Copyrighted 1997, 12/2024, all rights reserved.

 Jackie clutched her number, letting the woman behind her in line go ahead of her. She watched the butchers working, and timed their progress so that it would be Brenda to wait on her. The women behind the glass counter, their smocks stained with blood, raised and dropped their cleavers with blinding speed, and severed bone and sinew with clean, crisp cuts. 

 Jackie wondered what it would feel like lying on the cold butcher's block.

 She would soon know.

 She fished the letter out of her purse and read it again.  Her fingers felt the raised watermark and the embossed print.  By now she had memorized it.  The medical tests were final and official. She was barren. Her chances of carrying a child to term were non-existent.

 "What'll it be today?" Brenda smiled, calling her over. "We have some fine cuts of veal."

 Jackie didn't bother to look. "Can we talk?" She whispered.

 Brenda looked confused. "Sure." She whispered, not knowing why. "Come on back."

 As Jackie walked to the end of the counter, she eyed the cuts of meat and wondered if they were anyone she knew. She had mixed emotions that day long ago in high school as she stood next to Brenda and all the other girls crowding around to read the posted results. The smart girls got careers, next went vocational, then service and then meat.  Jackie was meat, but she also tested as fertile, a rare trait, and she tested high enough so that she wouldn't simply be cattle. She was sold to a loving husband, with hopes to bear his children. Hopes that dashed with the arrival of the letter that said there had been an error in her first test, and subsequent testing were not positive.

 Brenda lead her to the back room. "So what's with all the whispering?" Brenda whispered.

 Jackie showed her the letter. "I need a favor."

 Brenda read the letter slowly, her lips moving as she did.

 Jackie jumped to the gist. "I can't have kids." Brenda looked confused, not understanding. "I'm useless as a wife and Brian won't take me back to the agency."

 "Why not?"

 "The clod loves me." She moaned, loving him for it. "But the problem is we can't afford to get another wife. We can't even afford me. And Brian wants a son so badly."

 "That and the government check." Brenda pointed out knowing about the government subsidies for any household raising a male child. An important fact in a world where women out numbered the males 21 to 4.

 The planet could not support its 9.5 billion residents. The oceans were dead, polluted beyond recovery. The topsoil had blown away because of over development and excessive farming. Agricultural terrorists took care of what was left, leaving billions of people with only one thing to eat.

 Humans.

 Believing that Men were the root of all problems, feminist radicals released a virus into the air that killed only men, and made births of male children next to impossible; leaving Women to rule a ruined world, with the only solution to quell the starving, riotous population, was to eat them. 

 Women became cattle, milked, and breed, and slaughtered.

 "Here's my plan." Jackie confided. "I'm going to save all of our food allowance until I have enough to buy Brian a new wife."

 Brenda's brow furrowed as she thought. "But then, if you don't buy food, what will you eat?"

 Jackie lifted the hem of her skirt showing her long, shapely leg. "I need you to do me a favor..."

 "You can't be serious!" Brenda gasped.

 "Brian needs a wife to take care of him and bear him a son. I will take care of him until the new wife arrives."

 Brenda ran the plan though her mind. "You mean you want to do this in parts?"

 "I know you can do it. You're the best butcher in the county. You can make me last long enough so that Brian won't be alone before the new wife arrives. He can't care for himself.  It's illegal."

 "But Jackie..." Brenda protested. "I'm not that good. A new fertile wife costs so much. It’s impossible!"

 "Then get me as close as you can. Brenda, right now, legally, I’m meat.”  She held up the letter.  “I no longer have rights as a person.  I’m only sitting here because the State hasn’t the staff to come pick me up.  And if they did, I'd only end up here, or worse, a processing plant.”  A tear rimmed her eye.  “I’m meat.  It’s all I'm qualified for. In the time I have, I want to see Brian get a new wife. I want to give him something special for being the guy he is."

 Brenda chewed her lip. "Okay." She agreed reluctantly. "Wait here. We close in a half hour, we can do it then."

 Jackie felt tears welling in her eyes. "Thank you."

 Brenda turned away, plodding back to her counter as Jackie found herself a seat. Jackie stared down at her legs. Beautiful, shapely twins. She drew an imaginary line a few inches above her right knee.

 "Excuse me, Ma'am?"

 Jackie was startled by the little voice calling to her. She looked up, surprised to see a wall of women, fresh from their graduation. They were naked, bound at the feet and wrists with a leash about their necks to hold them against the wall. They huddled together not for cold, but for shame.

 Jackie suddenly realized that although she had been a wife for only a short time, she had come to regard meat as inanimate objects. For one to address her was not only illegal, but really weird.

 "Excuse me." The dark haired girl at the end spoke. "I couldn't help but overhear. You’re really going to have yourself cut up slowly? I mean, you don't have to."

 "I love my husband." Was Jackie's only defense.

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