My wife was sobbing in my arms. It was like holding on to a shaking bag of bones, she was so skinny back then. We were outside the temporary offices the Centers for Disease Control had set up around the country. It was a lovely, cool, early spring day.

“So it’s positive,” I said.

She wiped her nose on my shoulder. “Of course it’s positive. They’re all positive. They’re always positive—”

She tucked her head back into my chest. Then you shouldn’t have chimed in, I thought. You shouldn’t have done it. What was the point of it? Who did it help?

Me saying that, even thinking it, wouldn’t have helped. So I kept quiet. From all my years with her, I’d learned the best thing you could do sometimes is just shut up and hug.

Inside, we talked with one of the government’s doctors. Maybe a week, maybe less. Some women, they lasted a couple of days. You could practically hear the changes taking place in women like that, like some people claim they can hear corn growing during July. Not my wife. Her body, it was stronger. The doctor predicted it would take some time.

I didn’t know whether that was a kindness or a horror. I wondered what she’d look like on the way through it.

On the ride home, we were silent. My wife, she stared out the window, trying to take in as much of the world as she could, until she couldn’t, anymore. Until she didn’t care about anything, anymore, except for what between my legs. And not just my own legs.

“Manny. Promise you’ll take care of me.”

“I’ll take care of you. As best I can.”

“Don’t put me into one of those places they’re building. Please take care of me. In our home.”

That struck me as selfish. And then my reaction struck me as unworthy. I was her husband. This was a sickness, and I promised I would take care of her in more than just health.

“I’ll take care of you.” I wondered whether enough of her would be left to care if I didn’t. I wondered if enough of her would be left to know if I put in her one of the shelters.

I would take care of her. I was her husband. I promised her. I would do it.

I would.

* * *

We held each other closely that first night. She still seemed herself. Her breath was garlicky, thanks to the stir fry I’d cooked for dinner. I didn’t mind. My breath smelled of it, too.

The next morning, her breasts had gotten larger. My wife was so skinny at that time—professional power-woman pantsuit slender—that any change to her body was noticeable.

“They’re bigger,” she said. She was standing before the mirror, looking at herself from the side, holding them up. “Meatier.”

“That’s a gross word.”

“But they are,” she said. “Fleshier, already. Maybe I won’t last a week.”

She said it matter-of-factly, as if she’d acclimated to the prospect. That’s how she usually dealt with bad news: coldly, clearly. Like when her father died.

“They are larger,” I agreed. “But you’ll last a week. Maybe longer.”

She grimaced. “Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s go, now.”

That day, we went to the natural history museum. We walked among the dinosaurs and mammals and those weird bronze statues of aborigines from tribes all over the world. Nineteenth-century figures, made when scientists thought they could produce definitive typologies of races and suss out who rightfully belonged on the top and who deserved to be beneath them.

Now, of course, we knew. Thanks to the hashtag, we knew who was headed to the bottom. My wife was one of them. She didn’t deserve it—none of them did—but they would.

At lunch, my wife had a salad and a glass of white wine. I had a hamburger and a Coke. My tastes, they were always lower than my wife’s. We both appreciated that. She was the civilized one, the cultivated one, and I was the beast. Woman and man, just like civilization had made us.

My wife considered the wine in her hand. She loved wine, loved to drink it, loved the taste of a good oaked chardonnay more than anything. “I wonder when—”

She stopped. She looked at me, stricken. She’d lost her train of thought.

I said, “Everyone spaces off. I do it. It doesn’t mean anything.”

She set down her wine and looked away.

“C’mon, finish the glass,” I said. “We have to go see the aquarium. You love the aquarium.”

She looked at me. “I do?” She was genuinely confused.

It was starting. No, it had already started, with those bigger breasts.

“Yes, you do. Please. Finish your wine, so we can go.”

* * *

That night, the second night, we held each other close. As my wife was drifting off, she began kissing my neck. Delicately. Her breath smelled sweet, soft. Mild. Some kind of berry scent.

The scent. It made my cock stir. And I realized: It was going to be a scent. A scent would be what happened to me.

I pushed her away. “Hey.”

“Mmm,” she said. “Love you.”

“I love you too,” I said. “But don’t.”

She stirred. “Don’t what?”

“You were kissing me.”

It was pitch dark, but I could hear her frown. “I was?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know.”

“We probably shouldn’t. You know. . . .”

She turned away from me. A few moments later, the bed was shaking. She was crying.

I wanted to comfort her. But touching her, holding her, would only make things happen faster. I turned away. After she fell asleep, I went and jacked off in the garage for relief.

* * *

“Still bigger,” she said.

She was staring at herself in the mirror. Her breasts, they had rounded up and were overflowing her hands.

“Right?” she said, turning to me.

Her face was changing. Her lips were puffier. Her skin was softer, lighter—I think maybe her pores were tightening up a little. Her hair was lighter. Her ass seemed to have swelled a little, too.

“I guess,” I said. I didn’t want to let on that I thought she looked good. That I liked the new flesh, the new curves.

“Goddamn it,” she said. “I thought maybe it was my period. You know, just water. That the fucking test was wrong, that it hadn’t happened to me—”

She sat down heavily on the bed, taking her head in her hands.

“They’re still looking for the guy,” I said. “The guy who did this. They think maybe he’s in Southeast Asia, in Thailand. They’ll find him—”

“And then what?” Her glaring eyes were thick and red. “What’ll they do? Make him reverse it? Make him ‘take it back’? You’ve heard the reports. Nothing left. Just a mouth and bazonga tits and a needy, hungry cunt.”

I winced. I didn’t like that my wife was talking dirty. What I didn’t like about it was that I liked it. It took me a long time to figure that out.

“They can fix this. They’re looking for a way to fix this.”

My wife wailed to the ceiling. “I didn’t know this would happen!”

“I know—”

“I DIDN’T KNOW!”

I reached out for my wife. She fought at first. But then she let me hold her, and comfort her. I loved her.

Her breasts, they were enormous, and very warm. And her breath, it smelled of strawberries, even though it was the morning and she hadn’t brushed, yet.

“The art museum,” I said. “Let’s go there next.”

She snorted. “Art,” she said. “Just a bunch of naked women. They’re gonna be everywhere soon.”

“We’ll check out the Northern nudes. They won’t do anything to you. They don’t do anything to me. Or anyone, really.”

My wife, she chuckled.

* * *

At the museum, we weren’t the only people who had the same notion, that we should take in the sights, the sounds, the experiences, while there was still time.

A woman with flaming pink short hair was walking her black-haired, long-tressed girlfriend through the galleys, slowly.

This was black hair: “I don’t . . . don’t get it . . . no, wanna go home—”

Here was pink hair: “C’mon, love. You know. The museum. C’mon, the Kollwitz prints, they’re right over here. You love Kollwitz. Your Master’s thesis, right? Kollwitz.”

Black hair: “Cammie’s head hurts.”

Pink hair: “Baby, your name is Carmella.”

Black hair: “Cammie. It’s name is Cammie.”

Pink hair: “Love. Come on. Over here. It’s right over here.”

Pink hair was fighting. She was fighting for her love. Her love, black hair, was dying right before her eyes.

Black hair, she said. “Fuck. Wanna fuck. You wanna me t’lick yer pussy? Lick your yummy pink puss?”

Before pink hair could respond, black hair knelt and trundled underneath pink hair’s skirt. Pink hair yipped and skipped away and shouted at black hair to stop.

Black hair tilted her head and frowned, like a dog whose mistress had told it to scram. She crawled on all fours toward pink hair.

The marking, the brand that was coming, was right on her face—a slash across her forehead. I wasn’t close enough to read it, but I saw it, like a soot smear from Ash Wednesday. Transfiguring, and transformative.

I hoped the marking wouldn’t show up on my wife’s forehead. It would appear somewhere on her body, but I hoped it’d be someplace discreet.

The people around us, they knew what was happening. Everyone knew. Most looked on with sadness. Some walked away.

“I need to go,” said my wife. “I can’t stay here. Get me out of here.”

I’d been so transfixed by the tragedy of black hair and pink hair that I hadn’t noticed my wife was trembling.

We left the museum and drove to the park. I bought her a latte, and we sat by the enormous lake, and we watched the swans, and she cried, and I did what I could, but there was nothing I could do, and we both knew it. Many women around the lake were doing the exact same thing, and they were being comforted by their husbands, or their boyfriends, or their girlfriends.

“I didn’t know,” she said. She was talking about her action, the choice she had made, the same choice half a billion women around the world had made.

“I know. I’m sorry. Nobody knew.”

My wife, she raged. “That fuck. Please tell me. Please tell me they’ll find that fuck.”

My wife and I, we held each other, and we watched the swans swim by.

* * *

That night, I woke to a sound in the bathroom.

“Babe,” I said, knocking. “Babe, what’re you doing.”

Only a moan. I turned the handle on the door.

“D-don’t,” something in the bathroom said. It had the voice of my wife.

I opened the door. A humid and thick scent of strawberries wafted out. On the toilet was my wife. Her top half was covered by the green T-shirt she’d fallen asleep in. Her bottom half was covered by nothing at all. Her legs were spread. The T-shirt covered her vagina, but I could tell she was masturbating with the blunt edge of our electric toothbrush.

“Please. Help me—guh-guh-god—”

I rushed to her, grabbed her wrists. The strawberry scent was overwhelming, dizzying. I began to feel the scent working on me, too.

“Stop this,” I said. “You need to stop this. It’ll only make it happen faster.”

She pushed the toothbrush inside of herself. “Faster—yes, please, fasser an’ fasser—”

Another wave of the strawberry scent. My own head was swimming. Like I’d taken two Vicodin and they were hitting. I had to work fast.

I squeezed the bones in her wrists as hard as I could. She yelped and dropped the toothbrush-vibrator. It buzzed and scuttled on the tile like a swatted wasp.

The strawberry scent. I had to get rid of it. I tossed her trembling, lust-drugged body into the bathtub. I flipped on the bathroom fan and opened a window. Then I turned on the cold water full-blast. My wife, she shrieked and tried to pull herself out of the tub, but I crawled in and sat on her chest.

Her chest. It was so much larger, now. Her breasts so round and firm, like soft, strong, bouncy cantaloupes.

Stop, she screamed. Let me out. Get offa me. Get offa me you goddamned fucking prick lemme go lemme go lemme go lemme go—

The strawberry smell, it was killing me. All I wanted to do was fill her closest hole as hard and as fast as I could. That’s what any straight or mostly straight male in proximity would do to her, now. That strawberry scent would draw them in like ants to a carcass.

My wife thrashing under me, I flipped the spigot and turned on the shower. Shocks of cold water brought me back to myself. Then I grabbed the bar soap and frothed up my wife’s labia. I rammed a soapy cold finger into her vagina and began scooping around it, scraping out the strawberry-scented aphrodisiac. Her secretions were warm, soft, gooey. They were the pink of impatiens flowers. And her vagina was quite literally sucking on my finger, like it had gained the muscles of a mouth.

Her vagina was also hairless. All of her pubic hair had fallen out and was floating in the tub. Her genitals were making the transition from vagina to cunt.

My wife now traded one form of thrashing for another. She was moaning and wriggling. “Yeah—finger me—fuck yeah—”

I wasn’t trying to arouse her. I was trying to save myself so I could help save her. I was trying to clean her out, scour away the strawberry-scented ooze and get rid of the pheromones her vagina was pumping out before they wrecked me and made me wreck her.

But I had to be careful. I had to keep cleaning her out, and quickly, but if I made her orgasm, it was pretty much over. No days left. I thought about picking up the pace, bearing down into her, making her cum just then. “The Mercy Orgasm,” they called it. Finish her off. It’d be better than prolonging things, letting her linger. Right?

But I was selfish. I didn’t want my wife to go away. She’d be gone too soon. So I held my breath, slowed my pace, and kept on fingering out dollop after dollop of her new, gooey, strawberry secretions. Her pink lube eddied and slithered down the drain like pumpkin snot. Once most of it was gone, I shut off the water and sat on my wife until her struggles ebbed.

We waited. She slowly came back to herself.

“Manny,” she said. She couldn’t look at me.

“Babe.” I brought her a towel and helped her out of the tub. We lit up our fireplace and sat in front of the blaze, talking softly, staring at the flames.

“I couldn’t stop myself,” she said. “It’s like I was dreaming. I watched myself wake up, I saw myself walk to the bathroom, I watched as my hand took up the toothbrush—”

I stroked her temple. “It’s not your fault.”

“I wonder how many days we lost. There’s no way it’s a week, now.”

I couldn’t argue. We’d lost time.

“Is that what it’s going to be like? Me watching myself from inside? Seeing and feeling what’s left of me doing THAT?”

“I’m going to take care of you. I promise. I’m going to take care of you through all of this.”

She snorted. “You won’t be able to help yourself, either. Admit it. The scent was driving you crazy. The berries.”

I sighed, then nodded. “Yeah, it was.”

“It changes you, too. It makes you not care. Nobody will care.”

“I’ll always care,” I said.

She snorted. “God. And the worst part. . . .”

I waited. I knew what she was going to say. Everyone said it, eventually.

“It felt so . . . fucking . . . GOOD.”

* * *

The next morning, my wife sleeping, I sipped coffee and flipped through the news channels. I didn’t stay on any one station for long. News of the sexapocalypse washed over me.

“—easily half a billion women worldwide—”

“—wives and daughters, mothers and grandmothers—”

“—effects on the transitioning community particularly bizarre—”

“—the CDC, NIH, and WHO report no progress—”

“—red light districts and brothels now irrelevant—”

“—some church leaders calling it, and I quote, ‘God’s just wrath toward women worshipping before the idol of feminism and women’s liberation’—”

“—containment centers more like kennels—”

“—a recommendation from the Department of Agriculture to contain all animals, particularly horses—”

“—congressmen calling for registration, chipping, and regulation for the sale and safety of—”

All the anchors and reporters were men. Not one female journalist was left to report.

I turned off the television. For once, endless media coverage was proper. One world was ending; a new one was dawning. Three hundred years of progress recognizing the dignity and equality of women ending in an orgasmic car wreck.

The man who had done this, he had a simple message. Postindustrial society had let women become strong at the expense of men. He was restoring what he considered to be the natural order by removing the bravest, strongest women from the social equation.

And how had that man identified those women? And infected them with his nanites?

By targeting the women who had identified themselves as brave and strong. The half-billion, like my wife, who had chimed in on social media that day. They identified themselves all over the Internet—and that’s how the bastard’s nanites knew who they were. Slowly, through the air, through the water, the nanites made their way to those women, infected them, and began remaking them.

Some transformations were common to all women. Loss of IQ. Little impulse control. Natural docility. Uncontrollable arousal. All these things were happening to all of the infected, including my wife. They were devolving into their own worst nightmares. They were becoming what they hated.

“Manny,” a breathy voice cooed. My wife was awake. I turned to see my nightmare-yet-dream.

While some changes were common to all women, the nanites worked individual magic, too. My wife’s particular modifications were on full display. Her hair, once a shoulder-length mousy brown, was a long, shiny shade of nuclear pink. Her eyes glowed crystal blue. Bee-stung lips pouted out like the bad plastic surgery of some cheap eastern European model starving for a sugar daddy. Her skin was smooth, flawless.

I was horrified, and horrifically aroused.

She held out her hands. “Look.” Her fingernails had turned as pink as her hair. Her toenails too.

She walked toward me on long, strong legs. Her breasts swelled against the soft gray fabric of her T-shirt, nipples like bullets. The T-shirt bore the name of the law school she had attended. Soon she wouldn’t be smart enough to even read the words on her own chest.

“It’s happening so fast,” she said. “Last night accel—. Acc—.” She struggled for the right word, then dropped it. “Made it go faster. Faster, so much faster.”

I nodded.

“And these boobs,” she said. She brought both hands up and hefted each one, smiling sadly. “I guess maybe it’s not too bad. You’re a boob guy, right? You like big titties?”

A couple of days ago she’d have said that with scorn. Now she was honestly weighing the bright side.

“Big boobies,” she cooed. Through her shirt she rolled an enormous nipple between her thumb and fingers. She gasped, and her mouth fell open.

“Don’t,” I said. “C’mon. Let’s get you dressed. Let’s go outside.”

She dropped her hands. “Manny, it’s dangerous. That girl at the museum, the other day—I dunno what her lezzie dyke girlfriend was thinking, bringing her out like that—”

“We’ll be careful. We’ll stay away from people.”

“—she’d’a fucked anything and anyone out there. And I’d’a do it now, too. I’d do it, too. Me, too, me, too, me, too—”

I flashed on last night, pink strings twirling down the drain. My wife, she was going. Her brain was leaking away.

My crotch felt suddenly cold. I realized I’d been leaking this whole time. The lube, the strawberry scent. It was everywhere, now. There was a pat-pat-pat sound. Looking down, where my wife was standing, something syrupy was falling out of her.

I grabbed her arm and muscled her to the bathroom. “Go. Clean. Cold water, now. We need to get out of this house and get some air.”

“Manny, I’m so sorry, I can’t help it—”

“It’s not your fault, I know. But hurry. Shower, NOW!” And I shoved her into the bathroom so hard she nearly fell. I slammed the door and fled to the kitchen.

I felt guilty pushing her, but there was no time left. We’d thought we’d had a week, but last night had blown it. Today was the day I’d say goodbye to my wife.

I washed off my precum in the kitchen sink, dried up, and dressed. Hurry, hurry. But where to go? What to see? I decided on a park far, far outside of town. She loved the place, and it would be pretty isolated this time of year. If she had to go, it’d be best for her to go there.

In the kitchen, as I packed a picnic lunch, I heard my wife leave the bathroom for the bedroom to dress. I finished making lunch and waited for my wife to emerge. Five minutes passed. I cleaned the kitchen. Then ten minutes. She was taking way too long.

I knocked on the bedroom door. “Babe,” I said.

I heard soft crying.

I entered the bedroom to find my still-naked wife sitting on the bed. Clothes and shoes were everywhere. A shirt was half pulled up one leg. A high-heeled shoe was on a single hand. One sock was on her head. The other sock was draped across what had been her breasts but now could only be described as a gunned-out pair of titanic tits.

Her eyes were bovine. “Manny. I dunno how to put on this stuff. It’s too hard. I don’ ’member—”

I shushed her. Holding my breath against the strawberries, I helped my wife dress.

* * *

We drove fast to the park, windows open to whisk away the pheromones. It wasn’t working well, and my focus was poor. My wife periodically stuck her head out of the window, laughing, brilliant pink hair flapping behind her. The simple pleasure of moving fast and a strong wind. When bugs flew in her mouth, she ate them.

It was early spring, so the weather was cool and the park empty. We walked the trails together, slowly, holding hands. Even outside, now, her scent was omnipresent. I could feel my own pulse.

“What’s that,” my wife said, pointing.

“A tree,” I said. “An ash tree. One of the few left.”

“Ash tree,” she said. She looked at it. “Why they going?”

“A bug,” I said. “A bug brought them all down.”

My wife nodded. “Sad. That’s sad.”

“Yes. It’s sad.” I squeezed her hand. Then I kissed her forehead. With the kiss, she gasped slightly, and the scent intensified.

Not long, now.

We kept walking. My wife, she stared up, squinted, pointed. “How ’bout that?”

“The Sun,” I said. “It’s called the Sun.”

“Warm,” she said. “Sun feels warm. And good.” She closed her eyes and smiled.

I couldn’t help it. I smiled, too. She looked so peaceful. Happy. Beatific. Then I noticed that, from her closed eyes, a trickle of tears streamed out. Light pink tears.

My wife hated pink. It was the girliest of the colors, and she hated girly. And now she was pink, breathed pink, smelled pink, dripped pink, oozed pink. Everything about my wife was pink, now. It’s like the nanites knew what she hated most and turned her into it.

Suddenly she held me close, and tightly. Strawberries swam in my head, everywhere. Soon I’d have no choice but to fuck her. Fuck her, or break my promise and abandon her.

“Warm,” she said. “Warm like you. You’re warm like Sun.”

“I guess, yeah. I guess I’ll be your Sun, now.”

She looked up at me. And then she dropped to her haunches and unbuckled my jeans and yanked them down to my ankles and pulled down my underwear. My cock flew out and hit her in the nose. A healthy string of precum slopped across her face.

She giggled. “Warm.” She gripped my cock by the base and moved in to suck me. But I gripped her hair and held her back.

“Lemme do it,” she keened. “Lemme take it in me. Wanna suck an’ make yu cum—”

“I know you do. I know you do. Listen to me. I love you. I love you. I’m sorry this happened to you, and I love you.”

Something of my wife swam back up. Some flicker of the woman who had been the Phi Beta Kappa and the law-school graduate and the wine aficionado and who had had two abortions because she hadn’t wanted a family to interfere with her career. The woman I fell in love with.

“Loved you too,” she said. “Loved you too.” But her eyes dropped, and her voice trailed off, and her whole world narrowed to my cock and what it could give her.

It was time. I took a deep breath and said, “Okay, baby. Go ahead. You can let go.”

I released my wife’s hair. Without any joy, she impaled her head on my cock. Her mouth was warm, soft, pliable. Her eyes rolled up until I could only see whites. Her face went slack, and her shoulders fell. And she winked out. My wife was gone.

We stayed like that a while. I felt very lonely.

Then she came back. Her eyes closed. A moment later, she began blowing me. First her tongue rolled around the underside of my shaft. Then her cheeks began pulsing slightly. She moved her head back and forth, slowly, along my cock. Her spit was tinged with pink. The cool spring air tickled my balls.

She opened her eyes. Nothing but an endless, crystal, lusty bimbo blue.

Across her shirt, two wet circles bloomed over her nipples. She was lactating. That was a rare effect. My wife, she’d never wanted children, never wanted to “leak like some goddamned farm animal,” she said. And yet here she was, leaking. On her haunches, brainlessly blowing me, like some goddamned farm animal.

I liked what I was seeing. But I was mourning. But I was horny. This was awful. No. It was incredible. She was incredible, and I felt fantastic.

The scent. It was working.

I wondered whether her tits would stop growing, or if they’d keep going, like the fingernails and the hair of dead people in coffins. I shuddered. My wife was gone, but she wasn’t dead. Was she still inside there? Watching me? Judging me?

Best not to dwell. I’d never know.

Fuck it. I promised I’d take care of her. I knew what I had to do. It was my turn, now.

I breathed deeply, deeply, as deeply as I could, drawing the strawberry smell into myself. I relaxed into it. It was okay, now. She was gone. It was okay to relax. It was okay to let go. I could let myself go.

I let the strawberries soak my brain, my mind, my whole self. If I didn’t live with the strawberries and work inside the pink, I wouldn’t be able to keep my wife, to help this female. This female, my female, she didn’t want to live in some kennel, she wanted me to take care of her, so this is what I had to do.

That’s what I told myself that day. It’s hard to remember. We’ve done so much since that day, and I’ve got a few more females I’m taking care of.

I shoved the bimbo off my cock and yanked her shirt off. I hadn’t helped her put on a bra—what heterosexual male knows how to help a woman put on a bra?—so those big boobies bounced right on out, droplets thapping on the dirt beneath her. Her areole were as pink as her hair. The sight thrilled me. I squoze one enormous hefty funbag, and pink milk doused my feet.

She shuddered and lowed. Like a cow. I liked that. My cock pulsed. Strawberries. So many strawberries. This bitch, I owned her, now. I owned it. She was mine.

I’d take care of her. Like any livestock. I was her husband. This was husbandry. It only made sense.

“Moo for me again,” I said. She complied. So she could still understand language, take orders. I rewarded her with another, even heartier squeeze. She liked it, I could tell, because she mooed even louder, almost a bellow.

“Good girl,” I said. The strawberries were everywhere now. You know what that was like. You can’t judge me. I’m taking care of her. You can’t judge me.

I knelt and engulfed one of her huge teats into my mouth. With an aching jaw I drank deep, deep, deep. Strawberry milk. It hit instantly. Intoxicating. I reeled. She hollered as I bore down and drained as much of her milk as I could.

I let her teat fall from my mouth and rose over her. I felt invincible. Dazed. Triumphant. I seized her hair, pink strands flowing between my fingers, and looked at her eyes, the cow eyes. “Suck my cock, cow. Suck my cock to get my cum.”

The cow happily plunged her head over my cock. With one hand she massaged the tit I hadn’t drained. Milk thrippled in dashes and dots across the dirt. Her other hand wriggled into her shorts to finger her sloppy, hairless pussy. Everything was wet warm sensation, and my dumb, happy cow looked at me with dumb, happy need.

I don’t know if she was in there. I don’t know that I cared. I can’t make myself care. The strawberry smell is everywhere, to make me not care.

It didn’t take long. The slut was superb at giving head, even to a cock as huge as mine. Tongue, cheeks, throat, motion—everything. Dumb whore, giving good cock. Good little animal.

I groaned. It was coming, I was coming. Here it came. I looked at my cow. As my balls flexed and my urethra unlocked and my taint muscles thrum-thrum-thrummed and my cum burst out and splashed at the back of her choking throat, it began to appear—the tattoo, the brand, the words that had started it all, that had let the evil man identify the strong, brave women and target them for the nanites that turned them all into breeding stock and men into their owners.

Half a billion women. If my wife hadn’t had joined in, she wouldn’t be my cow, and I wouldn’t be her owner. But she had, and she was, and I was, and that was it.

The dumb cow. Twenty years earlier, waitressing at a restaurant, some cheeky old man had pinched her ass. That was enough to make her chime in, to identify herself with righteous indignation, as if what happened to her was on a par with some of the truly horrific things that had happened to her peers.

It wasn’t my fault. It was hers, the stupid, petty, overreacting cunt. And if she was in there somewhere, she knew it. She knew this was her fault, the situation she found herself in. I’m absolutely sure of it.

She deserved this.

She swallowed, and swallowed, and swallowed, and as she swallowed, she came, because that’s what cum did to her now, cum was a fix, cows needed cum, all cows needed cum, any cum at all. She collapsed back onto the dirt, her tits flouncing, pink hair everywhere. A last final shot slopped out of my cock and onto her left nipple. With a finger she strung it up and slurped it down, looking at me with empty, happy eyes as she did.

Whether she was in there didn’t matter, anymore. Not to me, anyway.

“Love you, cowgirl,” I gasped. “I’ll keep you happy and full.”

The cow, it was so fucking stupid, now, it couldn’t talk. All it could do was be a cow. But it smiled like the happiest thing in the world, and it tenderly cleaned up my cock with its sloppy tongue and pouty lips. As she did, the brand, it magically appeared along the side of her neck, in a lovely, discreet place. Every guy who ever fucked her now would know what had happened to her. This fucking uppity woman who had dared to protest her station and announce her violation of the natural order and been properly and justly punished for it.

#MeToo, the little brand said. #MeToo.

---