Catherine Hewitt waved to the spiffily uniformed guard and shaped her air-gasping mouth into a forced smile h determined effort as she completed one 5-kilometer circuit and started on her second. "I'm just having so much fun," she moaned to herself through her tightly clenched jaws. Her well-equipped exercise room still waited for her patiently.

Twenty minutes later, she had completed her run and began her three-day a week workout with her weights. After twenty minutes and two circuits, she mounted her patented Stud-Master™. The adjustable height- base supported a saddle - a male torso from shoulder to knee - that was fitted with a jutting, 5 centimeter in diameter, three-speed vibrating "pommel." The pommel was more than simply ornamental. After twenty minutes on the Stud-Master™, Catherine stood unsteadily with a towel wrapped around her neck. Sweat dripped down her naked body. Her perspiration-dampened hair stuck plastered against her sweating scalp. Her rubbery legs still twitched with the last reverberations of her many orgasms. She couldn't quite catch her breath. Her slim, firm breasts rose and fell as her tight, toned abdomen heaved with every breath. Still a bit dizzy, she steadied herself with one hand on the smooth leather covering of her Stud- Master™. Her dog, as hyperactive as usual, ran his frantic circles around her feet and in and out between her legs.

The pommel, a fat cock-like appendage glistened, wet with her juices. She thought of him affectionately for all the pleasure and great workouts he had given her in the year that she had owned him. She had owned the Stud- Master™ for two years now and one appendage had already preceded this one. Fondly, she stroked him with her hand as one might pet a beloved kitten. Catherine always called him her "Old Faithful," and he never let her down. Her hand came away moist with the unmistakable evidence of her arousal. She squeezed him gently between her thumb and index finger and greatly admired his lordly girth, his achingly curved barrel, and his spongy-soft bulbous tip. Lastly, she ran her finger over the line of carefully sewn stitches that fastened the replaceable phallus onto the torso. Technology had once again improved on nature. Her Stud- Master™ was much superior to the filth-spewing, high-maintenance, unreliable original. Unfortunately, he was already a bit the worse for wear. Sadly, the thin dermis of male genitals did not make for very durable leather. The skins of most male genitals were rendered for glue, male fantasies aside, and only the cutest ones were put to such interesting purposes. The famous cock-skin coats were prized more for the scarcity of their raw materials and painstaking effort of their construction than for their durability.

After several long minutes, she recovered enough to take her shower. Catherine had a busy day ahead of her. She enjoyed her shower thoroughly and even looked forward to her scanty lunch limited to a 200 grams of fat-free yogurt. Fashion is a demanding mistress, she confessed to herself. Exquisite taste and sensibility did not suffice unless you had the toned and shaped body, properly coifed hair, and adeptly applied makeup to support your chic wardrobe. Many suffered for their art. She certainly did.

Later in the day, she stood on the balcony above her atelier at her easel with pencil in hand and searched for inspiration for her fall line. Catherine Hewitt was the designer of the most sought-after line of man-skin apparel. Curiously in other applications, the term 'jack' for the male of the human species had largely replaced the term 'man' except in literature courses. The rich, smoky aroma of tanned leather permeated the air. Brilliant afternoon light poured in through the skylight. Highly skilled workers moved efficiently from task to task - cutting and sewing - and beautiful leather garments emerged from stacked heaps of cured skins only to be whisked away to the warehouse for inventory control and storage before shipment to waiting retail outlets. When she felt this creative block, one solution was to return to the source and re-acquaint herself with her raw materials. Today, she would gather up her petite, chestnut-haired summer trainee, Julia Fossum, and head out to the country.

Julia sat beside Ms Hewitt in the sporty Puma. The car hurtled down the Interstate; its V8 engine devouring the miles voraciously. Top down, Julia's lustrous red-brown hair streamed back in the wind. Her dark sunglasses protected her green-brown eyes from the overpowering glare of the summer sun. She put her head back against the leather anti-whiplash cushion and relished the warmth of the sun on her face. Fortunately, she had used her sun-block foundation in the morning. Compared to her indoor, bookish life at Business School, her summer internship was turning out very well already. Julia felt lucky to work with Ms. Hewitt, whose name graced the most highly prized line of man-skin garments. Ms. Hewitt also had a great brownstone with a great exercise room, which boasted the latest equipment. She also had a great dog that she did not hesitate to kiss on the mouth, even in public.

"You know, Catherine," Julia said, a bit uncomfortable calling her boss by her first name despite Ms. Hewitt's explicit invitation, "I know our history, for sure, and I've read all about the industry and worked hard on the design side, but I've never visited a ranch or a processing plant - an abattoir. I'm a bit nervous, I must say."

"You're not one of those 'jack huggers,' are you?" Catherine responded, suddenly dreading that her young associate might be one of those tiring People for the Ethical Treatment of Males or PET'M, "Save the Males" types. The screening process was said to be thorough. Heads will role in Personnel. She tried to pick carefully, but so many young people went through some sort of radical phase. It was a part of growing up but a few, sadly, never out-grew it.

"Oh, no!" Julia protested. Wondering if the petition she had once signed in a sentimental moment in support of Prof Johnson's research made her a stag hag. "We had plenty of those "Save the Males" types on campus." She rolled her eyes. "They're always picketing or demonstrating about something or other. I don't know when they find time eat or sleep, let alone study - or have fun. Why can't they just grow up and let the rest of us alone to enjoy life. You know what though, there actually aren't all that many. They're just loud and obnoxious all out of proportion to their numbers."

Catherine rolled her eyes in turn and nodded her agreement eagerly. She knew too many people like that too.

The car passed a gang of about 20 males or jacks tidying up the side the road. They worked naked under their broad straw hats. Catherine approved of the hats because severe sunburns diminish the quality of their skins. Their bulky, angular bodies betrayed their 'otherness' as they sweated in the sun. Their general hirsuteness gave away their ineluctable link with the bestial. Two smiling young women in sunglasses wearing shorts, halter-tops, and the same straw hats cheerfully supervised them and waved back when Catherine waved. Seeing males like this, it was hard to believe that they had ruled the world for millennia. Like the dinosaurs, whom they far surpassed in violence and destruction, their day had clearly passed

Julia saw them too. The jacks were so cute! Adorable! She still remembered her tragic loss of innocence on that grim day in her generally happy childhood when she had learned that a steer or a jack actually had to die to give her a burger and not just donate some replaceable part of his body like a chicken gives eggs or a cow milk and cheese. She called the first person who told her otherwise a liar and she simply couldn't or wouldn't believe that life could be so cruel. She actually called her a dirty liar, reaching in her child's mind for a truly stinging adjective. She smiled at her naiveté, but after all, she was just a child then.

She had friends at college who never recovered from the shock. She had friends who wouldn't eat any meat at all. She had friends who wouldn't eat 'red' meat. They wouldn't eat beef, lamb or jacques - the flesh of jacks or males, but they were perfectly willing to eat chicken or fish. Then she had some friends who wouldn't eat jacques, the flesh of males, just like she had friends who wouldn't eat pork or shellfish. In fact, she even had a single acquaintance, a Wittigian feminist, who would eat only jacques - saying that she had too much empathy for the peaceful, trusting domestic creatures and for the beautiful, graceful wild creatures. Only jacks were fitting prey. Of those who ate jacques, some ate jacques only from the slaughterhouses, pronouncing the Hunt messy and unhygienic. Others ate only jacques harvested in the Hunt, pronouncing the slaughterhouses cruel and inhumane. On the rare occasions that she thought about it in any depth herself, she just got a terrible headache. All sorts of people populated her campus and she had all sorts of friends and acquaintances.

Her campus even boasted a small handful of liberated males - males who had survived all three years of the Hunt and earned most of the rights of citizenship. Curiously, they were never ever seen at the PET'M demonstration - People for the Ethical Treatment of Males. Several of them were even known to eat jacques themselves. The male appetite was awe-inspiring.

"I've just never been around males much," Julia began. "My mother tells me that I once had an older brother. She signed him over for the bonus when I was born and bought us a larger apartment. Our housemates all had girls. My friends and I played "Hunt" with the joeys in the neighborhood, but they disappeared when they reached puberty and started to become interesting, if you know what I mean."

Catherine remembered her childhood and shook her head knowingly. She noted her exit up ahead and eased the Puma to the right. The car hugged the banked cloverleaf and charged up the step grade without complaint. The rustic two-lane highway to the ranch was only lightly traveled.

Julia continued with the familiar recitation. "I know the story. It's all very simple and logical. Limitation of male numbers saved our world and our species - the human race. War is something we read about in school - when you can't pick a more interesting or relevant alternative like the ceramics or fashion - and violent crime is rare. Rape is something you learn about from historical dramas. Our ancestors were faced with the challenge of culling the male population and keeping the number of adult males below 10% of the adult population. The Hunt is one institution and the ranches are a second.

"Right!" Catherine picked up the recitation. "Have you ever hunted?"

Julia shook her head, no.

"Well, I have," Catherine continued with her eyes focused on the road ahead. "Just once. I had no idea - no idea at all - of what I was doing but I went with some friends who did - fortunately, they did. I bought a really great, great outfit and great, rugged hiking shoes. It seemed we were just hiking in the woods and then suddenly a huge jack popped up out of nowhere. His male paraphernalia bounced and flapped as he ran. By the time that I even lifted my bow, he was already down. A clean kill. No suffering. Martha and Ashley gutted him. It was so fascinating - like high school biology class."

"I've never hunted, it sounds too dangerous, but I do eat meat - when my diet lets me - and you know that I just love to wear leather," Julia explained. "No matter what though, you know, I just can't imagine slaughtering a male solely for his meat or skin. But if a male is already taken in the Hunt or humanely slaughtered as a part of the culling process, why let him go to waste. It's only practical," she concluded, steering well clear of the common female vice of sentimentality. "And respectful," she concluded with the accepted aesthetic prejudice against waste.

Just then, a large chattel truck popped up over the top of the hill up ahead and rumbled noisily towards them. Catherine gritted her teeth in preparation for the unavoidable unpleasantness and slid her car over the right to allow the larger truck ample room and then some. No one crowded a chattel truck except perhaps another chattel truck.

The truck rushed by. A full load of fifty jacks was evident inside. Some of the jacks were White and some were Black. Once males had slaughtered each other over the colors of their skins. It was hard to believe - but true - that once the thin layer of epidermis was scraped away in processing, their processed skins - colored blue from the chromium salts - would be completely indistinguishable. Within a week, their tanned, dyed skins might very well be the raw material in her atelier. With the truck's substantial speed rumbling down the hill towards them, the jack's fetid aroma of sweat and excrement followed behind, like a wake follows a ship or a tail follows a comet.

"Fashion is a high expression of the human spirit - a form of art that brings aesthetics to everyday life," Catherine began when the odor of the noxious truck faded and its noise receded so that she might be heard.

"And raises everyday life to the level of art." Julia added with a strong feeling of déjà vu, pleased that she could inhale again.

Catherine knew that she had picked the right girl. "We take mundane materials and create beauty. Some celebrate art as the triumph of the human will over the natural world. However, I believe that we do best work when we act as midwives and help the beauty emerge from our material rather than seek to impose our wills upon it."

Julia leaned her small form back against the luxurious man-skin upholstery and looked up into the cerulean sky and thought deeply about what she had been told.

Jessica Anders straightened the papers on her desk and awaited her guests. Catherine Hewitt was coming up from the city for her annual visit to the Bar X Ranch. Jessica was happy to see her again, but weighed her pleasure against her other duties which now would necessarily receive less attention. Jessica fussed with the extraordinary half-meter long, phallus on her desk that Marissa had brought back from the processing plant. The jack had been exceptional in life and now he was immortal. The minimally processed skin was dyed a life-like color and artfully mounted on a flexible latex phallus so that it might be twisted and turned and even tied into a knot. Jessica found tying it and untying quite useful to work off her frustrations.

Running the Bar X was a challenging responsibility. The Bar X was one of five ranches that gathered males from this part of the state and supplied the central abattoir or slaughterhouse. Each ranch was responsible for one day per week at the processing plant. She housed perhaps 500 males in 10 gangs of 50. Every week a truck would leave carrying 50 males to the processing plant just 10 minutes away and 5 days a week a van would arrive carrying 10 new males, more or less.

The males had to be registered, weighed, and examined. Each new batch was kept isolated for a period of days and observed. Decisions were made as to which males should be shipped for early processing and which might be kept for bulking up and fattening.

The safety of her crew was her highest concern. Sullen and rebellious jacks were rapidly shipped out. An occasional male might be found suitable for some unskilled task around the ranch and earn himself some extra months of life. Sometimes, Jessica admitted to herself, she even became fond of them. She even forgot herself from time to time and allowed that one might really be a real person, just born in the wrong body. Then, she was saddened by her obligation to ship him to the processing plant. That's one place where she would never want to work. However, she wasn't given much to introspection and she certainly wasn't a jack hugger. She knew her 'his'tory well and with the constant demands of her job, she rarely had the leisure time to mope. Some new challenge always emerged to distract her.

Jimmy was often bored at the Bar X. He had lived at the Ranch for almost two months, ever since Felicity had sent him away. He had really thought Felicity liked him. Her mother was a friend of his mother and she had bought his contract. She kept him for two years and had even gone to the trouble of marking him with her own name in big letters across his butt. She had even applied the final three letters herself. That was why they weren't straight. Despite the pain, he really had not moved. He did his chores without complaint and served Felicity and her housemates well. He never gave anyone any reason for dissatisfaction as far as he knew.

Then one day, she shackled him before she took him for a ride in her car. He unexpectedly found himself at a collection station and in the afternoon was trucked with 10 others to the Bar X Ranch. He had some blood tests and spent a week in isolation and then found himself a member a 50 gang jack.

He had become used to the constant nudity and the rest of the routine of eating and exercise and eating again. They had banded him and that was the hardest to accept. A ring of metal surrounded his cock about a centimeter below his glans. This way an erection was impossible and no woman would be troubled by any physical demonstration of male lust. The poor jacks couldn't even bugger each other, a prime sorce of entertainment for the guards before the policy took effect. At night, Jimmy closed his eyes and imagined himself in some sort of paradise where a varied assortment of tight, wet pussies rode his magically unrestrained, suddenly rigid, indefatigable cock.

Males were always arriving and males were always departing. Now he had now been in the gang longer than anyone except Seth. Somehow Seth and he had earned the trust of their keepers. They let Seth and him from their pen on Friday afternoons and gave them a chance to shower with hot water and shave. Their relatively smooth faces put them at odds with the rest of their scraggily bearded troop. The rest of the gang was just hosed off twice a week.

The visit of the two women was as exciting as anything that had happened in weeks. When Marissa led him from his pen, he looked the two visitors over carefully. One was not any older than Jimmy's 20 years and the other was several years older - Julia and Catherine - Ms. Fossum and Ms. Hewitt, he learned, both very attractive and friendly. They even seemed to like him.

Jessica really liked this one. She and Marissa shared him often. She closed her eyes and remembered the night that she kept her place and focused single-mindedly on her pleasure for as long as she could, despite Marissa's impatient yammering. Marissa wanted her turn too and she would just have to wait. Jessica straddled Jimmy's head and watched his thick, rock-hard cock rise untouched and strain against the unyielding restraining band.. His stubbly face tickled the smooth skin of her buttocks. His eager tongue swept her crack and danced around her most intimate opening, testing and probing her tight muscular ring again and again. Orgasm after orgasm wracked her body until she simply could not catch her breath. The pounding of her blood in her ears drowned out both Marissa's impatient complaints the party proceeding merrily downstairs. She thought that she might be torn apart like a ship in a storm at sea and still the sensations kept ripping from her pelvis until she simply could tolerate no more.

Jessica dismounted unsteadily, supporting herself with one hand on Jimmy's strong shoulder. She was weak in the knees and the muscles in her long lean legs visibly twitched with the reverberations of her uncountable orgasms. Jessica reached awkwardly between her legs and refastened her thong while Marissa eagerly unfastened hers. Jimmy was just great and so adorable, tied spread-eagle to the bed. He saw her drawn but glowing face and smiled. He seemed even a bit proud of himself!

Jessica was filled to overflowing with a feeling of fondness. Suddenly, she just wanted to kiss him. The idea just popped into her still-spinning head. He had given her so much pleasure! She stroked his wet lips gently with her fingers tips, then pried them apart to touch his white teeth. She smiled, embarrassed by her unexpected urge. She thought of pressing her hungry lips against his and taking his warm, yielding mouth with her strong, ardent tongue and sighed.

Only then she remembered just where Jimmy's sweet mouth had been and snorted her sudden disgust. She straightened her clothes and favored him only with a peck on the forehead before leaving. "Have fun, Marissa!" She grinned at her friend. Where might I wash my hands?" she asked aloud of no one in particular.

Jimmy was pleased by the attention he received from the women. The other jacks in his pen were loudly jealous of both him and Seth. Jimmy, like the women, ignored their catcalls. He had heard the terrible rumors that the women were going to kill him and eat him, but the stories sounded too much like the fairy tales that adults use to frighten children and then laugh at their fears. Julia and Catherine - Ms. Fossum and Ms. Hewitt - just seemed so nice and smelled so good. When Marissa took him out of the pen, Ms. Hewitt even gave him a piece of candy. That made the others even more jealous.

"What's his name?" Julia asked Marissa.

"Jimmy," Marissa answered, looking perfunctorily at her clipboard. "I really want you to see this one."

"Hey! Jimmy," Catherine continued. Her smile was so open and warm that Jimmy had to smile too. "Jessica says so many good things about you. I think that you're a real hottie too. What do you think, Julia?

"Jimmy's a hottie, all right," Julia answered aloud and continued only to herself, "if you like that sort of thing."

"Jimmy, turn around. Show Ms. Hewitt your sweet little butt." ordered Jessica firmly.

Jimmy liked Jessica and he obeyed promptly. Her name badge had a 'J" on it, just like the "J" in Jimmy. He turned. His buttocks were branded with the name "Felicity' in eight centimeter high letters; four letters on each cheek. The "I," the "T," and the "Y" were a bit crooked as Felicity, nervous in general and a bit tipsy from wine, had faltered.

Julia ran her fingers over the raised, well-healed scars. Jimmy winced at the memory of the day when the white-hot iron had been applied to his unscarred bottom.

Catherine shook her head.

"You see what we have to deal with," said Jessica. "Okay, Marissa you can take him back now"

"One second, Marrisa," interjected Catherine. "He really is cute. Jimmy, I want you to kiss me, here." Catherine pointed to her lips. "I want to see something."

Jimmy was terrified. The other jacks in his pen watched intently. He searched Catherine's face and Jessica's face and Julie's face to search for some warning or message that he had missed. He saw the prod hanging from Marissa's belt and thought briefly of fleeing. He wasn't likely to get far and the few jacks who had tried it, were always caught and seemed to disappear soon afterwards.

He was a head taller than she. She didn't lift her face or close her eyes. Jimmy had to hunch down to bring his lips level with hers. He clasped one wrist in the other behind his back. He knew better than try to embrace her - to put his arms around her or to hold her face in his hands. Her eyes were smiling but he closed his eyes, yielding to the intensity of her gaze. The fragrance of her perfume washed over him. Hers was different from Felicity's but intoxicating none-the-less. Her lips against his were cool and delicious. Her small hand was warm and smooth against his thigh. He shuddered when she gently lifted his cock with her thumb, but greedy for pleasure, he stood perfectly still. His cock strained against the unyielding ring and rose slightly from his groin. This was even better than his fantasies.

Somewhere in this sudden intimacy Jimmy found the courage or the boldness to talk. "Ma'am, ma'am," he stammered. The younger woman, Ms. Fossum seemed quite shocked at his impudence. No one had asked him to speak. He was just a gang jack, already consigned for culling. However, both Marissa and Ms. Hewitt smiled at him indulgently. Neither was cruel in any sense of the word. "Are you going to kill me and eat me?" He looked from one face to the other, searching for an answer. His unexpected courage suddenly faded. "That's what I've heard some of the other jacks say," he concluded half-apologetically. "I really don't mean to complain."

Ms. Hewitt shook her head and chuckled. "Kill you. Not me. I've never killed anything except in my garden. And eat you? Me? Not me, not very likely! I'm always on a diet. I rarely eat red meat - very rarely. What about you, Julia?" Catherine waited to see how her protégé might respond.

Julia's face went blank for an instant. She said nothing. She didn't know what to say exactly. She really didn't want to lie. The poor bugger would certainly be slaughtered, butchered, and eaten. She knew it and he certainly knew it also. However, she saw no reason to restate the obvious and terrify him further. Her best answer suddenly popped into her head. She smiled warmly and shook her head. No, not today - not today, for sure!"

Marissa, Catherine, and Jessica laughed out loud. The laughter was contagious. After a pause, the male laughed with them. He relaxed visibly, feeling much more secure. Julia hadn't wanted to lie to the poor creature. She hadn't lied. He certainly knew his fate and she, like Catherine, found no reason to restate the obvious and panic him toward no aim.

He was still in a daze when Marissa led him back stumbling to his pen.

"What do you think about his ass?" Jessica asked. "Some Felicity marked him like that and then sent him to us when she couldn't find a buyer. Big surprise!"

"If males felt pain like ordinary people, it would have really hurt like hell. He must have moved to knock those final three letter out of line," Marissa commented, returning from her chore.

"It's a terrible waste," added Julie. "The butt is the best strongest, most durable part of the skin and she just about ruined it." In the cattle business, hides are simply a byproduct of the meat industry. In the jack business, meat and skins are equally important. Maximizing yields is critically important to the bottom line.

"Ms. Hewitt, do you want to try him - or any of the others?" Jessica asked, anxious to satisfy her distinguished visitor.

"He's really great, but I'm not one of those back to nature types. Some may like it, but I just can't imagine a filth spewing rod poking around my private parts. " Catherine answered with some regret. "It's later than I thought. Julia and I still have to go to the processing plant today."

Julia had serious misgivings about the planned visit to a processing plant. Like many others, she shopped at Laura's Market with its gleaming tall stainless steel commercial refrigerators that lined either side of the store's interior. On one wall, one might find the prime beef, lamb, pork, and poultry. Laura's only sold the best. On the other wall, one found jacques - the flesh of males or jacks, larger cuts, such as rounds, rumps, saddles, racks, shoulders, tenderloins, and barons and smaller cuts, such as roasts, steaks, back ribs, stew meat, hommeburger, and soup bones. Hams and pickled tongues were there too, along with livers, kidneys, and animuelles or "city oysters." In the cooler one might make out the vaguely humanoid shape of a half-jack or quarter-jack awaiting butchering to commercial cuts, if one looked. Julia tried never to look. As she searched among the packages, neatly wrapped in cellophane, she had given no thought at all to the chain of events that brought the meat to her table, step by step. Intellectually, she certainly knew that living creatures have been slaughtered, gutted and butchered, but the sterile packages and poster showing the cute, smiling jack in the big hat allowed her to avoid confronting the unpleasant necessities. When she actually saw the pens of cattle, jacks, sheep, and pigs - or more properly swine - her misgivings intensified.

Shelby Winston explained the operation. In the days of the Patriarchy, work in the abattoirs or slaughterhouses was low status and ill -paid, despite the skills and exertion needed. Pundits argued the chicken and the egg endlessly. Did low pay make the job low status or low status garner only low pay?

After the Revolution, women still ate meat and the abattoirs gained a new mission, culling excess males. They lost their mostly male workforce and needed to recruit females to replace them. The jobs were posted. In intellectual circles, many expressed a visceral aversion for the strenuous, necessarily bloody work. Some few acknowledged political urgency to control the male population.

In Shelby's own family, her Aunt Michelle brought home a jack every Thanksgiving. "When I was growing up," Shelby commented, "my cousins and I helped drag him off her battered 2x2. Cousin Ashley just grabbed him by his ball sack and he hobbled along after her - as fast as his shackled legs could carry him. . We just took him out in the yard and held his wiggling head over an old galvanized tub while Aunt Michelle just cut his throat. A saddle for Thanksgiving and a smoked homme for Xmas."

However, many underestimated women's fundamental practicality. Higher pay and other benefits provided a useful inducement. Three years of service earned a college scholarship. Many women did their service and passed through, proving their political reliability. No one could work in an abattoir and harbor masculinist tendencies. Opportunity brought some women back to the profession like some people chose life in the military or as a surgeon, and a special elan emerged.

The jacks were shipped in from the ranches that supplied the processing plant. All were located within an hour's distance. No jack was housed at the processing plant itself. The jacks arrived watered and rested. Within hours of their arrival, all would be slaughtered, gutted, flayed, split, and hung in the cooler. The idea was to avoid any chance for Shelby or her crew become too friendly or familiar with the poor creatures going to slaughter. The jacks arrived and were slaughtered quickly and efficiently before female sentimentality could come into play.

Julia watched a truckload of jacks clamber down from their chattel truck and file unresisting into the dimly lit bowels of the building. A handful of attendants, wielding electric cattle prods, provided raucous encouragement. With them stood a pair of snarling guard dogs. The women rarely needed to apply their implements. Usually, a spoken threat or a growl from a dog was sufficient to keep the line moving. When someone did apply her prod, however, the line of jacks lurched forward and the audible crackle and snap made Julia jump herself.

The line of naked jacks halted for a just a moment when the first jack encountered a slowly turning, revolving door. A pair of cheerfully swearing college girls made sure that one and only one jack was confined in every second segment as the door revolved, in starts and stops.

Julia looked to the next monitor. The door turned and stopped, confining each jack in darkness. It turned and stopped, turned and stopped, and finally conveyed the jacks, one at a time, about one every 20 seconds, to a position one removed from the next large chamber. The door halted and the jack was suddenly bathed in blinding light. Each stood stunned, trying to look out into the chamber, while a woman standing behind him in the hub of the door, effectively wielded an air pistol with a tethered bolt.

The entire process had a certain rhythm. The door moved, the lights flashed on, and the whispering bolt smashed into the back of the unsuspecting jack's skull. The door lurched forward again and two more workers caught the slumping creature and quickly bound his wrists and ankles with nylon ties. A third slipped a hook under the ankle ties, then a fourth pushed a button and the jack rose suspended head down and rolled on to the next station.

There, a woman, wearing elbow-length steel mesh gloves, opened the large vessels in his neck were opened leaving his esophagus and windpipe intact. Blood flooded over his faces and drained into a well-positioned gutter. The bleeding carcass was hosed off, the lathered up with antibacterial soap, scrubbed with a coarse brush, and then hosed off again.

Five washed carcasses at a time passed through the scalding tank, where steam was applied to loosen dirt and hair. The carcasses were thoroughly washed once again before they were gutted and flayed. Gutting and flaying both aided cooling and preserved the quality of the meat. No effort was spared in pursuit of cleanliness.

Shelby took Julia around. Some of the jacks were really cute. Julia marvelled at the skill of the workers as they flayed a jack with the efficiency of a mother wrestling her toddler out of her snow suit. The skins were promptly preserved in brine for later processing.

Julia looked carefully at the line of flayed jacks that hung head down from metal hooks that pierced their heels. To one side hung a line of swine and a line of beeves hung on the other. All stretched out, the jacques looked even larger than they had standing on their own feet and much larger than she. Their hands and genitals had not yet been trimmed. The hands were only good for soups or stews but the testicles or city oysters were highly sought after and very expensive. The heads had been removed from all but one, breaking their last link with the human. His lifeless, staring eyes seemed to follow Julia around the room. Drawn, Julia went over to him. His penis and scrotum, once the haughty symbols of male pride and power, hung forward limply now, emphasizing only male vulnerability. In the bad old days, the silly things were some sort of weapon that jacks used to terrorize people. Now, they seemed just pitiful and sad. Carcasses were usually aged for several days before butchering to allow rigor mortis to pass and the meat to stretch on the bone. Tentatively, she turned the unresisting carcass and looked inside the empty body cavity to see the pale ivory of the spinal bones gleaming against the dark red tenderloins. She reached up and flicked the flaccid penis with her index finger. Everything was so clean and nothing smelled as badly as she had feared. It was all rather scientific and fascinating and not at all disgusting.

The jacks were cute in a dopey sort of way. Believe it or not, Julia marvelled, women had actually allowed these panting, farting creatures to lay upon their naked bodies and thrust at their most intimate places with their filth-spewing organs in the days of the Patriarchy. Breathing alone must have been difficult. The weight must have been crushing. Fortunately, the world had progressed far beyond that stage.

Shelby gathered up her papers and headed for her car in the parking lot. That young Julia had been impressed with just about everything that she saw. The jacks were so cute, she gushed. Julia had watched Maria break down a carcass and Maria beamed with her enthusiastic praise. She chuckled to herself, "if you think that butchering a jack is a challenge, you should try putting him back together!"

Shelby prepared her specialty herself in the little kitchen off her office. She went down to the killing floor and came back with a penis, root and all, still warm from life. She rinsed it thoroughly in cold water and lemon juice, then parboiled it for only five minutes. Then she sliced it thinly, root and all, with her sharpest knife. A chopped onion was sautéed in olive oil, the sliced, parboiled penis and a crushed ripe tomato were added with pinches of salt, cinnamon, sugar and a heap of freshly ground black pepper. At the end, she threw in a squirt of balsalmic vinegar. The women enjoyed the treat on slices of crispy fresh French bread. Julia and Catherine sipped their wine and ate with gusto despite their unending protests about their so-strict diets.

Shelby enjoyed her snack too, but she couldn't help thinking the poor jack hanging lifeless in the cooler. She thought that she might have seen him climb down from the chattel truck herself and walk the well-trodden path to the killing floor with fatalistic resignation. When she placed her hand on his firm, muscled flank, he was still warm to the touch. She hated it when her mind wondered off like this. Perhaps there was a better way.

Julia Fossum had good reason to celebrate. Her summer had been an outstanding success. Catherine was taking her to Androphone's for dinner with Hannah and Sarah. What's more, Catherine had promised her a great job on graduation.

She really didn't know what to wear. She threw open her closet and concluded for the 'nth' time that she really didn't have all that many choices. Over on the left, she had her treasured few garments of genuine man-skin leather. She really loved the leather. She loved its fragrance and its supple feel against her skin. She loved the way it set off her petite, finely boned figure. She had her 'trawling outfits,' her favorite vest, and for winter, her leather camisole and leather Rio slacks, and for summer, her leather halter with cotton bralet and man-skin micro-mini skirt. She had her 'navel' jeans like everyone else, denim jeans with a strip of man-skin sewn over the fly boasting a male navel, lined up right under her own as it peeked out above her man-skin belt and below her tank top. She had her other jeans also with patches of man-skin sewn over the pockets for decoration. Lined up on the floor she had her mid-calf man-skin boots and striking mid-thigh man-skin boots.

Other leathers had always been an anonymous business. Tanneries bought cow hides and sheep skins in lots, accepting or rejecting shipments as a whole rather than acquiring one skin at a time. No one cared which particular beast had contributed to which particular boot or garment.

Genuine man-skin was different. Early on, labels listed the serial numbers of the males whose skins had been used in each individual garment, as proof of authenticity. First one designer then the others had added a more personal touch. Together with the cold, official 10 digits of the males' individual serial numbers, was a warmer greeting. "Hi! I'm Mike. I'm really glad to be your man-skin miniskirt." The name applied was that of the male with the largest contribution to the garment.

At some level, she very well knew that Mike, Matt, Jake, Nick, and Luis' deaths were most likely involuntary and they really hadn't wanted to end up flayed and featured in the leather goods hanging in her closet. However, the fiction was ubiquitous and comforting -like milk from contented cows and little roasted piggies running through the city streets. She was now an adult and she could cope. Coping wasn't even all that hard, because she rarely even thought about it anymore.

As one might guess from the frequency of first names, Julia really had a "Mike." She also had a "Jake," a "Matt," and a "Nick." Her boots were named "Luis."

Julia's new dress with the scores of embossed rhinestones was a "Jimmy." The skimpy little dress reached only to mid thigh and accented the feminine curves of her finely structured form. The soft red matched well with Julia's chestnut hair and green eyes. The dramatic plunging cowl back displayed her petite shoulders blades to advantage. She loved the feel of the supple leather on her skin and the way her body's warmth blended the leather's smoky fragrance with her favorite perfume. The flare of the skirt boasted her claim to fame - a large but subtle letter "F" for Fossum. This was her contribution to Catherine Hewitt's enterprise and it was a great success. A skin-damaging brand was no longer always a waste.

"Love your dress!" said Sarah Michaels as Julia walked into the Androphone's. Sarah Michaels was a tall brunette. She herself wore a ruffled black silk blouse over her best black man-skin Capri pants. The black accented her blond hair and light complexion. She softened her look with her golden broach. Her well manicured left hand rested on the smooth leather on her thigh. Catherine Hewitt had yet to arrive.

"Gawd," said Hannah Sommers, "can I touch it.

"Are you hands clean?" Julia asked.

Hannah nodded, yes. She ran her hand over the soft leather and caressed the raised lines of the eight centimeter "F" for Fossom. "That dress is lovely. It must have cost a pretty penny." She herself wore a costly pale ivory man-skin camisole over even more costly pale ivory man-skin Rio pants. A full third of her rounded breasts swelled out over the top edge of the camisole. The pale ivory contrasted richly with her deep, brown tan. "Do you like my sweet "Marcel? He so loves my boobies."

"You always look lovely, Hannah. I'm just glad that I didn't have to pay for your outfit!" Julia was very aware of the pressure of the woman's hand just below her left breast. "Catherine Hewitt gave it to me for a bonus for my summer's work. It is lovely! These monogrammed garments have really caught on. And she promised me a job when I graduate - she's so great to work with. She's the best at what she does and still open to new ideas! Can I get a drink around here? What a day!"

The waiter magically appeared and took their drink orders. He was just gorgeous. He was naked and hairless. His only ornaments were matching nipple rings and the two rings piercing his navel and the foreskin of his penis. A short gold chain linked the two, lifting his penis and revealing the plump, ripe ball sac beneath. Male genitals were once a symbol of male power and male alacrity for violence. Now male genitals had become a symbol of male vulnerability.

"What happened?" asked Sarah after they had given their orders.

"Well, I drove down to the Bar X and met with that Jessica Anders. She's great too. We now have such a demand for these monogrammed garments, we're running out of monograms. Some jacks are marked with the wrong letters. Some jacks aren't marked at all."

"What can you do?" asked Hannah.

"We've simply started a program to mark the jacks ourselves." Julia was still impressed with her cleverness. "Rather than relying on chance, we can mark them with the most needed letters in the most popular fonts and sizes. It's much more efficient to mark one jack multiple times and let him heal before he's harvested rather than mark each jack only once. Believe it or not, those 'jack-huggers' from PET"M are after us." Julia made a face and stuck out her tongue to show her distaste and frustration. People for the Ethical Treatment of Males, PET'M, worked to protect males from the worst abuses. Fortunately for PET'M, most people in the jack trades valued their PET'M compliance certificates and this gave the organization considerable leverage.

"The males are gagged and restrained - but they writhe so and make noises into their gags. If I didn't know better, I might actually think that they felt pain. Marissa even made me mark several myself. She said that she didn't want me wrestling them to the ground and hogtying them. I was never very good with knots and I'm not really one of those athletic types. It was hard work for Marissa's crew and for me. When we were done, the room smelled like a barbecue!"

"Now you're making me hungry," quipped Hannah, "despite my diet. Where is Catherine?"

Julia ignored her and continued. "I can really see where a naïve person might think that males really do suffer pain. We're going to limit ourselves to twelve marks for an average size male and maybe sixteen or twenty for a really large one." The corporate 'we' felt quite comfortable in her mouth.

"Julia, you know very well that males may certainly mimic the human pain response. They may even have many of the physiologic elements of the human pain response, but with testosterone poisoning after puberty, they just aren't capable of the cognitive or affective components, right? That's what they taught us in college," offered Sarah more seriously.

"You know, this Professor Johnson at the University differs very strongly. I fell asleep in the couch one night with the 3DV blaring and woke up at 3 AM to this talking heads program. She argues that males really do feel pain," added Hannah tentatively. "Pain, just like people do."

"No one believes her!" scoffed Sarah "No one at all. Her claims are rather extreme. And she can't even get funding for her research from PET'M, let alone her fellow scientists."

"Well, after today, I can surely see how someone naïve might be fooled. Our vet suggests pancurarium - like the indigenous people use to hunt in South America and doctors use here to paralyze ventilator patients. We can paralyze a jack with pancurarium temporarily and then mark him - no screaming and no writhing - no smudged marks and no waste. No breathing, either. You've got to dose it just right. Now I've got to visit the Ranch each week and learn how the brands heal and how to care for them."

"Hey! Hey!" Catherine Hewitt interjected, finally arriving on the scene, just as the waiter returned with the drinks. "I'm here!" Catherine placed her drink order and sat down. She smiled to see the three young women all wearing man-skin garments from her atelier. Their exquisite leathers made them stand out even among the very fashionable and chic crowd at Androphone's. Catherine added to their impact with her stunning, elegant black two piece man-skin dress. The skirt's hip high slit preserved her freedom of movement. A flash of flat belly-skin showed between the top and bottom. "Tonight's the night to let my diet go," she said, appreciating the tantalizing aromas of mesquite that permeated the restaurant. "Sorry, I'm late. I was working out and I simply lost track of time. The new phallus on her Stud master™ was a Jimmy."