Standing in the back of the truck, Clarissa paused in sucking water from the bottle Tom was holding. "Why don't any of the other girls like coming to town?"

Tom shrugged. "Well, there's not a lot they let cows do here. You're not allowed in most of the buildings -- not just you, of course, any slaves. And I guess they feel like they're on display. Though I don't really see a lot of people paying attention."

Clarissa sucked down a few more mouthfuls. "Yeah, I know. It took awhile to get used to standing out on the street naked, not to mention down on all fours, but I get to see some old friends, and talk with girlcows from other farms. And some other slaves, the ones that are allowed to talk. No offense, really, I like it on the farm, but it's nice to get away sometimes."

She waited as Tom pulled the ramp out from under the truck, and led her down to the sidewalk. She grinned. "Ice cream?"

He smiled. "There, that's what you really come for, isn't it? Sure. Vanilla?"

"Rocky Road. Oh, hi," she greeted a red-haired girlcow at the slave rail in front of the general store, as Tom locked her leash to the same rail. "I'm Clarissa."

"Ashley."

"Nice meeting you." She looked up at Tom. "Half-hour or so?"

"About that, yeah." He patted her shoulder and entered the store.

Clarissa turned her attention back to Ashley. "I don't think I've ever met you. You look about... 24?"

"Twenty-five."

"Oh, hey! Maybe you know Karen and Kirsten. Martin. Did you go to school with them?"

Ashley looked uncertain. "Maybe. Were they friends with Chrissie Gilmore?"

"Chrissie... oh yeah! She used to come over sometimes."

"Yeah, I think I remember them. Girlcows now?"

Clarissa nodded. "Yeah, we're on my brother Tom's farm now. Tom Martin? He would have been a few years behind you."

"That was him, just went into the store?"

"Yeah."

Ashley shook her head. "Didn't know him."

There seemed to be a crowd in the middle of the next block, across the street. Clarissa tried to make out what was happening. "Any idea what's up down there?"

"We drove past it on the way in. Some girl in a guillotine. The men are taking turns doing her, it looks like. There was a big sign next to her, but we went by it too fast to make it out."

"Like a punishment or something?"

"Couldn't tell. That or her number's up, I guess."

Clarissa strained to see. "Wonder what it's like, doing it out in public."

Ashley looked her, the sides of her mouth twitching upward. "What, you never?"

Clarissa giggled and looked away. "I just... well, you know," and gasped as Ashley ducked behind her and sniffed her ass. It was a standard preliminary to sex between unacquainted girlcows, each smelling the other's anus and pussy to make sure her potential partner came from a clean farm. Clarissa, not wanting to insult Ashley and starting to feel a tingle between her hind legs, moved around behind the girl, her chain leash jingling, and rubbed her nose along the crack of her butt. Ashley laughed and shook her hips.

At just the wrong time, Ashley's owner came out of the store. Ashley groaned and said "Shit" under her breath. As the man unlocked her leash, Ashley grinned at Clarissa. "Some time, maybe."

Clarissa smiled at her. "Nice meeting you."

Clarissa sighed as the other girl departed with her master -- the encounter had made her horny, and now there was nothing she could do about it. She looked around the area to see if there was anything useful she could rub against, and sighed again, squeezing her hind legs together. Peeing against the wall took her mind off it, and by the time Tom came out with a bag under his arm, she'd decided she could wait until she got home. Especially seeing the ice cream cone.

She eyed the cone to make sure he'd gotten the rocky road, as he unlocked her chain from the slave bar and led her to the curb. He sat on the curb and held up the cone for her. She licked off a little dribble of melted ice cream that was starting to run down the cone before taking a big bite out of the scoop on top.

Tom's attention was caught by the activity down the street. "What's all that, I wonder?"

"The cow that was here said there's a girl in a guillotine, with a bunch of men doing her." She swallowed the ice cream and licked around the edges of the cone.

"Wonder what she did."

She bit off another chunk, rolling it on her tongue, savoring the flavor and coolness. "Seen any executions advertised?"

He shook his head. "Maybe it's a draft snuff." A girl who was drafted usually simply reported to the butcher, but any girl could choose to go out in a more imaginative way, as long as a butcher was there to collect her meat afterwards. She could also sell her body privately, her snuff to be certified at City Hall, but usually only Grade A girls brought a high enough price to bother with.

Clarissa had finished the ice cream scoop and was taking bites out of the sugar cone. "I'm almost done with this. Want to go down and look?"

He looked at his watch. "I guess we've got time. I didn't have much I have to do today."

She took a last couple of bites to finish off the cone and licked a little leftover melted ice cream off his fingers. "Can we walk? I keep thinking I should get more exercise. We all should, I guess." She looked at him hopefully.

"You know, there's girlcow exercises you can do right in the stall."

She sighed. "I know, but that's not the same. Anyway, can we walk?"

He hefted the bag he'd just bought. "Okay. Let me get this in the cab."

After he'd stowed his purchases, he walked her down the block... it might be more accurate to say she walked him. She strained at the leash, eagerly trotting down the sidewalk, not remembering the self-conscious new girlcow who had tried to hide behind him on that first trip to town many weeks ago.

As they arrived at the outskirts of the crowd, she tried to see between the forest of legs, as Tom asked the nearest man what was happening. The man gestured to a large professionally-lettered sign standing on an easel just to the left of the knot of people, up by the building they were congregated in front of.

The girl, thought Clarissa, must not have any family. She apparently had some money saved up, and nothing left to do with it once she'd gotten her draft notice. Renting the equipment and the services of a snuff agent had no doubt taken up a large chunk of her fortune, but the three thousand remaining was an incentive for all passing men to do their best to make her exit an exciting one.

Clarissa heard a loud grunt from the current occupant of Cheryl's pussy, followed by a general groan from the crowd, and someone calling out, "Nice try, Glen." The people in front of Clarissa did a little shifting around, and Clarissa suddenly had a good view of the principals of the event.

The agent stood next to the guillotine, cheerfully signalling to the next man in line to try his luck. Along a bench beside him, Cheryl herself lay prone, her wrists tied to the base of the guillotine, her ankles tied to the legs of the bench on either side, causing her legs to be spread wide. Her neck was enclosed in a hole cut at the join of the two wooden boards through which the blade would pass. She was naked except for several sensors taped to her skin, on her forearm by her elbow, on her neck just behind the boards holding it captive, on the back of her lower right leg just below her knee, and of course one at the lower edge of her pussy -- orgasm sensors, designed to generate a signal under the appropriate combination of stimuli that would send the blade hurtling down its wooden track.

The girl twisted her neck to look to her left, where a man was buckling his pants. She smiled at him. "Was that you? That was great! I'm sorry I didn't quite get there. I know you tried."

The man smiled and shrugged. "It was fun. Save your money for a real stud."

She laughed. "Don't sell yourself short. Nothing short about you." Everyone joined in the laughter. The man himself laughed good-naturedly, and the woman standing next to him gave him a one-armed hug. He took the hand of the woman, apparently his wife, and they walked away down the street together.

Clarissa bumped Tom with her shoulder. "Tom, why don't you try it?"

He jerked his head in surprise. "Me? What have I got that none of these guys do?"

She grinned. "I've seen what you've got. Come on!" She butted against his leg with her head. "Go for it! They're not charging anything."

The man next to Tom smiled. "Take a shot, sport. I already did. Don't think I can get recharged in time to try again."

Tom looked down at Clarissa. "Well, uhh, really, we probably ought to get back..."

She butted him again. "You just said we've got time. Come on, make Wendy proud of you. Do it for your daughters!"

Tom bit his lip, thinking about what he could do with that money. He threw up his hands and laughed. "Okay, just stop bashing my leg." He signalled to the agent, who nodded and gestured for him to stand behind the man currently thrusting against Cheryl's inviting buttocks.

Moments later the man grunt and stiffened, adding his own contribution to the slick, shiny dribbles running out of Cheryl's pussy and onto the bench. Clarissa saw Cheryl roll her eyes -- obviously the man had gotten off too soon and hadn't done much for her, but she called out "Thank you," politely, as he disengaged and stood up with a smile and a shrug, zipping up his pants.

Tom grinned and took a deep breath, and led Clarissa up towards the front of the guillotine, wrapping her leash around one of the legs at its base, near where Cheryl's left wrist was tied. Cheryl looked up at Clarissa. "Your guy doing it next?" Clarissa shyly smiled and nodded, not quite certain how to behave in this situation. Tom was taking his pants down, and knelt behind the girl. There were quick murmurs of approval at the size of his piece.

Rather than entering her right away, he reached forward along the bench, pushing his hands underneath her to cup her breasts in his hands. As he began gently playing with her nipples between his fingers, the girl let out a sudden sigh and closed her eyes. With a wriggle of her hips, she encouraged him to enter her, but he held off for the moment. Letting her sighs guide his fingers, he continued playing with her breasts, giving them gentle squeezes. He's milking her, Clarissa realized, or trying to. Very gently, though. It just seemed to be something that came naturally to him.

It wasn't a feeling Cheryl was used to -- nobody had ever done that with her, and she relished the new sensation. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then smiled, simply letting out a sudden "Ooh" as the novel feelings intensified. Her hips wriggled faster, seeming to try to reach back and pull him into her.

He moved slightly forward now and touched just the tip of his erection against her pussy lips, and she shivered intensely, straining against the ropes holding her, the boards clamped around her neck making it impossible to move back towards him. She was breathing in gasps now, whining a little in frustration as she failed to draw him farther into her --

And suddenly he was there, fully within her, and she gave an excited shout, working every muscle in her hips and pussy, trying to milk him as he had been doing with her. Her hands clenched in fists, her entire body rocking, her elbows banging against the sides of the bench in time with his thrusts.

Clarissa watched as the girl suddenly scrunched her eyes shut tight and screamed -- and heard the whistling of the blade as it slid down in its grooves, faster than the eye could follow. With a wet sound it cut cleanly through her neck, and her head dropped onto a pillow in a shallow bucket underneath, a fall of just a few inches.

The agent lifted her head carefully, and turned it to face Tom, still thrusting into her disconnected body, which hadn't ceased its convulsions. Tom looked up to see her eyes watching him, a smile of bliss on her face. She continued looking on in awe as Tom renewed his thrusting against the body that once had been hers. Tom came with a shout, emptying himself into her now-still body, heaved a big sigh and looked at the girl's head again. A smile still curling her lips, she mouthed "Thank you," and seconds later her eyes glazed over as consciousness left her for the last time. The crowd, silent the last few minutes, burst into applause. A woman near the front wiped a tear away. "That was so beautiful!"

Tom disengaged himself and sat back on his heels, trying to get his breath back, as the agent replaced Cheryl's head, the light now gone from her eyes, gently back onto the pillow. He stepped forward towards Tom, surrounded now by men patting him on the shoulders. "Well, lad, I'd say you've just won yourself three thousand dollars."

Clarissa couldn't believe this was happening. He did it! He won! Tears of happiness ran down her cheeks as the agent took Tom's hand and helped him to his feet. With a flourish, he produced a wad of hundred-dollar bills from his pocket, presumably thirty of them, and pressed them into Tom's hand. Several of the men nearby watched with hopeful expressions, in case Tom was in a mood to spread some of his good fortune around, shrugging and grinning as Tom shoved the bills into his front pocket.

The agent glanced behind him. "I usually keep my clients' heads, but I do make the offer to the winners, in case they want them. Would you want to take her head with you?"

"I, uhh... no." Tom knew he couldn't display Cheryl's head on the mantlepiece -- the place reserved for his sisters once the time came for each to be snuffed. He didn't think Wendy would be thrilled about it either. "Thanks, you go ahead."

The agent smiled and shook hands with Tom again, as two men in the uniforms of a local butcher's shop untied Cheryl's wrists and ankles and removed the sensors, preliminary to taking her headless body to their truck parked nearby. The agent and the butchers signed and exchanged some papers, and the latter left with their meat. The crowd quickly dispersed, and in a few minutes Tom stood with Clarissa, holding her leash, as the agent began dismantling the equipment. They looked at each other, not sure what to say, and suddenly both started laughing.

Tom rubbed tears of laughter from his eyes. "Okay, I'll listen to your ideas from now on."

She rubbed the side of her head against his knee. "I guess I do have some good ones. What are you going to do with the money?"

Tom shook his head. "Haven't had any time to think about it. I know some things I could use it for. Let's get back home, though."

As they arrived back at the truck, Tom reached into the front seat for the water bottle. Clarissa went to the back to wait for him to let the ramp down, where her attention was caught by a sign on the side of the store.

She waited until the water bottle took some of the edge off her thirst, and stopped Tom as he let the tailgate down. "Tom, wait a minute. I can see something you can do with your money."

Tom followed her gaze and saw the sign. "Oh, no. Nice idea, but it wasn't that much money."

"What do you mean? Can't you get another girlcow for three thousand dollars?"

He rolled his eyes. "You haven't kept up with what they go for, have you? I guess you wouldn't, Dad never buys any. None of those cows at the auction are going to go for less than six thousand. Probably seven."

"Couldn't you finance or something?"

"Not at an auction. You have to pay the money up front. You could go to the bank beforehand, but there's no time for that now, the sign says the auction is starting now."

"Well, can't we at least go see? I went to a couple of auctions a long time ago, but it's... well, I guess it means more to me now. I wasn't a cow then. And don't look at your watch again, you know we have time," as he started bringing his wrist up.

He laughed. "Oh, okay. We're not walking all the way there, though. That's six blocks away. Let me get a refill on the water and we'll go." He topped off the water bottle from a courtesy faucet outside the store, and returned to take down the tailgate and pull out the ramp.

They had to park well back in the lot when they arrived at the site where the auction was taking place. As he led her towards the seating area, she said, "I'm getting a little hungry. Maybe a hot dog or something?"

He laughed and shook his head. "I feel like I'm taking a kid to the amusement park." He looked around. "Don't see any hot dogs. Guy over there has a fresh fruit stand set up. Apple?"

"Two of them. My tummy's really grumbling."

He finally managed to find an empty seat at the end of a row of folding chairs, and locked her leash around one of the chair's legs. Bidding was in progress on a state dairy farm cow, about thirty years old, that age where the state believed cows were past their prime milking years. She stood proudly but a little nervously, fidgeting on her four legs looking out at the crowd, no doubt wondering whom she would go home with and what her new home would be like. The last bid had been sixty-five hundred, pushed up to sixty-six as Tom settled in and held the apple up for Clarissa. As she took a big bite and chewed it, he said, "See what I mean about the price? There's no way we're going home with another cow."

Clarissa swallowed the piece of apple and sighed. She suspected Tom knew that, as soon as she'd seen the sign, she'd pictured herself with a partner like the other girls had. She had to admit that her sisters did their best to make her feel like she was one of them, but being the only cow who wasn't part of a permanent pairing did make her feel left out sometimes.

She gasped as she felt a hand on her rump, and jerked her head around to see who was giving her a feel. A short, portly farmer in a long-sleeved denim shirt was, by this time, kneeling down to do a professional visual assessment of her breasts. "T-tom?"

Tom looked around and saw the man balancing himself with a casual hand on the small of Clarissa's back as he squatted beside her. "Uhhh... help you?"

The man looked up. "How much you take for her? If you've a mind to, we can cut out the auctioneer's ten percent commish and do us a deal right cheer."

Surprised, Tom shook his head. "She's not for sale."

"You ain't even heard the offer. She's a real young-un, real good tit-volume. She'll make lotta milk for a lotta years. Looks real strong, too. Ten thousand. You ain't gonna get that much up on the block, not after they takes their cut outa it." Clarissa gasped at the amount. She felt suddenly Tom must be tempted -- add that to the three and Tom could go home with thirteen thousand dollars! Her heart pounded -- was she going to have to go home with this stranger? What if he whipped his cows? A hundred nightmares ran through her head at once. She sidled closer to Tom, pressed herself tightly against his side.

Tom shook his head again. "I appreciate the offer, but we're just here to watch, not to sell her. She's my sister. It's a family farm."

The man nodded. "Didn't mean no offense. 'F you got more at home like her and feel like lettin' one go, give me a call." The man pulled a printed card out of his shirt pocket, smiled, and gave Clarissa's butt one more pat as he stood up. "Y'all have a good day." He looked around the lot, and headed towards another leashed girlcow in the audience about fifty feet to the right.

Clarissa hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath. She let it out with her eyes closed, and said a heartfelt "Thank you!" to Tom.

He grinned at her. "See what'll happen to you if you don't pull your weight?"

She laughed at butted him with her head. "After everything I've done for you. Where's that apple?"

"Oh, sorry, here." He held it in front of her and she took another bite. Chewing, she sprayed a few bits of apple as she asked, "You're not keeping his card, are you?"

He chuckled, and dropped the card in the dust under the chair. "There, happy?"

"Yeah, and a little thirsty. The apple is good, but it's not wet enough fast enough."

As she sucked from the upheld water bottle, she saw the cow who'd been on the block being led to the cashier's table, where a farmer in jeans and a T-shirt was signing some papers. "What'd she go for?"

"Sixty-eight. They'll all be about that."

"I believe you, I believe you. Sorry, I just didn't realize. Save the three thousand, though. Maybe you can add to it later." She sucked a few more mouthfuls of water from the bottle, and nodded to him that she'd had enough. She was about to ask for another bite of the apple, when she caught sight of the next cow being brought up to the block.

This one seemed very reluctant -- while not quite straining at the leash, she didn't seem in any hurry to come to the front of the block, and the man leading her did have to actually pull impatiently on the leash to get her there. Once she was up in front of the crowd, she faced them with her head down, so that all one could see was her red hair, cut, as usual for girlcows, very short. Clarissa had only had a brief glimpse of her face as the man leading her had given her one last tug: high cheekbones, pointed chin, small cute nose with freckles, and a hint of dimples in her cheek -- she'd be very cute, in fact, with any other expression than the disspirited, sullen one she was wearing. The man handed her leash to the auctioneer and wiped his hands in a symbolic show of being glad to have that job done with.

Clarissa whispered, "Tom, what do you think's wrong with her?"

"What am I, a shrink?"

"Come on, she's a cow. You know more about cows than I do."

"Maybe they'll say something."

The auctioneer was reading from his clipboard. "Next up, Natalie, offered for sale by the State Dairy. Eighteen years nine months, eighty-five pounds, milk volume rating eighty-eight. Let's start the bidding at two thousand. Do I hear a bid?"

Clarissa bumped Tom excitedly. "Two thousand, Tom! Say something, say something!"

"Clary, think about it. Why is the State Farm giving up on her at eighteen? And look at the way she's standing. Everybody sitting here can figure out something's wrong, and they'd all sit here on their hands if the farm asked five or six thousand, let alone ten like that guy offered for you. Nobody here is an idiot about this."

"Okay, so why would they sell her at eighteen? Her volume rating is low but it wasn't that low."

"How would I know? Discipline problem, maybe. Maybe they think she's more trouble than she's worth. All I know is, it's not my problem."

She whispered more softly, not wanting to advertise his sudden wealth, "Tom, you've got three thousand dollars you didn't come to town with. It's like you could get her for free!" She could hear that the bidding had reached twenty-four. "Tom, you said just today you'd listen to my ideas. I've just got a feeling about her. They were probably mean to her. I bet she just needs some understanding, Tom, Tom, don't let somebody else buy her!" She looked around frantically, trying to see what monster was bidding on this poor girl.

He sighed and whispered back, "Okay, but twenty-seven is absolutely it. I'm going to get home with some cash." As the auctioneer made a last call for twenty-five, Tom raised his hand and was acknowledged.

Clarissa bounced on her front legs in excitement, but the air went out of her balloon as the auctioneer pointed to a man who had just raised the bid to twenty-six. Clarissa barely could raise her head high enough to see the bidder, a seedy looking farmer in overalls. Though he wasn't carrying anything, Clarissa had a clear mental image of him raising a whip. "Tom, do something!" The auctioneer was calling for twenty-seven.

As Tom hesitated, the auctioneer asked if anyone would go for twenty-six fifty. Clarissa pounded his shin with her foreleg until he raised his hand.

"I have twenty-six fifty, do I hear... yes, twenty-seven." That same seedy farmer had raised.

"I've got twenty-seven. Can I get twenty-seven fifty?"

Clarissa looked fixedly at Tom, trying to hold his eyes, with The Look. The same one that had gotten her dad to promise she could go to the Hanging Academy if they accepted her. Tom bit his lip, swore under his breath, scrunched his eyes shut and raised his hand.

"Twenty-seven fifty. Can I get twenty-eight?"

Clarissa strained to get a look at the farmer. He gave one last look, shook his head slightly, and looked down at his program to see what was next up. The auctioneer looked slowly around the crowd. "Twenty-eight?"

The next five seconds seemed to Clarissa to drag out for hours -- she could see the gavel through every inch of its descent as if it were sinking through molasses, so that the actual sound of it took her by surprise, and she seemed to jump a foot in the air as it impacted against the auctioneer's lectern. "Twenty-seven fifty to the gentleman over here," pointing to Tom.

Clarissa wished she could stand up straight and give Tom her tightest hug. She settled for rubbing her cheek again his thigh. "Tom, you did it! We've got a new cow!"

He stood, unwrapping her leash from around the chair leg. "So it seems."

"Come on, be more excited! Anyway, remember you owed me one."

"Might be the other way around now."

She looked up at him, worried. "Tom, promise me one thing. Do one last thing for me. Please?"

He stopped walking towards the cashier's table and sighed. "Okay, what is it?"

"Don't tell her I talked you into it, or I made you do it somehow. Act like you want her. Okay? Look at her. She doesn't need one more person who doesn't want her. Please?"

He looked at the girl, now being led over to the cashier's table, with that same sullen plodding as before -- being pulled by the neck more than led, really. He let out one more deep breath, and suddenly smiled, and reached down and ruffled Clarissa's hair. "Okay, you win. How do you keep doing that?"

She grinned up at him. "I've got my ways."