ONE YEAR LATER

Heidi shuffled nervously on her forelegs as Tom leaned back into the truck cab for the girls' water bottles. "I don't know if this was such a good idea. I feel like everybody's looking at me." She moved her forelegs still closer together, trying to hide the enormous breasts she was still getting used to. Neither she nor her sister Haley had really wanted to be girlcows, but at the end of high school they had run out of acceptable options.

Natalie shook her head, smiling. "Sweetie, nobody's paying any attention. They see girlcows here every day."

"What if my friends from school see me? This just feels so weird."

Clarissa nuzzled her face against her younger sister's neck, trying to calm her, as Tom tipped the bottle for Natalie to drink from. "They'll just be happy to see you're doing something good with your life. They'll probably ask what it's like, if their family doesn't have their own dairy herd. And get you caught up on stuff they've been doing. Heidi, we went through this too. I know how you're feeling. I'm glad you came with us. I've been trying for years to get one of the other girls to come along. If they'd just try it, they'd see how much fun it is. Maybe you can convince them. Oh, thanks," she took the nipple offered by Tom and sucked on it gratefully.

Heidi tried to look in all directions at once. "I just wish Haley would have come along." Haley and Heidi had both come into town two weeks earlier, to be registered as slaves at the police station. Neither had wanted to walk around town afterwards, despite Clarissa's pleas, and it had taken Clarissa and Natalie together this long to break down Heidi's resistance to trying it again. Haley had stayed behind, in the stall the two new girlcows shared, Karen's and Kirsten's old one.

Natalie nodded. "It's hard, being without your partner." She felt Clarissa's lips brush her cheek and turned quickly to bring her own lips in contact with Clarissa's. After breaking off the kiss, she turned back to Heidi with a sigh. "If you tell her how much fun it was, she'll probably come along next time."

Heidi looked cross-eyed at the nipple Tom was offering her. "Yeah, right. Assuming any fun occurs."

Clarissa saw Heidi's hesitation. "Heidi, you know you're thirsty. And I swear nobody's staring at you." She waited and watched as Heidi finally closed her eyes and sucked from the bottle, and then nodded to Natalie, who turned and begun backing down the truck ramp in a long-practiced motion.

On the street, Tom clipped the heavy chain leashes to Heidi's collar and Clarissa's and Natalie's joining chain. Heidi bobbed her head experimentally, testing the chain's weight on her neck. "I don't really like this either. I don't mind the leash at home, but out here..."

Natalie shot Clarissa an exasperated look, then turned back to Heidi. "It's really important here. For your own safety. Trust me, you really don't want to be stolen."

Heidi flushed, her eyes darting to Clarissa and then looking away. "Oh yeah, I heard about that. I'm sorry, Clary."

Clarissa rubbed her hip against Natalie's -- they always drew closer when that subject came up. "Don't worry about it, Heidi. Anyway, the point is, we're safe here. Just look around, see what there is to see."

"Clary, you know I've been in town before. Lots of times."

"Yeah, but not as a girlcow, except just running in and out of the police station. It looks different from down here. And you can't just spend all your time at the farm every day."

"The other girls do."

"They don't know what they're missing."

With Tom tugging gently on the leashes, the girls came up onto the sidewalk in front of the general store. As Tom started to lock their leashes to the slave bar, Clarissa said, "Hey, wait, Tom. Can't we walk around awhile before you stick us here in front of the store?"

Tom continued securing them, shaking his head. "Like I haven't learned from experience. You guys'll drag me all over the neighborhood till we're out of time and I haven't even been in the store yet. I want to make sure this gets done."

Clarissa sighed. "Okay. Chocolate chip."

Natalie hmmm'ed. "Master Tom, did you say they had some sherbets last time?" Tom nodded, and she went on, "Okay, see if they have lemon, please."

Heidi looked on wide-eyed at this exchange. "Huh?"

Clarissa laughed. "I didn't even think to tell you, we're just so used to it. Tom gets us an ice cream while he's in the store."

"For real?" Heidi looked up at Tom. "Can I get dark chocolate? I used to get that here sometimes. Do they still have that?"

Tom shrugged. "I think so. Back in a few."

As Tom disappeared into the store, Natalie was studiously examining flyers posted in the window. Clarissa expanded on the wonders of being in town. "Probably another farmer will stop by with a girlcow. That happens pretty often. It's neat talking with them. You find out how they do things differently at different farms. It's kind of amazing sometimes. Once a guy parked his puppygirl here. They don't talk, of course, you know how it is with petgirls. She was really sweet, though." She giggled. "She acted like she wanted to play, but her owner came back out before we could really do anything." She looked at Heidi more intently. "Sometimes the girlcows want to play too. Are you up for that?" She side-stepped to keep up with Natalie, who had moved to the next window.

Heidi's jaw dropped. "Ummm... I... You do it, okay?"

Clarissa rolled her eyes. "Come on, sis, you have to try some new things. There are a lot of things you can't do anymore, so you have to make up for it by trying some things you wouldn't have done before." She was about to go on, but heard Natalie's sudden gasp. She whipped her head around. "What?"

Natalie said quickly, "Clarissa, look, look!"

Clarissa tried to see which flyer Natalie was reading. "What is it?" She was catching Natalie's excitement without yet knowing why.

Natalie tapped the window with her hoof. "Here!"

Clarissa read quickly, and in a moment whispered, "Holy shit!"

Heidi crowded up against them. "What is it?" She read it then, and her jaw dropped. She looked at her older sister. "Have you ever seen one of those?"

Clarissa shook her head slowly. "I don't remember there's ever been one in town. They're so expensive! I hope we can come back..." She looked more closely at the flyer. "That's TODAY!"

Natalie couldn't take her eyes off the flyer. "Do you know her?"

Clarissa looked at Heidi, not sure who the question was directed to. "Doesn't ring any bells. Heidi?"

Heidi was deep in thought. "Ginny Reston. Reston, that's... I think I knew her sister. Samantha. She was in our class. Ginny was... I think she might have been three years older. Yeah, that was it, I remember now."

Clarissa nodded excitedly. "Okay, a couple of years behind me, then." She looked more closely at the picture on the flyer. "Yeah, I think I may have seen her around."

Natalie's eyes were glowing. "Well, we've got to stay for this, right?"

"Oh, no." Behind them, Tom had emerged from the store holding a bag in one hand and a cardboard tray with three ice cream cones in the other. "Stay for what?"

Clarissa gave him her most winning look -- he winced as soon as he saw it and immediately started shaking his head. "Tom, we can stay till four, can't we? Well, four-thirty -- they'll need twenty or thirty minutes to really do it right."

"No. Not a chance. I've got stuff to do."

Clarissa, as Natalie had earlier, tapped the window with her hoof. "Ever seen one of these?"

Tom immediately bent to read the flyer. He slowly straightened, sighed heavily, and pulled out his cell phone. "I'll call Wendy."

Sandy caught the motion out of the corner of her eye and pulled her head up from the cushion of Sally's breasts. She smiled. "Look, honey, Natalya's pulling herself up again."

The babies spent most of each weekday in their mothers' stall, with Sarah and Gail handling diaper changes, while their mothers fed them and retrieved occasional lost rattles. They stayed in the house in the evenings, learning to socialize with Tom and Wendy's kids, and slept in a crib in Tom and Wendy's bedroom.

Sally pulled her attention away from the game show on TV. She giggled. "Kind of looks like she's dancing." Natalya, her hands gripping two bars of the playpen, swayed on her feet trying to keep her balance, periodically lifting her right foot and pushing it through the bars, with a comical look of intense concentration on her face. Behind her, her sister Clarice crawled across the padded surface of the playpen and, with a grunt, pulled herself to a standing position beside Natalya.

Sandy's brow furrowed. "I think they might be trying to walk, except they can't figure out how to get around the bars."

Sally bit her lip. This was one of those times she wished she had arms. "Sarah!"

Sarah looked in the stall a moment later, her face and chest looking slightly flushed. She glared at Sally, who suspected Sarah had been cuddling with Gail. Sally hadn't heard anything, so they'd probably been in the earlier stages of play. If she'd called a few minutes later, Sarah might have been a lot more hostile to interruption. "What?"

"I think the girls are trying to walk. Could you get them out of the playpen and stand them up in the middle of the stall?"

Behind Sarah, Gail appeared, resting her hand on Sarah's shoulder. "What? They're walking?"

Sandy shook her head. "They're trying to, I think. But they need some open space. We want to see what happens if you help them stand up and then let go."

The irritated look dropped from Sarah's face. As she moved towards the playpen, Gail said, "Wait. You know what I bet would work? Give them a goal." She pointed at the two reclining mothers. "You guys, sit up against the wall, okay? And hold your forelegs out, like you're reaching for them."

As the two girlcows scrambled to comply, Sarah reached down again into the playpen, picking up Clarice. The two babies didn't look nearly as identical as their mothers did, though they definitely looked like sisters -- both girls were blonde, like their father, but while Clarice's hair was lightly curled, Natalya's was straight. It was, however, occasionally a strain to remember which girl went with which mother, as hard as it was to tell their mothers apart, so they wore bows in their hair matching the ribbons on their mothers' collars -- pink for Natalya, Sandy's baby, and blue for Clarice.

Gail gathered up Natalya, gave her a kiss on the cheek and sat on the floor of the stall beside Sarah, turning Natalya to face away from her, her hands on either side of the baby's tiny waist, gently letting the baby find her balance as her feet touched the floor. Sarah, her hip rubbing against Gail's, did the same with Clarice, and became aware suddenly of the quiet in the barn -- in the other stalls, the girls had muted their televisions, seemed even to be holding their breaths. In the farthest stall, where Karen had been showing Haley some new sexual positions, the giggles turned into whispers and then quiet.

As both babies waved their arms and cooed, their mothers, sitting side by side now against the wall of the stall, extended their forelegs and called softly to them.

Clarice seemed to react first, flashing an open-mouthed smile at both beckoning girlcows, pumping her arms up and down so vigorously it was all Sarah could do to hold onto her. Next to her, Natalya settled down a little sooner, holding her arms steadily out in front of her as if seeking just the right balance. Tentatively, keeping her hands inches away just in case, Gail let go. As Natalya wobbled and fought to remain upright, Clarice fixed her attention on the two girlcows in front of her, and Sarah cautiously let her stand alone.

Nobody could agree, afterward, on which baby had taken the first step, but they all watched, open-mouthed, as each child put out one foot, then swung the other forward. The babies' grins spread as they each took two more tentative steps, and a third and, starting to fall forward, took two more desperate running steps before falling face first into their respective mothers' breasts.

Sarah and Gail, pumping clenched fists, shouted "They did it!!" In the adjacent stalls, the clamor to be let loose began. "We want to see!" Sally and Sandy tightened their forelegs against the babies' sides, as close as they could come to hugs. Sally, tears running down her cheeks, her eyes alight, exclaimed, "Look how excited they are!! Did you see? They know it's a big deal!" Sandy kissed Natalya's neck and blew raspberries against her, which always made Natalya giggle delightedly. "Such a big girl!"

While Sarah ran to get Wendy, and Gail let the other girls out of their stalls, Sally and Sandy cradled the babies in their forelegs while the babies, from a lifetime of habit, fed from their mothers' breasts.

In the small park across from the Town Hall, there were already a half-dozen people waiting in front of the apparatus that had been set up in an open area near the picnic tables: two women alone, a man and woman who were likely married, and a tall man with a naked slave on a leash. Another man and woman, more official-looking, were kneeling of either side of the apparatus -- judging from their work uniforms, they were no doubt from the company that had supplied the apparatus, and seemed to be testing circuits.

Clarissa and Natalie hurried Tom along behind them as he worked to keep some slack in their leash, while Heidi trotted beside Tom, looking nervously from side to side. Clarissa called back over her shoulder, "Good, we're early enough. We can get up front." She and Natalie had both insisted that they had to arrive early, pointing out to Tom that they couldn't see over a crowd so they needed to be in front.

There was a large temporary rope circle enclosing the area surrounding the apparatus, with a gap at which a female attendant sat at a folding table, a money-box in front of her on the table. Tom and the girls paused here as Tom passed the woman eight dollars, two dollars each for the four of them, and the woman smiled and waved them through the opening.

They managed to get a good view, up against another temporary roped boundary in front of the chair, along the left side. Aside from the technicians, nobody seemed to be here in any official capacity yet. There was a large private camper parked well behind the restraining ropes, perhaps belonging to the family of the girl whose snuff would be the focus of attention today. Behind the girls, a few more spectators were arriving.

Natalie looked in wonder at the chair and the leather bands on its arms and front legs. She said softly to Clarissa, "I've never seen a real one before. They do electrocutions pretty often in the City, don't they?"

"Well, more than here, anyway. In the City they can attract a bigger crowd, and the money they collect for admissions helps keep it from costing the family quite as much."

"Why's it so expensive, anyway? Seems like people might build their own chair and do it themselves, and not have to pay for the professionals."

Clarissa shook her head. She had done a paper for her Social Studies class in high school on various snuff methods -- an admirable amount of time and study went into it, though her teacher had marked her down for dwelling so heavily on hanging that the paper was a little uneven. "Only licensed professionals can do it, and the chair itself has to meet standards, and be inspected and licensed. The thing they're worried about is, the electric current kind of pre-cooks the girlmeat -- a little, anyway. They have to make sure and do it just right, and roast her right away afterwards, so the girl's flavor isn't ruined." She looked around. "I'm not seeing anything set up to barbecue her, so they've probably sold her to a local butcher. Except I don't see a van either..." She craned her neck to look between the people lining up behind her to check on a nearby engine sound. "Oh, there we go. The van just pulled up, over there." She gestured with her head, and Natalie saw the van and nodded.

As Clarissa swung her head back to face the chair, she caught sight of Heidi, on the other side of Tom, huddled against his legs. "Heidi, what's wrong?"

Heidi whispered back, "Do we have to be right up in front?"

Clarissa gave her an astonished look. "What do you want to do, just look at the backs of a bunch of people's legs?"

"Samantha's probably going to be here. She'll see me."

Clarissa sighed. "Heidi, get over here." She looked up. "Tom, let her get by you."

Tom stepped back, crowding apologetically against the people behind him so Heidi could get between him and the rope.

Clarissa captured Heidi's eyes and held them. "Heidi, are you ashamed of what you are?"

Heidi looked away from her sister with an effort. "I guess I never really thought about it one way or another before. On the farm, I feel like I'm part of something and doing something good, but... I don't know, I guess here I see all these people and I feel like... they probably don't understand that. Or understand me."

Clarissa nodded sympathetically. Oddly, it seemed to be a good place to have a private conversation, despite the growing crowd behind them -- all of the spectators were cheerfully chatting in pairs and groups, paying not the slightest attention to any other conversations around them. "Just give it a chance, Heidi. When Natalie and I are here, it never feels like people are looking down on us." She giggled. "Well, except physically, I mean. Right, sweety?" She looked at Natalie.

Natalie nodded. "It's true. Well, once in awhile there's some idiot, but look: you're not just giving your body once for food, like most women. You're going to spend the whole rest of your life doing it. If somebody you meet isn't grateful for that -- well, then they're a lesser person than you are. Just ignore them."

Heidi nodded slowly. "I get what you're saying. But... if Samantha sees me... I didn't know her real well, but still, if you know somebody, you care more about what they think of you than a complete stranger. You know what I mean, don't you?"

A memory struck Clarissa, and she burst out laughing. She stopped when she saw Heidi's intense blush. "I'm sorry, Heidi, really, I'm not laughing at you at all! It's just that I know exactly what you're worried about, and how wrong you can be! The first time I came into town after my conversion, I was feeling the same way you are, and I was petrified I'd run into somebody I knew from school. And I did! Guess who it was? And to give you an idea of how it turned out in the end, it's somebody who's sitting back at our farm right now."

Heidi stared at Clarissa blankly, not able to imagine who Clarissa could be talking about. It occurred to her then that there were only three people on the farm, other than the babies, whom she hadn't grown up with, and of the three Natalie wasn't back at the farm, and it seemed doubtful Clarissa could mean Wendy. Her jaw dropped. "Gail??"

Clarissa nodded, her eyes bright. "And do you think she laughed at me and thought I looked really stupid?"

"Ummm... I would have to guess not. But... Gail's different."

Clarissa shook her head. "Not that different. So just give it a chance, okay? Assume everybody feels like Gail. And if it turns out somebody doesn't... well, then just tell yourself there's something wrong with them."

Heidi was opening her mouth to answer when Clarissa felt Natalie's hip nudge hers. "Look!" She gestured with her head towards the camper, whose back door was opening.

As they watched, a casually dressed man emerged from the door and descended the portable steps that had been set on the ground behind the camper -- about forty years old, likely Ginny's father. He was accompanied by a girl who looked about twenty, dressed in a pleated white skirt and sleeveless white blouse, who gave the appearance of trying to blend into the background. Clarissa whispered to Heidi, "Samantha?"

Heidi shook her head, looking puzzled. "Don't know her at all."

The man turned and beckoned impatiently to the unseen occupants still in the camper. A moment later a dark-haired girl in a t-shirt and shorts came out, walking sideways, looking back into the camper, her arm extended to someone still inside.

Clarissa felt Heidi stiffen beside her. She turned to look at her. "That's her?" Heidi nodded and gulped.

Clarissa sighed. "Heidi, look, she's obviously going to be busy. Quit worrying about her and just enjoy the show."

At last, hesitantly, another girl, a blonde, appeared in the door of the camper, naked, her skin glowing with a coating of cooking oil. Still holding Samantha's hand, as she saw the crowd she put her other hand to her face and giggled nervously. Several people clapped spontaneously, and in an instant the whole crowd was applauding good-naturedly. The girl seemed to relax a little, smiled, and waved to the spectators as she came down the steps.

As they turned towards the crowd and began approaching the chair, Clarissa could see that the blonde's pubic mound was bare of hair and slightly reddened -- they had probably just finished shaving her in the camper before oiling her, to save the butchers the trouble. Samantha's t-shirt, the front now visible, showed a comical drawing of a girl in a stylized electric chair, her mouth wide open and her hair standing on end, with the legend underneath: "Virginia Reston," followed by the date. The two girls, walking hand-in-hand, followed their father and the other girl as he strode self-consciously ahead of the chair and stopped to face the crowd. The girl in white with him stood off to his side, her eyes on him, clearly uncomfortable at being near the spotlight, while Samantha and, presumably, Ginny, stopped beside the chair, behind the man.

He cleared his throat, not looking accustomed to public speaking. "I, uhhh, want to thank all of you for coming. I guess you all know we're here to snuff my daughter Virginia..."

The blonde interrupted him. "Ginny." She had spotted a number of friends in the crowd and was waving to each of them.

Her father smiled. "Okay, okay. Anyway, Ginny got her draft notice a few days ago, and this is how she always wanted to go. If any of you folks have got wives or daughters who'd like to be snuffed this way, you can give them a call at Shelton Electrocutions. They've got some real nice financing plans..."

The two technicians, finished with their preparations and now sitting on the ground on either side of the chair, smiled and nodded. Ginny attracted her father's attention with a hand gesture and pointed to her sister's shirt. Beside her Samantha, her eyes passing over the crowd, suddenly spotted Heidi, did a double take, put her hand to her mouth, gave her a little wave and a radiant smile.

Her father nodded. "Yes, sweetheart, I was getting to that." He faced the crowd again. "You can all see the t-shirt Ginny's sister Sami is wearing. Show it a little better, honey." Samantha pulled down on the bottom seam to flatten out the shirt so everyone could see it. There were some titters as a few people saw it clearly for the first time. "The lady at the front table there will be selling those for ten dollars apiece after we're all done here."

Clarissa looked at Tom. "Can we get one?"

Tom tried not to laugh. "Who'd wear it, Clary?"

She glared at him, wondering how a man surrounded constantly by women could fail so often to understand them. She held his eyes. "Tom, it's her way of being remembered. Don't you know how important that is?"

Tom closed his eyes and sighed. "Okay, okay."

She turned to Natalie. "Where should it go? Pinned up by the door of the barn, maybe?"

Natalie nodded tentatively. "I guess. Unless... Oh! Look, Ginny's going to say something."

Her father had turned to her and the girl stepped forward, standing directly in front of the chair now. "I really appreciate all of you coming. I know some of you... Hi Sheila! I didn't see you over there!" She waved and beamed at a girl on the far right side of the crowd.

She went on, "Daddy did forget one thing." She grinned tolerantly at her father. "My meat will be at Craft and Hedges Butchers, and as long as the supplies last, if you wear one of my t-shirts to the shop, you can get a ten percent discount on up to two pounds of any cut of me!"

Clarissa felt Heidi nudge her hip. Out of the corner of her mouth, Heidi whispered, "Clary, Samantha keeps looking at me."

Clarissa watched Samantha for a moment, trying not to be obvious about it. She did catch the girl focussing intently on Heidi at one point -- it was easy to tell the direction of her gaze, as nobody else was down so low. Looking away from her towards Ginny, who was still speaking, she whispered back, "Yeah, I see that. She's not laughing, though. In fact..." Clarissa frowned, remembering Heidi said she'd barely known Samantha. "You didn't have kind of a thing with her, did you?"

Heidi spun her head towards Clarissa in surprise. "Huh? No, nothing like that."

Clarissa watched Samantha again, half-listening to her sister, and turned to Natalie. "Keep an eye on Ginny's sister. See if you think... well, tell me what she's thinking about Heidi."

Natalie blinked. "Uhhh, sure."

Ginny seemed close to finishing up. "I think maybe if those of you up front could kind of scrunch down a little, we can make sure people in the back can see." She made a downward gesture with her hands. In the front part of the crowd, people looked at each other and shrugged, most of them kneeling a little self-consciously.

Ginny grinned. "There we go." She giggled. "Sorry I ran on so long, I know everybody's waiting. Anyway, like they always say, I hope my meat tastes good." She turned to her father and gave him a slightly remote hug, trying to avoid getting too much cooking oil on him, saying loud enough that most of the crowd could hear, "I love you, Daddy. Thank you for everything!"

She lay her head on his shoulder for a moment, as he responded, "Love you too, Gin-gin. You always made us happy." She raised her head and beamed at him, then let go and turned to the girl in white. They looked awkwardly at each other, as if not sure whether to embrace or just shake hands, until Ginny finally put her arms around the girl's shoulders and patted her back. It seemed obvious now to Clarissa that the girl was not another sister but rather her father's new wife. Like Gail, Ginny had been faced with having a stepmother her own age; it looked as if she had come to terms with the situation better than Gail had. Though not much.

While Ginny was saying her goodbyes to her father and stepmother, Clarissa kept glancing at Samantha, and twice caught her looking at Heidi out of the corner of her eye. She wasn't sure whether she was imagining that she had seen Samantha's hand twitch towards the front of her shorts, stopping as she thought better of it under the scrutiny of the crowd. Natalie whispered in her ear, "Am I supposed to think Samantha has the hots for Heidi? Kind of looks like that." Clarissa choked back a laugh and nodded.

Turning at last to Samantha, Ginny, less mindful of getting oil stains on her sister's clothes, threw her arms around her and squeezed her tight, her eyes closed, backing off only to give her sister a warm kiss on the lips. After breaking off the kiss, Ginny whispered, "Love you, Sami. Take care of yourself!"

Samantha, her attention now fully on her sister, brushed away a tear that threatened to seep from the corner of her eye. "Love you too, Gin. I'll always think about you."

Ginny giggled, and patted Samantha's stomach. "You better. I'll be right in there." They both laughed at that, and Ginny, after giving her sister one more kiss, backed away, nodded to the nearer of the two technicians, and, with a deep breath and a smile, her eyes glowing with excitement, sat in the chair.

As Ginny sat, resting her forearms on the wooden arms of the chair, her legs spread so that her lower legs ran down along the chair's front legs, the technicians started fastening the many straps at various points on the chair to secure Ginny to the chair: belt-like fastenings held her wrists, elbows, ankles, thighs, and waist snugly, so that she sat stiffly upright and immobilized. As the male technician was securing the elbow and wrist straps, the woman slipped a metal ring, with a wire attached, onto Ginny's right index finger, and a similar one on her left, then knelt to slip two larger rings onto Ginny's left and right big toes. The man finished up by fastening a metal collar around Ginny's neck, the wires barely visible back where the collar was attached to the chair back. While he was doing this, the woman gently massaged Ginny's pussy lips, returning Ginny's smile as she did. Ginny, breathing hard, wriggled in the chair, sighing softly with pleasure, as the woman parted the girl's pussy lips and located her swelling clitoris. Ginny squeaked and tried to hold still as the woman slipped what looked like a tiny rubber band around the girl's clit, a wire leading to it running down between her legs and disappearing into the interior of the chair.

Ginny swung her head slowly to take in the crowd, looking like a naked queen benignly smiling at her subjects, her oiled skin glowing in highlights from the sun. Addressing the crowd in general, she giggled, "It'd be fun to be able to watch from where you guys are, but I'd rather be the one in the chair. This is so cool!" She wriggled in the chair, fighting with the straps to settle her rump a little more comfortably. "I guess we better get going on this. You've all been standing there a long time. Again, really, thanks for coming!"

Next to her, Samantha pulled a pair of rubber gloves out of the pocket of her shorts and pulled them onto her hands. She exchanged a look with the male technician, and both of them looked at Ginny, who nodded. At that, the technician twisted a dial.

Ginny flinched and then laughed wildly. "Bugs, it feels like bugs crawling over me... okay, I'm getting used to it." Her hands clenched into fists, she began moving her hips in a slow rhythm, obviously becoming quickly aroused by the tingling between her legs. She looked up at Samantha. "Sami, get my mind off the tickling."

Samantha knelt by the chair, reached across Ginny's chest and began softly kneading Ginny's breasts with her gloved hands. Closing her eyes, Ginny breathed, "Ohh, yeah, you always knew how to do that. And it feels so neat with my skin all slippery!"

Not letting go of her sister's breasts, Samantha slowly rose and moved to stand behind the chair, now reaching down to her over the back of the chair. "I think this will work better." She looked at the technician. "It's okay to kiss her, right?"

He nodded. "Her head's outside the circuit. Try not to touch her below the neck, though. Unless you don't mind a little zap."

Ginny laughed and looked up at Samantha. "Hey, I think he just called me a little zap! Not much I can do about it, though." She sighed, starting to breathe hard, her hips rocking, her stomach straining against the waist strap. She smiled as Samantha bent her head down in front of hers and leaned forward to kiss her, their mouths open.

Ginny was moaning now, expelling her breath hard through her nose. She broke off the kiss and whispered, "Let people watch me now, sweety. Don't stop feeling me, though! Yeah, like that, like that, ohhh!"

As Samantha straightened to give the crowd a clear view of her sister's face, Ginny drew several very quick breaths, exhaling each with a high-pitched sigh, her rib cage shivering. As she had by far the superior knowledge of her sister's orgasms, it was Samantha's job to tell the technician when the moment had arrived. Giving Ginny's breasts one last, loving squeeze, she said quickly, "Love you, Gin," and nodded to the technician, who twisted the dial to its maximum setting.

It was impossible to tell, from watching Ginny alone, exactly when the current had made its jump -- the writhing of her body in orgasm flowed smoothly into universal spasms as the current shot through her body. For that matter, it was doubtful even Ginny herself could tell the difference between the sizzling current and the waves of ecstasy pounding her body in response to the erotic stimulation she had been receiving. For about ten seconds every muscle in her body was jumping and straining against the chair's restraining straps. It must have taken immense concentration for her to look upward towards Samantha and jerkily choke out what sounded like "Thnk yoo..." before the light faded from her eyes. Moments later a timer mechanism in the chair automatically cut the power, able to judge better than a human operator the maximum amount of time the current could flow without spoiling the meat.

The crowd looked on in absorbed silence as the female techician donned a stethoscope and applied it to the chest of the now-motionless girl, whose head was now resting peacefully on her shoulder, her lips curled in a slight smile, tiny wisps of steam curling from her half-open mouth and her pussy. Finding no pulse, she gave a thumbs-up signal to her partner, and together they began releasing the straps holding the girl's body to the chair.

Beside Tom, a woman began slowly clapping her hands. In seconds, the rest of the crowd joined in. Ginny's father, his young wife standing beside him, smiled and nodded acknowledgement to the gathered spectators.

As the technicians finished releasing the straps and disengaging the electrodes from the lifeless girl, a man from Craft and Hedges greeted him with a clipboard of papers for him to sign, after which the man picked up Ginny's body, slung it over his shoulder and carried it to the waiting van for the trip to the butcher's. Samantha stood uncertainly beside the now-empty chair, watching the crowd begin to break up, a few of them coming over to shake her father's hand, many of them forming a line in front of the table where the t-shirts were being sold.

Clarissa butted Tom's leg with her head. "Tom, you promised us a t-shirt. You better get over there."

"Huh? Oh, right." Reluctant to fight the mob with three girlcows in tow, he looked around him. Just in front of them, the restraining rope was looped around the vertical pipe of one of the park's permanent standing drinking fountains. "You guys be okay here for a minute? If I lock you to the pipe?"

Clarissa nodded. "Sure. Go." He quickly secured their leashes to the pipe and hurried over to the line.

Natalie smiled at Clarissa. "Still rather be hanged?"

Clarissa laughed. "Well, yeah. Hanging still wins out as far as getting the crowd into it. I think the guys looking on were getting hard -- I'm pretty sure Tom was, anyway, but you don't get guys coming in their pants like you do at a good hanging..." Her eyes had caught Samantha fidgeting as if struggling to come to a decision. Suddenly, the girl had taken a deep breath and was headed straight for the girlcows. Beside her, she heard Heidi gasp.

As the girl arrived she politely came down on one knee, in front of Heidi. Blushing, she stammered, "Ummm... H-Heidi, right? Heidi Martin?"

Wide eyed, Heidi responded with equal uncertainty, "Yeah. Hi, Samantha."

Turning her head slightly, looking at Heidi out of the corners of her eyes as if ready to apologize if necessary, she blurted, "You've kind of changed a little."

With the elephant in the room finally acknowledged, the immensity of the understatement struck Heidi as funny, and she burst out laughing. "I guess a little, maybe."

Samantha laughed with her and finally relaxed. "How's..." She closed her eyes for a moment to search her memory. "Let's see, Heather, and Haley, and Hannah. Did I get it right?"

Heidi nodded. "We're all girlcows now. Heather and Hannah are working at my dad's farm, and I'm with Haley at my brother Tom's. That's him, over in line there. The kind of tall one, see?

"Light green shirt?"

"Yeah, that's him. And this is my sister Clary, and her partner Natalie."

Samantha smiled at them. Looking at Clarissa, she said, "You're Clary, right? You kind of look like Heidi." As Clarissa nodded, Samantha looked back and forth between her and Natalie. "Looks like partners is kind of an understatement. What's the chain for? I've never seen that on girlcows."

Natalie grinned. "So she can never get away from me." Clarissa laughed and kissed her, as Heidi asked, "So what are you doing these days, Samantha? You can kind of see what I'm up to."

The tense frown was back on Samantha's face. "I, uhh, don't know." She looked back at the electric chair, which the technicians were now picking up to load onto their truck.

Clarissa squinted at the girl, debating with herself whether to press the question. It might be a sore point with her. On the other hand, obviously Samantha wanted to talk about something in particular; perhaps this was it. "Have you got any plans? What do you want to do?"

Samantha's attention had turned to the van from the butcher's shop pulling away and turning onto the street. Natalie, watching Samantha's expression closely, suddenly realized there was a connection with the subject of the discussion. "You were going to do something with Ginny, right?"

Samantha, her eyes still on the van until it disappeared at a distant intersection, whispered a barely audible, "Yeah." When she turned back to look at the girls, her eyes were brimming with tears.

Quietly, Clarissa asked, "What was it, Samantha?"

Samantha quickly rubbed her eyes clear with the heel of her palm, visibly pulling herself together. Her sister had had a very happy, satisfying snuff; she knew she shouldn't be crying. "We were... going to open up a flower shop together."

Heidi gave her a puzzled look. "Well, you could still do that, couldn't you?"

Samantha gave her a wan smile. "You didn't know Ginny. She had all the business sense in the family. I mean, like with this, today." She waved her arm to indicate the surrounding area, and by implication the event that had just taken place in it. "She set this whole thing up, not Daddy. And all these little deals, like with the t-shirts, and tying that in with the butcher shop, all this stuff to fix it so we could afford it. Of course, Daddy gave her some money for it, and... well, she used up the money she'd saved to start the shop. That's not it, though, that's not why I can't start one on my own. I just don't know how to... do what she did. I'd never know how to keep a business going."

Clarissa sighed. You had only to look into Samantha's eyes to feel a small part of the loss the girl was experiencing. "I guess you can still live at home until you figure out what you want to do."

The nervousness was back full-force. "I -- I -- I think I know what I want to do." Her eyes were locked with Heidi's.

Clarissa looked back and forth between Heidi and Samantha, somehow sensing a current flowing between them similar to the one that had excited Ginny so much. "You do? What?"

Samantha swallowed convulsively. "I think I... maybe... want to be a girlcow."

The three cows joined together in a chorus of "Huh??"

The words suddenly gushed from Samantha's mouth. "I just... I know it seems crazy -- sorry, I didn't mean it like that, you guys aren't crazy, but when I saw Heidi... I never really thought about girlcows before, and I guess the thing is, I've never seen a girlcow before where I'd known her before she was a girlcow, and it was like... it made it so real! I mean, I realized girlcows are people just like me, and any girl can be one, and..." She giggled. "Heidi, you just look SO cool that way."

Heidi blinked in astonishment. "Uhhh... yeah?"

Samantha nodded vigorously. She touched her own chest self-consciously. "I never had very big breasts, not like Ginny's. I always loved hers." She laughed. "I guess you could tell."

Clarissa felt a need to bend Samantha back towards reality. "Samantha, you know it's not just about having big boobs. You're talking about something where you don't get to change your mind if you decide you don't like it. For one thing, you're a slave, and somebody else owns your body, but even not counting that, your arms and legs, you can't get those back. This is something that's forever."

Samantha shook her head. "No, Clary, nothing's forever, except living on in the people who eat you. I know being a girlcow isn't about just having enormous tits." She smiled. "You're happy being a girlcow, right? You don't have to answer. I can tell. I've been watching you."

Clarissa rubbed her hip against Natalie's and smiled. "Well, yeah."

Samantha turned to Heidi. "How about you? It's harder to tell with you."

Heidi bit her lip and smiled. "Well, yeah. I get to spend all day with people I really care about..."

Samantha clapped her hands together. "There you go! How many jobs are there where anybody says that?"

Clarissa tried again to bring the girl closer to earth. "Samantha, you hardly know any of us. Even Heidi. How do you know you'd even like us?"

Samantha smiled at her. "I already do, Clary. It's... I don't know, it's easier talking to you than anybody I've ever known, except Ginny, and I just met you five minutes ago! And... well, this isn't a put-down, but you're doing something with your life that I know I can do. There are a lot of things I just couldn't do now without Ginny to help me, but... I really could feel happy, and useful, and... important, doing what you're doing." She turned to look, pleadingly, at each girl in turn.

Natalie looked behind her, and saw that Tom had finally reached the front of the line. She turned back to Samantha. "Master Tom's going to be here in a minute. I know he'll probably say yes, so this is all on you. You need to really think about this, and I don't just mean for a few minutes. Look, why don't you come by the farm for a few days, and work with the slave girls, and see what it's like? You've never spent any time on a dairy farm, right?" Samantha shook her head. "Okay, you shouldn't decide in less than a week. We'll just tell Master Tom you want the experience of working there a few days and you don't want to be paid anything. Like it's a school project or something. Okay?"

Samantha blinked. "I finished school."

"Yeah, but he doesn't know that. But you've got to get to know us first, and then see if this is what you really want."

Samantha nodded. "I wasn't looking to be converted right this minute. I need to go home with Daddy, because we'll be eating Ginny for a few days." She grinned. "That was part of the deal with the butcher. We're getting her forearms and lower legs, and one breast. And her pussy, of course. So anyway, I wouldn't think of missing out on Ginny's meat. Can I start on Monday?"

Heidi squinted at her. "Will this be okay with your dad?"

Samantha looked behind her, to where her father was chatting with a few remaining guests, his young wife standing with them, her arm wrapped around his waist. "Yeah, he's kind of... eager for me to get out of the house, I think. I was getting set to move into Ginny's apartment with her."

Clarissa looked back. "Tom's coming now. We can get this set up."

Tom heard the last and groaned. "What now?"

TEN DAYS LATER

Samantha swam back into consciousness slowly, vaguely aware of aching arms and legs. Her eyes seemed to move sluggishly, like a door on a rusty hinge. When the room stopped whirling, she gradually realized she was on her back, and that Heidi and Haley's faces were not floating in the air around her, but hung motionless above her looking down at her. She mentally played back the sound of Heidi saying, "How you feeling?"

"Ummm..." She prolonged the sound because the buzzing of her larynx seemed to settle her a little. " 'S it all done?" She raised her arm -- no, her foreleg -- and saw the stub with the hoof grafted to the end of it. "Guess so."

Haley managed to hold Samantha's eyes -- a good sign, she decided. "You okay?"

Samantha giggled, lightheaded. "What's left of me, I guess." She held up her other foreleg for inspection. "I hurt all around. I guess that's normal, huh?"

Heidi smiled. "Oh, yeah. Remember, it's only for a few days."

Samantha winced. "And my boobs are really throbbing. You promised that'll go away. Right?"

Haley nodded. "Well, like we told you, you'll keep being more conscious of them than you ever were before, but it won't be uncomfortable like it is right now." She giggled. "I can see they're already bigger."

"Are they?" Samantha strained to lift her head and get a better view. "Wow, yeah!"

Heidi laughed. "That's nothing compared with what they'll be in a few days."

Samantha focussed more on her surroundings. "I'm in your stall, right?"

Haley smiled. "Your stall too, now. Permanent threesome, like we talked about. In fact... Oh, you probably haven't seen it. I'm standing in the way. Look on the wall, behind me..." She backed away to give Samantha a better view.

Samantha gasped. Pinned to the wall of the stall, its arms outstretched, was the souvenir t-shirt Tom had bought. Here in the stall, Samantha would always be able to look up and remember her sister. She saw it now through a cloud of tears. "Thank you SO much. You guys are so special!"

From the door of the stall, Clarissa said, "Knock, knock. Okay if we come in?"

Samantha beamed at her, and Natalie. "Sure."

Natalie looked her over critically as she came closer, and nodded. "Master Tom does good work."

Clarissa smiled at the newest girlcow. "Not changing your mind, huh?"

Samantha laughed. "I knew I wouldn't. You guys are all so great. Everybody here. I feel like I'm home. For real."

Natalie's eyes twinkled. "And we haven't even showed you how good we can make you feel yet."

Samantha let out a quick breath, suddenly twitching her hips in response to the flaring of heat and wetness between her hind legs. Blushing, she said, "Oh, yeah," and giggled.

Clarissa thumped Heidi with her foreleg. "That'll be mostly your job."

Heidi's eyes lit up, and she grinned at Haley. "We'll work on it."

Haley returned her grin and looked back down at Samantha. "You need anything? Hungry at all?"

Samantha shrugged. "Really thirsty."

Heidi laughed. "We can handle that."