by Big Kahuna
The doctor turned back around, the interruption forgotten, and found to her surprise that her charges were already on all fours on their respective milking stations, massive udders hanging down, waiting to be milked. “I…” she started, “…no, we can get you chairs. You don’t have to—”
Moo-Moo spoke up, her voice soft. “It’s okay, ma’am. We’re more comfortable this way.” Melissa smiled. She’d had no idea that Moo-Moo was a Southerner.
Being milked with Dr. Roberts in charge was quite a different affair than when Rance had been running things. She did not lock their heads on to the posts while they were being milked, but at their request gave them the water penises to suck on, so that they would remain hydrated. The doctor observed them closely during the process, marveling at their output, making notes on a tablet computer and constantly mumbling excitedly under her breath, such things as, “This is impossible,” and, “I don’t believe it,” and, “Oh, my God.”
Melissa couldn’t help but be amused by the doctor’s amazement. She especially liked it when the doctor put down her tablet, bent down in front of her, and hefted a massy milker with both hands, apparently trying to gauge its weight.
“Would you mind?” the doctor asked, taking back up the tablet and holding it in front of her, indicating that she wished to take her picture. “I’ll blur your facial features out. No one will know it’s you.” Melissa glanced over to see Agent Dillon in the corner, fuming but apparently powerless to interfere. She smiled and hummed her assent to the doctor, if for no other reason than to piss off the officious senior agent.
Once the milking was done, an agent escorted them back outside, though without Dr. Roberts, who was staying behind, presumably to monitor milk storage and processing. Melissa discovered that more trailers had arrived while they were being milked. There was already the command trailer, the medical trailer, and various other technical and support trailers. These new ones were FEMA trailers, driven up from Houston especially, one for each of the ‘detainees.’
They were actually quite decent living quarters, better than Rance’s trailer by the looks of things. An agent gave her a quick tour, her manner not unlike a redcap at a five-star hotel, and then left her alone so that she could get some sleep. Melissa closed the door behind her, surprised that she hadn’t just been taken to a hospital, when she heard voices outside the door, the agent telling another agent, “No one sees them. No one talks to them. Period.” Melissa guessed that seven hucows loose in the city would be a public relations nightmare.
She used the toilet, which felt almost unnatural now. Doing things the human way was definitely going to take some getting used to. She also did something that she had been dreading, which was to use the full-length mirror in the bedroom.
Melissa wasn’t shocked by what she saw, having seen herself reflected in her sister hucows. She vaguely remembered what she used to look like: blonde hair, clear skin, big belly, smaller boobs. That was another life, another person. The image in the mirror couldn’t properly be called a person, not really: completely hairless, massive udders, painted and branded hide.
Yet she had been fine with that. Only a few hours ago she had been a perfectly well-adjusted hucow…but was that entirely Rance’s doing? Had he truly hypnotized her into being a human cow, or had he seen something in her that she hadn’t seen herself? Was she a hucow by birth, or had he brainwashed her? The age old question: nature versus nurture. It was definitely food for thought.
Speaking of which, she needed some food. She hadn’t had a thing to eat since late afternoon, and her system was used to Rance’s schedule. She rummaged around in the kitchen, and was surprised to find that the cupboards were stocked, some thoughtful person at the DHS having anticipated at least that much.
There was bread, peanut butter, jelly, cereal, canned fruit, canned vegetables, as well as some canned tuna and various other tinned meats. She checked the fridge next, hoping to find some juice, which she did, right next to an unopened gallon of milk.
The tears came then, hot and fast. She pulled the plastic jug out of the refrigerator and held it up to her breasts, the container of milk looking bizarrely small in comparison. Gasping, she leaned back against the pantry cupboard and slid down to the floor. Her sobs continued unabated, her tears falling onto the rounded tops of her breasts until her massive mammaries practically shone in the low light. Little by little her sadness ebbed. Her hunger forgotten, she lay on her side, still clutching the gallon milk jug to her chest, and fell asleep.
She was awakened for her 2:00 a.m. milking by her breasts, which were more painful than usual, owing to the plastic milk jug that was wedged between her considerably larger flesh ones. She exited the trailer to more stares, but paid them no mind.
Dr. Roberts was in the milking shed, as were the rest of her sister hucows, plus there was another familiar face—Maggie the cat! In all of the tumult, Melissa had quite forgotten about her pet. Maggie hadn’t forgotten about her, though. The excited cat wound about her roommate’s ankles and rubbed her furry head against her legs, though whether she wanted affection or milk, Melissa didn’t know. Melissa bent down, as if to pet Maggie, but instead took hold of a fat nipple and pulled on it, squirting about a half a cup of titmilk at the finicky feline. Serves you right, puss-cat, she thought.
There was also another surprise: Dr. Roberts had set up the feed cans. Rance must have had some ready to go, or else the doctor had prepared them sometime during the last few hours. Melissa got into position, ravenously hungry, and allowed Dr. Roberts to insert the feed tube into her mouth and strap it on. Warm gruel slid into her mouth and down her throat. It tasted like Rance’s recipe, though ever so slightly different, fresher. It appeared that the doctor was every bit as conscientious a dairywoman as her late owner had been, gender differences aside.
Of course the doctor’s interest might be purely clinical, Melissa considered, until the attractive redhead leaned down in front of her to slide on the teat cups; the nipples poking through her lace bra were hard enough to cut glass.
Melissa smiled behind her strapped-on feed tube, then closed her eyes and fed, enjoying the sensation of being milked, of producing. It felt good to feel that way again, so soon after Rance’s death. Still and all, she was a bit surprised that the doctor was doing it this way. She could have ordered breast pumps sent in. The city wasn’t that far away. And shouldn’t they be receiving some kind of post-trauma counseling, unless this was the counseling, in which case it seemed to be working just fine.
Melissa let her mind go. Now was not the time for thinking. Milking was a time of relaxation, a time to let everything else go away. She felt the doctor’s hand on her tit, a gentle stroke that made her feel good, as though her late owner were still among the living.
She began to think of all that she had been through, especially her better half. Buttercup was gone now. She had begun to fade away shortly after Rance had been killed. Melissa thought of her with some small degree of sadness. It wasn’t as if the hucow had been a separate personality, with her own memories; Melissa didn’t think she was schizoid. No, Buttercup had been a part of her, the part of her that could cope with the strange situation she’d found herself in, the part of her that could abide, and now that the strange situation was passed, her bovine alter ego was no longer needed.
“Buttercup?”
Melissa opened her eyes. Special Agent Dillon was looking at her from across her wide desk.
“I’m sorry that I had to use your, um, cow name, Ms. DeVries, but you weren’t answering to your given name.
Melissa nodded. It was apparent that Agent Dillon didn’t like her. She didn’t seem to like anyone. Melissa wondered if it wasn’t the case that was making her behave like a cast-iron bitch. The senior agent probably felt that her talents were much better suited to taking down terrorists than riding herd on a bunch of stupid milk cows.
“Anyway, Ms. DeVries, the purpose of this meeting is purely informational. Under normal circumstances I
or a member of my team would be interviewing you, asking you what you had seen and experienced. This is no ordinary case, however. Mr. Rifkin, the man whom DHS agents shot last night, left behind a mountain of evidence. This agency will be months sifting through it all.”
Melissa nodded again, which she could tell by the set of the senior agent’s mouth irritated her.
“I will be sending an agent by your trailer later this morning to take your statement, that is if you feel up to talking. I understand that you’ve been through a traumatic event, and that you may be reticent to speak to a stranger about what has happened to you over the last several months. If you like, I can send a crisis counsel—”
“Months?” Melissa interrupted. In all the time since she had been rescued, it had never occurred to her to ask how long she had been Rance’s captive. Wouldn’t a person normally ask this? Perhaps Buttercup was not entirely gone from her psyche. “How, um, long have I been…?”
“A little over five months,” the senior agent answered, a trace of triumph flashing across her thin-lipped face. “Mr. Rifkin abducted you on April 23rd of this year. Today is September the 29th.”
“Five months…?” Melissa whispered, barely able to believe what she was hearing. She could have sworn that it hadn’t even been six weeks.
“Yes,” Agent Dillon replied, her mood noticeably improved. “This is often the case when people are kept incommunicado for long periods, as you have been. I’m told that Mr. Rifkin never even spoke English to you.”
“No, he didn’t. He spoke Russian, or—”
“It was Czech. It appears that Mr. Rifkin spoke fluent Czech. We assume it wasn’t his native language. Doubtful, as we found dictionaries, language recordings, and the like. He obviously went to a great deal of trouble to distance himself from, well, what he thought of as his livestock.”
Melissa looked across the desk, the pressure in her breasts rising as they sat balanced upon her thighs. She really should go and see about being milked, but there was more that she needed to know, even if it meant being insulted by this titless bureaucrat.
“You said that it has been five months. What…about my parents? Didn’t they report me missing?
“Don’t blame them, Ms. DeVries. You see, Mr. Rifkin, posing as you, had been emailing them regularly. He told them that you had met an Internet millionaire, who was taking you on a round the world cruise. He even included photographs of you in various European cities. He was quite skilled with Photoshop, it would appear.”
Melissa was shaken by this news. “So they don’t even know that I was gone?”
Agent Dillon shook her head. “We haven’t notified them yet, as we wanted to speak with you first. A missing persons report was filed with the Dallas police department by a Ms. Janice Parker. Her report stated that you had met an unnamed male who had been giving you gifts…” the senior agent paused, her eyes lingering over the giant funbags resting in Melissa’s lap, “…and that you’d quit your job via an email to your superiors at Masterson International, which made her suspicious. Dallas P.D. went to your home address, but your landlord told them you’d emailed him that you were taking an extended vacation, and to keep an eye on your apartment. Mr. Rifkin had been paying your rent via direct deposit from your checking account. He also had your mail forwarded to a P.O. box and then delivered here. It appears that he burned everything.”
Melissa wanted to cry, but she would not do so in front of Agent Dillon. She didn’t give a fig about her dingy apartment or a few tons of junk mail—that was just stuff! The real tragedy was that the only person in the world who had noticed her disappearance was a person she barely knew. When she got back to the city—to her life—she would go back to Masterson, find Janice, and thank her for her concern. Maybe they could renew their friendship, outside of work, if it was possible for a person to be friends with a human cow.
She got hold of herself, determined that she would not show weakness before someone who seemed to have less regard for her than the man who had been milking her for almost half a year. “So if no one was looking for me, then how did you catch him? Was it one of the others? One of their families? And why is the Department of Homeland Security involved? Isn’t kidnapping more of an FBI matter?”
For the first time since they’d met, Agent Dillon looked uncomfortable. “Normally it would be, yes, but we were unaware that Mr. Rifkin was keeping human beings prisoner. We were looking for him regarding an unrelated matter.”
“Unrelated matter?” echoed Melissa.
Agent Dillon nodded. “Yes. You see, the DHS oversees the U.S. Customs Service, which in 2003 was combined with other like agencies to form the U.S Customs and Border Protection office. Prior to that it had been overseen by the office of the Treasury.” Melissa looked confused, but Agent Dillon continued.
“I don’t know if you’re aware, but Mr. Rifkin had been enhancing your milk production by the use of various drugs. The tox screen provided by Dr. Roberts confirms this. Normally, the use and importation of such drugs is monitored by the Food and Drug Administration, which in turn is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.” Melissa couldn’t have looked more lost if Agent Dillon had been speaking Czech.
“Several weeks ago we received a tip from the FDA that Mr. Rifkin was attempting to import a recently banned growth hormone into the United States from the Czech Republic. Well, like I said, this would normally come under the rubric of the FDA, but they kicked it over to us, fearing that someone might be planning to use the banned hormone to infect the cattle supply, possibly as an act of terrorism.”
“But why would they fear that?” Melissa asked. “How would a human growth hormone affect cattle?”
“It wasn’t a human growth hormone, Ms. DeVries. It was a bovine growth hormone.”
Melissa’s eyes widened. “You mean, he was going to inject us with—”
“It appears so, seeing that he had no other cows to experiment on. I doubt that he would have injected all of you with it. While the use of such hormones has been shown to increase milk production, it is also linked to increases in mastitis, lameness, and reproductive system disorders.”
Melissa gulped, only just realizing that her arms were clutching her breasts protectively. “Then…” she began, feeling slightly faint, “…you weren’t here to rescue us. You were investigating him because you thought he was mistreating his cows!”
Agent Dillon sat in her office chair, her expression sheepish. “I don’t mean to make light of what has been done to you, Ms. DeVries, but there is some positive news.”
Melissa bent forward slightly and rested her arms on the tops of her milk-filled breasts, placing her chin upon her interlaced fingers, wordlessly inviting Agent Dillon to continue.
The senior agent tried to look Melissa in the eyes, but the tableau she was making made it difficult for her to do this. “Um, Ms. DeVries, in cases such as this, it is normal for the victim, or victims, to receive recompense from the perpetrator for their suffering. This can usually take a while to sort out, especially when there are multiple victims. But in this case we are lucky. Mr. Rifkin was quite methodical in his bookkeeping, both in terms of production and income. We know exactly how much you produced, and how much he sold it for. As we have already seized Mr. Rifkin’s bank accounts, we can immediately furnish you with the proceeds from your portion of his business, which comes out to just a little bit more than two hundred thousand dollars.
Melissa raised her head from her tit table, her mouth slightly open. “Two hundred thousand—”
“Two hundred and one thousand, six hundred dollars to be exact. Your fellow captives will be getting somewhat more, having been in production longer.” Agent Dillon’s mood seemed somewhat improved, pleased at her magnanimity in giving away something that wasn’t hers in the first place. Even so Melissa was shocked, that shock giving way to reality once she realized what that money was going to have to pay for.
“So how much am I going to have left over, Age
nt Dillon, after surgeries, not to mention taxes?”
“You won’t have to pay taxes on the income, Ms. DeVries. The U.S. government can’t be seen to be profiting from a human dairy farm. As to the cost of your surgeries, Mr. Rifkin made quite a bit of money from the sales of hats, t-shirts, even coffee mugs.” She turned her own coffee mug around on the warming pad to show Melissa. There it was, the simple white line drawing of a happy hucow stark against the cobalt-blue of the cup. Agent Dillon took a drink and made a face, obviously dissatisfied with the amenities that fieldwork offered.
“Altogether a satisfactory outcome,” she said pompously, “apart from the death of the suspect, that is. Couldn’t be helped.”
Melissa suddenly wished she had her plastic cow head to hide behind. She didn’t like Agent Dillon, and feared that her human face might betray her feelings. She also wished that her tongue were still fixed in place, because she knew her words would betray her. “Couldn’t be helped? Your agents shot an unarmed man!”
Surprisingly, Agent Dillon smiled at this. “Yes, I suppose they did. It’s ironic when you think about it, cattle rustling having been a capital offense in these parts.”
Melissa sat there in her folding chair, anger and frustration welling up inside her, so much so that she failed to notice that her engorged teats were leaking onto the trailer’s acrylic-pile carpeting, a state of affairs that was not lost on the officious bureaucrat sitting across the desk from her.
“Oh, it appears that you’re overdue for your milking, dear,” she said with false politeness. “Megan!” she called out. “Could you lead Miss Butter…I mean Ms. DeVries to the dairy building?”
An agent was by her side in a heartbeat. Melissa stood up, having had her fill of official hospitality. She started to turn away, but then bent over the desk, grabbed hold of her right teat, and sprayed a generous measure of cream into Agent Dillon’s coffee cup.