(Several months after Netflix…)

“I don’t know how much longer we have, Miss.”  Katie is busy being milked.  She doesn’t like me bothering her when her pumps are running, but as everyone knows, I have a bit of an obstinate streak.  Still, she’s the boss, so I need to play by her rules.

I kill some time in the bunker.  It took a lot of work expanding the hidden alcove in the corner cow stall into a full-size bunker. Miss Katie insisted, and she was right.  The weapons and the electronics and medical supplies I’d collected couldn’t realistically be concealed with the small alcove we started off with.  

I retrieve a bottled water from the mini fridge.  It was so worth splicing the electric line and running that conduit down here.  And Miss Katie definitely enjoys her evening popsicle which was so much harder for me to deliver with regularity from random scavenging trips.  

Miss Katie’s pump lets out a pitchy whirling sound announcing it is about to end a cycle.  I grab a straw in case Miss Katie wants a sip of my water and head back up out of the bunker.   Ten sets of hu-cow eyes are fixed straight ahead on the bare barn walls.  Hu-cows are basically immune to boredom.  Miss Katie and I are not.  We’re different.  We use our creativity to occupy our minds.  That’s our connection.  That’s why the eleventh set of eyes, HER eyes, are sloped toward me as I ascend.

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“But why don’t you want to go?”  Mistress makes a look.  I hold the straw up under her bit.  She sips.  More water falls to the ground than what gets inside her mouth.  I wait patiently for an answer that I know will not satisfy.  When it comes in a series of non-verbal “codes,” I am proven correct.

“Mistress, you can’t stop change.  Change is coming whether you want it or not.  All you can do is try to direct the change in the way that best suits you.”  I am speaking out of turn.  I’m upset and I’m scared.  Mistress is being exceedingly patient, but respect still needs to be shown.  I lower myself from my knees all the way to the ground and fix my eyes on the base of her milking frame.

“I’m so sorry Mistress.  Forgive me.  I know you’re not a child.  I remember what you say that you’ll always be with me.  I just don’t understand.  The farmers will sell you.  It’s your turn.  You’ll be gone and I’ll be…”  I stop mid-sentence.  Mistress utters (see what I did there?) a low grunt.  I almost can’t remember the last time she vocalized.  She clearly understands the gravity of what is happening.  This fact fails to assuage my growing alarm.

“I’ll be like before, Mistress.  Not understood.  Not even seen.”  I look up at her face.  She’s so full of wisdom.  I wish I could just understand the complex issues that are so simple to her.  I wish I could achieve the same sense of peace that she has.  

I’d settle for the obliviousness of the other hu-cows compared to the emptiness I knew before coming here.  I watch closely for Mistress’s next message.  And I’m elated with the gift she is offering!

“Really?!  Oh my God, yes!  Yes, I would love that.  I’ll get everything together right now!”

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I carefully release my hold on her arm.  Mistress is VERY steady on her feet considering how little she’s used them.  I love seeing her standing.  Her head is higher than mine, as it should be.  Being removed from her frame is more of an emotional challenge for her than a physical one.  I know how much of a sacrifice this is for her, and I am grateful.  But as Mistress has told me so many times, nothing is real without committing to it.  And she was committed to being what I need in the moment.

Mistress slides one foot just a quarter inch, and I know that she’s ready.  Still, before I comply, I quickly pounce down and kiss the foot that has delivered the command.

“Thank you, Mistress.  Here is the lead.”  I reach up and place the leather strap into her hand.  Mistress’s wrists are still secured behind her in the cuff.  Things did NOT go well when I removed her cuff that one time.  She prefers, or maybe, NEEDS, the comfort of the familiar cuff on her wrists.  I think it’s part of what makes her a hu-cow and being a hu-cow is her truth.  

Mistress takes slow, short steps.  It’s funny to watch a cow walk on her hind legs, but it’s beautiful when you consider the strength that it takes for her to overcome her nature.  After only a few strides, the slack is removed from the strap, and I feel the tug against my collar.  I proudly follow behind mistress on all fours.

Mistress leads me around the row of frames.  I weep quietly in bliss from the dominance Mistress is displaying upon me.    

I also cry because I know this is the last time she’ll walk me.  The farmers will come for her soon.

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(Weeks later….)

I’m in my frame, staring at the bare barn all.  I’m remembering.  After they took Mistress Katie, I wasn’t sure what to do.  I tried for a time to make a connection with the other hu-cows, but my sisters did not have the spark.  It was a wasted exercise.  I’m on my own.

I remember everything.  That’s what happened to me all those years ago.  It isn’t a gift, but it is something that has uses.  Right now, I am remembering the peace Mistress always had.  I am remembering how she looked at me with perfect acceptance.  I remember that I did not cause her the same alarm that I always seem to elicit from everyone else.  I remember how her eyes sparked for me and only for me.

Mistress loved me so much.

(Months later….)

“Thank you, Sister.”  I pour another few ounces of my sister’s milk into my container.  This is my routine.  I haven’t been to the bunker in a long while.  I still scavenge my meals, but I don’t go out every night, and I never engage with the farmers or the staff.  

My stomach growls telling me it’s empty.  It reminds me of Mistress’s grunts.  I look longingly to the heap where her writing journal lies discarded.  For some reason, I decide to look through it.  

I read her words.  They’re the words she wrote before she was brought here to become a hu-cow and before I came here looking to be broken.  I trace my finger along the lines that she once wrote and it makes me feel faintly connected to her, but not in a nourishing way.  

I sit on the concrete floor beneath the layer of dust and straw.  I remember the disgust I felt the night that I arrived to find something so inauthentic.  Poured concrete floors added to a legacy barn used by generations of farmers for animals?  I come from farmers and my ancestors would be appalled.  My encounters with the so-called vicious people who operate this hu-cow petting zoo only reinforced my certainty that Master Daniel didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about when he sent me here to be broken.  

The only thing that was ever here that had a chance to break me was Mistress Katie.  And they took her from me.  

I flip another page and trace more lines not really reading them as I go, but rather, playing thoughts through my head.  I can’t stop thinking.  It’s the constant barrage that prevents me from getting lost staring at the wood grain of the barn walls like my sisters and achieving the peace that they enjoy.

I look down at my finger.  Seemingly on its own, its stopped tracing.  It’s landed on the word “commitment.”  The work Mistress used to say was so vital.  And now I finally realize something.  Months after Mistress was taken, she’s taught me another lesson.

“I always left myself a way out.  I’ve never committed…”

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(An hour later….)

My milking pump has been repaired.  I even tested it to make sure and it worked perfectly.  I’m back in my frame, but the frame feels very different now that before.  I previously thought of it almost as furniture.  It’s about to become essentially part of me.

“I have to commit to be broken.  I have to commit to find what Mistress wanted for me.”  I tell myself that as I snap the cuff closed on my wrists.  The bonds finally feel as inescapable as they’re meant to feel.  A powerful rush courses through me.  I decide to enjoy a quick struggle like I used to when I trained as a bondage slave.  I squirm and I strain.  Everywhere I writhe presses back with greater resistance.  My arms can’t move.  I twist my hands, but they don’t budge.  I shake my body as violently as I can, and the frame hardly notices.  

I’d be completely helpless if not for this lock pick that I still clutch.  When I toss it off into the straw, I’ll have given up all control.  I’ll be committed to life on this frame, just like Mistress was.  I’ll be able to have the peace she wanted me to know.

I slide the pick higher between my thumb and index finger until I’m holding it by just the very tip.  All that’s left is a little flick.

And I’ll be a hu-cow.  A broken little hu-cow.

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(Weeks later….)

I remember how I almost surrendered that night in the barn.  But I didn’t.  At the last moment I did what my calculating mind always does, and I considered every possibility.  And that’s when it occurred to me that I didn’t have to be committed to captivity in that barn to submit to my Mistress.  

I had to commit to finding out where she was and battling right through every sorry son of bitch that was standing between her and me.  

I committed to reigning terror down on that farm and I committed to getting the answers that I needed.  Armed with that information and whole fucking lot of guns, I’m another hour drive from Mistress.  

And nothing is going to keep me from being seen by her again.

THE END

(Featuring the character based on my amazing friend @KatieBlake )