The hunters and the prey share a drink outside the lodge while we waiting for the starter pistol to fire. The hunters lean on their rifles, sipping brandy and highland whisky, their relaxed, refined chit-chat mingling with the more boorish banter of the prey, who down pints of ale and crack vulgar jokes to mask their pre-hunt jitters.
I squirm in my SUB, feeling the eyes of the hunters all over me. They stare at me like a piece of meat. And not the fuckable kind either. The kind of meat they want hanging upside down and dripping from the rafters of their chalets like a stuck pig. Like they’re already salivating for the evening stew of my haunches. I’m edible now. Legally, there’s enough animal DNA in me for them to do whatever they want with me.
It was The Highland Run, an annual charitable hunt put on for the British aristocracy. Twenty hunters. Sixty runners inside single-use bodies. Three days to survive.
“Most of the other runners have male bodies,” I point out to my girlfriend, a high, animal-like whine in my voice. I stare at their rippling half-animal musculature with envy. What I wouldn't give to have a little wolf in me right now.
This cat-hybrid flesh I inhibit is unbearably soft. I feel like warm treacle, gooey, my fat breasts sloshing with every movement.
I cross my legs to try to hide the alien sensation of my vagina, virginal and raw from being freshly decanted from a clone tube. My thick thighs rub together. There's not a scrap of muscle on me. I am a fattened suckling pig, an appetiser before the main course of the hunt, created to be run down and butchered in the first hour.
I stare at the distant ridge, knowing there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of my fat ass reaching it before they fill it full of tranquiliser.
“They mix it up for variety,” my girlfriend acknowledges in her clipped Kensington accent, largely ignoring me as she double-checks her equipment and slips a curved gutting knife into the holster on her hip. “Different sexes, tastes, textures. Some get game...” Her eyes flit to a 7-foot-tall stag SUB performing warm up lunges at the starting line. His waggling antlers have drawn a crowd of onlooking hunters, already measuring him up for their mantlepiece. “Others get…” Her eyes return to my cleavage. “…fattier meats.”
Pushing my drink aside, she lifts her case onto the table and begins assembling her hunting rifle. It’s a family antique, back from when her family owned most of Herefordshire. My stomach knots as she begins to slot long, thick cartridges into it.
“You told me they use tranquilisers!”
“Yes, the men use sedatives,” she nods. “The women go for the kill. The gentlemen prefer their catches alive and kicking.”
I don't like that implication. Not one bit. Yet she's so blaise. “Aren’t you concerned for my safety?" I snap. "A little human compassion would be appreciated.”
“Human? Sweetie, you’re a SUB. You’re born to die. What's the problem? If you make it to three days, they put you right back in your body. And if you get butchered or your brains get blown out…” She shrugged. “... well they’ve got your mind on backup. So stop being a prissy little bitch about it..”
"My last backup was seven months ago. We weren’t even dating then."
“This was your idea, babe,” she reminds me. “You said you wanted to meet daddy on one of his hunts.”
“Yeah, hunting with him. Male bonding. That kinda thing.”
She uses that sad, condescending look she reserves for those poorer than her, which is honestly almost everyone. “A hunter? You? Not really your pay bracket, is it? They don’t just let anyone in here.”
“I’m not anyone, I’m your boyfriend,” I snap back. “And this-?” I grab my soft, fat tits, jiggling them for emphasis. “-this is humiliating. I'm meant to be making first impressions. What is your dad going to think of me when he sees me like this?”
“You can ask him yourself when he catches you. You know, he’s dying to meet you.," she smiles. "Make it a challenge for him and he might think more of you.”
She waves at someone over my shoulder. I turn, sloshing. A silver-haired man, moustachioed like some great white hunter, stares at us. Beneath bushy eyebrows, his steely eyes burn with loathing for the disgustingly middle-class ex-man sitting beside his daughter. They fixate on my jiggling tits, wandering down over my chubby torso and fecund hips to lock onto my succulent ass like there's a goddamn bullseye stencilled on those swollen buttocks.
A perverse gleam enters his eye as he slams a tranq dart into the barrel of his rifle.