Epilogue


A small gray rabbit girl lay naked, cold, and dead on the stainless steel bier in the abattoir. Her blood-soaked pajamas had already been removed to be preserved and then auctioned. Her dull gray fur was heavily matted with blood and sweat, and peppered with flecks of pink lint. In a few minutes, the butcher would begin the task of skinning and portioning the cadaver, reducing the remains of this beautiful creature to meat and bones.

Dusk stood over Astor's corpse. The white eland wasn't sure what to feel. Remorse was foreign to him. 

She looked so vulnerable, so innocent. He reached out to touch her fur and hesitated, holding his hand an inch away from her stroking her head. 

He was sad she was gone, but he wasn't sorry he had killed her. In the heat of the moment he had enjoyed it immensely. When he was performing, he became a different person. Astor had always known the terms of their relationship, had known the reality of her disposability. Dusk had done his job, and Astor had done hers.

The other girls were thoroughly unphased by her death. It was what happened. They were conditioned to it. They had no fear. Even now they were likely frolicking in their traditional celebratory orgy, wondering where Dusk was and arguing over which of them would get to suck him off, and eagerly anticipating the feast that Astor's meat would furnish. They had been much more disappointed to learn that Irlino, the young chinchilla, would be sold after receiving the fewest votes. Dusk rarely missed them when they died; they were all the same, easily replaceable and interchangeable. Astor had been... different.

For the slaves, Dusk was caretaker and executioner both, tasked with keeping them healthy and happy right up until their deaths. For the most part, he was free to use them however he pleased, provided he didn't leave any marks that would show on camera. It was a privilege the slaves were always ready and willing to help him exercise.

He had always liked Astor. The other slaves, it was easy to think of them as things. Astor's file indicated she had not been born a slave, but rather sold by her parents when she was very young. There was no indication of why, or of how she had ended up marked for snuff. 

Dusk's eyes wandered aimlessly over her steel gray fur before coming to rest on her adorable fuzzy toes. Even after Aissu's snuffing, when the ballet lessons had stopped because they were no longer necessary, Astor had kept practicing during her free hours. She would enthusiastically tell anyone who would listen that she wanted to be a dancer when she grew up. The rabbit knew full well that the odds of her being allowed to grow up were slim, but she maintained her optimism regardless. The knowledge that girls unpopular with the voters were sold, and possibly even freed by their new owners, sustained her.

When she shared his bed, when she cuddled beside him after practicing her not inconsiderable oral skills, Astor liked to interrogate the eland about the outside world, about what sort of people bought young slaves, about what being a grown-up was like. Though she always used 'if' rather than 'when' when talking about her hopes, he never really heard her acknowledge the possibility that he would most likely have to kill her.

None of the others ever expressed any dreams for the future, aside from earnestly hoping that their deaths would be as erotic as possible. Dying young for the entertainment of unseen audiences was their greatest ambition. They more often cried tears of terrified sadness when told they would not be snuffed.

After witnessing Aissu's hanging, Astor had begun to warm up to the idea of being snuffed herself, provided it was as arousing for her as the doe's had been. Nevertheless, it was clear death was not an idea Astor relished quite as much as life.

Dusk found himself staring at the cruel gash he had incised into her abdomen. She seemed shrunken, empty, her belly collapsed inward by her evisceration. Astor had not found her death arousing. Dusk had tried to make it so, and, true, she had orgasmed before she died, but the eland had had to force it out of her. Had she died hating him? The possibility gnawed at him. 

Her heart had been so small. He had held it beating in his hand, had savored the feeling. It beat not with excitement but with fear. She had been afraid to die. How could something so frail dynamo someone so extraordinary?

When Astor had been issued her pink footie pajamas in wardrobe, she expressed great joy in how warm and cozy they were, and even asked if she could keep them after filming. She had not known she was dressing for her own execution.

To ensure that the snuff slaves' reactions were believable, the director had ordered that none of them be told who had been condemned by the voters, nor had they been told how they would die. When they gathered to film, they had been told it was a dress rehearsal, that the actual death would be filmed the next day. 

The surprise, the fear and panic in Astor's resistance had been genuine, and Dusk had relished it. She had been terrified and he, the one she trusted and confided in, he had pulled her entrails out through her anus.

Now, Astor lay dead at his hands. She did not look her best under the lifeless fluorescent light of the abattoir. He remembered how she had shone like polished pewter when she had danced on the stage. Once the taxidermist had worked his magic, she would sparkle once more. Her pelt would be a jewel in someone's collection, admired for years to come by a buyer who had never really known her, who saw her only as an ephemeral object of perverted lust.

Dusk could not let that happen.

Finally, he lowered his hand the last inch to touch her. Her fur was still velvety soft. "I won't forget you." Without a backwards look he left the room.

...

Dusk walked into the director's office without knocking. "I'm calling in my Prerogative."

The director looked up from her paperwork without any sign of surprise. "That could be expensive."

"I don't care. She deserves better than to be the trophy of some stranger who will never appreciate her."

"So she'll be your trophy?"

"Yes. I mean no. She's nobody's trophy. She's... special."

"Alright. It's your money."

"Also, I need some time off."

"I daresay you've earned it. Your sister will be filling in?"

The white eland nodded.

"Very well. Enjoy your vacation, and your new... memento."