Hashtagged 4

Dear Reader:

Serious trigger warning: Recommended for the nonconsensual and misogynistic crowd. Don't read if you don't enjoy such things.

The story's premise is from an episode of a BBC science-fiction television show. Everything else is cobbled together from years reading porn and lots of jerking off to it.

It's mostly a story of mourning and loss—until the end.

Adam Lily

* * *

My wife was sobbing in my arms. It was like holding on to a shaking bag of bones, she was so skinny back then. We were outside the temporary offices the Centers for Disease Control had been set up around the country. It was a lovely, cool, early spring day.

"So it's positive," I said.

She wiped her nose on my shoulder. "Of course it's positive. They're all positive. They're always positive—"

She tucked her head back into my chest. Then you shouldn't have chimed in, I thought. You shouldn't have done it. What was the point of it? Who did it help?

Me saying that, even thinking it, wouldn't have helped. So I kept quiet. From lots of years with her, I'd learned the best thing you could do sometimes is just shut up and hug.

We talked with one of the government's doctors. Maybe a week, maybe less. Some women, they lasted a couple of days. You could practically hear the changes taking place in women like that, like some people claim they can hear corn growing during July. Not my wife. Her body, it was stronger. It was going to take some time.

I didn't know whether that was a kindness or a horror. I wondered what she'd look like on the way through it.

On the ride home, we were silent. My wife, she was looking out the windshield, wide-eyed, as if she was trying to take it all in. As much as she could, until she couldn't, anymore. Until she didn't care about anything, anymore, except for what was resting on the car seat between my legs. And not just my own legs.

"Manny. Please tell me you'll take care of me."

"I'll take care of you. As best I can."

"Don't put me into one of those places they're building. Please take care of me. In our home."

That struck me as selfish. And then my reaction struck me as unworthy. I was her husband. This was a sickness, and I promised I would take care of her in sickness.

"I'll take care of you." I wondered whether enough of her would be left to care if I didn't. I wondered if enough of her would be left to matter if I put in her one of the new shelters.

I would take care of her. I was her husband. I promised her. I would do it.

I would.

* * *

We held each other closely that first night. She still seemed very much like herself. Her breath smelled of garlic, thanks to the potatoes I'd cooked for dinner that evening. I didn't mind. My breath smelled of it, too.

The next morning, her breasts had gotten larger. My wife was so skinny at that time—professional power-woman pantsuit scrawny—that any change to her body was noticeable.

"They're bigger," she said. She was standing in front of mirror, looking at herself from the side, holding them up. "Meatier."

"That's a gross word."

"But they are," she said. "Fleshier, already. Maybe I won't last a week."

She said it matter-of-factly, as if she'd already acclimated herself to the prospect. I'd been married long enough to know that was just one of her reactions to tragedy. Bad news, received coldly. Like when her father died.

"They are larger," I agreed. "But I think you'll last a week. Maybe longer than that."

She grimaced. "Let's go," she said. "Let's go, now."

That day, we went to the natural history museum and walked among the dinosaurs and mammals and those weird bronze statues of aborigines from tribes all over the world. Nineteenth-century figures, made when scientists thought they could produce definitive typologies of races and figure out who should be on the top and who should be the bottoms, permanently.

Now, of course, we knew. Thanks to the tag, we knew who was permanently going to be on bottom. My wife was one of them.

At lunch, my wife had a salad and a glass of white wine. I had a hamburger and a Coke. My tastes, they were always lower than my wife's. We both appreciated that. We both liked it. She was the civilized one, the cultivated one, and I was the beast. Woman and man, just like civilization had made us.

My wife considered the wine in her hand. She loved wine, loved to drink it, loved the taste of a good oaked chardonnay more than anything. "I wonder when—"

She stopped. She looked at me, stricken. She'd lost her train of thought.

What to do? I had no idea. So I said, "Everyone spaces off sometimes. It doesn't mean anything."

She set down her wine and looked away.

"C'mon, finish the glass," I said. "We have to go see the aquarium. You love the aquarium."

She looked at me. "I do?" She looked genuinely confused.

It was starting. No, it had already started, with those larger breasts. It was showing, now.

"Yes, you do. Please. Finish your wine."

* * *

That night, night two, we held each other close. As my wife was starting to drift off to sleep, she began kissing my neck. Delicately. Her breath smelled sweet, soft. Mild. Some kind of berry scent.

The scent. It made my cock stir. Oh, dear. It was going to be a scent that got to me.

I pushed her away. "Hey."

"Mmm," she said. "Love you."

"I love you too," I said. "Don't."

She stirred. "Don't what?"

"You were kissing me."

I could hear her frown. "What? I was?"

"Yeah."

"I didn't know."

"We probably shouldn't. You know . . . ."

She turned away from me. A few moments later, the bed was shaking. She was crying.

I wanted to comfort her. But touching her, holding her, would only make things happen faster. I turned away. I waited until she fell asleep, and then jacked off in the garage, for relief.

* * *

"Still bigger," she said.

She was staring at herself in the mirror. Her breasts, they had rounded up and were overflowing her hands.

"Right?" she said, turning to me.

Her face was changing. Her lips were larger. Her skin was softer, lighter—I think maybe her pores were tightening up a little. Her hair was starting to lighten. Her ass was a little larger, too.

"I guess," I said. I didn't want to let on that I thought she looked good. That I liked the new flesh, the new curves.

This all happened a while ago, so I can admit it, now. I couldn't even admit it to myself, then, but it was true. I was her husband. I was supposed to treat her with respect. And I would. Even if what I was feeling was something pretty different.

"Goddamn it," she said. "I thought maybe it was my period. You know, that I was retaining water. That the fucking test was wrong, that it hadn't happened to me—"

She sat down heavily on the bed, taking her head in her hands.

"They're still looking for the guy," I said. "For the guy who did this. They think maybe he's down in Southeast Asia, in Thailand, the guy who did this. They'll find him—"

"And then what?" She glared at me, eyes rimmed thick and red. "And then what? What'll they do? Make him reverse it all? Make him 'take it back'? You've heard the reports. Nothing left. Just a mouth and tits and a gaping, drooling, needy cunt. . . ."

I winced. I didn't like that my wife was talking dirty. What I didn't like about it was that I liked it. It took me a long time to figure that out.

"They can fix this. They're looking for a way to fix this."

My wife wailed to the ceiling. "I didn't know this would happen!"

"I know—"

"I DIDN'T KNOW!"

I reached out for my wife. She fought at first. But then she let me hold her, and comfort her. I loved her.

Her breasts, they were enormous, and very warm. And her breath, it smelled of strawberries, even though it was the morning and she hadn't brushed, yet.

"The art museum," I said. "Let's go there next. Today. Fast."

She snorted. "Art," she said. "Just a bunch of naked women. They're gonna be everywhere soon."

"We'll check out the Northern nudes. They won't do anything to you. They don't do anything to me. Or anyone, really."

My wife, she chuckled.

* * *

At the museum, we weren't the only people who had the same notion, that we should take in the sights, the sounds, the experiences, while there was still time.

A woman with flaming pink short hair was walking her black-haired, long-tressed girlfriend through the galleys, slowly.

This was black hair: "I don't . . . . don't get it. . . . no, wanna go home. . . ."

Here was pink hair: "C'mon, love. You know. The museum. C'mon, the Kollwitz prints, they're right over here. You love Kollwitz. Your Master's thesis, right? Kollwitz."

Black hair: "Cammie's head hurts."

Pink hair: "Baby, your name is Carmella."

Black hair: "Cammie. It's name is Cammie."

Pink hair: "Love. Come on. Over here. It's right over here."

Pink hair was fighting. She was fighting for her love. Her love, black hair, was dying right before her eyes.

Black hair, she said. "Fuck. Wanna fuck. You wanna me ta lick yer pussy? Lick your tasty pink pussy?"

Before pink hair could respond, black hair knelt to the tile floor and with great purpose trundled underneath pink hair's skirt. Pink hair yipped and skipped away and shouted at black hair to stop.

Black hair tilted her head and frowned in puzzlement. Like a dog whose master had told it to scram. She started crawling on all fours toward pink hair.

The marking was on her face—a slash right across her forehead. I wasn't close enough to read it, but I saw it there, like a soot smear from Ash Wednesday. Transfiguring, and transformative.

I hoped the marking wouldn't show up on my wife's forehead. I knew it would appear somewhere on her body, but I hoped it'd be somewhere a little more discreet.

The people around us, they knew what was happening. Everyone knew. Most of them looked on with sadness. Some walked away.

"I need to go," said my wife. "I can't stay here. Get me out of here."

I'd been so transfixed by the spectacle of black hair and pink hair that I hadn't noticed my wife was trembling.

We left the museum and drove to the park. I bought her a latte, and we sat by the enormous lake, and we watched the swans, and she cried, and I did what I could, but there was nothing I could do, and we both knew it. Many women around the lake were doing the exact same thing, and they were being comforted by their husbands, or their boyfriends, or their girlfriends.

I hoped none of the women were being comforted by fathers or brothers or sons. That struck me as dangerous. Although society would change, now, to where that wouldn't be dangerous, anymore. It'd just be normal.

"I didn't know," she said. She was talking about her action, the choice she made that had started this for her, the same choice an estimated half a billion women around the world had made.

"I know. I'm sorry. Nobody knew."

My wife, she raged. "That fuck. Please tell me. Please tell me they'll find that fuck."

My wife and I, we held each other, and we watched the swans swim by. Swans, they mate for life, apparently, until they don't, because they cheat.

* * *

That night, I woke to a sound in the bathroom.

"Babe," I said, knocking. "Babe, what're you doing."

Only a moan. I turned the handle on the door.

"D-don't," something in the bathroom said. It had the voice of my wife.

I opened the door. A humid and thick scent of strawberries wafted out. On the toilet was my wife. Her top half was covered by the green T-shirt she'd fallen asleep in. Her bottom half was covered by nothing at all. Her legs were spread. The T-shirt covered her vagina, but I could tell she was masturbating with the blunt edge of our electric toothbrush.

"Please. Help me—guh-guh-god—"

I rushed to my wife, grabbed her wrists. The strawberry scent was overwhelming, dizzying. I began to feel the scent working on me, too.

"Stop this," I said. "You need to stop this. It'll only make it happen faster."

She pushed the toothbrush inside of herself. "Faster—yes, please, fasser an' fasser—"

Another wave of the strawberry scent. My own head was swimming. Like I'd taken two Vicodin and they were hitting. I had to work fast.

I squeezed the bones in my wife's wrists as hard as I could. She yelped and dropped the toothbrush—vibrator. It buzzed and scuttled on the tile like a swatted wasp.

The strawberry scent. I had to get rid of it. And I had to snap my wife out of her stupor. I tossed her trembling, lust-drugged body into the bathtub. I flipped on the bathroom fan and opened a window. Then I turned on the cold water full-blast. My wife, she shrieked and tried to pull herself out of the tub, but I crawled in and sat on her chest.

Her chest. It was so much larger, now. Her breasts so round and firm, like sitting on two soft, bouncy cantaloupes.

Stop, she screamed. Let me out. Get offa me. Get offa me you goddamned fucking prick lemme go lemme go lemme go lemme go—

The strawberry smell, it was killing me. All I wanted to do was plug her closest hole as hard and as fast as I could. That's what any straight or mostly straight male in proximity would do to her, now. That strawberry scent would draw them in like ants to a carcass.

My wife thrashing under me, I flipped the spigot and turned on the shower. Shocks of cold water brought me back to myself. Then I grabbed the bar soap and frothed up my wife's labia. Then I rammed a soapy cold finger into her vagina and began scooping around it, scraping it clean of the strawberry scented aphrodisiac. The substance was warm, soft, gooey. It was the pink of impatiens flowers. And her vagina actually seemed to be sucking on my finger, like a mouth.

Her vagina was also hairless. All of her pubic hair had fallen out and was floating in the tub. Her genitals were making the transition from vagina to cunt.

My wife had traded one form of thrashing for another. She was moaning and wriggling. "Yeah—finger me—fuck yeah—"

I wasn't trying to arouse her. I was trying to clean her out, scour away the strawberry-scented ooze and get rid of the pheromones her vagina was pumping out. It's like what you do when the airplane masks drop: Save yourself first, so you can save the person next to you.

But I had to be careful. I had to keep cleaning her out, and quickly, but if I made her orgasm, it was pretty much over. No days left. I thought about picking up the pace, bearing down into her, making her cum just then. "The Mercy Orgasm," they called it. Finish her off. It'd be better than prolonging things, letting her linger for the time she had left. Right?

But I was selfish. I didn't want my wife to go away. She'd be gone soon enough, too soon. So I held my breath, slowed my pace, and kept on fingering out dollop after dollop of her new, sweet-scented secretions. The pink lube eddied and slithered down the drain like pumpkin strings. Once most of it was gone, I shut off the water and sat on my wife until her struggles ebbed.

We waited. She slowly came back to herself.

"Manny," she said. She couldn't look at me.

"Babe." I brought her a towel and helped her out of the tub. We lit up our fireplace and sat in front of the blaze, talking softly, staring at the flames.

"I couldn't stop myself," she said. "It's like I was dreaming. I watched myself wake up, I saw myself walk to the bathroom, I watched as my own hand took up the toothbrush—"

I stroked her temple. "It's not your fault."

"I wonder how many days we lost. There's no way it's a week, now."

I couldn't argue. We'd probably lost time.

"Is that what it's going to be like? Me watching myself from inside? Seeing and feeling what's left of me doing THAT?"

I'd been practicing my answer for a while, now. "I'm going to take care of you. I promise. I'm going to take care of you through all of this."

She snorted. "You won't be able to help yourself, either. Admit it. The scent was driving you crazy. The berries."

I nodded. "Yeah, it was. It was really doing a number on me. I won't lie."

"It changes you, too. It makes you not care. Nobody will care."

"I'll always care," I said.

She snorted. "God. And the worst part. . . ."

I waited. I knew what she was going to say. Everyone said it, eventually.

"It felt so . . . fucking . . . GOOD."

* * *

The next morning, my wife sleeping, I sipped coffee and flipped through the news channels. I didn't stay on any one station for long. News of the sexapocalypse washed over me.

"—easily half a billion women worldwide—"

"—wives and daughters, mothers and grandmothers—"

"—effects on the transitioning community particularly bizarre—"

"—the CDC, NIH, and WHO report no progress—"

"—red light districts and brothels now irrelevant—"

"—some church leaders calling it, and I quote, 'God's just wrath toward women worshipping before the idol of feminism and women's liberation'—"

"—law enforcement recommends keeping all male animals, particularly horses, contained—"

"—containment centers more like kennels—"

"—congressmen calling for registration, chipping, and regulation for the sale and safety of—"

I noted that all the anchors and reporters were men. It appeared that not one female journalist was left to report.

I turned off the television and sipped my coffee. For once, endless media coverage was proper. One world was ending; a new one was dawning. Three hundred years of progress recognizing the dignity and equality of women ending in an orgasmic car wreck.

The man who had done this to women everywhere had a simple message. Postindustrial society had made men weak and let women become strong. He was restoring the natural order by taking out the strongest of the women first.

And how had that man identified those women? And infected them with his nanites?

By targeting the women who had identified themselves as brave and strong. The half-billion, like my wife, who had chimed in on social media on that fateful, digital day. They identified themselves all over the Internet. The nanites knew who they were. And slowly, through the air, through the water, the nanites made their way to those women, infected them, and began remaking them.

Some transformations were observed in all women. Loss of IQ. Reduced impulse control. Instinctive subservience. Crippling arousal. All these things were happening to all women, including my wife, devolving them into their own worst nightmares. Nightmares that were the dreams of postmodernity's misogynist underbelly.

"Manny," a breathy voice cooed. My wife was awake. I turned to see my nightmare-yet-dream.

Some changes were common to all women. But the nanites worked individual magic, too. My wife's particular modifications were on full display. Her hair, once a shoulder-length mousy brown, was a long, shiny shade of nuclear pink. Her eyes glowed crystal blue. Bee-stung lips pouted out like the bad plastic surgery of a cheap eastern European model. A sprinkle of freckles powdered her face.

I was horrified, and horrifically aroused.

She held out her hands. "Look." Her fingernails had turned as pink as her hair. Her toenails too.

She walked toward me on long, strong legs. Her breasts swelled against the soft gray fabric of her T-shirt, nipples like bullets. Soon she wouldn't be smart enough to even read the words on her own chest.

My crotch roused with shame and arousal. Much like hers was doing, I guessed.

"It's happening so fast," she said. "Last night accel—. Acc—." She struggled for the right word, then dropped it. "Made it go faster. Faster, so much faster."

I nodded.

"And these boobs," she said. She brought both hands up and hefted each one, smiling sadly. "I guess maybe it's not too bad. You're a boob guy, right? You like big titties?"

A couple of days ago she'd have said that with scorn. Now she was honestly weighing the bright side.