The Girl from P.E.T.A.

Anna and I had been flirting since I started working in the same office. Well, truth be known, she was doing the flirting. I was mostly just playing along. She flirted with everyone.

While making her regular "flirt tour" one afternoon, she talked me into meeting her at a local club on Friday. I'm not much of a clubber. Actually, I hate clubs. But Anna convinced me it would be worth my while. Just before quitting time on Friday, she buzzed by my cubicle to remind me and to make sure I would be there at 8. I was starting to sense a sure thing so I assured her I'd meet her.

I arrived a little early and headed for the bar. About half way through my beer, Anna came in making a bee-line for me with another woman in tow.

"I didn't think you would come, Jon. I'm glad you did. Jon, this is my friend, Christine. Christine, Jon."

I said hello to Christine, a little surprised Anna would bring someone with her, but what the hell. Thoughts of a sure thing disappeared, but I'd make the best of it. I bought a round of drinks for the three of us which quickly became the two of us as a steady stream of guys asked Anna to dance. This more or less forced Christine and I to make small talk and wonder together why we were there.

Like me, Christine didn't do clubs, and like me her social life was in the toilet. Christine had told Anna she wasn't interesting in anyone she would meet at a club, but Anna convinced her she at least needed to get out among people.

She and Anna had been room-mates in college. Christine was into science and Anna was into the football team. In fact, the football team was typically into Anna. The two didn't have a lot in common, but they remained friends even after college, and Anna was a link to the social life Christine was told she needed.

Christine and I danced a few times and returned to the bar each time to talk. We weren't exactly hooking up, but neither one of us expected to. Christine was reserved in conversation, not shy, but not forthcoming. I figured it was the difficulty of trying to converse over the loud music, but it might have been the circumstances. Anna had disappeared into the crowd and was unlikely to be back. This evening had been a set-up and we both knew it.

"Hey, you wanna go next door to the steak house and get something to eat?" I asked.

"I don't think so. I'm vegetarian...vegan actually."

"Well, you still eat, right?"

"Yeah, but places like that don't usually have anything I can eat."

"Let's see what they can come up with. There's always the salad bar," I quipped.

When we were seated, Christine looked over the menu and shook her head. She decided to try her luck at the large salad bar. I ordered the teriyaki chicken.

By the time she returned, my meal had been served. "This isn't going to gross you out or anything, is it?" pointing to my chicken only half in jest.

"No. It's your funeral."

"Well, I only eat chicken and a little fish. No red meat."

"And I'm supposed to be impressed? Eat what you like."

"I do. In the Army I learned not to be too particular. Try MRE's for a steady diet some time.

"What did you do in the Army?"

"Infantry. A grunt."

"Really? Combat?"

"Some. I was wounded at Fallujah after about three months in-country ending my Army career."

"Sounds like something serious."

"Long time ago. I'm good to go now."

"You like to take big risks?"

"No, not really. It was my job. Why all the questions?"

"Why not? Maybe I want to get to know you better after all," she said with an appraising look. "How about you? You want to know more about me?"

"Uhh...well yeah, sure."

"Let's go to my place."

Damn. Where did that come from, I thought. I didn't think we were hitting it off all that well, but I wasn't about to turn her down. Christine was just plain hot, thought not in a flashy way like Anna. Her flawless, lightly freckled skin contrasted sharply with her chestnut hair and dark impenetrable brown eyes.

Those eyes were what most got to me. She had a look in her eyes I've only seen a few times, but it is unmistakable. I saw it in the eyes of combat troops in Iraq and I saw it in the eyes of civilians, even small children. It comes from seeing things humans are not supposed to see. Things that harden our outlook on almost everything. I was curious to know why Christine had the look.

We left the restaurant and piled into her car, leaving mine in the lot. Fifteen minutes later we pulled up to a small craftsman style bungalow in the older part of town, and went inside.

"Make yourself at home while I change into something more comfortable," she said disappearing into her bedroom. I flopped down on the couch grinning ear to ear with thoughts of my good fortune. A few minutes later, Christine came out of the bedroom wearing a dark sweater, dark pants, boots and her hair rolled up under a navy blue watch cap. In her arms were some old boots, dark clothes and a navy blue watch cap just like hers. She tossed them to me. "Here, try these on. They're my brother's."

"Wha??" I looked to her for a clue, but she just pointed to the bathroom. I changed into the clothes she gave me and came out of the bathroom. "Are we on our way to a costume party or a heist?" I joked.

"Grab that bag in the corner and you'll see," she ordered. We went out to her car and she threw me the keys.

"You drive."

"Are we going to do something illegal?"

"Holding hands is illegal in some countries."

"I'm guessing this isn't about holding hands. Do I need to arrange for bail or burial?"

"Depends. You like taking risks?"

"I told you, no, not much."

"Good. Guys who like taking risks are dangerous."

She wasn't being very forthcoming about our impending adventure so I figured I'd just drive and see what develops.

"Do you know what's at the corner of Beauville Boulevard and Cherry in Beauville?" she asked.

"That's called Four Corners, right? I have no idea what's there that I would care about at..." I glanced at the clock on the dash, "geez...one in the morning."

"OK, you know where it is-just drive."

We had a 30 minute drive out into the country ahead of us. During the drive, she went over some hand signals. Small sounds carry for miles in the dark cool air so she insisted on complete silence once we left the car. She wouldn't tell me any more and I figured I wouldn't press her as long as I could bail out if I didn't like what she was up to. We agreed on the signals we'd use, most of which were common on patrols in the military. About a mile before the Beauville/Cherry intersection, she told me to turn right onto a dirt road and follow it in for about a mile.

"Park there," she pointed at a spot adjacent to an orange grove.

"We came all the way out here to make out?" I asked to a stoney cold look.

"OK, here's the deal. We're at McNair Enterprises. They raise broilers-chickens. It's a factory farm. See those big metal sheds down the hill? There's about 25,000 chickens in each shed. We're going to check on them, video tape what we see and get the hell out."

"Isn't that illegal as in breaking and entering? And why would we even want to do that?"

She pulled a folded sheet of paper out of her pocket. "It's a copy of the law that says we can provide 'necessary food and water' to captive animals if they need it and the owners can't prosecute us."

"Does waving the paper really protect us?"

"Hell...I don't know. I haven't been caught. So we don't want to find out, do we? Oh, one more thing. Sometimes there are dogs. Occasionally, they are sort of free to move about."

"This date gets better and better all the time. Why are we doing this again?"

"So you can get to know me, right? This is what I do...well, one of the things. You might not want to know about some of the others. Here, put these on," and she handed me a pair of dark blue nitrile surgical gloves and a dust respirator mask. She also handed me a water bottle. It wasn't for me. "Necessary food and water, remember?" she said tucking hers into her front pocket.

I was beginning to think I should have hooked up with Anna when I had the chance. I'd probably only have to wear a condom on a date with her.

She got out of the car and very quietly closed the door. I did the same. We followed one of the rows through the orchard for cover until we hit a barbed wire fence. She pulled some welding gloves out of her back pocket-never had a woman do that on a first date-stepped on the low wire and pulled the middle one up far enough for me to crawl through. She handed me the gloves and I did the same for her.

Where the orchard had been sandy soil, the ground soon turned into some sort of muck that nearly sucked my ill-fitting borrowed boots off with every step and smelled like shit. I wanted to ask her about it, but she had sworn me to silence until we returned to the car. We only agreed on a few hand signals and none of them meant "Is this stuff shit?"

We made our way down a gentle slope towards the factory. There was some outside lighting, but not much. I could see a huge granary with pipes connected at the the top that looked like a giant spider from a 50's sci fi movie. The pipes connected the granary to every shed at the facility. As we moved closer, I could see large fans mounted in the walls of the sheds, and hear them cycling on and off. A few floodlights lit some areas. It looked more like a futuristic prison than a bucolic chicken farm. But I learned later, this kind of factory produces 99% of the chickens we eat in America.

Christine led the way between two of the huge metal sheds. At each doorway, she stopped and tried to open it. After a few tries, she found a large sliding door we could slip through. Once inside, I slid it shut behind us. The smell almost knocked me over. A mixture of chicken shit, dirty feathers and the unmistakable reek of death permeated the place. Each chicken was alone in a tiny cage no bigger than a football. The cages were stacked a dozen high. Birds on top of the stack would shit on the birds below them. Eventually, whatever could get through a dozen cages, fell on the floor below in a fetid black and white pile. The birds could barely move inside the cages. Christine later told me they were so genetically modified to produce white meat they couldn't stand on their own. If they did, their legs broke from a body weight they were too weak to bear.

I wandered around the interior of the cavernous shed trying not to breathe while Christine shot video of whatever caught her trained eye. The caged chickens watched us listlessly. A few were obviously dead and covered with shit from above.

After about 10 or 15 minutes, she hand signaled we were done and she headed for the door. Once out in the cool night air, I could finally breathe. We heard the voices of workmen. I ducked my head around the corner in the direction of the voices and could see three of them having a smoke by the granary. I signed the information to Christine and she led us off in the other direction to find a safe way back to the car.

In a crouch, we headed up the barren dark hill to the relative safety of the orange grove. I was just about to give thanks for not encountering any dogs when I heard something to my left in the inky darkness. With only a faint glow from the factory farm, I could just make out a shape coming fast. Just before it ran over us, I heard a loud snort, almost like from a whale blowhole, but no freakin' whales were out here and it was too big to be a dog. Christine jumped to the side and screamed, "Look out!" That's when I recognized the whale was a bull-a huge fucking bull and he wasn't happy. He stopped briefly, then lunged at Christine. I hollered at him, the bull stopped and looked over at me. Just as he did, Christine hollered at him and he looked back at her. I took the cue and hollered again. He just stood there perplexed, trying to sort things out.

By this time, the dogs we never saw started barking which seemed to add to the bull's agitation. Christine made a run for the barbed wire fence, rolled on her back over the low wire and pushed up the middle wire with the bottom of her foot. I saw the opening and dove through it. I helped extricate her from the wire and we took off running for the car laughing hysterically, though nothing about it was remotely funny.

When we got back to the car I asked her if she was OK. She said she was fine and smiled for maybe the first time all night. She unlaced her boots and threw them into a garbage bag in the trunk of her car. She removed her nitrile gloves and threw them into the bag as well. She told me to do the same and not to touch the boots without gloves.

"Bacteria. I got a nasty campylobacter infection last year from handling my boots after a visit to another factory farm so I don't take chances. If we had come in contact with any of the animals, we would have had to leave our clothes in the bag as well."

"Maybe we should just do it as a precaution," I suggested with a grin.

"I don't think so, perv. We still need to get home. We'll dispose of everything in the trash."

When we arrived at her place, we went into her backyard, stripped down and threw all of our clothes into the black plastic bag with the boots. She also stripped off the old sheets she had thrown over her car seats and threw them in the bag also.

"Gawd, that was exciting," she gushed, standing there in bra, panties and crew socks. "Did that make you as horny as it made me?"

"Which part? The stench of chicken shit or that fucking bull..."

"Never mind," she said grabbing my hand and pulling me into the house. "Go take a hot shower with lots of soap. And wash your hair. Everything. I'll put out your clean clothes."

"Scrub my back and I'll scrub yours."

"You wish. I'm serious. Wash every square inch of yourself clean."

We had been surrounded by 25,000 injured, sick and dying chickens, chickens that in a few weeks would be offered to the unsuspecting public in bright plastic trays wrapped in clear film. Or served as teriyaki chicken in the steak house we visited that night. We were walking around in the same bacteria and feces soup in which they spent their short miserable lives, pumped full of antibiotics to keep them barely alive just long enough to be slaughtered. Christine was right. I had to get that stuff off of me, but nothing was going to get the images out of my head or the stench; those might be permanently etched.

After we had both showered, we sat back on her couch sipping beer enjoying the feeling of being clean again.

"What if I had refused to go with you to the chicken ranch?" I asked.

"Easy. You would have scored with Anna 'cuz she's a slut."

"I would have had no chance with you?"

"You know the fat, hairy bartender at the club where we met? He would have a better chance."

"You like fat, hairy old men?" I grinned at her.

"Why, you planning to be one some day?" she laughed.

"No...I hope not. What are you going to be some day, Christine? Are you always going to be this intense? Tonight was not exactly a typical date. And apparently, you do this all the time. Even at the club you weren't at ease. Don't you ease up on yourself at all?"

"It's hard for me," she admitted, for the first time showing a crack in her otherwise serious, tough exterior. "Some days I wish I could be more carefree and sexy like Anna. Sometimes I think about a guy taking complete control; just throwing me on the bed and fucking my brains out no matter how much I protest."

"Really? You want me to do that?"

"Hell no!"

"But you just said..."

"If I said 'yes', I wouldn't be protesting, would I?"

I scooped her up, took her in the bedroom and threw her on the bed. She started squealing half-heartedly for me to stop. I pulled off enough clothes to reach her pussy. She complained that I was going to rip her panties, but I ignored her and they vaporized in my hands. When I reached my goal-naked enough-I pulled down my pants and plunged into her already very wet pussy. She protested loudly, and she was almost convincing at first, but not for long. As we fucked like animals, we managed to remove our remaining clothes piece by piece to reach more and more of one another. We didn't let up until we both cummed. I rolled off and ordered her to get me a beer.

"I just got my fantasy," she smirked. "Me getting you a beer can be the fantasy you don't get. Get your own damn beer...oh, and get me one while you're up."

I went to the kitchen, a big grin on my face I just couldn't get rid of, and grabbed two beers from the refrigerator. When I returned, I handed her a beer and said, "That was some date, wasn't it?"

"Still going to eat chicken after that?" she challenged.

"From now on the only meat I want is your delicious pussy. I'd wade through a mile of chicken shit to get to it."

"I guess that's no lie," she said laughing. After a couple of sips of beer, she snuggled against me and in no time, her exhaustion caught up with her-she was fast asleep. I finished my beer watching her sleep unable to wipe the shit-eating grin off my face. I'm in big trouble, I thought. I'm definitely in love with the Girl from PETA. Exhausted from the weirdest date of my life, I joined her in sleep.

*****

Story was posted here several years ago, but withdrawn. This is a repost with minor edits.