Monica sat reading in her favourite armchair by her library, drinking a glass of wine. It was a great way to start a lazy Saturday morning. The picked up one of her favourite history volumes and started pouring through the pages. She was enthralled for hours, before Kevin finally yelled that the car was ready, and they went out in the car for family brunch at their favourite fancy restaurant Jessica21 like they did every weekend.

She sat in the car ride on the way home, sending out the pictures she’d taken of the beautiful food onto her social media account. Her family chatted gently in the car around her.

When they arrived home, the girls and her husband went ahead of her, while she stayed back and collected the mail. There were a few letters waiting in the box already, she recognised what most of them were about just by looking at the envelopes. Bank statements, Share dividends, Thanksgiving letters from distant relatives, that kind of thing. One letter, however, stood out from all the others. It was a plain white envelope with her name, address and Meat ID number emblazoned on the front. And a big fancy red government seal from the Department of Human Resources. It wasn’t time for her annual meatgrade again was it? She’d have to make an appointment with her doctor. The only other thing it could be about wasn’t even worth considering. It was just too horrible to conceive.

Caroline jogged hard in the autumn breeze. She worked her body like a machine. It was the only time of the day she really had to herself, so she used it to improve her body like she wanted to. Living in Dolcett was a hard life for a girl with so many responsibilities. She had to take the time out of her day to exercise. Caroline wanted to get up to an A Meatgrade this year, so she didn’t have to worry about getting parted out if she won the lottery.

She didn’t really fancy the idea of potentially one day getting snuffed for her meat, but that was how the world worked. There was nothing she could do to change that, all she could do was live in it. She continued to pump her legs as hard as she could, stopping only for a quick break, some water and a protein bar, before wiping of her sweat, and getting in her shitbox of a secondhand car and driving to work.

She hated her work. It was a soul crushing 8 hours of telemarketing, selling timeshares in beachfront housing at beach houses in Hawaii. It was all fraudulent crap, and it was basically all butt impossible to reliably achieve the artificially inflated sales quotas that management set. She was sure that she was getting fired this week. She couldn’t afford that at all, not with needing to care for Lizzie.

So she hung on the lines, and stayed some extra unpaid hours to hit her numbers so that her rich jackass boss could buy himself another Ferrari, and cut bonuses for another year running. She hated every minute of her twelve hour workday.

When she drove back home, the light had almost faded from the sky. She walked over to her apartment’s mailbox area. Some punk had tagged it years ago, and the HOA still hadn’t done anything about repainting it.

Caroline opened up the tiny box with her tiny key. Inside was filled to the brim with bills, and notices of overdue rent. It was a second job all on its own of managing repayments for debts she’d incurred from taking care of Lizzie. There were so many unexpected costs, and the rates on payday loans were simply disgusting. One envelope stood out from the others though. It was a plain white envelope with her name, address and Meatgrade ID printed in small black letters on the front, with the Seal of the Department of Human resources stamped in the upper right hand corner.

Huh, was it that time of the year already? It must be her annual reminder to get her meatgrade taken. She didn’t know where she’d get the money for the doctor’s appointment from. She hadn’t planned for this expense at all. Maybe she could delay Lizzie’s wheelchair repayments for a couple of weeks to make up the shortfall? Of course, there was also the other thing that it could be about. Caroline didn’t even want to think about that.