The cheap blank government envelope tore easily in her hands. Her heart pounded in her chest. She hoped that it wasn’t what she thought it was. Her hands lifted the paper out so she could read it and she was greeted with the bright red seal of the Dolcett Department of Human Resources. She’d dreaded the inevitable coming of this day for her entire life.

Perhaps if she’d worked harder at school when she’d had the chance, she could have earned a grade B exemption, but sadly her job only qualified her for a rank C exemption, and Thanksgiving was always a busy period for meat sales.

She thought about the family who relied on her for her income and care. What would they do without her, when she was…. Processed? God, was she going to be another one of those hanging corpses she saw at the supermarket freezer, just in time for the thanksgiving rush? She visualised her own dead body hanging upside down in the chilly freezer air, and it made her feel weird just thinking about it.

She started to make plans for how to proceed in light of the grisly news. Appropriate accommodations would need to be made to ensure continuity of care for her family, and she’d have to ring her boss at the university to arrange for someone else to take over her academic work for the week. It was so much to do, and such little time to do it in. She wondered absentmindedly, whether she’d even be able to make the time for the customary traditional last fuck.