SLUT POSTERS (Patreon)

A beautiful nightmare about desire, ownership and the industrialization of the human body.

In the future, the patriarchy didn't disappear.

It became efficient.

It became clean.

It became profitable.

And eventually, it became beautiful.

They called them Slut Posters.

Beautiful adult women transformed into collectible surfaces, each accompanied by a small biography documenting the increasingly irrelevant fact that the product had once been a person.

The process happened inside enormous processing facilities.

At their centre stood The Wringer.

Two monumental chrome rollers rotated beneath clinical white lights. Above them waited a steel funnel large enough to receive a human body. Below them, a conveyor disappeared toward Quality Control.

The factory slogan glowed overhead:

A WOMAN ENTERS.A POSTER LEAVES.

Customers could watch.

For an additional fee, they could watch everything.

Three women waited inside Pre-Production.

A blonde. Twenty-six. Curvaceous, striking, terrified.

A brunette. Thirty-one. Tall, defiant, furious.

And a dark-haired woman of twenty-nine who had stopped speaking several minutes ago.

Their clothes were removed and deposited into transparent containers.

Shoes.

Jackets.

Jewellery.

Everything catalogued.

Everything preserved with bureaucratic precision.

Except dignity.

Behind one-way glass, customers watched with drinks in their hands.

“She's shy,” one man said as the blonde instinctively tried to cover herself.

His friend laughed.

“Not for much longer.”

The blonde heard him.

That was intentional.

The factory had discovered years earlier that customer engagement increased when the subjects could hear the observation gallery.

The brunette looked toward the silhouettes behind the glass.

“You think this makes you powerful?”

A customer stepped closer.

“You're down there.”

He tapped the glass.

“I'm up here.”

“You're a customer.”

She stared directly toward him.

“That's all you'll ever be.”

The man's smile disappeared.

Someone behind him laughed.

The brunette smiled.

A tiny victory.

Then a technician touched her shoulder.

“Subject B. Position.”

Her smile vanished.

Before processing, the factory recorded their biographies.

The blonde had worked as a veterinary assistant.

Her favourite childhood memory was swimming with her father.

She wanted to travel through Iceland.

She was afraid of enclosed spaces.

A customer read the final detail from his phone.

“Claustrophobic?”

His friend looked from her profile toward the enormous funnel.

“Bad career move.”

They laughed.

The brunette was a translator.

She had started writing a novel.

The first chapter remained unfinished.

“Should've written faster,” somebody commented.

More laughter.

The third woman worked in a bakery.

Every Sunday she called her sister.

She had been saving for a plane ticket to visit her.

One customer minimized the biography.

“Too depressing.”

Her body filled his screen instead.

“Better.”

The doors to Hall C opened.

The women saw The Wringer.

The blonde stopped.

“No.”

The brunette reached for her hand.

The third woman whispered:

“I don't want to disappear.”

For several seconds, the three stood together.

Not Subjects A, B and C.

Not Triple No. 0074.

Three people.

The factory corrected the error.

“Separate.”

They refused.

Technicians pulled their hands apart.

Above them:

MULTI-SUBJECT PROCESSING READY

The visitors moved closer to the glass.

Some raised phones.

Others simply stared.

The returning customer felt something he couldn't comfortably name.

The women were beautiful.

The machinery was beautiful.

The lighting was beautiful.

And everything happening inside that beauty was monstrous.

He should have wanted to leave.

Instead he wanted to see what happened next.

The factory understood that contradiction perfectly.

It had built an entire business around it.

The Wringer started.

WHUMM.

Chrome began rotating.

WHUMM.

The blonde trembled.

The brunette stared defiantly toward the observation gallery.

The dark-haired woman cried.

A customer whispered:

“Here we go.”

Three bodies entered the machine.

Thirty customers waited at the opposite end.

Nobody spoke.

Seconds passed.

Then the output conveyor moved.

A corner appeared.

A technician caught it.

Blonde hair emerged beneath the inspection lights.

Then the first figure.

Then the brunette.

Then the third.

The material kept coming.

One enormous continuous sheet.

Three people had entered.

One object emerged.

Still warm from production.

The technicians stretched the new Triple across the inspection table.

A screen illuminated overhead.

CONVERSION COMPLETE

SP-T0074

SUBJECTS: 3

SURFACE INTEGRITY: 99.4%

EDITION: UNIQUE

PREVIOUS OWNERS: 0

The room remained silent.

Then somebody said:

“Wow.”

And humanity returned to the room in the worst possible form.

Not concern.

Shopping.

“Blonde should've been centre.”

“No, brunette works better there.”

“I'd hang it horizontally.”

“I'd fold it.”

“You'd lose half the composition.”

“That's the point.”

The technicians lifted the enormous poster.

Three workers were required.

They threw it casually across a steel rail.

The brunette folded around the centre.

The blonde hung from one side.

The third woman's image nearly reached the floor.

The supervisor frowned.

“Twenty centimetres left.”

They pulled.

“More.”

Another pull.

“Stop.”

He examined the composition.

“Perfect.”

The audience applauded.

The biographies appeared beside the finished product.

Three tiny plaques.

Three names.

Three lives.

Beside them hung something that could now be touched, folded, rolled, purchased and eventually discarded.

A customer raised his hand.

“Can they be separated?”

“Certainly,” said the salesman.

“Without damaging them?”

The salesman paused.

“They're posters, sir.”

Somebody laughed.

“What if I only want the blonde?”

“We offer post-purchase cutting.”

“And the other two?”

“Recycling.”

The customer considered it.

“Does that hurt resale value?”

“Considerably.”

“Then leave them together.”

The three remained intact.

Not because anyone had rediscovered compassion.

Because the collectible was worth more that way.

A price appeared.

Phones illuminated.

The returning customer's vibrated.

PRIORITY PURCHASE ACCESS

Thirty seconds.

He looked at the blonde.

Wanted to see Iceland.

Twenty-five.

The brunette.

Wanted to finish her novel.

Twenty.

The dark-haired woman.

Wanted to visit her sister.

Fifteen.

Their biographies disappeared behind the purchase interface.

Now there was only the photograph.

The price.

The button.

Ten.

He remembered the previous poster he'd owned.

How carefully he'd carried it home.

How quickly fascination had become familiarity.

How familiarity had become boredom.

How eventually he'd stood above a domestic shredder and fed the poster inside.

Desire.

Purchase.

Possession.

Disposal.

Repeat.

Five.

He knew exactly where this ended.

Four.

He hated the factory.

Three.

He hated the customers.

Two.

Most of all, he hated the part of himself that still wanted the Triple.

One.

He pressed.

PURCHASE CONFIRMED.

Across Hall C:

SOLD.

People groaned.

“Fuck.”

“Who got it?”

The guide approached him.

“Congratulations.”

He stared through the glass.

“What happens now?”

“Whatever you want.”

The technicians removed Triple No. 0074 from the display.

“Would you like it rolled?”

He looked at the steel structure.

“No.”

“Flat delivery?”

“No.”

He pointed.

“Send it like that.”

The guide smiled.

“The display rail is available separately.”

Of course it was.

He bought that too.

At home, the Triple arrived exactly as ordered.

Steel structure.

Three biographies.

One enormous surface thrown over the rail.

For several nights he left the biographies beside it.

Then one evening he put them inside a drawer.

The installation looked cleaner without them.

That bothered him.

Then eventually it stopped bothering him.

Weeks passed.

The Triple accumulated folds and imperfections.

One corner touched the floor.

He stopped correcting it.

Possession accomplished what The Wringer couldn't.

The machine had flattened their bodies.

Ownership flattened their histories.

One night his friend visited.

He looked at Triple No. 0074.

“You getting bored?”

The owner didn't answer.

His friend noticed the recycling unit.

“Already?”

“Maybe.”

“You paid a fortune.”

“So?”

His friend walked toward the poster.

“Which one was the vet?”

The owner tried to remember.

“The blonde, I think.”

“And the writer?”

“The middle one.”

“What were their names?”

Silence.

His friend smiled.

“Exactly.”

The owner opened the catalogue.

New arrivals appeared.

Blonde.

Brunette.

Redhead.

Singles.

Doubles.

Triples.

Then something new appeared.

Five silhouettes stood beside one another.

WRINGER FIVE-SUBJECT EXPERIMENT

LIVE PROCESSING

LIMITED OBSERVER ACCESS

His friend leaned over his shoulder.

“Five?”

Apparently Unit Four had been upgraded.

The owner looked from the screen toward the Triple hanging from the rail.

Three lives that had once seemed extraordinary.

Now merely last season's purchase.

He tapped:

REQUEST INVITATION.

The screen went black.

Then:

REQUEST APPROVED.

Across the city, Hall C prepared for another demonstration.

Five biography forms appeared on a technician's monitor.

Five transparent containers waited in Pre-Production.

Five pairs of shoes would soon be left behind.

And somewhere above the enormous chrome rollers, the factory slogan illuminated once more:

DESIRE.PURCHASE.POSSESSION.DISPOSAL.REPEAT.

Nobody inside the factory called it dystopia.

They called it consumer choice.