Grocery shopping.

It started off as a very boring day, all things considered. I had just gotten off work early and swung by the store to pick up some food for me and my wife. While I was there I happened to run into an old classmate of mine, a fiery redhead I had always had a crush on named Marissa. I stopped and chatted with her for a little while, and I couldn't help but notice that the decade since I had last seen her had only given her time to grow into her beauty. I tried not to leer as her low cut top showed off her still amazingly perky breasts. After a few minutes she excused herself and gave me a hug, lingering longer than expected and pressing herself against me. Right. She is still a tease.

I finished the rest of my shopping and went up to the register, choosing one run by a cute alt girl with jet black hair and blue highlights. Halfway through the transaction she froze like a deer in headlights and looked around in sheer panic. I as about to ask her if she was all right, but in the distance I saw my classmate do the same thing. Odd. It was only the two of them that I could see, everyone else seemed to be completely unaware anything had happened.

"Umm, excuse me, are you okay?" I asked the girl.

"I don't know. What just happened? Do you feel that?" She whimpered.

"No, feel what?"

"I don't know sir. I just got this overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, and the certainty that I am worthless. It feels like I am not even a person anymore." She seemed on the verge of tears.

"That is nonsense. Of course you are a person. Nobody is worthless." I tried to reassure her, but something about this seemed familiar.

"No, I am serious. Something has changed. I know with 100% certainty that any person here could do anything they wanted to me and nobody would bat an eye." She put a hand over her mouth, as if she had said more than she meant to.

"Well there we go, there is an easy way to test this. Someone just needs to do something that would normally get them in trouble. Like this." With that I reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling it to my face and kissing it. I looked at the elderly couple in line behind me, but they only seemed impatient. A half-remembered conversation was coming back to me.

"See? Nobody cares about me or people like me anymore." She quickly finished ringing up my groceries and rushed me away. Confused, I walked towards the door, only to run into Marissa, standing off to the side and muttering to herself.

"Why is this happening? What did I do to deserve this?" She asked.

"Hey Marissa, what's up?" I asked, causing her to jump.

"Oh my god. What the fuck is happening. I feel weird, like I don't matter." She leaned into me, giving me a clear view down her shirt, and making me start to wonder.

"Marissa, do you feel worthless, and less than a person?" She looked up at me and nodded in confusion. "Come with me." She hesitated, but I grabbed her wrist and dragged her along behind me. I half expected to get weird looks from people at the very least, or even that someone would stop me from manhandling her in public.

I pulled her all the way out to my car and looked around, seeing only a couple people around me. "I think I know what is going on. I work in a government research lab and a while back I heard some of my supervisors talking about a new policy they were trying to figure out how to put in place for morale control. They were tasked with finding a subset of citizens that would lose all of their rights. Anybody that wasn't in this group would be free to do whatever they wished to them."

Marissa looked at me, her face full of confusion.

"Some of the guys in the lab were trying to get the boss to pick 'Attractive Women,' saying how they wished they could just go down to the mall and grab themselves a babe. Looks like they might have gotten their wish. There was supposed to be an announcement that went out, explaining all of this, but I guess someone pulled the trigger early to try to get in early."

With this Marissa finally seemed to understand what I was saying, and I pulled out my phone and texted my wife, telling her to stay inside the house and lock the doors.

"There is no way that is true. The government can't just do something like that. People would riot if all of a sudden their wives and daughters became less than people." She glared at me suspiciously, likely thinking I was trying to pull some weird prank on her.

"No, I am being serious. One of the teams in my lab was working on some sort of mind control device, they probably hooked it up to the cell towers and used it to let everyone know that attractive women are up for grabs. The effects are truly interesting. It seems like some people affected are aware something is wrong, but not what, while others are completely oblivious." I looked to the side as a man walked by with his wife, seemingly having just left a fancy event.

She was a stunning blond in a tight dress that showed off her curves exceptionally well. Even Marissa was impressed with her figure.

"What is more interesting is that everyone else seems to just accept this new reality without question. Yesterday any one of these people would have seen me holding you here and tried to help you. Now people barely look twice. And back in the store, the checkout girl...." I paused, thinking back to the cute checker and how scared she seemed. "It is only a matter of time before other people start realizing what happened, and I have to imagine a lot of guys, and some girls, are gonna go wild trying to make sure they secure their own prize."

Marissa shrank down and turned pale, the truth finally setting in, and she realized that she was potentially in trouble. She looked up at me nervously.

"What are you going to do with me?"