Old McDonald had a Farm...

Old McDonald had a Farm...

Technically, that wasn’t true, at least not in the complete sense. My friends, Robbie and Bessie McDonald, might have opted to retire early, but they weren’t that old, not by today’s standards anyway, nor did they have a farm. They’d bought what they called a ‘smallholding’, not a farm. I had no idea what that meant when they’d told me about it a year or so back when they’d decided to exit city life and head for the wilds. Now I’d accepted a somewhat insistent invitation to visit them; I looked up the meaning on Google before I started packing.

A smallholding is a home with a piece of land larger than a garden but smaller than most farms. The land can be used to grow crops or rear animals. Generally, acknowledged to be anything with fewer than fifty acres of land. There was a link to a Wiki entry, but I didn’t bother to look at it. Basically, it seemed a fancy name for a small farm. However, fifty acres of land seemed quite a lot and certainly considerably more extensive than the average or even non-average garden!

I‘d been somewhat taken aback by their decision to decamp to North Wales, for neither of them was an enthusiastic traveller and Bessie, in particular, was very suspicious not to say vocal about other countries and ‘foreigners’. Indeed, she didn’t even need to go abroad. Being London-born and raised, anyone who lived more than thirty miles beyond the metropolis was a foreigner in her eyes. As a diehard Englishman considerably more travelled, North Wales was far more alien to me than Paris, Rome or New York!

Both were occasional vegetarians, on and off, hot and cold, if you know what I mean. Maybe that had something to do with their decision, although they were hardly zealous. Bessie was big on house plants and had lamented their lack of a garden for years to grow things. Personally, I thought that a small price to pay considering the size of their luxury apartment, the prestigious neighbourhood, the convenient tube station and no less than three allocated secure covered parking spaces—his, hers and one for visitors. Hell, forget gardens; people would virtually cut their right arm off in London for a single parking space!

I lived in a small one-bedroom first-floor flat in a less salubrious part of town. Yes, I use both terms for added descriptive effect. My friends had or used to have a spacious four-bedroomed apartment, whereas I had a small, cramped one-bedroom flat that had cost me Shylock’s modern equivalent of a pound of flesh. Probably both arms and a leg as well, allowing for inflation. I didn’t have a garden either and, more annoyingly, not even a single parking space, never mind three. 

Street parking was a no-no because of through traffic and bus routes, and the nearest spot was a small tarmac oasis that had been repurposed by the Luftwaffe one night during the Autumn blitz of 1940 and, strangely for London, never built upon. Probably because the revenue the current owner got from hiring out the fourteen spaces annually made a small fortune. Of course, I’d had my name down on the waiting list for a spot for six years and had moved precisely four places nearer to obtaining one. You are now number twenty-eight in the queue. Please hold as those bloody telephone things would have irritatingly told me!

Being a car owner under the circumstances was perhaps ridiculous, but I persevered. My expensively restored, original E-type Jag, my pride and joy, resided under a faded cover on another friend’s driveway occupying the space his wife’s cheap Korean runabout had filled until their acrimonious divorce. Given that getting to my ‘wheels’ involved a ten-minute walk to an underground station, eight stops on the tube, and another ten-minute walk, you’ll understand why my silver classic wasn’t clocking up much more mileage-wise. 

Consequently, giving it a rare run out was one reason I was heading North-West to spend a few days eating dubious meals in a remote part of Wales. I’d only been to that part of the country once before, a four-day scout camp one Easter when I was about twenty years younger. It should have been a week, but our leaders wisely ordered a retreat to civilisation in the face of relentless monsoon rain, artic winds and the growing prospect of mass hyperthermia among our sad and soggy troop!

Destination aside, it was good to give my British classic a runout, but I have to say that I’m not a great fan of the countryside. I remember being introduced to a gorgeous young blonde dolly at a Christmas party a few years back that I’d been surreptitiously eyeing up. My fault, for I’d been more interested in her legs and cleavage than what my hostess had said prior to introducing me beyond her name registering. Bernadette, if I recall correctly. Worked as a riding instructor at a place that specialised in giving experience to disabled and socially deprived children. The current term for poor!” I could just see her in that sexy tight casual riding gear they have these days!

Unfortunately, my attempts at getting into her saddle ended at the first hurdle when I was verbally bucked off head over heels over that fence. She’d said something about the countryside and working in it, and I should have paid attention rather than focused on that deep sun-bronzed cleavage. ‘What did I think?’ was the only bit that registered.

In my spare time, I was a man of letters, a writer of short stories who’d also once penned jokes and monologues for a couple of well-known comedians, plus been an occasional fourth wheel to a writing team on a TV sitcom that ran for three series. I regarded my wry, somewhat deadpan sense of humour as a helpful chat-up tool, but it failed big time on this occasion.

Bernadette was looking at me intently, a glass of bubbly in hand, something to do with the countryside; what did I think of it or along those lines? Easy-peasy, I’d thought, grinning at her and promptly sinking myself with all hands. “Oh, I’m just a simple city type of guy, but I’ll grant you all that empty green space comes in jolly useful for growing food-type stuff and breeding big Mac ingredients once you’ve knocked a few trees down! I mean all that open space available for building new housing estates, gas fracking, dumping litter from rock festivals pus adding new motorways, freeways as our colleagues across the pond would say, not to mention….”

The latter part was true, and I never got to mention anything else because she gave me a dark look, called me a moron, and told me to ‘fuck off’ before disappearing into another room. Well, in my defence, she rode horses for a living and didn’t look remotely like any of those anti-hunt, countryside alliance types and Greenpeace freaks you see on the telly. Probably a vegan to boot! 

Mind you, even if I’d taken another tack, I doubt that we could have established much of a relationship given my thoughts regarding the countryside pretty much mirrored what I’d quipped. My only regret was that they hadn’t used up enough of it building a decent motorway in the direction I was heading in, and from my brief bit of research on google maps, it would soon be getting worse, far worse. I hadn’t anticipated that I could have added ‘bloody impossible’ before I reached my destination!

*****

I was right. A vintage Land Rover with four-wheel drive would have been a better elderly vehicle for the final stages of my journey or that World War Two-era jeep another friend owned than my highly polished sixties speed machine. It was great for turning heads, especially female ones, perhaps down to its long sexy, almost phallic shape. However, not terribly clever when it came to potholes and similar. I’d even been warned about it by Robbie. He’d asked me if I still had my ‘antique’ transport and then advised me that he’d make arrangements for me to leave my car with some guy who ran the local fuel filling station and repair place in the old blacksmiths forge in the nearest village some eight miles from their place, and he’d come and collect me.

A warning I’d ignored for the first mile once I’d found the right track and then had the good sense to realise that if I continued along that impossible obstacle course, every hundred yards of progress was probably going to knock a grand’s worth of value off my restored beauty not counting such essential things as the exhaust and suspension! I chickened out, returned to the village, and cut a deal with Owen, the garage guy Robbie had mentioned. Free storage providing he did no more than fifty miles tops on a decent road, no scratches or bumps, plus he filled the tank back up, deal? He agreed, and we shook on it, adding he’d also check everything for me, which is always helpful on a very old vehicle that didn’t get much use.

Robbie turned up about thirty minutes after I’d phoned Bessie, grinning all over his face. “You made it further than I thought you would” he laughed and waved to Owen. “Evening Taff, you going to keep an eye on yon wee heap of old junk for him then?”

“Sure, will boyo, be a pleasure. Treat it like the Princess she is, so I will. How’s Bessie? Has she gotten over the sniffles she had in the post office last week?”

Robbie held the passenger door open, the door to his gleaming new 4 X 4, a Japanese monster, I noticed as he motioned me to take a seat. “Bessie’s well, Taff. Just a mild touch of hay fever. I’ll tell her you asked. Thanks for looking after the car. I’ll call and let you know when we’ll pick it up” he waved and joined me, reaching for his seat belt.

“I’m only staying for the weekend”, I quickly reminded him. “He already knows when I’ll pick it up”.

“Robbie laughed and gave me an odd look, grinning all over his face. “You said you’d got a week’s holiday?”

“Yes, but I don’t intend to spend all of it looking at bloody sheep!” I shot back.

Robbie chuckled. “Oh, I think we can find something more interesting than sheep to look at. Besides, there aren’t any around our patch of mother nature in the raw. No pressure, but I think you may change your plans a little. Don’t worry about your rusting status symbol. Taffy Own is all right; it won’t come to any harm with him, plus he’s a damn good mechanic. Fourth generation around here. His great-grandfather was the last full-time blacksmith, his grandfather was a mechanic and still shoed the odd horse, then his father ran the garage and now Taff. His old mum still runs the post office next door, one of those old girls who’ll die in harness without ever considering retiring. How’s yourself these days, anyhow?”

I was about to answer when another thought occurred to me. “Hey, how do you know how far I got up that wretched drive, track, pothole breeding ground, whatever you call it?”

“Hah,” he laughed and grinned at me as he tapped the impressive satnav stroke entertainment console. “Tech laddie, technology. The wonder of this modern age! Got security cameras in all sorts of places and alarms”.

I frowned at him. “Why, who in their right mind would try and break into anything out here? Anyway, why the sea change? I remember you treated cell phones like live snakes and wouldn’t even use the TV remote!”

Robbie laughed again. “Only because I could never find the bloody thing! But that’s a good point, laddie, or boyo, as they say in these parts. Security is not always about keeping people out, you know. Damn useful for keeping an eye on things you want to keep in when you’re in the livestock business, sheep excepted, eh?” he chuckled and gave me a slow mischievous wink, then had to hastily brake and reverse a few yards as he promptly missed his own turn-off adding. “Whoops!”

“So, you’ve finally succumbed to the modern age and finally given up on steam”, I teased as we slowly started up the track I’d recently given up on. 

“Yup, had to, force of circumstances. Not quite a road to Damascus conversion, but not too different. Well, in one sense, very different, I suppose, but not in terms of the general meaning. Anyway, I was always a bit of a poser in that respect,” he laughed and added. “I did use the TV remote, contrary to rumour, plus I had one of the first iPhones and Ipads, just didn’t flash them around much. Being regarded as an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy stick in the mud often proved useful in the finance business! Hang on to your hat. Got to go very slowly over this bit, even in this bad baby.”

I grinned at him and grabbed the appropriate hold as the vehicle suddenly lurched to one side. Thank God I hadn’t decided to drive any further. Sly old devil, I thought he’d certainly pulled the old fuddy-duddy tech virgin bit off successfully, but why that mischievous wink? What was the story behind that? The vehicle bumped heavily several more times and then lurched the other way as he slowed right down. I looked ahead and shuddered, imagining what damage I’d have done to my low-slung Jag along that tortured Luna-like surface.

I’d known Robbie and Bessie for about five years. I was thirty-four now, and they were about twenty years older. Robbie was a city banker by profession, not one of the very top guys, but he’d undoubtedly climbed high in his chosen career. Bessie was or had been in marketing and held responsible senior positions in numerous well know high-street companies, and they’d both enjoyed salaries that made mine look insignificant! I’d liked them both from our first introduction at a party in Canada. There was something homily and warm about them, comfortable even.

They were easy going, friendly and we shared a similar sense of humour and, of course, interests. Physically we had hardly anything in common. I was six feet one, lean, dark, and hairy, needing to shave at least once a day and sometimes twice if I had an evening function to attend. Robbie and Bessie were almost a matched pair barring sex and hair. Both were about five feet five, somewhat rotund in shape, and in need of a regular workout that neither would ever contemplate, let alone partake in doing. Robbie was virtually bald, bar a thin growth on either side and the rather pathetic combover he persisted in maintaining despite being wholly inadequate insofar as covering his pink pate. My fingers itched to grab a pair of scissors and put it out of its misery every time I saw it! Bessie at least maintained a full head of curls, although the colour tended to vary somewhat, and she didn’t do subtle. It had been orange the last time I’d seen her, which didn’t sit particularly well with her otherwise warm motherly appearance.

“A couple more miles,” Robbie said. “It gets better the nearer we get to the farm”.

I grinned at that. “Farm?” I queried. “I seem to recall being corrected when I said that getting on for a year ago!”

“Smallholding, farm, mini agricultural business, whatever!” he grinned and laughed. “Hey, let's just call it what it is, a retirement hobby, eh?”

“Not bored then, yet?” I queried.

“Not one bit”, he chuckled and then turned, giving me that same curious slow, sly wink before he chuckled again, adding, “You’ll see why soon”.

I waited, but he seemed reluctant to say anything else, he just threw a mischievous grin at me and concentrated on the road ahead, so I changed the subject. “I read Bessie’s latest the other week and left a comment on both sites,” I told him.

He nodded. “Yes, thanks. She saw them and replied. I expect you saw that. He nodded, adding, “Not one of her best efforts, I thought, as reflected by the lack of comments, but don’t you tell her I said that, laddie. You know how touchy she can sometimes be. A couple of negative comments, and she goes all moody for a week!”

I smiled. “Trust me, and I agree. I thought the ending could have been a lot better. Judging by the comments left by her regular readers, several others seemed to think the same way.” I paused momentarily as we bounced over a large rut before adding, “I think people expected more given that it’s the only story she’s put up in what, four months at least!”

“Been busy”, Robbie chuckled. “Anyway, who are you to talk? Not seen all that much from you lately, either. If things had been different, I’d have had to look elsewhere to stimulate the old love life or reread your old stuff. Some of your long serials must be growing cobwebs for lack of attention! That new job is eating up your spare time and your kinky, creative interests!”

I nodded in agreement without speaking. He was on the ball with that one. Bessie and I both wrote erotic literature as a hobby. We published it on several internet fetish sites that specialised in artwork or stories of erotic bondage and domination. I tended to short stories and long-running serials, while Bessie favoured long stories or novellas. That’s how we’d met a few years before at an event in Canada. One site hosted a tongue-in-cheek annual awards ceremony for its assortment of perverted readers and authors once every two years.

This one was held in Vancouver, Canada and was the first and last I attended, for it proved to be the final one. They were bought by a company that specialised in publishing erotic literature of all types. They promptly killed off the art side of the site but kept the story side as a source of material and talent for their mail eBook business.

I’d been flattered by several invitations to publish my meagre scribblings with some professional editing. I'd be the first to admit that my spelling, grammar and punctuation had never been an overly sound foundation, but so far, I’d declined. I wrote for fun, for my own perverse entertainment chiefly, and somehow, I suspected that fun element might evaporate if I started doing it for the occasional minuscule pay cheque. Besides, my stuff was rather nasty non-consensual stuff that I felt a twinge of guilt about, and somehow, I felt my privacy, which I valued, might suffer. Silly, I know, but that’s how I felt.

Bessie was my spiritual twin story-wise, for we frequently mirrored each other and, several times, had uploaded stories that were far too similar but quite unintentionally, for we’d not met or even corresponded at that time. Indeed, reading some of the comments, it appeared that many of our readers thought we were one and the same writing under two different names, which was somewhat understandable.

Bessie had accepted the new site owner’s publication offer entirely for vanity reasons, for she didn’t need the money. ‘I can see why authors traditionally starve high up in their lofty garrets’, she’d laughed, telling me how much she’d earned in six months, and that was without any publishing costs since they were eBooks. The novelty of seeing your name, your pseudo name in print, soon wore off, as did her books on Amazon. They’d lasted a fortnight before disappearing, presumably because her stuff was too hot for their growing conservative tastes.

By coincidence, we’d been seated at the same table for dinner at the hotel hosting the awards ceremony. We immediately recognised each other via our oversized pink badges sporting the names we wrote under. Bessie was with her husband Robbie, and the three of us hit it off, as they say, immediately. The first time any of us had attended the event, and somewhat successfully, to our mutual delight. We both ended the evening clutching a couple of hideous gold spray-painted plastic dildos mounted on little varnished wooden plinths, with Bessie beating me on points as one of mine was smaller.

I took a winner for one chapter in a long-running serial and a runner-up for a short story. Bessie took home two winners for her ‘Poppy the Ponygirl’ and again for ‘Humans Make the Best Animals’. Both are excellent tales of dehumanising bondage and suffering. Also, among the ones that were too hot for Amazon, and that was after she’d already toned them down somewhat!

The three of us spent a couple of enjoyable days exploring Vancouver as we were booked on the same British Airways flight back to London, albeit in different cabins. However, Bessie took care of that since she conveniently happened to be working for them at that time. A call to a local colleague discovered that business class wasn’t even half full, and I paid a small, almost minuscule amount to upgrade my ’cattle class’ ticket. Bessie had wanted to do that as well, but I insisted.

Well, all history now as Robbie and I bumped slowly towards a growing huddle of grey stone buildings set against a bleak, windswept, virtually treeless background of stone-faced hills. Our friendship had grown through our mutual interests and regular meetings as we all lived and worked in the capital and even after they’d left for the wilds, via email and the odd Skype or phone call. Maybe that’s partly why our written output had fallen off because Bath and I had grown accustomed to bouncing ideas off one another. Our little mutual admiration society revolved mainly around the concept of human animals, wretched innocents snatched from their everyday lives, dehumanised, and held captive in appalling primitive conditions.

Most of our stories and written material was along those lines, although we both occasionally ventured into other territories such as enforced feminisation which we found equally fascinating though very much a second subject compared to our primary interests. Thus, I was looking forward to spending a few days in this isolated abode they’d decamped to and using the pair of them as sounding boards for the ideas I’d been jotting down recently.

My enthusiasm for hitting the keyboard and producing erotic fiction had been dormant of late, so I was looking forward to additional stimulation of the little grey cells. I also said so to Robbie and was somewhat taken aback when he threw his head back and roared with laughter before telling me.

“Och, Laddie, I’m thinking it won’t be your little grey cells that’ll soon be getting a wee bit of stimulation, and I doubt it will be wee either after it does!” he laughed again and was still chuckling at the expression on my face as we pulled into the neat little dirt yard between the various buildings of his farm, sorry, his smallholding scattering a meeting of assorted hens!

*****

“Better now! So how was your journey,” Bessie asked as I emerged from the downstairs washroom, making it sound like I’d just flown in on the red eye from the States or crossed half of Europe. Bessie, I’d realised immediately from the bear hug and shower of kisses, was in one of her motherly moods despite the ‘punk rock’ vivid purple hair. Somehow she managed to appear both big and small simultaneously, or so it seemed. Wider rather than higher, so perhaps medium might be more apt. Like Robbie, she was in her mid-fifties, one of those women you couldn’t imagine ever looking young,  who’d probably looked that age and kind of motherly and homely from her mid-twenties onwards and never changed. She’d also been baking, adding to that comfortable, reassuring, homely aura.

“Not too bad. I made good time most of the way, no hold-ups or roadworks,” I told her, dusting some of the flour off that her hug had deposited. “No problems till I got here and made that foolish attempt to take the Jag down your extended front drive, sheesh! Next time I’ll brink a tank!”

Bessie laughed. “Yes, I saw you” She nodded to a wall-mounted flat-screen TV which was off by the look of the black screen. “I was in the kitchen making up a batch of scones and saw you arrive when the buzzer went off. I didn’t think it’d be long till that camera saw you heading out again. I told them that”.

I nodded. “Well, you were right”, and then as I reached for the huge mug of coffee she’d produced, “Told who?”

Bessie laughed, clapping her hands, producing a small white cloud of flour dust. “Oh, piffle, time for that later. You sit there, drink your coffee while it’s hot and loosen up a bit. Robbie, take his case upstairs and then, mmm” She twisted her lips and put her head on one side as she thought about something. “Maybe, take our guest over to the barn while I clear up a bit and get on with dinner. Might as well start him off straight away; no point in shilly-shallying, is there?”

Robbie reached for my budget airline-approved carry-on case and hefted it. “Traveling light, I see. Nope, might as well get it over and done with, as you say, Love. Worst-case scenario, I can always blow his head off and bury him in the back garden, I suppose” he nodded towards a shotgun mounted over the enormous open fireplace on a couple of wooden pegs, then grinned and winked at me before heading for an open wooden staircase in the corner.

“Oh, pay him no heed!” Bessie laughed. “Besides, I offered to bet him you’d not be the least bit bothered by things here, but he refused point blank to take me on. Somehow, I don’t think we’ll be needing that gun, not this time, not for you anyway. Now drink up while it’s hot. Do you want a bun or a biscuit or anything?”

I shook my head. No, I wasn’t hungry. Curious, yes, very curious suddenly by their rather odd behaviour. Not quite what I’d expected, but then, thinking back, hadn’t they always been a bit unconventional despite their very conventional city occupations and lifestyle?

“Fish pie” for supper and homegrown greens, is that okay with you?” Bessie’s head reappeared around a door frame, and I nodded.

“Fine,” I said as she withdrew presumably back into the kitchen and closed the door rather firmly. I remembered that they were both sort of vegetarians, after a fashion, you might say. They didn’t eat animal meat, not very often anyway, but both ate fish, all dairy products, and poultry. Well, chicken, I didn’t know about Turkey or any other. Organic food was another interest, and I’d always presumed that a desire to grow their own vegetables and the like had been partly responsible for their decision to quit city life and bury themselves deep, very deep in this case, in the countryside.

Robbie clumped heavily down the wooden staircase, presumably giving me an unnecessary thumbs-up to inform me that my small bag had been successfully delivered to the guest room. Then he waved for me to join him and opened the front door.

“Come on, bring your mug if you want, no ceremony here. Got something to show you and might as well get it out of the way now before dinner, and we can chat about things as we eat” he held the door open and grinned. “Anyway, this place of ours isn’t big enough for secrets” Then he laughed and took me lightly by the elbow as he escorted me across the farmyard towards a big old barn on the opposite side. Like the house, the exterior showed signs of recent renovation in that all the pointing between the old grey stones was new. “Well, that’s quite true, considering everything. It would be hard to hide things from honoured resident visitors like yourself.”

“Honoured?”

“Oh yes, Laddie. VIP, you’ll be the first and” he chuckled, unlocking a massive padlock, then lifted the top of a small box covered with flaking green paint affixed to the wall beside the sizeable double steel doors. “Probably the only one I expect. Neither of us has any family, leastways none that we are on ‘inviting to stay’ terms’ and who else would we invite besides yourself? Hang on a sec,” he added as he tapped on a small electronic keypad that emitted a sound I was familiar with from work. I was a key holder, and the entrance door to our rented offices made precisely that same short electronic musical sound as the alarm deactivated.

“D-Day,” Robbie said, closing the cover. “Remember that, and the key to the padlock simply sits on the mantlepiece over the fire, the one in the big living room back there, next to the clock Bessie inherited from her grandmother.

“Eh?”

“Normandy invasion, think D-Day for the code, 060644. I expect you’ll want to wander over here on your own while you’re here,” he laughed and then muttered, “I must get some more oil on these bloody hinges, both sides. I keep saying that to myself and then promptly forgetting. Damn, things are new as well. “We had the doors changed because the old wooden ones were rotten”, he grumbled, pulling open the left-hand door, which screeched in metallic protest as he did so, and I took a couple of steps into the dark interior. Robbie flicked on the lights, which was just as well, for there wasn’t much natural light inside. There was a dull gleam from above via some ineffective skylights high above the rafters and heavy roof beams emitting virtually no helpful illumination.

“Covered in half a century of muck and bird droppings, I expect”, Robbie noted, my head tilted upwards. We thought about having them cleaned but decided against it. I kind of like the gloomy atmosphere in here, and the lights are on a rotary switch. Bessie usually cranks it right up, but I was in here when your phone call came, and this is how I like it most times!”

I switched my gaze from the high roof to my host, wondering what was so fascinating or important that I’d been dragged over to see and why I might want to wander over on my own. I noted with some amusement that Robbie was literally bobbing about with barely suppressed excitement for some odd reason. Then I saw it at the exact moment Robbie grabbed my arm again.

“Smell it?” he asked, taking a deep breath.

“Eh?” I Hardly heard what he’d said, my attention now entirely focused on the animated figure in front of me in the central area beyond the entrance. Thinking of lights, a small green one promptly switched on in my brain!

“The air, the atmosphere, that distinct aroma! Hell, you should, laddie. You’ve written about it often enough, both you and Bessie!” he grinned and mimed another deep breath intake while twirling both his forefinger round and round in front of him for some reason.

The barn was a bit deceptive and bigger on the inside than I’d have thought. As I’d noted, the exterior looked like some money had been spent on walls and big new-looking steel doors but not so the interior. It was dim even with the lights on, with no windows other than those murky skylights overhead. It was shabby and depilated, smelt old and musty, and my initial impression was one of dusty cobwebs, aged grey timbers, and once white-washed stone walls now grey with age and years of accumulated filth. Hardly surprising, though, considering it was an old barn that had probably been there for a century or more and obviously never featured on anyone’s annual spring-cleaning list!

I felt my senses, sight, sound, smell, and hearing, were all demanding exclusive individual attention rather than working simultaneously as a team, which is the norm. That’s how our bodies function unless one had a skinful at the local boozer on a Saturday night. That is when coordination of everything goes out of the window! Yet somehow, this moment was different and outside the norm. My eyes flickered from what they’d first focused upon and then back questioningly to Robbie as I instinctively took a conscious sniff obeying his urgings, that green light in the old brain box growing in insanity as my eyes returned to meet those of that figure in front of me.

Apart from that initial musty aroma, I smelt fresh grass, presumably from the big pile of green clippings to my right, evidently recently dumped on top of a blue plastic tarp. A strong smell of disinfectant seemed to be vying for supremacy with other less pleasant but identifiable odours. Stale sweat, urine and even that of shit. I had a sudden vivid recollection going back to my teen years, one of those triggered memory flashes of helping my mum clean up after my bed-ridden grandfather had one of his ‘little accidents’. Not that they ever seemed very little to me as I carried the stinking soiled bedding and whatever else down to the washing machine!

All that, though, was very much a subconscious background to where I was looking, “What the fuck?” the words came unbidden to my lips as that green light in my mind instantly upped its rotary switch to full illuminating brilliance. “It’s…he’s real, isn’t he?”

“Ah, you’ve twigged”, Robbie chuckled, rubbing his hands together. “Rather spoilt it didn’t I leaving him out like that. I’d meant to put him back in his stall before letting you lose. Let you soak up the atmosphere from the entrance first, so to speak, but then Bessie stuck her head in to say you’d called and were waiting on me down the village, so I didnae bother. Well, no matter and he’s seen you now. Come and say hello to Dopey. Meet your first alive and kicking captive ponyboy. He does as well, given half a chance!”

He reached out again to take my arm, gently pulling me forward. However, his touch hardly registered, nor did I need that gentle tug to galvanise me as the full meaning of what I was seeing and his accompanying words penetrated my stunned brain. I took a couple of paces forward, my eyes riveted on the strange figure bending towards me over some hurdle or similar apparatus.

I was looking down at a restrained man, a large male, maybe in his mid-forties or thereabouts. The man, or pony for he was garbed or harnessed in the fashion Besssie and I had so often written about, was highly animated. He desperately tried to attract my attention, shaking his head from side to side as best he could and making odd, muted noises from behind the fat bit, stretching his mouth. His eyes seemed to bulge outward from his futile effort to communicate. Age, I was guessing from body build and what little I could see of his face, largely obscured by his head bridle. His head was shaved bald bar, a stubby central kind of Mohican cut running from his forward hairline to the nape of his neck. 

“Getting a bit fuzzy on the sides and elsewhere”, Robbie noted. “We have a thorough grooming, shaving and trimming session usually every third Sunday as a rough rule. I can’t say I’m that fussy apart from the mane, but Bessie has a thing about body hair on them. You’ll remember that from her stories, no doubt?”

I nodded absently, focusing all my attention on the agitated figure squirming before me, making those incoherent squeals and moaning grunts. That mouth bit was making understandable speech impossible for the man. He was wriggling against the straps that held him down, his upper body twisting and trying to free himself from the tight leather arm glove that imprisoned his arms to the shoulder.

“He seems kind of desperate to communicate with you”, Robbie observed with a wicked chuckle picking up a nasty-looking leather riding crop. “I wonder why?” he grinned and then, walking to the other end of the hurdle, delivered three vicious strokes to the helpless man’s bottom, then beckoned to me. “He’s excited because he hasn’t seen a new face for a long time. Now stop that foolishness right now, Dopey. He’s not going to release you, so stop being silly” He waved to me again. “Come take a peek at him from this end.”

The helpless figure had emitted several muted shrieks of anguish as the vicious crop descended across his buttock cheeks. Still, his frantic movements slowly subsided into a less energetic writhing as though to alleviate the pain that crop must have caused him. Robbie appeared entirely unconcerned and stood holding it in his right hand, tapping the end gently on the palm of his left hand as he looked at me.

I hesitated, looking first at him and then back to that squirming moaning figure, for there was a question uppermost in my mind but one I was reluctant to ask because I suspected what the answer would be. I was equally conscious of a rising sense of excitement, which was partly at odds with my conscience as an upright, honest, law-abiding citizen, and I already knew which of the two would win out.

The rear view of the helpless, restrained and harnessed man confirmed my suspicions immediately, and a wicked thrill coursed through my body that lingered unbidden in my groin and wasn’t going to depart anytime soon, I sensed. From this angle, I could see the mass of raised welts on Dopey’s rump, the latest purpling. A drop of blood from the most recent was trickling down one buttock. I could see many old and new marks forming a lattice across his back, rear and legs, the signs of previous beatings. One odd angry red, shaped circular pattern caught my eye prominently high up on his right buttock. It looked like a funny letter in a circle. I realised with shock that he’d been branded!

“Made a bit of a mess with that one”, Robbie remarked nonchalantly as if discussing a brand deliberately and cruelly burnt into the bottom of a fellow human being was a perfectly natural subject for casual conversation. “Leastways, Bessie did. She had it made especially. It's supposed to represent our initials in a circle. She even registered it in the US at a site specialising in ranch cattle and similar brands. The Circle RB joined. The R is reversed with the back of the B doing for both and set in a circle. Only she jiggled the iron just at the critical moment, plus he moved a tad because he wasn’t tied down tight enough, so ...well, you can see the result. ”

I stared at him wide-eyed and subconsciously nodding and half wondering why I wasn’t shocked or standing there spluttering with outrage. As previously stated, I was a law-abiding citizen, wasn’t I? One who’d never once troubled those responsible for upholding the law. Not so much as a speeding ticket to my name, let alone anything worse. Not even a parking ticket or a reminder for an unpaid or overdue bill! I still had to ask the question even though I knew the answer, and I’d certainly be guilty of compounding a felony or whatever, wouldn’t I? However, that was no longer important, not when compared to that stirring in my groin that was overriding everything else.

I took a deep breath. “He’s real, isn’t he” My nod, this time directed towards that hapless writhing figure strapped to the apparatus before me. “I mean…” I trailed off for a second, my conscience seemingly unwilling to cross a particular bridge because I felt that once Robbie answered, I’d be as guilty as my hosts were of perpetrating a major criminal offence. My lips moved, but hardly an audible sound emerged. “Non-consensual?”

Robbie winked at me, not needing to hear to understand. “Of course it is, laddie”, he laughed. “Why do you think we moved way out here beyond the borders of civilised living? Well, almost beyond,” he conceded, grinning at me. “Hell, if we’d wanted to amuse ourselves pandering to the whims of masochistic perverts, we could have done that  without leaving London., No shortage of them there, I expect and willing to pay, not that we needed the money!” he shrugged and chuckled wickedly, patting the helpless man on his whip-scared bottom. “Whereas this fine animal and his brood provide us with a vastly more satisfying level of entertainment! Here have a squeeze of real captive human pony flesh. Go on, help yourself. It's not as if this fine beast is a stranger to it!” he laughed.

I looked from him, down at that helpless figure, and back to Robbie, who smiled, nodding encouragingly. “Dopey isn’t exactly able to object, is he? None of them are; that’s the beauty of the situation for us. Your call caught me with my pants down, literally. I was vigorously engaged in giving this stubborn creature another demonstration of my mastery over it when Bessie told me you were waiting down at Taff’s place.” He gave a cruel laugh, scrapped something off the guy’s raised butt hole, and held it out for inspection.

“Essence of Master Robbie, eh” he laughed, wiggling the finger. “The overspill as it were, and we know where most of it always ends up, don’t we, my handsome stallion” he gave the guy’s scarred left buttock cheek a hard slap which set the still figure to groaning and wriggling again.

It took a second or two for his meaning to sink in, and then I gawped open mouth at him for a moment. “You were fucking him?” I gasped.

Robbie smiled and patted the man’s mutilated bottom again. “Dopey here isn’t the most tractable of animals. Bessie thinks we should geld the unruly bastard to quieten him down.” He shrugged indifferently. “Maybe we will at some point but for now, I want to keep him intact” he grinned and reached down to grasp the man’s captive, caged penis. “Quite an impressive specimen. But leaving him whole adds that bit more when I use him to enjoy what we deny him. He viciously squeezed the man’s heavy ball sack and stood up, chuckling at the muted noise and frenetic movement his cruelty had initiated.

“Somehow, it adds that bit extra to my mastery of the big beast that wouldn’t quite be the same if we deprived him of certain important bits. Mind you, like I said, all that may change in the future! I almost always give in to Bessie once she’d made her mind up about something!” He gave me a tight little smile and added. “Makes for a quieter life, and I’d close it if I were you; this place tends to attract more than a few flies.

I realised what he meant and promptly shut my mouth because my jaw had dropped a while back. “Jeesuusss!” I whispered, looking down at the man’s gaping anus and then back to my grinning companion. “Jesus!” I repeated in shocked awe as my brain struggled to process what I saw and heard.

“Actually, this animal was one of the reasons we moved here, the main one, in fact. ” Robbie gestured around the big stable. “To this part of the country. Well, not this particular animal as such, but the idea was to find a suitable retirement spot first and then acquire it. We spent the better part of two years, weekends and holidays, driving the length and breadth of the country. You wouldn’t believe how many isolated places there are in our so-called overcrowded little island.”.

I was listening or half listening as I looked around me, taking in my surroundings which so far I’d ignored. Hardly surprising when you consider that Dopey was the first thing I’d seen upon entering the building. Not a sight I’d expected to see and certainly not something you see every day! Not something I’d ever expected to see outside the perverted outpouring of my mind that I typed into my laptop and the art on certain websites.

Inside the stable was a long room, open above the old roof rafters and beams supporting grey slate roof tiles. Further down was a sizeable doorless opening leading to a dimly illuminated area beyond. To my left was an extended workbench with a big vice, various tools, and assorted spools for rope and chain. A large charcoal barbecue with a gas bottle stood next to it.

“Double use,” Robbie said, having ceased his monologue to watch me instead. “Frying burgers or heating a branding iron.” He chuckled. “Bessie’s determined to have another go at this animal, only she can’t decide whether to try and correct the original botch up or maybe do it afresh somewhere else!”

That produced a loud if muted, exclamation from Dopey, who probably strained his neck muscles, twisting his head around to stare up at me with that same desperate expression. I ignored it, of course. I felt strangely elevated compared to him, and it wasn’t just because he was on that low hurdle, well, not quite. It was more like I was on an entirely different level of existence than him, and it was a rather odd and not to say empowering feeling!

“Nothing wrong with the fuckers hearing, is there?” Robbie laughed as we‘d both seen that sudden futile desperate movement from the restrained man at his words so casually spoken. I could understand that, for I’d felt a chill myself as Robbie spoke, my eyes straying back to that innocent-looking barbecue again.

 “Anyway, we finally settled on this place.” Robbie continued. “Isolated but not too isolated. House was in pretty good nick compared to quite a few properties we’d seen. It didn’t need much doing to it. All the outside buildings we might need plus a decent bit of land ready cultivated. The village is near enough to be useful yet far enough away not to bother us. Mains electricity, although we have a few natural alternatives, not just solar or wind,” he chuckled again and winked at me before continuing. “Even a half-decent internet connection and wait till you taste the water. Got our very own spring, which comes from the hills, ice cold even in summer. None of your chlorinated muck here. We knew we’d found our Shangri-la within a few minutes of being here and made an offer the same day!

“Everything except a decent approach road!” I noted sourly, wondering if their friend Taffy would find anything amiss with my suspension.

Robbie laughed loudly and shook his head. “By no means, laddie! Yon axle breaker was one of the main attractions for us. Promising, we thought from the first when the agent told us to leave our car at the village garage, and he’d take us up for a look-see in his four-by-four. Good as a moat and drawbridge around a medieval castle when it comes to keeping unwanted or curious besiegers out,  almost,” he chuckled.

“So, I noticed; I gave up fairly quickly!”

Robbie laughed. “I’ll bet someone else not that far away wishes he’d done the same”, then continued. “We had that knocked through when they did the doors and outside”, Robbie pointed to the opening down the end. There was an old stable on the other side tacked onto this, but you had to walk all the way around for the entranceway. Seemed daft to us but then maybe our requirement is different to what there was back in those days!”

I nodded, still looking around. There was another long bench on the opposite side with cupboards and drawers underneath, lots of straps and bits of leather tack hanging on a row of pegs above. Next to it was an area where the wall had been covered in white tiles like a large shower area, only there were no shower heads, just a curled-up hose pipe hanging from a hook nearby. The dirt floor gave way to a raised area of damp concrete slightly sloped back towards the gulley at the back below the tiles with two covered drain points on either end.

Between the tiled area and the wall down the end were numerous pieces of furniture, some padded, some not and most fitted with various straps. They were an odd-looking collection, but I knew what they were and what wicked purpose they served. On the opposite side of the opening in the wall, under a long shelf full of assorted sex toys, was a long rack of whips, paddles, floggers, canes and similar ominous implements.

“All the comforts of home, ensuite bathroom facilities”, Robbie commented, nodding to the wet area and then pointing to the opposite side. That’s the ready-use stuff”, he added, indicating the bales of straw and assorted plastic sacks stored on that side near that horrible barbecue, various garden tools, and a pair of wheelbarrows. “Bedding and floor covering stuff. We keep the bulk of it in the other barn along with the outside pony stuff.”

“More!” I exclaimed in surprise, looking at the considerable pile of hay bales and coloured plastic sacks denoting different materials. “Hell, Robbie, there’s enough to last a year and more already. Are you expecting a troop of cavalry or something to put in an appearance, or do you muck him out every half hour? I nodded towards Dopey.

“Nope, every couple of days unless someone’s got a bad dose of the trots.” He paused and grinned at me, noting I’d abruptly gone somewhat ridged and silent. “You know, the Delhi belly, as they used to call it back in the good old days of empire. The Rangoon rot and so forth! It tends to stink the place out a bit. Bessie’s weird, she likes the damn stench, the stinkier, the better,  but my somewhat oversized nasal organ can only take so much…ah!” he finished with a grin, seeing where I was looking. “Ah, twigged, have you? Proverbial penny finally dropped?”

“He’s not the only one here, is he?” I asked, speaking slowly, more to calm myself than for effect, as I looked towards the opening in the wall at the far end and into that dimly lit space beyond the entrance. Was that a hint of movement I could see through the big opening? Yes, a distinct rustling of straw or something similar!

“Nope, not the only one” Robbie gave a decidedly wicked laugh and then grinned at me in an equally evil way rubbing his hands together. “Talk about getting lucky, kids in a candy shop and all your Christmases coming at once! Bessie and I are still pinching ourselves,” he looked sideways at me. “Hey, talking about that awful entry track of ours, you wouldn’t be in the market for a virtually brand new, top-end 4x4 SUV, would you? I just happen to have one gathering dust in another old outbuilding, with only one previous careless driver! Not that I’d recommend driving it in public, not without a change of number plates and maybe a complete respray!” he chuckled, adding, “And don’t expect any accompanying paperwork!”

I looked at him for a long moment, then at Dopey before my gaze returned to that opening in the far wall or rather into the gloom beyond, then finally back to my grinning host. “How many?” I croaked, for my mouth and throat had suddenly gone very dry.

Robbie gave an exaggerated indifferent shrug. “Well, it was only a seven-seater!” he said with a perfectly straight face.

My jaw dropped at the implication of his slightly apologetic statement, which he immediately confirmed by adding yet another evil chuckle. “We’d been making all sorts of wicked plans for filling a single stall, and then, as I said, Christmas came early in the shape of one big shiny metallic green package just crammed full of goodies!”