Old McDonald had a Farm...

Chapter two

‘Well, it was only a seven-seater!’

I have heard of that expression, time stopping still, but I never fully appreciated it until that moment. Robbie’s words seemed to have the effect of pausing time for what felt like a considerable interval as I absorbed his meaning. No way, but the grin splitting his face was telling me something else!

He was still watching me with that amused expression, then abruptly looked at his watch, an action which seemed to shake me out of my temporary trance as he announced we still had a little time.

“What?” I shook my head to clear it.

“I said we have a few minutes before Bessie wants us over at the house. You know what she’s like about punctuality. She’s doing supper for six, and at six, it will be. Not a second earlier or later. Remember the ticking off she gave that poor chappie in Canada, the hotel barman, when he was five minutes late opening that bar we adopted?”

I frowned, dragging my addled mind back to that evening, the final one of our brief visit and nodded. “Slightly embarrassing, as I recall,” I agreed. Bessie had exploded verbally, making a large mountain out of a tiny molehill. It had come as a complete surprise. I’d only known her a few days, and until then, she’d seemed such a retiring motherly woman. You could easily imagine her being the apple pie mom in one of those wholesome fifties and sixties family TV shows! Indeed, up to that point, I’d still struggled to relate her appearance and personality to the type of stories she wrote. Then again, thinking about my evil scribblings, I didn’t see the devil incarnate looking back every time I peered in my shaving mirror, either did I? Just Mister Ordinary with not a horn in sight. Not above the waistband, anyway!

“Well, she’s always been like that and not likely to change now” he glanced at his ancient gold Swiss wristwatch again. The one he’d inherited from his father, as he’d told me at least a half dozen times previously. “Come on. As you seem determined to upset my planned schedule, let’s get this creature back in his stall and quickly visit the other stable occupants. Give you something to sleep on, maybe? Wait for one moment while I reaffix his tail!”

I watched him briefly, and then my brain kicked back in. “Seven-seater?” I repeated aloud as he picked something up from the workbench and shook it.

“Eh, what?” he returned, holding Dopey’s tail. A length of blonde hair a couple of feet long attached to a sizeable butt plug. “Yes, that’s right, seven” he seemed preoccupied with looking at the object in his hand as though he’d never seen it before.

Seven, I repeated to myself mentally as I thought about it before asking, “How many were occupied?”

Robbie jerked himself out of his temporary trance. “Oh, all of them, of course. I told you, all our Christmas’s coming at once! It was…” He stopped speaking and peered intently at me, wagging the butt plug somewhat threateningly. “I take it we are going to be discrete about all of this, aren’t we? He gestured downwards with the plug towards, Dopey.

I stared at him with a perfectly straight face. “What if I’m not so inclined!”

His mouth dropped open, and he seemed momentarily astonished that I might disapprove of this evil enterprise he and his wife had embarked upon. Obviously, they had neither formulated nor contemplated a plan B for such a contingency.

I grinned at his stupefied expression for a second and then recalled something. “Hey, shut it; this place attracts the flies, remember!”

Robbie glared at me momentarily and then tossed the tail for me to catch before stalking back to the workbench, muttering loudly. He’d been born in Glasgow and brought up in one of the city's more deprived and rougher areas. Consequently, he retained the primitive vocabulary of that area which was by no means extensive, more the opposite but very expressive! He allowed his childhood's thick, heavy dialect to accompany his feelings in moments like this. Naturally, I did not understand a single word of those unintelligible Glaswegian guttural grunts! Hardly the way he’d expressed himself in those City boardrooms later in his life.

He was still muttering to himself over by the bench, banging about, looking for something in various drawers, so I examined what he’d thrown at me. The tail part was formed from long silky blonde strands somewhat matted in places and stuck together. I was absently running one hand down the tail, working those matted sections free, when it struck me what might have caused those areas to be like that, and I stopped at once. The hair I was stroking was almost certainly of human origin and probably likewise the substance that had soiled those strands creating the less silky patches.

It wasn’t just a simple butt plug. Bessie and I had written about such anal shit tubes in our stories, and now I was holding one. One that had seen use, probably already seen far more use than as another sex toy for a few hours during a kinky weekend. The butt plug was longer than I’d have thought and thicker, with a hollow centre that allowed the passage of fluids and semi-solids-free exit, thus bypassing the wearer's sphincter muscles. Dopey, once plugged, would have no control over his bowel movements. The tail sprouted from a fitting at the top of the device clamped by a screw fitting similar to a pipe clip, and my probing fingers weren’t surprised to find that also that fitting also contained a tiny twist lever.

I held the device towards the open doorway behind me and peered through it like a telescope while twisting that little lever. As I suspected, it closed the tube completely, meaning whoever controlled it would also completely control that poor wretches’ bodily waste exit. Jeez, I gave an involuntary twitch as I thought about it. To do that, to have that level of control over a creature like Dopey. I’d written about such, but to stand there with such a device in my hands about to be put to such evil use. It wasn’t just my body that twitched this time.

“Remind me to bring over a couple of boxes of blue latex gloves”, Robbie said, returning with a lidless glass jam jar in his hand. The torn label proclaimed its content to be strawberry jam, but the translucent speckled reddish content filling the bottom third was far more akin to honey than the original content. “My fault, the boss”, he jerked his head towards the house, “told me to bring some over yesterday, and I forgot.

“Why blue?”

“Why not” He shrugged. “Not sure they do any others. They’re the ones she always orders on Amazon anyway, and no, they don’t deliver to us, don’t be silly! They leave them with Owens's mum at the post office. The human equivalent of those yellow left luggage things springing up everywhere!”

 “So, what’s that gunk for, lubrication?” I asked, nodding at the jar I held in my hand, which immediately led to another thought. “How long have you had him, anyway?” I inquired.

“Gunk!” he exclaimed. “Nay, laddie, this ‘gunk’ is Master Roberts's mystery blend, a cocktail of the finest bum-warming ingredients. One might say a ‘home brew’ worthy of the…oh, about four months, four and a bit”, he finished cutting short the advert, much to my relief.

He held the jar out. “I found a recipe for this stuff on the Internet. Would you believe it?” he chuckled. “What a marvellously useful tool that thing is. Amazing what you can find if you look hard enough. It is a partial lubricant, not that Dopey here needs greasing up as much as he did in the early days. Modified it a little to get a…. well, let us call it a more desirable and longer-lasting effect. I expect it was bad enough in its original form, but Dopey here certainly appreciates the more enhanced version” he paused and grinned. “My definition of appreciate you understand and not his, of course! Hey, wake up. Am I talking to myself?”

I blinked and shook myself. Had I heard him, right? Four and a bit months, seven-seater! I shook myself again to throw off that temporary paralysis that seemed to have gripped both mind and body. Yet again, my brain repeated silently for four months as I looked more intently at the incredible sight before me.

I noticed Dopey had become somewhat more animated as the conversation went on above him, thus confirming the sinister purpose of that innocent reddish-hued honey-like concoction in the jar. He knew what was coming, and there was not a thing he could do about it. My lower regions twitched again at that entertaining thought, and poor Robbie looked somewhat puzzled at the sudden look I threw at him. I was trying to visually reassure him that his worries about my charging over the horizon towards authority playing tell-tale were groundless. I felt I’d just walked into heaven or hell, depending on which side of the fence you happened to be on!

Robbie stared at me for a second, then shrugged his shoulders as though giving up, so I gave him a reassuring thumbs up. He nodded and turned his attention back to the man he held captive, lowering his arm and wiggling the otherwise innocent jar from side to side and lightly ruffling one hand through Dopey’s somewhat paltry Mohican stripe at the same time.

“You know what this is, don’t you, boy?” he whispered. “Oh yes, we both know you do, don’t we? Masters special,” he shot an amused look at me, “gunk!” Robbie might be talking quietly, but there was a definite edge to his voice that I found intimidating, so I can only imagine how his helpless victim felt. 

Robbie straightened up, holding something in his other hand he’d just unhooked from the bondage hurdle and held it up for me to see. I recognised it at once, a large ring gag designed to hold the unfortunate wearer's mouth wide open while simultaneously muzzling them.

“A little earlier, I was allowing Dopey here the privilege of warming up his Master’s cock ready for the main event plus adding a little natural lubrication”, he commentated, frowning down at his captive. “Decidedly unenthusiastic were you not, boy? I thought we were beginning to get over all that silliness, given you’re in no position to refuse,  but evidently not. You can count yourself lucky, though, for had this gentleman not been visiting, I’d have spent the evening applying considerable heat to the outside of your rump as well as the inside” he paused and looked at me, chuckling. “Mind you, the nights still young, eh!” he added, patting Dopey’s scarred right buttock cheek and winking at me.

Once again, that delicious twitch coursed through me, and I looked from Dopey to Robbie and then to that darker opening and just stared at it. ‘All of them occupied!’ he’d said. He hadn’t been joking either, had he? My thoughts were distracted by the distinctive sound of a hard slap as Robbie’s palm left an imprint on Dopey’s right buttock.

“Now you just behave, boy! We both know it’s going up there, and you can do nothing about it, so stop being such a foolish animal! If your own silly fault, after all. I gave you a chance to exercise your tongue and make your owner happy, but you did all you could to spurn that opportunity and thus earn my ire, silly boy!”

While my thoughts were still partly elsewhere, Robbie plucked the tail out of my hand and been swirling the plug around in his jam jar until he was satisfied that the first two-thirds were liberally coated with its sticky-looking red-tinged contents and was crouched down, holding it over Dopey’s bottom cleft. He turned to look up at me with yet another of those evil grins splitting his genial face.

 “Here, want to do the honours for me while I open him up?” he thrust the tail at me. “Careful, hold it by the hairy end and keep your fingers clear of the ‘gunk’, as you called it. Wipe them immediately if you touch it, and don’t lick them, not if you want to enjoy your supper later. I recall you’re not a lover of ‘hot’ food!”

I reached down to accept it and, on impulse, tentatively held it up to my nose and cautiously sniffed, prompting another chuckle from my host.

“Innocent smell, kind of inoffensive and rather bland”, he observed. “Quite a contrast to the effect it will have on him, given a few minutes to warm up, " he chuckled again. “Warm up, that’s also rather a bland term for the effect it has, eh, boy?”

He grabbed hold of Dopey’s buttock cheeks, one in each chubby hand and pulled them apart, further revealing that hairless puckered opening that was so helplessly exposed and once again, that thrill shot through me, setting more than my toes tingling! Imagine being in that vulnerable position when another guy did that to you! My face must have given my feelings away, for Robbie looking up at me, suddenly laughed, then gave me another of those leery winks.

I knew exactly what he meant, for Dopey was still struggling futilely against the straps holding him securely to the bench, his rear wide open to assault and nothing he could do to prevent me from doing what I was about to do to him. I’m not gay or even bi, nor was Robbie, to my knowledge but in that instant, as that erotic feeling of omnipotence coursed through me, it was all about Dominance with a capital D, not individual sexuality.

That frightened, squirming, angry figure before me was a fellow human being, one of my own kind and species, and yet he was not. His miserable situation dictated a vast void between us, and whereas I felt as though I had a foot firmly planted on either side of that void, Dopey was firmly stranded on that far side. I should have felt sympathy for his plight, his panic-stricken struggles, and those muted pathetic protests he was continually mouthing, his body trembling with fear of that humiliating object I was carefully holding in my right hand. He was sadly mistaken if he was foolishly expecting this unexpected ‘Good Samaritan’ to cross the road and come to his aid! Four and a fucking bit bloody months, my God!

I looked down upon him with a growing feeling of pure omnipotent power, such as I’d never experienced anywhere before that was both physical and sexual at the same time. As I contemplated his wriggling form, the latter no longer seemed to matter much. His helpless situation overrode any natural feeling of homophobia, and I could envisage using him as Robbie had recently done and that more akin to an act of bestiality rather than homosexuality. That puckered pink hairless hole he held open was so tempting, helpless, and vulnerable that I was beginning to squirm in my pants.   

That the common identity part between us was no longer relevant, was it? Dopey had crossed or instead been forcibly dragged over an invisible line and morphed into something else, hadn’t he? He was now an animal, an owned animal with no rights or freedoms other than those few his new owners permitted. An animal in human form, and that very fact somehow effectively negated all those normal compassionate feelings I harboured towards our furry, feathered or similar friends. An animal apprehended purely to provide its betters with erotic sadistic pleasure, and the fact that it had a capable brain no different to those who held it captive was, on the one hand, totally irrelevant but, on the other, adding that essential extra sadistic touch to the pleasure of owning such a fascinating beast.

Perhaps even a better brain, that thought crossed my mind for some reason, although Robbie and Bessie hadn’t been short-changed when it came to handing out the little grey cells. Would there be a behavioural difference, though, if they had a complete moron strapped down there, some mindless cretin with a negligible IQ, for instance? What would the…..

“Hoy, wake up! Yes, you, laddie! I’m getting cramp squatting down here, holding the back door open!”

I shook myself and grinned at Robbie. “Sorry, Rob, indulging in a little daydream”, I apologised.

He shook his head, looking surprised. “Bored already?”

“By no means”, I hastily assured him and added, “Keep the tunnel open; this red hot choo choo is coming ready or not!”.

I got the distinct feeling that Dopey wasn’t the least bit ready or perhaps not prepared to be cooperative might be a better way of putting it, for his readiness had nothing to do with my actions. I was willingly giving, whereas he was unwillingly receiving and not a thing he could do to prevent it. I pushed the conical tip of the plug against his clenched sphincter and gently pressed and then not so gently till it slid into his rectal passage,  twisted it from side to side and pushed hard, feeling him buck and writhe as the long thick tube slid into him.

Did that count as rape? I wondered as his pink puckered anal ring gladly embraced and closed around the thinner part that separated his open shit chute and tail holder from the fat bulk of the sticky invader within him. The urge to plunge my hand down past the waistband of my pants and massage my cock was overpowering, and the phrase penis envy came to mind. Boy, would I like to change places with that device and do a little not-so-gentle pumping? Now that would be rape and probably the way I was feeling, of the most violent kind!

“Ups-a-daisy, boy,” Robbie said, busily undoing straps. Let’s get you safely back into your stall before you get all twitchy, right? Up and on your hooves,” he pulled the bigger but near-helpless figure off the bench and into an upright position. “Impressive bugger, isn’t he?” Robbie looked at me with a distinctly self-satisfied look in his eyes.

I nodded. He was right about that. “You’ve certainly acquired yourself a fine stallion in the prime of his life,” I replied, eyeing the beast, for poor Dopey was already undergoing that trans…that transfiguration? No, that was Professor Whatshername’s class in Harry Potter. Transformation, I suppose, was the term in my mind, although I was sure there was a better one meaning my seeing Dopey in an entirely new light. Although when I thought about it, maybe I was the one undergoing that transformation as much as he was, although less abruptly. Then again, maybe not, because I’d been writing about such beasts for many years!

“He’s all of that and with a lot of mileage left in him”, Robbie replied, raising one hand high, firmly grasping Dopey’s bridle and brandishing a riding quirt he’d pick up from somewhere in the other. “Big in most aspects,” he chuckled, tapping the tip of his crop on the creature’s shoulders, chest, bottom, and legs before flipping his caged cock upwards. “Except in here,” he added, tapping Dopey on the head. “Not the quickest learner, are we, boy?” he paused and winked at me. “Not without the necessary encouragement anyway!”

Little and large, I thought, taking a step back to survey the pair of them. Dopey wasn’t exactly mega tall in the basketball player way, if you know what I mean, but he must have been six footish or thereabouts. His general build and broad shoulders gave that impression of greater height, and with Robbie being a good six or seven inches shorter and wearing flat-soled rubber boots as opposed to those high-hoof boots, there was a marked contrast between the pair. Mighty was the word that came to mind. The sort of guy with an aura of brute masculinity about him and still had but now in a markedly different and bestial way.

“Would it make any difference if he were a fast learner?” I shot back, nodding at his captive’s whip-scarred rump. The pair might differ in size and build, given Dopey also appeared to have kept himself in far better condition than his somewhat overweight and rotund chubby-faced master. Still, there could be no argument about who was in charge of the situation.

“Nope, but knowing it knows how many beans make five adds more spice to our fun!” Robbie laughed and hauled Dopey forward. “Come on, beastie boy and as you can see, we’ve already had a lot of fun with him!”

I thought someone had certainly left their mark following the pair through the opening into the next section. Robbie or Bessie, I wondered and decided, probably both and shook my head. Jeez, but they were such nice people. They are such a good-humoured, kind, pleasant couple, the image of middle-class respectability and normality. This situation was the last thing I would have expected…then again, Bessie certainly possessed one hell of a perverse imagination regarding the evil stuff she wrote!

Then I stopped dead; my thoughts abruptly terminated as the lights were flipped on in the next section, and four pairs of eyes stared at me as my head swivelled left and right a couple of times and a chorus of despairing muted cries came to my ears prompting an instant angry snarl from Robbie as he flicked the last of a row of ancient looking light switches.

“Be quiet, shut it, stop that silly noise right now, or I’ll make you all suffer for it. You must have heard us next door, so cut it out right now! Don’t get it into your stupid animal heads that anything’s changed or about to change because it won’t, so shut it!” he roared and then turned to me, adding in a somewhat quieter and far less aggressive tone. “Bessie and I thought they’d all get a bit excited seeing a fresh face for a change. Not that it’s going to make the slightest difference to their miserable lives other than maybe make it a tad worse! Three of us now, eh” he chuckled and winked at me as he pushed Dopey towards the last stall on the right.

Make it worse? My nose wrinkled at the smell, my head swivelling back and forth, trying to take everything in. What could be worse, I wondered, looking around at the primitive facilities and noting that the odour Robbie had mentioned a few minutes ago was far more substantial in this area. Unpleasant and yet exciting at the same time, given the nature of the unique creatures responsible for creating it. Four months and had they spent all that time living in here. I wondered how many days or even weeks that ‘bit’, the plus part Robbie kept tagging on the end, amounted to. Not that I expected it mattered that much as I looked around, taking another deep sniff.

I faced a large arched doorway with a pair of green-painted wooden doors, presumably the original entrance. On either side were three stalls facing the inside partition wall of the old barn or external in a sense as it rose higher than the stable section, which had evidently been a later addition. Between the stalls and the wall opposite was a sizeable space which no doubt would have been needed when manoeuvring four-legged equines about, especially those big heavy cart-horse types, for I doubted that a remote place like this had gone in for fancy saddle or race horses.

“Oosed terbe vor eidazide”, Robbie said unintelligibly as he attached various chains to Dopey in the farthermost stall to my right. He was holding his riding switch between his teeth, which tended to negate his attempt to communicate till he spat it out. “Used to be four stalls on either side”, he repeated. “We had the first one on either side removed partly to provide a bit more elbow room around the old entrance and to give us somewhere to stow tack and harness till we added that storage stuff next door. I don’t know what they did in the old days unless they kept it in another building. Be with you in a sec as soon as I’ve got this beast where I want him.”

Robbie’s head bobbed out of sight, and I heard the clink of more chains as his voice floated up. “Anyways, the builder fellow we had in suggested making that opening or putting in a doorway so we wouldn’t have to go all around the houses, as it were, to get from one building to the other”.

“Makes sense,” I said, somehow resisting the overwhelming impulse to examine the owners of those other imploring eyes, damp eyes in two cases and all fixed on me, as curiosity prompted me to see what he was doing with Dopey. Eagar as I was, there was no real need to rush such an unexpected and exceptionally unique pleasurable experience. Maybe I should send my boss an email. He suggested I might want to take two weeks off as I had a backlog of holidays to use up or lose. Why not?

Robbie exited the stall, pushing home the simple bolt that held the door open and inviting me to look over the low top with a sweep of his hand. “Gong nowhere fast”, he grinned. “Very apt, in fact, for he’s stuck fast where he’s standing and there, he’ll stay till one of us releases him. He’s got no choice in the matter and already starting to twitch nicely now that little concoction of mine has started to cook his rump from the inside. Won’t be long till he comes to the boil, only there is no automatic cut-off switch when he gets to that point!” Robbie observed with a wicked chuckle adding, “All the big bastard can do is grin and bear it…only he won’t be doing much grinning!”

I could see Dopey was decidedly unhappy, nor did he have much leeway when wriggling as he attempted to do and seeming to hop from one foot, one hoof to the other, as his discomfort increased by the second. Just standing like that virtually and immobile, wearing those heavy-looking hoof boots forcing you to balance on the front of your feet, would have been arduous enough without having someone light a bonfire in your rectum!

Robbie had affixed numerous chains from the walls and wooden partition between stalls to his harness, two others to his ankles, and a hobble chain at the top of his knee-length hoof boots. Apart from lifting his legs up and down a little about, the only other thing he could do was swivel his hips and shake his big arse, although I doubt that relieved that ‘cooking’ sensation inside it, as Robbie termed his obvious discomfort. Not from how his eyes were watering and the abject muted noises emanating from his mouth along with a veritable waterfall of yucky drool. If there was such a thing as a ‘happy bunny, ' that didn’t refer to him and certainly not in pony form!

“How long does he stay like that?” I asked, viewing the unhappy figure and at the same time taking in his spartan surroundings, which instantly prompted another question and one I should have asked earlier. “You’ve had him and the others, all in here for four and a half months?” my voice rose an octave or two towards the end, “In here, in these stalls and living like animals?”.

Understandable for leaving aside that harness and restrained hapless figure, the idea of existing even for a few hours in that small stinking enclosure was unthinkable. The sparse penitent cell of a medieval monk would have been luxurious by comparison. Add in the rest of it, and I couldn’t help gaping open-mouthed in astonishment again. I’d nonchalantly written reams about such, hadn’t I, as had Bessie, but she’d gone a stage further. Not just a stage, hell she and Robbie had bought the entire damn theatre and started a production destined to run for years and years with their reluctant cast!”

“Where else would we have kept them?” Robbie gave me an odd questioning look as he shrugged his shoulders. “Crammed them all in the guest bedroom, perhaps? This isn’t a holiday camp or a five-star hotel we’re running, laddie! We had them over here that very first day or evening, I should say, and boy, oh boy was that a long and exhausting day and half the night” he suddenly grinned, screwing his face up and looking like an evil little gnome. “Fun though!” he finished with a slow wink. “

I nodded, looking back at Dopey and then at his primitive stinking straw-strewn stall, his cell, his prison. “I’ll be it was…for some!”

The stall was about ten feet long, maybe eight broad, bounded by bare red brick walls to the rear and my right and a lofty wooden partition to the left. The door was about the height of my lower chest with a simple bolt fastening. Simple, that was unless you had your hands in a tight leather binder behind your back. The only natural illumination came from a semi-circular window set high in the wall at the rear of the stall or the front of the stable if you looked from the outside. The glass was clean but opaque. It had been recently covered in a layer of paint or whitewash.

“Just a precaution”, Robbie muttered, noting where I was looking. “Bessie insisted on it, although I think it’s a complete waste of time and paint. How many giants or people on stilts are we likely to get wandering past?

I grinned at his evident chagrin but looking up; I could appreciate his point. Maybe we could have peered in at the unfortunate occupants if I’d stood on his shoulders or vice-versa and the window had been clear. Still, short of carrying a ladder, I doubt their privacy could have been violated, bringing my mind back to Dopey and his immediate environment.

He was secured in the middle of his small enclosure, but apart from a plywood shelf with a hole about the size of a dinner plate in it about waste height, presumably to hold a bowl like the one next to it, there was nothing else bar the scuffed up dirt on the floor and straw, a larger pile along the short wall opposite me. There was nothing at all other than the various eye bolts and other fittings around the walls, which were obviously all very new. I shook my head and muttered “four months’ again to myself.

“Four and a bit”, Robbie corrected with a brief laugh. “Every bit counts, eh, Dopey? Not that his days vary all that much,” Robbied confided, “not really and for any of them overmuch! Of course, things were a bit more primitive for them at first!”

“At first!” I queried, looking at the stall and its listless miserable occupant now doing an impression of a cat on a hot tin roof. Maybe that eased his feet some, I surmised, for as sure as hell I doubted it was helping his burning butt!”

“Oh yes. We hadn’t even got one stall properly ready to relieve a reluctant occupant, let alone five. Oh, please don’t ask now. I know we both can count. You’ll get the full picture later. We had to put in a good couple of hours that day quickly cleaning aeons of junk out first, and even then, and we had to double them up for that first week. Got them all unwrapped and nicely restrained and nowhere to put the fuckers. Didn’t want them left all trussed up and laying on the kitchen floor all night, did we, laddie?”

I gave him a long hard look. “And now the accommodation is more….more luxurious”, I added sarcastically.

He ignored me. “Far from it, as you can see, but perfectly adequate for the likes of them. No, perhaps primitive was the wrong term. I meant we didn’t have all those eyebolts and the like in place. They took a while to get fixed up, and then there was the straw for bedding to order, bags of sand, sawdust and wood chipping for the floor, and the feeding shelves and bowels to fix up and arrange. That’s what I meant by primitive, less prepared, you might say. Plus, we had a ton of tack and other stuff to source and order, not to mention trying to get it all delivered discretely!”

“Yeah, must have been a real chore”, I grunted, still being sarcastic, which Robbie promptly ignored by laughing.

“Oh, not really. We were well compensated for our troubles in other ways, and it certainly wasn’t all work that first week or so” he paused and grinned towards Dopey. “There was plenty of time for play as well as we all got to know each other, some more intimately than others!” He gave another of those long-wicked chuckles.

“I can imagine”.

Robbie gave a short barking laugh. “I doubt it, I very much doubt it, even with your somewhat perverse imagination. One has to experience it to believe it; take my word on that. Come on, move along down the bus. We’ve time for a brief peek at the rest of  our little herd before we have a bite to eat.” He retook my arm and pulled me along.

“How long does he have to stand like that,” I asked out of curiosity, momentarily ignoring the insistent pressure on my elbow.

“Dopey, oh, for as long as we want. That’s what the long tether to his posture collar from the roof beam above is for, likewise the second one on that hook above the feeding shelf with his water bowl. They serve to keep them in their place and up on their hooves, although initially, it was bare feet until we got them all outfitted. You don’t see their four-legged equivalents lazing around on their backs and bums all day, do you? So why should these animals be any different? Those tethers, when attached to their collars, prevent that”.

I looked at where he was pointing with the crop and then at Dopey again. “So, how long?” I repeated.

Robbie pulled a face. “I just told you, didn’t I? He stays there like that; hey, all do for as long as we want and if his legs give way, so what. He’ll just end up dangling via his posture collar, and that’s too thick, high and tough to throttle him” He shrugged. It happens occasionally with one or other of them, but we’ve not lost one yet. Now come along, I can hear Mrs Dopey squeaking next door, not that I can understand a word, but I’m sure she’s dying to meet you!” he laughed, tugging at my elbow again.

“Took a while to get all the kit, the tackle and harness we needed, not to mention their hooves which are all made to measure, I might add. None of your bedroom namby-pamby play stuff off eBay and  Amazon. Bloody stuff has cost us a damn fortune, but well worth it, and we’re still buying and experimenting on our beasts. This fine-looking mare would tell you that if she was allowed”, he chuckled, “wouldn’t you, girl? No expense spared on your wardrobe, eh? Every girls dream to look good for her admirers with no expense spared, so who’s a lucky lassie then?”

Clearly not the female occupant of the stall, I decided, looking into those tearful, imploring blue eyes that had immediately locked upon mine and tearing at my very soul…or would have done had it been home! Unfortunately for her, it was AWOL and likely to remain so for a while, so what remained of that fleeting look of hope vanished to be replaced by one of hopeless despair. No doubt she read that in my eyes, and if she hadn’t, my hand hesitantly reaching out towards the nearest tempting heavy breast told its own story.

 “What do you think of Peaches then?” Robbie asked, running his tongue around his lips and winking at me. “Very luscious, eh? Bet Dopey just loved those juicy udders on her. I know my Bessie does. Look at all those proofs of affection she’s left on those soft sexy white things. Just so tempting to a sweet but evil-minded lady pony owner with a ready whip!”

I’m no expert when it comes to size, but Peaches certainly had a decent pair of tits on her or had until someone had left that crisscrossing lattice of fresh and faded marks on her breasts, including a couple of nasty-looking red raised welt’s purpling and spotted with dried blood where the skin had been recently broken. They were big and bouncy looking but not by any means oversized and still somewhat perky despite her age, if you know what I mean. She had large brownish areolas and thick stumpy nipples with a sizeable gold ring dangling from each.

Robbie reached out and pinched one nipple between his finger and thumb, rubbing it between them. At the same time, Peaches squirmed and pathetic-sounding little noises escaped from her mouth bit that achieved the reverse of what she intended making her sound more like a distressed animal than a human pleading for help. Her eyes were running with tears that she had no means of wiping, not with her hands restrained behind her back. Her nose was running too, which also sported another gold-coloured ring larger than the ones in her nipples.

“These are a ‘stay-bright’ brass alloy, by the way”, Robbie said, flicking one of the woman's nipple rings upwards. We haven’t yet decided about piercing and rings for all of them. Robbie said somewhat nonchalantly, “Plenty of time to think about it. Bessie is far keener on it than me, but then they were always ringed in her stories. Strange because Bessie has never even had her ears pierced herself! That was one of the things that first attracted me to her many moons ago, as they say. I’ve never been a fan of jewellery for some reason. Look,” he held out his left hand. “I took my wedding band off straight after the ceremony and….” He frowned. “Never worn it since, and I couldn’t say for sure where it is now. Maybe Bessie will know” he shrugged and held out a finger absently, catching a large tear as it was about to drip down Peach's chin, looked at it briefly, then flicked it away.

“Don’t hold back, laddie. I can see your fingers twitching. Please carry on; there’s nothing like the feel of helpless horseflesh, male or female” He nodded towards Peaches stall and the neighbouring ones and grinned. “And boy, we have plenty of that available for you to feel! Go on; I promise she won’t run away,” he laughed.

I could see that for myself. Unlike Dopey, presumably her husband in the next stall, she wasn’t cluttered with a cat’s cradle of straps and chains keeping her in one central position. Peaches was held near the entrance to her stall by one extremely short leather tether from her nose ring to a cleat on the door frame that meant she was only a foot or so away from me,

“Hurts like hell if she tries to pull on that leash,” Robbie noted. “Bessie likes to keep her within easy reach, doesn’t she, girl? My wife is very taken with this one. She’s only got herself to blame in a sense for her predicament and, of course, that of the rest of them. All your fault, wasn’t it, girl!” he laughed casually, flicking a beringed nipple with his forefinger again.

“How so I asked,” tentatively hefting Peach's left breast and gently squeezing it while staring her straight in the eyes and listening to Robbie. I had to concentrate because as I cupped that soft lump of flesh in my hand, the fact that I could do it despite her muted protests and all it implied was so diverting, as was the audible sob it elicited and the thrill that ran through me.

“Oh, we’ll have plenty of time for the full thrilling story of our round-up and capture of the wild beasts while you’re up here devouring our bread and salt. Let’s just say that Mamma mutton here is a delicious piece of mutton, as you can see and feel,”  he gave a brief laugh. “She was dressed far too lamby, shall we say, when she exited the vehicle in our humble farmyard. You know that old saying, Mutton dressed as lamb! It looked like she’d been delving into her daughter’s wardrobe for some lambskin. Skintight stretchy ripped jeans plus a very tight skimpy top and low-cut bra, very skimpy and low cut indeed. Out to catch the boy's eyes, were you, girl? Trying to prick-tease your daughter’s boyfriend, perhaps? You certainly weren’t hiding these fine udders under any bushel, and my Bessie noticed that right away” He chuckled and added both right and left ones, eh girl?”

I continued to knead the delightful flesh, enjoying those muted little whimpering sounds Peaches was making almost continuously and conscious that I was not feeling guilty or concerned. Perhaps that should have worried me, but it didn’t. Four and a bit fucking months she’d been in that stall! I could have stood there all day fondling that soft, helpless, warm female skin and enjoying that delicious omnipotent feeling permeating my entire being.

“What about Bessie?” I suddenly asked, “Why did she notice her?”

“Tch, laddie. I thought you’d read all her stuff. How often have those poor creatures in her stories felt a cane or whip across their tits! Didn’t you know that she’s got a wee bit of a thing about doing that to a pony’s tit’s, be they big or small? Peaches here could confirm that first-hand, couldn’t you, lassie” he nodded. “Cannya no see yon evidence, man!” his Scottish accent and word usage came to the fore as he became excited. “Ma Bessie’s a tit girl for sure.”

“Udders, Dear, always udders on animals like my pretty mare here. How many more times do I have to repeat it? I’ve got tits; this mare has udders,” Bessie chided, coming through the opening from the barn and shaking an oven glove at her husband and looking a trifle miffed.

“Is there a difference?” I asked without thinking. I’d sensed immediately that she was not in the best of moods, but the question just came out even as Robbie shot me a warning glance.

“Have you laggards got cloth ears the both of you? I’ve been shouting myself hoarse back yonder telling you that supper’s on the table going cold! Don’t either of you wear a wristwatch?” Bessie demanded, standing legs apart and arms akimbo. She wasn’t particularly loud, but it seemed that way as Robbie and I shared a sheepish look. I wondered if he was experiencing that same urge to look at his watch as I was. I doubted that we were overdue by more than a minute, but I lacked the courage to satisfy my curiosity.

“Now come along and get it while it's hot from the oven and not the microwave, and you, you can stop that damn stupid snivelling along of rolling those big sad cow eyes at our guest!” the later part was far louder and more irritated being aimed at Peaches rather the two us. The oven glove flew out of her hand to be neatly caught by her husband as she snatched something from a hook on the wall. It was a length of thin rattan cane with a leather-bound handle.

“I saw the terror in Peaches eyes as she flinched back only to be abruptly halted by her short nasal tether, which promptly triggered a muted squeal of agony.

“Foolish animal, will you never learn!” Betty told her quietly, all trace of anger and irritation gone as she raised her arm high, the cane then singing as it descended to slash across each breast, leaving another red angry wheal that instantly began to ooze blood in places.

I’d often written about such animals making noises when bitted and wondered how loud that muted sound could be. That squeal of agony from Peaches answered that question for me. Yes, it was muted, but boy, that thin strip of wood must have been damn agonising from the effort she put into those cries. Equally, apart from that heartrending squeal, there wasn’t a thing the poor creature could do to relieve the pain other than carefully bob up and down on the spot lest she trigger more agony in her nasal region.

Betty flexed the cane between two hands, a steely satisfied glint in her eyes as she surveyed the wretched woman now carrying another pair of those ‘proofs of affection’, then she smiled and returned the cane to its hook and turned to me. “That’s the answer, the difference”.

“Eh, what?” I gave her a blank look, most of my attention having been focused on the suffering woman “Question?”

“Come on now, don’t dawdle”, she beckoned to me with one hand as she pushed her husband towards the stable door with the other. “Suppers ready and won’t wait. You can come back later and play with them all to your heart's content!”

I obediently followed, and even as I glanced back at Peaches and another interesting-looking female pony in the next stall, Betty answered my earlier question.

“As I said, I’ve got breasts, tits if you want to be crude because I’m human, whereas that creature is no longer human. Peaches has udders, as do the other animals, making for a very convenient, sensitive target when training such a stubborn creature. One does not cane breasts, of course, but captive udders are an entirely different kettle of fish. That’s the difference. Oh, and talking of fish, I did say it would be fish pie, didn’t I? Freshwater trout, alright for you, Dear?”

“Fine”, I  replied automatically, my eyes blinking a couple of times as we emerged into the natural light of a perfectly normal world. However, my mind was exclusively focused on another world behind me that was decidedly unnormal. “Fine”, I replied again, although I’d have said the same had she said burning coals in a hot tar sauce! Probably an appropriate dish as well right then for the three of us. That world, my world, would no longer be normal again, would it?