Pony Life

Chapter 9

‘Leaving her mark!’ That’s what Penny had said to Melons. At least that was the shorter, abbreviated version; the full one was, ‘I’m no Shylock. I don’t want a pound of flesh. I’ll settle for leaving my mark permanently embedded in said flesh instead!’ That had stuck in my mind and returned as I watched Penny putting Melons through her paces on the outside motorised pony walker.

How much was a pound of flesh? I wondered, with a slight shudder at the gruesome thought, and would Shylock have insisted on it being flesh? Would a hand, or maybe a foot, have sufficed? I normally bought the 500g packs of chicken breasts at the supermarket, so if you… My metric-to-imperial conversion calculations were interrupted by another of Melon’s agonised screams; both chubby rump cheeks having been kissed by the whip this time.

Melons hadn’t left her stall willingly, and Penny wasn’t one to suffer such wilful disobedience calmly. In fact, Penny hadn’t suffered at all, but by the time she'd dragged the mare to the walker, Melons certainly had. Had it come to a tug-of-war contest on equal terms between the pair, one might have pondered which of them to place your wager on. Penny, tall, lithesome, shapely, but in that willowy, catwalk-model way. Melons, shorter, squatter, but more powerfully built and with the advantage of being nearer the ground. Weight-wise, probably near equal, but given that Melons was hoof-booted, harnessed and pony-tacked, that more than tipped the scales in Penny's direction. Throw in that short but vicious whip she wielded and, well… Cheap porn mag centrefold spread 0 – Vogue cover girl 1.

I gave up on mental arithmetic; it was too early, too much for the old grey matter, and irrelevant anyway. I had an obligation to return Melons to her owner, well, not necessarily intact, but in one piece, hadn’t I? So lopping off the odd hand or foot was out of the question. Nor would my friend be overly happy if I handed over a well-stripped zebra rather than a pony, something I hoped Penny would keep in mind. If Melons was to be permanently disfigured that way, well, it was her rightful owner who ought to be doing it!

“I wouldn’t worry too much”, Sally said, slipping her hand in mine. “If I know Mandy, her interest will be more in owning the silly thing rather than the personal satisfaction of training it. She reserves her energy for her racing and dressage ring show ponies, and Melons is hardly a suitable candidate for either category, is she?

So much for my expression keeping secrets, I thought, but then that tiny, perfectly formed hand gave a reassuring squeeze as Melons let out another ear-piercing shriek. The tip of the whip expertly bit into her right rump cheek, drawing blood. Her shrieks were louder than ever, easily beating those in the YouTube clip someone had secretly filmed of her being rejected and refused permission to fly at the business-class check-in of a prominent airline. Her shrieks and screams of angry protest had certainly notched up a couple of million views for whoever had posted it. What these days I believe is called being a ‘Karen!’

It was probably still there, for I doubted Melon would have objected to it despite her awful behaviour, nor was it the only one. Suzy had shown it to me on her phone and told me there were at least another dozen of Miss Big Tits behaving exceedingly badly in public.  Probably part of the bitch’s image, I imagined, for she was the archetypal example of there being ‘no such thing as bad publicity’. The thought made me chuckle as Penny’s whip flashed out, producing another squeal.

“What’s so funny?”

I gave Sally's diminutive hand a gentle squeeze. “Publicity”, I said. “That silly bitch has always wanted to be at the centre of things, the focus of attention ever since she flashed her big udders at the cameras the day after her sixteenth birthday. Well. Now she’s certainly centre stage, the sole focus you might say, although I’m not sure she’s going to appreciate all the attention!”

“Phhffffff!” Sally blew out her cheeks in disapproval. “Her mother must have been crazy, and the attention won’t last long, believe me. Once her week or so is up, Penny here will lose interest. Likewise, Mandy will after another week or two, once she’s reclaimed the animal. Like I said, there’s nothing about her to keep Mandy entertained, so Melons will spend her life stalled, doing sweet fuck all. She’ll be merely a possession, no different from one of Mandy’s expensive pictures or her porcelain figurine collection and far less entertaining than her ‘girls’ she keeps locked away on the top floor! Mandy might choose to exhibit her at select shows as…as a sort of freak exhibit, a curio, you know, like the tattooed lady, the skeleton man, or whatever, in a Victorian fairground sideshow booth.”

“I’d better make the most of my week, then,” Penny laughed. “If I’m to be bored, I’m still right about Mandy. I probably know her almost as well as Sally, and she’s spot on. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s splashed out a ton of money on some animal she didn’t really need.” Then Penny turned to look at us, abandoning the blow she’d been about to deliver to the distraught Melons. “Is Cupcake still a stable resident?”

“Uh-huh, nope,” Suzy answered from behind, shaking her head as she joined us. “She was there when I started, but Mandy sold her, oh, about two months after I began working in the stable. A pity, because I was quite taken with that mare; she was one of the first I was assigned to groom, and also the … no,” the girl's eyes narrowed. “No, she wasn’t the first pony I ever whipped. Bob had complained to Sara that some of his ponyboys had been ‘acting up a bit’, as he put it. He came into the stable just after I’d done my first ever morning feed, or rather, I followed Sarah around, holding the bucket while she sloped breakfast into their troughs, explaining things to me.”

Penny smirked at the younger girl. “This thing is called a bucket, this thing is called a big spoon, this thing is call….”

“Fuck off!” was the prompt reply, along with a small pink tongue stuck out for good measure.

 By return, Penny’s dazzling catwalk smile was unperturbed. “Now don’t waste valuable tongue energy, sweetie; you may need it later, and we wouldn’t want a below-par performance, would we?” She flashed a quick grin and a saucy wink at Sally and me, then added, “Now that’s one thing I do miss about Brutus, and Caesar needs a whole series of dentals before I’m going to let his mouth near my pussy, plus a heap of training. Maybe I should have left the big brute with Dee Dee a little longer!” She finished with a very obvious mock sigh and giggled at her own insincerity.

“IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I’D MET HIM”, Suzy announced loudly, reclaiming the conversation and glaring at Penny before switching her attention back to Sally and me, discarding the excess volume. “As I said, he’d come into the stable to have a quiet word with Sara; he’d been disappointed with the attitude of some of his boys recently, very disappointed”.

“Angry?” I suggested, curious, because Bob didn’t seem the type to let himself get angry. His wife, Mandy, yes, but not Bob. No, he always seemed very self-controlled to me.

“Bob!” Suzy considered. “No, I wouldn’t exactly say he’s angry. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Bob get angry… well, not what I’d call angry. He gets ‘Dumpy’ sometimes.”

“Dumpy?” I queried.

“Down in the dumps, you know, depressed,” Sally supplied. “It’s what Big Sarah calls those moods he has from time to time, and it has nothing to do with his pretty ponyboys or his huge, ugly stallions. Misbehaviour on their part is pretty minor, irritating maybe, but still minor. Besides, it's something to be expected from time to time. No, he gets dumpy when the stock market looks a bit shaky or one of his companies goes through a sticky patch. That’s why we’re playing host to that animal for a bit, remember,” she nodded towards the miserable figure of Melons, who, despite her enforced exercise on the pony walker, was clearly following the conversation, as the angle of her head showed. But then did it matter? My initial flash of irritation quickly subsided.

“Anyway,” Suzy continued. “The first time I met him, he was in a bad mood, highly irritated. He was fine with me, very welcoming and friendly, but still plainly upset because his ‘boys’, as he called them, hadn’t been very cooperative the last time he’d taken a couple for a spin around the grounds. He’d been away on a short business trip apparently, and this was the first time he’d had a chance to tell Sarah about their ‘unacceptable attitudes’, as he put it, when he complained to Sarah”.

Sally nodded. “Hardly unexpected, I’d have thought. Probably didn’t fancy having him stick his fat cock in their pony cunts, foolish creatures! His big pair, Samson and Hercules, try it and go on strike every so often or ‘act up’ as he puts it. Silly animals. I mean that only adds to his pleasure and their pain!”

“Very silly of them!” I agreed with a cruel laugh. “It’s not as if they ever have a choice, is it!”

Suzy giggled and winked at me, then continued. “It was only my second day there, my first full day, and I got plenty of practical training with whips and canes that morning. Sara was a bit, well more than a bit, put out with her charges, as I recall, and wanted to make damn sure that Bob wouldn’t have cause to moan in future. He had taken her to one side after she’d introduced me but, well,” she grinned. “I couldn’t help earwigging the conversation. Curiosity and being new and all that!” She looked at the three of us as though expecting something of a negative response, but no one said anything. We were all familiar with curiosity.

“I mean he didn’t shout or anything; he didn’t seem mad, more…more disappointed than anything else”

“Bob's not one to squander his valuable energy beating a recalcitrant pony, unlike us, nasty females. Once he’s got them whipped up into a nice trot, they’ll usually be spared, but he does expect them to behave themselves when he leads them to one of his mounting posts. He wants to fuck, not fight the damn things!” Sally observed clinically.

“I’m not nasty”, Suzy protested indignantly. “Objective, yes, but not nasty, well…” she broke off and pulled a face. “I mean nasty sounds so horrible!”

This time I laughed. “Oh, I’m sure your new ponyboy would wholeheartedly agree with that statement. You were certainly being very ‘firm’ with him the other afternoon, from what I saw and the sounds he was making!”

Suzy glared at me for a moment, then giggled, giving an indifferent shrug. “Well, Candi has to learn, and a little firmness now is better than a lot later,” she broke off and giggled again. “He’s got such a cute, tempting rump, though. I can hardly keep my hands off it.”

“I think it was more a case of what you had in your hand, girl!” Sally laughed. “That was the horrible part, and you were certainly being very ‘firm’ with it!”

Penny chuckled but quickly held up a hand before Suzy could say anything.  “Alright, little Miss innocent, ’ll bet you got pretty damn ‘objective’ that first morning then if Sarah was pissed off with some of Bob’s ponyboys”

Suzy gave another wicked giggle. Oh yes! Sarah was indeed pissed off, as you put it. Very much so! We were about halfway through feeding them when Bob came in, and up to that point Sarah was taking her time explaining the routine and other things I needed to know. After Bob departed, it was vroom, vroom, blink and you’ll miss it, and I’m sure at least one pony did miss out on its breakfast that morning.

“Probably an unexpected bonus for the poor thing,” I murmured, thinking back to my time at Mandys and the standard but distinctly unappetising ‘pony chow’ they fed the stables’ occupants.

Suzy flashed me a quick grin. “Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. You know, I tried a mouthful once, out of curiosity, you understand.” She pulled a face. “It was… well, to be honest, not quite as bad as I’d thought it would be, but…” She left the sentence unfinished, and I guessed why.

I remembered the first time I’d helped prepare the food and done the same. The different coloured bags of ready-mixed ‘pony chow’ Mandy used, diluted with water and served cold. Big Sarah hadn’t been very forthcoming; I recalled when I’d quizzed her about the contents and why the bags were in different colours. Her ‘that’s one brown flavour; that’s one green flavour’ and so on hadn’t been very enlightening. The food kept the ponies healthy and runny in the bowel department, which was all she asked of the stuff, and she didn’t seem to share my fascinated interest in the subject. 

Curiosity hadn’t killed the cat, but it had certainly settled my curiosity after a couple of small spoonfuls.  “Not exactly pleasing or stimulating to the palate or likely to titillate any taste buds”, I finished it for her. There was a slight difference between what came out of the different coloured bags, but it was pretty minor. I’d brought some back with me, and we used it as a base filler with other stuff we tossed in and liquidised the hell out of it till it was easily ‘slurpable gloop’—Suzy’s term for what we carried over in a plastic bucket twice a day. 

“It was also the one morning when checking for clean bowels after they’d finished was overlooked,” Suzy continued with another chuckle. “Sarah had impressed that on me when we started feeding them. Normally, she’s very fussy about it. One tiny smidgen of food left in their feeding trough equals one hot pony rump, no excuses! Not that they are ever in a position to offer any!”

“I remember poor Judith getting knocked down,” Sally said. “She was back at work, though, when I visited Mandy and Bob; that was the first time I met you.” She frowned in concentration. “It must have been that… that pony show weekend Mandy had put on. You were working in the stables when I came in a couple of nights before the event, and… and told me you’d been there about six weeks!” Sally finished, beaming as if she’d just breasted the winning tape after a particularly hard race.

Suzy nodded, then laughed. “Yeah, I remember now. I didn’t really know who you were, so I took you on a tour of the stable, only to realise I was feeling very silly when I suddenly realised you knew more about most of the occupants than I did!”

“Well, you were obviously so enthusiastic about your new job I didn’t like to …

“Stop her silly prattle?” Penny offered, flashing Suzy a malicious grin.

“Curb her evident enthusiasm,” Sally corrected. “Yes, I think you were understaffed at that time; Mandy had to call in a couple of girls who used to work for her to help out, if memory serves me right.”

“Bettina and Kylie, " Suzy exclaimed, snapping her fingers loudly in accompaniment. “I’d forgotten that; I got on great with them, still in touch via Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram"

“Oh yes,” Penny snorted. “And here is little old me thinking you’re ‘A numero uno’ tech-wise in the security department, yet you’re chatting away to all and sundry on social media about your job!” She gave Suzy a superior smile. “Complete with pictures of well-whipped ponies, no doubt. Does Mandy know?”

I’d expected the usual four-letter profanity to erupt from Suzy's cute little mouth like a missile, but instead her mouth twisted into an equally superior smile. “For your information, Miss Sneery, sassy, over the hill, saggy-boobed, model person,” the smile repeated. “My employers, both permanent and temporary, trust my judgement and have absolute faith in me as their Number one tech security person and…”

“Alright, alright!” I intervened quickly. “Let’s not get personal, ladies, and we seem to be straying way off the point. As I recall, you were telling us about some mare in Mandy’s stable and Bob’s ponyboys.” I wagged a cautionary finger at the young blonde and then at Penny, who didn’t see it. My glamorous visitor had hooked a finger into the front of her T-shirt to pull it outwards and was staring down at her chest, presumably looking for signs of sagging!

“Want me to fetch a mirror?” Suzy asked innocently.

“Mirror?” I looked at her in astonishment. “Why would I want a mirror?” I should have been warned by that exaggerated look of innocence on her pretty face.

“Not you, her so that she can check for wrinkles at the same time”, Suzy giggled with a nod in Penny’s direction. “Or maybe I should fetch that old walking stick of your dad’s you’ve still got in case her legs start to go!”

*****

“It is a pretty meaty stick,” Penny noted as we sat around the table for an early coffee break. Sally's suggestion was an alternative to refereeing a cat fight between my guest and the temporary employee, as she’d described herself. Not that I believed it would have come to that. The two invariably exchanged banter at every opportunity, and I was ninety-nine point nine per cent convinced Suzy initiated it because she wanted a sore bottom later, rather than the opposite.

Consequently, we’d retired to my big farmhouse kitchen, leaving the disgruntled Melons to the dispassionate mechanical perambulations of the pony-walker after a couple of parting ‘love pats’, as it were, from Penny, along with the promise of a nice bottom-warming paddling on her return. ‘A good session with the paddle never did harm to any pony’, she’d said somewhat piously as we walked away. Not something I would have agreed with, and I’m damn sure Melons wouldn’t either, having already experienced that wicked implement a couple of times. The mare must have heard what she’d said, but still, it was far better…well, from mine, and I suppose, rather than Melons' point of view, far less damaging than a whip!

“He hardly ever used it”, I replied, looking over to where the sturdy walking stick was hanging from the end hook on the long row of coat hooks above the place where we stored our muddy boots. It had been there when I moved back to the house and I’d never moved it. Nothing to do with sentimentality, more a case of hardly even noticing it on my part and the odd time it did register, I’d morbidly thought to myself, ‘might come in handy one day!’.

“I could probably find a use for it”, Penny mused, eyeing young Suzy thoughtfully.

“No, you damn well couldn’t. Besides, I bruise far too easily!” came the protest, though I found it unconvincing. Last time Penny had visited, I’d seen the tall model easily pick up the much smaller girl and carry her to her camper van, and I’d noticed that Suzy hadn’t put up much of a struggle!

“I can find you something far more appropriate than Daddy’s old stick if you’re desperate,” I winked at Penny, who laughed and replied with a suggestive conspirative wink of her own.

Thanks, but no thanks. You don’t imagine I’d come visiting without being suitably equipped, do you? She winked a second time, this time at Suzy. Once again, I expected the usual retort and perhaps a brief flick of that little pink tongue, but no, Suzy chose to continue her tale of early stable life.

“Going back to Sarah, Bob and the stable, I was”, she paused, sipped her coffee, pulled a face and reached for the small saccharine tub and extracted a small tablet, popping it into her mug and stirred it vigorously.

“Do they work?” Penny asked curiously. “My mum had type two diabetes, so I grew up in a near-zero-house as far as sugary things went. It means I have great teeth, but I have always had a craving for decent chocolate, not the crap candy they make in the States and call chocolate!”

“Pretty well in tea and coffee,” Suzy replied. “I’m the opposite. I’ve mostly managed to overcome my craving for sweet things. Anyway, you can’t buy decent chocolate here now, not cheaply, anyway. Belgian and Swiss, yes, but it’s expensive. Huge US conglomerates have taken over all our popular brands, and the first thing they did was cut the cocoa content and replace it with cheap palm oil, so now it tastes no different from the crappy stuff they’ve had for years over there!”

“You’re keeping them waiting,” Sally chided. “Not to mention the three of us!”

“Who, oh, yes!” Suzy replied. “Bob’s boys and Big Sarah. Where was I? Yes, yes, I know. Tch, don’t get so impatient, and don’t fucking do that either!”

I grinned. Penny had yawned quietly and made something of a show of looking at her wristwatch. She flashed me an amused look as Suzy exploded.

“Bob, as I said, wasn’t happy with the way his ponyboys had responded during his last outing. Maybe he’d said something to Sarah when he brought them back the previous evening, but I wasn’t there to hear. I was in the staff flat upstairs, unpacking, wondering where the other girls were, for I’d seen no one.  It was Mandy who’d picked me up at the railway station and driven me over and left me with Sarah, apologising profusely because she had to shoot off somewhere else.” The girl paused again and smiled a very long, contemplative smile.

“It was a fun evening. Sarah showed me where everything was in the flat, then gave me a quick tour of the stable before I went back upstairs. When I went back down, Sarah had finished for the day. She told me she was heading out on a few errands, but to feel free to look around, look but don’t touch, not yet, and that the lights stay on twenty-four seven. And that was that!” Suzy chuckled. “Apart from all the ponies, I was the only one in the stable, all on my own, and had a great time over the next couple of hours, as you can imagine!”

“I’ll bet you did touch; I know I would have done,” Penny admitted, then her eyes dropped to the whip she’d been carrying, and she shot me an apologetic look. “I’ve a habit of…tending to outstay my welcome sometimes.”

“You're not on borrowed time yet”, I reassured her. “Not quite!”

“It was kind of heavenly,” Suzy said softly. Her eyes had a faraway look, and her cheek bulged on one side, pushed by her tongue as she relived the experience. None of us interrupted, for we all had those early memories, and they were precious to us. My head turned automatically, and I looked without seeing at my kitchen door, just as Suzy was, only I was seeing my stable building rather than Mandy's. I was looking at myself, hot with excitement and trembling with a mixture of anticipation, pent-up sexual tension, guilt and outright fear at what I’d just done!

It had been the sight of Beauty, my trussed-up and terrified ponygirl on the floor, as I stood there, fully aware that the creature was mine, my very own ponygirl. Mine to do with as I liked, to fulfil my fantasies, mine to… The image faded, replaced by the sight of the gorgeous beast strapped helplessly to my makeshift bondage bench. A gorgeous body shaking with terror and rage, yet completely helpless under my touch. For the first time, I dressed her in the tack she’d wear for the rest of her miserable life, a life that would be very miserable for the magnificent animal I now owned. Owned!

“Are you alright, Sweetheart?”

It was Sally, peering at me with a slightly concerned look, while Suzy stared at me, open-mouthed and slightly puzzled, and Penny merely sniggered and winked at me knowingly. Christ, I’d almost given myself an orgasm just thinking back, romantic reminiscing… no, scratch that thought. Romantic probably wasn't quite the right term for what had happened, and certainly not for what happened later! I grinned, indeed, a very inappropriate term, for there had been nothing remotely romantic about the next phase of Beauties’ induction into stable life.

Penny still had that smug, irritating look on her beautiful face, so I quickly wiped the grin off mine and composed myself, deliberately turning back to young Suzy and ignoring Sally’s “You looked like you were having a fit or something”

“Or something”, Penny sniggered.

I ignored them. I’d surprised myself at how intense those memories were, especially now that I was, well, vastly more experienced as an owner of ‘two-legged equines’ rather than just Beauty. I had Goldie, my big ex-Russian mafioso stallion, plus four other stalls suitably occupied. Those animals weren’t mine, but they were helplessly stalled in my stable, which meant… I broke off, tensed, and made a deliberate effort to calm myself and speak slowly.

“Sorry, Suze, my mind was momentarily elsewhere,” I threw Penny a quick look as though daring her to say anything. She didn’t, so I continued. “I apologise; I missed what you were saying just now. You were talking about your first time, your first evening in Mandy's stable.”

“And morning,” Penny added. “I want to hear about Bob’s naughty boys.”

The girl giggled. “You would have done if you’d been anywhere near the stable that morning! No, you didn’t miss much. I was saying that once Sarah had gone, I spent several hours…” She paused and wagged a finger in the air. “What’s a good word for… no, I’ve got it. Acquainted, yes. I spent a couple of hours getting acquainted with all the stable occupants, both male and female. It was fascinating, unbelievable, so damn cool! I mean, all of them being there, yet none of them there willingly, and how they were kept, I mean, like, wow. I knew what to expect, of course, but then seeing the… the reality of it all, I mean that was something else, like…” She broke off and looked at us, shaking her head.

“We know,” Penny said softly and gently patted the younger girl's hand. “We’ve all been there and remember our first time.” She suddenly laughed and looked at me. “Although I gather some of us were a tad more proactive in their first pony experiences, or was I told?”

I grinned at her. “In my case, it was very much a DIY job, Beauty and…” I looked around for Fluffy. “And that thing was very much embryonic when I had my first encounter, you might say! Heck, outside of bdsm fiction and art, I thought I was a pioneer of sorts. How the hell was I to know about you damn perverts!”

Suzy laughed. “Well, you could hardly expect people to advertise or promote their nasty little hobbies publicly!” She took a sip of her coffee and continued. “Not that Mandy's stable was very small, and, like I said, it was so fucking cool seeing them all, one after another. I went right around the lot twice, just looking at the name boards and peering into the stalls—a couple of the female ones. Fillies, I remember telling myself, because that was how Sarah had described them. They looked as if they had recently been whipped, hard. Heck, I went weak at the knees just looking at them, and the thought of, well…you know,” she giggled and made a quick up-and-down motion with her free hand.

“Lords knows how long it took me to go round them all, and as soon as I’d done the first… first circuit, shall we say, I set off again. Sarah had warned me to be careful and not do anything silly. ‘Look but don’t touch, not yet, and for heaven's sake, keep in mind that these are dangerous, wild, very wild animals! Think about that and their circumstances, put yourself in their place, and think about how you’d feel. Never, repeat never, let your guard down, and never, repeat never, trust them, no matter how docile they might seem!’ or something like that, anyway. It was quite a long speech! I think she was in two minds, worried about security and what I might do without suitable supervision, and also not wanting to disappoint me on my first night by telling me to stay upstairs in the staff quarters”.

I nodded. “Yeah, I had something similar when I spent a week at Mandy's, helping out in the stable. I’m a little surprised she even left you on your own if that was your first night!”

Suzy nodded. “Yes, given how I’ve seen her induct other girls. I’ve always wondered about that, especially now she knows me a lot better!” The girl finished with a cheeky laugh.

“I’m surprised that there was no one else there”, Sally commented. “I’ve never known that to happen?”

Suzy nodded. “Yeah, that was a one-off in my experience. Maddy was away for a couple of days, playing bridesmaid at a school friend's wedding; one girl had recently left, and Judith…Judy had been knocked down the morning before I was due to start in a supermarket car park. Some silly old biddy lost control of her car coming around the corner of the building into the big rear car park, going way too fast, and then hit the accelerator instead of the brake.  Judy was lucky; nothing broken, just shock and severe bruising, but she spent three days in hospital under observation because she’d also taken a knock to her head. Normally there have always been at least two of us there and available for duty, and that’s not counting Big Sarah.”

I nodded in agreement, thinking back to my own experience in the big modern building. I’d frequently made up a fourth or fifth during morning and evening feed, plus daily grooming and mucking-out duties. No one person could have done all that alone. I mean, it almost took three of us to look after the six I had stabled…well, maybe that's a wee bit of an exaggeration, but ponies en masse were somewhat work-intensive. Suzy must have been reading my mind.

“Jeez, but it was pretty hectic and intense for a couple of days till the other girls got back. Mandy came back a day early and mucked in like she usually does when we’re short-handed, unlike Bob, who never does anything in the stable other than fuck his ponyboys, of course!”

“Didn't put you off, though, did it?” Sally chuckled. “And don’t be mean to poor Bob. It's his money, after all, that pays for everything. Plus, in case it's already slipped your ungrateful mind, he laid out some more for a near-virgin ponyboy for his favourite little stable girl!”

“Sorry Bob”, Suzy muttered contritely and then added” I wonder if he is a virgin?”

“Who, Bob?” I exclaimed, automatically without thinking much to their collective amusement.

“Don’t be silly!” Suzy giggled. “No, I was thinking of Candi; he’s very cute. I’ll bet at least one filly in the outsider world allowed him visiting privileges,” she giggled again and then gave a mock sigh. “I certainly hope so, for at least he’ll have something to look back on.”

“I’m not sure whether that’s a positive or a negative. You could always let him cover one of Mandy’s fillies as a rare reward for good behaviour,” I told her brightly, only to receive a dark, very dark look in return—my mistake. Suzy was very young, very blonde and very pretty, but also very ‘not-nice’ when it came to handling two-legged equines. Keen, efficient, knowledgeable, but decidedly not nice! Candi, it seemed, would not be covering anything and even being ‘milked’ by his young owner was presumably out of the question. The girl didn’t even bother to reply, letting that look speak for her as she returned to her narrative. Her genesis in the field of pony play, minus the play element, I suppose you could have called it.

 “Anyway, it was a very short night for me, or at least it felt that way. Sarah warned me that, being short-handed, we’d be starting earlier than usual, so I set my alarm, but I...” She broke off and laughed. “I hadn’t passed my driving test back then. In fact, Sarah gave Maddy and me lessons. She was a good instructor, too, because we both passed first time.”

“Oooohhh, very interesting.” Penny yawned loudly and a shade too theatrically. “And when did mummy and daddy buy you your first bicycle, perhaps at Christmas?”

“Fuck off”, came the inevitable irritated retort. “I was setting the scene, and besides, I only ever had one bike, never mind first.” She sighed. “My legs, like the rest of me, didn’t seem to want to grow, no matter how many burgers and fries I ate! Anyway, I’d had a tiring train journey, then all the excitement of being at Mandy’s, and I was tired, but going to bed early wasn’t on the cards.”

“I tried that as well,” Sally admitted. “I didn’t realise I had a medical condition when I was very young, and while all my playmates were growing, I wasn’t,” she shrugged and let out a brief, sad-sounding giggle. “I just got, erm… rather chubby!”

Suzy threw my tiny lover a sympathetic look before continuing. “Of course, I didn’t go to bed early that first evening, but I didn’t do much else either other than walking round and round with my mouth open in amazement, I expect,” Suzy laughed. “Stall after stall, me peering in and the poor things inside. The well-trained ones standing proud as they should, hard up against the stall doors as I approached, and a couple of newer ones being very shy. It was on the info board by the stall door,” the girl said, heading off my question. That's how I knew. “Name, stats and so on, you’ve been there, you’ve seen them”.

I nodded. I had indeed seen and read them. The information included the date they were captured from the wild. Their pony age would date from that day. I grinned at the girl. “Yeah, I saw them on my first day too. You weren’t the only one to have wandered around those stalls with your mouth agape in sheer amazement!” I chuckled. Actually, I couldn’t recall my mouth being open, but I could remember my amazement at the sheer number of two-legged equines Mandy had stabled!

Suzy nodded. “Yes, it was an interesting evening, and I kept going back to one stall”

“Cupcakes”, Sally offered.

“Yup, she fascinated me. Even all tacked up, I could see she was gorgeous, lovely, sad eyes and the best pair of udders I’ve ever seen on any pony, yeah, of course I did touch and more than touch.” She giggled and looked around quickly, furtively, then giggled again conspiratorially. “And I was amazed that the woman - I couldn’t think of her as a pony, a mare; I was too new to it all back then. The woman just stood there like a fucking statue, hard up against the low stall door, her top half totally exposed and vulnerable to me. She didn’t like what I was doing; I could see that in her eyes, but what could she do? She didn’t make a sound either, even as I squeezed hard on those gorgeous boobs of hers. Not a sound, just stared fixedly over my head, apart from the occasional malicious glance. She couldn’t help that, I suppose.”

Suzy stopped and stared at her coffee mug for what seemed a long time but was perhaps no more than about fifteen or so seconds before giving a deep sigh and continuing.

“She wasn’t a young filly by any means; I could see that and read it on the info board. She was twice my age and then a bit, and two years in pony years. But…” Suzy shook her tousled, long blonde hair. “Yeah, I’ve never seen a mare like her, certainly not with such a delightful pair of udders. Big but not too big, firm, hell, they were firm, not a bit of sag to them. Boy, she was my favourite by a long way. I was … well, hell, the only time I’ve ever come near to shedding tears over one of them was when I came back from a long weekend at home for my mum’s birthday, and Sarah told me she’d been sold!” 

“I remember her, remember when Mandy first got her,” Sally said. “She was certainly a looker, with a figure and hair to match. And talking of matches,” she put a tiny finger to her lip and whispered, “Don’t tell her I said this, but she made Mandy look kind of second-rate, and that was the problem, or part of it.”

“A touch of the green-eyed monster creeping in, I’ll wager,” Penny observed.

“Oh, much more than simple envy,” Sally added. “Mandy was never too bothered by bodily competition in the ‘meat market’, always saying there were tons of girls with better looks, figures and even personalities than hers. I think she was doing herself down a bit, but no, that was only a minor irritation, I expect. They both started in the business around the same time, at the same model agency, and too often on the same jobs. One of them was an absolute bitch from day one, and yes, I know Mandy can be a bit of a bitch at times, especially towards her animals, but compared to Cupcake before she became Cupcake, no contest, I gathered! Mutual hate and loathing at first sight, thanks to the bitch’s behaviour.”

Suzy nodded. “Yeah, I heard the story from Sarah. “I gather Cupcake was detested on the modelling circuit and not many tears were shed when she apparently died while scuba diving in the West Indies after a photo shoot out there”.

Sally chuckled. “Apparently, being the key word. Once Mandy had met Bob and his mother and become enamoured of their unusual hobby, well, you can guess who was top of her shopping list when it came to enlarging the stable population. It took a while, but the poor creature was doomed from the moment Bob slipped that ring on Mandy’s finger and said, ‘I do’. The most expensive animal she’s ever purchased by a long way, given all the…the ‘special’ arrangements that had to be made, but boy was she happy when the mare arrived!”

“A lot more than Cupcake, I imagine,” I mused, trying and failing to put myself in the woman's place. “Why did she sell her then?”

Sally considered for a moment before speaking. “I think it was a combination of several things, though I suspect she’s since regretted it. She’d had her for several years by then and had whipped every ounce of resistance out of the poor creature. She’d also paid a small fortune to acquire the animal, and then, out of the blue, she received a fantastic offer for the broken beast. It coincided with one of Bob’s financial doom-and-gloom periods, so a handsome fat cheque was far better than a spoonful of antidepressant medicine! Especially as Mandy was developing her racing stock and had her rapacious eye on a very athletic, fetching little filly that needed a new home but would come with an expensive price tag!”

“Who bought her?” Penny leaned forward intently. “I did ask Mandy once, but she was a bit…a bit evasive, I recall!”

“Sarah didn’t know either when I asked,” Suzy added, then laughed. “Well, she told me to mind my own business and said it had nothing to do with me. The mare had been sold, and that was all I needed to know, so to go on with my work!”

“Which translated means she didn’t know either. I bet,” Penny muttered, giving Sally a questioning look.

Sally smiled back. “Well, to put you both out of your misery, as it's old news now and I can’t see why Mandy couldn’t have told you at the time. “She went to one of the oil-rich Arabian countries, I don’t know which, but not Saudi. Bahrain or Kuwait, maybe, not that it matters”.

“Not to U.A.E, anyway”, Penny shrugged. “I’ve done a couple of gigs in Dubai and know some people out there. I’d have heard about her, but then again maybe not, but I know there are some big and I mean big, like mega pony operations out there in Saudi and some of the other countries”.

This time, Sally giggled and wagged a finger at little Fluffy, half curled up and half asleep in her big basket. “Oh, her pony days were over. Sheikh… whatever his name was… wasn’t into equines. I gather his hobby was breeding dogs, attack and fighting dogs to guard things like oil wells, I suppose. I can’t see why. You can’t exactly put an oil well in your pocket and walk off with it, can you?”

“Only the very small ones”, I teased her. “So, finish off then, I need to get back to Melons before the poor thing gets bored!”

Sally shrugged indifferently as she stood up, collecting our mugs and heading for the sink. “Well, what do you think he needed her for? I gather there was prior history involved, something to do with his eldest son and his wife and some sort of unfortunate encounter at a fashion show in Rome. Evidently something that festered! That’s why he was so keen to wave his cheque book about. Once he heard that Mandy had got her stabled, he bombarded her with offers until Mandy eventually gave in. As I said, once the novelty had worn off, she had no real use for the mare!” She paused, looking thoughtful for a moment as she carefully placed the mugs in the plastic washing-up bowl.

“Melons might be different”, Sally continued, still absently staring into the sink. Cupcake didn’t have a very high profile, not outside the modelling business. A bit like Mandy, neither of them courted publicity and so-called fame and celebrity status. Not much point in showing your VIP pony off at an event if a fair few of the audience have never met her or haven't a clue who she is!”

“True,” Suzy acknowledged. “I’d never heard of her till Sarah told me about her.” She suddenly laughed. “That can hardly be said of our big-uddered temporary lodger out there, though, is it?”

The three of us also laughed, as we could each picture Mandy proudly showing off her celebrity purchase at various equine events and garnering considerable kudos among her associates for owning the animal. Melons had courted fame and celebrity status all her life and was famous or infamous from London to Los Angeles, Dublin to Dubai, Cardiff to Calcutta, and… well, you get the picture. Most countries had certainly been bombarded with such pictures, and frequently the ‘full monty’, as the saying goes. Maybe not Dubai, but wasn’t that where she’d been arrested and then deported for going topless on a public beach? Yeah, she got herself a ton of publicity over that one!

Penny picked up her whip, and the three of us headed for the door, leaving Sally rinsing our coffee mugs. We came to an abrupt halt as Suzy opened the door, then froze with it half open. Penny and I pulled up just in time, reminding me of the ‘emergency stops’ I had Beauty practising recently. No practical reason other than it amused me to scream halt and yank the reins savagely back as she came to a skidding, ungainly stop.

“Hey!” Penny complained, swaying forwards and backwards, regaining her balance. “What gives?”

“What did happen to Cupcake then if she wasn’t stalled? You never finished your story?”

“What, oh yes” Sally paused, mug in one hand, tea towel in the other. “He bitched her. Like I said, he breeds big fierce fighting and guard dogs, and to keep the randy buggers happy he keeps human bitches, both male and female, to keep them a little calmer in their kennels. I’ve heard he doesn’t bother with special puppy suits like you two have for Fluffy and Caesar, uses straps and pouches to double up their limbs and then…well no need for me to be graphic!”

“Oh!”

We followed Suzy back out into the yard, and I wondered whether that brief exclamation from Suzy was one of sorrow for Cupcake's predicament, given she’d liked the pony, or a casual acceptance of her horrible fate, or even irritation that Sally hadn’t elaborated further. My thoughts were interrupted by the leather braids of Penny’s coiled whip tapping my shoulder.

“Hey, Boss lady, that reminds me. Remember what I was saying earlier about my special doggie fuck juice?”

I nodded, and then it was my turn to slam on the brakes as her expression triggered a thought. “You're not thinking of little Fluffy, are you?”