by Mark Andrews
It wasn’t going to be easy, though. I was well aware of that. Like most people, I have suffered burns of one kind or another and I knew how horrible they were. This one would be worse than any of them.
For those of us who have been burned with hot metal, say the hot plate of a stove, we know that the second your hand touches the hot metal, you scream and withdraw it. But even a half second burn lasts for days, the pain throbbing right into your very brain until, after perhaps three or four days, it begins to ease. What I was facing was three or four seconds - up to eight times longer - and the metal was going to be even hotter!
The vet had allowed the bright yellow-red brand to cool to a dull cherry-red but it was still extremely hot and as it burned into the flesh of my belly, I knew it was going to hurt like hell (no pun intended).
It did. It was indeed the worst pain I have ever felt I my whole life. I watched in fear - I was unable to close my eyes as Black Beauty had, as the glowing iron dropped down towards my belly.
I stared down my body, aware of my breasts as they lay flattened across my chest by the position of my arms up above my head; down further along the stretched array of my well-developed abdominal muscles to my naked mound, to the soft and now so naked lips of my vulva and the narrow slit between them. Down further I could see the shapely curves of my thigh muscles and below them again the horrible fetlocks and hooves that now seemed a real part of my anatomy.
But while I could see these parts of me and was aware of them, my eyes were inexorably drawn to the iron getting ever closer to my naked body. I suppose, like all people, I always hoped for a miracle - right up to the very last moment. A stay of execution, perhaps, a last minute reprieve. It wasn’t to be. But even down to the last millimetre before the iron actually touched my skin, I hoped.
Of course I could feel the heat long before this. The radiant effect of the glowing metal warmed and then burned my flesh long before the iron actually touched.
That was nothing though compared to the effect when it did touch. I had tensioned every muscle in my body (and was vaguely aware that the prince was gloating over me, his soft hands gliding all over my now fully tensioned body) and had also gritted my teeth in readiness for the pain.
I am glad to report I didn’t scream. I wanted to. Oh how desperately I wanted to give full vent to the appalling agony that pervaded my very soul as that iron pressed into my flesh. It was dreadful and it took every last ounce of my willpower to hold on; to keep my jaws clamped shut and my eyes screwed up tight as I felt that iron sink in through my skin to the muscle below.
I opened my eyes then and stared down at the smoking, sizzling flesh around the glowing iron as it moved slowly down - and then was quickly removed. I couldn’t see the brand clearly of course but then my mind was fully employed in coping with the pain. It was still dreadful, even after the iron was handed silently to the groom in exchange for the little jug.
And then, miracle of miracles, as the vet carefully poured the tiny crystals into the furrows left by the branding iron, the pain abated - very rapidly, until, by the time he had finished filling the tiny trenches with the powder, it had receded to no more than a dull ache.
I stared across at my two companions in awe - and relief, and smiled as I saw them grin back at me. I don’t know what is in that crystalline mixture but apart from its gold effect, it also killed the pain of our branding - almost totally. I almost bounded to my feet as they undid the straps that had held me down to tightly.
If it hadn’t been for the bit in my mouth and the tiny chains that still held my tongue down to my tits, I would have yelled out my thanks to everyone around. That dreadful agony was gone! And now I wore the beautiful mark on my belly the same as the other slaveboys and girls there.
“I think their tongue chains may now be removed,” said the prince slowly, but as I watched his eyes I knew it was a test. One word out of any of us and they would be back - or worse, our tongues might be torn out and our vocal cords cut. I pulled my tongue back into my mouth at least as far as the little ring on the end of it allowed and felt a wash of gratitude to the prince pass over me.
Weird? Of course, but then pleasure is relative and after what we had gone through over the last few days, being allowed to put my tongue back in my mouth was equivalent to the news that I had just won the lottery.
We were fed then and were then allocated to the morning session in the gym, our recent branding now forgotten as we worked on weights, on the rowing machine, shinnied up and down the ropes and then moved on to the gymnastics equipment for the rest of the morning.
Whatever we did, we did at full blast. As I said earlier, it was no wonder every single one of us slaves there had the most beautiful body imaginable. We did nothing else, after all. We were being trained at racing and as show ponies and everything else was sublimated to that one aim.
I won’t go into the details of the morning. I’m sure you get the picture. Suffice to say they worked every muscle in my body and when, at noon, we were allowed to return to our stalls to rest, I really needed it. And yet after two hours in the sleeping erect position, I was quite ready for the afternoon session on the track. I know my earlier training at the viscount’s stables must have helped but while our training there had been hard, it was nothing compared to the level of physical output required of us at the prince’s farm.
Nevertheless, my body quickly adapted to the new workload, as evidenced by the fact that the two-hour rest, even though standing up and with my body clipped to the various restraints already detailed, was quite enough to prepare me for the afternoon on the track.
Once more I now walked, trotted and pranced around that track while my groom alternately whipped me to harder endeavour or used the reins attached to my bit, to pull me back.
All afternoon I pranced around, remembering to raise my knees either to the trotting position with my thighs parallel to the ground, or the prancing position, with them pulled up even higher. I knew of course that these gaits were humiliating; that they showed off our bodies, males and females alike, in their best form, our sheer athleticism blatantly exposed to the lecherous stares of the men who crowded around the fence of the training track; and that, no matter whether our hands were secured in the doubled up position with our elbows pulled close behind our backs or with them clasped up behind our heads with elbows pushed right back behind our shoulders, our upper bodies and our sexual organs were also openly displayed to all.
I wondered, as realisation sunk in that we were sexual objects to these men, why there were so many males amongst us for our spectators were exclusively male but then it sank in to me. Arabs have none of the prejudices we Europeans do against homosexuals. For an Arab to indulge with fellow boys after puberty is seen as quite normal and even after he marries, he may continue to enjoy the sexual companionship of other males while still fathering a horde of offspring.
To me, this was a much more sensible approach than our Victorian one. I am not sexually drawn to women but I can understand those who are and I have a number of friends of both sexes who were quite openly gay. Here, all that was happening was that these upper crust men were indulging themselves (and their inferiors) with a quite open display of the best of both sexes under the guise of athletics - albeit a quite bizarre form of it.
I also realised that humiliation of races seen as antipathetic to those of the Middle East was a part of our raison d’être. We English were particularly despised because of our hegemony over that area in the Twentieth Century but so were other non-Islamic nations and races. Shaming us by turning us into human ponies and using us openly and publicly as such was a real pleasure to them.
As I came to this realisation, I marvelled at the sanctimony of our leaders - that they could pretend that none of this existed while buying Middle East oil at exorbitant prices. It had been the same with other areas of the Middle East, too. Not perhaps as dreadfu
l a practice as what we were experiencing but close ...
But as I watched the other fifty-odd slaves in our group similarly trotting and prancing (and some galloping) around the track, hooves clip-clopping on the track, tails waving madly, mouths bared in the grimaces forced on them by the bits and (for the most part) hands clasped up behind their heads to show off their upper bodies better, I realised how magnificent we all looked.
We were stark naked. Our bodies were all absolutely splendid. We were branded, bitted and hooved. Our genital organs were on open display and some of the males, those who had been trained for it, were erect and swinging madly from side to side as they ran; the others still swinging but less rigidly.
You may be wondering how we could walk, trot and prance with our feet in the ballet-dancer position? You must remember that they were held in that pose very rigidly by the hooves. Our feet were slipped down into them and the insides were shaped so that our feet remained absolutely vertical. They didn’t have laces. Instead, there were these clips with levers on them that once hooked to their counterparts and pushed over, gripped our feet very tightly. Neither could we remove them. Once all the levers were pushed over, a little rod went down through a hole in each clip and once pushed right through, a tiny but very strong padlock was locked to the rod. Until it was removed, the rod could not be extracted from the levers and they were now also locked shut.
It took a little practice to learn to walk and trot with our feet in this position but it didn’t take long and I think, once I got used to it, I was able to run as fast in that position as normally. Of course I don’t know for they never told us our times.
Now they also had us run with our hands clasped up behind our heads. We had to interlace our fingers behind our heads, tension our biceps muscles and then force our elbows right back so they were behind our shoulders - try it! It hurts, doesn’t it? And then we had to run all morning or afternoon in that position. Remember, we had to keep them that way at all times while racing or training. It wasn’t easy, like so many of the things they made us do there, but with practice, human beings can be made to do almost anything and after a few days whilst suffering a whip or cane to my back or haunches every time my knees dropped below the standard or my elbows strayed forward, I, and Black Beauty and Muscles soon learned.
We had one more night of sleeping erect, again with our tits clipped to the dangling chains, thumbs locked to the ring behind our backs and our hooves spread very wide, and then, the next night, we were mercifully allowed to sleep in a more normal human style, with my clit ring padlocked to the chain.
We still had to wear the bridle with their intrusive bits and the hooves on our feet and the tails poking horribly out of our bottoms, but we could at least curl up on, or in, the straw and sleep more naturally.
A few days later we were introduced to a new innovation in the gymnasium.
You will remember my first introduction there had been in the lunging ring? Well, they now had another one they had built right next to it. The lunging ring required the trainers to hold us by long lunging reins attached to our bridles while we trotted (or whatever) around the outer edge of the ring; this one did away with the need for the trainers. Over the centre of the ring, which was about twenty feet in diameter, there was a device like a huge overhead electric fan except that instead of fan blades, this machine had four long metal pipes, each about eight feet long.
Dangling from the ends of these were light chains with a clip at the very end. We had to stand under these and at the command, raise our heads up and back so they could clip the chains to our nose rings.
The trainer in charge then selected the speed: walk, trot, prance or gallop and we were then led, literally by the nose, round and round the edge of the new ring while our groom walked or ran beside us, lashing at our thighs or buttocks when we failed to keep our knees up high enough or our elbows strayed forward of their proper place.
Pain is perhaps the best teacher of all, as schoolmasters of a hundred years ago well knew, and Prince Azeem’s men used it abundantly. Believe me if you know that your already very sore buttocks or thighs (top or bottom) are going to be caned if you fail to achieve perfection, you soon learn to comply.
Prince Azeem came to watch us try out this new device and Black Beauty, Muscles and me were among the first to show how effective it was. It certainly freed up his trainers to concentrate on the track work outside and we found that after a week or so, one groom was enough to watch the four of us and I heard him say that it was so good, another would be installed over the lunging ring so that eight of us could be worked on the pair of them at a time.
I have said there were always people around, watching us as we were trained and this was as much the case inside the gym as outside on the track itself. Now as we showed off his latest training idea, there were dozens of men standing around, most dressed in traditional Arab clothing and staring in at us stark naked human ponies. At this practice we wore absolutely nothing - unless you count the hooves and tails as apparel and I certainly didn’t. As I said, I gradually came to think of them as a real part of my body.
You are astonished? I can understand why but you have to remember that we were being not so subtly brainwashed into thinking of ourselves in that light. For the first week we had been forced to sleep standing up. We had been denied the right or the means of speaking. We had been shaved bald apart from a ponytail at the very top of our heads. We had been pierced and ringed in noses, tongues and nipples and tails inserted more or less permanently into our rectums. And finally we had been hooved and then branded as ponies. All these things, together with the rigid training in the gym and on the track were designed to make us think of ourselves as ponies - and the tails and hooves were a very important part of that.
Over the next weeks, as my body became accustomed to them, I almost forgot I had the huge (ever larger) dildos there after they had been shoved into my bottom after our so horrible defecation process and I eventually got so used to walking in the hooves that if they had been suddenly removed I would have had to learn to walk normally all over again, so you can see those things, horrible and all as they were at the beginning, soon came to be accepted by us all.
The speech thing was never ever relaxed. We were never allowed to speak to each other and not even to our trainers unless something really essential, say to explain a symptom if we were ill occurred, but such events were a rarity for we never got sick. I suppose our training and the healthy mush we ate night and morning combined to ensure we didn’t get sick. Certainly I was never permitted to speak and I don’t think Black Beauty or Muscles were either.
After a few weeks, we were judged ready to be tried out in a minor race. All three of us but not just us ...
Chapter 4
You may remember that back in England, the human pony race meetings were very private affairs, conducted in remote parts of large estates, always under cover of trees and before a very small and very select group of human pony aficionados - no more than a couple of hundred at most. Here, human pony racing (and showing) were quite the opposite. They were very public affairs and attracted large crowds of fans - all male of course for in that very strict Moslem country, females were not ever permitted to be seen at such events; in fact rarely were they seen in public at all except accompanied by a male and then heavily veiled and shrouded in the thick robes that so well disguised their beauty.
We of course, were slaves - and Christian slaves at that. No such modesty was to be afforded us. We could be transported naked - and were; and we were certainly raced and shown in that same state.
The races were conducted at the same track where the more normal (at least to us) equine races were held and each variety was staged on alternate Sundays. I discovered that our races - the human pony variety, were better attended than the equine ones and I can certainly vouch for the fact that the extensive stands and paddock areas were pretty full
on the days I was taken there to race.
For the races we were harnessed to our gigs by means of the transparent plastic belts around our hips to the sides of which the slender bars of the pole were attached. You will remember the gigs were ultra-light and had just the one aluminium alloy pole coming forward from under the seat and that this bifurcated up near our backs unto two, the ends of which were clipped to our hip-belts.
I wondered at first that they didn’t use the so indecent anal/vaginal dildo arrangement that was so popular back in England but then I realised ... our tails! They would have to have removed them to fit the anal dildo in there and that would never do.
We were transported to the track in the same way we had been brought from the airport - on the low trailer, all five of us now swaying around as the Land Rover turned corners and sped up or braked.
Despite the normality of slavery in that place, we were objects of intense interest during these journeys and when we stopped at intersections, people crowded around to stare up at our nakedness and of course our fine bodies - for we were, all five of us, now at the absolute peak of human perfection - at least athletic human perfection, anyway.
It was as shameful as the first time. I never ever came to grips with my constant nakedness before our grooms and trainers and the constant flow of spectators at the stud farm. I felt constantly that I was an animal on show - and yet still human. I knew myself to be a human being despite the degrading hooves and tail. I know that sounds contradictory for earlier I said I felt we had been reduced to the status of animals in our minds. Both statements are true. I felt degraded like an animal by the permanent hooves on my feet and the almost as permanent a tail poking out of my rectum - but I also knew I was still a human being.
