Owned and Owner

by Anneke Jacob

  A couple of weeks before, lonely and looking for attention, I had whined and held back at the door of the cage, begging with my eyes for a reprieve, trying my old tricks. Pav and Arleben had instantly yanked me, not in, but over the hard metal, fastened me down and beat me hard, both of them, the same small strip of ass flesh, over and over until I shrieked and blubbered. Then I was shoved inside the cage and forced to stay on my hands and knees for hours, with metal rods slid through, under my armpits and hips, so thin and hard that leaning on them was instantly painful. They’d locked my nose ring to the bars also, and shoved the foul-tasting gag in my mouth. A thick dildo locked to the bars had impaled my sore ass from behind, making me want to cringe with humiliation, had I been able to move enough to cringe. Oh yes, now I did what I was told.

  I spent that day looking through the bars, shifting from one cramped position to another, hoping for a look, a word, a touch, a scolding, a blow. My mitt pawed at the metal imprisoning my sex, and the peripheral touching of my inner thighs excited me. Inner muscles clenched, hips wriggled. I managed to clink the belt against a bar and make a noise. I toyed with the thought of incurring some displeasure and a whipping, just to get some attention. A tidal wave of conditioned fear swamped me, and I curled up and shook, feeling for a moment as if I had really done something bad. Gradually the tide receded. I remembered that it was safer to be ignored, settled down, and tried to ease my muscles, sore from the morning’s training.

  Workouts on the machines had continued, but running in harness was taking up most of my exercise time. Arleben did a lot of the training; he seemed to be experienced at it. He’d start out by taking off my chastity belt, and then compressing me into a harness tighter than a corset. Corsets inevitably press harder on some areas than on others, depending on where the body conforms more or less to the corset’s shape. But harness straps can be adjusted to each location. Arleben did adjust them, hard. The chastity belt went back on, the waist fixed a lot smaller, and became in effect part of the harness. Some straps fastened to the waist of the belt, and some outlined my cunt, pulling my lips wide and swollen under their imprisoning metal cover. Straps circled my breasts tightly, making them jut out. The thin metal bar between my cheeks was fastened both to an anal plug and, up next to my tailbone, to a lovely thick horsetail, reddish like my hair. The harness included fastening for my arms up high behind my back. My bridle and bit were thick and sturdy, and pulled my head back with a tight strap running from the back of my head to a spot down between my shoulder blades. Sturdy boots completed the ensemble; they took very good care of my feet.

  It took time to learn how to move in all of this, much less to run well. I was taken through the same moves again and again, walking, slow runs, fast runs, with my knees well up and my head high. I think with horses and jonthes they call it dressage. It felt like my early training all over again. I had no way to understand what was wanted, except by trial and error. I had become good at responding to non-verbal signals, but most of the time I couldn’t see whoever was training me very well, through a haze of sweat, tears in my eyes, my head fixed forward in the bridle. The only things I had to go on were shouted reprimands, yanks on the reins, and the whip. The whip flicked the backs of my thighs when I wasn’t raising my knees high enough. It smacked my ass hard when I wasn’t going fast enough. It caught the underside of my breasts to make me straighten up even higher than my harness already held me. These things I could figure out.

  What I couldn’t get at first were the subtleties of pace and action, the ways to run more efficiently and beautifully. I know that’s what they wanted, because I seemed to be beaten less as I got more graceful and efficient. I don’t know how it happened. I had to let go of my reasoning powers and my confusion and just let the whip teach me. I still had to strain every nerve to do what was expected of me, but only through mute physical response to conditioning. If I tried deliberately to examine what worked and what didn’t, tried to take the initiative, inevitably I tensed up, reached too far with my foot, spoiled the rhythm, lost the symmetry, messed up somehow. When I surrendered my body to the demands of the reins and harness and lash, somehow, sweating, crying, gasping, I found myself performing properly.

  Eventually I displeased them less, and was back in my cage with fewer stripes and weals on my aching body. The occasional ‘Good jeedy!’ was so precious it made me weep. It was only when I’d done well that my master let me lick the dust off his boots.

  There began to be one or two men who would join my master to watch my training. I saw them as I came around the circle, their heads together but their eyes on me, exchanging comments. I had the feeling these were not the usual visitors; the way they looked at me reminded me of the group that had moved in toward the platform at the auction. I began to be rather nervous about what was coming. My master allowed them to stroke my breasts after the sessions, and at first I was scared; these men wanted me, it was plain; did this mean my master might sell me? I turned to him as far as the harness allowed me. But he held my reins hard and short while I was fondled, and I found this reassuring.

  Then one day after a warm up trot, there was something new. A contraption of struts and two large, very thin wheels with a seat in the middle; a kind of sulky. So this was the idea… They harnessed me up, arranging the heavy bridle, bit and reins so that the slightest twitch would convey their demands to my vulnerable mouth. Then for the first time blinkers were added, and I could only see straight ahead. It was surprising how frightening this was. I felt like one of those animals sent home from the vet with a cone on its head to prevent it from licking its wounds. I kept moving my head uneasily in an attempt to increase my range of vision.

  Then they backed me between the shafts and fastened them to my hips. I could feel the extra weight, but it was slight, until my master climbed into the seat. Then I could feel it all right. How could I pull anything so heavy? How much would he hurt me before he realized I couldn’t do it? Still, the heaviness of him, weighing me down by the hips, felt good. How can I describe it? I was his animal. He couldn’t ride me, and suddenly I felt sad about that. But I could carry him in a fashion. He could use me, I could serve the master I worshipped, in this new way.

  Adjustments were being made behind me. I leaned forward a little, taking the weight of the shafts. Then my master chirruped, the reins slapped my shoulders and my backside stung. I stepped forward, almost folded in the middle with the weight I was pulling, but leaned my hips into it and managed to get the vehicle moving. The flicks of pain on my ass and thighs kept me moving forward; I tried not to let myself jump with the sting and upset my gait. Soon, to my surprise, I managed a slow trot. With the momentum the shafts felt a little lighter on my hips, and in response to the whip’s encouragement and some clicking speed up sounds from my master I moved into a faster trot. The pull of the bit steered me onto a smooth track they had made around the grounds. On this I was really able to run. I was doing it!

  My initial elation carried me through some of the grueling training that followed. Once again I felt like I was starting all over. All my gaits had to be adjusted for the weight behind me. My center of gravity was suddenly a whole lot heavier than it had been before.

  It felt very odd, using my hips to pull a heavy weight. On Raniz if I’d had to pull something, I’d have used my arms and shoulders, put my upper body’s weight into it. In fact the harness on my upper torso wasn’t just for show; it transferred some of the pull to my shoulders and chest. Still, without hands or arms to use or swing, without even the ability to throw my head forward, I was operating under some remarkable handicaps.

  Turning corners was a new experience. In a sense I was now a quadruped with no ability to bend sideways, or a little biped with a huge rigid tail. During later trainings my master – who seemed to be learning himself – steered me into tighter and tighter turns at different speeds, until we reached the limits of what I could manage without capsizing.

  That first day, though, he mostly worked
on different speeds, smooth starts, and instant obedience to the orders conveyed by the reins, the whip and his voice. I had a lot of signals by rote now and could rely on some of the mind-free responses I had been conditioned into. But it was a constant struggle to meet the new demands. As I tired, my legs dragged a little on the track and I had more trouble holding the rhythm when the whip stung me. I gasped and yelped more as my chest heaved against the confining harness. Sweat rolled down my forehead, ran stinging into my eyes, and joined the tears already rolling down my face.

  I could see the point of keeping my feet high, because I was afraid of stumbling and falling on my face, no arms to protect me. When, at the end of that exhausting first day I did finally lose my footing, though, I didn’t fall. The weight behind me was so great that I hung suspended from the shafts long enough to get my feet under me again. But my relief was cut short when my master made up for the lack of frontal injury by thoroughly punishing the back of me.

  After that, every day of training included the sulky. Arleben drove me if my master wasn’t around. He was meticulous about my form, demanding perfect symmetry in my movements, precise placement of my feet. Every day they worked me relentlessly, to exhaustion, but as time went on I could run faster and longer. I became better at this bizarre method of movement, my upper body so tightly confined, harnessed to immobility, only my breasts bobbing a little in their restraints. My legs, of course, were free and unimpeded once they released the hobble, though allowed to do only what stern discipline demanded. Between them my imprisoned, soft and needy cunt opened and yearned. The plug in my ass shifted back and forth as I ran, its intrusion sending waves of disturbing signals and the continuous, endless message that I was a very bad jeedy indeed.

  My master tried me with a vaginal dildo along with the anal one. Though I could normally wriggle endlessly with this in my belt without being able to come, somehow the heavy weight I was pulling made it different. The excitement almost drove me out of my mind. I made several errors and ended up jerking the sulky almost off the track as I shook with my first orgasm since my almost forgotten disastrous free run. I was very thoroughly punished for this transgression (it was worth it). He tried again a while later with a much slimmer dildo. This gave me less helpless excitement as I ran, but enough that I ran harder to feel its smooth pressure. My excitement built, but the utmost crest of it wasn’t going to be orgasm. I kept hoping, however, and I think it gave an edge to my performance, a floating feeling that transmuted the lashes’ pain into a half-ecstatic, focused kind of energy.

  My days were mostly spent either harnessed tightly to the sulky or confined in a metal cage. All that touched me was hard or restrictive or painful, sometimes all three. When in the evenings he touched me gently, stroked my belly above the belt or fondled my soft breasts, the contrasting sweetness turned my grateful body liquid and weak. Most evenings I spent on the floor at my master’s feet, intensely thankful for any contact. But pure pleasure was a rare and brief experience, all the more valuable for that. Some nights he blindfolded me, and chained my elbows back so that my mitts could reach just under my breasts. Then he would make me arch my back and offer up the vulnerable mounds to him again and again, without knowing which I would get, his warm mouth or the hard sting of leather.

  If I had done well that day I got to suck him, sometimes for hours. If I did poorly he just immobilized me and fucked my face through the ring gag. When he wanted to read I was a footstool, ass conveniently oriented to his right so he could whip me whenever I moved. I tried so hard to keep still for him, but to my shame I always failed in the end. The warm weight of his legs on my back was something I felt with gratitude; still, they were very heavy. But it was contact, and I craved it.

  If he liked his book, my life as furniture became very hard. I trembled and ached under him, and found it harder and harder to keep my position when the whip struck. When he took his legs down my relief was often short-lived; he would take out my bit or gag and send me to fetch a long thin cane with a terrible bite. When I crawled back with this implement in my mouth he would replace the gag and put his feet back up for another few chapters. The brief respite, and a fear of the acid-tipped cane would strengthen me for a little while. But punishment, once resumed, would inevitably accelerate until he finished reading, or I collapsed.

  Village Maiden

  Therin’s house was in the small village of Butter Hill in the Lower Archipelago, overlooking a long river valley, just within sight of the sea. The house was on permanent loan from an older cousin who was living happily in a city in the North Continent now, part of a five-man cluster. Therin, too, would have preferred city life, particularly with the price of aircar fuel, but the house was free, most of his work was done from home, and he managed. And Butter Hill was just across the valley from the village he’d grown up in, so he felt at home. Most of his brothers were still over there, in partnerships or clusters now, too busy to visit. They were puzzled by their gregarious sibling’s solitary living arrangements, and still sometimes tried to set him up with a nice man or two. Bote, his next oldest brother, had recently remarked that he was glad Therin had gotten a pet to keep him company.

  Therin was sitting in the shade under the deep overhang at the side of the house, working at his screen with Vizay at his feet, when his neighbor leaned over the fence. Yegra was a man in late middle age with only one lifelong partner and a mind that ran on gem roses and their pests. The fact that Therin wasn’t vigilant about weeds irked him sometimes, and he’d make sideways comments and look hurt. He was a nice guy at heart.

  ‘Yegra, where’ve you been? Did you go away?’

  ‘We were in Somis getting Chem’s knee looked at. Decided to stay and make a holiday of it. What’s this?’ he asked, looking askance at Vizay.

  ‘A pet woman.’

  ‘Really? Where did you get that?’

  ‘I bought her from a friend. Well, part-time. What do you think?’

  ‘Um, fine,’ Yegra muttered, his voice flat. ‘Strange looking animal, though.’ She looked too close to human but not close enough, which made him uncomfortable. ‘Some kind of primate, isn’t she? What do you feed her?’

  ‘People food. She eats anything, really.’ Therin smiled, thinking back to that morning, when he fed her the sour orrta he knew she disliked, but would not have dared to refuse.

  ‘Well, she’s odd-looking, but I haven’t heard anything out of her, I’m glad to say. Unlike that dog of Pratchet’s. Barked half the night last night.’

  Therin tried to look sympathetic, but he hadn’t noticed. Yegra was one of the reasons he couldn’t enjoy Vizay’s screams in their pure state. He patted his pet’s dark head, and she rubbed against him like a cat. Yegra took a last, sidelong look and went back to trimming gem rose bushes.

  ‘Reghia’s got the wood in,’ he called over his shoulder.

  ‘Thanks.’ Therin kept working for a few minutes, but he was getting restless. A stroll to the depot would be just the thing. ‘C’mon, girl,’ he said to Vizay, and tugged on the leash. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’ She trotted by his side, the leash neither too taut nor too loose, her head up, wearing nothing but her wide metal collar and bands upon her wrists and ankles.

  In five minutes they were among the village’s few stores, shaded by huge trees and the deep eaves of the houses, and then they were in the depot examining the wood shipment. Reghia watched bemused as Therin stood Vizay up against the large blocks and arranged lights just so. Finally he picked out several big slabs for delivery.

  When he came out the sun was overhead, and he was hungry. The grocery store was right in front of him. Most people just transmitted their orders, but Therin liked to pick out the fresh stuff himself. He fastened Vizay’s leash around a post in the shade of the awning of the grocery store; Urbeis didn’t allow pets inside. She settled down to wait for him, sitting on her heels as she was told. The leash fastened to itself using the same technology as the bands on her wrists and ankles. The material didn�
��t so much link as completely fuse on the molecular level, with the press of the correct thumb. The same thumb could undo it. Therin couldn’t have afforded this level of technology, but Vizay had been wearing them when he picked her up from Miseko’s the day before. He’d been in such a hurry to get home and fuck her that he hadn’t noticed the new hardware. Luckily Miseko remembered when he was on the way out, and had added his friend’s thumbprint to the program.

  Therin finished with the impulse fresh food buys and started on staples. When he glanced out the shop window two people were petting Vizay, neighbors from a couple of streets over. One leaned down and began chucking her under the breasts, making them bounce; both men laughed. They patted her head again and moved on.

  ‘Everyone’s taken with that creature of yours,’ said Urbeis. ‘She’s such a peaceful little thing. You never know with these exotic animals, some of them are nasty. Can’t imagine why anyone would have vraags for pets, for instance.’

  ‘Nice plumage,’ Therin said abstractedly. He was trying to remember what was in his pantry.

  ‘Buy the plumage then! And that stupid monkey of Paodine’s! It almost took my store apart that time it snuck in. I swore I’d never have pets in here again. I heard that Paodine had to practically rebuild his place when he got rid of the wretched animal – let me tell you…’ Therin had heard Urbeis tell this story many times before. The tale was twenty years old, and Therin knew it well enough to nod and exclaim in all the right places with his mind elsewhere. He kept an eye on Vizay as Urbeis prepared the bill for thumbing. Several more people had greeted her as they passed with a, ‘Hello, girl!’ and a friendly pat. She was looking relaxed, though she kept her eye on the door through which he would emerge, as any good pet in her position would. When Therin came out of the store, a chill box of groceries under his arm, an elderly man was holding Vizay’s hand in both of his and exclaiming over how tiny and how like a human’s hand it was.