Beauty's Release

by Ann Rice

  "Ponies don't look around like that, my boy!" he said and swatted me hard with his open hand, jolting the phallus inside me. "If they do, they're soundly whipped and fitted with blinders."

  When his fingers touched my cock, binding my balls against it with a tight cock ring, I could hardly stand the gentleness of the touch, the heat of the sensation.

  "Now, that's nice," he said, walking back and forth in front of us. His white sleeves were rolled up to show the gold fleece on his sun-bronzed arms, and his hips moved enticingly under the leather tunic to suggest a comfortable swagger.

  "And if I have to put up with those tears," he said, "I want your faces held high for the world to see them. If you must cry, then your Masters and Mistresses should enjoy the sight of it. But you don't fool me, either of you. You're perfect ponies. And your tears will only make me whip both of you harder. Now march to the front of the stables!"

  We both obeyed. I felt him gather the reins behind me, the phallus like a club forced into my anus, hard and unyielding as the bronze phallus had been, thick, and firmly held there by the harness. The weights pulled at my nipples. In fact, there seemed no part of my body that was left in peace, the cock ring tightening on my cock, the glove-soft fit of the boots rendering the rest of me shamefully naked. The harness seemed to govern me, contain me, to unify a thousand sensations and torments.

  And as I felt myself dissolving in these sensations, there came the loud crashing smack of Gareth's strap on my backside. Another blow rang out, and I heard Tristan wince behind his bit. We were marched past the pillories and through another pair of doors into a big stable yard where carts and carriages stood in their stalls, and a gate stood open to the east road of the village.

  I felt panic again, panic that we were to be driven out there, panic that we were to be seen in this new livery of shame, and the more I shook with sobs and anxious breaths the more the harness constricted me and the weights danced as they hung from my nipples.

  Gareth came up beside me and ran a quick comb through my hair.

  "Now, Laurent," he said, scoldingly. "What is there to be afraid of?" He patted my bottom where he had whipped it only moments ago. "No, I'm not tormenting you," he said. "I'm quite serious. Let me tell you something about fear: Fear is only good when you have a choice in things."

  He jerked the phallus to make sure it was in well. It seemed to grind me harder, more deeply, my anus itching and throbbing around it. I couldn't stop crying.

  "But do you have a choice in things?" he asked honestly. "Think on it. Do you?"

  I shook my head to admit that I didn't.

  "No, that isn't how a pony answers," he said gently. "I want a good shake of the head. That's it. Again. That's it."

  I obeyed, and each toss of my head tightened the harnessing, moved the weights, jarred the phallus. He touched my neck with maddening gentleness. I wanted to turn to him, weep against his shoulder.

  "Now, as I was saying," he said. "And you listen to this, too, Tristan. Fear is only important when you have a choice. Or some control. You have none. In a few moments, the Lord Mayor will be here with his farm cart. He'll be returning the old team, and you'll be part of the new team to take the cart back out to the manor house for the afternoon load, and you've no choice in this whatsoever. You're going to be marched out there and tethered to the cart, and you'll pull it all afternoon and be whipped soundly as you do it. And there is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent it. So when you think about it, what is there to be afraid of? For a year you will do this, and nothing can change it. You understand me, you know you do. I want a nod now."

  Tristan and I both nodded. And to my surprise, I was a little calmer, the fear seeming to darken, become something else, something nameless. Hard to explain it – perhaps impossible – the feel of this new life beginning, just beginning.... All the roads I had followed had led me to this place, this gate, this beginning.

  Gareth took a little oil in his hands from a nearby jug, and he rubbed it onto my balls, murmuring that it would make them "glisten," and then he gave the tip of my cock the same polishing. I could hardly endure the stimulation, the chills crawling over my skin, and I shied away from his hand as he laughed and pinched my rump.

  "When are those tears going to stop?" he said as he kissed my ear. "Chew hard on the bit when you cry. Chew hard. Doesn't that feel good, the soft leather in your teeth? Ponies like it."

  It did feel good. He was right. It helped to chew on it, to work it between my jaws, the stiff roll of leather tasting good and feeling strong enough to take the clamping down, the chewing.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him polishing Tristan, thinking, "Any moment we will be out on the road; we will be marching and hundreds will see us – if they bother to look up, bother to take notice."

  Gareth turned to me again. A small loop of black leather was fixed just under the tip of my cock and this was adorned with a small bell that gave a low, brassy jangling noise with every movement. Unendurably degrading. Such a little thing.

  Memories of the exquisite adornments in the Sultan's world inundated me – jewels, gold, the multicolored carpets strewn on the soft, green, garden grass, the fine leather manacles – and the tears streamed down my face, but it was not that I wanted to be there! It was only that the dramatic change intensified everything!

  Tristan, too, was being made to wear the bell, and every movement of our cocks brought some appalling sound from the things. And we would become accustomed to all this, I knew. In a month, it would seem natural!

  I watched Gareth take from a hook on the wail a long-handled thrash I'd never seen before. It was a bundle of stiff but flexible leather strips, a sort of cat-o'-nine-tails, and with this he thrashed both of us soundly.

  It did not hurt like the wallop of the strap, but the strips were heavy and they covered all of the flesh in each sweeping blow easily. Almost caressing they were, enveloping the naked skin in countless stings and prickles and scratches.

  Gareth took our reins again and marched us to the gate. My heart came up in my mouth. I looked out over the broad road to the far wall of the village. On the top of the wall, the soldiers passed back and forth lazily, were silhouettes against the sunny sky. One of them stopped and waved to Gareth, and Gareth waved back. A carriage appeared to the south, and it came on fast, pulled by eight human steeds, all harnessed and bitted as we were. I stared at it, stupefied.

  "Do you see that?" Gareth asked. I gave as vigorous a nod as I could. "Now remember, as you march, that that is what you look like. And you belong to these who see you. Step high, step proud. I can forgive some faults, but lack of spirit isn't one of them."

  Two more coaches went thundering past, slaves prancing, horseshoes ringing on the stones, leaving me all the more breathless, petrified.

  For a year we would do this, this would be our lives. And, within seconds, the first excruciating test would begin in earnest.

  My tears poured down, as freely as ever, but I swallowed the sobs, chewing on the leather bit, liking the feel of it as Gareth said I would, and when I flexed my muscles I liked the pull of the harness, the knowledge that I was bound too well for rebellion to make much difference.

  In moments, the Mayor's cart appeared, lumbering up to the gate and blocking everything beyond it. It was piled with linens, furniture, other merchandise, apparently to be taken out to the manor house from the market. And other stable boys quickly unharnessed the six dusty and windblown pony slaves who had been pulling it. Four fresh ponies were driven out from the stables and harnessed in the front places as we waited.

  I wondered if I had ever known such tension, such a feeling of dread and weakness. Of course I had a thousand times, but what did it matter? The past did not come to my aid. I was on the cutting edge of the present. Gareth's hand closed on my shoulder. The other stable boys moved in to help. And Tristan and I were ushered into place behind the first two pairs of steeds rather roughly.

  I felt straps looped under and
over my bound arms and through the ring attached to the phallus. The reins were lifted behind me.

  And, before I could resign myself, or prepare my spirit for it, the reins and harness were pulled, the phallus lifting me off my feet, and the team was suddenly galloping.

  Not a moment to beg for mercy, for time, for some last touch of comfort from Gareth. No. We were lifting our knees, moving fast on the cobblestones of the road, passing into the stream of traffic that we had studied in mingled apprehension and horror.

  And I realized in these harrowing moments that the harness and bit, the boots and the phallus, were unlike any devices to which I'd ever been subjected. They had a clear and useful purpose! They weren't merely to torture us, humiliate us, make us malleable for the amusement of others. They were for the simple and efficient pulling of this cart along the road. We were, as the Queen had said, workhorses.

  Was it less debasing or more so, that we had been so cleverly put to work, our tendencies as slaves so expertly channeled? I didn't know. I knew only, as we pounded suddenly into the middle of the road, that I was drenched in shame, each marching step intensifying it, and yet I felt as I always did at the core of punishment: the coming of a tranquility, a quiet place in the very center of frenzy, in which I could surrender all the parts of my being.

  The driver's strap licked down with a loud popping noise at my legs. The sight of the ponies in front of me stunned me. The bushy black tails swayed and danced in their reddened rumps. Their legs pumped at the ground, their hair shimmered against their shoulders.

  And we made the same picture, except that the driver's long strap smacked us hard over and over again. And it wasn't the maddening little sting of the Sultan's thongs. It was a good smack each time the leather whipped us. And down the road we went in a loud clatter of horseshoes, the sky shining overhead as it had done on a thousand warm summer days, other carriages passing us.

  I can't say the country road was easier than the village road. If anything, there was more traffic. Slaves at work in the fields, small carts rattling by, a string of slaves bound to a fence, their bottoms being soundly whipped by an angry Master.

  And when we pulled into the farm road, our brief rest in harness was hardly an escape from our new station. The naked and dusty farm slaves pushed indifferently past us, unloading the cart, then piling it high with fruit and vegetables for market. At the kitchen door, a scullery maid watched us idly.

  The experienced ponies pawed the ground with their horseshoe boots; they shook their heads now and then when the flies came near; they stretched their muscles as though loving their own nakedness.

  But Tristan and I were rather still, and it seemed each tiny variation of the country scene took more of the mental skin off me, deepening the sense of my lowliness. Even the geese pecking near our feet seemed part of a world that had condemned us to be rude beasts and would keep us there.

  If anyone enjoyed the sight of our hard cocks, our tortured nipples, this wasn't revealed to us. The driver of the cart, pacing up and down, whacked us with his doubled strap more out of boredom than inclination.

  And when two of the other ponies rubbed against each other, the driver punished them with hard and cold annoyance.

  "No touching there," he declared. And the scullery maid slowly roused herself to fetch a wooden paddle for him. Stepping in front of us, he found plenty of room to punish the offenders, switching back and forth between the two rumps, jerking up the phallus by its hook with his left hand as he soundly whacked at the bottom and thighs with the paddle.

  Tristan and I watched, petrified, the ponies groaning under the hard smacks, the muscles of their reddened buttocks contracting and releasing helplessly. I knew I must never make this mistake of rubbing against another harnessed body. Yet I felt certain that someday I would make it.

  Finally, we were again driven out. We trotted fast, muscles tingling, backsides smarting under the strap, the bits pulled harshly back, the pace just a little too quick for us so that it soon had us crying.

  Driven into the marketplace, we were again allowed to rest, the noonday crowd taking only a little more notice of us than the farm servants had, someone stopping to pat a rump here or slap a cock there, the ponies who were touched tossing their heads and stamping their feet as if they liked it! I knew when some passerby finally touched me I would do the same. And then suddenly I was doing it, tossing my hair and chewing hard on the bit, as a young boy with a sack slung over his shoulder stopped to call us fine steeds and play with the weights that hung from my nipples.

  "It will take us over," I thought. "It will become second nature."

  And as the afternoon passed in a succession of such trips, I grew not accustomed to it so much as profoundly resigned to it. Yet I knew that true understanding, true appreciation of the pony life, would only come with the passing of days and then weeks. I could not conceive of my frame of mind six months along. It would be an interesting revelation to me.

  At nightfall, we made our last trip, no longer tethered to the Mayor's cart but to the refuse wagon that traveled about the deserted market to receive the sweepings. Sluggishly we moved, as the cart was filled, naked slaves driven to the work by their crude and impatient overseers.

  The villagers, dressed for the evening now, moved past the deserted shops and stands towards the nearby Place of Public Punishment. And we could hear the paddles and straps at work there, the cheers and screams of the crowd, the general noise of festivity. From that too we were, for better or worse, excluded.

  It was the stable world for us, the hearty young grooms unharnessing us with simple words:

  "Easy now," and "Steady," and "Head up, that's a good boy," as they whipped us to our stalls, and over the beams for feeding and watering.

  It was a good feeling to have the boots slide off, to feel the balls of my feet on the soft, slightly moist floor, to feel the scrub brush sudsing me thoroughly. My arms were unbound and I was allowed to stretch them for a moment before folding them on my back again.

  No one had to tell us to eat or drink with enthusiasm this time: We were hungry! But we were also tortured with desire. And, as I lay over the beams, the stable boy lifting my head to clean my face and my teeth, I felt my cock a jutting shaft of pure hunger. It was nowhere near the rough wood that supported me. They were much too clever for that. And I knew what happened to those of us who tried to touch others.

  I hoped against hope for some relief. Surely we were given relief But, when the water and food dishes were cleared away, a large down pillow was laid in the trough and my head was pushed into it for resting. This had a remarkable effect on me. We would sleep in this fashion, I realized, our weight on the beams, head on the pillow. We could stretch our legs if we wished, or just let our feet rest on the earth. It was a good and completely debasing position. I turned my head towards Tristan. He was looking at me. Who would see if I reached out and touched his cock? I could do it. His eyes were two glittering orbs in the shadows.

  In the meantime ponies were marched in and out. I could hear the sounds of the harnessing and unharnessing, the voices of villagers in the yard asking for this or that steed. The stable was darker but no quieter than it had been at morning. The stable boys whistled as they went about their tasks. Now and then they teased a pony with loud affectionate voices.

  I continued to gaze at Tristan, unable on account of the crossbeams to see his cock. Bad enough to see his handsome face against the pillow. How soon would they catch me if I mounted him, dug my cock in deep and.... But they might have ways to punish us of which I hadn't thought....

  Suddenly Gareth appeared. I heard his voice at the same moment that I felt his hand stroking my sore backside.

  "Well, the drivers did their work on you two," he said. "And by all reports you're fine ponies. I'm proud of you."

  The flush of pleasure I felt was just another extraordinary humiliation.

  "Now, up, both of you, arms folded firmly on your backs and heads high, as if you wore
the bit. Out there now, move quickly."

  He marched us past the doors to the wagon yard, and I saw another pair of open doors in the side of the stable. A beam like a bolt lay across the span of the opening at midpoint. A man would have to duck under it or climb over it to get through, the former being much easier.

  "That's the recreation yard, and you'll be there for an hour," Gareth said. "Now, down on your hands and knees, and see you stay down in the yard. No pony walks upright save to march to his Master's commands or to trot in harness. Disobey and I'll chain your elbows to your knees so that you can't stand up. Don't make me do it."

  We went down on all fours, and he swatted our rumps with his open hands to drive us through the doorway.

  Immediately, we entered a clean-swept dirt yard lighted by torches and lanterns, with several large old trees against the far wall and naked ponies sitting or. prowling about on all fours everywhere. There was a peaceful atmosphere until we were seen, and at once the other steeds moved towards us.

  I understood what would take place. And I didn't try to fight or run. Everywhere I looked, I saw naked flanks, long unruly locks, smiling faces. Directly in front of me a beautiful young pony, blond-haired and gray-eyed, smiled as he reached up and stroked my face and opened my mouth with his thumb.

  I waited, unsure as to how far I would let this go, when I felt another behind me, the cock already pushing into my anus, and yet another had thrown his arm over my shoulder and was pulling at my nipples roughly. I backed up, bucked, only driving the cock in deeper, and I was caught in front by the beautiful one, who laughed as he sat back on his heels and pushed my head down towards his cock forcefully. My arms were pulled out from under me by another pony, and I opened my mouth on the cock even though I wasn't sure I wanted to. I was groaning from the hard grinding I was getting in back. And I was also boiling over with excitement. I liked these steeds if only....

  And then I felt a wet, firm mouth on my own organ, sucking at it hard, as another pony's tongue lapped fiercely at my balls, and I didn't care anymore about who made the decisions. I was sucking the pretty boy, and being sucked, and my backside was being ground out hard, and I was happier than I had ever been in the Sultan's garden.