This work is copyright 2000-2006 by Xaltatun of Acheron (A Pseudonym). It may be posted on the Internet to any free forum. It may be reformatted to match the forum's look and feel, and the forum editor may make minor spelling and grammer corrections. Otherwise it must be posted in its entirety, including these notices. It may not be sold, or included in any compilation that is sold, or posted on any forum that requires a fee for access, without my written permission. My permission will require payment, terms to be negotiated. For purposes of this notice, sites guarded by Adult Check or similar packages are considered pay sites. Posting on any site must include this copyright notice.
Adult Content Warning - this story contains adult themes, including non-consensual bondage/slavery and forced sexual acts. If you are under the lawful age for such materials (18 in most jurisdictions) or if you would find such material offensive, please go elsewhere.
Safety Warning. This story may contain descriptions of practices that are decidedly unsafe, either in general, or if performed by someone without adequate training. There are a number of good books available on safety in the BDSM scene. Most large cities, and some not so large ones, have organized BDSM groups that will usually welcome a newcomer. I'm not going to point out which practices are safe, and which aren't. Any practice is unsafe if performed by someone with inadequate training and experience, or if performed when not paying attention. Please think before you act. Don't make yourself a candidate for a Darwin award.
Now on to the story...
Chapter 2. They Arrive and are Greeted.
Chapter 3. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Agamemnon, Hector and Helen arrive at the island on the vacation that Big Mo, their employer, has sent them on after discovering that Helen has been stepping out on him with two of his heavies. All three of them are locked up tight in chastity belts, and after a week they’re still deterred by the threat that the belts will explode if the locks are tampered with.
After trudging up the path for a while, they’re met by a demon, a ponygirl, three herd dogs and two workers, none of whom look like what they expect – except maybe Darlene, the ponygirl. Her Haughtiness explains that this is Circe’s Island, where the sorceress Circe turns men into animals. She sends Helen to the stable and Hector to the kennels. Ag has been sent to the forest to play gorilla.
A half hour later, Helen found herself in a meadow, looking up at a brunette ponygirl who must have been close to seven feet tall, hooves included.
“If I can talk?” she asked hesitantly.
“Here,” was the answer. “The rules are simple. You can talk to other ponies where nobody can hear you. The herd dogs don’t count, and neither do the workers or the cattle, but don’t talk to them, either. The collars will buzz you if you try to talk any other time.”
“This is Hell, isn’t it? Moe killed all three of us.”
“Right. You’re dead, and this is the most appropriate place for what you’ve made of yourself.”
“It’s not like Hell is supposed to be!”
“Hell constantly changes to match the world you came from. I’m told this section was modeled on current Western business practices. I suspect there are obsolete sins, and there may well be sins we haven’t even thought of.”
“Forever?” she almost wailed.
“Now would a beneficent and merciful God do that? That’s the priests earning themselves their own slice of Hell by trying to bully their congregations into blind obedience, using texts that were never accurate when written, have been changed constantly through the ages, and are interpreted with an eye to building congregations and collecting donations rather than preparing their followers for Heaven.”
“So there’s a way out?”
“Just keep in mind that there’s a reason you wound up here rather than somewhere else, pay attention to reforming your personality, and you’ll be sent somewhere else when that’s more appropriate. Also remember,” she paused slightly, “the path goes both ways.”
“Huh?”
The ponygirl whinnied at her and galloped to the edge of the meadow, where she jumped the fence, her golden mane and tail flowing behind her.
Someone let out a piercing whistle from the other side. “Helen! Time to get your lazy ass to work!”
She shrugged slightly and headed toward the voice. “Where?”
“Here, you lazy...” the voice dribbled off into a mutter as if it had lost interest mid-imprecation.
The speaker turned out to be another weather-beaten man, dressed in heavy denim jeans, a plaid work shirt and heavy boots.
“Bend over and put your hands here,” he commanded, pointing to a low block next to what looked like some measurements scrawled on the wall of the stable.
“What?” she asked as she bent over.
“Rest on your knuckles.” He put a stick on her ass and one on her shoulders, and looked at the marks on the wall. “This ought to do,” he muttered as if it didn’t matter what he said.
He picked up a couple of devices off a shelf. “Put your hands in these,” he said peremptorily.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
“If it was up to me, you’d walk tilted until your arms grew out,” he said angrily. “This is the way they want it, and I’m not going to get my ass in a sling telling them they’re coddling you.” She thought it was likely that he had argued it at one time. She fit her hands into the devices, and discovered that they were surprisingly comfortable.
“Harness,” he muttered. He pulled a cat’s cradle of straps off the wall and dropped it on her back. A minute later he’d pulled several buckles tight around her torso. He dropped another cat’s cradle of rope on her head and tightened it, then he tugged on her lead rope.
“Stay on all four,” he commanded when she tried to rise. “Right front, left rear and let it happen. Sheesh,” he muttered almost under his breath, “I’ve got to tell this bitch everything.”
She managed to get her feet coordinated enough to avoid tripping as he pulled her lead rope across the stable yard to a circular building that had a measured thump, thump, thump coming out of it.
What was inside was a windlass that was being pulled by some of the herd beasts to the time of the thumping. He fastened her lead to a ring in the wall with a motion of his hand that was almost too swift to follow, and then stood, hands on hips, watching the six cattle stolidly walk forward in the traces. “Stop.” He commanded.
The thumping stopped, and so did the cattle. He swiftly unharnessed one of them and harnessed Helen into the device. “Keep pace and put your back into it,” he told her, as if it should have been obvious to a cretin but she didn’t measure up. The drum gave a rapid double thump and then settled into the same measured thump, thump, thump she had heard on the way in.
She stumbled a bit before she got the pace, and then she felt a sting across her buttocks. She shoved harder into her shoulder harness, and the stinging stopped. After a few minutes she settled into the pace and the proper pressure of the leather harness on her shoulders. To her surprise, she felt her muscles responding rather than complaining.
Once she’d settled, she looked around. The other five draft animals on the windlass kept the same relative positions, fastened to the poles as they were. The two of them she could see easily were a pair of Circe’s cattle, luxurious hair coming off their backs and falling to the sides. As it shifted side to side she thought she saw large, pendulous breasts that must have been at least triple-D. At least Darlene’s breasts had seemed to be a much more reasonable B cup. So, she thought, had the worker bee’s breasts, at least the females.
She paced forward to the thump, thump, thump, shoving the harness with each step. Each time around she took a quick look at the drummer. He seemed lost in what he was doing, sitting as still as a statue except for the rise and fall of one hand and arm as he beat the drum. Thump. Thump. Thump.
His face seemed to be totally vacant, as if he had become one with his instrument. Yea, right, she thought to herself. Totally mindless, just like the drum. Thump. Thump. Thump. I wonder, she thought, how long I could sit there going thump, thump, thump before I ran screaming. She hastily shoved the thought aside.
She looked around for anything to look at. There were just the cattle, the drummer, the walls and the door. That didn’t do anything for her either; it had a small entranceway curved so that all she could see was the wall.
Her world condensed to the thump, thump, thump of the drum, the pace as her feet hit the floor and the feeling of her buttocks pushing to maintain the pressure in her shoulder harness.
Every once in a while it stopped as the stable hand came in and swapped one of the cattle for a new one. Then it started up again. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Once a tall, raven-haired woman stood in the doorway and looked at her for a while. The woman was dressed in a classical dominatrix costume that looked like a black leather leotard, and had a whip curled up at her belt. Then the next time she came around to where she could see the doorway, she was gone.
In between times, a worker came in and gave the beasts a drink and a bite to eat, keeping pace with the outside of the windlass so they didn’t stop.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Eventually it was her turn to be removed from the windlass. The stable hand led her back to the stable, took off the harness and front hooves, and washed her down as she stood trying to recover from the hours of mindless labor.
“Here,” he shoved her into a stall and closed the door, shooting the latch and removing her halter almost in the same movement.
She looked around. The stall was about seven feet deep and four wide, with four foot high walls. It didn’t look like it was particularly secure. It had a thick mat of straw on the floor, and a low shelf with a bowl of water, a bowl of various fruits and an empty bowl.
She felt like she ought to be ready to collapse, but she didn’t feel particularly tired. Just confused.
“You’re new?” a voice said from the next stall. “I’m Jessie, you’re?”
“Helen,” she responded automatically. Jessie was about 6’3” and had a light brown mane, tail and leggings above her hooves. She looked beautiful, as if ponygirls had been deliberately designed to be attractive. “What is going on?” Helen almost wailed.
“They had you on the pump?” Jessie asked sympathetically.
“Was that what it was? There were six of us on some kind of a windlass.”
“Probably. There are also a grinding mill, a power wheel for the organ and some other stuff. Everything else operates off of water power, so they’ve got to keep the water reservoir filled.”
“So how does this work?”
“The stable, the farm or the whole thing?”
“The stable first, but if you know anything about how to get out of here, I’m all ears!”
Jessie laughed. “There’s about fifty of us in this stable. Most of us are out working during the day, and they shuffle the stalls so you’re only going to have the same neighbors once or twice a month.
“It’s a simple sliding bolt latch on your stall, you can leave any time you want and wander around. I don’t recommend it, you don’t want to find out what they’ll do to you if you aren’t in earshot when you’re called to work, or if you interfere with something you shouldn’t. On the other hand, you can go to the latrine any time you want, and you can go to the meadow behind the stable. That’s in earshot, and they know to look there if you’re not in your stall.
“You’ll normally lay your eggs in the morning when you wake up. Just squat, let them come out onto the straw and then put them in a bowl on the shelf. Workers will come by and collect them.
“Everyone comes out of their stalls in the morning and lines up on all fours to be milked. Then we go into the meadow until we’re called. Evening milking is the same, except that they lead us back to the stalls; that’s when they shuffle things around.
“The rest of it? You’ll learn as you go.”
“But what about getting out of here? I want to go to Heaven!”
Jessie laughed again. “There is no Heaven and Hell. There are an infinite number of places; this is one of them. Some of them are, I suppose, more Heavenly, some of them are more Hellish, but there isn’t a sharp border. Which this is? I frankly don’t know. The environment’s nice, it’s well kept up, we don’t have problems with insects, and while being ponygirls, herd dogs and workers is certainly, um, unusual, most of us aren’t particularly unhappy. Some of us even think this really is Heaven, and I suppose it is compared to where they came from, at least from the stories they tell.
“On the other hoof, the stable hands seem to be pretty miserable, and the pigsty, hen house and spud farm, as well as what goes on in the Hovel is basically disgusting.”
“This is nothing like the priests said.”
“True. I suppose you got the entrance speech from that girl that thinks she’s an angel?”
“Uh, yes.”
“As I understand it, she’s mostly right. You came in as a ponygirl. There are ponygirls just like us in a lot of the different places; it’s a popular form. Some of the places you find us are more pleasant than others in a number of ways. Some people stay here for a while, some move on quickly. One of the girls has been here for close to a thousand years; she remembers recruiting for one of the Crusades, and she thinks this is Heaven. When you’re ready to move on, you’ll move on. You may stay as a ponygirl, you may have a different form, you may reincarnate. It’s up to you.”
“But...”
“Well, you might want to talk to Darlene about it.”
“Darlene?”
“She’s the one that Her Haughtiness rides when she’s picking up the newly dead, so I know you’ve seen her. She was a black magician; curses, lust potions, beauty spells, calling up demons, fortune telling tailored to transfer the mark’s fortune into her hands, all that stuff. She knows a lot more about how all this is organized than most of the rest of us, and she’s still got some of her powers; she can find out a lot of things when she wants to.
“One word of warning, though. She’ll be very helpful if you’re serious, but if you’re just curious you’d best stay away. She’s got a nasty side if you’re bothering her.”
“My impression is that she thinks it funny!” Helen said with a bit of asperity.
“Oh, she does. She says the reason she’s here is payback; she used the demons, they’re using her. Once she’s finished with the payback she’ll go somewhere else. Or so she says.”
“Um. that’s a lot to digest. Something else just occurred to me. I saw a woman in black leather with a whip. What’s up with her?”
“Oh, her. She showed up several years ago and appointed herself head ponygirl trainer. The stable hands hate her, but that’s not unusual; they seem to hate everything about what they do. She can be merciless if you don’t do it her way the first time or you don’t put out the effort. On the other hoof, she’s been real good for shaping up our competition teams.
“You don’t have to deal with her if you don’t want, but that means you won’t get any of the carriage work or show stuff. You’ll be stuck on the water pump, pulling a cultivator, lawn mower, roller, garbage carts and such like. If you do get ridden, it’ll be by the stable staff rounding up the cattle.”
“This,” Darlene said a bit unnecessarily, “is the Hen House.” The building loomed in front of the two ponygirls, looking somewhat like a big box store. The noise coming from it, however, was a kind of clatter that sounded more like a factory.
They walked in the door, and Helen stopped, startled at the sight. Being told about it hadn’t prepared her for the reality.
The reality was rows of racks that stretched from near the front to the back of the building. Each of the racks held naked women stacked four high, each in her own individual container.
The containers consisted of metal bars that sketched out a bare cube, maybe two feet on a side. The woman it held seemed to sit toward the back, her legs spread out in a V in front and then folded back at the knee, with both the knees and the feet attached to a corner of the apparatus. Her arms were stretched out in front of her and shackled at the wrists to the upper two front corners of the cube, as if she was holding something or praying for help. Her head came out the top, held in place by an iron collar that was attached to the four upper corners by the same dull metal rods that formed the cube’s outline. She seemed to be sitting on a bar that ran from the front of the cube to the back, and supported a black device of some kind that nestled between the pinioned woman’s thighs.
Each of the eight corners of the cube, as well as the centers of the bars on the sides, had some kind of a gadget that held onto the sides of the rack.
As she looked at one of the racks in amazement, the packaged women started shifting; it looked very much like one of the empty slots was moving.
“Startling sight, isn’t it?” Darlene asked with a bit of amusement.
“What are they doing?” Helen asked, fascinated in spite of herself, as she saw a number of the leather headed workers fussing at some task or other.
“These were all game players,” Darlene replied. “Most of them were addicted to game shows, or spent a lot of time playing games. A few of them played games with the people around them. So they’re spending their slice of eternity playing games. The ones in this corridor,” she said as she walked down two corridors and then led Helen in between two towering racks of caged women, “are playing duplicate bridge.”
“How?” Helen asked as suddenly some of the cages slid back and the rest shuttled around in what looked like a random frenzy. A minute later, everything settled down to where she could see four rows of thirteen caged women on each side of the corridor. The women in each row started whispering to each other. A minute later, the whispering stopped. For a minute it looked like nothing was happening, and then one of the cages slid back, letting the rest of the cages in the row slide over one. The cage in back appeared on the end in the vacated slot. Then one in the next row slid over followed by one in the third row. After a pause, one in the fourth row slid over.
“They just played a round, didn’t they?” Helen half asked. “How are they doing it?”
“There’s a little display on the top bar at the front of their package,” Darlene pointed. “And there are some switches they can get to with their fingers. Once they’re dealt, the display tells them which card they are, and they have to tell each other. The highest ranked card in the row is the player, until she plays herself. Then the highest card that’s left is the player. Watch what happens at the end.”
The two ponygirls stood there as the game played itself out, the cards seemingly playing themselves. When it finished, the card’s values appeared on the women’s chests above their breasts, with a green splotch that indicated which side had won which trick.
“The bid suit is circled. Overtricks are green splotches on the winner’s belly, undertricks are red splotches. This one seems to have been four spades, with an overtrick. And the other board,” the turned around, “didn’t make the overtrick. So,” Darlene paused like a master showman, “we have a winner!”
One of the woman gasped and then grasped the bars, her head tilted back as the device started to stimulate her to an orgasm.
“Those hens are definitely playing to win,” Darlene commented as the winning team captain came noisily.
“So they spend all their time doing this?” Helen asked as the winning bidder’s cage slid back, to be replaced by a cage holding another woman.
“Well, most of it. She’ll either be going to a different game, or possibly heading for servicing.”
“Servicing?”
“Back here.” The two women walked toward the back. “Queuing racks on top,” Darlene said, pointing up as they crossed a corridor. Helen craned her neck back and was rewarded by the sight of a double row of cages hanging from the ceiling.
The servicing area seemed to be quite busy with machinery doing various things to the haplessly caged women. As they walked up, one cage slid up the four poles, shifted direction and slid into an opening in the queueing racks. A moment later, another cage came out of the overhead queue and slid down the poles with a speed that threatened to impale its occupant on a post jutting up from the floor. The cage came to a jarring halt just before the poor woman made contact and then slid down another inch or so at a much more sedate pace, stopping with a click.
Immediately an apparatus came out from the side and captured the woman’s breasts, while another tentacle came out and inserted itself into her mouth. A nozzle started circling, spraying her with soapy water.
Helen watched, amazed, as the woman’s cheeks and throat indicated she was swallowing something, and as a white liquid squirted from her nipples into little cups before being sucked down the hoses on the milking machine.
“It’s very efficient,” Darlene said. “She gets fed, washed, milked and her wastes emptied all at the same time. She gets serviced every four hours; the first service in the morning takes care of her eggs as well.”
Helen frowned at the sight, trying to collect her thoughts. “Isn’t that an awfully lot of milk?” she asked, voicing the first thought that managed to form itself well enough to come out.
“That’s part of the punishment. Since they don’t have to move, there aren’t any limits on what they can do with their breasts. Most women’s breasts have milk glands that are about the same size; they’ll fit in a healthy A cup regardless of the size of their breasts. These have been modified so that they’re almost all milk gland; they’ve got about ten times the capacity of yours and they fill every four hours.”
“Yike! But,” she frowned, “you tell me that there’s always a way out, and I don’t see it here.”
“There is. It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game,” she said, trying to stifle a laugh. “When they’ve learned whatever it is they need to, they’re the beneficiaries of an equipment breakdown: the machine drops their cage on the floor, right out of one of the overhead transfer queues. It pops open, and they walk out.
“Where they go from there? It depends on what their next most serious sin was, or whether they learned any new sins while being used as game pieces. Some stay here in another of the places, some go elsewhere.”
“Quite true,” a voice said from behind them. They turned to see Her Haughtiness. “Go get yourself saddled,” the demon told Darlene. “We’ve got another pickup to make. You,” she told Helen, “get your tail back out there. They want you for some training.” She smiled sadistically, showing her fangs.
Deana, Helen saw as she trotted out of the Hen House, was standing in a corral twirling a leash and looking like a particularly dyspeptic thundercloud.
“There you are,” she snarled. “Get a bridle and bit on, and bring an arm binder. This time you are going to learn how to high step right, or finding unmarked skin is going to be the least of your worries.”
Helen trotted into the stable to where her tack hung on one of the equipment walls. A minute later she had buckled the bridle around her head and made sure it was tight enough to not slip. She snapped the bit into it, feeling it settle into the space where her canine teeth had been, draped the reins over one arm and picked up the sheet of leather that was the unwrapped arm binder.
“At least you didn’t dawdle too long,” was Deana’s only comment as Helen handed her the arm binder and turned, hands firmly clasped behind her so that Deana could install it.
“This goes here, and this goes here,” Deana muttered to herself as she laced the sides and pulled them tight. “Sullen stable hands, passive-aggressive ponygirls and judges that can only be bribed by the other contestants. What did I ever do to deserve this?”
“Huh?” she exclaimed as Helen doubled over laughing, yanking the leather thongs out of her hands in the process.
“There is nothing a ponygirl can say that I want to hear,” she said as if it was an article of faith, right up beside “me first”. “There is nothing a ponygirl can say that I want to hear,” she repeated as if it was a mantra. “There is nothing a ponygirl can say that I want to hear,” she said a third time. A very discerning ear might have detected a note of uncertainty in her voice. But maybe it was just imagination.
“So give,” she said as she hauled her subject upright. Helen whinnied at her around the bit.
Deana scowled as if she had eaten something rotten, and it had started to disagree with her. Vehemently. She reached up, unsnapped the bit, and stepped back, hands on hips. “So what’s funny?”
“Darlene could probably tell you if you asked her nicely. I presume that Her Haughtiness knows, and isn’t telling you. Beyond that, Circe probably knows, but I’ve never seen her.”
“Darlene. That stuck up ... mare.” Deana snarled. “Why Darlene, if I may ask?”
“She used to be a black magician, and still has a lot of her powers. She could probably give you chapter and verse, if she wanted to exert herself to find out. Anything anyone else tells you is a guess.”
“She ... used to be ... a black magician.” Deana said slowly. “Then why hasn’t she retaliated for some of what I’ve done to her?”
“You haven’t gone over her limits – yet. Quite. I do remember her muttering once about scorpions in your bed, though. And there was once she was muttering about curdling your milk in your breasts, but then she got distracted.”
“And what do I have to do to get through her aura of smugness?”
“Oh, she’s got her reasons for practicing tolerance, patience, kindness and all that stuff, but there are a lot of trees with her hoofmarks in their bark.”
Deana scowled. “That’s quite enough.” She held up the bit as if she wanted to cram it down Helen’s throat, preceded by fragments of several teeth. Helen opened her mouth and suppressed a snort as she felt the familiar sensation as it settled into the void formerly occupied by her canines. She turned around to let Deana finish lacing up the arm binder.
“Now why did I just do that,” Deana muttered as she pulled the leather laces taut enough to almost rip the bronze rings from the leather, pulling Helen’s shoulders far enough back to cause her to arch her spine and mewl in protest.
“Now that almost looks good,” Deana pronounced. “A little bit more arch and a bit more bounce to those breasts and the judges won’t be falling asleep out of boredom.
“Now,” she said as she snapped the lead to the left side of the bridle, “this time get that right hoof up as if you meant it, and you might get back to the stable with at least some skin left intact.” She flicked her whip in emphasis as Helen pranced to the side of the corral, turning when she felt the lead tauten.
Then everything became a blur to Helen for the next hour, punctuated by the stinging pain of the lash when her body didn’t react exactly the way her tormentor wanted. She just marched forward, the lead pull her to the side as she had been trained as Deana’s commands washed through her brain causing her to stop, start, march and prance almost without her conscious volition. Eventually she stopped, panting.
“Now that,” she pronounced, “wasn’t entirely awful. In fact, quite a bit got up to just plain bad.” She grabbed the reins, practically dragging the wilted ponygirl out of the corral to throw them over a rack. “Hey, Jake,” she yelled. “Groom her and put her into her stall.”
“Oh, great,” Jake muttered as he came over and dipped a bucket into the trough. “As if you couldn’t do it yourself. Bitch!” He sloshed the frigid water over the ponygirl and then proceeded to soap her vigorously.
This definitely had to be Hell, Helen mused once again as she lay on the straw, her battered ass in the air. Only in Hell would her body heal fast enough so she could be whipped bloody again the next day, all in the name of being trained.
Deana stalked into the Hovel, her bad mood lightened slightly by Helen’s really excellent performance. If she kept improving at this rate, she thought to herself, it might be possible to train her for some show routines.
She stopped in the entranceway and looked at the male hanging from the ceiling by a shoulder harness, his arms bound behind him. She walked up, noting the combination of fear and hate in his eyes. She punched him square in the face, giving it the full power her body was capable of, and heard the satisfying snap as his neck broke.
His head came back up, and the speaker set in his face where his mouth should be said: “Deana, checked in. Her Haughtiness wants to see you after you freshen up a bit.”
She twisted his right nipple to acknowledge the message, noting that his face had regenerated enough to show the wince.
That, she thought as she walked to her rooms, was probably the most satisfying punch in and punch out procedure she had ever seen.
She saw two statues on her way to her apartment. She’d been here long enough that she knew most of them by sight. The staff moved them around, of course. She idly wondered what kind of training regime was needed to get them to freeze in one position for eight to ten hours, and hold it regardless of the provocation.
In her apartment, she saw another statue standing easily by the door, eyes staring vacantly ahead. This one was a blonde in a skimpy black and white maid’s uniform. Deana recognized her; she was one of a dozen or so maids that was assigned to her apartments regularly, and she knew the layout. Deana walked up to her and firmly pressed her right breast, and then twisted it to the right. The maid’s eyes suddenly focused.
“Lay out my red evening outfit,” she commanded, “and then prepare my evening makeup.”
“I hear and obey,” the speaker set in her head said tinnily as the maid walked to the closet.
A few minutes later, Deana walked out of the shower in a much better mood and slid into the outfit that the maid had neatly laid out on the bed. Then she sat in the chair in front of her makeup table while the maid busied herself applying the various layers of creams and powders that turned Deana into a ravishingly beautiful sex object.
She got up and preened in front of the mirror for a moment. Her red evening gown was a single shoulder affair, coming off of the right shoulder and down below her left arm, showing a good bit of her left breast in the process. It hugged her upper body and waist like it had been sewn on, and then split into four panels over her hips and thighs, showing her legs when she moved but falling in a demure cylinder if she stood still, legs firmly set together.
The hem barely touched the floor when she wore her six inch heels. That, she thought, was the only real downside; not only couldn’t she wear this outfit without atrociously high heels, she didn’t have any outfits that weren’t walking sex advertisements in some form or other. Even her nightgowns were calculated to make sleep the last thing on any normal male’s mind. Being able to relax in scruffy slacks and a turtleneck was a rapidly fading memory.
The dress, she thought as she walked down the corridor to Her Haughtiness’ domain, was a not so subtle reminder that, while she had a fairly privileged status, she was definitely not at the top of the heap. And after that conversation with her currently favorite ponygirl, she was beginning to wonder about whether her position was all that privileged.
The next reminder came when she walked in the door. She curtsied. It wasn’t an intentional action; it was simply something she did whenever she came into the demon’s presence or left it.
The demon was in her favorite position, sprawled on a comfortable looking couch with a blonde head working busily between her thighs. The head was attached to a rather luscious looking body, or at least it would have been luscious looking if it hadn’t been covered in short fur, patterned somewhat like a tabby cat. The illusion was helped along by the girl’s posture, which was in a typical cat position with her hind legs under her and resting on her hands. She had cat ears and a long, furry tail. Deana knew that if she could see her head, she had slit eyes as well, and she normally walked on all four feet.
“Ah, good,” the demon said as Deana rose from the curtsy. “I take it you learned something today?”
Deana frowned. “I’m not sure if I learned anything, or if I just have more questions. Can Darlene really tell me why I’m here?”
The demon laughed nastily. “She can if she wants to, but she won’t tell you very much. Omniscience seems to want people to discover these things for themselves, and Darlene has finally figured out that telling people what’s wrong with them is seldom helpful. Even when she’s right, which is admittedly a great deal of the time, and a lot more than most people.”
“But then?”
“Use what’s between your ears for something besides keeping your makeup out of your hair, girl! Everything that happens to you here is the result of one simple rule. What is it?”
“Uh?”
“You’re going to stand there until you can tell me, so start talking.”
“It all seems so excessive!”
“You’re headed in the right direction. What’s excessive?”
Deana took a deep breath. “All the sex. I’d give almost anything to just be able to lounge around in scruffies sometimes.”
“So, what’s stopping you?”
“I don’t have any,” she answered with some asperity.
“You could,” the demon told her, suddenly serious.
“How?”
“That I’m not going to tell you. Neither is Darlene. I’ll give you one clue, though. Think about Jessica Rabbit.”
“What does a cartoon character have to do with me?”
“You’ll figure it out sooner or later. You do have the rest of eternity.” The demon waved her hand in dismissal. Deana curtsied, turned and left, muttering under her breath.
“Jessica Rabbit”, Deana muttered to herself as she mingled with the other professionals before dinner. As usual, they were dressed rather formally, but she noticed as she frowned that the only ones that were dressed really sexily were the sex workers from the Whorehouse. And several of those were dressed for as much comfort as a formal dinner allowed.
“Jessica Rabbit?” Timmi asked. “What brought that up?” Timmi was a genuine, functioning she-male who usually dressed like a drag queen. Tonight she, or maybe he, seemed to be a bit toned down; she wore a pink chiffon creation that actually flattered her feminine curves without either being overdone or an open invitation to rip it off then and there.
“That’s not how I am, that’s just the way I’m drawn,” she giggled.
“Huh?”
“That’s Jessica’s most famous line. Philistine!” She took the sting out of the pronouncement by giggling as she waved a limp hand.
“Do you think I’m overdoing it?” she asked as a sudden thought occurred to her.
“You look like you’re trolling,” Timmi answered, serious for once. “And unless you’re getting it in the barnyard, it isn’t working.”
The staff had replaced her maid while she had been at dinner. This one was a brunette, likewise wearing the skimpy black and white of the classical French Maid uniform. Like the first one, she stood in what appeared to be a relaxed although formal pose with her unfocused eyes gazing at nothing.
Some of her maids were capable of executing standing orders without being told; this one, however, wasn’t, so her nightgown wasn’t laid out and her bed wasn’t turned down. She reached out to activate the maid, and then withdrew her hand, frowning in thought. She walked over to the closet and looked. There, nestled in with the peignoirs, teddies and baby-dolls, was a long flannel nightgown.
It would have been very easy to miss, and she was certain that if she hadn’t looked her maid wouldn’t have laid it out for her. She drew it out and looked at it. It wasn’t, she thought, all that severe. It had a fair amount of lace and a ribbon that could be done up into a bow to gather the neck. There was, however, no doubt of one thing. It was to sleep in, not to lounge around and warm up a nearby male.
She laid it out on the bed and then turned on her maid. “Draw my bath and remove my makeup,” she told the robotized woman.
The next morning there was, of course, a different maid. She swung out of bed and looked down at the nightgown thoughtfully. Flannel wasn’t, of course, anywhere near as sensual as satin and silk, but it seemed like it said “sleep” to some part of her brain. She couldn’t offhand remember having slept that well since dying and coming to this, um, place.
On a hunch, she looked in her closet again. There, next to the row of leather dominatrix uniforms, hung a pair of denim jeans and a plaid shirt. She took the jeans out and looked; they were neither too masculine nor too fussy. She nodded; it looked like today’s outfit, all right.
After bath and a light breakfast, she looked at herself in the full length mirror. The jeans provided just the right touch; not afraid to get her hands dirty, but still expecting instant obedience.
As she walked out, whip coiled at her belt and the tap of solid two inch heels on her work boots sounding like a military tread, she wondered why she’d ever thought that being a lust object was going to get her anywhere with training ponygirls.
“Helen!” the voice bellowed from the front of the stable, “get yourself harnessed and get out here on all fours. Now!”
“Duty calls,” Helen broke off her conversation with the new girl, whose name had turned out to be Stephanie. She trotted into the stable and slid into the waiting harness, making sure it was cinched tight. Then she put on the headstall, added the bit and reins making it a full bridle, and slid her hands into the hoof boots. She trotted out to the front and looked around.
“There you are,” the ranch hand muttered. “Took you long enough.” His voice seemed to die in mid mutter, but his hand on the reins didn’t waver. She trotted after him to a roundish building she’d never been in before.
Once she got inside, the dominant sound seemed to be a cacophony of straining leather, water sloshing, gears screeching and the buzz of conversation punctuated by some of the more vicious curses she could ever remember hearing.
A minute later the hand had unhitched one of the cattle and slid her into place, all without stopping the huge windlass that dominated the center of the building.
It took her several circles around the center pole, and a like number of stinging lashes across her buttocks, before she figured out the system. The spoke in front of her wasn’t just an unadorned pole. It had all kinds of fancy gears, levers, pulleys and other gadgets along its length, ending with a gage right in front of her eyes. As long as she kept the needle straight up, she didn’t get either a tug on her reins to slow down or a lash on her backside to pull harder.
She would have shrugged if the tension in her shoulder harness didn’t make it impossible. Instead, she sighed as she plodded forward, the leather of her harness making almost inaudible creaks in time to her rear hooves planting themselves on the dirt and pushing.
Once she made the connection, she found she had some time to look around. The place looked like a mad scientist’s nightmare, or one of those cartoons where the professor pours out some birdseed so the bird can peck at it so its tail brushes a switch which trips a can of water than sloshes over a string which tightens...
The center of the building seemed to be occupied by a huge stone wheel calmly rotating on a bed of ball bearings. The windlass was somehow connected to it by a set of gearing that made her head ache to try to figure it out. From there, it seemed to power a mass of gears and pulleys that spread out over the entire building.
The outside of the building seemed to be occupied by a row of sunken tubs, each of which had a spoke from the contraption dipping into the center. Above the tubs there was another row of cylindrical containers that seemed to contain cloth tumbling. The light dawned. This was Hell’s laundry, and it seemed that Hell had a lot of dirty laundry.
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