Sir Stephen's Equestrian Training. Sylvia had thought it was a riding academy. Naturally there was nothing to indicate otherwise.
She suspected nothing as she paid for the ten-week course in full. She liked the fact that it was out in the country, and she pictured herself flying through the forest on the back of a magnificent steed. Events were to prove her quite wrong.
A man in riding clothes greeted her and ushered her into a waiting room when she arrived. It was all very homey, and she drank the cup of tea offered to her. That was the last thing she remembered.
When she awoke she was very groggy, but she realized that something had been done to her head - it felt cold. She tried to put her hands up there to feel it, but they wouldn't move from behind her back. Somehow she had wound up on the floor, too.
There were people in the room. Sylvia could feel them remove her clothes quickly and expertly. She smiled, her mind able only to focus on how erotic it was to be undressed by somebody and unable to fathom the circumstances of the act.
Then came the straps. Sylvia felt them tighten around her waist, over her shoulders, and between her legs. This was unexpected and incomprehensible. Her mind snapped awake. What was going on here?
She looked down to see herself rigged up in a leather body harness, complete with metal rings in strategic places so she could be hitched up. Sylvia opened her mouth to scream for help, and a hard rubber bit was thrust between her lips. A bridle was wrapped around her head and attached to the bit, keeping it in place. The woman gave up resisting, knowing it was useless.
"Welcome to our training academy," said the man she had met earlier. "You'll learn all the things a good filly should know."
She now knew what had been done to her head - it had been shaved so that there was just a mane running down the center of her head. With her black, curly hair, she hated to see how it had turned out.
He fastened a lead to her bridle and brought her to her feet. Naked and trussed, she was scared and didn't want to follow him anywhere, but he was too strong. She scurried along behind him down a hallway and into a workshop. From the pieces of leather lying around, it was obvious that this was where they made the harnesses and bridles.
The leather-worker helped the man push Sylvia facedown on a table and clamp her feet in the stocks at one end. They carefully measured her feet.
"Yeah, I think we got some shoes in her size."
No! thought Sylvia, they're not going to nail horseshoes into me! They wouldn't sink to such barbarity!
What they did, though, was just as insidious. They ran a tube of super-bonding glue all around the perimeter of her soles and held hard rubber heels against them. They were sloped to fit the angle of her feet, so that it was as if she had a permanent set of high heels.
After holding them fast against her feet until the glue had set, they hauled her to her feet and walked her around a bit. The young woman felt so helpless - her head shaved, her body naked, the bit digging into the corners of her mouth, the harness a tight web around her torso, and the human horseshoes sealed to her skin.
"And now for the final touch."
They bent her over. The worker held a butt plug that had been modified so that it held long strands of hair like a ponytail. They greased it and painfully screwed it into her ass until the thick part was all the way in and her sphincter muscles had closed around the narrow stem. All that remained visible was the long tuft of black, curly hair that had been fashioned from what was cut from her head. She was now completely transformed.
She was taken from the stable and was shocked to see the stalls filled with other victims in the same condition. Shaved and bridled heads peered out from over the wooden barriers. As Sylvia passed by, she could see they were also naked, harnessed, and shoed. They acknowledged her with silence and looks of sad resignation - this was their destiny, like it or not.
Sylvia was stunned to realize that she recognized all of the faces from the evening news - a slim, attractive, college coed who had disappeared during a night of partying, a newly-married bride who had vanished on the night of her honeymoon, a hitchhiker who had been reported on the highway and never seen again, a thirtyish business executive who had left her apartment and never made it to work, a prostitute reported missing by her roommate, two Korean women who had dropped out of sight just after becoming U.S. citizens, a Hawaiian model believed to have accidentally drowned after her car was found near a lake one night......
A queasiness entered her stomach as she was put in one of the empty stalls, the closet sized cubicle equipped only with a bare mattress, portable potty, a box of tampons, and an enema bag hanging from the wall. She wondered just how far the equestrian parallels went. She was soon to find out.
THE TRAINING ACADEMY - PART II
Sylvia tottered around in her new "shoes", distressed at the fact that they were adhered directly to her skin. And her hair - her beautiful hair - cut off into a Mohawk. That, at least, could grow back, but she feared the shoes would never come off, at least without causing a lot of pain and leaving scars.
A commotion made her look up. It was time for the noon feeding. The bits were unhooked from the girls' mouths and leather feedbags were fastened onto the bridles. Sylvia was hungry, and she dutifully let them attach one to her.
The inside was lined with plastic, but she could still smell food, as the bag covered her face from chin to nose. She tilted her head back cautiously, liked she saw the others do, frustrated at not being able to use her hands to eat. She tasted a dry mixture of grains, vegetables, hay, and green grass as the mixture spilled into her mouth. She nibbled at it, no longer very hungry.
After the feedbags were removed, the enema bags were filled with water and the ends of the hoses put in their mouths so they could drink their fill. The new mare drank her fill, her mind craving the sweetness of a diet soft drink.
Training was then resumed. The fillies were herded out into the corral, and four of them were hitched to a wagon, with the coed and one of the Korean women in the lead and with the prostitute and businesswoman behind. A man climbed into the wagon and cracked the whip. "Heeyah!" he said, and the four cantered off, pulling the wagon, their shoes thudding in an uneven rhythm on the ground, and their manes, tails, and tits bobbing to their gait.
Sylvia watched in horrified fascination as the female "mule-team" flawlessly obeyed the barked commands and the crack of the whip over their heads, until a firecracker SNAP! near her own head made her pay attention to her own training.
She and the others were put through their paces in the corral, high stepping like showhorses. She found it hard to concentrate. Being naked outside dressed only in a ridiculous harness that covered nothing, having to contend with a bit that chafed the corners of her mouth and kept it open so that she couldn't help but drool on herself, having to participate in these humiliating exercises, and - worst of all - having absolutely no support for her b-cup tits, which would surely cause irreversible tissue damage, made her less than enthusiastic. She had to be smacked with the riding crop twice to make her listen to her trainer.
An hour and a half later, drenched in sweat after a strenuous workout in the hot sun, they were allowed to stop and have a drink in their stalls. The wagon team had already returned and the driver came up to the trainer. "How about we take the new ones on a trip to the store?"
"Good idea. I'll get them ready."
Sylvia was thrilled when the man came back with a handful of bras. They were halter-top models, so all he had to do was slide it under the harness, hook the straps, and adjust it without having to risk freeing her arms. Her joy was partly dissipated when he also fitted blinders on her already-cumbersome bridle and put on wrist cuffs that clipped to the waist strap of the harness. The bride, the model, and the hitchhiker were similarly fitted, and they were all led out and hitched to the wagon, the model and hitchhiker in front, Sylvia and the bride in back.
Sylvia looked toward the tall, thin, still-gawky country girl next to her - she had been only eighteen when she had disappeared on her honeymoon. The whip SNAPPED above her head. "Eyes front! Heeyah!"
They started off at a brisk trot, the rings on the harnesses at the small of their backs pulling the wagon along by the wooden shafts. They clopped along the dirt road, the impact of their hard shoes jarring their knees. The worst part, though, was the hill, which they barely made. The bride and the hitchhiker each collapsed twice, nearly dragging them backwards. Only the sting of the whip on their bare asses made them get up again and continue. Then there was the downhill part, where the wagon picked up speed, threatening to overtake them and drag the women along by their harnesses.
They stopped at a general store, their breaths huffing through the choking bits and their bodies glistening with perspiration. Enema bags were hung from their harnesses and the tubes stuck between bit and tongue.
The storeowner came out, and the driver proudly pointed out Sylvia to him. "We just got her today. Ain't she a looker?" Sylvia turned away. Here she was almost totally naked - sweat made the bra semi-transparent - and strangers were ogling her.
"She's kinda shy," laughed the driver.
The storeowner reached out and fondled a tit, reveling in the girl's response as she jumped out of reach. "Yeah, but she'll get over it."
"I still like the Hawaiian girl though. Here, honey, have a sweet." He shoved a mint into her mouth and stroked her mane as she bowed her head in submission.
"Don't spoil 'em. They'll get too pampered."
Bags of feed were loaded onto the wagon. Well, thought Sylvia, at least the trip back is mostly downhill.
They started off with the heavy load, and by the time they got back to the stables, the girls were frothing at the mouths from the heat and from exhaustion.
After another drink, they were unhitched and all their equipment removed. Their bodies were scrubbed down with soapy water, and their manes were washed, dried and combed. An electric razor kept the rest of the head smooth.
Sylvia dared to speak up: "Why are you--?"
The trainer cracked a riding crop across her ass. "You must not speak or you will be punished."
The bridles and harnesses were put back on, and they were led back to their stalls for the evening feeding. The butt plug tails were removed at night so they would be free to defecate.
Sylvia tasted her feed and found it to be the same as lunch. She came to the disheartening conclusion that the meals would never vary - breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Neither would the training.
Her eyes turned toward the sliver of fading light coming from the doorway. She was no longer an independent, free-thinking girl, but a beast of burden trained to wait for instructions or rewards, useful only for simple physical tasks like any other domesticated animal.