by Anne Rice
“Into the house, on your hands and knees,” he said softly. And he pushed open the door to my left. “You will always enter that way without being told.” And I found myself moving silently across a finely polished floor through small crowded rooms, a diminutive mansion it seemed, a rich town house to be exact, with an immaculate little stairs and crossed swords above the little fireplace.
It was dim, but very quickly I saw rich paintings on the walls of Lords and Ladies at their courtly amusements, with their hundreds of naked slaves forced to a thousand tasks and positions. We passed a small, heavily carved armoire. And high-backed chairs. And the hallway became narrow and close around me.
I felt enormous and vulgar here, more animal than human, crawling painfully through this little world of townsman’s wealth, not a Prince surely, but a rude domesticated beast. With a silent burst of alarm, I glimpsed my reflection in a fine mirror.
“To the back, through that door,” my Master commanded, and I entered a rear alcove where a well-done-up little village woman, a maid obviously, moved aside with her broom in hand as I passed her.
I knew my face was disfigured with my struggle. And it struck me suddenly what the terror of the village really was.
It was that we were true slaves here. Not playthings in a palace of pleasure, such as the slaves in the paintings on the walls, but real naked slaves in a real town, and we would suffer at every turn from common men at their leisure or tasks, and I felt my agitation increase along with the sound of my labored breathing.
But we had entered another chamber.
I moved across the soft carpet of this new room in the burnished light of oil lamps, and was told to remain still, which I did, without even trying to compose my limbs for fear of disapproval.
At first all I saw were books, shining in the glow of the lamps. Walls of books, it seemed, all bound in fine morocco and decorated in gold, a King’s ransom in books surely. And the oil lamps stood on stands here and there and on a great oaken writing table that was covered with loose sheets of parchment. Feather quills stood together in a brass stand. There were pots of ink. And then high above the shelves the glimmer of more paintings.
Then out of the corner of my eye I saw a bed in the corner.
But the most surprising thing in this room, other than the incalculable wealth in books, was the vague figure of a woman materializing slowly in my vision. She was writing at the table.
I have not known many women to read and write, only a few great Ladies. Many Princes and Princesses at the castle could not even read the punishment placards fixed to their necks when they were disobedient. But this Lady was writing quite fast, and when she looked up she caught my glance before I looked down subserviently. Then she rose from the table, and I saw her skirts come round before me. She seemed small all over with tiny wrists and long graceful hands like the Master. I didn’t dare to look up, but I had seen that her hair was dark brown and that it was parted in the middle and fell down her back in ripples. She wore a dress of deep burgundy, rich, like that of the man, but she also wore an apron of dark blue, and there were ink stains on her fingers that made her look interesting.
I was afraid of her. Afraid of her and the man standing silently behind me, and of the small silent room and my own nakedness.
“Let me look at him,” she said, and her voice, like that of my Master, was finely turned and faintly resonant. She put her hands under my chin and urged me to kneel up. And with her thumb she stroked my wet cheek, causing me to blush all the harder. I looked down, naturally, but I had seen her high jutting breasts and slender throat, and a face like the man’s, not physically so, but just as serene and impenetrable.
I slipped my hands behind my neck and hoped desperately that she would not torment my cock, but she bid me stand up and her eyes were fixed on it.
“Spread your legs; you know better than to stand like that,” she said sternly but slowly. “No, very wide,” she said, “until you feel it in those exquisite thigh muscles. That’s better. That’s how you’ll always stand for me, with your legs widespread, almost at a squat but not quite. And I will not tell you again. Slaves in the village are not coddled with constant orders. You will be strapped on the Public Turntable for any failing.”
These words sent a shudder through me, with an odd sense of fatality. Her pale hands seemed almost to glow in the light of the lamps as they moved towards my cock. And then she squeezed the tip, bringing out of it a drop of clear fluid. I gasped, feeling the orgasm ready to explode inside, to roll up through my organ and out of it. But mercifully she let it go and lifted my balls now as the youths had done.
Her little hands felt of them, massaging them gently, moving them back and forth in their sheathing, and the flicker of the oil lamps seemed to expand and to dim my vision.
“Flawless,” she said to my Master. “Beautiful.”
“Yes, I rather thought so myself,” said the Master. “Easily the pick of the herd. And the cost was not so terribly great, as he was the first one auctioned. I think had he been last it would be have been double. Observe the legs, the strength in them, and these shoulders.”
She lifted both her hands and smoothed back my hair. “I could hear the crowd from here,” she said. “They were in a fury. Have you thoroughly examined him?”
I tried to still my panic. After all I had been six months in the castle. Why was it so terrifying, this little room, these two cold townspeople?
“No, and that should be done now. His anus should be measured,” said the Master.
I wondered if they could perceive the effect the words had on me. I wished I’d taken Beauty a half dozen times in the cart so that at least my cock would be better under my control, but the thought of that only further inflamed me.
Frozen in this shameful stance, legs sprawled, I watched, powerless, the Master going to one of the shelves and reaching up for a morocco-covered case, which he set on the table.
I was turned by the woman so that I faced the table. She brought down my hands and placed them on the edge of it so that I was bending over from the waist, and I struggled to spread my legs as wide as I could so that she wouldn’t have to correct me.
“And his buttocks are hardly reddened, that’s good,” she said. I felt her fingers toying with the welts and sore places. Little riots of pain broke out in the flesh, like lights in my mind, and right before my eyes I saw the leather case opened and two large leather-covered phalluses taken out of it. One was the size of a man’s cock, I would say, and the other somewhat larger. And the large phallus was decorated at the base with a long bushy shock of black hair, a horsetail. Each was fitted with a ring, a sort of handle.
I tried to brace myself. But my mind rebelled as I stared at that thick, glossy hair. I could not be made to wear such a thing, a thing to make me look even more lowly than a slave, a thing to make me look like an animal!
The woman’s hand opened a red glass jar on the desk, the light seeming to strike it for the first time as I noticed it. And her long fingers gathered up a large dab of cream and disappeared behind me.
I felt the coldness of it against my anus, and knew the appalling helplessness I always experienced when my anus was touched, opened. Gently but quickly, she spread the moisture, smoothing it well into the crack, and then into my anus itself as I tried to be silent. I felt the Master’s cold eyes; I felt the Mistress’s skirts against me.
The smaller of the two phalluses was lifted from the desk, and slipped sharply and firmly into me. I shuddered, tensed. “Shhhh ... don’t be stiff,” she said. “Push out with your hips, yes, and open to me. Yes, that’s much better. Don’t tell me you were never measured or mounted on a phallus at the castle.”
My tears came in a flood. Violent tremors went through my legs and I felt the phallus sliding in, impossibly large and hard, my anus contracting in spasms. It was as if there had been no other time, yet every other time had been as debilitating, as mortifying as this one.
“He’s almost vi
rginal,” she said, “a mere child. Feel this.” And with her left hand she lifted my chest up until I was standing again, my hands behind my neck, legs throbbing, the phallus thrust up and into me, her hand securing it.
My Master came round behind me, and I felt the phallus rocked back and forth. I felt it shift in me even as he obviously let it go. I felt stuffed and impaled. And my anus, a quivering heated mouth around it.
“And why all those lovely tears?” The Mistress drew near to my face, her left hand lifting it higher. “Haven’t you ever been fitted before?” she asked. “You’re going to have a great many of them ordered for you now this very day with a great many different decorations and harnesses. It’s very seldom that we’ll leave your anus unplugged. Now keep those legs wide.” To my Master she said, “Nicolas, give me the other one.”
With a sudden muffled cry I protested as best I could. I couldn’t bear to look at that thick mass of black horsetail, and yet I stared full at it as it was lifted. But she only laughed softly and stroked my face again, “There, there,” she said sincerely. And the smaller phallus was slid out with lightning quickness, leaving my anus to grasp with an odd sensation that sent shivers through me.
She was applying more of the chilling cream, rubbing it in deeper this time, her fingers prying me open, while with the left hand she kept my face high, the room nothing but light and color in my vision. I couldn’t see my Master. He was behind me. And then I felt the larger phallus breaking me open wide, and I groaned. But again, she said:
“Push your hips back, open. Open ...”
I wanted to cry out, “I cannot,” but I felt it worked slowly back and forth, stretching me, and finally sliding in so that my anus felt enormous, throbbing around this immense object, which seemed three times what I had seen with my own eyes in the case before me.
But there was no sharp pain—only the intensification of feeling opened and rendered defenseless. And the coarse, tickling hair against my buttocks, being lifted and dropped, it seemed, the stroking almost maddeningly tender. I couldn’t bear to picture it. She held the hook, it seemed, and she moved the giant shaft, pushing upwards so that I stood on tiptoe as best I could and she said, “Yes, excellent.”
There it was, the soft words of approval, and I felt a lump in my throat break, felt the warmth in my face and in my chest expanding. My buttocks swelled. I felt shoved forward by the thing, though I stood still, and the soft tingling touch of the hair was all the more mortifying.
“Both sizes,” she said. “We will use the smaller ones most often for regular wear and the larger when it seems necessary.”
“Quite good,” said the Master. “I’ll send for them this afternoon.” But she did not remove the larger instrument. She was looking at my face most carefully and I could see the light flickering in her eye, and a swallowed sob caught in my throat silently.
“Now it’s time for us to ride out to the farm,” said my Master, and the words seemed for my benefit. “I’ve already ordered the coach to be brought around with a harness free for this one. Leave the large phallus in for now, it will be good for our young Prince to be broken properly to harness.”
But I was only given a second or two to think what all this meant. At once, the Master had his firm hand on the ring of the phallus and was pushing me forward with the command, “March.” The hair stroked and tickled the backs of my knees. And the phallus seemed to shift in me as if it had life of its own, poking and prodding me forward.
A SPLENDID EQUIPAGE
Tristan:
No,” I THOUGHT, ”I can’t be driven outdoors, not disfigured with this bestial decoration. Please ...“ And yet I was hurried through a rear corridor and out a back door into a broad paved road enclosed on the other side by the high stone ramparts of the village.
This was a much bigger thoroughfare than the one through which we had come. It was bordered with tall trees, and I could see guards high above walking in leisurely fashion along the battlements. And immediately before me I saw the shocking sight of coaches and market carts rattling past, pulled by slaves instead of horses. As many as eight and ten slaves were harnessed to the large coaches, and here and there a small chariot rolled by pulled only by a couple of pairs, and there were even small market carts without drivers being pulled by lone slaves, the Masters on foot beside them.
But before I could overcome my shock, or perceive how the slaves were turned out, I saw the Master’s leather coach before me, and five slaves, the four in pairs, all laced into boots and well harnessed with bits jerking back their heads, and their naked buttocks decorated with horsetails. The coach itself was open with two velvet upholstered seats, and the Master handed the Mistress up to take her place as a smartly dressed youth pushed me forward to complete the third and last pair nearest to the vehicle.
“No, please,” I thought as I had a thousand times at the castle, “no, I beg you ...” But no real belief in resistance galvanized me. I was in the power of these villagers, who placed the long thick bit firmly back in my mouth and the reins over my shoulders. The thick phallus ground into me as it was shifted up, and I felt a finely made harness coming down over my shoulders with thin straps that went down to a band around my hips, which was buckled at once very securely to the ring of the phallus. I couldn’t now push the thing out. In fact, it was rammed hard into me and bound to me, and I felt a firm tugging that almost pulled me off my feet as a pair of reins was obviously fixed to this hook and given to those behind me, who could now control both the bit and the phallus as they drove me.
As I looked ahead I saw that all the slaves were so tethered and that all were Princes, the long reins of those in front passing beside my thighs or above my shoulders. Tight leather rings gathered them together neatly just before me and probably right behind me. But I was startled to feel my arms being folded against my back and laced tight with harsh tugs. Rough, gloved hands quickly clamped small black leather weights to the nipples of my chest and gave them little pats to make sure they hung securely. Like leather teardrops they were, with no other purpose, it seemed, than to make the unspeakable degradation of the equipage all the more piercing.
And with the same silent quickness, my feet were being laced into thick boots with horseshoes on them, like the boots used at the castle for the devastating runs on the Bridle Path. The leather felt cold against my calves, and the horseshoes felt heavier.
But no wild run on that path, driven by the paddle of a mounted rider, had been as degrading as being tethered with these other human ponies. Even as I grasped that it had been completely done—I was now outfitted exactly like the others and all those I saw clopping past on the busy road—my head was jerked up, and I felt two sharp pulls of the reins, which started the whole team moving.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the slave next to me lifting his knees in the usual high march, and I did the same, the harness tugging on the shaft in my anus as the Master called out, “Faster, Tristan, better than that. Remember how I taught you to march.” And a thick strap licked down with a loud popping noise at the welts on my thighs and buttocks as, in a blur, I ran with the others.
We couldn’t have been traveling very fast, but it seemed we were racing. Ahead of me I could see the limitless blue sky, the ramparts, and the high-seated drivers and occupants of passing carriages. And again there was that horrid sense of actuality, that we were true naked slaves here, not royal playthings. We were the groaning underbelly of a place so vast and vital and overwhelming it made the castle seem a monstrous confection.
Before me the Princes strained under their harnesses almost as if outdoing one another for speed, reddened buttocks jogging the long sleek horsetails back and forth, muscles standing out in their strong calves above the tight leather of the boots, horseshoes ringing on the cobblestones. I groaned as the reins jerked my head higher and the strap walloped the backs of my knees, and the tears flowed more freely than ever down my face so that it was almost a mercy to have the bit to cry against. The weigh
ts tugged at my nipples, knocked against my chest, sending ripples of sensation through me. I felt my nakedness perhaps as I’d never felt it before, as though the harnesses and reins and the horsetail only further revealed me.
The reins were given three jerks. The team slowed to a rhythmic trot as if it knew these commands. And winded and wet with tears, I fell into it gratefully. The strap licked at the Prince beside me now, and I saw him arch his back and lift his knees even higher.
And over the jumble of sounds, the clops of the shoes, the groans and outright cries of the other ponies, I could hear the thin rise and fall of the sound of the Master and Mistress talking together. The words weren’t clear, only the unmistakable sound of a conversation.
“Head up, Tristan!” the Master said sharply, and there came that cruel jerk of the bit along with another through the ring in my anus, lifting me right off my feet for a moment, so I cried loudly behind the gag and ran fast when I was let down, the phallus seeming to enlarge inside me as if my body existed for no other purpose than to embrace it.
I sobbed against the gag, trying to catch my breath the better to measure it and weather the pace of the team. And there came the rise and fall of conversation again, and I felt utterly forsaken.
Not even the whippings in the soldiers’ camp when I had tried to escape on the journey to the castle had violated me and debased me as this punishment. And the glimpse of those on the battlements above, leaning idly against the stone or pointing now and then to the passing coaches, only made my soul feel all the more frail. Something in me was being absolutely annihilated.
We rounded a turn, the road widening, the rush of horseshoes and rolling wheels growing louder. The phallus seemed to drive me, lift me, propel me forward, the long popping strap lapping my calves almost playfully. I seemed to have caught my breath, to have gotten a merciful second wind, and the tears streaming down my face felt cold in the breeze instead of scalding hot.