WHATEVER HAPPENED TO RORY?

                                       CHAPTER ONE

The wall fronting the main entrance to Penelope’s estate was an imposing fraud. Built of undressed stone thirty feet high and twenty feet thick, it ran for only a hundred yards on either side of the gated archway which gave entrance to her estate before petering out in the forest. One of those Gothic follies so popular in Victorian times, it had stood for nearly one and a half centuries, designed and built by one of Penelope’s ancestors.  However, the development of the Enclave in the years following its construction had rendered the pompous edifice obsolete, for, nowadays, most visitors to the Great House came and went by another, less imposing entrance on the other side of the estate. But the two tiny rooms built into the thick stone still housed an old, retired slave whose sole task was to open the heavy wooden gates in the morning and close them at night, a task accomplished nowadays by means of an electric motor and supervised by old Hannah, a cheerful and amiable crone in her eighties.

  Also built into the wall, but on the side fronting the forest, was the kennel which had been occupied by many generations of dogs, each being replaced by a younger as each died of disease or of sheer old age. Now the kennel housed another animal, not exactly a dog, although, by long usage, thought of as a dog by everyone including himself. In short, the figure sprawled bonelessly on the bare earth outside the opening to the kennel was that of a young man of twenty-three whose given name was Rory, a name he’d once been called by his owner, Penelope, a girl of his own age. But now he answered to the simple name of ‘Dog,’ as had all his predecessors, and he found this as natural as his lack of clothing, the collar around his neck, and the six foot long chain which tethered him to the staple set in the wall by the kennel’s entrance. This coming year would be the fourth Rory had spent chained to the kennel, and the seventh he’d spent entirely naked as the property of the young woman whom he taken for his personal God.

  Rory lay outside his kennel in the faint warmth of the winter sun. Bored and restless, he came to all-fours and walked to the end of his chain where he tugged at it fretfully, watched by old Hannah, her ever-present pipe clenched in her toothless gums, from where she sat on the other side of the archway, basking in the wintry afternoon sunshine. She smiled, remembering his more recent predecessors, the half-dozen or so animals who’d spent their lives chained here in her own long lifetime. It had been fortunate, she thought, that the old dog had died just as the Lady had tired of her male pet, thus allowing him to take its place. But he would live a great while longer, or so everyone told her. For he would live a human lifetime, and he was young. A lover of tradition, it pleased the old slave to know that he would still be kennelled here many years after she herself was dead and buried.

 

Hannah refilled her mug and watched Rory’s grimy buttocks vanish into his kennel. These were strange times, she thought, when human beings were used as animals. First had been those kept as pets, the vast majority small, petite girsl, then others, taller and stronger, had been brought here to pull the carts of the Great Ones and their slaves. The little electric carts had everywhere vanished, and Hannah approved of this. It was better and more natural that people should be carried about by the muscles of animals, but why the Great Ones had chosen human beings rather than donkeys, mules or horses was beyond her.

In his kennel, Rory curled up on the thin layers of threadbare carpet that were his bedding. He could remember, or thought he could remember, a time when the kennel had smelled strongly of dog, but now it held the rank, comforting odour of his own body, unwashed and unbathed for so many years, and the familiar smell relaxed him. As so often, he thought about God, but he no longer thought as a human being would think. His animal mind had long ago taken over his thoughts whilst what remained of his human mind hid away in some recess of his brain. Where was God? he wondered vaguely. What was She doing now?

                                       CHAPTER TWO

    “Rory? Oh, we keep him chained up outside the old entrance. I haven’t seen him for months!” Penelope replied absently to her friend’s question,  her eyes on Janette’s pet sprawled on the rug before the log fire. “I had to get rid of him; He wasn’t nearly so much fun after he was cut. He'd begun to  bore me, I suppose.”

“Bet you’re glad we persuaded you to buy a bitch in the end,” drawled Sandra. “Where is Bessie, anyway?”

    “Oh, she’s outside somewhere,” replied her hostess. “Magda will bring her in later. She tells me my little pet is coming on to heat, but we’re all girls here!”

The three friends giggled, and Janette remarked that she’d never been entirely at ease in Rory’s company, sex-drive suppressing drugs or not.

   “Oh, that never bothered me!” Penelope told her. “He'd become quite excited in that way at nights in my bedroom when I’d come in naked from my bath. Poor thing; he just couldn't control his body's reactions to mine, that was blatantly obvious! I’d sometimes squat on the carpet and pet him through the bars of his cage. It was a little sadistic, but quite fun in a way, to rouse the poor thing in that way, knowing he was helpless. It gave me a queer little thrill!”

Giggling, she went on.

“Of course, that went by the board after I’d had him cut. But I still had a little fun with him,” reminisced Penelope, smiling at the memory. “I still allowed him to sleep in my bedroom then, and it was great fun when Rupert made love to me on my bed. Rupert said it gave him quite a lift at first, knowing Rory was watching us from his cage a few feet! It certainly seemed to put something of an edge on Rupert’s lovemaking!”

Her two friends felt an instinctive sense of distaste as they imagined the scene. Then they relaxed as the absurdity became clear to them. Why shouldn't Penelope and her boy-friend make love under the eyes of her male pet? Rory was only an animal - and a gelded animal at that.

    “It was something of a pity I had him castrated,” Penelope continued. “He wasn’t nearly as much fun after that, though he smelled better. But there it is,” she added philosophically. “It’s the sort of thing one does to male animals. He might have expected it sooner or later in our relationship.”

Penelope went on to explain how, at the age of just seventeen, Rory had insisted on acting as her dog, whether she accepted him or not.

     “I was in something of a quandary about it,” laughed Penelope. “I was only seventeen myself, and living in England in a remote cottage owned by the family. I was into the simple life and the joys of Nature at the time! But poor Rory was so insistent that I couldn’t refuse him, thinking he’d be fed-up with it in a week or two.”

She paused to sip her tea, her eyes fixed on the past.

    “But he wasn’t,” she went on quietly. “I did my best to treat him authentically; I kept him naked and I put a collar around his neck and fed him on scraps from a bowl on the floor. Although he could have done so at any time - and I wouldn’t have minded a bit - he never once tried to stand upright, or to talk, or to use his hands. I used to keep him chained up in the shed at nights and he must have been very cold. There was a huge heap of straw in the barn a few yards away, out of his reach, but he never used his fingers to detach his chain or remove his collar to go and snuggle down in it. I’d let him off the chain in the daytime, and he’d roam about the garden, or lie sleeping in the sun on the lawn. Whenever I went out, I’d leave the door unlocked, and he could have just walked in, took his clothes, dressed and left. But he didn’t; not after a week, or a month, or even after a year.”

    “Committed!” remarked Sandra lightly.

    “Very committed!” agreed Penelope dryly. “But what was I to do with him?” she appealed to them. “He stayed like that for two years, and by then I was really fed up with the simple life and wanted to get back to some sort of civilisation. I tried to reason with him; I even ordered him to snap out of it and become human again. But it was no good!”

She sighed, her eyes fixed on the past.

    “He’d never disobeyed me before, and he didn’t then, not really. I can see him now, sitting at my feet and staring up at me with blind devotion but no real understanding. You know,” she went on. “Just like our pets do now, as if they’ve forgotten how to understand our words. Poor Rory! He was so confused, just like a real dog who knows you want him to do something but can’t understand what it is!”

    “Of course,” Penelope said after a pause. “By then research was well underway into the human pet project, which I knew nothing about because no-one had told me!”

There was a note of an old grievance in her voice, and her friends looked at each other helplessly.

    “But we couldn’t!” Janette burst out. “No-one knew where you were except your parents, and they were always away sailing!”

    “That’s right!” Sandra said. “They were never here; the Countess was caring for your estate along with her own.”

    “Yes, of course,” Penelope acknowledged. “I forgive you!" she laughed. "But when I did find out about La Clinique and the human pet programme, and that wasn’t until several pets had already been delivered to their owners, I sent to them to send over a Psychologist to try and sort Rory out. And so they did, they sent me a gold-collar slave, no less!”

    “It was a farce!” she laughed. “And we both knew it! Rory wouldn’t answer her questions; he probably didn’t even grasp them by then, and she said this was the effect they’d been trying to achieve with their subjects at La Clinique and had only recently succeeded in doing. Rory, it seemed, had done it on his own by some sort of permanent autohypnosis or something of the sort. And then she concentrated her mind on me!”

She fell silent, reflecting.

    “She opened my eyes,” Penelope admitted. “By asking me, first of all, if I really thought of Rory as an animal now. I don’t remember even pausing to consider; I DID think of him as an animal, as the real dog he’d always acted as being, and I said so. The slave laughed, and told me that this, too, was an effect they tried to instil in the people who would deal with human pets.”

Penelope paused again.

    “Well, Mummy and Daddy disappeared in that Atlantic storm shortly afterwards, and I had to come home to look after the estate. I had Rory sent to La Clinique for the obvious physical alterations and some final psychological conditioning. Poor thing! He was flown over to La Clinique in a little wooden crate marked ‘Live animal in transit! This side up!’ It must have been awfully frightening for him!”

She laughed reminiscently before continuing.

    “Anyway, as you know I kept him with me as my pet until public opinion persuaded me to castrate him. We had a lot of fun, although I can see now that it wasn’t quite as amusing for others!”

    She grinned mischievously and called for tea to be served.

    “I tried to sell him, but male pets, even gelded and harmless ones like Rory, just aren’t wanted by anyone. It was a stroke of luck when the old dog chained at the gates finally died just before my new pet was due. I had Rory chained up in the dog’s place: that was three years ago and he’s been there ever since. I really must try to find time to visit him, but I suppose he’s forgotten me by now!”

                                    CHAPTER THREE

Magda left the kitchen, the swill-bucket dangling from her hand. Briskly, she walked across the big yard and through the stable yard where her fellow slaves were putting away the estate’s draught animals for the night, all except the Lady’s own personal beasts who’d be kept between the shafts for some hours yet in case Penelope wished to leave the estate that evening. Two other carts stood there, each with patient two-legged animals harnessed to them, and Magda recognised Sandra’s two geldings and the four smaller fillies of Janette. So the Lady’s friends had come visiting; she must hurry and feed Dog, and find the Lady’s pet lest she be wanted by her owner.

Leaving the stable yard, Magda took the old driveway for the entrance beyond which Dog was chained. Looking alertly from left to right, she spotted a little tanned pink rump vanishing into the shrubs some fifty feet ahead of her. Magda stopped and put down the bucket before unhooking a leash from her belt. “Bessie!” she called out. “Come here!”

The naked girl came reluctantly from cover on all-fours. Trained to be unable to consider any alternative to immediate, unthinking obedience, she bounded over to Magda and sat at the latter’s command. Magda clipped the leash to the girl’s collar, ignoring her tiny whimper of protest. Bessie didn’t like to be leashed, and she liked being muzzled even less, whining piteously when Magda rammed the blunt leather cone over her nose and mouth and secured it with its single strap.

Magda regarded her work with approval. A peasant girl, she disapproved of animals being allowed to roam freely: the creatures should be kept penned or chained when not required by their human masters, and even then  their movements should always be controlled with a leash or a halter. Picking up the bucket in her free hand, she turned away and tugged at the leash, sensing the pet coming to all-fours and following her. Magda increased her pace, hearing a whimper as the girl came upright in order to match her. Like all her kind, she didn’t like walking upright, with the most vulnerable and intimate parts of her body open to all eyes.

Hannah had gone inside and built up her fire when Magda arrived at the gates. She called out to the young slave-girl to come and take a cup of wine with her when Dog had been fed. Magda called back her agreement as she tied the end of Bessie’s leash to a rail of the fence surrounding the tiny garden, then she passed under the archway and out beyond the gates whilst the tethered girl watched her dolefully, curled up on the cold, bare earth where she’d been left.  

Rory had heard the voices from within the arch. He knew what they portended, and came eagerly from his kennel, his chain rattling on the ground behind him, and sat waiting for Magda to appear. At the sight of the bucket his mouth flooded with saliva as he came to meet her, his head down and his rump wriggling in welcome.

Magda stopped and stared balefully at the excited creature tugging at its chain, revelling in her power over it, her hand stealing to the whip hooked to her belt. Sensing her mood, the creature went down on its grimy belly and began to lick her shoes, whimpering in terror at her unspoken threat. Magda looked down in contempt at the grovelling animal at her feet, at the collar around its neck and the chain which kept it confined amongst its own ordure to the few square feet of barren earth where its life was spent. Dog! she thought scornfully; tame beast, chained up and helpless, and she wondered yet again how she’d allowed it to frighten her so badly on that terrible occasion in the flower bed more than three years ago. Well, it would frighten no more girls in that manner, not ever again! Kicking it aside, Magda emptied the contents of the bucket on to the bare ground and watched as it went down on its elbows and lowered its shaggy head to feed.

The dog-thing ate quickly and noisily, gobbling down the mess of raw and cooked vegetables, bits of stale bread, and uneaten morsels scraped from used plates, the whole greasy with rancid olive oil. Magda kicked  its water bowl to check its level, then turned away and went back through the archway. Seconds later, she sat before the fire with old Hannah, a cup of wine in her hand.

After a pleasant half hour, Hannah remarked that it was getting dark, and so it was, even as they watched. Both women rose and went outside, Hannah to close the gates for the night and Magda to untie the pet and return to the house. Bessie, her skin blotched red and blue with the cold, was pathetically glad to see Magda, rearing up to paw at the other girl’s waist until Magda cuffed her down. Magda said goodbye to Hannah and walked off, hearing the whine of the electric motor and the thud of the gates as they closed behind her.

Left alone, Rory lay in his kennel whimpering in desolation. This was by far the worst part of his daily existence, when the gates were closed, leaving him abandoned and alone in the darkness, forgotten by all those clustered about the light and warmth beyond the wall. Presently he fell into that half-doze, half light trance in which he spent so much of his life whilst outside the darkness grew and the temperature dropped. 

                                      CHAPTER FOUR

The three friends stood in Penelope’s hall, shrugging on the thick coats her slaves had brought to them. Penelope’s pet watched from the cage where Magda had put her for the evening, whilst Fifi, her leash held by a smiling slave, tugged and fretted in an attempt to investigate the other girl until her handler, with an apologetic glance at Fifi‘s owner, gripped her collar and forced down her head before administering a stinging slap on the struggling girl’s taut little buttocks. Janette smiled her approval and murmured something about her pet being over-excited. Taking the end of the leash, she hurried outside to join the others.

Lars, the estate's chief stableman, was waiting for them, smiling with pleasure at the sight of his young Mistress. Their various mounts, he assured them, had all been fed and watered; they were well rested and ready to be driven off.

Sandra and Penelope climbed into their seats, then waited whilst the load bed of Janette’s cart was lowered and their friend’s pet ushered into the little wire mesh cage in which she travelled. Janette, who intended to take her pet back to her house and would have to drive a further two miles to where the friends would be dining, went first. Flicking her whip at the haunches of her four eager little fillies, girls no taller than herself, she drove out of the stable yard and vanished into the night.

Sandra went next, her two geldings leaning hard into their harnesses, and Penelope followed. Penelope’s two fillies were bigger and stronger than the diminutive young women harnessed before Janette, but Janette was well satisfied with her mounts, arguing that four such little creatures were the equal in strength and stamina to any pair of middle-sized geldings or fillies - which indeed they were. Originally, the idea had been to acquire only those young people of greater than average size and strength. Even so, hopes that such comparatively large and powerful beasts would be capable of working alone for long periods proved false, and carts were swiftly adapted for two such creatures harnessed side by side. And that turned out to be as well, for the constant procession of human draught animals arriving from La Clinique were of all sizes, the only thing they had in common being their youth and fitness. And so, although two mounts harnessed together was the most common mode, it was not unusual to see four - or even six - of the smaller two-legged animals pulling a cart containing a single individual, whilst the biggest of the human beasts were reserved for pulling heavy loads, or for trudging round and round, yoked to a water pump or the like.

                              CHAPTER FIVE

It was nearly midnight when Penelope came to her senses. Rupert, bless him, had proposed to her at the Baron’s decorous party, going absurdly down on one knee to do so! Penelope had gravely accepted, and then spent the rest of the evening in a happy daze which had persisted after the party ended at eleven and she’d driven away to the laughter and congratulations of her friends.  For an hour she’d driven at random through the maze of tracks, and now she wondered where she was and why she’d reined her mounts to a stop. Peering about her, she tried to get her bearings.

  Of course! She’d stopped the cart at one of her favourite spots, on a headland overlooking the sea, although how long she’d been there she’d no idea. Her two mounts, waiting patiently to be driven on, were showing signs of restiveness, pawing at the ground with their feet and shaking their heads now and then in the apparent hope that the clinking and rattling of the metal clips on their bits would awaken their driver to her responsibilities.

The left-hand filly emptied her bladder, and the hissing of the girl’s urine on the ground brought her driver back to reality. Penelope knew now where she was; using her whip backhand and forehand, she dealt alternative swift blows across the haunches of her mounts, whipping them into a steady trot.

The two fillies ran on in the moonlight. A cross-roads came into view, and Penelope reined them back a little. Straight on, around two sides of her estate, was the way back to the entrance normally used, but the left hand fork, after passing the old entrance, would take her there just as easily, for she had no intention of waking her old slave to let her in. Tugging on the reins, she steered the two panting girls to the left with the vague notion of visiting her one-time pet in her mind.

Rory was waiting for her, warned by the rattle of the wheels and the creaking of leather. He stood in the bright moonlight, the dark line of his chain making a gentle arc from his collar to its staple, staring at the oncoming cart. But when Penelope drew her mounts to a halt and dismounted, he recognised her at once. Uttering a tiny mew of joy, he bounded forward, ignoring his tether to the extent that it checked him brutally, making him rear up on his hindlegs with his forelegs pawing vainly at the air.

Penelope tethered her off-side mount to the branch of a tree. Turning to her old pet, she took a few steps towards him, smiling with all her old fondness at his ecstatic excitement. As she came within his reach, Rory reared up to paw at her waist, and she cuffed him down out of force of habit before telling him to ‘Sit! Stay!’

Her old pet obeyed as always, and Penelope stooped to run a gloved hand down his back and thighs, grimacing ruefully at the dirt collecting on the pale, thin leather. He was lean, but fit and muscular, and she dismissed all thoughts of allowing him a longer chain. A six foot chain had been good enough for the dogs tethered here before him; as long as he was getting sufficient exercise there was no need to worry. No doubt he spent much of time as they had done, she thought vaguely; pacing endlessly back and forth out of sheer boredom.

Penelope continued to run her hand down Rory’s quivering back for some moments, noting his ecstatic wriggling and little whimpers of joy at her touch. Reinforcing his obedience with another command to ‘Sit!’ she straightened up and walked a few feet further on where she stooped again and peered into his kennel, wrinkling her nose against the smell of his body. There was nothing of the damp smell of rot; his sparse bedding was dry and that was another cause of worry off her mind.

Finally, Penelope nudged the water bowl with her foot, seeing a faint glimmer of reflected moonlight from the water within. Suddenly feeling cold despite her thick coat, she shivered. Satisfied Rory was being looked after adequately, she went at once to her cart, untied her tethered mount, and climbed into her seat, ignoring the desperate little whines of appeal from her old pet, now tugging frantically at his chain in an attempt to follow her. She whipped her tired fillies into a walk and then into a fast trot, careless about sparing their ebbing strength now that she was so close to home, and her last view of Rory was of him staring after her, his shoulders slumped in dejection.

Back at the house, Penelope didn’t tether her mounts outside the front door and send for a slave to lead them away. Instead, she drove them into the stable yard, surprising Lars and his underling, Justin, who were sitting around a glowing brazier, drinking wine and waiting for their Mistress’s return.

Despite their objections, Penelope insisted on helping them unhitch her two fillies, remove their harnesses, and rub them down with handfuls of straw until their fair skins glowed before leading them off and chaining them in the stall they shared. She helped Justin feed them, enjoying the warm breath and the feathery touch of their lips on her hand as they ate from her palm. After telling Lars to rest them tomorrow until she sent for them, Penelope made her way to the house to be welcomed by Hilda, who wouldn’t have dreamed of going to bed until her Mistress had returned.

Ignoring the sleepy mews of her caged pet, Penelope went into her living room where she accepted the congratulations of her Housekeeper on her engagement, smiling to herself at the efficiency of the slaves’ grapevine.

She didn’t stay up long. After dismissing Hilda and drinking the hot milk and brandy set out for her, Penelope took the little plate of dainty sandwiches left for her and went into her Hall where she ate them standing at her pet’s cage, getting the girl inside to beg for the crusts. Finally ready for bed, Penelope opened the cage door and called the excited girl to heel. Obediently, Bessie shadowed her Mistress up the stairs, along a broad corridor, and into the large, delicately furnished bedroom.

With Bessie installed in the wire mesh cage once inhabited by Rory, Penelope stripped off her clothing and went for a shower. Naked and dripping, she came back into her bedroom after a few minutes, drying herself vigorously with a huge, fluffy towel. Disdaining her nightwear, she climbed naked between the perfumed silk sheets of her bed, remembering as she did so the many occasions Rory had watched her from his cage. Moments later the lights dimmed and went out, leaving the room lit only by the reflected light of the full moon outside.

Penelope woke reluctantly, murmuring a drowsy protest. The moon, moving in its course, now shone directly through the window, its light falling full on her face. Swearing sleepily, Penelope slipped out of bed and walked to the window, intent on drawing the curtains. Struck by the beauty of the silver and black scene, she paused, looking out of the window at the old driveway, leading arrow-straight to the old wall beyond which Rory lay in his kennel.

He must be cold, she thought vaguely; there would be a hard frost in the morning, and, if the wind got up, possibly a heavy, short-lived snowfall later. But he must be used to it by now, after three years spent chained to his kennel. Shivering in the cool air, she closed the curtains. It was still light enough for Penelope to find her way back to her bed, light enough to see the pale body of her pet curled up in her cage. Slipping gratefully between the warm, scented sheets, Penelope drifted off into slumber.