Mary and Elizabeth

CHAPTER ONE

Crawling lethargically from her hot, stuffy kennel, Mary emerged into the fierce Californian afternoon sunlight and cowered instinctively as the sun's rays fell upon her back like the heat from a furnace. She had suffered agonies from sunburn in the first weeks of her captivity, but now the generous coating of dirt she'd acquired protected her fair skin from its worst effects. At the end of her chain she squatted to urinate, the liquid vanishing immediately into the parched, hard-packed soil. Drearily she looked around her at the familiar vista; the blank brick walls, broken only by the outlines of other, vacant kennels identical to hers, of the small yard she'd woken up in. She knew exactly where on her rambling old property she was; her house was no more than fifty yards away through the maze of barns and outbuildings which had been so useful as quarters for her canine guests. Her water dish was dry; her food dish empty except for the hard, dried crust of food around its edge on which the flies were perambulating, as they did upon the turds she'd deposited earlier that day. In a day or so the sun would dry them to a husk, then to a powder, and their constituents would form part of the dusty ground. Even the cramped and sticky heat of her kennel was preferable to this, and she padded slowly back inside to turn around and lie down, her head propped on her mitted hands, staring vacantly out into the glare of the sunlit yard. She found herself whimpering again; she had not expected it to be like this.

Only now was she beginning to realise that she'd always had reservations about the whole thing, but when Elizabeth, her long-sought for and newly acquired Mistress, had taken her up on her vaguely expressed desire to live and be treated like one of her own dogs for a whole month, and offered to install herself and her two live-in female slaves in Mary's large, remote farm-house for the duration, to look after her and her dogs and to conduct her affairs while she was temporarily out of action, the other woman's forceful personality had seemed to leave her no choice but to go through with it. And indeed, that first awakening from the sleeping draught administered to her by her Mistress had been delicious; to feel the collar around her neck and the weight of her chain, and to feel the warm, rough dirt under her naked skin. She had even gazed in delight at the thick leather mitts on her hands and savoured their animal-like helplessness.

But that now seemed a long time ago; surely the agreed month of her imprisonment must be nearly over? She had, at the beginning, made an attempt to keep some sort of record of the number of passing days, but the materials available to her were too limited, and her mitted hands too clumsy, and in the end she lost count completely. In this she was not aided by the sheer monotony of her new existence, where every day was exactly the same.

But surely the end was near, - and she cheered up a trifle when she recalled that her period hadn't started yet - when she would be able to stand upright, wear clothing, and above all to shower or bathe, for she was only too aware of her grimy, rank-smelling body and her long dirty hair, now matted where it fell around her shoulders with the food she couldn't prevent it dipping into when she ate from her bowl.

She dozed off, to wake to her ever-present hunger and thirst. The light had become grey and muted as one of the area's frequent thunder storms rolled in from the Pacific. She whimpered deep in her throat. As a human being she had enjoyed the spectacle of these late-afternoon Summer storms, seen from behind a large, reinforced plate-glass window in her air-conditioned living-room, a cold glass of Chardonnay in her hand and a delicious dinner cooking on the stove. Now, as an animal chained to a kennel, she saw them from a different perspective. True, she wouldn't be thirsty when it passed, for both her food and water bowls would be brimming, but the torrential rain would churn the surface of the patch of hard-packed earth her chain restricted her to into evil-smelling mud, and whenever she had to leave her kennel – and she would have to leave her kennel to empty her bowels and bladder - she would track it in and onto the thin layers of smelly old carpet she slept on.

The first loud crack of thunder from overhead made her cower in her kennel, as terrified as her own dogs would be at this very moment. The shocking glare of lightning pierced the gloom, and the rain hissed down, the heavy drops sending spurts of dust into the air until the ground became too wet to support them. The faint breeze, warm and humid until then, changed into a howling gale, driving sheets of rain down the length of the small yard, the spray from their passing soaking the bedding at the front of her kennel. The wind became cold, and the rain changed to hail as the centre of the storm passed over. Mary cowered deeper in her kennel as the hail hissed down to cover the surface of the yard in a thin mantle of white. Some of those hailstones were big and heavy, capable of rebounding from the ground and stinging her unprotected skin painfully as she'd found out though bitter experience.

The storm passed as suddenly as it begun; the hail abruptly stopped, and the mutter of the thunder retreated up the valley. The sun came out, but Mary resisted the temptation to slake her terrible thirst from the bowls the storm had left brimming with rain water. The ground was a mess of thin, smelly mud, but the sun was drying it rapidly; soon she would be able to go out and drink without getting the slimy stuff over her mitts, knees and feet.

The sounds of gurgling water draining from every surface ceased, the ground dried, and Mary scrambled out to her water bowl. Going down on her elbows, her forearms on the ground on either side of the bowl, she lowered her head and sucked and lapped noisily at the heavenly water, her dirty hair falling like a curtain around her head.

Raising her head at last, she shook it violently from side to side, scattering the excess water from her face and hair. The storm had cleared the air; the sun, though it shone as brightly as before, seemed to have lost its killing heat, and a cool breeze brought welcome relief to her sweaty body. The refreshing coolness made her restless; for some minutes she walked back and forth outside her kennel, her chain dragging along the ground behind her. Finally, with her arms and her knees shrieking for rest, she stopped and took up one the few positions she could now adopt without pain.

Her mind seemed unusually clear and she found herself remembering, with increasing uneasiness, the train of events which had led up to her present state.

It had all so seemed so easy at the time. She had been talking to Elizabeth on the Internet for a month, happy and excited to have found a Mistress at last, and longing to meet her. Her Mistress had been supportive and co-operative in discussing Mary's inmost fantasies, often suggesting exciting refinements of her own, and when Mary, after some hesitation, had mentioned her desire to live for a time like one of her own canine boarders, Elizabeth had offered to come over forthwith and make her fantasy into reality forthwith.

So far, so good; she thought. She'd half believed nothing would come of it, but Elizabeth, accompanied by two younger woman she'd casually introduced as her permanent live-in slaves, had driven up the very next morning in her huge SUV.

Events had followed a whirlwind course; in no time at all the details of Mary's ordeal had been settled, and the running of her business by her briskly efficient Mistress taken into her capable hands. Elizabeth had run Boarding Kennels of her own in the past, or so she'd said, and her confident manner had over-ridden any objections Mary may have had at the time. Acquainted in a remakably short time with all Mary's affairs, she had announced, in a manner that brooked no dissent, that she was ready to take charge that very moment, and that Mary should commence her month's 'holiday' as a dog that very afternoon.

It was as though she been hypnotized, thought Mary, carried along helplessly by the older woman's forcefulness and efficiency. Only six hours after their first meeting – their only meeting so far, she remembered now – Mary had woken up chained to the kennel where she'd been ever since. For the first time she wondered why Elizabeth had found it necessary to drug her at all; she could have been led on a leash to her temporary home, Had something been done to her which had necessitated her unconsciousness? She recalled awakening with a slight headache, which had soon abated, and with a slight soreness of the throat which passed in a day or so, but nothing else seemed to have changed. Unless, she thought, the restrictions on the bodily positions she could adopt, and the terrible pain which struck her if she tried to stand, or even to raise any part of her body more that about three feet from the ground. And it was the same pain which prevented her from moving any part of her body past an invisible line about twelve inches beyond the semi-circular limit of her six foot chain. For the first time she methodically explored in her mind the limits on her actions enforced by the pain which would punish her if she attempted to go beyond them. Apart from being unable to stand, or to extend any part of her body much beyond the end of her chain, her posture was limited to lying down, standing on all fours, and sitting with her legs folded under her with her buttocks resting on her heels and her hands on the ground in front of her knees to support her upper body. She had learned quickly that attempts to sit on her buttocks, or cross-legged, or in any manner adopted by human beings, brought instant, paralysing pain, and she wondered how this had been achieved. True, she vaguely remembered Elizabeth making some reference to restricting her possible postures to those of a dog, and of agreeing enthusiastically with her that this would lend authenticity to the experience. But how on Earth had Elizabeth done it?

The air was turning colder now as the sun set, and she crawled back into her kennel. Elizabeth wouldn't send a slave to water her that evening; she would guess the rain had filled her bowls. It would be tomorrow morning when Mary received the next visit from anyone at all, and that would be the slave sent to feed her. And what food! She'd expected to be fed the same stuff as the dogs, and so she had for the first few days. But then her daily meal had consisted of a thick, sour-smelling porridge, coarse, tasteless and gritty, along with uneaten scraps from their meals. She remembered her disgust and horror at the prospect of eating the smelly mess the first time the tall slave had slopped it into her feeding bowl from the battered plastic bucket she used to feed the dogs, but now she salivated at the thought of filling her belly. Hastily she wrenched her thoughts from the subject of food to the conduct of the only people she'd seen since her ordeal began – Elizabeth's two slaves who fed and watered her.

Two young women of about her own age, one short and dark, the other tall and thin, they had treated her with a casual brutality from the beginning. The very first time the short slave had come to her that first evening to water her, Mary had come out and greeted her in a playful fashion, jumping up at her as a dog might do. Her reward had been to be seized by her collar, her head forced down by the pressure of hard knuckles grinding into the back of her neck, and several unbelievingly painful blows from the short whip both slaves carried dangling from the leather belts they wore around the waists of their sleeveless russet dresses. Since then she'd given them both a wide berth, skulking fearfully in her kennel whenever they appeared with her food and water. And then there was the behaviour of the dogs, some of them old and regular residents well known to her, whenever they made of their rare appearances. After some initial confusion, they were beginning to regard her as an equal – if not an inferior – and she was frightened of them, tethered and defenceless against their powerful jaws and sharp teeth. Twice Bonny, in her human existence a favourite German Shepherd bitch of hers, docile and friendly, had interrupted her over her morning meal to examine the contents of her food bowl, poking her long muzzle into it and warning Mary off with a snarl and a show of long yellow teeth. Once the tall slave had arrived with her water bucket along with Duke – a young black Labrador – on a leash, and had let him lap from her bowl. Mary remembered her feeling of disgust as she been left to stare at the water the dog had left for her – but she had drunk it all the same.

She stirred restlessly on her thin, damp bedding; it was dark now and she could just make out the faint scattered glow from the house lights where Elizabeth was, no doubt enjoying a dinner cooked by her slaves. She was beginning to hate Elizabeth, suspecting that she actively enjoyed keeping her as a captive animal, dirty and stinking, outside in the darkness. Her thoughts returned to herself. She'd expected to be played with, and to be exercised, and experience all the activities she provided for her canine boarders, but instead she was kept chained up in this dreary place, a forgotten and neglected animal. How she wished her ordeal would end! Surely she MUST be released soon?