'Doggygirl.'  

                                                       'The Farm'

 

  The elderly Solicitor peered quizzically at Carlo over the rims of his half-moon spectacles as the young man read the simple document he'd just been given. Outside in the sunshine the inhabitants of the small market town went about their business and a trapped fly buzzed faintly against a window-pane.

 

    "I am quite certain that you will find that all is in order," he said dryly as the young man placed the document on the desk between them. "The estate has been valued, and all the necessary taxes paid. The whole affair was most simple, and has been completed with extraordinary dispatch. You are now the registered owner, and there is no reason why you should not move in immediately. Though you will find the living conditions a little, ah, primitive, I fear!" he added, permitting himself a wintry smile.

 

  Carlo rose, thanked him, and left. Sitting in his car, he read the copy of his late great-great-uncle's Will yet again. It was indeed a simple document, reflecting the old man's legendary terseness. Boiled down, it said quite clearly that the Testator willed all his worldly goods of whatever kind to Carlo Edward Morris, his sole surviving relative. There followed the address at which Carlo had been found by the the old man's Executors. And that was that! The Solicitor had even thoughtfully included a map of where the property was to be found. Carlo studied it carefully and drove away.

 

  The journey of twenty miles took a full hour of tortuous progress through a maze of narrow lanes, the country becoming bleaker and more sparsely populated the further he went. Towards the end Carlo was seriously beginning to think he'd taken a wrong turn as for several miles he drove along the badly surfaced road without seeing a single person or a dwelling of any kind. But finally he came upon a hamlet halfway up a narrow valley and there the road ended in a tiny square, lanes branching from it on all sides. He knew his dead relative's property was four miles further on, but which lane to take he had no idea.

 

  The hamlet, small as it was, boasted a pub which doubled as the village shop, and several old cars and battered tractors were parked behind it. Carlo drove his own car amongst them, parked, and went into the pub's sole and tiny bar. He found a round dozen grizzled and weaterbeaten men inside; their muttered conversations stopped as he came through the door and twelve pairs of inquisitive eyes tracked his progress to the bar.

 

  The Landlord proved to be as laconic as his customers, but when he'd pulled Carlo a brimming pint of the best bitter he'd tasted in his life, he responded readily to the latter's questions.

 

     "Old 'Arry Morris's farm?" he said thoughtfully. "Oh aye! Ah can tell thee 'ow to get theer. An' Ah can do better nor that!" he went on. Raising his voice he called out "Bill! Hast bin up an' fed them dogs o' 'Arry Morris's today?"

 

  A large middle-aged man stood up, threw  the last of his pint down his throat with a practiced movement, and came up to the bar. "Nay, Ted!" he said. "Ah wor goin' up when Ah come out of 'ere!"

 

    "Will tha tek this young chap up theer an' show 'im the way?"

 

    "Aye!" the man replied Then, turning to Carlo, he enquired, in the blunt fashion of his county, what his business was up at the farm.

 

  Carlo was frank and forthcoming, and when he'd explained the reasons for his presence, and they all knew why he was here and what for, the atmosphere improved markedly, aided by Carlo's offer of drinks all round.

 

    "The old bugger died just outside 'ere," Carlo was told by Bill. "He just fell off that old tractor of 'is, dead as a doornail! A'undred an' nine 'e wor, 'an as tough an' 'ard as an old brick!"

 

    "Aye!" confirmed another man. ''It wor me wot found 'im. An' me an' Bert took 'is ratty ol' tractor back to 'is place after."

 

  Eager voices provided Carlo with the full details of his uncle's decease, It was all very simple. A doctor had been sent for, had found nothing at all suspicous about the sudden death of a centenarian known to drink a bottle of Scotch daily. His Solicitor had been informed, his Will opened and read, and that was that. Meanwhile, until other arrangements could be made, Bill had offered to visit the place daily and feed the old man's two dogs.

 

  That was all there was to be said; Carlo ordered and paid for a further round of drinks, and it was with a buzzing head that he followed Bill from the bar when the latter said he was going up to the farm. Minutes later he was following Bill's noisy old pick-up along the lane out of the village.

 

  Four miles on through an endless succession of gloomy pine woods, the lane ended in a square of cracked concrete on which stood a large  wooden shed. Bill stopped, got out of his pick-up, and unlocked the shed door. He vanished into the dark interior, a single-cylinder engine ground into life, and he emerged at the wheel of a tall and antique tractor.

 

     "Put tha car in t'shed," Carlo was told. "Tha'll not get it up track. 'Ere!" A set of keys was tossed to him. "Lock up t'shed, an' unlock t'big gate ower theer!"

 

  He did as he was bid, noting that the wide gate which barred the narrow track leading to the farm was reasonably new and in remarkably good repair. The pine trees on either side were grown so close together that a cat might barely squeeze between their trunks, and  it ocurred to Carlo that his relative had valued his privacy. He said as much to Bill as he stood by his side on the steps up to the driver's cabin. Bill, spinning the huge steering wheel with expert hands, grinned across at him. "Oh, aye!" he bellowed over the noise of the engine. "Tha could well say that, lad! Wait til tha sees t'farm!"

 

  A mile further on the track ended at huge wooden double doors set in a forbidding wall fully twelve feet high. At Bill's direction Carlo leapt down and unlocked the doors. They swung open easily on well-oiled hinges, and Bill drove in and stopped his engine.

 

  Carlo barely had time to register the big open yard surrounded by outbuildings, or the long, low house it fronted, before two black Labradors ran barking in excitement towards the two men. They were friendly and amiable creatures, and they and Carlo soon became friends. Bill led the way into an open fronted shed in which stood a steel manger, one of its partitions full of water. The countryman took a large tin of dogfood from a well-stocked cupboard, placed it upon the bench that ran along one wall and picked up a rusty tin-opener. "Here, lad!" he addressed Carlo. "Tha'd best feed 'em from now on - so's they get ter know thee!"

 

  Carlo complied, the dogs fawning at his feet, and when he tipped the tin's contents into the dry partition of the manger they nuzzled his hands before eating. "No need to gi'e 'em water," Bill told him. "T'trough's fed from t'stream up above. But don't tha drink that - there's plenty o' good water in t'well." And Carlo was shown where it was, and the location of the astonishingly modern and powerful electric generator.

 

    "Well," said Bill at last. "Tha's got all th' keys to t'place, an' tha knows what tha's doing, so Ah'll be off! Nay, lad, 'tis nobbut a mile down t'track, and Ah'll not put yer to trouble o' takin' me down on tractor."

 

  He insisted on walking back to his pick-up, in spite of Carlo's objections. Finally, as they went to part company, Carlo's hand went instinctively to his wallet. Bill saw the motion, and interpreted it correctly. He burst into good-natured laughter. "Nay, lad!" he said again. "Ah'll not tek tha brass for act o' common neighbourliness. Tha's a good straight-forward lad, and us'll all get on 'appen tha stays 'ere. Us 'ave few words an' no aid fer strangers as a rule, but the ol' man, miserable ol' bugger as 'e wor, wor one o' us - an' that meks thee one o' us too! Ne'er mind gi'ein' me tha' brass; gi'e us yer 'and like a man!"

 

  They shook hands solemnly and exchanged goodbyes. When he'd shut the big doors behind the departing countryman, Carlo walked across the yard to the house. A large porch had been built out from the kitchen. After finding the key to its door, Carlo entered and unlocked the stout oak door to the kitchen. Inside he found it amazingly neat and clean for the kitchen of so solitary and elderly a man. It was sparsely furnished, but there was a large old-fashioned Aga, and he lost no time in fuelling it from the large basket of split logs by its side and lighting it. He put a kettle of water on to boil for tea, and went on a short voyage of exploration. There was no refrigerator, of course; but there was a large, cool larder and an astonishly large selection of tinned food, and even six bottles of good quality Scotch in a cardboard box on a shelf. Feeling considerably more cheerful, he found tea -- leaf, not bagged -- sugar and tinned milk and hurried out to the boiling kettle.

 

                                                          'The Secret.'

  Carlo spent an astonishingly comfortable night in his late uncle's bed, still neatly made by the old man on his last morning on Earth. He rose early, with a good appetite. Having satisfied his hunger, and re-fuelled the Aga, he took a mug of tea into his uncle's Study where he went straight to the big desk to admire it. It wasn't genuine, of course, but one of the imitations so popular with the romantic Victorians, for it contained a secret drawer which could be open by the pressure of a hidden spring. He scanned through the few and mundane documents the desk contained, all of which had been inspected by his uncle's Executors, then, in the vague hope that they either hadn't known about the secret drawer or hadn't bothered to open it, he reached into a pigeon hole and pressed a tiny button. The hidden drawer slid open by his left knee, and it contained, much to his surprise, a large and battered ledger upon which rested an equally old and battered leather dog collar. He took out both and opened the ledger on the desk before him.

 

  Instead of the columns of neat figures he'd expected to see, he found himself reading a sort of diary of events of almost eighty years ago, and it made sinister and disturbing reading, too. It was written in his uncle's old-fashioned copper-plate, and it began thus:

  'June 14th 1930. Morning.  The bitch has told me all. She taunted me with her infidelity. Now she is upstairs, packing her tainted rags, preparing to leave today. But she shall not leave today; she shall never leave.'

 

  Carlo felt a cold thrill of horror. He knew 'the bitch' his uncle had referred to. It was an old scandal in his family; the old man had married a woman of little less than half his age. Only a few months had elapsed before he discovered her true character and threw her out, never to be heard of again. Now Carlo, whose own father had been yet unborn at the time, began to feel a terrible presentiment. He read on.

 

  'Evening. All has gone satisfactorily. I am no Surgeon, but I am still a tolerable Butcher. Such simple operations as I carried out on her will heal in a week or so. I have disposed of her personal belongings - her shoes and her clothing. She will never need either again.'

 

  The next entry was exactly a week later.

 

  'June 21st. Morning. 'The bitch is healed, and ready to take her place with her own kind. I removed the dressings from her new paws -- for such they now are. She will never caress a lover with her long fingers again -- an hour ago and found them healthy and free from pain. As for the slight incisions I made to shorten the tendons in her groin and behind her knees, they healed some days ago. My cropping of her nose is healed too. Now I must choose her future, since she is no longer of capable of choice. She will find she is animal-helpless when I allow her to awake, incapable of escape from a simple pen. Perhaps I may start keeping pigs again; she could share their sty. But no; she was always a bitch, and I shall take her to her new home in order that she recovers consciousness in the company of her sisters.'

 

  'June 22nd. Morning. Last night I drank too much, enjoying imagining her horror at her present (and now permanent) condition. Naked, dumb, unable to straighten her legs (or 'hind legs', I should write; for now her slim, smooth arms are become her fore-legs) the delicate hands she'd been so proud of now mere shapeless clubs of flesh. That soft voice with which she had beguiled me is silent for ever; now she is only able to grunt, whine and whimper in the manner of a beast. She shall learn the feel of the collar around her slender throat, and become used to the constant, dragging weight of the six foot chain which keeps her tethered to her kennel. That tender skin she has spent so much time pampering will be permanently dirty, and will become coarsened by exposure to the weather. In the heat of summer she will lie panting on the dirt before her kennel surrounded by her own ordure, a paw over her face to ward off the flies; in the winter she will shiver with cold on her dirty straw, curled into a ball to preserve her body heat and only emerging into the frosty air to relieve herself and to eat and drink. Her body will become used to it over the years. I shall go to her presently; the other bitches I shall allow their limited freedom as always, but she shall be chained to her kennel as long as she lives.'

 

  'June 22nd. Later. The look on the bitch's face when she first saw me was one of understandable confusion mixed with a relief which she soon learned was in vain. Only the good God himself knows what had passed through her mind when she'd discovered what had been done to her. I poured food from the bucket into the trough she would share with her sister-bitches, all the while ignoring her various expressions of anger, fear, horror and insenate, helpless rage. I have no pity for her; she had always been an animal on two legs, now she shall live her animal's life on four, chained to her kennel throughout -- as shall the pup she is bearing. I shall commence her training tomorrow. Hunger and the whip shall tame her!'

 

  'July 26th. Afternoon. She has begun the long journey to full acceptance of her animalhood -- rage alternating with apathy, culminating in blessed forgetfulness of her former humanity. Today I took down to her kennel a large mirror in which to show her herself. She took one glance, and relapsed into sobbing helplessly at the sight. Indeed, she is no great beauty as a human being now (to put it mildly!) though as a dog she is a graceful and elegant animal; or would be if the filth was washed from her body and her hair cleaned and combed. She has learnt to eat from the trough, snuffling in it for what the other bitches have left, for they do not allow her to eat until they have finished. They evidently regard her as very much their inferior!'

 

  'August 30th. Morning. The bitch is now almost three months into pup -- with her paramour's child, as she boasted to me --  and her pregnancy seems to be proceeding without complication: which is as well, for I am no Mid-wife. She is thoroughly tame now, and comes to me on my command, even for the regular whippings I give her, and I have taught her to join the other bitches in begging for scraps which I bring them from my meals. She does so clumsily but willingly, competing with her sisters for my attention. She no longer tugs at her chain in frustration, having learnt to accept its permanence. I inspected her neck for signs of chafing caused by her collar; there were none, the oils from her unwashed skin have kept the leather smooth and supple and it rotates around her neck freely when her chain pulls on it in different directions as she moves around on the small patch of bare soil that is her whole world. Her whole world now, and for the rest of her life.'

 

  'December 10th. Morning. A horrible night; dark, windy, cold and wet. I woke in the early hours to answer a call of nature -- as we drinking men are wont to do, alas! -- and while I stood pissing I dwelt long and pleasureably on my mental image of my wife at that moment; out there in the shrieking darkness, naked and shivering on the damp, stinking straw of her kennel. The bitches she shared her kennel with would have deserted her for the barn a few yards away where they would be asleep in the warm, dry straw. A few yards to warmth and shelter! I pictured her looking at it over that short distance, I imagined her straining at her tether in the cold rain, striving with hopeless longing to cross those few yards. She and her chain would have many a tussle, but it would always win. In the end she would accept it as as much part of herself as one of her limbs.'

 

  'February 27th 1931. Afternoon. My wife is greatly swollen with her pup, and shall drop it quite soon. An interesting development: my other two bitches have become much more friendly towards her as her pregnancy has advanced. They have both pupped before, and  -- who knows? -- they may have sisterly feelings towards another animal in that condition!'

 

  'March 15th. The bitch dropped her pup, another bitch like herself, last night while I was in bed. There was little I could have done had I indeed been present, as for the last day or so she has not left her kennel where she'd lain with one or both of her sister-bitches alongside her, comforting her by licking her face and rubbing their flanks against hers. That was how I left her yesterday evening; when I returned this morning her pup was already suckling at her breast where she lay in the straw. The little pink body was fairly clean; the blood and slime of childbirth had been licked off it by her tongue and the tongues of the other bitches. The umbilical cord had obviously been chewed through by one of her companions, and a short severed section dangled from the pup's round little belly. The afterbirth had evidently been eaten by one or all of the bitches, for which I was profoundly grateful, having all the male squeamishness in these things. I made sure to put more food in their trough, which I would continue to do for the next few weeks while the bitch was lactating. Once her pup was weaned, I intend to remove it and keep it in the run next to its mother's.'

 

  'April 20th. A fine, warm and sunny day. The bitch brought her pup out their kennel for the first time, carrying it in her mouth, her front teeth gripping it firmly and, apparently, painlessly by a loose fold of skin at the back of its neck. It lay on its back, its plump little legs waving in the air while its mother ate hugely from the trough in the company of the younger of the other bitches who was lactating too, a condition caused by some obscure chemical signal shared between female animals -- or so my researches inform me. I watched them for some time, noting that the pup suckled both from the swollen udders of its mother and those of the other lactating bitch as seemed most convenient to it. I wondered what my wife thought when she saw her daughter being suckled by a dog in the dirt, but when she met my eyes hers were dull with animal indifference.'

 

  Carlo read on in fascination, his horror tempered by guilty excitement. He'd always wanted a 'doggygirl' and he and his present girl friend often played this scenario before sex. His uncle described the salient events: how the little girl had become more active and learned to crawl about on all-fours ('Just as well,' his uncle had remarked, 'for I shall operate soon to prevent the pup from ever walking on two legs!')  and how she had been fitted with her first collar before her mother's eyes ('To show her that her child would be raised and treated as an animal!' was his uncle's vindictive comment) and how, once she'd been weaned, the pup had been taken from her frantic parent and chained to the kennel in the next run, in the plain view of her mother. His uncle described how the child's mother continued to produce milk after her daughter was taken from her, and how the other bitches, as he called them, suckled fom her to relieve the pressure in her breasts -- or  'udders', as he delicately put it -- until she stopped lactating. He wrote of his operations on the little girl, of his shortening the tendons in her legs, of his work on her tiny hands ('So much easier than her mother's!') of his cutting her vocal chords and amputating her nose.

 

  His uncle's entries became further and further apart in time, mostly they seemed to be gloating accounts of his first victim's few fully lucid periods. Apparently they now lasted only hours, and his uncle described vindictively her despair and misery. 'When she fully realises what she is,' he wrote,' a bitch chained to a kennel. When she sees the daughter she betrayed me for staring back at her through the bars separating their runs, growing up as a chained dog, her despair and hopelessness exalt me!'

 

  Carlo, lost to the world, read on, every now and then guiltily and shamefully aware of his own sexual arousal by the narrative. The old man described with relish another humiliation he inflicted on his faithless wife. 'As in all female beasts of her age she is sexually active (or more than active, as I have bitter cause to know!) and there is no male of her outward species to satisfy her lusts. Well, I shall oblige her -- if a male of her true inner species can be persuaded to mate with her.'

 

  Later on; 'I have put in with her two young males. The other bitches are now both too old to bear puppies and haven't come on to heat, the new bitch I bought at Totnes Fair she has not yet met. The dogs are young and inexperienced; at that age when they attempt sexual intercouse with one's leg. We shall see!'

 

  'She is definitely interested! She teases them, and has gone as far as to turn her back on them presenting her glistening genitals, wriggling her rump in blatent invitation. Coquettishly, she allows them to sniff her vagina, and to investigate it with their noses, but when they attempt to mount her she promptly sits on her haunches. The dogs withdraw, snarling with frustration. Then she begins again -- but each time she comes closer to the point of no return when her fundamental animal nature will betray her.'

 

  'She is on heat as I thought no woman could be. The odour of sex permeates the atmosphere. It cannot be long now!'

 

  'It has happened at last -- and I was fortunate enough to observe it. I was walking around the corner of the barn, a bucket of feed in my hand, when I saw her turn her back. Her swollen vagina positively gleamed with lubricating fluid and the excess oozed down the inside of her thighs. When the paws of the larger dog landed on her shoulder blades she staggered before going down on to her elbows, lowering her upper body and raising her buttocks. The dog, panting with excitement, with its furry member stiff and hard, blindly searching for the orifice it was designed for. I saw her move her hips slightly to guide it, and it yelped with excitement as it plunged into her. Its thighs pumped vigorously -- as did hers -- and, a few seconds later, when it had spent itself and withdrawn, the smaller dog took its place. Again she moved her haunches to guide the tip of its member between the lips of her vagina, again the swift, animal mating was accomplished. I took a step forward, deliberately making more noise than necessary. The dogs, sitting with their heads down licking their genitals, raised their heads to look at me. As did she; and I was delighted to see the human awareness in her eyes. She had voluntarily mated with the dogs; she knew it, and she knew that I had seen it, and that I knew it too. To my delight she flushed a deep crimson in embarrassment and shame before giving a strangled little sob of despair and fleeing into her kennel out of my sight. Knowing that she was in one of her increasingly short lucid periods,when she could understand my speech and reason like a human being, I could not resist taunting her. 'Don't be embarrassed, my dear!' I called out. 'You're only doing what you're best at. You always were an animal; why shouldn't you be mated on a chain with other animals? Your cub will soon be be at puberty; would you like me to have you both mated together by the same dog, chained side by side? Soon you shall see her tugging at her chain, desperate to mate with any male beast she sees -- just like you!' A stifled sob was all the reply I received from within her kennel.'

 

 

 'March 15th 1941. My wife's pup -- the sole offspring she shall ever have -- is ten years old today. She is a lively little creature, and spends many hours trotting back and forth the short distance her chain allows her, and she enjoys the company of the other puppies who come in to play with her, for I keep the barred door of the runs open most of the day. Sometimes I wonder if she envies them their comparative freedom, for when they play in her run beyond her reach she strains at her chain and whines desolately, and when they run off and leave her she sits and looks after them hopelessly. But I doubt if she can envisage being able to follow them; having spent her entire conscious life on a chain she must believe it the natural order of things to be confined to the tiny area of bare soil which is all she will ever know of the great world. Having no other example to follow than that of the dogs (and of my wretched wife chained to her kennel in the next run) she imitates them in everything, adopting their canine postures as well as she can with her very different physique, although it is astonishing how she can curve her back into an almost perfect circle, even to the extent of being able to lick the skin between her lower thighs. But this, of course, is the result of her spine being exceptionally flexible; it has never been compressed by the constant burden of her upper body.  Her behaviour is typical of the canine species, she whines and whimpers for my attention, and she enjoys going through the repertoire of simple tricks I have trained her to do. I punish her occasionally, of course, just as I do the other dogs, and, like my wife, she has learned to cower in terror in her kennel when she sees me enter her run with the whip in my hand. Then, exactly like her mother, she comes from her kennel to be whipped at my command, trembling with fear; and when her punishment is over she fawns at my feet, whining piteously.'

 

 'As for her mother, her temporary periods of human lucidity have stabilised. She is mated two or three times a year, not nearly often enough to satusfy her lust, and now she shows no signs of embarrassment. Indeed, lucid or not, she strains at her chain whenever she scents the other bitches come on heat, often turning her back and presenting her haunches to any male dog who passes the end of her run. Well, she is only fulfilling her natural function, and she always was a brazen bitch.'

 

  At this point Carlo closed the ledger hastily. His penis was so shamefully stiff and swollen that he was obliged to stand and walk about for a few moments before it subsided. He went into the kitchen, filled the kettle and put it on the Aga to boil, and then went out to look for the dogs. There was no sign of them, and he went back into the kitchen where he made his tea and cooked himself an eccentric meal of beef stew followed by cheese and crackers. Afterwards he went into the study and retrieved the ledger. Bringing it into the kitchen, he left both doors open in case the dogs turned up to be fed, and began to read.

 

  His uncle went on to describe his unfaithful wife's daughter's first mating at the age of thirteen.

 

  'The little beast had menstruated several times -- as the blood between her thighs and her smell indicated -- and it was time for her to be bred. (Though bred is not the correct term, for no issue could come of this mating.) 'Trixie', as I had named her, had lived with the other dogs all her life, but for this occasion I closed the normally open gate of her run and put in with her a yearling dog I'd selected as being nearest to her in subjective years and physical development. They knew each other well, and lived amicably together in their run, cramped though it was for two such young and active animals. But I walked the male as often as possible on his leash, and their ordeal was not to last long. As was normal, my other bitches came on heat within two days at the behest of subtle chemical signals, the little beast for the first time, and her mother amongst them. (She was fortunately at the end of a lucid period, and she was able to watch throughout. I still savour her look of horror, hopelessness and despair as she watched her daughter sniff at and lick the genitals of her puzzled male run-mate, and display her own genitals to him in open and innocent invitation.)'

 

  'I enjoyed the antics of the two virgin animals, both the male and the female, and I hoped the little bitch's mother was appreciating them too. (But I fear she was not; her brief moment of humanity had passed; in heat she'd reverted to her natural animal behaviour, crouched with her haunches raised to any male who wandered by -- exactly as she'd behaved when she'd been human, in fact.)'

 

  'The young dog had by now scented the pheromones of the females of his own species, and his sexual excitement was evident. But he was at a loss; the scents of his familiar female companion (whom he'd known all his short life) were subtly different. Yet they were close enough to those of the bitches of his own species to excite him, and the postures she was adopting were so oddly intriguing, that he was beside himself with confusion and longing. Little 'Trixie' whined and whimpered in excitement. She nuzzled the male's genitals and licked his stiff, fuzzy member with such abandon that I feared she might cause him to ejaculate prematurely. Then she stood in front of him and licked his muzzle before turning her back and going down on her elbows, raising her grimy little pink rump invitingly. The dog was panting with excitement by now; his body was urging action. If only he knew what to do! He sniffed the hairless haunches before him uncertainly, licking his companion's cleft and probing her glistening vagina with his nose. In response, she lowered herself a little and shuffled backwards, attempting to push her rump between his fore legs. Uncertainly, the young dog placed his front paws on her buttocks. She lowered her body a little more, butting her haunches insistently against his lower chest. Off balance, he was obliged to walk his front paws forward on her back. The little bitch continued to reverse slowly, her lower legs from her knees downwards passing  between his hind legs, and when her rump was under the dog's hairy belly she straightened her thighs, forcing the dog to raise himself still further on his hind legs and move his fore paws forward on to her shoulder blades, with his belly was now resting on top of her haunches. She opened her upper legs slightly to part her buttocks, and pressed her rump back against the dog's genitals.'

 

  'Fascinated (and, perhaps, a little repelled) I came up to the bars of their run and stooped for a closer view. The bitch was in the throes of sexual excitement. Panting and drooling, her sparse little bush of pubic hair dripping with the lubricating fluids from her vagina, she moved her knees still further apart, widening her cleft still more. The dog's ramrod stiff member, glistening with his own lubricating juices and with a milky drop of sperm on its tip, probed urgently for its matching orifice. I saw its tip brush the lips of her vagina at which the bitch jerked her rump sharply backwards. The dog's strangled bark of surprise, triumph and ecstasy was simultaneous with the bitch's little yelp of pain as she was penetrated for the first time.'

 

  'It was all over in seconds, of course. Spent, their flanks heaving in unison with their efforts, the two animals remained in position, the dog now drooped on the bitch's back with her supporting his weight. Finally he tried to withdraw, but he was young and she was tight and it was several minutes before they disengaged from each other. The bitch slowly straightened her elbows, raising her upper body to the horizontal. The inside of her thighs were streaked with her blood and gleaming with the dog's sperm seeping from her vagina. After fully recovering her breath, she slowly squatted and urinated where she stood before moving off awkwardly to the trough where she lowered her head to drink. Her recent sexual partner, who had been complacently licking her blood from his genitals, trotted over to sniff at the damp patch of ground where she'd just emptied her bladder. He seemed to like the spot, for he raised a hind leg and issued of a stream of yellow urine, milky with his sperm, onto the same patch of soil. Then he trotted over to where she stood lapping thirstily. He sniffed her cleft, and she made to pull away, but he only put out his long, thin tongue and gently licked the insides of her thighs. Then he joined her at the trough. I left them curled up side by side in the dirt outside her kennel.'

 

 'On my way I paused to glance at my wife. She had, it seemed, been enjoying a lucid period throughout, and, though the rags of her remaining humanity must have been horrified at the willing coupling of her daughter with a dog, her own innate bitch nature had been too powerful to prevent her pawing the bars of her run to reach the dog and slake her own lust. Now she lay staring wistfully through the bars at the satiated couple in the next run, wriggling her haunches against the dirt in a vain attempt to satisfy her own lust.'

 

  The next entry was dated a year later.

 

 'At last I have fulfilled my ambition of mating both bitches with the same dog at the same time, and, to my good fortune, my wife was lucid throughout. In this period of Spring Nature is at her most fecund, and my dogs respond in their own manner. All the bitches, both the real and artificial are on heat, and the sequestrated males as frantic with sexual longing as the females. I had selected my chosen dog with care; young but experienced, he had often served two bitches in quick succession. After shutting all the other bitches in their runs, but leaving open the doors of the runs in which my wife and her daughter were chained, I led the big dog into the yard.

 

 'He tugged hard on his leash, eager to get to work, and when I released him he ran straight to the runs of his own kind and pawed frantically at the barred doors. Door after door he investigated, and then he came to the open runs at the end of the yard. After sniffing the air doubtfully, he ran down my wife's run to where she awaited his attentions. First, of course, there was the little ceremony of sniffing each other's muzzles and hind-quarters; then, with the dog satisfied that this was indeed one of the same oddly-shaped hairless bitches he'd been brought up with, and that she was sexually receptive, he prepared to get down to business. In this he was aided quite brazenly by my wife, who turned and went down on her elbows to present her haunches to him.'

 

 'He took her in the swift and brutal manner she was now accustomed to; when he withdrew to lie panting on the ground, my wife turned and lowered her head to lick his genitals with the obvious idea of encouraging him to another mating. But he withdrew beyond her reach to recover; disappointed, she sat on her haunches and gazed longingly at his prone body.'

 

 'All this time my wife's daughter had been beside herself with frustration, rising on her hind legs and pawing desperately at the bars dividing her run from that of her mother. The dog, now recovered a little from his exertions, raised his head to gaze at her with sudden interest. Rising to his feet, he shook himself, then went to investigate the occupant of the next run. Behind him, my wife hurled herself forward in desperation, her front paws off the ground and her chain as rigid as a steel bar. But the dog ignored her increasingly hopeless whimperings and trotted slowly down the other run to her daughter.'

 

 'This time their introductions were more prolonged; the dog was no longer so frantic, realising that these bitches were at his disposal with no other males around to compete for their favours. But my wife's daughter was not so patient; she leapt at him, eager to investigate his sexual readiness. To my amusement, the dog began to tease the frantic little bitch, if it was possible to describe his behaviour as such. He sat just beyond the limit of her chain and watched her scrabbling frenziedly at the hard ground with her little front paws, trying to gain every fraction of an inch she could. Panting with frustration, she finally sat back, her flat chest heaving with effort. The dog lay down, his head on his front paws, and regarded her with tantalising interest.'

 

 'Then she turned her back on him and went down on her elbows to wriggle her little rump at him invitingly. Her vagina was distended; its pink interior glistening with her juices and her pubic hair dripping with moisture. The dog yawned. Then he rose and sauntered leisurely up to her. Still he refused to satisfy her lust, confining himself to licking the inside of her thighs and probing her cleft with his nose. Whining with excitement, she shuffled slowly backwards until her chain checked her; then the dog withdrew. Over and over again this little comedy was repeated for my entertainment. All the time her mother, like her daughter before her, was scrabbling at the bars of her run whimpering for the dog's attention.'

 

 'He was becoming more interested as his sexual potency recovered and on the next occasion my wife's daughter offered her cleft he took her in a swift and businesslike manner. Sated at last, he paused to drink from her trough and left her run to go and lie down in the barn, leaving her lying panting on the ground, staring after him. Her mother, after uttering a little sob of frustration, lay down by her side, separated from her daughter only by the bars of their runs.'

 

 Another entry followed.

 

  'August 25th 1946. Morning. The older bitch has gone blind due to an untreated eye infection, doubtless caused by the flies which pester the two bitches throughout the summer. My own fault; I clip short their tangled, filthy manes every two years or so and I neglected to leave the fringe of hair over the the older animal's forehead to ward off the flies on the last occasion. It is of no importance; my wife still manages to find her trough and the entrance to her kennel, and I have discovered an amusing pastime in which I toss small items -- sometimes morsels of food, sometimes pieces of earth -- through the bars to within the reach of her chain. She investigates each sound of their landing, of course; and her chagrin when she finally fastens her drooling lips on a piece of worthless soil is most amusing.'

 

 'Now that I consider the matter, it is fortunate that neither animal has suffered too badly from parasitic infections to date. They are frequently infested by fleas, of course, but these are dog fleas and do not thrive on human blood. There are no available human parasites to infest them, I am glad to say.'

 

  There were few entries remaining to cover the next forty-three years and the penultimate one was dated some twenty years before the old man's death. It made horrifying reading.

 

  'June 21st 1989. Afternoon. This day, the fifty-ninth anniversary of her entry into the life she was always meant for, and the forty-third year of her blindness, at the human age of seventy-eight years, my wife died. It was very sudden, and quite unexpected. When I'd seen her that morning she'd been lying curled maternally around Blackie's pups; only four hours later a frantic Blackie appeared in my kitchen, whining desperately for my attention. When I responded, she had led the way to their shared run where the old bitch lay stiff and cold at the end of her chain. Ben, my sole remaining dog, was hanging around uselessly -- the very image of a male animal -- while Trixie, my wife's daughter-bitch, was pushing her face against the dividing bars, staring at her mother's inert body and whimpering pitifully. Blackie's two tiny pups, meanwhile, were huddled in the kennel whining to be fed. I took the pups and put both them and Blackie into Trixie's run. She and Blackie, their composure restored now that a human being was present, went into the kennel and lay down to suckle the hungry pups. Ben backed off in evident relief as I stooped painfully and examined the body. She was dead -- no mistake about that! --  though for no reason I had the wit or training to discover. I regret to say that I swore at the prospect of the work before me. But all had been worked out years before, and, though I am now an old man, I was still strong enough to tie a rope around her ankles and drag her body, bumping and scraping over the hard ground, to the midden. There I left her, in a fitting place for the corpse of an animal, for the insects, birds and small scavengers of the forest. Her bones I shall collect once the flesh has been stripped from them;  ground-up, they will be a valuable source of calcium for the other dogs.'

 

  'I had to remove her collar, of course; and it came as a shock to me to recall that it was exactly fifty-nine years to the day since I'd buckled it around her neck. I unclipped her chain -- the chain that had kept her tethered within six feet of her kennel for the greater part of her life, and I thought it was a pity that she, and all of her sex, were not kept chained up from birth.'

 

  Carlo's flesh crawled at the old man's cold-blooded and matter-of-fact account of the death of the woman he'd kept as an animal for so long, and at the brutal and horrifying manner he'd disposed of her body. He turned the page to the last entries, his interest quickening when he saw the date; the first anniversary of the death of his unfaithful wife.

 

  'June 21st. 1990. Morning. A full year since the old bitch died - amazing! Last night I sat over my Scotch and mused long on an ideal world where all women, of whatever age and condition, were muted, and their meddling hands amputated at birth. They would be kept, naked, collared and dumb, in cages or chained to kennels, and brought out only for the sexual needs of their male owners, and to fulfil their only other useful function -- the propagation of males. Their male children would be taken from them once weaned, to be raised amongst men by men; their female pups would be humanely disposed of if surplus to the requirement to ensure a constant stock of young and healthy female breeding beasts. Women would be bought and sold like the cattle they are, and few would survive their early twenties when they begin to lose the bloom of youth. Before I went drunk to my bed I quoted to myself what I remembered of the wise words of Thomas Otway. 'Whose face launched a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium? Who cost Mark Antony the World? Woman! Damned, deceitful Woman!'

 

  'Now that my canine establishment is reduced to three -- my dog, Ben; and my two bitches, Blackie and Trixie -- I shall not increase it again. As time passes, and the short lives of dogs takes its toll, only I and Trixie will be left. Well, I am old and grow tired, and Trixie is perfectly at ease chained up in her run -- as, indeed, she should be after fifty-nine years!' 

 

  'January 1st 2001. A new millenium; and, no doubt, not much different from the old one. Wars, and rumours of wars; much as usual, each more destructive of human lives than before. Very soon there will be a last conflict; after that the race of Man will trouble this tiny corner of the Cosmos no more.'

 

 'I shall be a full century old this year, and Trixie sixty-nine. Dressing warmly against the bitter cold of this New Year's Day, I go out to her kennel to acquaint her of this fact -- for what that will be worth.

 

 'She greets me as usual, fawning at my feet and rolling on the frozen earth outside her kennel in a frenzy of welcome. I stroke her icy skin, smooth and flawless under its coating of dirt. I study her clinically, as usual easily dismissing any pang of conscience about the way I had treated her. Unlike her dam, she has never known any other life than this, chained to her kennel all her life. How can I be accused of treating her cruelly? She is fit, and moves easily; her body is still slim and her udders, though long without milk, are still firm. Perhaps, I wondered, Nature meant that women should stay on all-fours and never be taught to stand upright. In an ideal world...'

 

 'March 21st 2006. Trixie is seventy-five today. She remains healthy, but arthritis, the dreaded disease of age, is now afflicting her joints. If she comes to suffer unduly, I shall kill her -- 'put her down', as people refer to the killing of pet animals -- and dispose of her body before someone, at some time in the near future, comes to dispose of mine. A hundred and six years of life weigh heavily.'

 

 'August 8th 2008. My little beast is dead. I was privileged to be with her to observe her last moments. It was hot and sultry, and she hadn't eaten any of the swill she was fed on for some days. She was lying on the ground just outside her kennel, the fat flies crawling on her skin and about her open eyes and mouth, when I came to her that afternoon. I set down the low three-legged stool I'd acquired the habit of sitting on now that stooping had become so laborious a practice and sat by her side. Her eyes were dim and clouded, but she recognised me at once. Rolling, with some effort, on to her back, she presented her still hard little belly to be scratched. I obliged her, at the same time pitying the obvious pain each movement cost her. It would not be long, I thought, before her present suffering ended in the only possible way.'

 

 'She rolled on to her side with her back to me, and I bent awkwardly and began to stroke her dirt-encrusted flank. To the accompaniment of her slow and stertorous breathing, I mused on how different her long life would have been had she not been born to the animal I had married so long ago. But I expect she had been happy enough, never having known any other life. I had cared for her; I had fed her (admittedly only once daily, and then on scraps and dog food) and I had given her ample opportunities to satisfy her sexual needs. Kept chained up all her life, she had never been obliged to elude the many dangers which affect those creatures free to move about the world.'

 

 'Her painful breathing quietened; for a moment I thought she was about to go. But no; from somewhere she found the strength to stand on her four legs and take a step or two away from me. She lowered her head and looked down at her faithful life-long companion, the chain which had held her for so long. She prodded it with a paw, as if she was about to play with it as she had done so often when she was a child. Then she turned and looked out into the yard at the unchanging view she had known all her life. Suddenly she stiffened, and her head rose as if she saw something in the distance, something I, for all my peering, could not descry. Amazingly, she found the energy to break into a slow trot away from her kennel, her chain rattling on the hard ground behind her. And then, as had always happened in the past, her chain rose from the ground and became rigid, deforming the collar around her neck as it halted her abruptly. For a single moment she strained at her chain, her front paws even rising from the ground under the effort. As always the collar and chain defeated her, she sank to all-fours wih a defeated sigh, fell slowly to her side, and expired. And so passed my wife's daughter, at the age of seventy-seven, after a long lifetime spent as an animal.'

 

 'For this moment I had long prepared; gone were the days when I could have dug a grave for her. She, I had decided, should not be dragged away to the midden when her time came; she would be buried as I'd buried so many of my canine companions in the past. And what better spot for her final resting place than beneath the barred dog run where she had pent her life?'

 

 'It was the work of a few minutes to drive into her run the miniature mechanical digger I had purchased with this eventuality in mind. So neat and accurate was the little shovel that I didn't even need to move the corpse from where it lay, and very soon I had excavated a neat pit six feet deep next to her body. When I was satisfied with its dimensions (it was not the shape of a human grave, Trixie had never been able to stretch out to her full length) I descended from the machine and walked over to where she lay.

 

 "Bending over her, I detached her chain from her collar, remembering as I did so that day so many years ago when I'd clipped it there. Her collar I left in place; she would wear it in death as she'd worn it in life. A brief movement of my foot, and the surprisingly light little frame fell with a thump to the bottom of the pit. Then I filled in the grave, every so often tamping down the earth with the bucket of the digger. Once the grave was full, I fetched the old lawn roller from its shed and hooked it to the rear of the digger. I spent an hour rolling flat the newly-filled grave, pulling the roller over it again and again, and when I had finished I could be sure that after a few days of rain and sunshine the grave would be be indistinguishable from the surrounding, undisturbed soil.'

 

 'April 2nd 2009. Today I went into the now disused dog yard for the first time since I'd buried Trixie there. The dogs accompanied me (Ben and Blackie, the latest in a succession of black Labradors of the same names) at first, but for some mysterious canine reason they wouldn't enter either of the two runs at the far end where the two women had lived for so long. Though I examined the bare ground as closely as I could I could find no trace of the grave I alone knew lay under it.'

 

 ' May 10th. 2009 I am not feeling well; maybe I should telephone from the village for an appointment with that old fool, Doctor ********.'

 

 That was the last entry in the thick ledger, neatly underlined as though the old man had known his tale was told.

 

 Carlo closed the book slowly and sat for some minute staring out of the window into the July sunlight. He shivered; surely the words he had read were the ravings of a madman? His mind went back to his only meeting with the old man. Carlo had been six years old and engrossed in the things of a child, but he had an indelible memory of the tall, gaunt, upright figure, of the stiff grey hair cut en brosse over a pair of bleak grey eyes. He picked up the old collar; was it possible that this thing had clasped the neck of the old man's wretched wife for so many years? He shivered again at the thought, then was brought back to the moment by the gentle pressure of Ben's nose against his hand.

 

 Rising, cramped from his long spell hunched over the kitchen table, Carlo went out with the dog into the fresh, clean air of the farm yard. There he looked around him, trying to work out which of the openings from it led to the old dog runs. After only one false start, he found what he was searching for.

 

 The yard, some fifty feet square, was split up into eight dog runs, each with its kennel built into the thick wall of the barn behind it. The runs were about six feet wide and thirty feet long, separated by barred fences seven feet high and closed off by heavy barred doors at the entrances. The doors of the two runs at the far end hung open, and Carlo walked slowly across the yard to them, the two dogs, who had been frisking about his heels, stopping to allow him proceed alone.

 

  He gazed down the length of the two runs to the dark openings of the kennels at their ends, each with a chain stapled to the wall at the side. Slowly, he entered the endmost run and walked down to the end. There he stooped and peered into the dark kennel, wrinkling his nose at the animal smell still lurking in its depths. He straightened and picked up the dangling chain, feeling its cold heaviness in his hand. Could it really be true, he wondered, that a young woman in her late 'teens had been kept tethered by this chain, transformed into and treated like an animal, kept naked, collared, and on all-fours for the rest of her life as punishment for a marital transgression? He looked through the bars into the next run; there she had been able to see the fruit of her betrayal grow up like a chained dog, a chained dog who had never known life as a human being. It would have been worse for the older woman, Carlo thought; she would be able to remember her lost humanity; she would remember wearing clothes, being clean, being free to move about where she would.

 

 He sighed heavily. In the next run the hard, barren soil lay flat and dusty under the sun. He looked down at it closely; was there really a deformed human skeleton, a mouldering collar around its neck, lying six feet below the surface?

 

 Leaving the gloomy little yard to its phantoms, he went back to the house. Later he telephoned his girl friend to acquaint her with the news of his inheritance.

 

 EPILOGUE

 Carlo's girl friend, like Caesar of old, came, saw, and conquered. She wouldn't hear of him selling the place, something he himself was not keen on doing, knowing as he did its dreadful secrets. He had destroyed the damning old ledger, and she never knew anything about the awful events that had happened there in the last century. In due course they married, unfashionable though that was at the time, and they lived to hear the old farm house ring to the laughter of their children, and then to that of their grand-children and even their great-grand-children, for both Carlo and his wife came of long-lived stock. The old dog yard was now a favourite playground in which Carlo spent many hours sitting on a wooden bench he had built in a sunny corner, watching his descendants at their games. The rusting bars of the old dog runs had long been removed and the kennels were now mere holes in the wall, full of the wind-blown debris of past Autumns. There, in the summer, the youngest children ran and played unclothed, as irrepressible youngsters will; watching them Carlo sometimes thought he could discern the faint shade of a naked little girl held tethered by a collar and chain, straining on all-fours to join the other children at their play. But the sad little ghost -- if that was what it was -- remained unseen by anyone other than himself.

 

 And that, he would think at those times, was only natural. He had, after all, only the fading memory of the old man's words to suggest the possibility that such events ever happened at all.