Rory lay in his kennel, puzzled and upset. The action that had brought him here should not have happened, and he was at a loss to explain it. The three days a month after the drugs were withdrawn and he became sexually active had been over for almost a week: he’d been released from his long, boring sojourn in the pen and the normal routine had resumed; he would not be kept chained to the kennel again until he was next allowed to ‘come on heat’ - as he’d come to think of it. Yet here he was again, as a result of something that shouldn’t have been possible for him.

What would God think? Perhaps She wouldn’t punish him further; no, She certainly wouldn’t do that, for Rory was always punished immediately upon a transgression so that he would know what it was that incurred Her displeasure. Besides, he thought, God would see the welts the riding crop wielded by Her Housekeeper had left upon his back, buttocks and upper thighs and know he’d been punished enough.

He lifted his head from his paws; God was coming, and he scrambled from his kennel to greet Her, his chain rattling on the hard ground behind him.

Rearing up, Rory scrabbled at the bars of his pen with the blunt paws God had given him in place of his hands and whined piteously. God stared down at him, Her face severe but with a hint of laughter.

     “Sit!” She told him, and he did, trembling with eagerness as he watched Her enter his pen, his leash dangling from Her hand, Her feet careful to avoid the little piles of ordure he’d deposited there during his recent, longer incarceration.

    “Bad boy!” She told him, and he reared up to paw at Her waist, only to be cuffed down to the ground.

    “You’re a bad, bad boy!” God told him again, as She clipped the leash to his collar.

But God was smiling as She led him from his pen, and Rory was satisfied he wouldn’t be punished further for today’s transgression.

                                 CHAPTER TWO

An hour later Rory lay in his cage in the huge entrance hall of God’s Chateau, his belly full of the scraps God had fed to him, and listened drowsily to the voices he could hear from another room by way of the slightly open door. After existing for so long in his now permanent role as God’s pet, Rory seldom bothered to exercise what he thought of as his ‘human brain’ in understanding what was said between others. Only when his name was mentioned did he pay attention, and even then he often didn’t bother to take in the content of the words.

There were two other people in the room with God; young women of Her own age, friends of hers he had come to know quite well. One of them had a deep, husky contralto, and affected black cigarettes smoked through a long holder, the other was a slight, fair-haired girl with a squeaky little voice, and she had bought her pet-girl with her. She was nowhere in evidence, having been led past his cage earlier, but now he saw the door open a little wider and the pet-girl emerge into the dimness of the Hall, moving silently on all-fours, her leash trailing behind her.

Rory came to all-fours as the pet-girl approached, her pale body lit only by the flickering fire in the huge grate a few feet away. She looked at him, then came closer until she was facing him, divided from him only by the bars. He realised how small she was compared to himself, how she had to crane her neck to look up at him, and an odd feeling seized him. He whined deep in his throat, and his member hardened, just as it had done earlier.

She turned her back upon him and lowered her head and shoulders,  stretching and digging her front paws deep into the thick carpet, her  round little haunches protruding into the air.

Rory’s member stiffened still more, and he reared up until his head met the top of his cage, scrabbling with his paws at the bars in his eagerness to reach her.

The pet-girl affected to ignore him and walked slowly away, her pert rump swaying and her little pink sex peeping shyly at him from high up between her slender thighs.

Whimpering in disappointment, Rory lay down again on the thin, stained mat covering the floor of his cage, watching the pet-girl walk on to the rug before the fire and lie down in the warmth, her back to him. His member subsided, and he began again to pay attention to the voices from the other room, clearer now that the door was a little more open. 

    “Oh, do tell us what really happened, Penelope!”

    “It shows all the signs of being an enjoyable scandal.”

Thus squeaky-voice and husky-voice, and God replied, with a hint of laughter, that perhaps Hilda herself was the person best qualified to narrate the full story.

Nothing would do but God’s Housekeeper be sent for, and within seconds Rory was watching the gaunt figure sweep through the Hall, noting his presence in the cage with a single dismissive glance.

Hilda was eloquent, her story honed by repetition, and Rory propped his chin on his paws to listen, each of the upright, triangular ears God had given him swivelled in the direction of Hilda’s voice.

    “It was after luncheon,” Hilda was saying, “and Mademoiselle had gone off to play at the tennis with Monsieur Nigel.”

    “So I had!” God interrupted. “And I hadn’t taken Rory with me as I usually do.”

    “The more’s the pity!” Hilda exclaimed. “For then the animal would not been able to perform its atrocity - although it would have done so at some time; that goes without saying!”

    “Oh, do get on with it, Hilda!” drawled husky-voice, and the Housekeeper, after pausing for breath, continued her narrative.

    “The beast was on the lawn as usual, safely chained up - or so we thought, although its chain is far too long, being a full five metres. Ah! How often have I told Mademoiselle that her animal should be kept chained to its kennel, safely behind the bars of its pen?”

Hilda’s voice had risen as she scolded her young Mistress, but God merely laughed indulgently, and the Housekeeper went on.

    “Now little Magda, having no work about the house, had offered to Olaf to weed the flower beds bordering the lawn, and he, being a man and naturally idle, had accepted. She first asked my permission, of course, and I agreed, telling her only to change into old clothing in order that she did not soil her housemaid’s uniform - clean on this morning. And so she did,” Hilda informed her audience. “But did she put on proper clothing? No, she did not! Instead she put on an old dress of hers, one she’d outgrown, a dress which barely covered her thighs. And her underwear? That she dispensed with: young girls today have no modesty. So you may picture her, Mademoiselles; kneeling on the lawn, her hands outstretched to grub up the weeds Olaf was too lazy to deal with, not realising she’d strayed within the beast’s reach!”

The Housekeeper paused for breath before continuing, her voice rising in indignation.

    “Of course, such a vision was too much for the dog-thing to be able to control its lust! Although I did not observe it myself, the creature must have bounded towards the unsuspecting girl and tried to mount her. And in that the beast succeeded, as I myself found when I happened upon the scene to catch it in the very act! Ah; but it would have gone hard with little Magda had the animal’s chain been a few centimetres longer! It had forced her knees apart with its own, and its front paws were scrabbling in the air mere inches above her shoulders where it doubtless intended to place them, the better to slake its lust for her body. But, thanks to the mercy of the good God, its chain was just too short, as rigid as an iron bar from the beast’s collar to the steel peg sunk deep into the soil which held it. And so the animal was unable to satisfy its lust, and I was in time to drag it off the shrieking Magda by its collar. And then I beat it with the riding crop Mademoiselle uses to correct its behaviour. As for Magda, no doubt she will be non the worse for her fright, except that  coming so close to being raped by an animal will haunt her dreams.”

The Housekeeper trailed off into silence. God said nothing, and Her husky-voiced friend uttered her contralto laugh. But squeaky-voice expressed her horror.

    “Oh, poor Magda!” she exclaimed, her voice rising still higher. “Imagine the poor girl’s feelings!”

Watched only by Rory, the pet-girl, aroused by her Mistress’s voice, rose to all-fours and padded across the Hall to enter the brightly-lit room beyond. The last Rory saw of her was the pale gleam of her buttocks as she passed through the doorway, then the Housekeeper spoke again, her voice chiding.

    “Ah! If only Mademoiselle had taken a pet like this little one!” she said reprovingly, obviously alluding to the newly arrived pet-girl. “She is clean and quiet, and obedient in all things. But no!” she went on, airing an old grievance, “ Mademoiselle must needs acquire a male beast, going against the advice of those who care for her standing amongst her friends, not to mention those of us who must continually spray the beast with deodorant to mask its male smell!”

God laughed, that same indulgent laugh Rory had heard Her give so often when chided by Her old servant. Then the Housekeeper left them, muttering something about seeing to it that coffee was brought to them.

Rory subsided on to his mat. The tale of his doings as related by Hilda, in which he’d heard without resentment her descriptions of him as ‘beast’, ‘animal’ and ‘the dog-thing’, had intrigued him. Ever since he’d willingly agreed to become God’s life-long pet and had undergone the necessary surgery to achieve it, he’d come to imagine his brain as being analogous to a computer’s hard disc partitioned between separate operating systems, as it were. The part which he thought of as his ‘animal mind’ was his default; his ‘human mind’ he only called upon now and then, and that more and more seldom. But now the human mind was in action, reviewing what he’d heard from Hilda with the memories his animal mind had seen fit to communicate to its fellow.

Those memories were few and exiguous. Rory’s animal mind lived entirely in the present; past and future were meaningless concepts. But he recalled the surge of animal desire that had swept over him at the sight of the crouching girl and her bare expanse of upper thigh, he recalled, too, the excitement of the moment he pounced on her, landing with his knees between hers, forcing her legs apart, and the silky feeling of the skin of the backs of her thighs against the front of his own. The memory came back of his own frustration at being denied her by the chain, now at full stretch with the ‘D’ ring of his collar at the back of his neck, and the pain it had caused his neck muscles.

Although the animal within him was content, in its primitive way, with his actions, Rory’s human mind was not. Were the drugs he was given losing their effect? The sight of the young housemaid on all-fours, her short skirt riding up high on her plump thighs, should have had no effect on him.

But it had, causing him to pounce on her in the mindless way of a male animal. Then he remembered the longing he’d felt for the body of the pet-girl, not so very long ago. That, too, should not have been possible, and he wondered if God had remembered to dose him that morning. But no, he thought; there had been signs of his increasing libido for some weeks now, drugs or not, as witness the pleasure his animal mind experienced when poking its nose into the crotches of God’s female friends. He meant it as a gesture of affection, his human mind realised, but it was naturally never taken as that and had earned him many a cuff on the head from his Mistress.

Turning off his human thought processes, Rory slipped with relief into the crude certainties of his animal existence. The three friends were still conversing and, whilst his ears twitched whenever he heard the voice of his God, the meaning of the words spoken by Her and Her companions washed over him unheeded.

     “Old Hilda was right, Penelope,” Sandra remarked when the Housekeeper had left. “You really should have bought yourself a bitch, like Janette’s little Fifi here.”

She gestured with her cigarette holder at the pet-girl sitting quietly at her Mistress’s feet.

Janette concurred. Fondling the sitting pet-girl’s hair with a negligent hand, she spoke to her Hostess.

     “Yes, you really should have done that,” she said, her high-pitched, little girl voice unwontedly serious. “But it’s too late now, of course. All the same, Penelope, you’ll have to something about your pet; you must have noticed how invitations have fallen off lately where you insist on bringing him.”

     “Yes,” Penelope admitted. “And people don’t like to visit me - for some reason!” she continued with a chuckle.

Sandra laughed her contralto laugh.

     “Oh, come on, Penelope!” she said affectionately. “You know you only got a male pet in the first place to outrage the Enclave Committee. But Janette’s right; you’ll either have to leave it at home, or keep it caged out of the way whenever you have guests.”

     “Or find some way of making it harmless,” Janette broke in. “Perhaps you should have a word with Anne; she may have some suggestions.”

Penelope was silent for a few moments, and when she spoke at last, her voice was sad and low.

    “I already know what Anne would suggest for Rory,” she said.

There was an awkward little silence before Sandra spoke.

    “I know you would much rather have him as he is,” she said quietly. “But there may be no alternative.”

Rory’s attention was distracted by the arrival in the Hall of a housemaid bringing coffee for God and Her guests. It was Magda, and she glanced down at his cage in fear as she passed. But he merely looked at her in benign indifference, the events of earlier forgotten in his animal mind. Leaving the other room on completing her task, the young housemaid closed the door, cutting off any sound from within, and Rory settled down on his mat and fell into the light doze in which he spent so much of his time.

                                            CHAPTER THREE

Brought back to full alertness by the sudden bustle, Rory came to all-fours to watch the departure of God’s guests. Husky voice led the way, with squeaky voice following, leading her pet-girl and being careful to keep her close to her leg as they passed his cage. God brought up the rear, and Rory whined as She walked by. It was late, near the time he was let out into the garden to empty his bladder. God hesitated, then picked up his leash draped over the banister next to the cage. She unbarred the cage door and he came out at Her call, sitting meekly to allow Her to clip the leash to his collar.

God led him outside, keeping the slack in the leash coiled in Her hand and his head close to Her knee. They watched Her friends leave, each in one of the little electric runabouts used for transport in the Enclave, the pet-girl huddled in a little wire mesh cage at the rear of the vehicle driven by her squeaky voiced owner.

Only when the lights of the runabouts had faded from view did God lead him out on to the lawn, walking him round and round in the cold darkness until he stopped dead in his tracks, a signal that he was ready to relieve himself.

She led him the few feet to one of his favourite trees and waited patiently as Rory lifted a hind leg and sprayed the rough bark with his urine. Then they went back into the welcoming warmth of the Hall.

Once in the Hall, matters proceeded as had become normal. Rory, let off the leash, dashed over to fireplace where God’s slippers had been set to warm. Seizing one of them in his mouth, he bounded back to where God was removing Her shoes. Then he went back for the other before following Her to the fireplace where She sat with a sigh of relief in one of the huge, shabby armchairs before the fire.

Rory enjoyed these nightly occasions most of all, lying at God’s feet and dreamily watching the play of flames in the fireplace. She had kicked off one of Her slippers, and he chewed drowsily on the soft leather, wishing, as always, that this interlude would last for ever. But it was not to be. God, having drunk the hot milk and drained the brandy brought to her by Hilda, stirred and rose to Her feet. He rose too, going down and stretching, his front paws digging into the soft hearth rug while She inserted Her foot into the slipper he relinquished. At Her command, he trotted away, returning to sit at Her feet, looking up at Her with his leash dangling from his mouth.

Smiling down at him, God took the leash from his mouth and clipped it to his collar.

    “Good boy!” She told him, flooding his heart with joy and devotion. Then She led him up the stairs to her bedroom and shut him up in the cage in which he spent his nights.

Rory lay on his mat, listening to the soft hiss of water from the bathroom where God was showering. As for himself, he was seldom bathed; God seemed to prefer him a little grubby, covering his musky male smell with the animal deodorant She bought for him. Presently She came out, Her bare skin glowing from brisk towelling and sat naked at Her dressing table to give Her long, golden hair its regular hundred brush strokes. Rory She ignored, but he found it impossible to ignore Her. Although he tried his best to suppress his feelings, his member hardened, making him feel both guiltily excited and ashamed, and puzzled, too, at this further evidence of an excitement that should not have been possible.

But now She’d finished and, instead of climbing into Her bed as She normally did, She crossed to his cage where She stood looking down at him through the bars, glorious in Her upright nudity. Gracefully, She squatted by the side of the cage. Stretching through the bars a long, slender arm, She began to stroke his trembling flank whilst he gazed up at Her with devotion in the deep brown, animal eyes She’d given him.

     “What AM I going to do with you, my pretty pet?” She whispered. “I was told you might not be able to control yourself; I should have listened! But I don’t want to sell you, even if I could find a buyer. And I don’t want to have to keep you shut up in a cage or chained to a kennel for the rest of your life.”

His animal mind now firmly in control, Rory rolled over on to his back in order that She might scratch his belly.

God obliged him, sighing sadly as She saw the effect She was having on him.

    “Poor boy!” She told him. “You really can’t help your reactions, drugs or no drugs. Oh well,” She continued, withdrawing Her arm and rising to Her feet. “We must see what Anne can suggest - but I fear the worst!”

He rolled on to his side again and watched as God slid naked under the scented silk sheets of the soft, warm bed he would never share with Her. The soft lighting went dark and he fell asleep, basking in the warmth of the radiator on the wall at his back.

                                 CHAPTER FOUR

The next morning followed the usual routine. Yawning, God had risen from Her bed, put on a warm dressing gown, and led him downstairs and outside. There She’d left him, tethered by the long chain to the steel spike screwed into the lawn where he’d sat shivering, his back to the increasing warmth of the rising sun, watching his shadow shorten as the sun rose higher in the sky.

Little Magda had been sent to feed him, sent by Hilda who’d assured her that the pet of their Mistress was easy to handle.

    “It is only a tame animal,” she’d told the nervous young housemaid. “It will obey you if you command it with confidence. See, you will take with you the riding crop used to punish it. If it is slow to obey, you must beat it! The beast will not dare to resist.”

And nor would he, for Rory had been trained in obedience by the best Animal Psychologists in the world. Like all animals, at first he’d been got to obey out of fear, then out of a desire to please. But finally, as with  all well-trained beasts, he obeyed because his animal mind could no longer envisage any alternative.

All very well, Magda had doubtless thought when she arrived with the bowls containing the pet’s food and water, but her confidence had risen when he obeyed her first sharp commands to ‘Sit! Stay!’

The chained creature had not moved a muscle when she came within its reach to deposit her burden on the grass, nor did it move even when she’d withdrawn out of reach. Instead, the creature merely sat and gaze at her, uttering soft whines of entreaty, and Magda realised, with a feeling of power, that her Mistress’s pet was waiting for her permission to eat and drink.

    “Take it!” she snapped, and turned away. When she stopped and looked back, the dog-thing was down on its elbows over its food dish, noisily wolfing down the jumble of scraps and little brown pellets of pig meal it was fed upon.

Her confidence rose. It was only an animal, she thought scornfully; why had she allowed it to attack her as it had done only yesterday? She had a mind to turn back and thrash it for the fright she’d allowed it to give her. But then she reflected that the male beast couldn’t help itself; it was its nature. Hilda was right, she thought; it really should be kept permanently chained up in its kennel.

Rory gobbled down the last of the mess in his food bowl. He was well aware of how he was regarded by others - the humans, as he thought of these Godlike beings who brought him food and water and who punished him when he transgressed. He bore them no resentment; had he not always wanted to be an animal, free of human conventions and inhibitions, free of responsibility and choice? Of course he was kept naked; of course he wore a collar around his neck and could be walked on a leash, chained up or caged at their whim! His complete helplessness was the other side of the coin, and it was a price he’d been quite prepared to pay for the rest of his life.

An hour later, after he’d emptied his bowels, God came for him.

The little electric cart hummed along the grassy track, bouncing now and then on the rougher sections. Rory, on all-fours in the wire mesh cage in the back, watched the trees go by, enjoying the cool breeze by their progress. He had no idea of where he was being taken, nor why, but that was normal; as an animal he was neither consulted not even informed about such things. The cart slowed, then turn off the track on to another, and presently, turning around in his cage and looking over God’s shoulder, Rory saw the elaborate front façade of a Chateau, surrounded by gardens, come into view.

Rory had been here before, although he could hardly recall the occasion. But the Chateau seemed familiar, as did the long terrace he was led past on being taken from his cage. On the terrace, a pet-girl, tethered by a long chain, came to peer at him through the stone balustrades, and he recognised her, too. This, he thought, was the home of another of God’s friends, the Veterinarian who catered for the health of their pets.

Led through a wide door into a brightly-lit corridor, the air heavy with medical odours, Rory’s human mind came to the fore, soothing his animal self with the knowledge that all would be well, that he faced only a routine medical inspection such as he’d undergone before.

The room he was taken into was even more brightly-lit, furnished with gleaming machines, but Rory walked confidently up the ramp and on to the examination table, careful not to let himself look over the edge in order not to terrify his animal mind. There came the touch of cold metal on the skin of his thigh, followed by a short, sharp hiss of escaping gas, and a wave of comforting warmth and drowsiness swept over him with the release of the muscle relaxing drug into his bloodstream.

Now the animal mind was in full charge, accepting the things that were done to it with fuzzy equanimity, soothed by the near presence of God.

Hands roamed about his limp body, inserting probes and sticking on sensors. Presently they stopped, and he lay there listening vaguely and without understanding to the voices above him.

    “Your pet is physically healthy, although he really needs much more exercise,” Ann told her friend. “They are very active animals, particularly the males. I know you have difficulties in that respect; perhaps you could get him an exercise wheel. But that’s not the real problem with him, is it, Penelope?”

Rory’s Mistress was silent for a moment, looking down at the sprawled body of her pet. Ann was experienced and shrewd; besides, she could scarcely have been ignorant about Rory’s misdemeanours in the small world that was the Enclave.

    “No,” she admitted. Then: “Is there any way to prevent him doing the things he does short of…?”

Her voice tailed off under the sympathetic eyes of the Veterinary.

     “Well,” said the latter, after a pause for thought. “I could blind him; that would make him much less boisterous. To cut down on the crotch sniffing, you could keep him muzzled in company, and control him with a choke chain. Of course, I could always increase the sex suppressing drugs, but that would be only temporary; animals develop a tolerance for them after a time. But, face it, Penelope,” she went on. “You’ll never be able to take him anywhere without worrying about his behaviour. It’s just the nature of male beasts to do these things, and you must consider the possibility of his impregnating one of the pet-girls.”

Penelope gasped, this possibility having not occurred to her.

    “But surely,” she argued. “All pet-girls come from surgery sterile.”

    “Don’t you believe it!” snorted her friend. “Their methods are not at all reliable compared to a good old-fashioned spaying. Some pet-girl owners get me to spay their pets anyway, but not all of them have.”

Penelope was silent, revolving the matter in her mind. The thought of Rory pouncing on one of the happy, carefree, innocent little pet-girls filled her with horror.

    “If I allow this to be done to him,” she said slowly, “what changes in his behaviour can I expect?”

Ann considered, then she spoke.

    “Well, he’ll be much less boisterous,” she began. “And generally much more docile and obedient. He’ll be less active, and less restless. In fact, in his later life, you may have to force him to exercise! But there’ll be physical benefits; he’ll probably live longer, and he won’t be liable to nasty things like prostrate cancer. And, of course, he‘ll no longer have that musky male smell that upsets some people so much.”

Penelope sighed, looking down at the flaccid penis in its nest of thick pubic hair.

     “If it must be done, it must,” she said at last. “You won’t hurt him?”

The Veterinary laughed heartily.

     “My dear girl!” she exclaimed. “This isn’t the Dark Ages! He won’t feel a thing; I promise you; he won’t even know anything’s been done to him. Oh, there’ll be a tiny sore spot where the glands were attached to his body, and his first urination afterwards may be a little uncomfortable, but it really is a painless and bloodless procedure nowadays, and it’s all over in seconds.”

Rory, his animal mind firmly in control, understood nothing of what they saying. He sensed God’s near presence and smelt Her perfume, then felt Her soft hand stroke his head.

     “Poor boy,” he heard Her say, a catch in Her voice. Her distress upset him, and he would have liked to lick Her hand to console Her, but the muscle relaxant made him unable to move.

    “Alright,” he heard God say sadly. “But I want to do it myself. Is that possible?”

    “Child’s play!” laughed Ann. “Come on; let’s get him on his feet. Eva!” she called out to her nurse. “Give us a hand, here!”

Under the gentle urging of their hands Rory came muzzily to all-fours where he stood motionless, Eve gripping his collar with one hand whilst stroking his untidy mane of hair with the other.

Hands held his hind legs just above the knees, pulling his thighs gently apart. There came a sudden hiss, and the flesh of his groin and upper thighs went icily numb, a pleasant sensation rather than otherwise.

    “The upper loop around the root of the member,” he heard the Veterinarian say. “The lower one around the neck of skin joining the glands to his body and cup them in your free hand. Let me have a look…yes, that’s right…now all you have to do is squeeze the trigger.”

Penelope hesitated for a second, feeling the warm weight of her pet’s testicles in her left hand before squeezing with her right as she’d been directed. The two separated scraps of flesh and skin dropped to the table top between her pet’s knees, and she watched as Ann scooped them up in a gloved hand to drop them casually into the waste disposal bin on the floor nearby.

    “There!” she heard Ann say. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it, boy?” the Veterinarian said to the oblivious Rory in the same cheery tone. “I’ll just give him a shot to bring him round,” she told her friend. “The local anaesthetic will wear off in ten minutes or so. Keep up the drugs for a few days longer until the last of the testosterone leaves his system,” she went on, patting Rory on his buttocks. “And then he’ll be perfectly harmless; won’t you, boy?”

    “Yes,” Rory heard God say in a low, sad voice that made him ache to console Her. “He’ll be perfectly harmless,” She echoed softly.

Taking up his leash, Penelope led her pet down from the operating table, but not before he’d managed, trustingly and obliviously, to lick the soft, scented hand which had just castrated him.