Dark Horse Ch. 01

This story contains some themes of dehumanization, and human characters are referred to as ponies, horses, and mares. However, no animals are involved in a sexual act.

*****

"See you Monday, Liz! Have a good weekend!"

"You too, Harv!" What a fucking idiot, Elizabeth thought to herself. She waved as he grinned and climbed up into his Hummer. Not an H2, or an H3. A full sized Hummer. No, he's not overcompensating at all... What she truly found wearying was that, despite her cool reaction to his less-than-subtle advances, he still thought he'd bed her eventually. Elizabeth was all for stringing him along to further her own career, but after 8 years? Take a hint.

She slid into her sleek black Mercedes and exhaled. There were weeks that tried her patience, and then there were weeks that tried her patience. She flipped down the visor to check her lipstick, and the burnt orange luggage in her back seat caught her eye. Yes, this had been a trying week, she thought, but it's Friday. All across America, millions of people were celebrating the coming weekend, and in a few short hours she would be too.

She pulled onto the interstate, and it all started falling away. It was 4:15, which meant that her husband Richard was banging his personal trainer. Or maybe the maid. Maybe he finally convinced the maid to join in with the trainer. She found it hard to keep track, especially when she cared so little. Til death couldn't come soon enough, as far as she was concerned.

It's cliche to say that you wake up one day and don't recognize yourself, but a cliche is a cliche for a reason; It happens often.

For Elizabeth, that day had come about two years earlier. At age 44, she was... miserable. At no time was she ever doing anything for herself. She bent over backwards for clients, she bent over backwards for colleagues, she bent over backwards for Richard. She hosted events and get-togethers for friends, friends who then fucked Richard behind her back.

She'd managed to shower and get dressed that morning, but as she sat behind the steering wheel of her car she just couldn't find the strength to start the motor and make that soul-crushing commute even one more time. She took a personal day, and just drove. She took whatever turns looked like fun, and ended up deep in Virginia. At first, she was just enjoying the natural beauty around her. Gentle, sloping hills, roads with more curves in a mile than all 20 combined during her normal commute, and every shade of green under the sun. She rolled down her windows for the first time in a decade, and was just breathing. It was sooooo cathartic. And then, right about noontime, she crested a hill and there was a horse farm. Just out in the middle of nowhere.

She pulled into the gravel parking lot and sat for a minute. Her patent leather pumps were woefully inadequate for the terrain but she had nothing more sensible with her, so she snapped off the heels and dealt with the odd bend to her toes.

She was alone. She wandered down a row of stalls, and the smell... she was 9 years old again. Took her right back to the gentle painted she'd had as a girl. Meadow... Her face hurt from smiling, which seemed so ludicrous to think about. She genuinely smiled so infrequently that the muscles were tired within five minutes.

Her parents had gotten rid of Meadow when she was 12. Money had been tight. Felt like 100 years, not 32.

As Elizabeth walked, names and knowledge and nuggets of information she thought she'd left far behind bubbled up from the murky depths of her memory. She walked and walked, finding no one but the horses. Eventually she came to a stop at a stall without bars, and a chestnut gelding leaned out to nuzzle her. Nevermind what it did to the jacket of her tailored suit. Nevermind what it did to her hair. As she stroked his neck, the wheels began to turn.

Of course, that farm had been far too remote for Elizabeth. She found a beautiful little patch of heaven an hour outside of DC, where she bought and then boarded a massive black stallion named Pronto and a gray mare named Stiletto. She spent every weekend, and at least three days each week, working with the pair. She reveled in the work, in the sweat. In the aches. In the punishment and the rewards. In the breakthroughs.

Today, she thought as she sped down the highway, is going to be especially sweet. Elizabeth had her eye on a new pony, a breed she hadn't worked with before. Among the many wonderful things happening this weekend, she was finally going to get to start working with her dream horse.

She pulled into the parking lot just as her new hands, Paulo and Mutch, were loading Stiletto into her new trailer. Pronto watched impassively from his stall at the end of the small barn by the parking lot.

"Ya just went and got yourself a whole mess of shiny new toys, eh?" The wizened and white haired woman that hobbled toward her from the corral smirked as she flicked away a spent cigarette butt. "New ranch, new truck, new trailer... I knew ya had money, Liz, but yeesh!" Elizabeth smiled broadly as she pulled Betsy in for a hug. Betsy, the owner Blue Skies Ranch, had been part mentor, part mother to her. She'd learned more from Betsy in two years than any one person she could think of.

"Bets, I'm gonna miss you most of all!"

"Then stay, dammit!" Betsy smirked, and then waved a hand dismissively as she turned. "Ahh, I always knew you were gonna end up leavin'. This broke-down, two bit farm ain't fer you. Never was."

"Oh, come on-"

"No point in lyin' about it. Ain't gonna hurt mah feelins' none. Yanno, nearly everyone is here t'day ta see ya off!"

Elizabeth frowned momentarily, before sliding into a wide grin. "Well get 'em together in the big barn! Maybe I can dig deep and find a few words!"

"I think they'd like that," Betsy said as she ambled off.

Elizabeth watched her go, calling for this person or that. Paulo and Mutch escorted Pronto out of his stall, and she smirked as she looked past them. 4 stalls farther into the barn, silhouetted against the daylight at the other end, Isabella was just putting her horse, Snickers, back in her stall. Elizabeth closed her eyes, committing the figure to memory. She reached inside her car window grabbed two water bottles protruding from her duffel bag, and went inside.

"How was she today?" Elizabeth called out while still halfway across the small barn.

"She's still... getting the hang of it," Isabella replied from inside her stall, her cadence interrupted by the effort of brushing down her mustang.

Elizabeth leaned against the doorframe, and let her eyes wander "I'm still impressed that you'd want her to do all that running around. I mean, she's what, 18?" She could only barely hide her smirk.

"She's got plenty of years left," the girl said obliviously, still focused on the task at hand.

Elizabeth set the water bottles down on a ledge and stepped up to Snickers. The big horse nuzzled her shoulder and Elizabeth smiled. Long, wavy black hair. Caramel coloring. Dark, glittering eyes. Elizabeth closed the stall door behind her, grabbed one of the water bottles, and offered the other one to Isabella.

"I'm gonna miss you riding her," Elizabeth said.

The girl took a long pull from the bottle, and nodded. "We make a pretty good pair." Another sip, followed by a swipe at the sweat on her brow with her forearm.

"It's a shame, really."

"You could... You..." Isabella blinked, and braced herself against the side of the stall. "Yooo... Yew..."

Immediately, Elizabeth was at her side, cradling her head. The girl's lips worked fruitlessly as she stared at the older woman. As she stared past her. As she stared at nothing. Ms. Winters set her down on a few laps of hay, and paused to listen.

***

"You guys will probably never know how much being a part of this barn saved my life." The gathered group, mostly women, shrugged and smiled and avoided eye contact. They were humble people. Friendly and helpful, to be sure, but uncomfortable with praise. Almost as uncomfortable as Elizabeth now found herself giving it.

"So where's yer new place at?" Betsy'd had one of the ladies drag her chair up to the barn, and was lounging in it.

"Yah, you never did get to that," said Tammy, a fellow renter who'd taken Elizabeth on dozens of trail rides.

"Well, I, uh, I bought about ten thousand acres an hour south of here. It's kind-of in the middle of that." Elizabeth colored slightly, as she always did whenever her affluence was the subject of attention. The assembled group whistled and nodded, and pressed no further.

Elizabeth went on for a bit, recalling good times and hard losses. Most of the renters wanted a few final words with her, which broke down to either well wishes or advice that had been given before but warranted stating again. Elizabeth smiled and nodded, and took it all in graciously. In packs of one and two, the group dissolved until it was just Elizabeth and Betsy.

"Not sure where Isabella is. Thought she was down in the lower barn. She'd have wanted to say goodbye..."

Elizabeth frowned and nodded. "I wanted to say goodbye to her too."

"Where did that girl get off to," Betsy said, as she ambled off.

***

Her eyes popped open. It took a few seconds to resolve her surroundings; she was lying back in a reclined car seat. Ms. Winters smiled fondly at her from the drivers seat. She tried to speak, but found her mouth filled with a gag. She tried to force out the gag, but found her mouth covered with tape. She tried to remove the tape, but found her hands were bound together behind her back. She tried to sit up, but no amount of wiggling produced any significant gains. Every effort felt slow, as if done under water.

Ms. Winters made shushing sounds as she reached a hand over to stroke her cheek. She tried to recoil, but passenger side of the Mercedes did not allow her to escape Ms. Winters' touch. The woman driving was a stranger to her. Ms. Winters' steel gray hair hung loose around her shoulders. She had never seen it out of a tight ponytail. Other details, seemingly insignificant things, jumped out. The set of Ms. Winters eyes and jaw, and the fact that she was wearing glasses...

"Don't strain too hard, Velvet. You're only tied up so you don't hurt yourself, but that doesn't mean you can't if you keep fumbling." At first, she didn't realize the older woman was talking to her. Her name wasn't Velvet, it was...

She shook her head, trying to clear the numbing fog. Her sluggish tongue fumbled awkwardly around the gag "Elthhbthh?"

Ms. Winters put a finger to her taped lips, silencing her. "Shhh my pretty, don't worry yourself. You're safe. Everything is going to be just fine." The car turned beneath her, onto gravel. "Feel that," she asked. "We're almost home." There was a note of pride in Ms. Winters voice as she said the word 'home', like there was added meaning beyond the obvious.

She tried to sit up, enough to be able to see out of the windows, but the effort was fully beyond her. She could barely remember being at the barn this morning... if it was even still this morning! Her nostrils flared as her breathing intensified in panic, and she flinched again as Ms. Winters fingers ran through her hair. The tips of Ms. Winters fingernails dragged lightly along the side of her scalp. Ms. Winters made calm shushing sounds, and although her first instinct was to quiet down and believe the older woman, a part of her mind screamed at the indignity of it all and at her eagerness to be soothed.

She tried squirming even farther away, but there was nowhere to go. "We're almost there. Just a few more minutes." She cried, and closed her eyes.

Even through her eyelids, she noticed when the interior of the car became darker. She whimpered as they came to a slow stop, and again as Ms. Winters turned to her and smiled. She shook her head, and her vision doubled for a moment. Had there been a water bottle?

Suddenly, the passenger side door opened. A hand reached in to grab her shirt, and she was lifted. Her legs felt stiff and wobbly at the same time, but she thought she might still have a chance. As soon as her head peeked out through the frame of the door, she threw her shoulder into Ms. Winters. Shock broke across the face of the older woman as she turned and stumbled. Behind the car, the garage door was open. Beyond the door, maybe 200 yards away, the two ranch hands from earlier were unloading Pronto. She tried to scream, but the gag and tape reduced it even to her own ears. Her legs churned, but balance was nowhere to be found and the best she could manage was to slide along the side of the car.

All she had to do was make it out into the fading daylight and be seen. All she had to do was be heard by one of them.

Her head yanked back hard as a fist closed tightly within her long black hair, and her legs disappeared from underneath her. She landed unceremoniously, squealing less from the shock of hitting the smooth concrete than from having her hopes dashed. Ms. Winters reached over and slapped a red button, and the garage door descended smoothly. The fist in her hair never lessened as she was dragged, and she screamed again as the daylight before her dwindled to nothing. Thunder rolled ominously in the distance.

"I doubt you'll believe me when I say this, but that hurt me much more than it hurt you. I'm sorry, Velvet." Ms Winters spun around in front of her, stepping over her legs and grabbing her shirt again. She was lifted up to her feet, and then faster than she could process, she was dumped over Ms. Winters shoulder.

Logically, she knew she was flailing. She could feel her legs moving, but she also knew how feeble it was. She knew the effort was pathetic, and by comparison Ms. Winters seemed downright amazonian. Whatever had been in that water bottle had been... potent. She tried desperately to file away any scrap of information she could latch on to as she was carried, but she had difficulty looking anywhere but down at the heel of Ms. Winters boots. She thought she was carried through a spacious kitchen area, but it might as well have been an exact replica of a NASA Space Shuttle for all she really saw of it, or for all the good she thought that might do her.

It was with great care, however, when she felt herself being lowered onto a couch. It was a deep couch, and she was able to lay across it without being pushed into the back cushions or encroaching on the edge. There was enough room, in fact, for Ms. Winters to sit down next to her. A fresh wave of hysteria crashed over her as she looked up at the older woman.

"Lets get this off of you, shall we? Duct Tape is so un-becoming of a beauty like you." Ms. Winters smiled reassuringly as her nails peeled up the corners of the tape. It was over quickly, but her skin smarted from the pull. Then Ms. Winters was reaching down behind her ears, to the straps that held the ball gag in place. She sucked in a deep breath as she felt the loosening of the buckle, and as soon as her tongue could manage it, she emptied her lungs in an ear-splitting scream. Ms. Winters frowned and immediately fought to reinsert the gag. The girl tossed her head back and forth, but her inebriated efforts were easily overcome. "Oh, Velvet, I'm so sorry," Ms. Winters said a few moments after snapping the gag back in place. "That was cruel of me. No one will hear you, but you don't know that yet." The older woman's sad smile, as her cheek was stroked, was truly puzzling. "You think there is hope you'll escape, and you fight to keep it alive, but..." There was a long pause, broken only by her disjointed sobbing.

"Your mind must be racing, Velvet. This must seem so surreal, but I assure you that this is happening. No, no, shhh. Don't cry, my sweet. Think. Think! If you're here with me, where are you not?" I'm not at home, she thought. I'm not... at home? Ms. Winters smile widened slightly, though it was still one of exquisite sadness. "You don't need to live in fear of her any more. You're with me now." Part of her brain shrieked that trading her terrifying, bipolar mother for a kidnapper was a lateral move at best, but she knew Eliz-

She had thought she'd known this woman. Even as Ms. Winters stroked her cheek delicately, having delivered her from a miserable home life, she reeled and whimpered.

Ms. Winters stood abruptly, her smile instantly warmer, and she crossed the room to a shoulder-high pile of boxes. Velvet tried to twist to watch her, but her arms were still bound behind her and her vision blurry. Ms. Winters produced a knife, and sliced into the top-most box in the pile. "Oh yes," she cried. "Yes, this will look magnificent on you." She held it up for Velvet to see. What at first looked like a black and pink t-shirt resolved into a black leather corset with pink trimming. Velvet whimpered again, briefly.

The next box produced a pair of heeled black leather boots Velvet thought would reach the middle of her thigh, and a matching set of elbow-length gloves. Another box, another corset, this one sleek and all black, but with rings placed around the hips and back. Velvet tried not to think about what the rings were for.

More boxes, more outfits. One box produced an interconnected set of leather straps that looked suspiciously like a bridle, but it would have been far too short to fit a horse. Ms. Winters seemed to have a system set up, as items from some boxes went into a pile on her left, some in a neat stack on her right, and others spread out on the floor behind her. "That is going to be adorable," she said, with a flat expression that didn't match the tone of her voice.

Ms. Winters smiled softly, turning to Velvet. "Hmmm, but enough of that. Lets get you out of those clothes. They're hardly fitting for a pony, now are they?"

Velvet's eyes widened in terror when Ms Winters grabbed a pair of shears from the side table. She wriggled against her bonds with renewed vengeance, desperate to get away from her kidnapper. If only the hands could hear me, she thought, but the gag reduced her screams to little more than gargled whimpers that sounded quiet even in the room. Outside, a rainstorm was just rolling in.

Ms Winters paused, seemingly taken aback by Velvet's reaction, and tried to comfort her with a hand against her chest.

"You poor thing... Don't be scared. I'd never let any harm come to my beautiful mare. Shhhh, shhhh... it's okay. I'm just going to remove these filthy rags. If you insist on struggling you might accidentally cut yourself and I would be distraught if I saw this body marred."

Velvet's screams gave way to wracking sobs, her body succumbing to exhaustion. Tears streamed from her eyes as Ms. Winters hovered the shears over the edge of her shirt. "Deep breath, my pretty. This is happening." She started to snip, slicing fabric away with the cold shlick shlick shlick of metal on metal. Velvet's chest heaved uncontrollably, but not problematically. The shirt was quickly tossed aside. The sports bra was only slightly more difficult.

"Magnificent," she said, setting down the shears. Her fingers trailed down along Velvet's ribs, and grazed over Velvet's abdomen, but her eyes remained fixed on Velvet's breasts. Color flushed across Velvet's cheeks and chest as she turned away. The confliction of her treatment against the compliments would have left a fully-present mind confused, and in her diminished state Velvet was simply and completely overwhelmed.

Ms. Winters, after a full minute of allowing her hands to roam, finally brought them to bear on the girl's diminutive chest, but her eyes now watched Velvet's face. Flared nostrils and a sharp inhalation as fingers kneaded. The trembling of lips as her nipples were rolled between finger and thumb. The pinching of her eyes. The older woman nodded, satisfied.