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| Animal Story | Back to K | Back to main page | ||
Collected by Djian
The following story is posted for the entertainment of adults. If you are
below the age of eighteen or are otherwise forbidden to read electronic
erotic fiction in your locality, please delete this message now. The story
codes in the subject line are intended to inform readers of possible areas
that some might find distasteful, but neither the poster nor the author
make any guarantee. You should be aware that the story might raise other
matters that you find distasteful. You read at your own risk.
Animal Story
PART ONE
"Give me those keys," Mary Sands said in a deadly-serious
voice.
The confrontation was taking place in the bright clean kitchen
of Ralph Johnson's rambling, single story ranch house. At Mary's
side rested two battered brown suitcases the sight of which had
sent Ralph into a cold panic. He knew Mary for a woman whose
mind, once made up, seldom changed. If she left him now it would
be for good. So he held her car keys in a death grip and tried
to school his voice to its most reasonable, though there was a
tremor in it he couldn't control. "Not until you listen to
reason for a moment. I'm sorry about last night. I thought you
understood. I thought that it was what you really wanted. Even
if you can't understand, can't you forgive me? I love you,
Mary."
"I've put up with your sadistic games. I've put up with the
straps and the handcuffs. I've done things that have disgusted
me for your sake. Did you really imagine I enjoyed it? Last
night you finally went too far. To brand me like an animal!
That went beyond all our little contracts. That was
unforgivable. Now. Are you going to give me those keys?"
Ralph's panic mounted. He could not lose her. It was
unthinkable. He searched desperately for words that might make a
difference. The truth was he had thought she had enjoyed their
bondage games. Even now he believed that deep down she had; that
she was just denying it to hurt him, or to hide the truth from
herself. "Okay, no more games. I swear, from now on, no more
games. I'll burn all the toys. I'll promise anything you like.
Please don't leave me."
"Swear? On what? I'll never trust you again. The keys!
Right now or I'll phone the cops instead."
He stammered incoherently and moved sideways towards the
phone. She walked towards him glaring with her hand for the key
which he held away from her at the top of his reach. Quite
without warning she kicked him in the balls, expertly and with
considerable force. Then as he doubled up in agony she slammed
the heel of her right hand against his skull, striking him a
little behind the ear. Dazed, he fell onto hands and knees. She
triumphantly snatched the fallen keys and was out the door with
the bags before he was steady enough to stand. Even as he
reached the door he heard her car engine catch, and as he opened
it she was already driving off in a shower of gravel.
Ralph went quietly berserk then. She couldn't leave him! She
was his! Didn't she understand how infinitely precious she was
to him? As he snatched the deer rifle and rammed in two shells
from a box whose contents, in his panic, he scattered all over
the floor, he was unaware he was repeating "Bitch! Bitch!" under
his breath.
Some still, cold part of Ralph's mind had been calculating.
Their small ranch lay at the bottom of a secluded valley. The
access road twisted back on itself as in climbed out and for a
stretch of several hundred yards the car must pass close to the
house. That was his one chance. It was a difficult road and
she'd be driving fairly slowly. She always had been a careful
driver. He'd stop that damn car that was taking her away from
him.
The first shot missed. He could see her turn to look at him
with sudden terror. That terror felt so good to him now. He was
aiming at the front tyre but the second shot thudded into the
side of the engine. Whether is did any damage there was, as it
turned out, academic. At the first shot she'd veered the car
instinctively away without looking. Even as the second shot rang
out her offside front wing smashed into the side of the cutting.
Something broke in the steering and the car twisted the other
way, breaking though the flimsy fencing. In a second it was on
its roof amongst the bushes at the base of the bank. The engine
coughed and died. Everything was silent for a moment except for
the squeak of a still-turning wheel. Then her screams faintly
reached the house.
Ralph stood for a moment, his mouth so far open that in other
circumstances it might have been comical. Some part of the
irrevocability of what he had done began to come through to him.
There was no way on Earth he was going to talk his way out of
this one. In his desperation to keep her he might have killed
her and thus made his loss absolute and hopeless. Christ! She
still might die! The thought finally galvanised him into
rational action. He ran through the house into the small
dispensary where he grabbed the big first-aid kit then he threw
open the surgery entrance and ran around the side of the house to
the wreck. She mustn't die! she mustn't!
At least there was no smell of spilt fuel. The most obvious
damage was the smashed glass and buckled roof-pillars. She was
still crying out in pain and fear, though more softly now. That
was good, because the dead don't cry out. He dropped to his
hands and knees by the door and looked in. She was held upside
down by the seat belt and curled partly into a ball. Her
shoulders were jammed against the crushed roof. There was a
great deal of blood soaking through her dress, and her right arm
hung at an unnatural angle which, to his knowing eye, spoke of
something seriously amiss in the shoulder joint. At least she
was partly conscious and her right arm moved, though aimlessly.
He had to stop that bleeding, that was the priority. Ralph was
not an M.D. but a vet, but when the chips are down, humans are
animals too, and saving their lives has to be done pretty much
the same way.
He braced his right foot against the rear door and hauled with
both hands at the door post, heedless of the damage to his skin.
To his relief, the door came right off. Unable to reach the
buckle of the seat belt, he opened the first-aid box and ruined
two expensive scalpels cutting the belt, supporting her weight as
best he could at the same time. He hated to move her like this,
but there was no choice. He had to get her out to stop the
bleeding. Briefly he wondered if he should have called the
emergency services but the rate of bleeding convinced him he was
right to do this himself. She would be dead before any
paramedics could possibly arrive at this remote location.
Making up his mind, he hauled her out. As he did so she
gasped and seemed finally to lose consciousness. He dragged her
a few feet from the car, as gently as possible, and then went to
work. At least her head and spine seemed okay. There was a
fracture of the neck of the right humerus just below the ball of
the shoulder joint, but the most serious injury was a
near-certain fracture of the pelvis. The bleeding had come from
an open fracture of the left femur. Messy, but now, at least,
the bleeding from that was under control. Her breathing was okay
but her pulse was a little thready. She was stable for the
moment but needed to be in a hospital quite soon. There would be
internal bleeding.
He returned to the house to use the phone and fetch a blanket.
He picked up the receiver. Then he stopped, his hand refusing to
dial. He couldn't do it. If he made that phone call that would
be the end of it. She'd go to hospital and he'd go to jail.
Marking her with the brand of his small ranch was bad enough,
even though he'd used liquid nitrogen and not heat, but to shoot
at her car was beyond the pale.
He thought frantically. His surgery was very modern. He was
not one of the "GPs" of the veterinary world, but a consultant
specialising in difficult orthopaedic surgery, sometime performed
here with Mary as assistant, sometimes at a veterinary hospital.
As a consultant, he didn't quite have all the equipment found in
the operating theatre of a human hospital, but he had most of it.
He had successfully operated in there on horses, dogs, cats and
occasionally more exotic animals. MDs tend to be dismissive of
the veterinary profession, but a vet needs to know almost
everything an MD does and a lot more besides. If it had been a
dog lying there with a broken pelvis he would not have hesitated
to go in. Suddenly that seemed the thing to do. It would keep
her here for some time. In that time he would think of some way
to keep her with him for good.
Getting her into the surgery without further damage was a
nightmare. He found a wooden plank and slid it under her. Then
he tied her to it with bandages. He drove the pickup the few
hundred yards to the accident site. When lifting the plank, he
thought he might do himself permanent injury. Fortunately, at
the surgery he had installed lifting gear for manipulating large
unconscious animals, and things were relatively simple. God,
what he wouldn't give for an assistant to do the tasks that, up
until now, were Mary's duty. He knew how dangerous it was to
operate alone.
His eyes were full of tears as his hands performed their
tasks. He set up a saline drip for the want of whole blood. He
took X-rays. He gave her a muscle relaxant and, working quickly,
intubated and connected the breathing gasses. He cut away her
clothing and washed her with disinfectant soap. Only then could
he go and scrub up. That wrenched at him. He'd never left a
patient, of any species, on its own on the ventilator. That was
a cardinal sin. He laid out the instruments, forcing himself to
take his time over it. If there was an instrument he had
forgotten to lay out, he would probably have to do without it.
As he picked up the skin knife for the first incision, his hand
suddenly started to shake violently and his vision blurred with
tears.
What was the use? She'd never stay with him now. She would
think he was crazy and dangerous. He thought about keeping her
prisoner, but it wouldn't work. There were too many visitors to
the veterinary practice, and hadn't she just demonstrated that
she could handle him easily despite his size and strength? At
some point in her past she'd obviously had some kind of karate
training whereas he'd never been able to hold his own in a fight,
even at school. If only she were an animal. He could
handle
animals. They behaved well for him. He could keep an animal and
there would be no question of it leaving him.
The thought made him rigid with shock for a moment. No, it
was too horrible. What kind of a person was he to think such
things? He was mad. He wouldn't do it. He would call for an
ambulance at once and forget this ill-conceived operation. Even
as these thoughts were going through one part of his mind,
another, colder part was beginning to act. He put the knife down
and went into the dispensary where he opened a cupboard marked
"Internal Prosthetics." He looked through his selection of
titanium leg joints.
Mary woke, her mind leaden. It seemed at first that every
part of her body hurt. The worst was her backside and thighs,
but her shoulders, hands, and throat were all centres of pain. A
moment later, she remembered the crash and the shots that had
come before. At the same time, she recognised her surroundings
with a sinking feeling. It was the guest bedroom at the ranch
she had been trying to escape. It was now obvious that Ralph
wasn't just unstable, as she had come to believe, but dangerously
insane. And he was here in the room.
"You've been in an accident," Ralph said, trying to sound
reassuring. "You'll be okay. You know I'll take care of you but
don't try to move or speak for the moment. Are you hungry? Just
nod."
After a moment she shook her head. She was too much afraid
for hunger. Despite her drugged state, her stomach was a tight
knot. Hesitantly she tried to look down at her body to see how
badly she was damaged, but a quilt covered her up to the neck.
She started to bring up one of her sore hands for inspection.
She hesitated because the first movement hurt her shoulder and
her arm didn't seem to move right. "Don't," Ralph whispered, but
that just increased her determination. She brought the arm up,
gritting her teeth against the increased pain. Then she saw her
hand and for a moment the pain was forgotten.
Fingers and thumbs were gone. Not even stumps remained. A
howl of horror rose to her throat, but all that came out was a
gasp. Her terror grew and grew. She tried to turn the hand over
to look at the palm, but her wrist wouldn't turn at all.
Dreading what she might see, she brought up her other hand. It
was in exactly the same condition. This could not be any kind of
accident. She looked at Ralph, tried unsuccessfully to speak. A
whole series of expressions chased one another across his face.
There was guilt in there, and triumph, and anger.
"It's your own fault, love," he said quietly. "I just
couldn't let you go. I couldn't. Now things will be the way
they should be. You'll be mine and I'll take care of you.
You'll never say those hateful things again. There will only be
truth between us. You probably hate me right now, but you'll get
used to it. You'll come to see that what I did was an act of
love. You want to see? Look!"
He dragged over the dressing table and angled the large
mirror so that she could see the expanse of the quilt. Then,
with the air of an artist unveiling his work, he threw the quilt
aside. She stared at herself in a kind of hypnotised horror.
Her legs, which had felt stretched out to their full length, were
at right angles to her body. Neatly stitched surgical scars were
visible on her thighs, which seemed to have lost more than half
their length. Her whole abdomen seemed unnaturally narrow, and
yet, there was a wide gap between her thighs. Incredibly, she
thought, he must have broken and reset her pelvis in a folded
state, mimicking that of a quadruped. Her toes, like her
fingers, were missing, and her the balls of her heels seemed to
have been trimmed off. She could now see the palm side of her
hands, and found some thick callous tissue where the fingers used
to be. There were similar calluses on the balls of her feet. To
add insult -- literally -- to injury, there was a plain red
webbing dog collar around her neck.
"There's still work to do," said Ralph, with a kind of
professional detachment. "We're going to need to do something
about your head angle. I haven't exactly worked out how best to
tackle that one. And, of course, those stitches will have to
come out in a day or two. I'm trying to decide if I can do
anything about your jaws. It's going to be difficult for you to
eat and drink like that. Oh," he grinned for a moment, "and
we're going to have to get you a better collar. That was the
only one I had lying about, but it's just not you."
His flippancy broke the trance. For a moment the terror was
replaced by pure fury. Unable to express it any other way, she
spat at him, her spittle falling short. Immediately he slapped
her on the cheek with the back of his hand, just hard enough to
sting. "Now, I love you, but I'm not going to put up with any
nonsense after all the work I've done. You've got some things to
learn." In what seemed to be genuine anger, he walked out and
shut the door behind him.
Mary's mind was now beginning to work again. It had been
stupid to antagonise him. The man was completely demented. She
ought to be looking at ways of humouring him until some realistic
way out of this presented itself but how far out of this was it
possible to get? When she found a way to let the authorities
know about this they would deal with him, but how much could he
do for her? Well, there were prosthetic hands, she supposed, and
some of the damage ought to be reversible. What had he done to
her voice?
She felt the need to do something now. At this point there
was no realistic chance to escape. The only thought that
occurred to her was to be more competent than he believed her to
be. The thing to do now was to see what she was capable of.
Could she even get out of bed? Well, she would try.
She pulled her arms and legs in against her body and rolled
over onto her front. Each movement hurt like hell, but she was
determined. What astonished her most was how far her legs
folded, against the side of he abdomen instead of the front. She
had to admit it was an amazing tour-de-force of surgery. She
pushed the front part of her body up with her arms, then
struggled up onto all fours. He seemed to have done something to
the tendons of her ankle joint, because with her legs extended
her feet seemed to extend automatically, forcing her to stand on
the balls of her feet.
Standing on the edge of the bed she was very wobbly, partly
because of the bed springs but partly because her muscles seemed
weak and shaky. Now, how to get off the bed onto the floor
without breaking something or making a loud noise that would
alert Ralph to her activities? Furthermore, suppose she managed
to get down; would she be able to get up again? She began to
have serious doubts about that question. Okay. Now, suppose she
did get down. To get back up again, she would need to put her
hands on the bed and push herself forwards. In her presently
weakened condition, jumping was out of the question. So, before
getting down, she should try the necessary motions.
None of her limbs seemed able to move much from side to side,
but only backwards and forwards. Even in that direction their
movements were limited. Her legs would not reach more than a
forty-five degree angle to the vertical. Hence, there seemed to
be no possibility of balancing on her feet alone. So, the first
thing was to get further onto the bed so that there might be no
danger of falling off.
She shuffled sideways, one limb at a time, discovering just
how little sideways movement they were capable of. Then she
assumed a sitting position and tried to lift her hands above the
bed. They didn't want to. She lifted one hand, but when
attempting to lift the other, she found her legs would not hold
her body up. With one hand in the air she tried to see just how
much cross-body movement her arms had. Barely four inches. She
was unable to bring her hands closer than about three inches from
one another. She struggled to lift her hands again. It hurt so
much that she just couldn't seem to manage it. Perhaps with
exercise, she'd be stronger. Until she could do the "sit up and
beg" manoeuvre she would not be able to climb as high as the bed,
so she should stay where she was.
It seemed the best way she could occupy herself here was
exercise. She lay down and got up again five times. That was
about as much as she could take. Then she practised rolling from
her side to her front and back for a while, listening all the
time for any indications of Ralph's potential return. How long
would he leave her here? What about when she needed to relieve
herself? It was all so frustrating, yet she found that she no
longer really hated the man. She was afraid of him, yes, but he
seemed too obviously mad really to hate. In a way he was
pitiable. In the end what he had done would destroy him more
completely than it had destroyed her.
It seemed to be a very long time before she heard him
returning, and hastily resumed an approximation to her original
position. He brought a glass of water, a bowl of oxtail soup and
a spoon, and began to feed her. "Sorry I was so long. I've been
trying to organise a new nurse for my work. It's a bit of a
nuisance, really because, obviously, I can't have anyone staying
here for long periods now so I'll have to get someone to come in
on surgery days. There aren't that many theatre-trained
veterinary nurses around looking for work, you know. And that
damned car. I've put it in the barn for the time being, but I
will have to find some way of getting rid of it without inviting
too many questions." His tone was petulant. Obviously, in his
own mind, all this inconvenience was her fault and he seemed to
expect an apology.
When she finished the soup, he produced a couple of small
pills and told her to open wide. "It's all right, lovely, it's
just ibuprofen for the pain and inflammation. You've got to
learn to trust me. What other choice do you have, really?" She
opened her mouth. He put in the pills and, rather inexpertly,
gave her a drink of water. He poured too fast, and she began to
choke on the water and pills. A considerable amount of water
joined the soup stains on the bed. He shook his head. "This
won't do. We've got to get you up on your legs as soon as
possible." Then he looked at his watch and swore. He left
hurriedly, pulling the door behind him. A couple of moments
later she heard the front door followed by the pickup driving
off.
Okay, now was the time to think carefully. This could just be
the right time. Of course she wasn't sure how long he'd be away.
She thought about the appointments book. Say she'd been out for
about a day. That would make today Thursday the 10th. She
seemed to remember he had an op scheduled for Thursday afternoon.
The question was which hospital and how long an op. Try as she
might, she couldn't remember. The book would be in the small
reception area. Suddenly, she had another idea. A plan was
beginning to form.
She shuffled to the edge of the bed. To one whose body seemed
to be one huge bruise the floor looked a long way down. She
shuffled around so she could push her hindquarters off the bed
first, realising as she did so that she had begun to think of her
body in the terms used for sub-human quadrupeds. That made her
feel really rather strange. She pushed her hind legs down, but
before they reached the floor the coverlet slipped, and she slid
backwards onto her backside. The pain was enormous, despite the
analgesics, and she wondered if she had done herself important
damage. There was a lot of recent surgery in that area, after
all.
After waiting a moment to let her heart calm down, she got
back to all fours and walked clumsily over to inspect the next
obstacle: the door. Movement seemed to be getting a little
easier now. Some combination of practice, exercise and the
analgesics was starting to work for her. With her head lifted
uncomfortably high the handle of the door was just level with her
eyes. It needed to be pressed down and then the door pulled.
Two days ago only a reflex action, today this was a major
problem. First she tried pushing the handle with the bridge of
her nose. No use; the handle moved only fractionally and then
sprung back. The she tried to lift a forepaw onto it, first
standing and then sitting. No good. She couldn't get it high
enough.
She thought for a moment then dragged a pillow from the bed
with her teeth and pulled it against the door. Putting her front
legs on it, she could just about reach the handle with her mouth.
After three tries she managed to move the handle far enough to
release the latch, and pulled. The door opened about an inch but
then the handle slipped out of her mouth, and the pillow pushed
the door closed again. Had she been able to, she would have
screamed with frustration. After a moment she sat back on her
haunches and wept for a time in total dejection. Was there
nothing she was now capable of?
After an unmeasured period of self-pity she felt a little
better. Her neck hurt from repeatedly bending it so far back.
She almost wished that Ralph had worked out a way to "adjust the
head angle." Okay, think of Robert Bruce: try, try again. She
dragged the pillow a couple of inches away from the door and
tried it again. Eventually she had the door opened against the
pillow. Then she could drag the pillow away and paw the door
open, oh so carefully. What a triumph to get out into the
corridor!
Although she was moving better now she still walked with
arthritic slowness, and escaping the ranch on footq was obviously
out of the question. Oh, she might play hide and seek with him
for a while but it was not a game she had any chance of winning.
No, better to continue the original idea.
Her next target was the box room. This also had a handle, and
before she could get in she had to return for the pillow, walking
backwards and dragging it with her teeth. At least this door
opened away from her which made it easier.
Now, if only her memory held true. Upon entering the room,
she deliberately toppled a pile of cardboard boxes by pulling an
exposed flap with her teeth. She winced as they rained down on
her tender body. She had been on target. The box second from
top held party favours left over from a long-ago housewarming.
She turned the box over to scatter its contents. Then she picked
up a noisemaker in her teeth. The whistle in it could provide
her with a voice, of sorts, if she could get it into her mouth
the right way round.
The door of the master bedroom had a knob, and she couldn't
think of any way of getting that open. So she went down the
corridor to the kitchen which didn't have a door. The phone in
there hung on the wall at normal shoulder height, well out of her
diminished reach. She had forgotten that. There was, of course,
another phone in the reception of the surgery, but the door from
the surgery area to the rest of the house had a snap lock high up
on the door and it was fastened. The kitchen phone would have to
do, somehow.
Her first idea was to use the noisemaker. She put it down on
the floor and managed, after several tries, to get it round the
right way in her mouth. Then she blew, the thing unrolling with
the usual cheerfully rude noise. She tried to use it to snag a
loop of the cord dangling from the phone, which consisted only of
a handpiece. She quickly found she couldn't raise her head to an
angle high enough to get the thing to reach upwards. She tried
rolling on her back, but of course the noisemaker didn't reach
far enough that way.
She laughed silently at what she now started to see as a
ludicrous situation. "Ralph," she silently demanded, "come and
fix the angle of my head so I can send for the men in white
coats." She tried a broom. She found she could carry it
horizontally in her mouth but the staff was really too thick to
get a good grip on, and it fell every time she twisted her head
to try and raise one end. This time, instead of despair, she was
starting to suffer from the giggles, almost enjoying the
challenge. What she needed was something long and reasonably
thin that she could get a decent grip on. The loo brush!
Fortunately, the bathroom door was open a crack, so she was
able to fetch the long handled brush. By clamping her teeth hard
on the handle and twisting her head as far as it would go to the
side, she could just get the bristles into one coil of the phone
cord. It took several tries, but she finally hooked it well
enough to dislodge the phone, striking her painfully on the side
of the head. Now all she needed was to find something to hold in
her mouth and push the buttons -- she was almost there! She had
only to call Emergency and use the noisemaker to honk S.O.S. in
Morse, and they would trace the call and be here. Then, finally,
it dawned on her that there was no dial tone. What a time for
the phone line to go down!
She looked closely at the phone for signs of the problem, not
really expecting anything obvious. But it was: the end of a
piece of insulation tape stuck out of the phone socket. In that
moment Mary felt a surge of admiration for Ralph. He had
outsmarted her. He had unplugged the phone and replaced the plug
with a piece of tape to block the connection. She would give
odds that the answering machine, which could not dial out, was
the only functioning phone on the premises today. There was no
way on Earth she could pull out and replace that finicky little
plug. Nor could she think of any way to put the phone back in
its cradle. Ralph would know what she had tried to do the moment
he got back. Suddenly she was very much afraid.
Perhaps physical escape was still possible. She quickly
established that the outside doors were both mortise-locked. She
could see no sign of the keys, but the burglar alarm was off.
That last showed more foresight on Ralph's part. Had it been
armed, she might have contrived to set it off. She hoped that
this had, at least, taught her not to confuse crazy with stupid.
Now it was she who felt like a fool. Her escape attempt had been
hopelessly premature. She should have waited until she had more
information about how Ralph planned to arrange things and until
she was more competent physically. The telephone had been a trap
and she had walked right into it. How clever she had thought
herself to solve those problems!
Her best course now was to try to appear contrite and to
humour Ralph as much as possible, whatever it might cost her
pride. She decided to tidy up as much as possible, returning
broom, loo brush and pillow, and laboriously putting the party
favours back into the box. Of course there was nothing she could
do about restacking the boxes or straightening the coverlet.
While she was engaged in these domestic chores she began to feel
the need to relieve herself. First her bladder and then her gut
began to make demands. She went to the toilet and tried to find
a way of using it. It was too high for her. She would have to
hold out as long as she could and hope that he came back in time.
She thought of the shower cubicle, which would at least be easy
to clean up, but couldn't find a method of opening the slippery sliding
doors.