So this, then, was my new life. I was the Overseer’s means of transport around the Sheikh’s very extensive holdings. Each day I was shackled into my rickshaw, the bridle was clamped into my mouth, and I was led out to wait for the Overseer to begin his daily rounds.
He was always in a hurry, and I had to run hard and fast between the various fields he needed to visit, the quarry, and various outbuildings on the estate. He never spoke to me in English, and I was directed solely by the bridle, the slapping of the reins on my ass, and the light driving whip he used which stung my ass, back and shoulders when he thought I was not moving fast enough.
In fact not only did I not get spoken to in English, but I hardly got spoken to at all. The Overseer used the short, guttural Arabic commands to tell me to halt or get going, and in the stables there was almost no words of any kind used. All the stable-hand slaves were of course, like me, muted by their tongue restraints, and they took me through the daily round of showering, milking, feeding, and grooming by routine. Only rarely did the guards on duty in the stables intervene, and then they, too, just barked a short command before using their stun guns if necessary to get obeyed.
Weeks passed, and the lack of language really got to me. I could not speak. I heard no conversation, just a few barked commands. And I was unable to use any private, non-verbal communication because every night I was shackled alone into a stall in the stables. Some of the pony slaves, like the team of eight with Mike and Hans who pulled the heavy wagon, always slept together, as did a group of four tall, lithe black guys who pulled a four-wheeled carriage with four seats around the estate for parties of visitors. But as a “thoroughbred”, specially trained to pull a light rickshaw fast, I was very valuable and kept apart from other ponies. With no means of communication, it became easy to think of myself as a pony, because that was what I now was, and my former life in the USA seemed like a strange dream.
I just ran and ran around the estate, and there was nothing new in my life. The initial shock of seeing lines of naked men chained together tilling the fields had passed, and I was used to seeing the other pony-slave vehicles around the estate.
The Overseer – I never knew or heard his name – was always dressed in the same way, too, when he was working. Just the denim cut-offs that he had been wearing on the day he arrived, and his feet in trainers. He was obviously proud of his physique, because he never covered his chest with its crop of curly brown hair bleached almost blond by the sun, and he was of course, like me, tanned a very dark brown by the constant exposure to the strong desert sun whilst he was outside inspecting the Sheikh’s holdings and slaves.
One morning, though, was different – half way through our rounds of the estate the Overseer looked at his watch, and pulled me sharply around and flicked his whip against my ass to make me run faster than usual back towards the central complex. We went back to the Veterinarian’s office, where the Overseer released me from the shackles and led me in for what I realised was a regular inspection to make sure I was keeping in first-class condition. My bridle was left firmly clamped into my mouth, though, because we were obviously going back as soon as I had been examined.
The veterinarian took the familiar blood, urine and semen samples, weighed me, and ran his hands all over my body feeling for any welts, scratches or wounds. And then for the first time in I don’t know how long, I heard English again! The shock of it was almost more than I could bear, and just hearing a few spoken words made me feel so alone that a tears started to well up.
The Veterinarian told the Overseer that although my ass, thigh and calf muscles were in great shape, he was concerned that the development of my arms and pecs was falling away. “After all, ” he said, “this is a valuable pony, and if the Sheikh wants to sell him on, the next owner might want to use him for some other task and his value would be severely reduced. I think you should schedule him through the training room every day, not on the treadmill, but just on the other apparatus to keep him in tip-top condition all over”.
“Can he stand it?” the Overseer asked. “I work him pretty hard running around the estate, and if he then has to do a major session in the training room, will it be too much for his heart and lungs?”
“No.”, was the reply. “You have a tough, young pony there. There’s absolutely no sign of heart strain, and his lungs are in excellent condition from the running. Our diet is designed to keep him healthy, and he’s currently only 23. I would expect him to be able to run as a pony until 45, and if you work him hard in the training room too, that might reduce by a couple of years. But the Sheikh will still have got over 20 years of work out of him, so he will have more than repaid his purchase price.”
He went on to say “Best schedule him starting today. The Sheikh is coming down for the stud sessions next month, and we don’t want him displeased with any of the manflesh on the estate.”
The Overseer then led me out, re-shackled me to the rickshaw, and I had to run even harder than usual to make up for lost time during my exam.
When we got back to the stables that evening I was led off to be showered and milked as usual, but just as my semen spurted out as I was being finished, a stable-lad slave came in and gestured to the grooming slaves . They pointed at me, and the stable-lad came over and grasped my still-rigid cock and using it as a handle, let me to the training room. I was familiar with this from my first weeks in the stables, and I saw other ponies in training using the treadmill and the other apparatus just as I had.
I was taken to the first weights machine, and my number was keyed in and I had to start a tough programme of reps. I was already exhausted from my normal day’s hard work, and my usual routine after being milked was simply to eat down the slave meal and collapse with total exhaustion into my stall. So this new exercise was a horror – it needed every ounce of my strength to avoid the to keep me at it!
This was now to be my new routine, then. Running with the Overseer around the estate all morning and most of the afternoon, then a very extended session in the training room until late into the evening, when I could finally collapse.
A VISITOR
One morning I was shackled to my rickshaw with my bridle in as usual, waiting outside the stables for the Overseer to arrive, when a stable-lad slave came out instead. He took hold of my cock, and used it to lead me off to a part of the complex here I had not been before. Arriving outside a small one-storey house, he wrapped the loose ends of my reins around a tree at the edge of the path, and left me tethered there whilst he went back to the stables.
I stood patiently under the hot sun, thinking it was a nice change from having to run. As usual the flies were a real nuisance as they incessantly buzzed around my head, and there was little that I could do to stop them – my hands were shackled, and the only way to keep them out of my eyes and mouth (which was of course half open, because of the bridle I was wearing with its steel rod forced down into the back where my rear molars had been) was to keep flicking my head constantly. After about an hour, I wanted to pee, so I let go as usual where I was standing – this now seemed such a natural thing for a naked pony to do, I didn’t give it a second thought.
The morning went on, and I wondered what was happening. I became apprehensive – I couldn’t imagine what I had done to warrant this change of routine, but I was so used to having my life pass in an absolutely standard way, with no freedom of choice, that any alteration seemed threatening. Was I going to be punished in some new or unusual way? What had I done to deserve the Overseer’s displeasure? I broke out into a nervous sweat as I contemplated some awful unknown that might be about to be my fate.
Eventually the door to the house opened and the Overseer appeared, followed by another guy about the same age. This second man was pale – it was unusual to see anyone without a deep, rich, tan on the property. Normally only freshly-arrived slave stock was pale, and one of the first things that had to happen was that they had to get tanned so that they could toil in the open all day.
The second guy was chatting to the Overseer, and suddenly stopped in the middle of his sentence. He had seen me standing there, naked in the shafts of the rickshaw, and was obviously so surprised that he did a “double take”. He stood there on the steps of the house, checking that it really was a tall, naked, branded man coupled to the cart. It was as if he couldn’t believe the evidence of his eyes!
“Get up on the seat”, said the Overseer to the man. “It’s really only designed for one, as I use it to get around the estate quickly. But the pony is young and strong, and he’s been resting all morning so he’ll be quite easily able to pull us both for the rest of the day.”
The man looked in astonishment at the Overseer. “You mean that the man in the shafts can pull you around?”, he said.
“Yes”, said the Overseer. “He’s a well trained pony, and he can easily do the 10K or so a day I usually cover in my work. I’ve had him for about four months now, and he’s one of the best I have had – very responsive to commands, and with a good endurance. The Sheikh saw him in a sale earlier in the year, and thought that as he had long, well-developed thighs, he’d make a good pony where speed and endurance were more important than raw pulling power.”
“No “, said the guy, “I didn’t mean could he do it, I really meant to ask whether you do actually use men for jobs like that. Surely a motor cycle would be better!”.
“No “, said the Overseer, “A bike would be quite contrary to the Sheikh’s philosophy. He wants to show the world that it is possible to run a large estate, and provide a good living for its master, entirely without the use of oil. We all know that the oil is running out, and of course that’s where the Sheikh got his fortune from in the first place. But as oil gets scarcer and scarcer, we’re going to have to find some other solution to the problems of getting work done – especially hard, manual work – and so the Sheikh is conducting this large-scale trial with using men instead of machines. I told you all about this before you decided to come and visit, and warned you that your sensibilities might be offended at first. You didn’t see anything last night because it was dark on the way from the airport, but I’m going to take you on a guided tour today, as your introduction to life on the Sheikh’s estate, so you can see the full range of uses we can put slaves to.”
“In any case, I’ve found a pony slave like this one much better than a bike. It’s quiet, there’s no smell of gasoline, and it’s semi-intelligent. I can leave him trotting along between stops, and don’t have to concentrate on the road constantly to avoid pot holes, and to steer! I can get a lot of valuable thinking done during the day because my mind is freed-up from having to bother about trivia.”
“But surely you could use a real pony”, the guy replied. “Man has been using horses for centuries, and it’s degrading to make a man perform like a pony”.
“No, you’re wrong there “, said the Overseer. “When the Sheikh first set up the estate to run without machines, he got horses, ponies and cattle in to pull the carts, drive the ploughs, and power the various treadmills and capstans that provide us with the small amount of electricity we need for our hi-fis and PCs. But there were endless problems – they need a lot of training, you have to look after them well, and they can’t work unsupervised. We needed almost as many cowboys, cattlemen, and general hands to manage the stock as we now need to control the slaves, and it simply wasn’t economic. You couldn’t make the place pay with all the staff overheads and the expenses of keeping animals.”
“Once the law changed so that slavery was the punishment for most crimes in this country, the Sheikh realised that he could get slaves to do the work that the draft animals were doing. Now the only non-slave animals you see here are those we’re rearing for food. All the physical work is done by slaves, and it’s much cheaper. Once you’ve paid the one-off cost at the auction, there’s no more ongoing expenses for wages. And we’re working on eliminating that, too – we’re breeding our own slaves now, from healthy slave women and working male slave stock that is performing well at work. There’s an added bonus that the bred slaves don’t come with any preconceived notions of their ‘rights’, and they’re much easier to manage. Within about 30 years we probably won’t even need guards, as all the slave stock will know its place, and will not even be able to conceive of doing anything else except toiling on the estate”.
“The Sheikh likes to feel he’s doing his bit for the planet. Unlike conventional farms with their huge energy inputs and greenhouse gases being generated from all the engines, it’s completely non-polluting. It’s rather like going back to those older times where there was a real peasant economy, and everyone simply worked on the land. The only updating the Sheikh has done is to change the ratio of men to women – in a peasant economy, there’s about half of each, and the women and children tend to consume all the surplus production. The Sheikh needs the surplus for himself, to trade to make money to keep him in the style he deserves, and so we can’t afford a lot of relatively unproductive female slaves. 95% of the slaves here are men, and we work them intensively. The only women are in the breeding herd. It works out well, really – most of the new slaves as a result of the laws are men anyway, as they tend to break the law more often than women. And the advances in biology these days mean that we can easily test the sex of the foetuses in the breeders at an early stage, and abort any that won’t be men.”
“Anyway, we can’t stand here talking all day. I’ve got work to do. Do you want to come and see the estate, or are your sensibilities so offended by the sight of my pony that you’d rather stay here, and go to the Club and the Pool?”.
With that, the guy climbed into the seat, the Overseer untied my reins from the tree, and got up beside him. With the usual sharp command in Arabic and the flick of the reins on my ass, we were off. It wasn’t so difficult to pull two men in the rickshaw, and as the Overseer was pointing out the functions of the various buildings as we set off for the fields, we were going only just at a light jog and I did not have to run flat-out.
We came to the first large field, and the field slave gang was about halfway across it, turning over the sod with their spades. The guy looked truly astonished to see the 30-or-so naked slaves, joined together by the wire that ran through the links of their neck chains.
“See how economical this is.”, said the Overseer, “We have 30 slaves in this gang, and we only need one guard. And he has nothing to do most of the time. They can’t escape, because of the wire and we use advanced technology to keep up the work rate. If the gang does not keep up the right pace, the guard only has to touch that switch, and a sharp shock goes along the wire to all 30 of them, to remind them to keep working! If we had two teams of horses pulling a plough, we’d need ploughmen, grooms, and so on, and this is so much easier.”
“But why are they naked? “, the guy asked. “Surely they could be given shorts or something!”.
“Don’t be so sensitive”, said the Overseer. “You’re still thinking of slaves a people. Only people need clothes, for protection from the weather, display, fashion, and sexual modesty. The sun always shines here, so there’s no need for weather protection. Display and fashion isn’t an issue – these are slaves. And as for sexual modesty – what have they got to be modest about? They’re all males working together, and other than their owner the Sheikh, the guards, and the occasional visitor like you, there’s no one looking at them. Think of a football team in the USA – they all change together in the locker room, then put on special costumes to play; but after the game, they all shower together and there’s no talk of ‘sexual modesty’ then. Indeed, when I used to play at college, most of the guys were always trying to take a sly look at each other’s cocks.”
“Once they’re used to being naked, there’s no problem. And anyway, what else would clothes achieve? – they would have to be bought, they would wear out, and they would need changing and washing – all extra expense for the Sheikh. We could only justify the costs if the clothes made the slaves work harder, and we know that’s not so. We drive them so hard already, there’s no way that they could possibly work any harder!”
“Observe “, he continued, “the differences between this field gang and my pony. We only wash the field slaves once a week, primarily to keep lice and so on down – it doesn’t really matter if their skins are dirty. And water is an expensive problem here – it all has to be pumped up from underground, and we need slave power to do that. Similarly we only cut their hair every few months – it doesn’t really matter how long it is, providing it doesn’t get in their eyes and hinder them from working. We also don’t bother to trim their body hair – out here in the fields, it really doesn’t matter if they’re smooth or hairy as we’re not expecting them to be looked at closely.”
“But my pony is a thoroughbred animal, and is kept in excellent condition. He is washed every day, and shaved every three or four days. In between, I think the ‘designer stubble’ on his chin is quite fetching, but of course I don’t like beards so it’s never allowed to get any longer than that. I also have his chest shaved, as I like to see the definition of his pecs properly, and I keep his head hair at about half an inch as I think it makes him look ‘hard’ – as a blond, he might look a bit less masculine if it was longer. And of course I like his pubic hair trimmed neatly – his balls are shaved whenever his chest is, as I personally don’t like to see wispy hairs growing from a guy’s sac. And don’t you think that trimming away the rest, except for that small area directly above his cock really emphasises that he’s different from you and me?”
The Overseer’s companion nodded, and said “I suppose you’re right. What about that mark on his ass – I’m surprised you want your perfect pony disfigured in that way”.
“Au contraire, mon ami”, the Overseer said. “That’s one of his brands. The Sheikh insists that all his property is properly marked – it serves two purposes. Firstly if the slave ever did escape, we can indisputably prove that the Sheikh is his owner. And secondly, it emphasises to the slaves that they are owned property. In the early days we didn’t brand slaves, and we found it took them much longer to settle in to their new lives. Now they are branded on arrival, and we find it really emphasises to the new stock how their status has altered. This one came almost directly from the USA, and he probably thought it was some kind of exotic adventure, or even a dream, until the white-hot branding iron seared into his flesh. That really gets a slave to understand his new status! You’ll also see on his arm we have his number tattooed – the Sheikh doesn’t like slaves to have names, as he thinks it gives them too much dignity and might suggest they are really men like us. A number is much less personal, and we also use it for the feeding and exercise machines, to identify this slave uniquely”.
After exchanging a few words with the field guard, we were then off again, and above my laboured breathing I could hear the Overseer and his companion continuing to talk.
At the next field the Overseer and his companion got down from the rickshaw to inspect one of the pumps raising irrigation water out of the small canal that brought water onto the estate, discharging it onto the crops. The pump was a conventional Archimedian screw, so it could cope with some silt and muck in the water, and was powered by a black slave on a small treadmill at one end of the apparatus.
“This is what I mean about ‘conservation’ “, said the Overseer. “On the other farms around here in the desert, this would have an electric motor, There would be wires disfiguring the landscape, and back at the main buildings we’d have to have a huge diesel generator to generate the power. It’s much more environmentally friendly to have this slave simply do it, and it costs almost nothing.”
“This slave was one of the first raised here on the farm, and because we buy our slave meal in very large quantities, the cost of feeding him is minimal. We don’t have to guard him, because he has no conception of ‘freedom’ or ‘running away’. Since he was 16, the only life he has known has been to stand here driving the Sheikh’s pump. And in any case, his neck chain is secured to the pump housing so he can’t move more than three metres from it. It’s a really low-cost solution, because we don’t even have to provide an escort every day to and from the central complex – we simply leave him here next to the pump all the time. At night, he just lies underneath it, and then he’s ready to start again in the morning. As he’s a black, his hair doesn’t grow much, and a monthly visit from the barber keeps his hair trim. He can wash himself as often as he likes in the canal water.”
Whilst they were talking, the farm carriage pulled by the four matched blacks drew up, and the Overseer and his friend went over to talk to its occupants for a while. When it went on its way, they came back and climbed into the rickshaw, still talking. This was the first time I had heard a lot of English for months, and it was a real experience for me – I realised how much the silence that had surrounded me, except for a few commands, was taking away my ability to think.
“That’s another example of the care the Sheikh takes with his slaves”, the Overseer continued. “Notice how they were all the same height, and build. Getting four the same height is relatively easy, but sometimes you find that two slaves who are the same height in the catalogue before the sale are quite different in practice. One can have a long body and shorter legs, and the other can have wonderfully long legs, but a short body. If you’re only concerned about the overall height, you won’t have a good match – to some extent if they are wearing clothes it doesn’t matter as much, as the clothes tend to hide those differences. But when they’re going to be naked, you have to pay attention – especially if they’re doing work where the Sheikh’s reputation is on the line. Those carriage slaves are seen by most of the Sheikh’s guests, and he takes a pride in having everything ‘just so’ . He doesn’t want the cock of one to be pressing into the small of the back of one of the others, if they’re standing close. He wants cock to ass, the same for all.”
“They looked in good condition “, ventured the Overseer’s companion.
“Yes “, he replied. “They are Nubians, so they’re handsome stock to begin with. Then they have been trained long and hard, so that their muscles are at peak tone. Every scrap of hair is shaved off them every day, so they are always completely smooth, and they have oil rubbed in to their bodies before they set out so they have that wonderful sheen. It’s actually not that good for them, because it can interfere with their sweating. But usually they don’t have to run very hard, or very far, as they are only taken out when visitors are being given a short tour. That’s why I didn’t book that carriage for us today, and used this one – my pony is used to longer and harder journeys, and he isn’t oiled so he can sweat properly”.
“Although perhaps I should consider having him completely smooth – but perhaps not. Without any hair at all, I think slaves can end up looking rather as if they haven’t fully matured. It’s not so important with those very big blacks as they have less body hair anyway and we’re kind of used to not seeing it, but with a blonde slave like this one, I think it is important to avoid the ‘schoolboy look’ That’s one of the reasons why I choose to have the little line of hair running down from his navel to his cock left – it adds just that little extra touch of maturity to him. Have a close look next time we stop, and tell me what you think. I’d value your opinion as someone who is seeing him with a ‘fresh eye’ – I can easily order him to be shaved clean if you think it would make him more pleasing tothe eye.”
“I’ve also had his foreskin left, for the time being, as it’s a bit unusual. Most of the slaves we buy in are from this country, and as Arabs they are already circumcised when we get them. And a whole lot more are from the USA, where it’s increasingly rare to find a man not circumcised. Strangely, we don’t seem to get many Europeans, and I think that’s a pity as many of them are uncut. Whilst you’re looking him over, tell me what you think – should I have him cut? I’ve watched him being milked several times, but it’s always difficult to try to judge the effect of circumcision until after the event and it’s too late then! If he had that type of foreskin that extended well beyond the cock-head, I’d have had it removed by now. But I think it’s kind of interesting to see how the cock head and piss slit just poke out from the foreskin in his case.”.
I couldn’t believe I was being talked about like this, in front of me. The Overseer clearly did not even consider that I might have a view, or even that I could understand what they were saying. I was no more ‘there’, as part of their conversation, than a dumb animal would have been. But then, to them, that was what I was.
To be continued …
