Alison's Lament

Max’s pet shop was a large establishment on the high street. And being the typical pet-loving girl I went there for a job. Always one to give a girl a job was Max. Well known for it in fact. Not that they stayed with him for long. Always moving on to better things he said, so there was always a space for a new girl. Part-time, weekends, even the odd evening if you wanted. Anything to make your pay up to a sensible level so you could have a good time.

The work was easy once I started. Basic cash handling at the till as a steady stream of older folks and mothers with children came in to buy bags of feed, or just to ogle the pets in their cages.

Oh yes, and the men. The sort of men who had bull terriers and/or damn great Rottweilers. They came with shaved heads, excessive earrings, and they all fancied themselves something rotten. One or two gave me a bit of a hard time, but Max was always there to keep them in check if they got out of hand.

They all bought what I can only call fashion accessories for their dogs. Chunky leather collars and studded harnesses that looked as uncomfortable for the dog as hell, but they all seemed happy with them. One or two of the men wore the collars themselves as well, which looked altogether too odd for my tastes.

These strange fashion accessories were delivered every Thursday regular as clockwork by a fine-speaking gentleman who always remembered my name, always said please and thank you, and got on great with Max. Max would then whisk the box away and unpack it in private, unlike most of the other stock which would be unpacked openly on the counter in front of the customers.

Well, one day the inevitable happened and the nice gentleman arrived when Max had been called away. I smiled as ever, had me sign his docket, then swept away leaving me with that plain cardboard box. A suspiciously large cardboard now I came to think about it.

Curiosity got the better of me, and within seconds I had a heavy knife in my hands and was slitting the tape and lifting back the lid. To be faced with depressingly normal looking box full of finely tooled leather doggie accessories. Quite what I had expected to find I don’t know, but somehow I was disappointed.

Frustrated, I slammed the lid back and heaved the box off the counter and swung it round to place it in the back room to await Max’s arrival. But something went wrong and my hands slipped in their grip allowing the box and lid split and delivered a slithery flood of gleaming leather onto the floor.

Cursing I put down the bottom of the box and desperately started to put the leather items back inside. There went any chance I had of denying I had opened the box, but such was life.

I was about halfway through my hurried work when I found something in my hands that bought me up short. At first glance it looked just like any of the other doggie harnesses, but on closer inspection something was not quite right about it. To start with, it was far larger than any of the others, and certain of the straps appeared to be in strategically different locations.

I turned it over slowly in my hands, examining every part hoping it would reveal it’s secrets to me, but nothing came to me. Laying it aside I took a closer look at some of the other items and soon located a couple of what I had taken to be dog collars which were also slightly strange. They were heavily made and somewhat taller than usual for your average dog.

The rattle of the shop door made me shove all the contents back into the box and shove it under the counter before I sprang up and served the customer. Then another, then another, and before I knew it Max had returned and silently taken possession of his package and taken it into the back room.

It was hours before I found myself in the back room with the box again, free to examine it’s contents again. Checking carefully to see Max was deeply involved with a customer I lifted off the lid again and soon located that strange harness. Still not quite sure what to make of it I turned it around in front of myself in both hands, the straps all hanging down from the heavily made central section. Wondering if there was some sort of label I turned it over in my hands, and as I did so the two uppermost straps twisted and came to rest across the tops of my shoulders. A sudden thought dashed through my mind, and as I shivered inside I bought the thick leather central section towards me until it touched my chest. As I watched in horrified silence all the other straps unfolded themselves and turned in their fittings to swing towards me.

Moments later I knew what that strange harness was for. It wasn’t for any large dog, it was designed to be worn by a person, and judging by the way the straps came to lie softly against my curves, to be worn by a woman.

I heard Max’s voice change, moving towards the door to the back room. Suddenly panicking I looked desperately about the room, trying to find some sort of hiding place. Silly thinking I soon realized, but the discovery of the real purpose this strange harness had addled my mind. My eyes fell on the big corner cupboard, and I darted towards it, wrenched open the door and slipping quickly inside before pulling the door nearly closed behind me.

I swore silently as I realized that I was still holding the harness, which did away with any chance I might have had that Max might think I was out in the back yard if he went into that box. I backed away until my back touched the rear wall of the cupboard, and I almost fell as it swung open behind me and deposited me into a room I did not even know existed. Still, after the things I had found today, I suppose nothing should have surprised me.

I took a pace into the room and closed the secret door behind me before I turned and took stock of my new location. There were benches in the room, and hooks on the walls that supported fresh bundles of leather that really did not bear closer investigation. I could guess their purpose from their general appearance, and while part of me was fascinated, I didn’t want to know all the finer details right there and then. But something in the room did intrigue me. A tall, square structure in the middle of the room, nearly as tall as me and covered with a cloth.

Setting the harness down on a bench I stepped up to the pillar and took a firm handful of cloth. Pulling hard it came away smoothly in my hands and I gave a little shriek. The top half of that little tower was what could only be described as large puppy cage, only it’s occupant was not a puppy, or a dog of any kind. It was occupied by a beautiful young woman.

My hand was at my mouth as I slowly circled the cage, taking in every detail of the caged woman. Milky pale flesh contrasted sharply with the black leather harness buckled tightly about her curvy body, and ginger hair curled tightly off a head made the prisoner of a bizarre mask. Leather straps about her head kept it firmly in place, while the front was sculpted into a likeness of a dog. Complete even down to a pair of simple leather ears sticking straight up from the uppermost straps. A tall black collar was fastened about her neck, it’s square studs gleaming brightly in the light.

Her head snapped round to follow my slow circuit, and judging by the inarticulate gurgling noises she was making there was some sort of gag built into the back of that mask. She pawed desperately at the front of the cage, and I saw that pawing was all she could do as thick leather mittens were laced about her hands to take away her ability to use her fingers. There were even little pads moulded into the bottoms of the ‘paws’ to complete the ‘doggy’ effect. Not that having her fingers free would have helped her, as I found when I tried to open the cage door. It was padlocked closed. I rattled it impotently as her big blue eyes starred silently up at me from behind the mask.

I don’t know what came over me then as I reached through the bars and started to stroke her. As if she really was a big dog of some sort. As my hand touched her pale bare shoulders she made a tiny noise from behind her gag, and as I started to stroke her unresisting back she stretched sinuously as if she really was enjoying the attention. My fingers traced the lines of her leather harness through the bars, and softly followed the lines of her spine until I reached the curves of her beautifully rounded buttocks. So hypnotized was by those pale, fleshy curves that I was completely surprised when a strong arm closed about me and a hand pressed a cloth to my nose and mouth. There was a brief whiff of chemicals as I fought, and then nothing until consciousness retuned.

The first thing that struck me when I woke was that my jaw ached, and when I tried to move my mouth to relieve the ache I couldn’t feel my teeth. As waking rushed back to me I recalled the whiff of chemicals, then the memory of that lovely girl in the cage came crashing back into my mind. My eyes snapped open and I tried to scream as I could see through half-focussed eyes thin wire bars that mean only one thing. The feeling of matching bars through the thin rug that lay under my side made me whimper softly I my mind refused to allow my eyes to open again and possibly see a truth I couldn’t face.

Still in my self-imposed darkness I reached out one hand to see how far it could reach before the inevitable happened. I touched bars before my arm was even half extended. But not with my fingers. They seemed welded together somehow, and everything I felt was through a thick, soft material. Desperate to know the truth, yet fearing it with every fibre of my being, I drew my hand to my face and opened my eyes. Where there had once been a pink human hand, there was now a black leather doggie paw laced tightly over my hand. And somewhere in the back of my mind I could feel the firm embrace of a collar about my throat.

Tears welled up in my eyes as I forced myself to look around and face the terrible truth. Now I was the girl in the cage. I looked down my body and saw the transformation was complete. A black leather harness had made a prisoner of my now naked body. It might even has been the harness I had found in the box, who knew. All I knew was that now it was strapped tightly about me. The thick leather front section was pulled tight against my ribs and up against my breasts to offer them some modicum of support, while other straps pulled tightly at my shoulders and hips. Straps liberally dotted with gleaming studs and handy ‘D’ rings that spoke ominously of opportunities for further restraint and confinement.

“I see you are awake”. Max’s voice made me jump. I had been so fascinated by the discovery of my predicament that I had not heard him enter. “Comfortable ?”

I wailed at him through the big rubber roll gag that I guessed was in my mouth. And hurled myself helplessly against he solid bars of the cage, receiving only bruises and sore shoulders as my reward. The cage was my keeper now, whether I liked it or not.

Panting from the sudden exertions, I watched him warily as he took a large mirror down from the wall and asked if I wanted to see how I looked?

As I knelt there on all fours, my body heaving as I panted, he held up the mirror and a semi-human but oh so sexy creature stared back at me. My eyes were still my own, big and brown as ever, but the rest of my face was obscured my a black leather mask in the perfect face of a dog. Complete with two upright ears atop. Leather straps vanished backwards from the mask and no doubt joined up at tight buckles somewhere in the mass of my blonde hair I could only just make out.

My firm breasts hung down unfettered, their nipples growing erect despite myself as they took in the bizarre nature of the poor captive girl I could see in the mirror.

“What happens next is rather up to you” Max said, “Every day I will take you out and exercise you, feed and water you, and then put you back in your cage. And every day you will be given the chance to plead to be taken away from your cage. And take you away from it I will. Out to the farm. And out at the farm things are rather more intense than they are here. So be careful what you ask for, because once I take you out of the cage, there is no going back to it.”

I tried to rise, to protest, but the moment I rose I felt the bars of the top of the cage pressing hard down on my spine, silently reinforcing my fate.

“After a while” Max was talking again, “You will forget all about walking upright. The others soon did.”

So that was why Max’s pet shop had such a high staff turnover.

“Then you will forget what it is like to have to talk, and after a while it really is like having a dog of your own. You will respond to my touch, to a tender caress, and the offer of sex will drive you absolutely wild with delight. Just give it a few months in the cage and you will never look back.”

Max propped up the mirror before he left, and as the door closed behind him all that was left in the room was a poor, helpless, thoroughly trapped puppy girl in a cage with no real hope of rescue. And because everything he had said was probably true, I started to weep. Weeping as I wondered what really happened out at the farm.
 

03.02.08