Horse Play

Annie was quietly pleased that the roster had teamed her up with Jess for the day; there were some girls on the payroll that she was fond of, some that she really loathed and others that fitted somewhere between provoking neither fun nor fury. Jess fitted into the middle category and made herself desirable for the work of the day simply because she was a pleasant soul who more than anything else knew when to talk and when to shut her mouth. The shift was a long one and Annie needed to make it through without a constant line of inane chatter in her ear.

As they stripped off in the white-tiled locker room, Jess made a few small comments to her taller colleague, complementing her on the effect the gym was having on the shape of her hips and the flat muscles of her stomach. She framed them in her usual self-deprecating style as she folded her clothes with great care and placed them into her locker.

For her own part, Annie did what she had learned to do in the time that she had known Jessica: accept the complements with grace and keep her own sense of incredulity to herself. At first Annie had thought the other woman was being some kind of stealthy bitch based on the way she put herself down. Petite and perfectly proportioned with the face of a porcelain doll, Jessica had always struck her as the personification of Japanese beauty who made the taller and broader woman feel like a lumbering great thing in comparison. But time had taught her that Jessica meant every word and there seemed to be nothing she could do to change her mind.

Annie dumped the last of her own clothes into her locker in a jumbled pile and took a second to study her reflection in the mirror inside the door. Perhaps Jessica was right to complement her? The thought was sudden and the vanity of it took Annie off guard. But then she was employed in a profession that needed a degree of physical charm and the ability to stir desire in her audience. Maybe she wasn’t too tall and maybe her skin, the colour of shelled hazelnuts, wasn’t as imperfect as she thought?

Amused by her odd burst of self love, Annie gathered her shoulder-length, black braids up and pinned them to the back of her head before following Jessica into the adjoining dressing room. This new room was smaller than the locker room, the walls sporting rails from which hung white bags fastened up the side with zippers. Annie and Jessica made their way to the rack on the left side of the room and located a pair of bags with their names printed on a small piece of card behind a plastic window. Jessica smiled as she sat on one of the narrow benches in the middle of the room and Annie took a seat across from her on the other.

“I hope they listened after I complained about the instep in the boots,” Jessica unzipped the bag that she had draped across her lap. “I don’t think that I can take another shift in pain like that!”

“Mal told me he made sure it was sorted,” Annie had already opened her own bag and started to pull the contents out before she realised that she had just said more than she wanted to.

“Well,” Jessica laughed in a conspiratorial manner, “if Malcolm put someone on it I have nothing to worry about!” She fixed her colleague with a suggestive look. “If only we could all have caught the eye of our prince?”

“Forget I said a word, Jess,” Annie shook her head, “no one did a thing and you’re in for hours of pain and discomfort!”

She busied herself with checking the contents of the bag and ignored Jessica’s childish giggles.

The bag contained five items that looked to be made of off-white latex and were clearly intended to be worn. First Jessica scooped up the smallest of the items and proceeded to pull it on over her head then inch it down until her face emerged and it was clear that the item was a hood. When she had finally negotiated it on the hood covered her from the tip of her head to the base of her neck, but left her face exposed as if to emphasize the contrast between its colour and her own skin.

Next she grabbed one of the larger garments and balled it up like a stocking before slipping her left foot inside. The foot found its way into the base of the garment where it fitted neatly into a snug, padded opening like a shoe at the bottom, only stopping when her entire calf was sunk into the same substance. Annie smoothed the remaining length of the strange garment over her thigh and then repeated the exercise with her right leg.

She stood up to examine the fit of the garments that seemed to be a hybrid of boots and stockings, noting that the shape below the knees gave her legs the appearance of ending in not feet, but instead in round appendages that were almost as wide as a dinner plate and started in an unbroken line from her kneecaps. She took an experimental step and was satisfied when her feet and legs responded in perfect harmony, hidden as they were by the padded latex of the leggings.

Annie bent and picked up the last two items from the bag and pulled the first one onto her left arm in much the same way as she had pulled on the leggings. Indeed the shape and form of the garments she pulled on were in many ways a miniature version of the leggings, but gloves designed instead to be worn over the hands and on the arms. Her hand sank into a padded opening in the bottom of the glove and she wiggled her fingers until they were comfortable, held in a position that gripped a portion of the material and kept them from moving individually. When she had pulled it all the way up, the glove ended an inch above her elbow.

With one hand sunk into the glove, Annie was forced to pull the second into place with her teeth as they ended in a more subtle and smaller version of the rounded appendages that had replaced her feet. Annie glanced across at Jessica who had already finished dressing herself in an identical set of garments and nodded before they both made their way through into the third and final room on their bizarre rounded legs.

This was the smallest room yet and the space was dominated by four large devices that seemed to resemble an attempt to create a spray-tan booth capable of a lunar landing. Large enough for a fully grown adult to stand inside, a heavy door made of a synthetic material as strong as steel and yet as clear as glass allowed entry while numerous pipes, valves, tubes and wired snaked down from openings in the suspended ceiling to connect with the booths.

“Time to get into character,” Jessica waved to Annie as she keyed in a code on the panel by the door of the first booth and stepped inside.

“See you on the other side,” Annie turned and entered her own code into the panel of the opposite booth and stepped inside, allowing the weighted door to swing closed behind her with a suppressed hiss as the edges sealed her off from the outside world. Annie had done this dozens of times before, but it was always at this point that she felt a slight jangle of nerves at the anticipation of the next few hours.

As the mechanics of the booth started to come to life around her with the familiar sounds, she recalled the techniques and tricks that she had learnt from her brief and abortive stint as thespian and began to mentally assemble the character that she would be playing. She stood with her head slightly tilted back, eyes and mouth closed; arms held away from her sides and her legs a foot apart and allowed the booth to do its work.

When the first pair of jets emerged from their recesses and began to orbit around her feet, the combination of familiarity and her mental preparations meant that Annie failed to notice the sound that they made as they began to spray her legs and the cold sensation of the substance they used was nothing more than a vague tingle in the back of her mind. With the precision and efficiency only possible for a machine, the jets circled Annie’s body from bottom to top, covering both her naked skin and the latex of her strange garments in a layer of thick, clinging liquid that coated her evenly.

The liquid was the same pale colour as the latex garments and rather than simply cover Annie’s body it instead settled in a way that served to disguise the previously clear elements of her own skin and her clothing. In effect it gave the illusion of having merged them both into one skin.

Only moments after the first pair of jets completed their task, a second pair emerged above Annie’s head and began to move down her body. These sprayed her with a finer liquid that was far from neutral in colour. A vibrant purple it coated her form once again and seemed to sink into the first layer, changing its colour to the same hue as it went.

Once the second pair of jets had completed their task, the temperature within the booth began to rise slowly until the interior reached a set temperature. Then the surface of the skin that had been sprayed onto Annie began to loose its liquid state and set, though it retained the smooth, shiny look of plastic or latex. Soon the entire layer was dry and the temperature in the booth dropped accordingly back to a more bearable level.

More devices descended from the ceiling of the booth as Annie stood stock still, but these were not jets. Instead each carried an intricate object that looked like a collection of cords or rope. The first descended as far as Annie’s, now purple, buttocks and was pushed firmly into the base of her spine. A plug at the end of the device connected with the spinal socket that was concealed under her skin and Annie became dimly aware of the fact that she had a new appendage that would respond to the impulses of her nervous system like any other.

As the first device moved back up to the ceiling of the booth, the collection of cords could clearly be seen to be a mass of braids or perhaps more accurately a thick tail of hair gathered into braids, a shade of purple so dark that it was almost black. The second device only descended as far as Annie’s head where it attached a similar collection of braids to her scalp and then to her upper back. These were long and somewhat finer than those that made up the tail and their extended length gave them the appearance of a mane rather than a normal head of hair.

Finally a more complicated device hovered around her right thigh and with a point of searing light, etched onto her purple flesh a highly stylised image of a simple white flower. The flower was a daisy and now she was ready to play the character of “Daisy-Anne” both physically and mentally. It was clear to see now that she resembled an anthropomorphised version of a Pony Pal.

Everyone had heard of Pony Pals, the mass-produced, plastic ponies that had been a part of pop culture for the last decades of the twentieth century and even into the new millennium. There had been hundreds of them and hundreds of thousands of avid collectors who were not about to let the passage into adulthood deprive them of their obsession. Luckily for people in Annie’s line of work as well, it seemed there were enough people out there with an appreciation of slightly perverse parody to make the process she had just undergone profitable in the adult entertainment industry as well.

With their skin coated in a unique latex derivative, tails attached, hands and feet buried in the rounded hooves of the Pony Pals and their own name and matching thigh tattoo, the ponies in the special enclosure had become one of the more popular and unique attractions of the resort over the past year.

Each of the girls who participated in the Pony Pal show was encouraged to come up with their own character for the purpose both in order to avoid messy copyright issues and because the minds behind the idea were certain that it would help them to get into the spirit of things more easily. For her own part, Annie had heard from Mal, that there was also a little something mixed into the liquid sprayed onto the girls that would be absorbed through the skin and help to enhance the idea that they were actually plastic ponies rather than women dressed up as such. Nothing radical just a subtle chemical high to push them in the desired direction and enhance the pleasure of the experience.

Knowing this was one of the reasons that Annie allowed herself to be taken over by the experience and fully embrace the character that she had created for herself. Daisy-Anne was anything but an attempt on her part to hive off part of herself and keep the experience of playing a human Pony Pal separate from who she was. Instead Annie had come to think of the application of the second skin that seemed to change her into Daisy-Anne as the physical manifestation of the effect that the addition of Daisy had to her own identity. In the same way that Bruce Wayne became Batman, she became Daisy-Anne for the duration of her shift and revelled in the freedoms that it afforded her as a result.

As the door to the booth opened and she stepped out onto the floor, Daisy-Anne gave her tail a quick flick in practice and stretched her long, purple limbs to be sure that the process had covered every inch of her body. The sound of Jessica’s booth opening drew her attention and she watched as the Pony Pal persona of her colleague stepped out.

Jessiebell was a bright pink from head to hoof and sported a thick head of glossy black hair that resembled an exaggerated version of Jessica’s own, she wore a motif on her right thigh of a heart-shaped bell and her thick, black tail had been braided into one neat length. She had Jessica’s demure manner and shy face, but beneath it was an almost wicked sense of humour and knowledge of her own physical allure that must have been just buried beneath the surface of the real woman’s personality.

Daisy-Anne looked at her colleague (from this point on she refused to even think of herself as Annie for fear of dropping out of character) and Jessiebell returned the look. Both could feel the subtle effects of the chemicals that were being absorbed through the skin. They blurred the edges just enough to make them feel no fear or anxiety, made them more open to stimulation and excitement. As they each made a last effort to check that the other had been totally covered by the latex skin, it also made them take a moment more time and seem to appreciate the lines of their bodies as well.

Finally they helped each other into bikinis that matched the vivid colours of their skin and trotted down the short corridor to the door which would lead them to the Pony Pal stables. There they would amuse themselves for the next four hours, doing whatever the mood took them as they were watched from behind mirrored glass by those that could afford the privilege.

* * *

Malcolm slid the key card into the lock and let himself into the small cabin that he called home while he stayed on the island. It was later than he had thought and he was still rather unnerved by the experience of sharing a freight elevator back to the surface from the subterranean research department with one of its latest projects. If he hadn’t interviewed the girl for a position on the island himself it might have been different, but as it happened he remembered her very well. A fairly textbook example of eastern Mediterranean features that always put him in mind of Greek goddesses capable of going from mad passion to just plain mad in no time at all.

The face and the nervous smile were unmistakable, but the marble skin and pedestal were new. Malcolm had heard that there was a team working on the concept of a penthouse suite that featured living decorations, but he had not seen any of the proposals and had no idea that they had got as far as actually having a trial run with the prosthetics.

Estella, that was the name he recalled, had been turned into a living piece of sculpture for the project. From the waist down her body disappeared into a very convincing stone column, which Malcolm assumed was made of some form of rigid but breathable plastic that kept her upright and was only slightly wider than her own legs must have been beneath it. Her torso, arms and head had been left naked, but covered with a far finer layer of latex that resembled smooth, veined marble. The effect was quite stunning and had she kept her eyes closed and mouth shut he was convinced she could have passed for the real thing.

But then he also recalled from the interview that she was a compulsive talker as well.

The journey back to the surface may only have taken five minutes, but in that time Malcolm learned everything there was to know about how Estella had taken the experience of becoming a living statue. He smiled as her hands pointed out the finer details of the costume such as where the catheter drained from and the fact that all of her intimate organs below the waist were reachable in an emergency. He nodded as she cupped her breasts and marvelled at the effect the coating had on her nipples.

When the doors finally slid open he smiled and made his excuses, all the time hoping that the first person to stay in the room that Estella was destined for was a good listener. After that endurance trial, all he had wanted was to relax and sleep. But there were some things that could always change Malcolm’s mood like flicking a switch could change the lighting in a room. One of them was the sight of a purple-skinned Pony Pal, lounging on his bed wearing nothing but a sulky pout and flicking her tail in a petulant manner.

“You took your time,” Daisy-Anne pulled herself up onto all fours and stretched her limbs, “I’ve been waiting for you here, all on my own!”

“Well,” Malcolm dropped the files he had brought from the office that had suddenly become irrelevant to him on a table by the door, “here I am, so let’s see if I can make up for your wait.” He had managed to strip off everything he was wearing by the time he climbed onto the bed and knelt behind her, pulling her up from all fours so that her back met his chest. He felt the sensation of the tail as it brushed his groin and reached around so that he could run his hands over her stomach. The latex gave her skin a smooth, but warm feel as she reacted to his touch and pressed herself back into him.

Daisy-Anne only managed a quiet breath that embodied her feelings and needs, but her body responded on a subconscious level. Her tail twitched and then rose in a manner that made her desires clear in a moment and Malcolm found that he was ready to fulfil them. He entered her and felt the length of her body react to him as though he had touched every inch of her skin. Under the spell of the moment, Daisy-Anne dug her hooves into the bedclothes and revelled in the experience of being ridden by a rider of her own choosing.

* * *

Malcolm flipped the TV on and scrolled to the news channels while Annie rested her head on his chest, still sealed in the skin of Daisy-Anne, but relaxed enough to let her own personality slowly return to the fore. This was not the first time that he had come home to find Annie waiting for him, she did that often enough, but the appearance of her still in costume was far rarer. Malcolm had never asked her how she managed to make it across the island from the Pony Pals enclosure to his cabin, though he had some interesting theories as to how she did.

He was forced to admit that he was glad she did. The Pony Pals and their shows had been Malcolm’s own brainchild, an idea that he had worked on from the first day to bring to life. For his own part he was intrigued by the fantasies that the island resort he worked for brought to life and the women who played the parts. Nevertheless he was only really interested in personally exploring his own fascination with the fusing of the human and the equine.

Malcolm had always been careful to keep his interest in such things quiet before he came to work on the island. It seemed hard to make it clear to people that he did not want to actually have sex with something that lived in a stable and liked the occasional sugar-cube as a treat. One former girlfriend that he had let in on his secret had insisted on taking him to see Equus in the West End, thinking that it would be right up his street. In truth the sight of Daniel Radcliffe and his hoof-pick had turned him white and ended that relationship in record time.

He supposed that it was odd for a man who had grown up in Tower Hamlets to be fascinated by horses; most of his friends had never seen one in the flesh until they were old enough to leave the place behind. His first inkling of his interest had come when he sat and watched show-jumping as a child, seeing a woman riding astride a graceful mount. Somehow the desire for the woman and the power and poetry of the horse had become intertwined in his developing mind.

The first time he saw a female centaur on the cover of some faded comic it changed his world. In the mythical creatures that combined human and horse Malcolm saw all his desires embodied right there and then. For years as a young boy and then a teenager he had guiltily hoarded anything he could find that contained an image of or was written about centaurs of the fairer sex. As an adult he had realised one of the disadvantages of his predilection in that if you were turned on by mermaids, snake-women or even Barbie dolls there was always someone out there who made a clever costume that would bring your fantasy to life. But no one made money selling centaur costumes, which was fairly understandable when you considered the challenges it entailed.

Pony-girls were something of a thrill to Malcolm, and he had spent some time and money on that area of interest over the years. But when he had secured a position on the island as a project manager and seen the resources they had available, he had made it his personal vision to take the girls that had in the past worn bridles, fake tails and boots that ended in hooves to another level.

The Pony Pal girls were one of his major hits with those who vacationed on the island. People were into the retro charm of the old franchise and no one came to the island as a paying customer if they were not interested in being aroused by the attractions. The strictly hands off policy of the island meant that the women employed to temporarily become the ponies were free to explore the experience for themselves and it seemed that most found it acceptable and some even found it a riot. Indeed the sight of the latex-skinned ponies had even resulted in some of the island’s guests making quiet requests to take their own turn in the stables when the audience had retired for the night, man and woman alike.

Annie had been the only woman that he had secretly wanted for the project right from the start and that was a fact he had never let her in on. Malcolm had started to become blasé about the charms of the women who worked on the island until he spotted her one day while making his usual rounds of the various parts of the island where his charges worked. He was not responsible for the pools, caves and grottos where the mermaids worked and as the buggy drove by one day he caught sight of Annie for the first time. She was reclining on an actual rock that had been placed in the middle of one of the swimming pools, resplendent in a silver tail that looked very convincing in the distance and a pair of nipple caps in the shape of shells no larger than pair of coins. From that moment he had known that he wanted her in a way that he found surprised himself and he had made sure she was offered an enticing incentive to sign on for his Pony Pals project.

It had been an unexpected joy to find that they had a chemistry that extended well beyond the bounds of work and a few casual drinks turned into a relationship that both were now committed to in a real and passionate way. Malcolm found that his own rather reserved English personality contrasted rather than clashed with Annie’s own, which was pure Southern USA, heart on sleeve and passions to the fore. Best of all he had discovered that his interest in centaurs intrigued rather than confused or repelled Annie and he had found himself sharing his thoughts on his work with her and using her as a sounding board for his ideas.

As far as he knew as well, he was the only man able to say that he had bedded one of the Pony Pal girls and had not paid a large sum for the privilege.

“She did it,” Malcolm shook his head at the news story, “she got into the Iberian Riding School!”

“You’re kidding?” Annie raised her head a little to see the screen. “I thought the school was all male, only stallions allowed?”

“I guess she got in on the technicality that she’s can’t really be classed as a stallion or a mare,” he sounded both exasperated and amazed. “But then you have to think that the school has been struggling to keep the interest in its tours over the past decade; this could be the thing it needs to bring itself into the latter half of the twenty first century. They’ll be clever about it though, keep her on the tours and make sure she never sets hoof in the actual school back in Dresden and that way they can still convince the purists that they never turned their backs on tradition or turned the whole thing into a freak show.”

On the screen a press conference was underway in front of a stately white building with a small group of formally dressed people standing on a raised platform to address the assembled media horde. Most fitted the stereotype of buttoned down and terminally reserved Austrians and spoke in polite German, which was translated for the viewer as soon as it was spoken. The only figure that stood out did so because of the fact that she towered over the others, but she was still dressed in a similarly formal manner. When her turn came to speak, her voice spoke of the eastern USA, good breeding and all the benefits of growing up as part of a wealthy and influential clan.

Malcolm hardly heard the words as he already knew the content of what was being said. He had been following the career of Harriet Booth for some years now and knew her as well as was possible from the distance he maintained from her. To him the woman represented the combination of the Holy Grail and a proverbial poisoned chalice. Harriet Booth was widely acknowledged as the world’s first centaur.

She had been famous before she became a centaur though, the eldest child of an old and very wealthy family. Intelligent and considered by many to be a picture of aristocratic beauty, Harriet had also been without doubt one of the most gifted professional riders of her generation with success in jumping and dressage at the Olympic level. The horse that she rode to those victories was almost as famous among those in the know as the rider; a Lipissan mare known as Rhapsody from one of the oldest bloodlines and a picture of elegance.

But then the accident had changed all that; during a private training session a jump had gone badly wrong and resulted in the permanent injury of both the horse and the rider. No details had been released, but speculation ran that Harriet’s spine was snapped and the fall broke the neck of her horse. What emerged afterwards still divided the world into those who thought it was a miracle and those who thought it was the most monstrous perversion of nature ever seen. Rather than see two lives lost and people said at the behest of Harriet herself, surgeons at a private medical facility had performed a procedure to remove the woman’s leg’s and graft her torso onto the now headless body of her horse. The process was said to have been difficult and fraught with problems that pushed the boundaries of medical science, but after days of surgery and a period of recovery that spanned three entire years, Harriet Booth emerged as a media sensation and a centaur for the entire world to see.

Malcolm had often though that he should have been in awe of the woman, but there was something about her attitude, the way she looked down literally on the people around her and the visceral accident that had created the creature she now was that turned him off. There were always rumours about the circumstances of the accident as well, jokes floating around about the ways in which her entourage had to find “a real stallion” to satisfy her and the cult of fame that she encouraged and seemed to love.

There was also always the fact that he’d tried to hire her to work on the island and her people had told him in no uncertain terms what they though of that idea. A thought that he had kept in the back of his mind since the rejection by Harriet Booth suddenly popped up again and began to grow in size and change its shape as he watched the press conference. It was fuelled by the sight of the centaur that he had been denied and the fact that Annie was laying warm and close to him.

“I want the island to have its own centaur,” Malcolm got the words out before his better judgement could stop him, “and I want it to be you.”

Annie sat up in the bed and gave him a stare that seemed to ask if he was serious. It would have carried more weight if she had not still been wearing the purple latex skin of Daisy-Anne, but Malcolm got the message all the same.

“I mean it,” he turned the TV off and faced her, “it would be a coup for the island and one in the eye for that bitch Booth.” He regretted mentioning Harriet Booth, but he was committed to his suggestion and not willing to back down.

“And what about me?”

“A step up the ladder, maybe even the chance to become famous?”

“Oh really?” Annie laughed and he noted the slightest hint of interest behind the indignation. “And two pairs of Armani horseshoes, a Louis Vitton nosebag and my own penthouse stable as well?”

“It’s not that ridiculous,” Malcolm tried to get a grip of the part of her mind that was open to his crazy suggestions, after all she was currently for all appearances a human Pony Pal and that was his doing. “I have contacts with a clinic back home that are very good with this kind of thing, their record is almost spotless. Remember that Dream Princess thing a few years ago? They were behind that, did all the surgical work.”

Annie considered his example in silence for a moment, remembering the media sensation that a Japanese company had created when they had paid to have an actress physically transformed into a replica of a mermaid doll that they marketed. The idea had caught on with a number of films being made featuring the man-made mermaid and the company had made millions out of the gimmick before some reporter had discovered the woman in the role of the mermaid had a past in the adult entertainment industry. She recalled the way in which the PR people behind the erstwhile mermaid had managed the impossible and turned the scandal into a coup by re-launching her career as a reality TV star in her own series where she struggled with the trials of life as a mythical creature. The Playboy centrefold had been an interesting one, that was for sure.

“My source at the clinic also tells me that the process is reversible,” Malcolm applied more leverage as he watched Annie digest the idea rather than simply push it aside, “and as for the sum that I could negotiate for your agreeing to the position, based on the Island’s policy…”

He wrote a figure down on the notepad by the bed and held it up for her to read.

Neither of them said a thing, but he did note that Annie’s eyes widened after she saw the figure on the paper.

Annie stepped under the head of the shower in the bathroom of her own cabin, only vaguely aware of the feel of the water as it rained down, soaking her latex-coated body. In the hours that had passed since Malcolm made the offer, it seemed that she had not been able to think straight and concentrate enough to really wrestle with what he was actually asking her to do. But in the shower she always found that she could remove her mind from the here and now and gather her thoughts on another level.

As the water soaked into the purple skin of Daisy-Anne, it began to slowly loosen, break down and slide away to reveal the dark tones of Annie’s own skin beneath. A container of specialised solvents had been screwed to the showerhead where the water emerged in order to deliver the substance in a diluted form and free her from the Pony Pal costume once her shift was over. As time passed, more and more of the latex was removed until she was standing in the shower, dressed once more in the bizarre collection of under-garments required by the costume. Annie slipped these off as if in a daze and dropped them on the bathroom floor without a second thought.

Her initial shock and surprise had faded away and she was left with a more complicated mixture of feelings that ran the entire length of the spectrum from basic fear all the way to an odd sense of pleasure that made her feel somewhat guilty and even a tad perverse. She was well aware of the fact that Malcolm found the idea of female centaurs to be the biggest fantasy imaginable and was loathe to admit that she was somewhat jealous of the fact that Harriett Booth had something over her in those stakes. Annie understood what a compliment he was paying her in his own strange way by asking her to do this thing, but was she prepared to take such a drastic step simply because she was flattered by Malcolm and could go one better than Harriett Booth?

For her own part, Annie was intimidated by fear that she felt at the prospect of agreeing to something that would change her life on every level. Right now she could do what she did secure in the knowledge that all she had to do was walk away and it would end. She was in charge and the process that Malcolm wanted her to undergo would mean that she was simply physically unable to walk away. Annie had never liked to be in a situation that her mind could conceive as her being trapped, and on so many levels the proposition of undergoing surgery to radically alter her body was just that.

But then there was the little voice that kept whispering in the back of Annie’s mind, the one that urged her to jump when she looked down from a great height. It kept reminding her of the fact that she had once listened to it in the past and tried to become an actress before she let her common sense get the better of her. This was the real reason she had quit the acting profession, it tried to convince her, not because of the bitching backstage and the cruel words of the critics. She had quit, it suggested, because deep down she had known that those roles were beneath her. And now she had been handed the opportunity to play the greatest role of her career, one that she was truly worthy of.

Perhaps there was something to that thought, now that she had the chance to examine it from all sides. The Booth woman might be seen as the first centaur the world had seen, but in reality she was just half a woman that had been stitched onto four fifths of a horse. It would be kind to call her a curiosity of medicine when the blunt or cruel would probably call her a freak instead.

Annie, on the other hand, had been asked to adopt the mantle of her own free will and because of that she surely had a more legitimate right to think that she would be a far better example of a centaur than Booth? For one thing she knew how to portray a character and keep that role alive for hours on end, whereas the Booth woman was still as distant and cold in public as she had always been before the accident. And was that even right? Should the embodiment of a centaur be a woman for whom life seemed to be a series of cold exhibitions of talent, of applause received with a stiff upper-lip?

It was certainly not the way that Annie would have presented the character of a centaur. In her youth, she had often ridden horses through the wide open country and though she was not by any means a serious rider; she fully understood the thrill of being on horseback. For her the experience of sitting astride such a graceful and powerful creature was a feeling that could only bring a smile to her face. Annie smiled as she recalled the times that she and Malcolm had found time to ride through the virtually untouched interior of the Island and the wonderful memories that she had of those times.

In a sudden moment she had a vision of a future trip into the same location, but this time there was one less animal involved in the journey. It was as she daydreamed about the memories they might create on that imaginary journey that she made up her mind to say yes to Malcolm’s offer. She would become the woman of his dreams in one more way; she would agree to become a centaur.

The week that followed saw both Annie and Malcolm trying to continue with each day as normal. Both struggled to keep their mouths closed about the issue that was always there like the proverbial elephant in the room whenever they were together. After she had said yes, they had felt the awkward need to celebrate in some way and a pleasant meal had been followed by some of the best sex they had had in months. Annie had teased him whilst they were lost in the depths of each other and more than a little drunk, dropping hints about what she would be capable of and what she might demand of him when the transformation was complete.

In the morning though, the whole thing had started to feel a little uncomfortable and the jokes from the previous night started to feel like laughter at the funeral of a vague acquaintance. Not the most heinous thing imaginable, but not to be taken lightly either. So they avoided the subject when possible and tried to simply get on with what was in front of them at the time. Annie was brought out of her own soft denial by the arrival of a package via courier one evening after her shift had ended and Daisy-Anne had been consigned to the showers plughole. The label identified it as having come from the mysterious Retreat clinic.

Inside were polite but brief instructions printed on good quality paper, two test-tubes with screw on caps and a small booklet with perforated pages. She scanned the instructions and used the cotton bud in the first tube to swab inside her cheek for skin cells, obviously for the purpose of a DNA sample. But the instructions for the booklet were more interesting as they explained the pages were each filled with examples of the colours and patterns that were most common amongst modern breeds of horse. Annie didn’t need to read any further to know that the instructions were asking her to pick out the colours that her equine body would possess once the procedure was complete.

Taking her time to peruse the booklet, Annie felt a sudden resurgence of the fears that had come with her first consideration of the procedure, but she mastered it and flicked on through the pages as if she was shopping for new shoes. Finally she settled on a choice of a light grey with a delicate white dappling that reminded her of the horses that she had ridden back home. Before she had the chance to second guess her decision she tore out the page, sealed it in the second tube and returned the box with both tubes in to the courier who had waited outside for the package to be returned.

* * *

Annie had never been to England and her knowledge of the country was based on what she had read, watched and the stories that Malcolm had told her about his life there. Through the chaos of the airport and the contrasting quiet of the afternoon drive through the greenest countryside she had ever seen, Annie found herself wishing that he was with her and there could be more to the visit to his home country than a solo trip to a clinic. As the last of the small villages went by, Annie pulled the photo that Malcolm had given her before she departed out of her bag one more time.

It was a shot of them together, beneath one of the largest trees in the interior of the Island, taken on a riding trip and on it he had written: “Remember that the woman I love is in this picture and no matter what happens she is still the woman that I love.”

She was grateful for the sentiment, but she was also aware of the fact that no man in the course of history had ever been faced with the situation of adjusting to the fact that his lover had become a centaur. Annie was still engrossed in the photograph when the car came to a halt and she was presented with the sight of the building that housed the Retreat. The driver deposited her in front of the red brick Victorian mansion and entrusted her luggage to a discreet porter who made it disappear moments later.

Left to her own devices, Annie climbed the steps and entered the foyer, her shoes sounding quietly on the black and white chequerboard tiles. She had to admit that her experience of such places was strictly limited and hoped that the similarities that seemed to exist between this and checking into a hotel might see her through.

Annie spotted what might have been a reception desk on the right hand side of the foyer, covered with a dark cloth throw and made her way towards it. As she approached she saw that there was no one sitting at the desk itself, but a woman stood with her back turned, engrossed in the contents of a row of old fashioned filing cabinets that lined the wall behind it.

She had at first taken the woman for a receptionist, but the sight of her clothes made Annie wonder if she had been correct in that assumption. Most receptionists she had dealt with dressed in smart business wear, but this woman was wearing a full length black dress that would have looked more appropriate on Morticia Addams. The dress had a high neck and began no more than a centimetre from the point where the woman’s black hair had been gathered into a bun on the back of her head. The arms were covered as far as the wrists and then the hands concealed also beneath black fabric that so that Annie could not tell if the woman was wearing gloves or they were part of the dress itself. Below the waist the dress hugged the woman’s buttocks and legs so tightly that there was nothing to do but admire the fact that she had an almost perfectly curved anatomy or else look away altogether. At her ankles the dress spread out over the floor like a black puddle, totally disguising her feet and hiding them from view.

Annie knew from first hand experience that the English had a tendency towards eccentricity, and if that was the level of oddness that the people behind this place were comfortable with then who was she to argue.

She tapped the bell on the table and watched the woman in the black dress glance over her shoulder, noting as she did so that the face was a perfect match for the body. The woman smiled warmly and closed the drawer in front of her before sitting down in a wooden chair on castors that Annie had failed to notice. She span the chair around and propelled herself across the small space between the cabinets and the desk, never once showing a hint of trying to walk in the dress that must have effectively hobbled her all the time she wore it.

“Can I help you?” Annie stood corrected; the woman’s accent was nothing like the English ones she had heard since the airport. She might have guessed that the woman was Russian or came from one of those countries in the east of Europe that she admitted to knowing very little about.

“I’m a patient,” Annie had no idea what the etiquette was supposed to be and instead handed over the letter she had been sent containing the particulars of her visit to the Retreat. That seemed to be acceptable as the woman took it from her and consulted a small desktop to her left briefly before handing the letter back.

“That’s all in order,” the woman nodded, “you’re scheduled to meet with Dr Pickford tomorrow afternoon and until then your room is number 3a on the ground floor.”

Annie found that there was something to reassure her in the person of Dr Pickford when she found herself seated in an armchair and nursing a cup of coffee the next morning. The man was by no means what she would have thought of if asked to imagine a doctor of any kind. Younger than she had expected and an energetic type with a wide smile, he put her in mind of the actor she had seen playing a time-travelling hero in a TV series from the turn of the century that Malcolm had insisted she watch with him.

But perhaps another element of the comfort she was able to draw from Pickford was the fact that he reminded her of Malcolm in some odd way. Physically there was no comparison between the black guy from Greater London and the slightly awkward white doctor who was rifling through his notes in front of her. But still she sensed a kind of cultural kinship that linked the two in terms of manners and the occasional turn of phrase. Those small and almost invisible ways in which the English behaved that distinguished them from their transatlantic cousins was an anchor for her at a time when she was sure her very person was about to become as fluid as the oceans themselves.

“Normally I’d be the one steering this whole thing from the start to the finish,” Pickford glanced up from his notes, “but the sheer complexity of what we’re doing here means that I’ll be bringing in a colleague to handle some of the more intricate elements of the surgery.”

Annie had to confess that apart from his efforts to put her at ease and explain what was going to be done to her in layman’s terms; most of what Pickford had been telling her for the past half hour had failed to sink in.

“I’m sure you know what you’re doing,” she smiled.

“Oh, I’d hope so,” Pickford seemed to be unaware of the trepidation that she was straining to keep out of her voice. “My own methods are more concerned with the overall shape and surface of the body and I like to be able to handle something like this in a number of stages in order for the subject to come to terms with what is being done a little at a time. But the problem here is that the process will be far more complicated and involve more than one approach to the whole thing. I’ll be bringing in a colleague for a large part of the operation more skilled in the area of internal surgery than myself, a Doctor Ward. These requirements mean that there simply won’t be any opportunity for you to acclimatise during the operation. We will have to make sure that everything is handled in one visit to the theatre.”

“So no training shoes for me,” Annie tried to sound upbeat. “You just slice me off at the waist and then sew me onto some headless horse, like that Booth woman?”

“I’m sorry,” for a moment is seemed that Pickford was offended, “but you seem to be under the impression that I’m some kind of a taxidermist that deals in living specimens!”

“God, no,” Annie realised that she had found one of the well –hidden spots in the armour of politeness that most of the English wore, the ones that would make them explode with suppressed indignation. She knew they were a reality after having seen the ones that existed in Malcolm’s otherwise placid personality. It seemed to her that they were places where all the anger and rudeness that other people would let out constantly built up in the English, like volcanoes in the Earth’s surface. They erupted when stimulated and were best left well enough alone.

“No…I’m sorry,” she placed a hand on Pickford’s knee. “You have to know that I’m a mess of nerves right now. I just don’t know what to expect and it’s making me run off at the mouth a little.”

“Well,” Pickford shook his head as his more pleasant demeanour returned, “I understand that and I’ll do anything I can to help out with your all too understandable nerves, believe me. But what we do here is far more complicated and advanced than the hack job that produced Harriett Booth. On one level I have to take my hat off to the team that managed to overcome all of the obstacles to grafting a human torso onto the headless body of a horse and making sure the result lived. But we believe more in the philosophy of changing the physical form of the subject rather than splicing together a chimera.”

“So what does this involve… I mean, where does the equine element come in?”

“Well, we like to sidestep all the issues around compatibility and tissue rejection by growing the required biological modifications before the process begins using genetic samples taken from the subject. You’ll recall that we asked you for a swab of DNA? Well, so long as you didn’t get someone else to take the swab for you, we’ve used that to create the elements that we will need to alter your physical form and we have them in storage on the grounds.” Pickford’s face became worried for a moment. “You didn’t do that, did you? I mean get someone else to take the swab?”

Annie shook her head, amused at his sudden concern.

“Good,” Pickford recovered and went on. “In essence we’ll be reshaping the lower portion of your body and then marrying it to the equine body that we have created for the purpose. Our stance has always been that it is better to use as much of the subject’s existing body as possible in a procedure such as this. We feel that the larger the portion of the new body that was once part of the original, the better the chances from both a physiological and psychological stance.”

“So you’ll be turning these into hooves?” Annie pointed at her feet.

Pickford nodded.

“I’d have thought they were too short to be a horse’s legs?”

“Miss West,” from the sound of his mock-serious tone it was Pickford who was now amused, “just how closely did you acquaint yourself with the very extensive reading material that was sent to you regarding this process?”

“Okay, I admit that I kind of skipped through it.”

“Well, if you had taken the time to digest the contents you would have been aware of some of the more aesthetic considerations of your proposed new form. One of those is the fact that we are not going to be extending your legs by much. You stand about five feet and nine inches tall as an unmodified human being and you won’t be much taller as a centaur either.”

“You’re serious?” One of the fears that had plagued Annie was the thought of towering over people and clattering about with the heavy step of a full-sized horse.

“Very much so,” Pickford nodded. “The scale to which we have been working with your equine body is more in keeping with that of a small pony than a whopping great dray horse. I have to say as well, that I agree with the decision for my own part. It would be a shame to see you lumbering around with the body of something more suited to pulling carts full of coal. That sort of thing would very much spoil your feminine charms… if you don’t mind me saying so.”

Pickford did not blush as he paid her a veiled compliment, but he did rush into the next phase of his explanation of the process in a hurried and self-conscious manner that made Annie want to laugh out loud. Even after all the time she had spent with Malcolm, she was still baffled by the way in which English men seemed to perceive complimenting a woman’s looks was somehow akin to openly asking them to make love right there and then in public.

Her most promising theory on the subject was that it was a part of the tendency that the English had for constant self-deprecation, their inability to put themselves forward where an American would have simply stuck out his chest and told the world to go to hell. Men like Pickford seemed to think that a woman would just laugh at them and brush their attention off in a second. It was more ridiculous than it was annoying in her mind when she considered the fact that had she been unattached, Pickford would have been a man she would not have been unhappy to spend time with over a casual drink or a meal.

But anyway, she was two for two with the English men at least.

It was not until the morning of the actual operation that Annie was introduced to Doctor Ward by a rather harassed Pickford. She had the distinct impression that there was some kind of friction between the two of them, Pickford’s clipped language and Ward’s flippant responses seeming to characterise their relationship. She might have been worried by the chance of a conflict going on amongst the medical men that she was about to be operated on, but the effects of the medication she had been given to relax her mind prevented her from truly processing the events going on around her.

Where Pickford had been personable and keen to make her comfortable, Ward seemed to be concerned only with the job at hand. He made no effort to speak to Annie and instead attended to his equipment from the moment that she was wheeled into the theatre on the gurney. True to his character, Pickford paid her more attention as he directed the nursing staff to their tasks and prepared more of the medical paraphernalia in the room that defied Annie’s clouded attempts to discern their purpose. She was sure that he did speak to her, but the words were lost as the effects of the drugs became ever stronger. Instead she was left with a sense of reassurance that battled with the apprehension at what was about to be done to her body.

The time between the drugs being administered and Annie falling into a state of unconsciousness seemed, for her at least, to have been a strange and extended period of time in which she drifted away from awareness. In reality the time had been no more than a few minutes and all the while the team had been preparing the final elements of the material they needed. As soon as it was ascertained that the subject was under, the operation began in earnest.

The first part of the process was Pickford’s responsibility and he took command of the room in a manner that belied his normally placid demeanour. Here he was in charge and his word was followed to the letter as he ordered the theatre staff to various tasks. Ward simply stood back and seemed happy to observe as his colleague worked, as though he was an actor waiting for his call to the stage.

Annie was stripped of her gown and left naked on the gurney while a complex harness was lowered from the ceiling of the room and looped around her torso. There was no operating table in the room and the nature of the process would require her to be suspended in such a manner so that the doctors could have access to the areas of her body they were to work upon. Soon she was hoisted gently from the gurney and suspended a few feet above the floor while Pickford fussed over the harness and made a last check over her body. The harness also held her head upright and pinned her wrists to her collar as if to keep them out of the way for some reason that was not immediately apparent.

The examination was thorough, but professional in every way as the doctor ensured that his patient was in good condition and had been shaved as he specified. Once Pickford was happy, she was pulled across the theatre on a network of rails that hung from the ceiling and would facilitate her movement from one spot to another as required.

Annie was brought to a halt above a bath of liquid that stood as high as Pickford’s chest and at his direction, hoisted high enough to be then lowered inside. He called a stop as soon as she was immersed to the waist and now the reason for restraining her arms became clearer, whatever the purpose of the liquid in the bath, her arms and torso were not to be given the same treatment. She was allowed to remain partially submerged in the liquid for a long while and in her state of artificial unconsciousness, Annie found that she was able to form thoughts in a dreamlike state where she was not totally in control of their ultimate form or direction.

The liquid in which her legs were submerged was warm and viscous, manifesting itself in her mind as an all-encompassing sense of well-being. The warmth seemed to seep into her body and fill her with the strange sensation that she was melting, becoming a liquid herself.

In her dream, Annie felt that she was somehow trapped inside something, pushing her head towards an opening like struggling to pull her head through the neck of a tight jumper. She tried to find the opening with her hands and realised that they were trapped inside as well so that she was forced to push as hard as she could before her head finally emerged from the hole.

She opened her eyes and stared in surprise at what she saw before her. Annie’s head emerged from the screw-top of what looked like a giant tube. Below she could see the white length of the thing pressed tightly against the shape of her body so that every detail of her form below the neck could be seen. She saw something printed on the tube and strained to read the words.

Artist’s Acrylic Paint, Colour No. 101, Annie West.

Annie pulled harder and more of her body seeped out of the impossibly tight neck of the tube, its end curling up and the shape of her figure moving up its length as she did so. As soon as it was free of the tube, her body assumed its own shape and she found that the description on the thing was accurate.

She was Annie West, and she was made of a thick, oozing liquid that resembled paint.

Once she had pulled her feet out of the tube, Annie sat and looked at the living pigment that made up her body. She was aware on a certain level that she was dreaming, but the sensation of her legs as they began to lose their definition and run into one another was so real that she was almost afraid.

She tried to stand, but she found that she could only rise to her knees as her lower body ran together into a mass of liquid paint. Annie tried to separate her legs with her hands, sinking them into the mass, but it was no good and she quickly gave up the effort. But when she pulled her arms out once again she was shocked to see that her fingers hand been stretched by the contact with the rest of her body and the digits pressed together into an undefined paw.

Annie realised that she was melting, losing control of her own body with every moment that passed.

She sensed a presence behind her and turned to see the figures of Malcolm and Pickford standing over her, shaking their heads in consternation. She tried to speak, but her tongue had merged into her jaw and no sound emerged from her lips when she opened her mouth.

The men conversed for a moment as they studied her and then nodded before Pickford produced a bucket from nowhere and Malcolm a shovel similarly plucked from thin air. The doctor kneeled down with his bucket while Malcolm calmly scooped up what he could of Annie’s dripping form on the shovel and tipped it inside. As she was dumped into the bucket, parts of her body fell away from the rest and were only reunited when they too fell into the bottom of the pail.

Reduced to a pile of thick liquid in the bucket, which managed to hold her despite its being far too small in size thanks to the strange physics of dreams, Annie could do nothing as she was picked up and carried off. The men continued to talk to one another, occasionally glancing down into the bucket as they walked as if making casual observations about its strange contents.

When they came to a halt, Annie could hear the sound of pipe organs and see glimpses of gaily painted wood. Despite the fact she was trapped inside the bucket, she somehow knew they were standing on an old-fashioned carousel filled with carved wooden horses painted in intricate and lovely designs. Without a moment of warning, the men upended the bucket over the nearest carousel horse and watched as Annie’s liquid form seeped and ran over it. Had this been the real world, liquid would simply have dripped over and off the wooden horse, but as this was a dream the rules were different.

As she oozed over the head and neck of the horse, Annie began to regain some of her solidity, her own head and torso becoming more defined and her arms emerging from the mass of her body. At the point where the neck of the horse ended, she seemed to stop covering the painted wood and the remaining liquid of her form seeped into the surface, absorbed like liquid by a sponge. She regained her definition as her face emerged from the liquid, followed by her hair and then the breasts from her chest and the individual fingers of her hands.

But as she regained her features, the liquid dried to a sheen that perfectly matched that of the varnished wood of the carousel horse. She could feel a stiffness creeping into her arms even as she raised her hands to cover her exposed chest and soon she was as immobile as the other horses on the carousel.

She had become a centaur carved of wood, gilt paint and varnish.

Annie watched in silence as Malcolm and Pickford inspected her body. They put their hands all over her and she felt every touch in her own torso and that of the carousel horse. They took turns to sit upon her back and she felt their excitement through the fabric of their trousers as they did so. All the time she wanted to scream. But instead she remained still, a blithe smile frozen on her immobile features.

* * *

Pickford ordered Annie hoisted out of the liquid when the required time had elapsed. The effects of gravity had already started to hint at its purpose as her legs seemed to be slightly longer than they had been before she was partially submerged. The doctor had used the liquid many times before and knew that it would render her flesh as soft and malleable as clay, allowing him to reshape her in the manner required for his part of the operation.

He worked quickly but diligently as soon as she was free of the bath, beginning with her thighs and moulding them into a thinner shape while pressing much of their mass backwards into her buttocks. His aim was to use as much of her natural flesh as possible to become a bridge between her and the equine body that had been grown for her. Annie’s legs would retain most of their muscle and perhaps some of their human shape, but in the end they would pass for the legs of a horse in most ways possible.

Beneath the knee, Pickford again thinned Annie’s calves in order to walk the line between horse and human. He was sure that the measurements he had taken would fool the eye into believing that her legs looked like those of a horse and yet retained much of the shape and musculature of a human being.

Only when he came to her feet did he make radical changes.

Pickford plucked Annie’s toenails from her feet one at a time and dropped them onto a tray held by an assistant. Next he simply rolled them together and obliterated all trace of them, toes and all as he spread them into blunt wedges ready to be married to the hooves that awaited her in the next stage of the operation.

Finally he took a delicate tool in one hand and smoothed over Annie’s genitals, making her groin totally smooth. When she was fully attached to her new body, they would be made redundant and she would rely upon almost exact copies located in regions more suitable for a centaur. There was no need to remove these organs like he had done with her toes, medication would render them dormant and they would remain for the day when Annie once more entered the human race.

His work done, Pickford signalled to Ward and passed the patient over to his care as the two doctors swapped positions.

Now it was Pickford’s turn to watch and Ward’s turn to operate.

Where Pickford had worked his part of the operation in a manner akin to a potter working clay, Ward performed his own tasks with the attention to detail and concentration of an expert engaged in the task of disarming a bomb. He directed Annie to be placed in another tank that had been wheeled into the theatre as he assumed responsibility for the operation. Unlike the last, this one was huge and swallowed her whole, breathing apparatus being attached to keep her alive as she was submerged.

The new tank was far from empty as most of it held the equine portion of the centaur that was being created from Annie’s body and the efforts of the doctors’ work. Roughly three quarters of a horse floated in the sterile liquid, starting from just behind the point where Annie’s own front legs would become the forelegs of the centaur. The cross-section of the equine chest was open to the water and the detail of the organs could be seen like a specimen in formaldehyde, the flaps of skin that would cover the lower half of her body floating gently with the hooves upon the end like the sleeves of a shirt.

Ward operated using a combination of sturdy gloves built into the side of the tank and a number of small drones that he could control from a computer outside the tank. The liquid itself was a solution that functioned to keep the organic matter suspended in it both sterile and oxygenated while also holding it in a state similar to that of an anaesthetic. It was Ward’s own invention and something of which he was fiercely proud and very protective.

In concert with his drones, Ward took hours of minute surgery to open up the region of Annie’s body that had once been her backside and link every system of her body to the new flesh of her equine portion. Nerves, veins, muscles and organs were all married with one another in accordance with a process so exact and painstaking that one tiny mistake could have resulted in an error that would later prove fatal for the subject of the operation.

Ward worked his way upwards and outwards until he was attaching the last of the muscles together and stretching the new skin across Annie’s altered forelegs and abdomen. At the same time the drones were administering the stimulants that would induce the organs contained in Annie’s new body to become active and start to work alongside those in her human torso. This was almost as delicate a part of the process as the attaching of the two parts of the body itself, a specific course of artificial chemicals being required alongside natural hormones to gel the anatomy of a centaur and allow it to function.

When he was done, Ward stepped back and felt no embarrassment in basking in the glory of his own work.

They had done it; between themselves they had taken Annie’s body and made her into a creature of legend. Below the line of her waist and where her human skin ended, she was a graceful equine in the same grey with delicate white spots that she had chosen for herself. Her elegant legs ended in black hooves and her tail was a perfect match for the thick black hair that covered her head.

“Dr Ward,” Pickford placed a hand on his colleague’s shoulder, “you may be an arsehole, but you are certainly one hell of a surgeon.”

“Dr Pickford,” Ward replied, “the mood I’m in right now, I would not argue either point.”

* * *

Annie awoke to a rising sense of panic, realising that she was unable to move her body in any familiar way and terrified by the terrible sound of something hard clattering against metal as she struggled to understand what her confused sense were telling her. Though she was sure that her body was not paralysed on account of the fact she could cast her head from side to side and had a vague appreciation of motion elsewhere about her person, the fact that she had no idea what was keeping her from moving scared her greatly.

Her situation was not helped by the darkness in which she had found herself when she opened her eyes. Annie had no idea where she was, only that the sound of the incessant clattering seemed to be absorbed rather than bouncing back at her in an echo. Trying to focus on that one piece of information, Annie calmed herself down and tried to think.

If there was no echo, then she was probably in a small space that was furnished in some way, the sound being swallowed up by the combination of wood and fabric that comprised such items. If there was furniture, she could assume that she was in a location that was frequented by people on a regular basis rather than a bare industrial space. And if she was in a place where there were other people, it seemed unlikely that she was being held against her will.

So why was she restrained?

Annie’s speculation was brought to a halt by the unmistakable sound of a door opening nearby and the darkness of the room slowly being replaced by subtle artificial lighting that allowed some of the detail of her surroundings to be seen while keeping the finer details hidden.

She noted that she was being held upright in a harness of some kind, her head supported in a cradle and her arms strapped to her waist by means of a wide fabric belt. The material of the belt was soft and stretched when she tried to move her arms, but it was also deceptively strong and resisted any attempt she made to free them from the position in which they were held.

So she was restrained, but her bonds were far from painful or demeaning.

The only other reason that Annie could find for her predicament was a medical one. Perhaps she had been injured to such a degree that simply attempting to move would prove harmful or worsen her condition. She noted absently that she was wearing a plain, sleeveless shirt that left her midriff exposed right down to the point where her smooth grey coat began, just below the waist. For some reason the fact that she was naked save for the shirt was not as worrying as the odd thought that kept nagging at her regarding the coat of grey hair some two inches below her navel.

Annie had the distinct feeling that it had not been there before.

“Good morning,” Pickford stepped out of the gloom that masked the edges of the room with a tentative smile on his face, his eyes trying to both look Annie in the face and take in the details of her body that has thus far escaped her own.

“Doctor… Doctor Pickford?”

“That’s right,” he produced a small torch from his pocket and began to make a discreet examination of her reactions, gauging the reaction of her pupils to the beam and watching as she followed the motions he made with it. “Sounds as though things are a bit blurry for you at the moment, is that so?”

Annie nodded, blinking at the intensity of the light.

“Nothing to worry about really, but with the amount of drugs that have passed through your system in the last twenty four hours things are going to be bit foggy for you. That’s why I thought it might be best if mine was the first face that you saw this morning, hoped that I could start to chase out the cobwebs and get you back up to speed.”

She nodded, more on account of the fact that memories were actually starting to come back than from a conscious agreement with what he was saying. They came in fragments at first, like a dream recalled upon waking that seemed so real and yet was so fantastical that it could not have been true.

But of course this was different, this was real.

Annie recalled the events that had brought her to this point at the same time as she truly began to take in the sight of the body beneath her. She remembered the operating theatre, the sedation and the reason that she had crossed the Atlantic to hand herself over to the attention of the doctor who was standing by her side.

The sight of the equine body that began below her waist was made all the more bizarre and unnerving by the sensation of every muscle and tendon that it was composed of registering in her mind as much as her familiar and still human portion continued to do. Now she knew that the clattering sound in the room had been the sound of her own hooves as they made contact with the sides of the contraption of metal and taught fabric that held the weight of her enlarged body off the floor.

She glanced desperately up at Pickford, the panic once again evident in her eyes as she pleaded silently for him to do something that would make it all go away. Right there and then the whole realisation that she had been transformed into a creature of ancient myth was too much for her to bear and all she wanted was to run as far away as she was able.

Driven by instinct and with no experience of controlling the new body that she had awoken to, Annie began to thrash violently within her harness. Her equine legs pounded and flailed against the metal frame, threatening to buckle the entire thing with blows from her hooves. At the same time her human torso lurched back and forth as her arms fought with the restraints and her head shook in pure fear.

Pickford seemed shocked by the violence of her outburst and the strength of the blows that she was delivering. At first he seemed to have no idea how to react, but then he visibly steeled himself and stepped as close as he could manage to the panicked centaur and slowly reached out a hand towards her.

In her state of confusion, Annie’s first instinct was to pull as far back as she could from the man, staring at him with wide eyes.

In the chaos, one of her hooves lashed out and caught him in the side with a vicious blow that came so quickly that he had no time in which to react. There was a muffled crack and Pickford’s face contorted in pain, but kept moving towards her despite the obvious damage that had been done to his ribs. Once he was close enough, he placed his hand on the side of her face, following her desperate efforts to avoid his touch and simply stroked her cheek. All the time he said nothing and tried to hold her gaze as best he could.

Pickford had never found himself in a situation as strange and as the one he faced at that moment, even in the line of medicine that he practiced, and he had been forced to fall back on the few scraps of knowledge he still recalled from his youth spent working in his father’s veterinary practice. He was well aware of the fact that this was no dumb animal spooked and trying to flee, but there seemed to be nothing else he could do.

The feeling of a gentle hand on her skin and the effort that it required for Annie to keep her eyes on his was enough to break through the barrier of panic that had seized her. She found that very slowly she was able to regain control of her emotions and almost with every breath her movements became less and less erratic until she was able to still her body entirely.

“Annie?” Pickford spoke in a low voice, testing the ground before he went any further.

“No,” she shook her head, “that’s not right.”

“How so?”

“Annie was a human being,” she had a look in her eye that moved Pickford to sympathy. “I’m not a human being, so how can I be her?”

“Okay,” he chose his words as carefully as he was able, “what should I call you?”

“Call me… Daisy-Anne.”

It seemed so simple to her, the idea of slipping back into the identity that she had crafted to play the part required of her on the island and become someone else. Almost as soon as she had made the decision, her mood lightened and her face broke into a smile as the strangeness of the situation was explained away. Annie may have been a human being with one pair of legs, but Daisy-Anne was now a totally different entity and the fact that she was a centaur was simply a detail that had been overlooked until now.

In the past, she had been able to maintain the juggling of personas and identities while simply using the concept that she had created in order to liberate herself as she worked. But now the strain that had been placed upon her mind seemed to be too much for her to handle and in reaching out to save herself, she had grasped the persona of Daisy-Anne and buried herself within it. The human being who had been known as Annie was hidden away for fear that the reality of what she had become would drive her over the edge.

Daisy-Anne represented a safe identity and a blank canvas on which the idea of her actually being a living and breathing centaur could be painted. In fact, the more she dwelled on the sight of her altered body as her mind eased into the role, the more she became enamoured of the body that she had awoken to. She smiled again and cast her eyes at Pickford’s hand, still placed against her cheek.

“If you let me out of this thing,” she spoke in a warm and friendly voice that suited the character of Daisy-Anne, a young and playful centaur, “I promise I’ll behave.”

The days that followed were hard on Daisy-Anne, both physically and mentally as she adjusted to the realities of life as a centaur. She was helped as much as possible by the staff of the clinic, which provided everything that she needed and endeavoured to make her as comfortable as possible on an estate that had been built for the use of human beings. After all, who could have predicted the needs and wants of a mythical creature when drawing up their plans?

The room in which she had woken was the room that she had been promised on the day she had checked in. Located on the ground floor and with French windows that opened directly onto the grounds of the buildings that housed the clinic, the room was spacious and furnished in a minimal style in order to minimise the potential of accidents involving her newly enlarged body.

At first she found that it was the small things that bothered her most, niggling points that made her life different from that of a human being and had to become part of her daily routine. Using the toilet was a drama in of itself and she vowed to devote an entire chapter of her memoires to the subject just to remind those with two legs how lucky they were in that respect. Sleeping was another as she was too heavy in the body to lay in a conventional bed, instead the harness in which she had found herself on that first morning was where she spent the night.

There had been talk of her learning to sleep standing up, but Pickford had suggested that a compromise might be the best choice. He guessed that the similarity to a hammock of the cradle for her equine body might be a comfort to her and said so in front of his colleagues, though later and in private he confided in her that some of them were under the impression that she would be living in a stable like a common horse.

It was that way for most of the time in her recovery and adjustment, her own effort and perseverance making the progress and the constant support of Pickford as he ensured that she was supported all the while. Every step that she made on her hooves, he was there to offer encouragement and advice as well as shooing other, less dedicated members of staff away from his patient when they failed to meet his standards and see things from his perspective.

Not a cross word was exchanged between the two of them until one day, while they were going through the exercises that Daisy-Anne performed every day to practise her control of all four of her legs.

“You did well today,” Pickford shielded his eyes from the sun as he tried to make sure that she could see his face. “But on the way back to your room, I want to take a slower pace and watch how you manage at a canter. So you just set off when you’re ready, I’ll be right behind you if you need me… which you really won’t.”

“But,” Daisy-Anne fingered the complicated halter of leather straps that she had become used to wearing whilst she exercised, “I feel so much better if there’s someone holding onto this.”

Pickford’s expression became furrowed as he watched her hands playing with the halter in a manner that laid her thoughts open far more clearly than her words ever could. At first it had been necessary for her to wear the contraption for her own safety and that of the people working on her physical rehabilitation. Daisy-Anne may not have been the size of a draught horse, but she was still considerably larger than the average human being and her weight was far greater. With the halter she could be led through exercises and follow a person’s instructions from a safe distance of a few feet and at the same time the helping hand had given her a confidence that had made the therapy move faster than anticipated.

Had his second qualification not been in psychiatry, Pickford suspected that he would have had no issue with the halter whatsoever. As it was, he had kept his reservations to himself for months and tried to believe that he was simply reacting to seeing a sentient being led around like an animal. But recent events had convinced him that his doubts were well founded and Daisy-Anne was becoming far too dependent on them for it to be healthy in the long term.

“What you mean,” he replied, “is that you feel more comfortable when I’m holding them.”

“That’s not true,” Daisy-Anne laughed.

“Really?” Pickford fixed her with a hard stare. “Then perhaps you’d like to explain to me again why you reared up and nearly kicked poor Nichole in the face when she took hold of them the other week?”

“I told you,” her face showed a mixture of irritation and hurt feelings at his questioning, “there was a wasp flying around, I thought it would sting me and I just overreacted.”

“Come on, Daisy-Anne,” Pickford’s tone was not accusatory, but rather conspiratorial. “We both know that you’ve been swatting insects with your tail for some time now, why would you start using your hooves?”

She looked down at the halter in her hands with such an expression of sadness that he truly thought his heart might break from the sight.

“You know what I think?”

She looked up at him as he asked the question.

“I think that the real problem isn’t the damn halter at all, I think it’s me.”

“What do you mean, you?”

“Daisy-Anne,” he smiled as he shook his head, “you’re not the first patient to become attached to their doctor, and it’s a perfectly understandable reaction to what you’ve been through. But the halter is just a physical manifestation of that attachment and it’s starting to get in the way of you making progress. Worse than that, I’m worried that the attachment will do nothing but hold you back in the long run.”

“What if it’s more than an attachment?”

She stepped forwards so that she was only a few inches from him.

He could see nothing but the rich brown of her eyes and hear nothing but the sound of her breathing. She was so close that he could have simply moved a finger to brush the skin of her stomach and all that he could catch a scent of on the air was the smell of her skin. He could not recall a time when he had been more tempted to turn his back on the oaths that he had taken as a doctor, but in the end he was far too enamoured of the woman standing before him to do anything that would be bad for her.

“What if it’s nothing more than an attachment?”

He stepped back and broke the spell that she had created.

“What if you’ve been coping with all of this by creating a new world in which you can be guided and led by a hand instead of taking back control of your own life? That’s what you’ve been doing from the moment that you asked me to call you by another name, constructing a new life in which you don’t have to admit that you’re both a centaur and the woman who existed before the surgery.”

“No,” she was struggling to disagree with him, growing surer all the time that he was right.

“I can’t let you carry on like this. For god’s sake, Annie,” he deliberately used her real name to bring home the sincerity of his words, “how serious do I have to be to reject the advances of a girl as intelligent and pretty as you? But you know what I keep seeing in my mind’s eye? I see that picture that you have on the dresser in your room, the one with you and that very happy-looking bloke together and smiling. When I think of that image, it always makes me wonder what he’ll think of me when you come back to him and you’re changed inside here.”

He tapped the side of his head to make his point.

“They can pay me to change you on the outside,” Pickford tried to cheer her up with a grin, “but they couldn’t pay me enough to make me want to change you on the inside, Annie.”

He kissed her gently on the forehead and started to walk back towards the clinic.

She stood still and silent for a moment before she followed, falling into a step alongside the gangling doctor.

“See,” he shook his head, “I knew you were lying about needing the halter!”

* * *

Malcolm stood up for his perch on the roots of the vast tree once more as he thought he heard a sound approaching from the valley below. He had been there for hours and even the slightest noise saw him straining to see the path and hunting nervously for the sight of her approaching. His stomach was a mess of nerves and anticipation and he had run through every possible scenario as to what would actually happen when he laid eyes upon Annie.

Almost a year had passed since she had flown to England and in that time he had lost himself in his job, trying and failing to keep her out of his mind. In one of his many attempts to conjure their first post operation meeting, she emerged from the bushes like a creature from the movie Fantasia and everything was perfect. In another she snorted in his face and then lifted her tail to deposit a pile of manure on his feet as repayment for making her into a monster. The rest of his imaginings the result fell somewhere between, but he was never able to think of her without the nerves setting in.

It had been her idea to meet in the same spot they had ridden to so many times in the past and he took it as a sign that she was well disposed to seeing him again that she wanted to relive the happy times they had enjoyed in the past. Malcolm was aware at the same time that this would be a very different meeting to those pleasant rides into the country they had shared. He had not raised the subject in their brief emails to one another, but it had seemed sensible to hike into the hills and leave the horse that he was used to riding to their meeting spot behind.

Malcolm ranged from one extreme to the other in his emotions as the thought of Annie occupied his mind. There was almost no point at which he stopped and simply thought about the fact that the woman he was sure he loved had consented to become the personification of his most intimate fantasy. Instead he was eaten away by the guilt he felt at the thought that he might have ruined her life and destroyed their chances of happiness at the same time.

Convinced that he had been hearing nothing more than the noise of the small brook that ran through the bottom of the valley, he was about to return to his seat on the root of the tree when a new sound reached his ears. Malcolm had enough experience of riding to be able to identify the sound of hooves clattering over rocks and through water and in that instant he knew that something was crossing the brook and coming in his direction up the side of the valley.

In that moment he was no longer a grown man worried about the consequences of what he had urged his partner to become, he was ageless and totally overtaken by the need to see who or what was making the journey up the winding path towards where he sat.

He was half way up the trunk of the tree by the time he was able to see through the branches and leaves, down onto the path in the direction from which the sound had come. For a few seconds he was forced to glance around as he tried to see what he both longed and feared to see, but then he was rewarded with a view that could have been taken from a Hollywood storyboard.

It was Annie, she was coming up the path towards him and she was beautiful.

She moved with a strange confidence and grace that at first seemed strange to the eye as she shifted her human torso and almost wove herself through the trees. But he soon realised that her movements made perfect sense when the motions of her equine portion were taken into account. It was clear that she had mastered the challenge of adapting to her new body, and better she was smiling as she went, clearly enjoying the experience of galloping through the wooded valley.

Everything about Annie’s centaur form looked to be in proportion and flowed together in a way that had to be seen to be understood. There was no way that she could have been taken for a thing sewn together from disparate parts, instead she presented a complete entity that made a crazy kind of sense. The way in which her subtly muscled torso melted into the grey coat of her equine body seemed to be perfectly natural, the shape of her legs more akin to a graceful blending of human and animal than a compromise between the two.

Annie wore her hair in the same braids that she had before the transformation, though now they stretched down her back in the manner of a mane. She had braided her tail in the same way and it flicked and moved over her well-muscled haunches as she made her way up the path. She wore a simple shirt that covered her breasts, but left her arms and stomach exposed to the breeze and nothing at all on her lower half save for a pair of practical leather pouches strapped around her middle.

She came to a halt a few feet from the tree and fixed him with a playful grin.

“Now that’s just not fair,” she planted her hands on her sides, “shinning up a tree where you know I can’t follow!” She raised her forelegs one after the other and stamped them down on the dirt path to make the point.

“I’m sorry,” Malcolm climbed down from the tree with his eyes fixed on Annie’s.

“Don’t be stupid,” she laughed, “I was only joking.”

“No,” he shook his head, “I’m sorry that I can’t join in the joke… I’m kind of in awe right now.”

“You were the one who wanted a centaur,” she shook her head in a good natured way as he climbed down and walked over to where she stood. “Well, what do you think?” She turned herself around slowly so that he could take it all in.

“It’s incredible… better than I could have pictured it,” he paused for a moment. “But are you still…”

“Yes,” Annie nodded as she stepped close to him so that they were only a fraction of an inch apart. “I’m still me despite the fact that I’m a centaur, and I still love you.”

He kissed her gently on the lips and then could not help starting to laugh as he stood back to take another gaze at this woman who had become a centaur because of her love for him, marvelling that she still felt the same after so much had changed for her.

“All that time,” Malcolm let out a breath and felt himself relax as they walked further down the path, “and no contact until so recently. I was starting to worry that things had gone very badly for us… and you.”

“I know,” Annie replied, “I’m sorry if it hurt you, but the rehabilitation was hard after the operation. I was being taught to stand, walk and everything else you can think of pretty much from scratch. There was just no way that I could have coped with any more issues than I had at the time.”

He nodded, allowing her to speak as she needed to.

“Sometimes I really came close to thinking that I couldn’t do this and that I’d made a mistake, but I kept looking at the picture that you gave me and imagining the look on your face when you saw me again.”

“This is going to be something that’ll take some adjusting to,” Malcolm tried to broach a subject that had been on his mind a great deal in her absence in a way that would not provoke a swift kick in return. “I’m just going to ask,” he came out with it, “you are still interested in two-legged males?”

Annie laughed out loud and slapped him gently on the shoulder.

“I don’t know about the Booth woman, but I still think that horses are beautiful in the plutonic sense of the word.” She smiled at the look of relief that was suddenly all over his face. “The doctors were pretty frank about all that stuff, so much for your famous English prudishness by the way. They showed me some images of stallions and human guys that even made me blush while I was hooked up to some kind of computer and they said the responses were pretty much what you’d expect from an ordinary straight female. Apparently it has to do with the fact that my body was created using my own genetic material. I might look like a horse from the waist down, but in real terms I’m still technically a human being in all the ways that matter.”

“What about in the sense that you no doubt think I’m thinking of right now?”

“Let’s just say that while I didn’t go off and play with another stud while I was away,” Annie winked at him, “I had some time to myself and things may have moved around a bit, but the important things are still all present and correct.”

“As I said before,” Malcolm slipped his arm around Annie’s waist and stroked the point where her coat began, “this is going to take some adjusting to.”

“Just wait until it’s my turn to go on top,” Annie replied, leaving him lost for words.

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15.07.13