The Horse’s Ass
Chapter 6: Performance Review
Tempest sat on the edge of the bed in her bra and thong, arms wrapped tightly around herself. The hoof boots still locked her feet in their rigid, pointed position. After nearly a week she had grown used to the constant, low ache in her calves and the way she had to balance on her toes. She had stopped fighting the routine as hard as she once had, but the anger and fear had not gone away. They had simply settled deeper.
The door opened.
John stepped inside carrying his usual clipboard. He closed the door behind him and stood near the table for a moment, looking at her. Tempest didn’t look up. She kept her eyes on the floor, sullen and quiet.
“I have a performance review from Shadow, Tempest,” John said.
Tempest let out a short, bitter laugh but still didn’t raise her head.
“A performance review,” she muttered. “Of course you do.”
John didn’t react to the sarcasm. He simply glanced down at the clipboard.
“She reports that your adaptation to the hoof boots has been acceptable,” he said. “You’re falling less often during training. Your balance has improved. You’ve stopped resisting basic commands as strongly as you did at the start.”
Tempest finally looked up, her expression tight.
“And?”
John set the clipboard down on the table.
“However, there is one consistent problem that continues to hold back your progress,” he said. “Your hands.”
Tempest stared at him.
“My hands.”
“You continue to use them for balance. You reach out, steady yourself, catch yourself when you fall. As long as you have the free use of your hands, you’ll keep relying on them instead of learning to move properly in the boots.”
Tempest let out another short laugh, sharper this time.
“So what, you’re going to cut them off next? Is that the plan?”
The words were out before she could stop them. I shouldn’t have said that.
John didn’t answer right away. He simply stepped forward, bent down, and picked up the torn silk blouse that had been lying on the floor since the day he ripped it off her. The fabric was still crumpled and stained.
He straightened up and walked behind her.
“Stand up.”
Tempest stayed seated for a few seconds, then slowly rose to her feet. After nearly a week of practice, her legs were more steady in the hoof boots. Before she could fully turn, John took both of her wrists and pulled them behind her back. Tempest immediately began to struggle.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she snapped, twisting against his grip. “Get your hands off me! You can’t just tie me up like this—”
John didn’t reply. He wrapped the torn silk blouse around her wrists and tied it tightly, knotting the fabric several times until her hands were pinned together behind her back. The binding wasn’t professional, but it was secure enough to hold.
Tempest pulled hard against it, her breathing quickening.
“You sick bastard,” she hissed. “You think this is going to break me? You think tying my hands is going to make me into whatever the fuck you want?”
John stepped in front of her again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the same slip lead he had used during her previous walk. Without a word, he slipped it over her head and tightened it just enough to rest around her neck.
“We’re going for another walk, Tempest,” he said.
Tempest stared at him, wrists straining uselessly behind her back.
“You’re serious,” she said. “You’re actually going to walk me around like this. With my hands tied behind my back like some kind of animal.”
John gave the lead a light tug, guiding her toward the door.
“Keep up,” he said.
They took a different path this time.
Instead of the dirt track that ran beside the barn, John led her along a narrower trail that cut between two large fields. The ground was harder and more uneven than the smooth floor of her room, and without the use of her hands Tempest had to concentrate even harder to stay upright. The slip lead didn’t pull hard, but John used it to correct her whenever she started to drift or lose her balance.
After several minutes of walking in silence, John spoke again.
“You’re here because you reminded me of someone,” he said.
Tempest glanced at him, breathing heavily from the effort of walking.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“You spoke to that barista the same way my mother used to speak to the staff at our house,” John said. “The same tone. The same certainty that the person serving you had stopped being a person the moment she became inconvenient.”
Tempest let out a short, disbelieving sound.
“So this is, what, revenge? Because I reminded you of your mommy issues?”
John did not answer immediately. He kept walking beside her, the lead held loosely in one hand.
“My mother never raised her voice,” he said. “That was the part people missed. She didn’t have to. She could ruin a housekeeper’s day, a driver’s job, a waitress’s shift, and still sound perfectly reasonable while she did it. Everyone around her learned to pretend it was normal.”
Tempest looked at him, uncertain now despite herself.
“You’re insane,” she said.
“Yes,” John said calmly. “But not about this.”
The answer chilled her more than denial would have.
He gave the lead a small corrective tug when she drifted off balance.
“You think what happened in that coffee shop was small because it was ordinary,” he said. “That’s what people like you count on. A little cruelty. A little humiliation. A little performance for the room. Nothing anyone can punish properly because it disappears the moment it’s over.”
Tempest’s bound hands pulled uselessly against the silk blouse.
“I was rude,” she said. “That’s all.”
“You were seen,” John said.
The path narrowed between the fields. He guided her forward without looking at her.
“And now you’re going to be corrected.”
Tempest’s mouth tightened.
“That’s what you call this?”
“Yes.”
“You’re punishing me like this because I was rude to some girl making coffee?”
John stopped walking and turned to face her.
“No,” he said. “I’m correcting you because you still believe that’s all she was.”
He let the words settle, then gave the lead another light tug.
“Keep moving, Tempest.”
The words hit Tempest like a slap.
For the first time, everything clicked into place. The name on the poster. The new video title. The way John had been treating her. The boots. She had never connected them before — her arrogance had refused to let her. But now the pieces slammed together with brutal clarity.
He wasn’t joking. He wasn’t exaggerating. He was actually turning her into a horse.
Tempest didn’t answer. She kept walking, but her steps had become mechanical. Her jaw was tight, her bound hands pulling uselessly against the silk fabric.
They eventually reached a large wooden barn set back from the main path. John stopped in front of the wide double doors and glanced at her.
“Inside,” he said.
He opened one of the doors and led her in.
The barn was long and dimly lit, with a wide central aisle running between two rows of stalls. There were twenty stalls in total—ten on each side. Most of them were occupied.
Tempest’s steps slowed as they walked down the aisle.
In the first stall on the left, a woman stood in the center, secured by a short leash attached to a ring on the wall. A small metal nameplate on the stall door read Sable. She wore full pony gear: heavy hoof boots, a thick leather harness across her chest, and a bit in her mouth connected to reins that hung loosely. Her arms were bound tightly behind her back in a dark leather sleeve. She didn’t move when they ed. She simply stood there, head slightly lowered, staring at the floor.
The next stall held another woman in nearly identical gear. A small metal nameplate on the door read Raven. The stall after that read Ember. Tempest kept walking, but her eyes kept catching on the nameplates as they ed — Silk, Frost, Onyx — each one marking another woman who had been reduced to this state.
By the time they reached the middle of the barn, Tempest had stopped walking entirely.
The realization that had begun on the path hit her with full force now. This was what she was going to become. Not just the boots. Not just the name. This. Standing silently in a stall, arms locked away, bit in her mouth, reduced to nothing but an animal on display. And there was nothing she could do to stop it.
John gave the lead a gentle but firm tug.
“Keep moving, Tempest.”
He watched her carefully as she started walking again. The moment of recognition had landed cleanly. Most subjects needed more time to understand what they were seeing. This one was absorbing it faster than expected. That was useful information.
They continued down the row until they reached the second-to-last stall on the right. A small metal nameplate on the door read Shadow. John stopped, unlatched the door, and pulled it open.
Inside, secured exactly like the others, stood Shadow — the woman who had been training her.
She wore the same heavy hoof boots, the same thick harness, and the same bit in her mouth. Her arms were locked behind her back in a leather binder. A short leash ran from her collar to a ring on the wall, keeping her standing in the center of the stall. She looked up when the door opened, but she didn’t make a sound.
Tempest stared.
John stepped into the stall and gently pulled Tempest in after him. He took the end of her slip lead and secured it to the same ring that held Shadow’s leash, so the two of them stood side by side, only a few feet apart.
Then he stepped back out of the stall.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” he said quietly.
He closed the door and locked it from the outside.
The sound of the bolt sliding into place was loud in the quiet barn.
Tempest stood frozen for several long seconds, staring at Shadow. The woman who had spent days correcting her posture, hosing her down, and forcing her to eat from a bowl now stood beside her in full pony gear, unable to speak because of the thick bit between her teeth.
Tempest’s breathing grew unsteady.
She looked around the stall — at the straw on the floor, at the way Shadow’s leash kept her standing in the exact center, at the way her own leash was now clipped to the same ring. Then she looked back at Shadow.
Neither of them moved.
Then Tempest spoke.
Her voice was low at first, almost hesitant.
“I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”
She swallowed hard.
“I keep thinking someone’s going to come. My father. The police. Someone. But no one’s coming, are they?”
Shadow didn’t respond. She simply stood there, breathing slowly through her nose around the bit.
Tempest looked at the ring on the wall, then at the short leash holding Shadow in place. Then she looked down at her own bound hands.
“I was just rude to a barista,” she said. “That’s what I keep telling myself. I was rude. I was awful. I know that. But this…”
Her voice thinned.
“This can’t be the rest of my life.”
Shadow remained silent.
Tempest gave a small, broken laugh that did not sound like amusement.
“You used to scare me,” she said. “When you came into the room. When you made me walk. When you stood there with that whip and never said anything. I hated you.”
She looked at Shadow’s bound arms, the bit in her mouth, the stillness of her body inside the stall.
“And now you’re standing here too.”
For a long while she said nothing. The barn was quiet around them. Somewhere farther down the aisle, one of the other ponies shifted in her stall.
Tempest’s breathing grew uneven.
“I’m scared,” she whispered. “I’m really fucking scared.”
Her eyes filled, but she blinked hard and forced the tears back.
“I keep waiting for the part where I know what to do. Where I get angry enough, or smart enough, or someone makes a mistake. But there isn’t a mistake, is there? He’s done this before. You know that better than I do.”
Shadow’s eyes stayed on her.
Tempest looked away.
“There’s something wrong with me,” she said.
The words came out smaller than she intended. Once they were spoken, she seemed unable to take them back.
“Not just because I was awful. I know I was awful. I mean now. Here.”
She shifted her weight in the hoof boots. The leather creaked softly.
“When he uses the lead, I hate it. When you made me stand there and eat from that bowl, I hated it. When he calls me Tempest…”
She stopped.
The silence stretched.
“I hate that name,” she said, but the words had no force behind them.
Her face burned. She kept her eyes on the straw because looking at Shadow felt impossible.
“My body doesn’t know what I hate anymore.”
That was as close as she could come to saying it.
She waited for Shadow to react. To judge her. To make some sound around the bit. But she only watched her with the same steady, unreadable eyes.
Tempest’s voice broke.
“I don’t want this,” she said. “I don’t. I swear I don’t.”
Then, after a long pause, quieter:
“But sometimes I’m afraid part of me is learning it anyway.”
For the first time, Shadow’s eyes changed. Not much. Only enough for Tempest to see that the words had landed somewhere real. Shadow lowered her gaze for a second, then lifted it again. It was not comfort. It was recognition.
The ission seemed to take something out of her. Her shoulders sagged. Her bound hands stopped pulling against the silk blouse. She stood beside Shadow in silence, breathing through the shame of what she had almost said and what she had not been able to say at all.
After that, the words came in pieces.
She spoke about the bowl. The lead. The room. The video. The way the name Tempest no longer hit her with the same sharp refusal. She did not confess cleanly. She circled the truth, touched it, pulled away, and returned to it again. By the time she stopped, her voice was hoarse and her face was wet.
Shadow had not answered once.
That made it worse. And somehow, by the end, it also made it easier.
Then footsteps echoed down the aisle.
John returned.
He opened the stall door and stepped inside. In one hand he carried the black leather arm binder. He looked at Tempest for a moment, then reached behind her and untied the silk blouse from her wrists. The fabric fell to the floor between them.
He held up the arm binder.
Tempest stared at it.
She didn’t move at first.
Then, slowly, she turned around and placed her hands behind her back without being asked. John paused for half a second. She was offering them now. Most subjects still fought at this stage. This one was progressing faster than expected.
He noted it without expression and stepped forward, guiding her arms into the binder. He worked methodically, pulling the leather tight around her elbows and wrists before locking the final strap with a small metal clasp.
When he finished, Tempest stood very still, breathing shakily.
John stepped back, gave a small nod, and clipped the slip lead to her arm binder. Without another word, he led her out of the stall.
They walked to the very last stall on the right. A small metal nameplate on the door read Tempest. John opened the door and guided Tempest inside. Two leather leashes were already hanging from rings on opposite walls of the stall. He clipped the first leash to a D-ring on the back of her arm binder, then gently moved her into the center of the stall. He clipped the second leash to the other side of the binder. The lengths were short enough that she could not reach either wall or sit down. She was forced to remain standing exactly in the center of the stall, just like all the others.
John stepped back out of the stall, closed the door, and locked it.
Tempest stood alone in the stall, arms locked tightly behind her back in the new binder, her feet forced into the rigid hoof boots. She stared at the wall in front of her, her breathing slow and uneven. Even though there was no gag in her mouth, she didn’t want to scream or talk. The fight had gone out of her.
Outside the stall, John’s footsteps faded a few paces down the aisle. He stopped and retrieved his phone from a high shelf. The screen was still recording. He watched the final seconds of the footage, then pressed stop.
He slipped the phone into his pocket and stood in the quiet barn for a moment, listening to the faint sounds of the other ponies shifting in their stalls. She had progressed faster than most at this stage.
He turned and walked away, his footsteps fading down the aisle until the barn was silent again.
Tempest remained standing in the center of the stall, arms bound tightly behind her back. For the first time since arriving at the farm, she didn’t feel like she was waiting to be rescued.
She felt like she was waiting to become something else.