Time Out
by Abrank
Copyright 2005

It was late on Saturday evening and Stephanie had been busy all day.  But now her preparations were almost complete.  She sat in front of her dressing table mirror and was fixing her hair which cascaded in long blond curls down her back.

She was an attractive girl, even sexy.  She had long legs, a small waist, and large breasts.  A casual glance at her attire might have suggested that she was a hooker and was preparing to go out to ply her trade.  But a more careful observer would note that apart from her legs, she was not exposing much skin, and so perhaps she was preparing for a more legal activity, perhaps a visit to a nightclub.  It did not seem the best of nights to go out, it was windy and thunderstorms had been forecast.

Her legs were covered with black fishnet stockings.  She was wearing a black micro mini skirt, which, as she was sitting, had ridden up to reveal the tops of her stockings, attached garters, and dark red panties.   One hoped that wherever she was going later that night, she would, for the sake of decency, not sit down.  Her white top was buttoned high up to her neck, and appeared to too be several sizes too small since her breasts bulged tightly against it and two or three strategic buttons appeared on the verge of popping open.

The room was lit by a subdued light emanating from a lamp on the dressing table.  The lamp was plugged into a timer in a wall socket.  There were two clocks on the wall, one indicating a quarter past nine, and the other a quarter past ten.  The clock radio on the bedside table offered a third time; a few minutes before eleven.

Apparently satisfied with her hair, Stephanie turned and, still sitting, forced her feet into a pair of black boots.  But these were no ordinary boots - they were ballet boots.  They forced her toes to point down and had extraordinarily long stiletto heels.  She fastened the ankle straps securing the boots to her feet.  She had some difficulty bending to put the boots on and secure them, and an astute observer might have attributed this to the corset she was wearing.  She rested to recover her breath, then stood up, considerably taller than when she had sat down.  It was difficult to understand why she was wearing such boots for an evening out; they seemed so unstable and so impractical.

She walked over to the full-length mirror, a little unsteadily perhaps, but it was a wonder that she could walk at all in such footwear. She stood in front of the mirror and examined herself.  She smoothed down her skirt so that it covered the tops of her stockings, and nodded, apparently pleased with what she saw.   Her face was lightly made up, and she appeared to be in her late twenties.  Perhaps the only thing out of place were her eyebrows, which were brown, and contrasted with her blond tresses.  Surely she was wearing a wig.

She resumed walking around the room, and checked several of the objects it contained.  Apparently satisfied, she sat down on the foot of the bed. 

What she did next was rather surprising, unless one had been paying attention to the various items laid out in orderly fashion on her bed.  She lifted up her left foot, exposing the tops of her stockings again, and placed it next to the post at the left corner.  She picked up a leather cuff attached by a chain to the post, wrapped it around her ankle, and buckled it tight.  She moved further onto the bed, stretched out her right leg to the other corner, and, with some difficulty, picked up another cuff and buckled it around her right ankle. Her legs were now forced wide apart.

She lay back on the bed and rested, breasts heaving and straining even harder against the confines of her blouse.  The corset she was wearing must have been laced very tightly.  After a few minutes she appeared to have recovered, and shuffled up the bed on her back as far as she could towards the top.  She reached up and out and touched the chains locked to the two top corner posts.  She appeared satisfied with their placement, and shuffled down a little to relieve the tension in her legs.  Using her arms she levered herself into the sitting position.

She picked up a pair of long black opera gloves from the bed and pulled them on, smoothing them up her arms.  Next she picked up a pair of handcuffs and carefully closed one cuff around her left wrist.  One cuff of a second pair went around her right wrist.  She had a little problem finding the next item laid out on the bed, a small nail, but finally located it and used it to double lock the cuffs around her wrists.  She placed the nail on the bedside table then picked up pair of headphones.  These were connected to a small electronic noisemaker, which she switched on.  She adjusted the sound level until she was satisfied.  The glove and the dangling cuff did not seem to impede her; she had clearly done this before.

She picked up the leather head harness and, leaning forward buckled it around her head.  She inserted the red ball into her mouth and buckled its retaining strap around her head.  She then systematically tightened all the straps, pulling the headphones and wig into her head and holding them firmly in place.

Picking up an electronic connector from the bedside table, she attached it to a similar connector projecting out just above the waistband of her mini skirt.  The connector from the table had a ribbon cable connecting it to a box with knobs and dials.  The connector next to her waist was attached to about ten wires that disappeared under her skirt, and were lost to sight.

Stephanie looked carefully at the controls on the box, then flipped a switch.  Nothing happened.  She waited a few seconds then, taking a last look around, applied the blindfold of her head harness and buckled it around the back of her head, further securing the headphones and wig

She lay back on the bed, reached out and up, and found the chains attached to the two top corner posts.  She stretched as far as she could, and passed the open shackles of the handcuffs through links in the chains, and closed then, ratcheting them tight.

She had done this before, several times. At first this final closing of the handcuffs, which she could no longer hear, had caused a sexual surge.  But now she was used to it, and it had become just one more step in the bondage experience.

She strained against her bonds, testing them and assuring her body that she was inescapably held in their unyielding grip.  She strained her eyes and ears but could sense nothing apart from blackness and a meaningless hiss.  She was confined to her own private world for the next few hours, a world of fantasy and suffering, of sexual arousal and aching muscles, of desire and denial.  Cut off from the stimulation of the outside word, she slipped deep and deeper into herself, into a world of strange erotic dreams, where pain and pleasure, sex and frustration were intermingled in the complex web of her subconscious.

* * * * *

When she first began these sessions she found that just being chained spreadeagled for an hour or so had been terribly exciting and she had achieved orgasm with no other stimulation, but as the novelty wore off she needed additional stimulation to produce this sexual high.  The sessions had quickly expanded to a full night’s bondage, and sometimes extended to twelve hours or more.  She justified the lengthy sessions by telling herself that she needed to catch up on her sleep. 

The next step in the escalation of her sessions was sensory deprivation, blocking her mouth, eyes and ears.  Blindfolding was easy to do and very effective.  But it was frightening at first; she imagined all kinds of intruders in her house quite apart from the ones she dreamed up in her fantasies.  Gagging was also easy, though not as effective.  A rubber ball gag prevented speech, but she could still make noise and even, with some effort, breathe around it.  It too was initially frightening, but for a different reason, the possibility that it could asphyxiate her was always present.  But she persisted since the immobile and aching jaw it induced was an important part of the helplessness of the bondage experience.  Blocking out all sounds proved to be the most difficult.  She found the only really effective way to shut out the sounds of the outside world was to cover her ears with head phones connected to a noise maker.  She tried various sounds, but eventually settled on the hiss of random noise.  At first the hissing in her headphones kept her awake, but now she was used to it and could fall asleep.

Once she had learned to sleep, she decided she needed something to wake her up.  Although short periods of sleep were acceptable, it seemed pointless to put herself in elaborate bondage if she simply slept through the entire session.  So she began to use electric shocks.  These served three purposes: to wake her, or keep her awake, so that she experienced the bondage; to heighten her arousal and bring her to the edge of orgasm; and to inflict pain.  The pain incited fear, and this in turn intensified the experience and somehow increased the pleasure.  Thus wires from the machine were connected to various sensitive parts of her anatomy including her genitals and nipples.  The timings and intensities of the different types of electric shock were random, and this helped make each session a different and exciting experience.

Another change was the sex.  At first she enjoyed the orgasms, and counted on having at least one or two during each session, but later derived more pleasure in denying herself an orgasm, and spending the hours in an elevated erotic state craving for release but being unable to achieve it.

* * * * *

Phil was, as usual on a Saturday night, sitting in a bar.  He was lonely in a crowd of people.  He was tired of one-night stands, and wanted a more permanent relationship.  He was in his late forties and was past his prime: losing his hair and growing a paunch.  Youth attracted him, be it embodied in male or female, but unfortunately he no longer attracted youth.

He scanned the bar again.  One young man in particular attracted him, and he thought he might have a chance.  He managed to maneuver himself into a position to start up a conversation.  But the young man’s eyes were on someone else, a muscular fellow in his early thirties, with scars and tattoos.  When Phil returned to their table after buying another round of drinks, he found the young man had deserted him and was now in deep conversation with the tattooed man.

Feeling rejected and frustrated, Phil left the bar.  It was going to be another Saturday night jacking off alone.

* * * * *

As the night progressed an occasional electric shock awakened Stephanie to full consciousness, and the subsequent stimulation around her crotch and nipples was arousing but frustrating.

She wondered if this night would be different from the many that had preceded it.  It was of course different in detail, they always were.  She thought about some of the self-bondage stories she had read on the Internet.  The predominant plot seemed to be that the subject puts herself, or himself, in bondage and then has great difficulty getting out, or perhaps is discovered.  She supposed that those who escaped easily didn’t bother to write about it, and those that couldn’t get out didn’t live to tell the tale.  It seemed that one had to court disaster in order to have an experience worth relating.  Stephanie had always been very careful, and doubted that she would ever have such an experience.  In the present situation the worst that could happen was a power outage that would delay her release by a few hours.

She had always managed to escape her bonds, even when young and inexperienced, otherwise she would not now be lying in tight bondage on her comfortable bed, with her arms and legs pulled out to the four corners.  She had initially provided herself with three escape methods, including one that she could use immediately in emergences such as a burglar breaking in, or the house catching fire.  But with her graduation to sensory deprived bondage she would not know if such an event had occurred, and so she omitted the last kind off escape method.  This made the bondage sessions, more real for her, and more exciting.  Once bound she had absolutely no way of escaping until her timers released the key.

She took reasonable precautions.  She never put herself in really strict bondage when she was feeling ill or when she had a cold. The latter could be deadly when forced to breathe only through her nose, as at present.  Perhaps the greatest danger had been when she once failed to digest her evening meal properly and some strongly acidic food had forced its way into her throat.  By shear force of will, she had prevented herself vomiting, but that had required intense concentration for the remaining hours of her bondage.  Rather than give up gagged bondage after this life-threatening event, she simply decided to eat earlier and eat less before her sessions.

The timers allowing her to escape had been tested many times.  She used to use two kinds, an electric timer and an ice timer.  The ice timer was 100 percent reliable; short of the instantaneous onset of an ice age, nothing would stop the ice melting, and it would release the weighted keys to swing down on their string to touch her manacled hand.  Yet after while, she felt there was something unsatisfying with the ice timers.  They worked so well that she was always certain of being released at the allotted time.

She resorted to using exclusively electric timers.  These provided the needed element of uncertainty since there was always the possibility that the electric power would be cut for a while, and this would necessarily prolong her bondage session.  She found this prospect added a little spice to the bondage sessions.  Logically she was certain of being released, the power always came back on, but she could persuade herself that it might be out for days or weeks.  The electricity was fairly reliable, but there seemed to be at least one significant outage a year caused either by someone digging into a buried cable or by a tree falling on the power lines.  She had heard both excuses for previous outages.  This kind of outage seemed to last a few hours at the most. 

For reliability she always used two electric timers.  She had tried various kinds but now exclusively used timers based on an electric wall clock.  She set the hands of each clock to a quarter past the hour, and hung the keys over the minute hand.  The clocks were plugged into timers and began to run when the timer turned on.  A few minutes later the keys would slide off the hand and swing down to her.    In testing she had found it important that the hands didn’t cross during these few minutes.  Setting the time to a quarter past four, for example, might cause everything to jam at about twenty-two minutes past the hour when the hands came together.

She sometimes, as she had tonight, connected timers in series allowing her to conceal the time of release from herself.  By avoiding looking at the dials, she could set the timer for a random release time.  Each clock had two timers connected in series.  The timers plugged into the wall sockets were set for seven hours, and each of the timers plugged into them was set for an unknown time between zero and nine hours.  She knew that she would be in bondage for at least seven hours and not more than sixteen hours, plus the five to ten minutes of the wall clock.  She asked a mathematical friend what was the average time of this arrangement, without revealing the application of course.  He said it was the fixed time plus one third of the random time, or about ten hours.

She wanted to feel that everything was right with the world.  She wanted to feel that the bondage session was right.  But it wasn’t. It was just a fantasy.  What she really wanted was a partner with whom to share this fantasy and perhaps make it a little more real.  But she couldn’t.  She couldn’t bring herself to mention it to anyone.  She pulled on the chains in frustration. ‘Why don’t I do something to meet someone?’ she asked.  But the chains didn’t respond.

And yet they did.  They held her, they punished her, they made her muscles ache, and they constantly reminded her of what she was.  She closed her mind to these thoughts, and dwelt on one of her fantasies that she knew would carry her beyond her present limitations, beyond sleep.

* * * * *

Stephanie was awake.  She could hear the rumble of thunder through her headphones.  ‘It must be very loud,’ she thought.  Then realized that the ubiquitous hiss was absent. ‘Oh God, the electricity’s off,’ the thought feeling both anxiety and anticipation.  ‘Probably some damn tree down on the power lines again.  Or maybe lightening struck a transformer.  They haven’t used that excuse for a while.’

When awakened she had been in the middle of a rather terrifying dream.  She was lying in a field of flowers and a herd of horses were galloping straight towards her.  She couldn’t move or get out of the way and was afraid she was going to be trampled.  She had found that the bondage, which in real life prevented her moving, often became woven into her dreams.  In this dream, as in others, her immobility resulted more from lack of control over her muscles rather from an actual restraint.

She wondered what time it was, and whether it was night or day.  She couldn’t hear anything apart from the rain, and concluded it must still be night.  She was stiff from lying in one position, and moved against her bonds to try to ease her muscles and tendons.  But her bonds did not permit her much movement, certainly not enough to relieve the aches in her thighs and arms.  She flexed her ankles and wrists, fingers and neck, about the only joints she could move.  She needed to make pee.  Without the electric shocks her situation was bearable, but she knew it would get gradually worse.  She hoped it wouldn’t take too long to restore the power.

* * * * *

Hours had passed, and still no power.  It was now daytime and Stephanie could hear cars passing outside.  The power must have been out for several hours.  Why hadn’t they restored it yet?  At least the absence of electric shocks had allowed her to get some sleep.   This passed the time but she awoke stiffer than ever, and her need to urinate had increased.  She wondered if it was morning or afternoon, and decided it was probably afternoon.

Fighting the drool in her mouth was also becoming an increasing problem.  Her jaw was aching, and it was becoming even harder to swallow or eject the drool.  She became concerned that she might choke or drown.

* * * * *

Phil lay masturbating in his bed.  He was thinking of one of his subordinates at work, a female programmer.  He felt desire whenever she passed by his office, particularly when she wore a short skirt, which she sometimes did.  But he felt impotent.  Two things prevented him from taking action.  On the single occasion that he had said something suggestive, she had rebuffed him.  And he valued his job too much to jeopardize it by attempting to force a subordinate into sexual involvement.

He was insecure.  What few technical skills he had once acquired were now sadly out of date, and his value lay only in his managerial skills.  He wondered about the latter, and felt he could be easily replaced by someone else at a lower salary.  He felt that if he lost this job, he would never be able to find another.  No, the last thing he wanted was to jeopardize it.

 All he could do was look at her with frustrated and impotent lust.  The only way he could have her was in his dreams, in his masturbatory fantasies.

* * * * *

When Stephanie next awoke it was night.  She could tell by the lack of sound outside.  "Oh God, please turn the power back on soon,’ she prayed.  ‘I have a big day at work tomorrow and I can’t afford to miss it.’   She was really worried.  She realized that even when the power came back on the timers might still condemn her to several more hours of bondage.  Her need to pee was desperate.  She had never been faced with this situation before.  At least the electricity was off and her pee wouldn’t short out the electrical contacts.  But what would happen when the power came back on.  Would she be shocked?  She tried not to make pee, to hold it in.  But the pain was becoming overwhelming.  Finally the inevitable happened.  She felt disgusted and ashamed.  Oh how she wished the session would end.

* * * * *

Phil was pissed.  Jason, his project leader on the Orion project had not come into work that Monday, and had missed the vitally important sales meeting at which he was to make his final presentation.  Phil had to give the presentation himself, and, not having rehearsed it and lacking the latest video and slides, was aware that it did not go well.  He felt very embarrassed at being unable to answer some of the questions raised by the client.  They almost certainly wouldn’t get the contract now, and months of hard work had been wasted

Phil’s calls to Jason’s house, made with increasing urgency during the morning, had brought no response, the phone rang but no one picked up, not even Jason’s answering machine.  None of his coworkers knew why Jason hadn’t shown up.  Phil decided that if Jason had not been involved in a serious and incapacitating accident, he would be fired.  He resolved to go to Jason’s house after work to deliver the news personally, he didn’t want Jason even showing up for work the following day.

* * * * *

Jason’s house was quiet.  Phil’s ringing and loud knocking elicited no response.  He thought that Jason must be out, but his car was still in the driveway.

He went to the neighbor’s house, and they said that they hadn’t seen Jason recently and had no idea where he might be.  Phil happened to remark on a tree that had been blown down across the street and the neighbor said that a big storm had passed through early the previous morning, blowing down several trees in the neighborhood.  But the worst part was a power surge.  It destroyed their TV set and blew the fuses on their computer surge protector.  Power had been out for several hours that morning.

Phil wondered about the power surge.  Perhaps Jason had been electrocuted, and was lying injured in the house.  He called the police on his cell phone, and about half an hour later a patrol car showed up. 

Together Phil and the policeman inspected the outside of the house.  Everything seemed to be in order, no signs of damage or a break in, but there were no lights on in the house.  The policeman was reluctant to break in, but Phil offered to pay for any damage, so they forced open a window and went inside.

Phil tried to turn on a light, but it didn’t work.  "The main circuit breaker must have tripped," said the policeman.  They searched the house and in the master bedroom they found a woman chained to the bed.

On removing the blindfold and gag, they discovered it to be a man.  Once the policeman was satisfied that no crime had been committed, and that Jason didn’t need to go to hospital, he left.  As for Jason and Phil, if this were a fairy story they would have lived happily ever after as lovers.  But it was not to be; Jason was not interested.  He resigned his job and moved away, leaving no forwarding address.