Life Sentence
by Raul Roget
Part 1
Chapter 1 Knock Knock! Who’s There?
The figure kneeling before the massive door could have been a man, or a woman. Unless you were within a few feet, it was nearly impossible to tell. The huddled outline suggested woman. So be it. Her story begins.
She waited, with the patience of a woman used to waiting, used to long periods of inactivity. Moving less than a predator watching a walking food supply.
While she waited, she turned her head, with considerable difficulty. She could see the rock strewn road on which she must have come. It disappeared only at the horizon, the land somehow tilted to display it’s lengthy, nearly straight course. It also displayed grass. Feet, yards. miles of grass, nothing but grass, save the rocky road. Not a tree. Not even one. Not even a bush to break the monotony of grass.
The house loomed out of the grass like a manufactured version of the Wyoming Devil’s Tower. Tall, lined, forever seeking the sky. Windows, dull against the rock, lifeless, perhaps dead? There wasn’t the slightest hint of life, other than the overwhelming green of the grass.
The woman could hear movement behind the door. She felt herself being examined through a peephole, knowing the eye would refuse to believe what it saw. Patiently she waited. Disbelief was her lot in life. She heard footsteps, walking away from the door, walking into the silence of the house. Her lip curled in a wry smile. “They need help, yet I am helpless.”
The footsteps returned, a second, more aggressive step setting the pace. She, who waited, brightened. The Master of the house had been summoned.
She again felt, knew, that an eye was examining her. Would he too disbelieve and leave her to eat grass on his acres of lawn? There was the murmur of consultation. A long pause. More footsteps, some hurrying.
Without warning the door opened, silently. The barrel of a Winchester rifle moved past the edge of the door, her head centered in the sights. Without moving, without a sign of recognition, or peace, she waited. She had no choice.
The gun moved forward, never wavering from its target. She could not, dared not look directly at it as it was coming from an angle at the side. She felt the cold steel of the muzzle pressing into her temple. There was a finger, crooked, tight, on the trigger. It would move, curl, if she moved. If she moved, she was dead. She remained inanimate, still, a quarter inch from fertilizing the grass with her brain matter.
For the first time she showed fear. Her eyes bulged, tiny shivers ran from her scalp to her toes. The muzzle pressed harder. She stopped shivering, a switch turned off. The gun remained, pressing, never wavering. The gunner’s eyes roamed, flicking back to the gun sights again, roaming again. Nothing to see but grass, the road, tilted to see the horizon.
Puzzlement. Where did she come from? Who brought her? Why? Yes, why? How in Hell did she get here? What is the purpose of all this?
The pressure increased. The woman prepared for death. The gun pushed her over, suddenly she was lying on her side. The gun prodded the cape that surrounded her, the sharp gun sight catching in the cloth and tearing a small hole. A hand came from behind her, opening the cape, the gun muzzle beside it, covering her, searching inside for her gun, a gun she didn’t have, couldn’t use, wouldn’t use. ‘One false move and I’m dead meat.’
She lay sprawled, mostly on the cape, where the gun had placed her. Patient. Unmoving. This would pass. The man with the gun would disagree. She was a problem of the worst kind.
Once down it was easy to see that the cape was her only garment. No clothes, but her bare flesh was crisscrossed with wire filaments that bound her tightly and covered nothing, displaying everything, her most secret and sacred places exposed. Out of her line of sight through her constricting, slitted goggles the gunman shook his head, Half frustration, half puzzled. This did not make sense. Something was wrong. This is a trap. He searched with his eyes to the horizon and back. Nothing. He wanted something, anything, to explain away the nude woman on his front porch. The naked woman who didn’t belong in his world. The problem that was getting worse by the minute.
He scanned the sky, looking for a long gone plane, listened for the thrum of a helicopter. Not a single cloud. Not a dust devil. Nothing. “To pour piss out of a boot, put the instructions on the heel.” He swore, a long string of ugly words. She heard him, heard the words directed at her, directed at the empty view. She winced inside, careful not to show it on the surface of her skin.
When he could draw his attention away from the magnificent ballooning breasts he looked at her legs. The wires, deep in her flesh told a story he didn’t want to hear. She couldn’t walk ten feet tied as she was. She was here, in the midst of all that grass, but how - and why - did she get here, turn up umpteen miles beyond nowhere? He slapped the side of his head with his open hand, trying to make sense of absolute senselessness. He refused to think about how she would have had to struggle to make it up the six steps to the porch. He dismissed it as impossible.
He looked down at impossible, lying sprawled invitingly before him. The desire to fuck her flickered and died instantly. A dildo, fixed to the taut wire that bisected her in a blood- red channel, blocked entrance to anyone without the key. Key? He had yet to see a keyhole. Her bonds seemed woven on her from one continuous strand of wire, the most cruel bondage he could remember ever seeing.
Nagging thoughts, questions flooded his mind. She arrived on his porch, unable to move in her bonds. How! Damn it, HOW! She had to have had help! No way could she make it across miles of grass and crawl onto his porch. His thoughts deteriorated into a tight loop, circling ‘How’ and ‘Why’ through his brain again and again.
“Why me?” He hadn’t asked for this problem, didn’t want it, wanted it solved immediately and he wanted the beautiful black haired enigma long gone from his sight. He noted that someone had tied loops of wire around the base of each inch-long nipple, blocking fresh blood from them, holding stale blood to keep them erect.
A closer look showed wires around the base of each breast, brazed into a continuous, achingly-tight loop. He wondered if they had made the loops in place, delighted by her screams, or simply brazed them at a workbench. Did they enjoy mauling her tit-flesh getting them on her? He shook his head, trying to stop the non-stop images that marched across his brain.
The woman knew all too well what he was looking at, but she made no move to hide any part of her. It didn’t suit her to be coy or modest and he was not the first to get a closeup look at her body. An even closer look would have revealed to him that she had lost her pussy hair to a propane torch. Still hiding in her folds were hairs that had been singed and curled against her untouched flesh.
He looked again, out to the edge of nothing and back, sure he had missed something the other times. His laser blue eyes saw everything, missed nothing and saw nothing. He cursed again, a fresh string, new words, just as ugly as before. He was not a happy man. He glared down at her, even pulled his boot back to give her a swift kick in the ass, but as rapidly discarded the idea. He would need to talk to her. Learn everything she knew, make her - yes, make her - answer his questions. After that there might be time for fun and frolic.
His cock was building, storing blood, elongating, swelling, hardening. She was a cock raiser all right. He pictured her, spread on his bed, free of those deadly wires, legs spread invitingly. The vision conflicted with his purpose. He wanted answers, then he could worry about getting a piece of that delicious ass.
He, unaware, was the first to see her bonds. They were new, on a body closing on 30 years. Used, but not abused, at least up to now.
He looked at her face. Her eyes behind the goggles were closed. Had been, from the moment the gun touched her. Her mouth looked strained. He bent down and ran a heavy, calloused finger between her teeth and cheek, catching on the clamp that locked her jaw closed. Frustrated until he got her to his tools, he glanced below her jaw. A collar of wire - what else? - encircled her lovely sculpted throat, the one wire on her whole body that wasn’t drawn deep into her flesh. Her arms and hands, praying upside down behind her back, and her feet, were turning white from lack of blood.
He knew from long experience that she was close to oxygen starvation and needed to be released from the relentlessly tight wire that seemed to follow every contour of her body.
Wire calls for wire cutters. His assistant picked her up like a feather and carried her to the workshop. Laying her on a rolling table, he picked up a cheap pair first, snapping a chunk out of the “Made in China” tool. He dug and found a well used Stanley that could cut the wire. Where to cut?
He found a strand he could get the blade under, and using extra strength, cut it. Much of the wire fell away, leaving her arms still bound. He cut again and more came loose, but he had to exert all his strength to cut the wire. Titanium, he guessed. Several hundred dollars worth of wire. Why, with rope so cheap?
The circulation returned to her arms and hands, and finally to her feet, tingling with returning sensation, arousing her. This was not according to the book - arousal happened during bondage, not from removing bondage. She’d never read the book and would undoubtedly have called the author one of her pet naughty names.
The dildo came out of her with a sucking sound, again affecting her after the fact. It plopped as it came free, tugging on the nearby butt plug, still buried inside her. She resisted his attempt to remove the plug, tightening on its narrowed base, almost as if she was daring him to take it out. His mental archive spewed out multiple images of his cock pushing in, relentlessly forcing entrance against her will.
He slid the goggles up off her face, tangled in her night-black hair. It had to hurt. He intended it to hurt, but her face remained serene, nothing moving except the faint rise and fall of her chest with its twin attractions - or distractions to someone bent on getting answers.
He used a dental mirror to peer into her cheek. He released the cheek momentarily as he turned to the workbench and selected an Allen wrench. He retracted both cheeks and unscrewed their respective clamps. The clamps came away, leaving her mouth free.
She inspired and bred disbelief in both men. They had seen her, touched her, carried her, released her from her bonds, but neither man believed anything about her that even approached logic. Apart from being a problem, she was their dream, the classic nude, beckoning her lover, lying on the table, open to their every glance, ready to satisfy their carnal needs and wants.
One thing lacked. They had not seen her eyes. “The doorway to her soul.”
Jack Wellington Lewis III, direct descendent of the Lewis family and current owner of all the grass in sight, as well as the house, finished his examination, stared down at the still body for a long moment, then tapped on the woman’s cheek.
“Open up.”
Deliberately provoking him, she opened her mouth, wide, her tongue moving suggestively, displaying the gold stud it sported. Stony faced, Jack reached for a cane in the rack above the table. Paying her in kind, he held the cane close to her thigh so she would have no advance warning, then drove it into her flesh. She grunted - no screamer this one - more from surprise than the all-enveloping pain. Covering his mistake in not being specific, he growled,
“Open your eyes, bitch!”
Her eyelids split apart and retracted, very slowly, steadily, under remarkable control. She opened wide, without blinking. The lids surrounded white around brilliant green, a most unlikely combination with her black hair. Jack reached for a magnifier and looked at close range. There was no sign of contact lenses. The green was for real. Jack hit the other thigh with a longer swing. Her grunt was up an octave, but still not a scream.
“That’s for taking your damn sweet time. In this house you jump to it when I give an order.”
His assistant, Raymond Balsh, watched, with growing concern. The softening up process was not working. This had to be a robot of some kind, or an alien from outer space. THAT, at least would explain how this .... ‘thing’ landed on his boss’ front porch. He stood, mouth open, watching ‘it’ take two zingers that would incapacitate almost any woman. He had never seen a cane strike with that force without wringing a scream from the victim’s lips.
Also increasing his concern, she was lying on the table, without any restraints, yet she made no effort to move, evade or react to the caning. He reached under the table and unsnapped a cuff. He brought it up above the table and closed it hard on her nearest wrist. She still remained quiet, making no resistance to being bound again. Swiftly, Raymond circled the table, closing and locking three more cuffs, pinning her helpless on the padded table.
“Put her in the cell for now, Ray.” Jack ordered.
The two men had been together for years. Through long experience they had learned to share the work and do the things that needed to be done, mostly without verbal orders or comments.
The cell was just that. A cell. Bare walls, no window, a barred sliding door, a light fixture buried under heavy mesh in the ceiling. A cement block bench gave the inmate two choices - sleep on the floor, or on the equally hard bench. A combination stainless steel toilet and wash stand took up one back corner. This was not your common everyday prison cell, closer to one used for solitary confinement. An important feature not found in jail cells were the numerous ring bolts mounted in the walls, floor and ceiling. One of the rings on the far back wall already had a chain welded to it.
Ray rolled the cart into the cell and before releasing the woman he locked the chain to her collar, He released her wrists and immediately locked them in special German handcuffs which had a hinged bar between the cuffs, virtually inescapable even with the key in hand. He uncuffed and re-cuffed her ankles with a foot long hobble chain. Only then did he allow her off the table.
Jack walked in behind him, snapping on a pair of latex gloves. Ray held her chain, pulling her down as Jack announced, “Cavity search.”
There still was no reaction from the woman as she was forced to bend over, to allow Jack to probe her mouth, then her pussy and ass with his fingers. He found nothing and stripped the gloves off and tossed them out of the cell. He followed them out and came back moments later with a blanket.
“That’s all you get. Keep it neat!”
Nothing more was said. The men walked out, shutting and locking the door behind them. The woman waited until they were gone and walked toward the door. The chain on her collar stopped her several feet short. She smiled to herself.
Once out of earshot the two men began talking, the first chance since Ray had sounded the alarm. Jack started with the same questions that had been nagging him - who was she, and more important, how on earth did she get to his front door. ‘Why’ hadn’t been answered either, and close contact with the woman had raised new questions.
“What do you think, Ray?”
“Boss, that’s got to be an alien. How else could she have gotten onto that high porch without help?”
Jack shook his head. “She’s no alien, although I agree that would explain how she got here, but she’s normal flesh and blood.”
“Normal!” Ray snorted, “No ‘normal’ woman could take that caning without squirming or squealing! She could be a robot.”
“Yeah, she’s normal, but with a pain tolerance that’s off the scale. Look at the wire we cut off of her. It had disappeared into her flesh in several places - between her legs - and that hurts as bad as a heavy caning.”
Ray reluctantly agreed, but he still was nowhere near any answer for any of the questions which were piling up.
“Could she have gotten here with a plane, or a helicopter?”
“I don’t see how. We were both here all day and we would certainly have heard either one.
Backtracking, Jack asked, “Did she ring the bell? I didn’t hear it.”
“Yes. I barely heard it, and she may even have tried it before, but I went to the door as soon as I heard it.”
“How did she ring the bell?”
Ray started to answer, then realized he didn’t know. Her arms were lashed behind her back, useless. If she could have gotten her tied legs under her, she might have been able to push herself up and either use her nose, or raise enough to get a finger on the bell.
“Damn if I know. She would have had to be a contortionist to do it and get back into kneeling position before I got to the peephole.”
“And, why stark naked?”
Chapter 2 Answers, We Want Answers!
“That was probably so that we would see the wire immediately and get it off of her. We probably wouldn’t have told her - at least right away - to take her clothes off.”
Ray scratched his head. “Yeah, you’re probably right, but that still leaves so damn many questions that I’m getting a headache.”
“You indeed! You do realize that this complicates matters for me. If she escaped from someone, or the police are chasing her, we’re going to be in a serious bind. For one, try explaining that cell we just filled and locked. If they find her here, we’re in shit up to our necks.”
“You’re right as usual, boss. I guess the short term solution will be to beat some answers out of her.”
“Tell me how to do that without killing her in the process. She’s tougher than nails and we just got through watching her take a man’s punishment without a flinch.”
“We’ve done it before, we can do it again. I agree, beating isn’t the answer, but we need to stop and think if any of the tactics we’ve used would work on this one. We’ve each got a slave that proves we must have done ‘something’ right before.”
Jack glanced up at the monitor. The woman was lying on her side on the bench in her cell, the blanket half covering her, her head cocked uncomfortably to rest on the blocks.
“Sweet dreams, you bitch!”
He reached up and turned the thermostat down ten degrees.
“Good sleeping temperature,” he joked, as he turned out the light and followed the night lights to his bedroom. Ray laughed at the joke and went down the other hall to his own bedroom.
The two bedrooms were virtually identical. Each featured a classic four-poster bed, replete with rings and chains, a walk-in closet with clothes on one side and bondage gear on the other. Each room also came with a kneeling female slave, balanced on one knee, rigidly silent and unmoving, exquisitely trained, perfectly presented with her shackled foot thrust forward to prove and confirm her bondage, her slavery.
Both answered to ‘slave.’ They could barely remember their original free names after countless hours of repetitive training that molded them into the ideals that each man had.
Both were silent, always. They had been caught, whispering of escape. Their punishment had only ended when they accepted a vow of silence. Nuns in the service of two devils.
The vow was more than a year old. The two slaves continued to suffer, cruelly punished for refusing to answer questions, the lesser of two evils, or making noise while being whipped. Neither dared say even a single word. Not after experiencing the painful remedies that the two men had for backsliders. They were given a taste of each diabolical pain machine. Just enough to make them realize just how helpless they were and how much they would hurt in a full blown torture session.
They differed from the two common sources of slaves. They had not volunteered. They had not been abducted. Rather, they had been sold into slavery by their parents, almost as if by mutual agreement, enslaved within a week of each other. The two men took great delight in telling the slaves in detail exactly how their parents had squandered the money.
Under torture, both slaves would have fearfully admitted that they hated their captors, almost as much as they hated their parents for their unspeakable acts. Their one ray of hope had been their whispered words of encouragement and escape. Now, cut off from each other, forced to suffer in silence, their future was bleak. The two men knew them well, and made them suffer for it. The stark realization that they could be easily tortured into confessing their hate was more than enough to keep them in line.
Above all, they had no idea that their world was about to tip upside down, leaving them at the bottom of the heap.
Jack accepted the offered mouth, sitting on the edge of the bed, distracted by the events of the day. He already was the target of a small sect that somehow had gotten wind of the two slaves, but not their exact location, in the isolated house. Finding them, and now a third woman - that he automatically thought of as a slave - here in this house would spell disaster. All it would take would be a search warrant and he and Ray would learn how it felt to be behind bars. The arrival of a third slave could only be bad news all the way around.
The practiced mouth overcame his distraction and was rewarded with his juices. Silently she cleaned all traces from his softening cock and then backed into her kneeling position again. He ordered, “Dismissed.”
Obediently she knee-walked into the closet, opened a small door in the base of the wall and crawled in, pulling the door shut behind her, her chain snaked around the corner. The automatic lock clicked, shutting her away for the night.
Jack made a final check of the monitors. All three slaves were settled for the night. He laid down and was fast asleep in seconds. It would be nearly morning before the nightmare jerked him awake. Police had come in helicopters, surrounding the house, marching the slaves to safety as he and Ray were handcuffed and taken to the interrogation room. They asked ‘his’ questions.
“Where did she come from? Who is she? Why is she here? How did she get here?”
He yelled in frustration, waking himself up. He looked at the bedside clock which showed five minutes before five. He dressed quickly. At exactly five a red light started flashing. He watched as his mystery woman jerked erect, tugging at her bonds, looking around as if she had never seen the cell before.
Jack shut the siren off, sudden silence for her after deafening noise. He flipped a switch and spoke, “You have three minutes to fold your blanket - neatly - and position yourself on the floor. On your back, all chains tight!”
She obeyed, without the slightest hesitation, as if she had been doing the very same thing for years. Obedience didn’t make a woman a slave, but it was a marker - a milepost - on the road to slavery.
Jack walked to her cell. Ray joined him as he reached the door. He didn’t bother to look in first. The monitor told him that she was obeying perfectly.
They stood, just inside the door, only partly visible to her as she stared at the ceiling directly above her. Jack focused on her green eyes, shaking his head in bafflement. Ray took over command, “Toilet.”
She jumped to her feet, rattling her chains, then squatted, her legs spreading unbidden, a second before the order was uttered.
“Kneel.”
She dropped gracefully to her knees - as a trained slave would kneel - and inched forward until her collar chain was taut. The chain joining her ankles was equally as rigid. Her hands remained in the German hinged cuffs.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. Something was radically wrong here. He had classed her as a slave the moment he saw her, but... she was more a slave than anything he had ever seen or heard of. Perfect obedience that required years of hard, painful training. She was obeying like a born slave. Why was a superbly trained slave suddenly dumped on his doorstep? His mind flooded again with unanswered questions. He mentally reviewed his entire list of friends and business acquaintances. He couldn’t place a single one who would gift him a slave.
He looked at Ray, assessing the odds of thrashing her to the point where she would talk - would answer his questions. He worried that she might not know the answers either, but he was almost willing to bet the farm that she knew every answer.
Ray’s mind was churning the same problem. His hand was itching to hold a whip. Not any whip, but one that would slice and dice that unmarred back until she begged to be allowed to answer questions. He knew that Jack was thinking along the same lines, but both men decided at the same time that - just as they discussed before - it wouldn’t work. Between them they had to come up with something radical that would break through that serenity and get them the answers they must have.
Ray left, and returned with a bowl of dry bread crusts. He pointed to the bowl.
“Fifteen minutes.”
When they returned, the bread was gone, the bowl was licked clean. The orders came quickly, “Stand. Turn. Hands. Leg.”
Her chains and cuffs off, finished, she stood, tightened the collar and waited.
“One hour of exercise. Just short of out of breath.”
She launched into Jumping Jacks, somehow keeping the collar chain tight, a pivot point.
As they walked away, Ray piped up, “She’s a slave! A fucking, goddam slave! Nobody but a slave takes orders like that! What the fuck is she doing here?”
Jack chuckled, “A slave, but a damn good one. She does things we took weeks or months to train. I still don’t know what she’s up to, but I intend to find out!”
“S’pose we just ASK her? She might surprise us and answer.”
“Ray, answer your own question. Do you see the slightest sign that she’s interested in sharing with us?
“Well, No, but...”
“Okay, to prove the point I’ll ask her when she’s finished working out. I’ll buy the steaks if I’m wrong.”
They cuffed her, unlocked the collar chain, replaced it with a leash and took her to the room marked “Interrogation Room.” She was allowed to sit on a dildo chair, with a strap across her lap to keep her intimately acquainted with it.
Jack and Ray sat down at the desk, facing her.
“What is your name?”
The woman remained silent, a very faint smile on her lips. She knew the whip was coming and she had already mentally prepared herself, reviewing the whippings of the past and how she had survived them.
Ray got up and walked slowly toward her. She looked at his hands. Empty. Not yet.
She didn’t expect the slap that nearly overbalanced her, chair and all. The imprint of his hand showed on her cheek. The very faintest of smiles remained on her lips. She watched as Ray’s arm swung back...
“Ray.”
It was tantamount to an order. Ray stopped in mid-swing and went back to his seat. “Good Cop, Bad Cop.”
“What is your name?”
“This will mean the whip.” She remained silent.
“Why are you here?”
He repeated every question that had crossed his mind, letting her know exactly what he wanted to know. She sat, unmoving, silent, through the entire recitation. Ray started to get up once, but Jack put his hand on Ray’s arm and he remained seated.
Annoyed by her silence, knowing for sure that she was deliberately baiting him, Jack debated what to do. The best place for her was looking up at the grass roots from below. Jack was into slavery, but not murder, so that tempting option was out. This had already turned into a battle of minds. Jack wasn’t at all sure that he could win such a battle. One thing he did know was that it was going to take brute strength to win a battle of wits.
He ignored her and whispered to Ray. He nodded agreement and moments later the woman was hanging by her wrists. He counted twenty lashes and stopped. She showed no reaction, as if he had been using a fly swatter. He looked at Jack, who just shook his head. The result had been a foregone conclusion on both sides.
They put the woman back in her cell, re-chained, and then went to Jack’s office for a council of war. Their discussion was interrupted by a phone call. Jack listened intently, asked a couple of questions and hung up. He turned to Ray.
“That was the bank. Someone just deposited $25,000 in my account.”
“Who was it?”
“It was a money order. No name.”
“Anybody owe you money?”
“None that could afford anything that size.”
“There’s one possible source...”
“Don’t be silly. What possible connection could it have with our slave lady? Who is going to pay that kind of money to...”
“Keep her out of circulation? I can think of several possibilities.”
“Nonsense. That’s about as believable as how she got here.”
“Well, it’s one more question to ask her.”
“I don’t think so. If there is some connection, we’d be confirming for her that we got the money. Let’s just stay cool and try some other things on her.”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m liking this whole deal less and less!”
“We’re stuck with it, so we have to make the best of it.”
The woman’s routine was set and she already had memorized it.
5 a.m. Siren
5:03 Inspection
5:15 Breakfast
5:30 Exercise
6:30 Interrogation room.
On the second morning, after breakfast, she was introduced to a gag she never had experienced before. A ring gag with a hollow tube attached came into view. She was familiar with penis gags, but this was different. At the end of the tube a ring of flexible very thin plastic strips was glued on. With the ring gag in place, the tube ended at the opening to her throat and the strips fluttered against her throat. Since this was the point where gagging started, she realized that she was about to lose her breakfast.
Thinking about it was the trigger and she puked. The violent convulsions in her throat aggravated the problem, fluttering the strips and bringing up more and more bile until she was dry heaving.
This was even more painful as without the liquid the gag reflex dominated her whole upper body. Trying to breathe was nearly an impossible chore.
On her knees with her head in the toilet, the two men standing behind her, the woman felt fear again. There was no way to fight this, no way to resume control. Her body was fighting her, taking no prisoners and leaving her heaving her guts out.
In the interrogation room, she sat with a bucket in her lap, finding new sources of bile and undigested bread. For the first time she looked haggard and vulnerable.
Both men were pleased with her reaction to the tickler gag. They held the advantage for the moment, but they recognized a worthy adversary, and held only a tenuous grasp of the problem.
“Will you answer questions if I remove your gag?”
She hesitated, a heart beat, then slowly shook her head. It surprised both men, the first positive reaction. She had obeyed certain orders, except to talk, hadn’t said a word, but now had used her head to answer his question. He noted the hesitation, pleased that he had gotten behind her facade.
Calmly he let her know her fate. “You will wear the tickler gag for 24 hours. Perhaps you will by then be willing to talk. Or, would you rather answer the questions now and avoid further punishment?”
She looked at him, controlling a throat full of bile and shook her head. She puked again into the pail.
Chapter 3 We Still Want Answers
The woman spent most of the night on her knees in front of the toilet. She stood inspection looking like death warmed over, or as the Westerners would say, “Run hard and put away wet.”
They made no effort to accommodate her. The gag was pointedly left in place. She found by tilting her head back she could swallow water through the tube. The men stood watching as it almost immediately came back up. She was ordered to begin exercising although she was so nauseous that she could barely stand.
They watched her on the monitor. Regular as clockwork she paused, ran to the toilet and vomited.
“Amazing bitch! Where did you get the idea for that tickler gag?”
“Read something about the gag reflex that brought it to mind.”
“Well stay away from me with that thing. I want to puke, just watching her. Umm, do you think it will work?”
“I surely doubt it. That is one tough cookie. She does what she wants and won’t do what she don’t want.”
“I hope to God before I die I get some answers.”
“Ray, just be patient. We’ll get her in the end.”
“I’d really, really like to ‘do’ that bitch in the end. Perfectly good ass, wasted on that bitch of a woman!”
Jack laughed. “Patience, Ray. You’ll get your piece of ass before this is over and done with.”
When 6:30 came, she was barely able to stand. She was gamely trying to touch her toes as they came in. Ray leashed her and led her to the interrogation room. She was able to maintain a normal pace to match his. She sat before them, spiked to the chair and again holding her pail in her lap.
Ray took the gag out, triggering a last dry heave. Ray held it on one finger, looked around and seeing nothing better, dropped it into the pail. She welcomed a sip of water, carefully controlling her throat.
Jack watched her carefully. When she finished, Ray set the glass on th table in front of her.
“After a bad night, are you ready to answer questions?”
She didn’t move, more to keep from puking again than resistance to his question.
“We have other methods that are much worse. Or perhaps you would like another 24 hours of gagging and puking?”
She closed her eyes for a moment, reliving her horrible experience with the little plastic strips. She had lived through it. She had survived. Almost like a robot, she swung her head from left to right and back, repeating it once more.
Without a word, Ray took her back to her cell. He rightly guessed that she would start worrying, wondering why they didn’t torture her when she was all psyched up to endure it.
Jack could also tell that she was actively combating his tactics, but he was at a total loss as to why. Watching her, sick, following orders, but refusing to talk. It made no sense.
The woman collapsed on her blanket, fetal position and went instantly to sleep.
“Why didn’t you follow up, boss?”
“Because she was almost out of it. That tickler is even more potent than I thought. She’s one out of a thousand women who could stand up to it and survive. I’d get answers, but it would send her off the deep end and that body is a terrible thing to waste.”
“Jokes, at a time like this!”
She screamed, when the siren went off. Stark fear, trailing from the repeating nightmares. Jack had another puzzle on his hands. She had something for sirens, scared by them, but why?
She ate vigorously, starved for a full day, her first solid food. The hard crusts crunched in her teeth. Why didn’t she protest the one item menu? One more enigma to add to her catalog of questions.
Exercise time became bath time. The two silent slaves were brought in to wash the silent woman. They assisted her into the bath, then climbed in with her to soap and rinse her black locks and then the rest of her body. The woman watched them very closely, with evident interest. It quickly dawned on her that they too were being silent, but apparently for different reasons than hers. She would have given a lot to talk with them, but they were careful not to give her a chance to speak.
Finished, they dried her with warm towels, using the wet towels to dry themselves. Jack and Ray had watched the entire event. The woman had been fully aware that they were there, but ignored them until she knelt before Ray to be leashed and returned to her cell. It was too much for him.
He jerked her to a halt with the leash. Lifting her face to look into her eyes he demanded, “Why do you obey every order, except answers to our questions?”
She stared back at him, he would swear, insolently. Angered, he slapped her face, hard. She continued to look at him, her features unchanged except for the mark of his hand.
“Ray.” The boss called him off again. She bowed her head, waiting for the yank on her leash. It came and she could feel his suppressed anger through the leash. She marked him down as the dangerous one. She looked forward with dread to the first opportunity he had to get her alone. He, of course, was very much looking forward to their first encounter alone.
She took the opportunity to think about the two slaves she had met. She, the maker of puzzles, now had a puzzle of her own. Why were the two girls absolutely silent? She hadn’t heard a single noise louder than a sudden breath from either of them. They showed no fear, as serene as she was. It would give her something to wonder about, perhaps even worry about in the coming nights.
They came for her and took her to the interrogation room. The dildo chair was gone. In its place a low table, with straps. Secured on her back, they brought a wooden-jawed vise and lifted her head into it. It tightened until her ears were pressed flat and her head was rigid as a rock.
A hand came to her nose and pressed something in before she could catch a glimpse. The second went by as fast and suddenly she could no longer breath through her nose. She wasn’t wearing a gag, for a change, so she drew in air through her open mouth. She couldn’t see it, but there was a pitcher of water on a side table next to her head.
Jack gave her something to look at. He held a strip of tightly woven gauze where she could see it. Without explanation he and Ray held the ends, while he poured water into the middle of it. The water dripped through the gauze slowly, leaving a small lake in the middle that slowly sank through the cloth.
She had an inkling of what was coming but was helpless to stop it. A ring gag was inserted behind her teeth, shoving her mouth open. The wet gauze was laid across her mouth, partially blocking her breathing. With a steady hand Jack poured water into the center of the cloth. The weight of the water pulled the gauze deep into her mouth, the water slowly draining down her throat, which was still sore from the tickler gag.
Water, being water, is impervious to air and wet gauze is nearly as impervious. The woman struggled for air, in vain until all the water had drained away. She drew a deep gusty breath, in time to feel more water pouring into the gauze. It slid past her gag spot and down her throat, which convulsed in protest against yet another invasion.
Jack now had her under his absolute control. She could breathe only with his permission and he could control the volume of every breath. This utter control was not lost on the woman. He had warned her he had worse than the tickler gag, and he was proving it to her minute by minute. She was much too busy praying for a bit of air to be steeling herself to survive this ordeal.
He could see the fear growing in her eyes with each passing second. She was drowning in the water she would have given anything to keep down when they tortured her before.
He bent down, nose to nose.
“Would you care to answer my questions?”
She had nothing to move but her eyelids. Her eyes stared into his, and nothing moved.
They pulled the gauze from her throat and repeated the water torture. Each time she felt her sore throat getting sorer. Each time he asked, she never moved a muscle. The third time they dragged the gauze from her throat she fainted.
They had no choice but to wheel her back to her cell. Jack repeated himself, “That’s one tough cookie. Neither of our slaves lasted through the first application.”
“I know. It’s unbelievable.”
“This whole damn thing is unbelievable. I’m, seriously thinking of taking her to town and turn her over to the Sheriff.”
“Which still leaves us with two more problems.”
-0-
Ray drove to town, with several things on his mind. He checked with several of his old buddies, but there was nothing on the street that would indicate any problems. There was something new in their post office box. An unmarked envelope addressed to Jack.
When he opened it, a newspaper clipping fell out. The headline read, “Cult Leader Arrested, Cult Disbanded.” Jack skimmed through the story, finally turning to Ray.
“One piece of good news, that cult leader that was on our trail was arrested for murder. That takes him out of our hair.”
“Great! Now all we need to do is break a few bones and find out what she’s up to.”
“I’m beginning to think it’s going to take that. But, there’s more than one way to drown a cat. We shall see.”
-0-
The same table was waiting for her in the interrogation room. She was strapped down, as before, but this time with her head hanging off the end of the table. The last strap went across her forehead, holding her head back at a sharp downward angle. She opened for a muzzle gag which effectively blocked her mouth. Then Ray showed her one of the nose plugs, before he inserted it in her nostril. A funnel went into the other nostril, and the woman wanted out.
She had seen this done to a slave and remembered her piteous begging not to do it to her again. The water tortures left no marks and could be repeated and repeated, requiring only patience to get results.
She used the only movement left to her, blinking her eyes frantically, but neither of the two men saw her. Water splashed into the funnel and went ‘down’ into her head, giving her an instant headache. She tried to suck air, instead inhaling water which set off a fit of coughing. She was again drowning, this time in less than a cup of water.
Jack bent down. She was already blinking rapidly. He reached and removed her gag. Weakly she spoke, “My name is...” She was stopped by a violent coughing spell as water got into her lungs. She tried again.
“My name is Diane Seaforth.”
“What the fuck was so hard about that?”
She just looked at him, until another fit of coughing took her attention. Ray walked over to the computer and punched up a search program. He typed in Diane Seaforth and seconds later he read the words appearing on the screen. He came back, mad.
“The bitch lied to us. Diane Seaforth is buried in a cemetery in Billings, Montana. Got killed in an auto accident on the 13th. The day after this piece of shit showed up.”
He reached to the shelf and grabbed a bottle.
“Maybe snuffing up some of this stuff will clear her brain enough to tell us the truth. He held the hot sauce bottle where she could read the “Very Hot” on the label.
Jack looked down at her.
“Want to try telling the truth or do we fry your nasal passages for you?”
Ray interrupted, “Let’s do it to her anyway, just for lying to us.”
“In a minute. I’ve asked her a question.”
Spurred by the prospect of inhaling hot sauce, she spoke again, “That’s my alias. My real name is Vicky Hunter.”
Jack nodded and Ray went back to the computer. He returned with a piece of the puzzle.
“She’s wanted for mail fraud in four states.”
“Fine! Now we’ve got a new puzzle to add to our ever-growing pile. We’ll need to build an addition on the house to handle all of them.”
Vicki, or Diane, or whatever, took the opportunity to gather her strength and resolve, well aware that they would continue to torture her, determined to hold them at bay. She’d never experienced hot sauce up her nose, but she could imagine its effects.
It was worse, much worse than she had imagined. It had the same effect as sticking a lighted cigarette up her nose. She endured it and suddenly went limp.
“She’s fainted,” warned Ray.
Jack cursed, felt her pulse and swore again. Angry, he wheeled the table back to her cell and dumped her on the bench. She coughed up water but didn’t come back to consciousness.
Ray looked at him. “I think she’s faking.”
Jack made a face and slowly shook his head.
“I don’t think so. Even the best can’t control their heartbeat or their breathing. She’s out, no question.”
-0-
The morning interrogations went on for a week. Each day she was dragged into the interrogation room and one or more of the water tortures would end when she fainted. Even Jack was beginning to believe she was controlling her fainting, a point as believable as some of the other mysteries surrounding “Vicky.”
Ray was nearing open rebellion, pleading for a chance to work her over. He had taken an instant dislike to her, and while it was hard to read Vicky’s thoughts it didn’t take much to convince him that the feeling was mutual.
Jack continued in his role as peace maker. He was just as determined as Ray to get the truth out of her, but he wanted her in one piece when she gave up the information. He didn’t really know why he wanted her unscathed, but his gut told him to treat her carefully until he had all the facts.
He experimented. He put a timer on the siren in her cell, setting it off every fifteen minutes all night long. Vicky was a basket case by morning but she adamantly refused to answer any more questions, or explain why she was so apprehensive about the siren.
He brought out the tickler gag. An hour of force feeding water until her belly was bloated. An hour in the gag, bringing every drop back up. Another hour of water, an hour of gag all day long. She resisted and remained serene. Both men realized that she had the remarkable ability to use the slightest pause to regain her strength and steel her resistance.
Finally, in desperation, he summoned the two slaves. They listened silently as he explained their job. They would be responsible for breaking this woman, just as they had been broken. Vicky listened to his instructions. She heard him order them to bring her crawling to his feet, begging to provide any and all information that the men wanted from her. She smiled to herself. That would be a cold day in Hell, when she crawled to a man. The two slaves didn’t need to be told that failure was forbidden. They already knew the penalties.
The slaves bowed their heads to acknowledge their orders, then turned as one and walked up to Vicky. A second leash was clipped to her collar and she was forced to crawl between them, headed for the dungeon. Each of the slaves had a whip and both were using them before they were out of sight.
Chapter 4 Blood Is Thicker Than Water
Jack and Ray gave them a few minutes, then followed them into the dungeon. Vicky was fixed to the big St. Andrew’s cross, leaning against the stone wall. She wasn’t just hanging there. As the men spotted her, they saw her lunge upward, pulling on the chains to her wristlets. The movement revealed an overlarge dildo, fixed to a cross piece between her legs. The dildo was wired and wires led to adhesive patches surrounding her pussy.
Each of the slaves had a control box. After watching for several minutes the men were able to recognize which slave controlled which wires. Vicky had no control over her legs, but the slave did, using the current to make them thrash and jerk like a puppet gone mad.
The other slave had the control box for the dildo and after watching a moment they were able to get the connection between the box and the dildo. It was wired so that when Vicky let her body down, she got a massive shock through the dildo. But, when she jerked upward to stop the flow of current that was fluttering her kegel muscles, she got an equally sharp jolt, causing her to drop onto the full length of the dildo, repeating the cycle. The two men watched her as she tried to hold her body only halfway down, only to be the victim of severe pulses that nearly brought a scream to her lips.
She was feeling her control slowly slipping away, forced by the currents that ruled her body. Her mind was chattering, in synch with the vibrating muscles in her legs, fouling her concentration and setting off rolling waves of cramps that coursed through her upper body. One wayward stream popped her sphincter open and winked it again and again.
Each new onslaught brought her closer to screaming with the pain, but she refused to admit, even to herself, that she was out of control. She began reciting the numbers table in her mind, anything to blunt the power of the electricity surging through her.
One of the slaves leaned over her, control box at the ready. She showed it to Vicky, the double digit numbers lighted to show the strength of the pulses. The slave raised an eyebrow, questioning. Vicky looked at her, thinking “Is this how you treat a fellow slave?” She shook her head, refusing. The slave held the box before her eyes and let her watch as she twisted the knobs to higher settings. She made sure that Vicky was aware that the knobs could be turned higher. She raised her eyebrow again. Vicky shook her head again. The slave turned the knobs higher a second time and turned her back on Vicky.
The fresh currents were at least twice as powerful as the first ones. Vicky’s legs were beating a tattoo on the legs of the cross. A direct connection straight through her clit set her bouncing helplessly. Her internal organs were tied in knots and it felt like someone was touching each loop with a burning sparkler. She was mindlessly fucking herself on the dildo, the shocks continuous.
Her diaphragm was slowly being paralyzed, making it more and more difficult to breathe. Her panting became louder and louder, until a slave put her finger to her lips to caution silence. She tried to stop them, tried to agree to talk, but her vocal cords were rigid, preventing speech.
One of the slaves noticed her efforts and with one hand, pointed them out to the men. Jack shook his head.
“Take her back to her cell. Chain her to her bench.”
The electricity stopped. Vicky slumped in her bonds, only to be dragged bodily off the table, gagged, leashed and put on her hands and knees to go back to her cell. The opportunity to confess had slipped away.
The two slaves placed her on the concrete bench and with practiced hands secured her on her back, with her hands stretched above her head and ankles tied to a ring bolt. They pulled her taut and tied off the ropes. Vicky mumbled a protest which was lost in her gag. Just that small a noise was enough to earn a warning glare from one of the slaves. The two were unhappy that they had failed their assignment, meaning that if they got a second chance, Vicky would suffer, right along with them.
Actually, Jack was well satisfied with the way things went, although he didn’t tell the slaves that. “It will do them good to worry.” He could read the signs that Vicky was breaking down, and he was a very patient man. As he kept telling Ray, “We’ll get the answers.” With the cult leader out of circulation, he had much more time to spend getting answers. But, who sent him the clipping? Was it the same person who sent the $25,000? What did they know?
Vicky spent a very restless night. Stretched taut, she had no option but to lie as they had left her. Knowing that she had reached the end of her rope, she was afraid. Crawling to a Master’s feet was nothing new, but instinctively she knew this was going to be different. More humiliating for one thing - if that were possible.
The next day the slaves knelt before Jack, fully expecting to be painfully punished for failing to break Vicky. They were astounded by almost praise from their two Masters. Ray directed, “Keep up what you are doing. Just make sure she doesn’t have a chance to talk. Ignore any signals she tries to give you, if they aren’t something life threatening. Punish her for any noise, as she is under the same order you are. She will not be aware of your orders, so you may treat her as you like. She is not a free woman, so don’t hold back, or you will join her.”
Vicky tried to pull back, but her twin leashes snapped taut and jerked her forward to her fate. She had never seen or heard of the machine she was approaching, but it looked painful at first glance.
It was a steel pillar on a heavy floor mount. A quarter moon saddle topped the pillar at waist height. It had pivoted arms sticking out on each side. A foot pedal was attached at the end of each arm. The head of a dildo peeped through a hole in the center of the saddle.
The slaves lifted her onto the saddle, then lashed her feet to the pedals with leather straps. Her wrists were tied behind her back, wrist to elbow. They stood before her, watching expectantly, joined by the men.
Knowing anything she did would hurt, she obeyed the slave’s motions toward the pedals. She tentatively pushed down. Somewhere inside a hydraulic jack pushed the dildo up into the entrance to her pussy. As soon as she reached the bottom with her feet, the dildo started to drop out of her. As if angry with her, the dildo then gave her a continuous shock and started vibrating. As soon as she pressed on the pedals the shocks stopped, but the vibrating continued. As soon as the dildo started to sink, the shocks began again.
Vicky quickly learned that the harder and faster she pumped her feet the longer the periods without shocks, but the vibrator continued, stepping up the pace very slightly with each stroke. She could take it only so long before she had her first orgasm. She stopped pumping and the machine punished her for her inattention to business with a series of shocks. She pumped frantically to get the dildo far enough into herself to stop the shocks, but more and more effort was needed, increasing after each orgasm. She resembled nothing more than a frog, swimming through thin air.
Vicky was more than ready to panic. She was gagged, which precluded any plea to the men to stop the machine and release her. If she stopped, worn out, the shocks would curdle her innards. She could see no way out. She blinked rapidly, her one available signal, but the slaves studiously ignored her. The men looked right through her, as if she wasn’t there. Her plight was compounded, because she was willing - wanted - to talk, and nobody wanted to listen.
It ended much as Vicky expected, but only after she found herself forced to climax by the machine. When she ran out of energy, the dildo sank to the bottom and the shocks reached a maximum. The slaves took their time releasing her and didn’t shut off the current until they had removed the straps holding her feet. They helped her off the saddle and put her back on her hands and knees for the trip back to her cell.
Two egos were at odds. Both came to the same assessment, but Jack was as confidant as Vicky was doubtful of the outcome. Both considered the dungeon and its equipment as the deciding factor. Vicky had tasted only a small handful of the machines and tools that she would have to contend with. The rest were an unknown quantity, unknown, beyond the threat of “much worse.”
Her despondency was slowly increasing with each torture session. She recognized that she had zero chance to survive and win against the impossible odds that were steadily building a box that would get smaller and smaller with her inside it. She was already setting her mind to the task of accepting that she must grovel at the feet of the two men who - for lack of a better word - had captured her. Still, if things worked out as she pictured them, it might not be that bad after all.
She railed at her self delusion. ‘Girl, you are up shit creek without a paddle. You are going to hurt, and hurt bad, before this is over - if it’s over.’ As might be expected, the hurt didn’t bother her nearly as much as the burning humiliation of having to knuckle under to a man, or men.
Vicky met the rack, and lost. To her, the strain on her body was unbelievable. The pain was something else. The pain she could take, but she was certain some of her stretched joints and ligaments would never be the same again. The two slaves working the infernal machine seemed gleeful at her fate, always watching her, always with a faint smile on their faces, as if they knew something she didn’t - but should - know.
She tried to surrender. Tried to send a message with her eyes, but she was rebuffed every time. Her gag was replaced with one with a feeding tube attachment so it didn’t have to be removed, eliminating another possible time to answer their questions.
She felt anger. Angry because she was helpless. Angry because she was being punished and tortured for something far beyond her control. Angry because men were giving the orders she had to obey. It didn’t help that the two female slaves had taken over her interrogation. To Vicky the problem lay with the men who ordered the slaves. She already hated the girls for their slavery, automatically and falsely assuming that they were volunteer slaves. She almost, but not quite, fell into the trap of thinking: “If I were their slave (the men) I would tell them where to stick their orders.”
She knew better than that. She had plenty of experience and knew the consequences of refusing an order or talking back to a Master or Mistress.
Ray signaled the two slaves. They released the rachet, allowing the ropes to slacken. Vicky’s body slumped onto the table of the rack. She made no effort to move her arms or legs, knowing it would hurt, possibly escape her control, embarrass her. She concentrated on sending her message of surrender, cursing to herself when she was obviously and deliberately ignored.
Ray had stopped the rack from tightening any more than was needed to put her under a serious strain. The aches in her arms and legs would pass, and he was certain from past experience that her body was undamaged. He and Jack were concentrating on wearing her down, rather than doing any permanent damage. She was under constant scrutiny by the men, watching for the inevitable signs that she was losing her grip.
They were there, little signs. Some she herself wasn’t aware of. The slaves had quickly learned her tender spots and used them against her. Her reactions were slowing, and she was closer and closer to the point where she would break down and start screaming.
The end came just as if the men had planned it. The slaves came to her cell, leashed her and started for the interrogation room. Vicky had made that trip one too many times. She balked, fought the leashes and tried to back into her cell. She admitted defeat after suffering a dozen cuts of the slave’s whips. She crawled forward, punished at every step by the whips or the jerking leashes. She had made her point, now to see if it would give her the opportunity she needed.
Jack and Ray were seated behind the table, fully aware of her rebellion. She saw the tickle gag, whips and other implements on the table in front of them. She had only a moment to take all of that in.
The slaves brought her into the room, forced her to her belly and ran both leashes through a ring bolt and locked them, holding her head tight to the floor.
“Take her gag out.”
One slave bent down and unlocked the strap at the back of her head. She jerked on the strap, pulling the gag out of Vicky’s mouth. The men stared down at her for several minutes, letting the tension build. Jack broke the silence, “Do you have something to say?”
“I humbly beg the opportunity to answer your questions. I beg permission to give you the information you require from me.”
Jack signaled one of the slaves. Her whip whistled and Vicky jerked as it burned her thigh.
“You forgot the most important part of your appeal. Say it right!”
“Master, I...”
The whip landed.
“You address all men as ‘Sir!’ Try it again!”
She repeated her plea correctly.
“What questions have I asked you that you refused to answer?”
Carefully, Vicky listed each question.
“For the moment you will answer only with ‘Yes, Sir,’ or ‘No, Sir. Are you now willing to answer them?
“Yes, Sir.”
“You lied to us, when we asked your name. Will you lie again?”
“No, Sir.”
“It is common practice when questioning a slave, especially a lying slave, to perform the interrogation under torture. You are aware of that practice?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Jack paused.
“You have no objection to being questioned under torture?”
“No, Sir.”
His first trap was sprung. “Then you are in fact, a slave?”
She answered boldly, with pride. “Yes, Sir!”
“May I enquire if you are an escaped slave?”
She wanted to sink through the floor, knowing her answer to the totally unexpected question would trigger many new questions. With great reluctance she answered, “Yes, Sir.”
“Gag her and take her back to her cell.”
The gag cut off whatever it was she started to say. Ray gave Jack a puzzled look. Jack watched the two slaves escort her out the door and turned to Ray.
“She may not realize yet that she gave us a whale of a lot of information with those last answers.”
Ray continued to look puzzled. “Such as?”
“For one thing, that whoever dumped her here is probably the same person, or group, that sent me the money and sent me the clipping. Someone who must know an awful lot about our life style.”
Ray grinned. “I still think she’s an alien. They’d have all the information on us too.”
“Yes, but knowing about the cult, and sending the money, that’s not the alien way of thinking.”
“You of course have a complete knowledge of how aliens think.”
“Well, I know how you think and you’re definitely not an alien.”
-0-
Vicky lay on her bench, staring at the same spot on the ceiling that she had watched for days. Her mind was whirring up a froth, trying to understand why, when they had her broken and ready to talk, they had quit after only a few questions. She hung on the point that they were dragging this out, over days or weeks, perhaps longer, keeping her under constant stress, casually showing her the power they could unleash on her, but only ‘testing’ each one before bringing out another horror.
She was smart enough to realize the traps she had sprung. She gave Jack grudging credit for his skill at interrogating her. If it had been a woman, she would have praised her skill and technique. She cursed herself for letting him lead her blindly into admitting she was an escaped slave. She faulted herself for not lying, which would postpone punishment for some time.
Jack got on the phone as soon as he got back to his office.
End of Part 1