Katja 00: 1. Prolog - Early Signs (M/f m/f)

[Jenny_1972]

This is part of a growing series of Katja stories:

-
Katja 00: Prolog 2 - When TUGs were simple viewtopic.php?t=23905
Katja 01: What's a collar without a leash? viewtopic.php?t=23816
Katja 02: Making the shopping mall less boring viewtopic.php?t=23853
Katja 03: A question of peg and chain viewtopic.php?t=23881
Katja 04: Caged Birds Do Sing viewtopic.php?t=23931
Katja 05: How not to dance viewtopic.php?t=23950
Katja 06: A Bald Decision viewtopic.php?t=23963
Katja 07: The Big Red viewtopic.php?t=23977
Katja 08: Grandma's Wooden Spoon viewtopic.php?t=24038
Katja 09: Enjoy the Silence viewtopic.php?t=24055
Katja 10: Pastoral viewtopic.php?t=24067
Katja 11: Reading Tolkien viewtopic.php?t=24096
Katja 12: All about David viewtopic.php?t=24109
Katja 13: Boxing Katja viewtopic.php?t=24151
Katja 14: Butchering Katja viewtopic.php?t=24244 ADULT!


Katja 00: Prolog 1 - Early Signs

I don’t know how or when Katja’s affinity for TUGs developed — it seems like it’s always been there.

Not in chronological order:

• I remember going Christmas tree shopping with her once. Like some kids, she insisted on going through the tree-netting machine, emerging on the other side wrapped head to toe in stretchy plastic mesh. Unlike most kids, she walked with us across the Christmas market still wrapped up — arms pinned to her sides, forced to take little steps — trading the continuation of her “captivity” for any sweets and little trinkets she might have got there.
  But I think she was the only kid who stayed netted all the way home, only getting out of it when we were inside and she had to take off her winter clothes. It was a bit heartbreaking for her to accept that the net couldn’t be reused. (Btw, how much is such a netting machine?)

• When her little brother got toy handcuffs for Christmas, she showed remarkable patience serving as his willing prisoner.

• When they received reins for playing horsey, it was usually her who suggested the game — and most often, she’d be the one being reined. And when they were tired of running around, she would show him how to tie his horsey to a chair, table leg, fence post…

• At a holiday park once, we came across an animated display of Hansel and Gretel — the story where the evil witch locks Hansel in a cage to fatten him up. It must have struck a chord with her. On the drive home, she started asking very practical questions: how did Hansel sleep in such a small cage? Where would he go to the bathroom?

• She'd spend whole afternoons blindfolded. Learning how to navigate the cottage, how to eat and drink without sight, trying a blindman's stick outside, trying to solve her earliest preschool puzzles now without sight — she even tried to teach herself Braille.
  Just riding in the car blindfolded didn’t work for her. Without visual input, the car's motion would make her sick within minutes.

• Whenever she came with me to one of the local wineries, she’d get all twitchy and fascinated around the big old wooden barrels.
  If one was out of use, she’d want to squeeze through the manhole and climb inside. Every single time.

• When I’m working from home and she talks too much, she’ll sometimes quietly take a strip of duct tape and stick it over her mouth.
  It’s her way of reminding herself to be silent — and it usually stays on until I take it off. Until then, she communicates only in gestures.
  (Not quite true — she also sends me SMS or instant messages.)
  Silencing herself with duct tape was a habit that followed her into the university library, I've heard later.

• And of course she'd ask me to zip up her winter coat with sleeves empty, her arms tight at her side.
  To top it off I'd stuff her unused sleeves into to the pockets of the coat - she almost looked normal and it made Christmas shopping so much easier for me.

• After seeing that Star Wars episode it was a real struggle to explain to her why she couldn't be Chained Princess Leia next Halloween.

• Any circus show with a magician's assistant disappearing in some contraption or with a contortionist sqeezing into a tiny container triggered a lenghty and detailled technical discussion.

• Uncle Eric had a serious sports car. It had a roll cage and racing seats with six-point belts. One time he came to take Katja for a spin. When they came back, he was somehow disappointed. Katja seemed far less impressed by the car’s speed and his driving skills than by the six-point belts that held her strapped so unyieldingly into the seat.

• Like many kids, she wanted to be buried in the sand when we were at the beach. Just more often and a little longer than most — and in her own way:
  We’d dig a shallow hole for her, long enough for her whole body, from feet to head. She’d lay down on her back. Then she’d put a thin cotton kitchen towel over her face, and we’d bury her. From her legs to her neck with just enough sand that she could escape by herself if necessary. Her face would be covered with a thin layer, just enough to blend the towel in with the surrounding sand.
  And with that, she was gone — vanished from the face of the earth, one with the sandy vastness of the beach ... she loves it to this day.
  (With so little sand and the thin towel over her nose and mouth, she got enough air.)
  I was always shocked how quickly she disappeared from our minds. After burrying her we spent the afternoon as if she wasn't there. We talked about her, not with her. Sometimes we were startled when she suddenly stirred to release herself. I always joked we might forget her one day. Once all our belongings were back in the car, it would be really hard to find her on an emptying beach as the light started to dim.

• Once, when I was just going to bed, I heard Katja call me from her room. I opened her door and saw what looked like a scene from The Exorcist: dressed in her nightshirt she was bound spread-eagled to the four corners of her bed. But when I rushed to untie her, she stopped me: "I called you to help tie me. I want to know if I can sleep like that. I could properly bind my legs and my left hand, but now I can't tighten the knot on my right."
  To the two of us, such a request made perfect sense. I tightened the final knot and offered to draw the duvet over her. I gave her a kiss on the forehead, which I knew she hated. When I left her room I said, "I’ll leave your door and mine slightly ajar, so I’m sure to hear you if you call me tonight." Then I went to bed. At around 3 a.m., I woke up and heard her calling me. I stumbled over to her room.
  “Daddy, you were snoring so loud,” my little princess had the audacity to say. (Her voice was still a girl's — and she didn’t float above her bed.) “But, while you're here, please untie me. I didn’t sleep much so far.” Grumbling, I untied her - only her right arm - and went back to bed.

And these are just the TUG-ish events I know about and remember. Don’t ask me what she got up to with her friends.

Some of these events might become stories here on their own.

[Jenny_1972]

Dear Readers, these Katja stories are my first attempt at story writing and English is not my first language.

Therefore I'd appreciate your feedback.

[sweetvillain]

Very beautiful narrator's point of view to tell about Katia

[Jenny_1972]

Three more stories Katja's grandpa reminded me of:

• On weekends, little Katja would accompany her grandparents when they drove to the big shopping center to do their weekly shopping.
  Like many kids, Katja wanted to ride in the huge shopping carts they had there. But while most kids sit in the cart so they can help their parents 'choose the right products', Katja would lie down in the cart and let herself gradually be buried under the items her grandparents piled on top of her. (This requires some careful planning while shopping.)

• In the barn next to Katja’s grandparents’ farmhouse, there was — probably still is — a rather tattered old wardrobe.
  It holds old work clothes, a worn raincoat, a rubber boat that might still be repairable, and several horsehair blankets from after the war - and there still is space left. At the bottom, there are boxes of curd soap — no one remembers why. The door of this wardrobe has a lock, but the key has long since been lost. By now, the wardrobe is so warped that if you press the door shut, it stays closed. One day, when the holidays were over and Katja had already returned to her mother, Grandpa discovered an odd piece of wire attached to the inside of the lock. The wire ended in a loop — just big enough for a thin finger to pull the door shut from the inside.
  How much time might she have spent in there, sitting in the dark, listening to the sounds of the farm, smelling old blankets and faint traces of soap?
  Grandpa has left the wire dangling there to this day.

• Late in summer, those big round hay bales would appear on the meadows around our farm – seemingly out of nowhere. Inside, they were tightly packed with hay; outside, wrapped in airtight plastic. Katja was endlessly fascinated by them. What would it feel like to sit among the freshly cut grass, then be lifted up and pressed into a big grassy disc all around her, and finally be tumbled around again and again until the bale was tightly wrapped in white, green, or black plastic? Then either be left on the meadow for somebody to bail her out, or maybe roll downhill faster and faster to where the other bales waited. Hoping someone will find her among the other bales.
  Of course, this was neither safe nor sane. And we told her, repeatedly. But as often as those hay bales appeared, just as often did Katja dream of being inside one. Thank God our sheep farm had no such baling machine.

A recent one

• TV news reported about the climate protesters who glued themselves to the streets. She never asked what they were protesting against. She discussed the glue, how long it would last, how to dissolve it, what they'd do when it gets cold or rainy, what if they needed a potty break, etc. Out of solidarity and curiosity she got some double sided adhesive tape and stuck herself with both hands to the tiled kitchen floor. She chanted ‘protest slogans’ against me and I had to run detours while cooking.
  This might just be her dream job: a professional protester who gets paid for chaining herself to fences or glueing herself to streets.

[StringTheorist]

@Jenny_1972

Oh, you need so much more practice. Not to improve your English. Love your little vignettes.

ST

[BoundGaggedGal]

It's a promising start.

[Jenny_1972]

Two more stories from Katja’s grandpa, and one from me — it’s amazing how much you forget over the years...

• When Katja spent the summer at our farm, she would walk from my cottage up to her grandparents’ farmhouse several times a day. So we’d tell her things like, “When you get up there, remind Grandma that...” or “When you head back down to the cottage, tell your father...” But the 8-minute walk between the two buildings gave her just enough distractions to completely forget these messages.
  I got a bit frustrated — until I found a clever solution: I had Katja turn around, lifted her T-shirt, and wrote my message to Grandma directly on her back with a Sharpie. That way, she couldn’t forget it — even better, she didn’t even know what it said.
  As soon as she left the cottage and headed for the farmhouse, I called up there and told them to read the “incoming message” on Katja’s back. They’d write their reply underneath mine, and so on. For most of her holiday, Katja served as our very own messenger drone, unknowingly carrying messages back and forth between me and my parents.

• Once, Grandpa asked Katja to carry a long curtain rod from the farmhouse down to the cottage where I was doing some home improvement. She lifted it onto the back of her neck, stretched out her arms like she was being crucified, and hung them over the rod. With it resting across her shoulders, she was about a meter wider than with just her arms stretched out. She had to squeeze through every doorway sideways.
  Grandpa looked at her skeptically: “How many times do you think you'll drop it before you get there?” Then he got up and returned with a roll of silver duct tape. Katja said nothing, grinned, just stood there and let him tape both her wrists and elbows to the rod. “That’s better. Now you can’t drop it.” And with that, Grandpa opened the farmhouse door and sent her on her way.
  Our farm didn’t get many hikers on weekdays, and the farmhands had already seen Katja do stranger things. When she arrived at the cottage, I heard strange bumps from the door. She couldn't press the bell or turn the door handle. I let her in, helped her take off her shoes, offered her a drink through a straw, and measured the curtain rod. I would have left her tied up like that for a bit longer, but I was afraid she might knock something over with her oversized load.

• Katja’s “Humor Appreciation Chair.”
  One evening after dinner, I treated my princess to a carefully selected series of my best jokes. I know a lot of them — and unlike other dads' mine are really good. Apparently, my princess disagreed. She called my jokes old, boring, lame, embarrassing, chauvinistic, and in general, “dad jokes.”
  So I got up, placed a roll of duct tape - we always keep one handy - on the table, and carried on with my set. She continued to heckle me with comments. Eventually, I took a strip of duct tape and put it over her mouth. Unable to speak, she resorted to exaggerated gestures of disapproval, and finally stuck her fingers in her ears.
  So I had to tape her wrists to the armrests of her chair. And continued with my jokes. Then she started scooting the entire chair away from the table, heading for the kitchen door.
  So I taped her legs to the chair legs as well. Now she could finally sit still and fully appreciate my humor.
  
  These days, we no longer need such measures. Whenever I even start telling a joke, she automatically assumes this peculiar posture: back straight, legs still, arms on the armrests, lips tightly pressed shut. Is she mocking me?