Hi, everyone. It's me, Tamatoashiny123 (aka Empoleon666). I know I don't post here much anymore, but I wanted to share some of the fics I've been posting for Kinktober on DeviantArt. I won't post every day; just some of the ones I think will vibe best with this site.
(Also, yes, I know I'm only starting to do this halfway through the month. Shh...)
Website Migration Update
I moved the website to a new host, which I think will be more tolerant of the content this website hosts. Nevertheless, I do want to take a moment to remind everyone that the stories and content posted here MUST follow website rules, as it it not only my policy, but it is the policy of the hosts that permit our website to run on their servers. We WILL continue to enforce the rules, especially critical rules that, if broken, put this sites livelihood in jeapordy.
*CALLING FOR MORE PARTICIPATION*
JUST A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT TO REMIND EVERYONE (GUESTS AND REGISTERED USERS ALIKE) THAT THIS FORUM IS BUILT AROUND USER PARTICIPATION AND PUBLIC INTERACTIONS. IF YOU SEE A THREAD YOU LIKE, PARTICIPATE! IF YOU ENJOYED READING A STORY, POST A COMMENT TO LET THE AUTHOR KNOW! TAKING A FEW EXTRA SECONDS TO LET AN AUTHOR KNOW YOU ENJOYED HIS OR HER WORK IS THE BEST WAY TO ENSURE THAT MORE SIMILAR STORIES ARE POSTED. KEEPING THE COMMUNITY ALIVE IS A GROUP EFFORT. LET'S ALL MAKE AN EFFORT TO PARTICIPATE.
JUST A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT TO REMIND EVERYONE (GUESTS AND REGISTERED USERS ALIKE) THAT THIS FORUM IS BUILT AROUND USER PARTICIPATION AND PUBLIC INTERACTIONS. IF YOU SEE A THREAD YOU LIKE, PARTICIPATE! IF YOU ENJOYED READING A STORY, POST A COMMENT TO LET THE AUTHOR KNOW! TAKING A FEW EXTRA SECONDS TO LET AN AUTHOR KNOW YOU ENJOYED HIS OR HER WORK IS THE BEST WAY TO ENSURE THAT MORE SIMILAR STORIES ARE POSTED. KEEPING THE COMMUNITY ALIVE IS A GROUP EFFORT. LET'S ALL MAKE AN EFFORT TO PARTICIPATE.
Kinktober 2025 fics (various)
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TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
- Posts: 1267
- Joined: 7 years ago
- Contact:
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TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
- Posts: 1267
- Joined: 7 years ago
- Contact:
Day 2: Trance (M/F)
I sit on the edge of my living room couch, fingers twisting the hem of my red wool cardigan and brushing down my sensible black tights. The familiar hum of the house buzzed around me, from the distant refrigerator buzz to the faint ticking of the mantel clock. My new therapist, Dr. Fastin, sits across from me in the armchair, his briefcase on the coffee table. He’s older, with a bald head, a red and silver stubble, a tweed suit, and a calm voice that feels like it could be just what I needed. I hired him because I’d felt more anxious lately, suffering from sleepless nights and a gnawing anxiety I couldn’t pinpoint the origin of. My husband’s away on another out-of-state business trip, and the emptiness of the house with our kids constantly out at school and with their friends only sharpens my unease.
“Thank you for coming to the house,” I say, my voice quieter than I mean it to be. “It’s hard to get out sometimes, with all the chores that have to get done around here.”
Dr. Fastin smiles, a slight, reassuring curve of his lips. “Of course, Mrs. Jones. I’ve found it’s often easier to confront our issues in a familiar space.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a silver pocket watch, its chain glinting in the sunlight streaming through the window. The back of it turned toward me, showing it to be pristinely shining. “I’d like to try something today: hypnosis. It’s a powerful tool to uncover the root of your anxieties. Are you open to it?”
I hesitate, my stomach tightening. Hypnosis sounds like something from a movie or a stage magic trick, not a therapy session. But his eyes are steady and kind, and I’m desperate for answers. “Sure,” I nod. “If you think it’ll help, I’m open to it.”
He leans forward, holding the watch by its chain, letting it dangle. “Just focus on the watch, Mrs. Jones. Watch it swing, back and forth. Back and forth. Let your eyes follow it. Let your mind relax.”
The watch sways, catching the light with each gentle arc. My gaze locks onto it. His instructions flow over me like the beach’s waves. They’re low and rhythmic, like a lullaby. “Breathe deeply. In...and out. Let your thoughts disappear. You’re safe here in your home. You’re calm.”
My eyelids grow heavy, my shoulders loosening as the tension I’ve carried for weeks begins to melt. The watch swings, and his words weave through my mind, pulling me deeper into a strange, dreamlike calm. I’m floating, weightless, my worries fading like smoke.
“You’re doing wonderfully,” he says, his voice a distant anchor. “Now, we’re going to try a therapeutic exercise to help you release control, to confront your fears of vulnerability.”
That was weird. I hadn’t mentioned anything about vulnerability. Even weirder, he opened up his briefcase and pulled out some white plastic zip ties. Did therapists usually carry those with them on house visits? He handed one to me. “Let’s start with your legs,” I heard him say. “Tighten this around your ankles, and then tighten one around your knees.” My body moves before my mind questions it. I do as instructed, tightening the first, then the second ziptie.
“Good,” Dr. Fastin says, his voice steady and commanding as he pulls out another zip tie. “Loop the zip tie around your wrists in front of you. Pull it tight. This is all about trust and letting go.”
In the haze of the trance, it makes sense. Trust and letting go. If it meant letting go of my anxiety, I was all for it. My hands move automatically, threading the zip tie around my wrists, the plastic biting into my skin as I pull it snug with my teeth. The sharp zip sound it makes feels distant, as if it’s happening in another room. My wrists are pinned together now, the restraint grounding me in an odd, comforting way.
“Excellent,” he continues. He pulls out a square of white cloth and a roll of duct tape. “Now, take the cloth, place it in your mouth, and seal it with the tape. This will help you focus inward, silence the noise of the world.”
A flicker of doubt breaks through my mental fog. Surely this wasn’t part of any type of therapy I had researched before hiring Dr. Fastin or anything like I had seen on TV. But his voice smooths it away. It’s therapy, I reasoned. It’s safe. I reach for the cloth and push it between my lips, the fabric dry feeling against my tongue. The tape is next, and I tear off a strip, pressing it over my mouth to seal the cloth in place. Two more strips follow. My breathing quickens and muffles as I switch to breathing through my nose, but the trance holds me. It feels right.
“You’re doing so well,” Dr. Fastin softly praises. He takes the tape roll and places my arms against my body. He puts one end at where my right elbow bends and wraps it around my body several times. “This will ground you even further. Stay here, in this calm and safe space. Reflect on your trust and vulnerability in this moment.”
I sit there, bound and gagged, my mind adrift in the trance’s warm embrace. The world and my worries feel far away. I don’t notice the soft clinks of him moving through the room, the rustle of drawers opening, the faint jingle of my jewelry box. I don’t hear the creak of floorboards as he slips into the kitchen, the dining room, the study. My mind is locked on the watch’s imagined swing, his voice echoing in my skull.
Time floats by until a sharp sound slices through the haze: the front door slamming shut. My eyes snap open, the fog shattering like glass. I blink. My wrists suddenly ache, the zip tie cutting into my cardigan. The tape sticks to my lips, and the cloth dries my mouth as if I had swallowed sand. I try to call out, but only a muffled scream escapes.
I struggle to my feet, heart pounding, and make stumbling hops to the window. Outside, Dr. Fastin, or whoever he was, hurries down the driveway, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder filled with what I can only assume are my family’s valuables. The glint of his pocket watch dangles from his pocket as he scrambles into a white van and peels down the block.
Panic surges through me. I shift my wrists against the zip tie and tape, but they only seem to tighten. The tape around my lips holds firm, my muffled cries useless for attracting attention. The house feels even more empty than before. I stumble-hop to the kitchen, searching for the scissors I usually keep in the junk drawer or anything to cut myself free. The realization sinks in like a stone dropped in a lake: I let him into my safe space, my home. And that’s where I found myself bound and gagged.
I sit on the edge of my living room couch, fingers twisting the hem of my red wool cardigan and brushing down my sensible black tights. The familiar hum of the house buzzed around me, from the distant refrigerator buzz to the faint ticking of the mantel clock. My new therapist, Dr. Fastin, sits across from me in the armchair, his briefcase on the coffee table. He’s older, with a bald head, a red and silver stubble, a tweed suit, and a calm voice that feels like it could be just what I needed. I hired him because I’d felt more anxious lately, suffering from sleepless nights and a gnawing anxiety I couldn’t pinpoint the origin of. My husband’s away on another out-of-state business trip, and the emptiness of the house with our kids constantly out at school and with their friends only sharpens my unease.
“Thank you for coming to the house,” I say, my voice quieter than I mean it to be. “It’s hard to get out sometimes, with all the chores that have to get done around here.”
Dr. Fastin smiles, a slight, reassuring curve of his lips. “Of course, Mrs. Jones. I’ve found it’s often easier to confront our issues in a familiar space.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a silver pocket watch, its chain glinting in the sunlight streaming through the window. The back of it turned toward me, showing it to be pristinely shining. “I’d like to try something today: hypnosis. It’s a powerful tool to uncover the root of your anxieties. Are you open to it?”
I hesitate, my stomach tightening. Hypnosis sounds like something from a movie or a stage magic trick, not a therapy session. But his eyes are steady and kind, and I’m desperate for answers. “Sure,” I nod. “If you think it’ll help, I’m open to it.”
He leans forward, holding the watch by its chain, letting it dangle. “Just focus on the watch, Mrs. Jones. Watch it swing, back and forth. Back and forth. Let your eyes follow it. Let your mind relax.”
The watch sways, catching the light with each gentle arc. My gaze locks onto it. His instructions flow over me like the beach’s waves. They’re low and rhythmic, like a lullaby. “Breathe deeply. In...and out. Let your thoughts disappear. You’re safe here in your home. You’re calm.”
My eyelids grow heavy, my shoulders loosening as the tension I’ve carried for weeks begins to melt. The watch swings, and his words weave through my mind, pulling me deeper into a strange, dreamlike calm. I’m floating, weightless, my worries fading like smoke.
“You’re doing wonderfully,” he says, his voice a distant anchor. “Now, we’re going to try a therapeutic exercise to help you release control, to confront your fears of vulnerability.”
That was weird. I hadn’t mentioned anything about vulnerability. Even weirder, he opened up his briefcase and pulled out some white plastic zip ties. Did therapists usually carry those with them on house visits? He handed one to me. “Let’s start with your legs,” I heard him say. “Tighten this around your ankles, and then tighten one around your knees.” My body moves before my mind questions it. I do as instructed, tightening the first, then the second ziptie.
“Good,” Dr. Fastin says, his voice steady and commanding as he pulls out another zip tie. “Loop the zip tie around your wrists in front of you. Pull it tight. This is all about trust and letting go.”
In the haze of the trance, it makes sense. Trust and letting go. If it meant letting go of my anxiety, I was all for it. My hands move automatically, threading the zip tie around my wrists, the plastic biting into my skin as I pull it snug with my teeth. The sharp zip sound it makes feels distant, as if it’s happening in another room. My wrists are pinned together now, the restraint grounding me in an odd, comforting way.
“Excellent,” he continues. He pulls out a square of white cloth and a roll of duct tape. “Now, take the cloth, place it in your mouth, and seal it with the tape. This will help you focus inward, silence the noise of the world.”
A flicker of doubt breaks through my mental fog. Surely this wasn’t part of any type of therapy I had researched before hiring Dr. Fastin or anything like I had seen on TV. But his voice smooths it away. It’s therapy, I reasoned. It’s safe. I reach for the cloth and push it between my lips, the fabric dry feeling against my tongue. The tape is next, and I tear off a strip, pressing it over my mouth to seal the cloth in place. Two more strips follow. My breathing quickens and muffles as I switch to breathing through my nose, but the trance holds me. It feels right.
“You’re doing so well,” Dr. Fastin softly praises. He takes the tape roll and places my arms against my body. He puts one end at where my right elbow bends and wraps it around my body several times. “This will ground you even further. Stay here, in this calm and safe space. Reflect on your trust and vulnerability in this moment.”
I sit there, bound and gagged, my mind adrift in the trance’s warm embrace. The world and my worries feel far away. I don’t notice the soft clinks of him moving through the room, the rustle of drawers opening, the faint jingle of my jewelry box. I don’t hear the creak of floorboards as he slips into the kitchen, the dining room, the study. My mind is locked on the watch’s imagined swing, his voice echoing in my skull.
Time floats by until a sharp sound slices through the haze: the front door slamming shut. My eyes snap open, the fog shattering like glass. I blink. My wrists suddenly ache, the zip tie cutting into my cardigan. The tape sticks to my lips, and the cloth dries my mouth as if I had swallowed sand. I try to call out, but only a muffled scream escapes.
I struggle to my feet, heart pounding, and make stumbling hops to the window. Outside, Dr. Fastin, or whoever he was, hurries down the driveway, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder filled with what I can only assume are my family’s valuables. The glint of his pocket watch dangles from his pocket as he scrambles into a white van and peels down the block.
Panic surges through me. I shift my wrists against the zip tie and tape, but they only seem to tighten. The tape around my lips holds firm, my muffled cries useless for attracting attention. The house feels even more empty than before. I stumble-hop to the kitchen, searching for the scissors I usually keep in the junk drawer or anything to cut myself free. The realization sinks in like a stone dropped in a lake: I let him into my safe space, my home. And that’s where I found myself bound and gagged.
-
TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
- Posts: 1267
- Joined: 7 years ago
- Contact:
Day 6: Locked (F/F)
It was two hours until showtime at the Wayne Family Theater, and Zatanna Zatara sat before her mirror in her dressing room, fully costumed in a black tuxedo jacket, a white blouse, her signature fishnets, and tall, high-heeled boots polished to a gleam. The lightbulbs around her vanity mirror cast her reflection in gold as she brushed her rabbit, Pocus, who nibbled on a carrot as he splooted.
“You’re gonna steal the show tonight, my wittle baby,” Zatanna cooed. “Yes, you are! Yes, you-”
Then she noticed it. The silver lightning bolt amulet, a lucky charm worn by her father that she sometimes kept in her pocket during performances for good luck, was gone from her prop table. She had left it on a small display to polish it before the show. But it was now missing, and the display was slightly askew.
Zatanna rose to her feet, her eyes narrowing. "It was right here," she softly muttered, knowing it wasn’t enchanted with the ability to sprout legs and walk away. Pocus’s ears suddenly sprang up, and he twitched his nose toward the air vent on the wall above the couch.
Zatanna stepped on the couch and squinted her eyes: a sleek gray rat was clutching the amulet between its teeth. It vanished into the darkness of the vent with a defiant squeak.
Zatanna climbed off the couch and grimaced. “laeveR eht htap fo eht ria stnev morf ym moor,” she uttered.
A 3D map of the theater, made of blue light, appeared, with red lines of light indicating the path of the vents. Zatanna traced the line from her dressing room with her finger, which revealed that the vent led to a side door outside the theater.
"Oh, no, you don't," she muttered, grabbing her top hat from her wardrobe and sprinting from the room.
Pocus returned to his carrot, unfazed.
oOo
Zatanna burst through the side door, right in time to see the rat disappear down an open manhole that led down to the sewers. Zatanna peeked down the manhole and immediately cringed at the smell. All she could see down there was darkness, with no clue as to which direction the rat had gone.
“It’s my father’s amulet…it’s my father’s amulet,” Zatanna repeated to herself as she descended the ladder on the side of the manhole.
oOo
A stale, musky air hung heavy around her. Zatanna took out her wand from her tuxedo pocket. “etanimullI eht s’tar htap,” she commanded. A sphere of white light appeared on the tip of her wand. A path of white, tiny rat pawprints appeared on the ground. Zatanna steeled herself and began to follow.
Zatanna’s boots splashed through narrow channels of rainwater and runoff. How much of that runoff was urine, she didn’t want to think about. She sighed, knowing she’d have to give them a thorough polish (and a blast of air freshener) before she went onstage. Pipes hissed warmly, liquid drips echoed, and an unknown humming sound filled the air. The trail of tiny pawprints led her into a vast, vaulted chamber lined with rusted steel and cracked concrete. Piles of trash and ripped garbage bags were repurposed into nests, and the air thickened with the scent of wet fur.
The rat skittered up a mound of damp rags and dropped the amulet on top like a prize. It stepped back and stared at Zatanna, as if offering it to her as a prize for winning the impromptu game of tag they had played. As Zatanna stepped forward, her ankle unknowingly grazed a tripwire.
CLANG!
A heavy grate slammed shut behind her, the noise echoing off the walls and cutting off her only exit.
Zatanna could still see the glowing pair of eyes of the rat straight ahead of her. She spun her body around, noticing dozens, no, hundreds more of glowing eyeballs rapidly appearing at foot-level, their tiny claws pattering on the concrete and forming a ring around her. The growing sound of squeaks was like a rising war cry.
A sharp tweet from a flute pierced the heavy air.
The effect was immediate. The ring of eyes surged forward in a coordinated blur of motion and squeaking. Zatanna barely had time to utter a spell before rats charged at her boots and swarmed up her fishnets. Zatanna fell to the ground stomach-first, causing her to drop her wand on impact. Something that felt like a grimy cord was swiftly looped around her ankles. Two rats scrambled onto her chest and used their paws to pinch her lips closed. As she tried to shake them off, a stained white cloth scrap was pulled between her teeth.
"Mmmph!" Zatanna grunted in alarm. Too many were on her now, and the pull on the back of the gag prevented her from being able to push it out with her tongue (that, along with the repugnant taste of the cloth). She managed to roll onto her back before something, no, someone emerged from the shadows.
A human figure in a patch-sewn hoodie and worn jeans, gas mask strapped tightly to their face, stepped into the dim light cast by her dropped wand. They moved calmly and raised a small, canister-like device. Zatanna caught a glimpse of big, curious brown eyes behind the mask, and then a hiss of gas exploded from the nozzle.
Her eyes watered, and then everything suddenly went black.
oOo
Zatanna’s head tilted forward as consciousness crept back. Her ears rang, her limbs ached, and her mouth was dry and stuffed full; a coarse knotted cloth-canvas gag pressed tightly between her lips and tied behind her head. She coughed against it, but it barely moved. At least it didn’t taste as bad as the previous cloth jammed in her mouth.
Zatanna looked around, taking in her situation through the single, yellow, buzzing light bulb suspended from the roof by an exposed wire. The bulb’s status as a fire hazard was the least of her worries right now, however: she was slumped in a sunken cement basin, a rounded in-ground trench coated with slick grime and sewage sediment. Her thighs were pressed together, knees bent slightly in front of her, feet flat on the slimy floor. Her arms were pulled out and up in a lowercase ‘y’ shape, wrists stretched wide above her, shackled with thick, heavy iron manacles. The chains looped through the bars of a rusted, padlocked sewer grate. Her arms were pinned too far away from her face to even brush against her gag, and her muscles were already beginning to tremble from the strain.
Her ankles were clamped together with a pair of tight iron shackles, locked and bolted to the concrete floor by a third, shorter chain. Her boots squelched in stagnant runoff, the squishing noise of it almost making her puke into the gag. A dull metal collar circled her throat, secured with a lock of its own to the middle rung of the sewer grate behind her head. It held her spine upright and limited her ability to hunch forward.
“Mmmph!” she groaned into the gag as her eyes flicked up. A figure was crouched just a few feet in front of her, overlooking the basin. They were perched on an overturned crate, elbows on knees.
The figure tugged the gas mask off, revealing a young woman with messy brown hair tied in a loose ponytail and dark circles under her eyes. She sported a half-sheepish and half-gleeful smirk. “Hi,” she said brightly, waving.
Zatanna blinked. She had heard of this woman. This was Cleo Cazo, also known as the second Ratcatcher.
“Don’t freak out,” Cleo said, holding up her hands in mock surrender. She stood up from the crate. “Okay, maybe freak out a little. That was kind of the idea.”
Zatanna grunted furiously into her gag. “Mmmph?!”
Cleo strolled closer to the basin, crouching down. In one hand, she held the silver lightning amulet, twirling it by the chain around one finger. With the other hand, she gently scratched the head of the same sleek gray rat from earlier, now perched proudly on her shoulder.
“You met this little guy?” she asked, gesturing to him. “This is Sebastian, the MVP of tonight’s operation. He sniffed out the amulet from all the shiny stuff on your table. Good nose. Better taste, considering you followed him all the way down here to try and get it back.”
Sebastian squeaked proudly.
Zatanna strained against the chains, but the iron wouldn’t give. The locks held fast.
Cleo sat back down on the crate, swinging her legs. “Okay, okay. Before you hurt yourself, just let me explain. My dad once went to one of your father’s shows, and he said it was the greatest thing he’d ever seen. After that, I’ve been to every Gotham show of yours since I was fourteen. I used to hide in the balcony rafters because I couldn’t afford tickets. You were magic. I mean, real magic, sure, but the theater magic…the escapes…the illusions…the timing…” She leaned in, voice softer now. “It was fascinating.”
Zatanna’s brow furrowed.
“I wanted to see if you and the magic were real. So my friends and I,” she motioned to the rats lining every ledge and pipe that overlooked the basin. “We set up our own little trick. No magic tricks. No spells. Just scavenged gear, teamwork, and timing. And I think we did a good job, no?”
Zatanna gave her a long glare.
Cleo shrugged. “Well, I believe that we did. You will not remain here forever…I mean, depending on how good you are…”
Cleo stood and casually pulled out a pocketwatch. She squinted at its face, nodded, and flicked her thumb toward the grate behind Zatanna. “You’re chained to the outflow gate of a storm reservoir. That grate? It’s about to start letting in water from this morning’s storm in about ten seconds from now.”
Zatanna froze. A low gurgle echoed behind the grate.
“Well, five now,” Cleo corrected herself. “You were asleep from the anesthesia for a bit longer than anticipated.”
Frigid water began to trickle in. Her boots were the first to feel it, then her fishnet-covered feet as the water leaked through. Zatanna thrashed in discomfort again, her arms burning with strain. The shackles bit into her wrists.
Cleo crouched again and twirled the amulet once more. “I know it’s risky. But if anyone can escape this mess? It’s you.”
Sebastian squeaked in approval.
Cleo smiled. “See? Sebastian believes in you, too. And I’ll stick around just in case you…you know…don’t make it and I have to fish you out. Good luck, Zatanna.”
Zatanna locked eyes with Cleo and then closed them. It was time to escape.
To be continued…
It was two hours until showtime at the Wayne Family Theater, and Zatanna Zatara sat before her mirror in her dressing room, fully costumed in a black tuxedo jacket, a white blouse, her signature fishnets, and tall, high-heeled boots polished to a gleam. The lightbulbs around her vanity mirror cast her reflection in gold as she brushed her rabbit, Pocus, who nibbled on a carrot as he splooted.
“You’re gonna steal the show tonight, my wittle baby,” Zatanna cooed. “Yes, you are! Yes, you-”
Then she noticed it. The silver lightning bolt amulet, a lucky charm worn by her father that she sometimes kept in her pocket during performances for good luck, was gone from her prop table. She had left it on a small display to polish it before the show. But it was now missing, and the display was slightly askew.
Zatanna rose to her feet, her eyes narrowing. "It was right here," she softly muttered, knowing it wasn’t enchanted with the ability to sprout legs and walk away. Pocus’s ears suddenly sprang up, and he twitched his nose toward the air vent on the wall above the couch.
Zatanna stepped on the couch and squinted her eyes: a sleek gray rat was clutching the amulet between its teeth. It vanished into the darkness of the vent with a defiant squeak.
Zatanna climbed off the couch and grimaced. “laeveR eht htap fo eht ria stnev morf ym moor,” she uttered.
A 3D map of the theater, made of blue light, appeared, with red lines of light indicating the path of the vents. Zatanna traced the line from her dressing room with her finger, which revealed that the vent led to a side door outside the theater.
"Oh, no, you don't," she muttered, grabbing her top hat from her wardrobe and sprinting from the room.
Pocus returned to his carrot, unfazed.
oOo
Zatanna burst through the side door, right in time to see the rat disappear down an open manhole that led down to the sewers. Zatanna peeked down the manhole and immediately cringed at the smell. All she could see down there was darkness, with no clue as to which direction the rat had gone.
“It’s my father’s amulet…it’s my father’s amulet,” Zatanna repeated to herself as she descended the ladder on the side of the manhole.
oOo
A stale, musky air hung heavy around her. Zatanna took out her wand from her tuxedo pocket. “etanimullI eht s’tar htap,” she commanded. A sphere of white light appeared on the tip of her wand. A path of white, tiny rat pawprints appeared on the ground. Zatanna steeled herself and began to follow.
Zatanna’s boots splashed through narrow channels of rainwater and runoff. How much of that runoff was urine, she didn’t want to think about. She sighed, knowing she’d have to give them a thorough polish (and a blast of air freshener) before she went onstage. Pipes hissed warmly, liquid drips echoed, and an unknown humming sound filled the air. The trail of tiny pawprints led her into a vast, vaulted chamber lined with rusted steel and cracked concrete. Piles of trash and ripped garbage bags were repurposed into nests, and the air thickened with the scent of wet fur.
The rat skittered up a mound of damp rags and dropped the amulet on top like a prize. It stepped back and stared at Zatanna, as if offering it to her as a prize for winning the impromptu game of tag they had played. As Zatanna stepped forward, her ankle unknowingly grazed a tripwire.
CLANG!
A heavy grate slammed shut behind her, the noise echoing off the walls and cutting off her only exit.
Zatanna could still see the glowing pair of eyes of the rat straight ahead of her. She spun her body around, noticing dozens, no, hundreds more of glowing eyeballs rapidly appearing at foot-level, their tiny claws pattering on the concrete and forming a ring around her. The growing sound of squeaks was like a rising war cry.
A sharp tweet from a flute pierced the heavy air.
The effect was immediate. The ring of eyes surged forward in a coordinated blur of motion and squeaking. Zatanna barely had time to utter a spell before rats charged at her boots and swarmed up her fishnets. Zatanna fell to the ground stomach-first, causing her to drop her wand on impact. Something that felt like a grimy cord was swiftly looped around her ankles. Two rats scrambled onto her chest and used their paws to pinch her lips closed. As she tried to shake them off, a stained white cloth scrap was pulled between her teeth.
"Mmmph!" Zatanna grunted in alarm. Too many were on her now, and the pull on the back of the gag prevented her from being able to push it out with her tongue (that, along with the repugnant taste of the cloth). She managed to roll onto her back before something, no, someone emerged from the shadows.
A human figure in a patch-sewn hoodie and worn jeans, gas mask strapped tightly to their face, stepped into the dim light cast by her dropped wand. They moved calmly and raised a small, canister-like device. Zatanna caught a glimpse of big, curious brown eyes behind the mask, and then a hiss of gas exploded from the nozzle.
Her eyes watered, and then everything suddenly went black.
oOo
Zatanna’s head tilted forward as consciousness crept back. Her ears rang, her limbs ached, and her mouth was dry and stuffed full; a coarse knotted cloth-canvas gag pressed tightly between her lips and tied behind her head. She coughed against it, but it barely moved. At least it didn’t taste as bad as the previous cloth jammed in her mouth.
Zatanna looked around, taking in her situation through the single, yellow, buzzing light bulb suspended from the roof by an exposed wire. The bulb’s status as a fire hazard was the least of her worries right now, however: she was slumped in a sunken cement basin, a rounded in-ground trench coated with slick grime and sewage sediment. Her thighs were pressed together, knees bent slightly in front of her, feet flat on the slimy floor. Her arms were pulled out and up in a lowercase ‘y’ shape, wrists stretched wide above her, shackled with thick, heavy iron manacles. The chains looped through the bars of a rusted, padlocked sewer grate. Her arms were pinned too far away from her face to even brush against her gag, and her muscles were already beginning to tremble from the strain.
Her ankles were clamped together with a pair of tight iron shackles, locked and bolted to the concrete floor by a third, shorter chain. Her boots squelched in stagnant runoff, the squishing noise of it almost making her puke into the gag. A dull metal collar circled her throat, secured with a lock of its own to the middle rung of the sewer grate behind her head. It held her spine upright and limited her ability to hunch forward.
“Mmmph!” she groaned into the gag as her eyes flicked up. A figure was crouched just a few feet in front of her, overlooking the basin. They were perched on an overturned crate, elbows on knees.
The figure tugged the gas mask off, revealing a young woman with messy brown hair tied in a loose ponytail and dark circles under her eyes. She sported a half-sheepish and half-gleeful smirk. “Hi,” she said brightly, waving.
Zatanna blinked. She had heard of this woman. This was Cleo Cazo, also known as the second Ratcatcher.
“Don’t freak out,” Cleo said, holding up her hands in mock surrender. She stood up from the crate. “Okay, maybe freak out a little. That was kind of the idea.”
Zatanna grunted furiously into her gag. “Mmmph?!”
Cleo strolled closer to the basin, crouching down. In one hand, she held the silver lightning amulet, twirling it by the chain around one finger. With the other hand, she gently scratched the head of the same sleek gray rat from earlier, now perched proudly on her shoulder.
“You met this little guy?” she asked, gesturing to him. “This is Sebastian, the MVP of tonight’s operation. He sniffed out the amulet from all the shiny stuff on your table. Good nose. Better taste, considering you followed him all the way down here to try and get it back.”
Sebastian squeaked proudly.
Zatanna strained against the chains, but the iron wouldn’t give. The locks held fast.
Cleo sat back down on the crate, swinging her legs. “Okay, okay. Before you hurt yourself, just let me explain. My dad once went to one of your father’s shows, and he said it was the greatest thing he’d ever seen. After that, I’ve been to every Gotham show of yours since I was fourteen. I used to hide in the balcony rafters because I couldn’t afford tickets. You were magic. I mean, real magic, sure, but the theater magic…the escapes…the illusions…the timing…” She leaned in, voice softer now. “It was fascinating.”
Zatanna’s brow furrowed.
“I wanted to see if you and the magic were real. So my friends and I,” she motioned to the rats lining every ledge and pipe that overlooked the basin. “We set up our own little trick. No magic tricks. No spells. Just scavenged gear, teamwork, and timing. And I think we did a good job, no?”
Zatanna gave her a long glare.
Cleo shrugged. “Well, I believe that we did. You will not remain here forever…I mean, depending on how good you are…”
Cleo stood and casually pulled out a pocketwatch. She squinted at its face, nodded, and flicked her thumb toward the grate behind Zatanna. “You’re chained to the outflow gate of a storm reservoir. That grate? It’s about to start letting in water from this morning’s storm in about ten seconds from now.”
Zatanna froze. A low gurgle echoed behind the grate.
“Well, five now,” Cleo corrected herself. “You were asleep from the anesthesia for a bit longer than anticipated.”
Frigid water began to trickle in. Her boots were the first to feel it, then her fishnet-covered feet as the water leaked through. Zatanna thrashed in discomfort again, her arms burning with strain. The shackles bit into her wrists.
Cleo crouched again and twirled the amulet once more. “I know it’s risky. But if anyone can escape this mess? It’s you.”
Sebastian squeaked in approval.
Cleo smiled. “See? Sebastian believes in you, too. And I’ll stick around just in case you…you know…don’t make it and I have to fish you out. Good luck, Zatanna.”
Zatanna locked eyes with Cleo and then closed them. It was time to escape.
To be continued…
-
TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
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Day 8: Mimic (M/F; Creature/F)
The apartment was dim except for a scattering of candles and the glow from the DM’s laptop. Tara sat cross-legged at the table, black hoodie zipped up to her chin, the ends of her flannel pajama pants bunched into her Ugg boots, and her character sheet lay out neatly in front of her. With most of the party’s players busy that night, it’d be a side mission adventure for the participants. To add further intrigue, the DM promised an “immersive experience” for the players who showed up that night, whatever that meant.
“Alright,” the DM said, voice dropping into his dramatic tone, “As the rest of the party sleeps, Ravenshade slipped out of the camp and crept into the dungeon. The party had said they’d explore it together in the morning, but something about the dungeon seemed to call to her, and that was a feeling she couldn’t just let sit around.”
Tara grinned and leaned forward. “Perfect. Time for some loot.”
oOo
Ravenshade moved like a shadow, her raven hair and pointed high elf ears tucked beneath a hood. Her black leather armor bounced slightly as she padded over uneven stone. Every step was measured, every glance sharp as she scanned for traps. Emerald eyes flicked across the corridor, reading the patterns of dust and cracks in the walls.
At the far end of the hallway sat a chest bound with iron bands and a heavy silver lock, gleaming faintly in torchlight.
Ravenshade’s lips curled into a curious smile. “Treasure, just sitting here? Too easy.”
oOo
“Okay, Tara, roll for Perception.”
Tara leaned forward and tossed her die. “Seven.”
The DM was poker-faced. “Looks like a perfectly ordinary chest.”
Tara squinted at his face. She couldn’t read any hints. “That’s suspicious.”
“To you, it’s an ordinary chest in an ordinary dungeon. Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t,” he shrugged. “Investigation check?”
“Yep.”
Another roll. The die landed on four. “Oh, come on,” Tara groaned.
“The lock looks clean,” the DM said with a slight and sly grin. “Nothing you couldn’t pick.”
The DM might as well have done his best Admiral Ackbar “It’s a trap!” impression. But Tara had to play the character. If there were a treasure chest, its contents would be Ravenshade’s. “I take out my tools.”
oOo
Ravenshade crouched low, pulling her thieves’ tools from her belt. She twirled a pick between her fingers. “Don’t fail me now,” she whispered. The tools slid into the lock. Click. Click. Click
The chest suddenly shuddered. The lid quivered like a pair of lips and then lunged open, lined with dripping, dagger-sharp fangs. Sticky pink tendrils lashed out.
oOo
“Surprise! It’s a Mimic!” the DM announced. Tara rolled her eyes. “Tendrils lash out for your wrists. Roll for a strength save.”
“Great, my worst stat,” Tara muttered. She rolled her d20. The die wobbled…and then landed on a one. A critical fail
The DM cackled. He reached under the table and pulled out a piece of white cotton rope. “Wrists behind your back, Tara.”
Tara blinked. “What?!”
“Like I said, tonight’s session would feature immersion,” he replied. “The Mimic binds Ravenshade. You get the same treatment.”
Not knowing how to argue against this, Tara put her hands behind the chair’s back. The DM crossed her wrists and wrapped the rope snug around them, cinching the binding for good measure. She wriggled, finding that the rope wasn’t unlike what Ravenshade was experiencing right now. “This is so unfair!”
“I’m not the one who rolled like crap just now,” the DM cheekily reminded her. “Now, where was I?”
oOo
Ravenshade’s tools clattered to the floor as her arms were wrenched behind her back, bound in gluey pseudopods. She tried to twist her body around, “You damned beast!” she spat.
oOo
“Um…ooh, I always keep my dagger in my belt behind me,” Tara remembered. “I reach for it and stab at the mimic.”
The DM smirked. “Disadvantage, because you’re restrained.”
She rolled the first die. Nineteen. “Yes!” she celebrated.
“Now roll the second one,” he reminded her.
The die clattered and landed on…a three.
The DM leaned back and laughed. “The dagger slips from your fingers and clatters uselessly to the floor. The Mimic slaps a tendril across your mouth.” He pulled out a folded red bandana from under the table and approached Tara with it. “And since that happened to Ravenshade...”
Tara groaned but opened her mouth. The cloth was pulled taut between her teeth, tied snug at the back of her neck. “Mmmrrgh!” she growled.
The DM grinned. “That’s exactly what Ravenshade sounds like right now.”
oOo
A wet pseudopod sealed Ravenshade’s lips shut. Her muffled curses bounced off the stone. Another tendril lashed her ankles, snapping them together. She toppled, writhing in the dark as the Mimic dragged her toward its gaping maw. With a final squeal, Ravenshade was stuffed inside, folded into wet and warm darkness. The chest slammed shut.
oOo
The DM’s tone dropped low and dramatic. “From the outside, it looks like a perfectly ordinary treasure chest again. Tara, your rogue is trussed up inside and gagged. Roll for a strength check to try to escape from the inside.”
Tara groaned. She looked down at the die in front of her, then behind the chair at her bound wrists. “Srrz-lhh?” she questioned.
The DM shrugged. “Roll for a strength check,” he repeated.
After a moment of struggle and thought, she bent forward and nudged the die with her nose. It rolled a few inches forward…and landed on a two.
The DM burst out laughing. “You flail inside the Mimic’s belly, completely helpless. You’ll have to wait for rescue.”
Tara let out a muffled groan and buried her face in the table.
The apartment door creaked open. “Sorry I’m late! Gino’s was crowded.” Jemma’s voice rang out as she shuffled in, balancing a greasy pizza box. She froze in the doorway, then burst into laughter at the sight of Tara bound and gagged, wriggling in her chair with dice on the table. “Am I interrupting something?”
The DM filled Jemma in on the adventure so far, from the faux chest to Ravenshade’s plight to how that translated to Tara’s situation. “You weren’t kidding about the whole ‘immersion’ thing,” Jemma hummed.
Tara muffled something furious through the bandana, pointing her head at Jemma and the pizza box.
Jemma smirked, plopping the pizza box on the table and opening the lid. “Oh no. You don’t get any.” She temptingly waved a steaming slice under Tara’s nose, and then took a slow and savory bite. “Not until Ravenshade gets out of that chest.”
Tara groaned and shot a death glare that would turn a raging barbarian into quivering jelly.
oOo
A lantern’s glow cut through the shadows. Ravenshade’s fellow party member, Liliginia, crept into the corridor looking for the missing rogue. Her cleric's robe swayed softly. At the end of the hall, a chest gleamed innocently in the dark.
oOo
“Alright, Jemma,” the DM said, “your cleric enters the dungeon. You see a chest. Roll for Perception.”
Jemma wiped grease off her fingers, grabbed her d20, and flicked it onto the table. It spun, then wobbled, and finally came to a flat landing.
The DM grinned. “Nat 1.” He reached under the table to pull out another length of rope and a second folded bandana.
oOo
From inside the Mimic, Ravenshade squealed and thrashed in the dark, muffled and desperately calling for help. Unfortunately, Liligina didn’t perceive this.
The Mimic’s lid twitched as she stepped closer…
The apartment was dim except for a scattering of candles and the glow from the DM’s laptop. Tara sat cross-legged at the table, black hoodie zipped up to her chin, the ends of her flannel pajama pants bunched into her Ugg boots, and her character sheet lay out neatly in front of her. With most of the party’s players busy that night, it’d be a side mission adventure for the participants. To add further intrigue, the DM promised an “immersive experience” for the players who showed up that night, whatever that meant.
“Alright,” the DM said, voice dropping into his dramatic tone, “As the rest of the party sleeps, Ravenshade slipped out of the camp and crept into the dungeon. The party had said they’d explore it together in the morning, but something about the dungeon seemed to call to her, and that was a feeling she couldn’t just let sit around.”
Tara grinned and leaned forward. “Perfect. Time for some loot.”
oOo
Ravenshade moved like a shadow, her raven hair and pointed high elf ears tucked beneath a hood. Her black leather armor bounced slightly as she padded over uneven stone. Every step was measured, every glance sharp as she scanned for traps. Emerald eyes flicked across the corridor, reading the patterns of dust and cracks in the walls.
At the far end of the hallway sat a chest bound with iron bands and a heavy silver lock, gleaming faintly in torchlight.
Ravenshade’s lips curled into a curious smile. “Treasure, just sitting here? Too easy.”
oOo
“Okay, Tara, roll for Perception.”
Tara leaned forward and tossed her die. “Seven.”
The DM was poker-faced. “Looks like a perfectly ordinary chest.”
Tara squinted at his face. She couldn’t read any hints. “That’s suspicious.”
“To you, it’s an ordinary chest in an ordinary dungeon. Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t,” he shrugged. “Investigation check?”
“Yep.”
Another roll. The die landed on four. “Oh, come on,” Tara groaned.
“The lock looks clean,” the DM said with a slight and sly grin. “Nothing you couldn’t pick.”
The DM might as well have done his best Admiral Ackbar “It’s a trap!” impression. But Tara had to play the character. If there were a treasure chest, its contents would be Ravenshade’s. “I take out my tools.”
oOo
Ravenshade crouched low, pulling her thieves’ tools from her belt. She twirled a pick between her fingers. “Don’t fail me now,” she whispered. The tools slid into the lock. Click. Click. Click
The chest suddenly shuddered. The lid quivered like a pair of lips and then lunged open, lined with dripping, dagger-sharp fangs. Sticky pink tendrils lashed out.
oOo
“Surprise! It’s a Mimic!” the DM announced. Tara rolled her eyes. “Tendrils lash out for your wrists. Roll for a strength save.”
“Great, my worst stat,” Tara muttered. She rolled her d20. The die wobbled…and then landed on a one. A critical fail
The DM cackled. He reached under the table and pulled out a piece of white cotton rope. “Wrists behind your back, Tara.”
Tara blinked. “What?!”
“Like I said, tonight’s session would feature immersion,” he replied. “The Mimic binds Ravenshade. You get the same treatment.”
Not knowing how to argue against this, Tara put her hands behind the chair’s back. The DM crossed her wrists and wrapped the rope snug around them, cinching the binding for good measure. She wriggled, finding that the rope wasn’t unlike what Ravenshade was experiencing right now. “This is so unfair!”
“I’m not the one who rolled like crap just now,” the DM cheekily reminded her. “Now, where was I?”
oOo
Ravenshade’s tools clattered to the floor as her arms were wrenched behind her back, bound in gluey pseudopods. She tried to twist her body around, “You damned beast!” she spat.
oOo
“Um…ooh, I always keep my dagger in my belt behind me,” Tara remembered. “I reach for it and stab at the mimic.”
The DM smirked. “Disadvantage, because you’re restrained.”
She rolled the first die. Nineteen. “Yes!” she celebrated.
“Now roll the second one,” he reminded her.
The die clattered and landed on…a three.
The DM leaned back and laughed. “The dagger slips from your fingers and clatters uselessly to the floor. The Mimic slaps a tendril across your mouth.” He pulled out a folded red bandana from under the table and approached Tara with it. “And since that happened to Ravenshade...”
Tara groaned but opened her mouth. The cloth was pulled taut between her teeth, tied snug at the back of her neck. “Mmmrrgh!” she growled.
The DM grinned. “That’s exactly what Ravenshade sounds like right now.”
oOo
A wet pseudopod sealed Ravenshade’s lips shut. Her muffled curses bounced off the stone. Another tendril lashed her ankles, snapping them together. She toppled, writhing in the dark as the Mimic dragged her toward its gaping maw. With a final squeal, Ravenshade was stuffed inside, folded into wet and warm darkness. The chest slammed shut.
oOo
The DM’s tone dropped low and dramatic. “From the outside, it looks like a perfectly ordinary treasure chest again. Tara, your rogue is trussed up inside and gagged. Roll for a strength check to try to escape from the inside.”
Tara groaned. She looked down at the die in front of her, then behind the chair at her bound wrists. “Srrz-lhh?” she questioned.
The DM shrugged. “Roll for a strength check,” he repeated.
After a moment of struggle and thought, she bent forward and nudged the die with her nose. It rolled a few inches forward…and landed on a two.
The DM burst out laughing. “You flail inside the Mimic’s belly, completely helpless. You’ll have to wait for rescue.”
Tara let out a muffled groan and buried her face in the table.
The apartment door creaked open. “Sorry I’m late! Gino’s was crowded.” Jemma’s voice rang out as she shuffled in, balancing a greasy pizza box. She froze in the doorway, then burst into laughter at the sight of Tara bound and gagged, wriggling in her chair with dice on the table. “Am I interrupting something?”
The DM filled Jemma in on the adventure so far, from the faux chest to Ravenshade’s plight to how that translated to Tara’s situation. “You weren’t kidding about the whole ‘immersion’ thing,” Jemma hummed.
Tara muffled something furious through the bandana, pointing her head at Jemma and the pizza box.
Jemma smirked, plopping the pizza box on the table and opening the lid. “Oh no. You don’t get any.” She temptingly waved a steaming slice under Tara’s nose, and then took a slow and savory bite. “Not until Ravenshade gets out of that chest.”
Tara groaned and shot a death glare that would turn a raging barbarian into quivering jelly.
oOo
A lantern’s glow cut through the shadows. Ravenshade’s fellow party member, Liliginia, crept into the corridor looking for the missing rogue. Her cleric's robe swayed softly. At the end of the hall, a chest gleamed innocently in the dark.
oOo
“Alright, Jemma,” the DM said, “your cleric enters the dungeon. You see a chest. Roll for Perception.”
Jemma wiped grease off her fingers, grabbed her d20, and flicked it onto the table. It spun, then wobbled, and finally came to a flat landing.
The DM grinned. “Nat 1.” He reached under the table to pull out another length of rope and a second folded bandana.
oOo
From inside the Mimic, Ravenshade squealed and thrashed in the dark, muffled and desperately calling for help. Unfortunately, Liligina didn’t perceive this.
The Mimic’s lid twitched as she stepped closer…
-
TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
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Day 13: Relief (M/F)
The duct tape wrapped my wrists behind my back like the world’s worst hand-hold attempt. The ripped-up curtain gag was tied tight across my cheeks and between my teeth, and the scarf blindfold was tied even tighter, as if I were Superman and this blindfold was an attempt to block out my laser and X-ray vision. Somewhere in the distance, as I was lying on my couch, I could hear drawers slamming, my smart TV being unplugged, and then my jewelry box rattling like rolling dice.
The burglar was doing the job he came here to do, which included tying me up like a bow. But I couldn’t think about any of it right now.
Because my bladder was screaming.
This wasn’t a gentle nudge either. I’d been holding it in for over an hour now, repeatedly telling myself “five more minutes” while I finished doom-scrolling through my TikTok For You page until I heard glass shattering and felt a gloved hand pressed over my mouth. Now here I was, trussed up like a damsel tied to a railroad track in a black and white silent film, and all my brain could scream was: bathroom. Bathroom! BATHROOM!!!
The front door slammed, and then silence came. He was gone.
I wriggled against the tape. Too tight. No chance of ripping it off, or at least not in a timely manner. The gag furthered my overall discomfort, and the blindfold would make every step a gamble, along with my taped-together ankles and knees.
But when it’s pee or perish, a girl has to take that risk.
I rolled to the side off the couch and braced myself before I fell on my knees. I counted kneeling shuffles as I racked my memory to see if I had ever randomly thought about how many steps it’d take from the living room to the bathroom. One…two…three…
*thunk!*
My knee banged into the corner of the coffee table. I hissed through the gag and then turned left toward the hallway. My heart pounded every time I heard a creak from the floorboards, terrified he’d come back to find me stumbling around blindly like a fool, seemingly looking for a way to free myself when the only thing that needed freeing was the large Diet Pepsi from my lower body.
Finally, the odyssey across the living room that’d usually take seconds ended with the cool brush of tile under my knees. The bathroom! Land ho!
I turned around and groped upward like a virgin on prom night until my fingers found the toilet’s porcelain seat. I awkwardly turned back around and pulled myself onto the bowl. My bound hands gripped through my sweatpants and panties and inched them down. I couldn’t help but think that this would unironically make for a good game show challenge.
When the relief from my bladder emptying finally came?
It was glorious. The feeling surpassed physical pleasure and transcended into something spiritual that Spanish monks throughout the past millennium would attempt to relay on paper. If angels weren’t surrounding me, it’s only because they weren’t perverted bathroom voyeurs.
The burglar could’ve taken everything: my TV, my laptop, and my grandmother’s pearls. I would have to survey the damage once I got my blindfold off. But as the last drop of yellow liquid hit my toilet bowl, none of that mattered to me…
The duct tape wrapped my wrists behind my back like the world’s worst hand-hold attempt. The ripped-up curtain gag was tied tight across my cheeks and between my teeth, and the scarf blindfold was tied even tighter, as if I were Superman and this blindfold was an attempt to block out my laser and X-ray vision. Somewhere in the distance, as I was lying on my couch, I could hear drawers slamming, my smart TV being unplugged, and then my jewelry box rattling like rolling dice.
The burglar was doing the job he came here to do, which included tying me up like a bow. But I couldn’t think about any of it right now.
Because my bladder was screaming.
This wasn’t a gentle nudge either. I’d been holding it in for over an hour now, repeatedly telling myself “five more minutes” while I finished doom-scrolling through my TikTok For You page until I heard glass shattering and felt a gloved hand pressed over my mouth. Now here I was, trussed up like a damsel tied to a railroad track in a black and white silent film, and all my brain could scream was: bathroom. Bathroom! BATHROOM!!!
The front door slammed, and then silence came. He was gone.
I wriggled against the tape. Too tight. No chance of ripping it off, or at least not in a timely manner. The gag furthered my overall discomfort, and the blindfold would make every step a gamble, along with my taped-together ankles and knees.
But when it’s pee or perish, a girl has to take that risk.
I rolled to the side off the couch and braced myself before I fell on my knees. I counted kneeling shuffles as I racked my memory to see if I had ever randomly thought about how many steps it’d take from the living room to the bathroom. One…two…three…
*thunk!*
My knee banged into the corner of the coffee table. I hissed through the gag and then turned left toward the hallway. My heart pounded every time I heard a creak from the floorboards, terrified he’d come back to find me stumbling around blindly like a fool, seemingly looking for a way to free myself when the only thing that needed freeing was the large Diet Pepsi from my lower body.
Finally, the odyssey across the living room that’d usually take seconds ended with the cool brush of tile under my knees. The bathroom! Land ho!
I turned around and groped upward like a virgin on prom night until my fingers found the toilet’s porcelain seat. I awkwardly turned back around and pulled myself onto the bowl. My bound hands gripped through my sweatpants and panties and inched them down. I couldn’t help but think that this would unironically make for a good game show challenge.
When the relief from my bladder emptying finally came?
It was glorious. The feeling surpassed physical pleasure and transcended into something spiritual that Spanish monks throughout the past millennium would attempt to relay on paper. If angels weren’t surrounding me, it’s only because they weren’t perverted bathroom voyeurs.
The burglar could’ve taken everything: my TV, my laptop, and my grandmother’s pearls. I would have to survey the damage once I got my blindfold off. But as the last drop of yellow liquid hit my toilet bowl, none of that mattered to me…
-
tugtourist
- Forum Contributer
- Posts: 10
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Very interesting stories for kinktober!
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TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
- Posts: 1267
- Joined: 7 years ago
- Contact:
Day 14: Betrayal (F)
The game had started with thirty people. By the second week, it was down to three.
The Honors College’s annual “Assassin” tournament was the stuff of legend on campus: water pistols instead of Nerf, anywhere on school grounds outside of class time was fair game, and elaborate traps and ruses that would’ve made Kevin from Home Alone look amateur, by comparison. For two weeks, students lurked behind bushes, ambushed each other at vending machines, and even organized a fake pizza delivery to a dorm to strike down their foes, all for the prize of bragging rights, a plastic trophy, and a $150 cash pool prize.
Only three names remained in the running:
Player 1 — Kevin Steeds: a meticulous and natural-born leader, known for checking around corners twice for would-be assassins. He had organized some alliances early in the game, but they had all either been eliminated by now or tried turning against him. But he always seemed to anticipate their betrayals and cut them down before they could take him. He was also said to have a (yet-unconfirmed) crush on…
Player 2 — Mandy Sariss: a psych major, good at blending into crowds to escape pursuers, hence how she was able to stay in the game for so long, taking a more passive approach to the game in lieu of going in, water gun ablazing.
Player 3 — Gabe Caplo: a drama major with a flair for traps. In fact, he had been the one who organized the aforementioned pizza delivery ambush in what had gone down in Snapchat DMs as the ‘Pizza Party Massacre.’
oOo
Kevin was currently sipping a Red Bull in the library, studying for a computer science exam. After all, classes didn’t stop for this 30-way war. But that’s when his phone buzzed.
It was a text from Mandy’s number with an attached photo that made his caffeine rush stop cold: Mandy in the Honors College’s kitchenette area, arms tied behind the back of a chair, ankles bound with rope, and a black bandana gag knotted tight between her teeth. Her wide eyes practically begged for help.
A follow-up came seconds later, from Gabe’s number: “Come save your damsel, hero, or else she’s out of the game.”
Kevin swore under his breath. He could practically hear Gabe’s attempt at a Snidely Whiplash impression as he reread the text. He stared at the photo again, judging whether it could have been photoshopped or AI-generated. The gag looked real, and the ropes did, too. Mandy’s expression wavered between slight terror and annoyance at being caught in this trap.
“Alright, Gabe” Kevin muttered, pulling his neon-green water pistol from his backpack. “Let’s dance.”
oOo
He entered the Honors College and crept toward the kitchenette like it was enemy territory. He checked a hallway mirror suspended near a security camera to see around the corner. Empty. He listened at the door for the telltale click of a water gun trigger. Nothing.
Kevin slid inside as if he were a part of a SWAT raid, his pistol raised.
Mandy was right where the photo had shown her: roped to the chair and gagged, frantically calling for him as if she were Lois Lane calling for Superman before a mad scientist shot her to the moon while tied on a rocket ship.
“Hang on,” he whispered, checking every corner of the room. Under the table? Empty. Behind the fridge? Nope. Inside the oven? Mandy rolled her eyes as he peeked inside, but he couldn’t afford not to be too sure with the tournament potentially on the line. But no, no Gabe.
Finally convinced, he hurried to Mandy and worked on the knots at her legs first. The ropes loosened and fell to the floor. He pulled the gag out of her mouth, letting it hang around her neck. “Thank you, oh my God,” Mandy spat the taste of the gag out of her mouth. “I knew Gabe was crazy, but never this!”
“You’re okay now,” Kevin assured her, trying not to sound like too much of a savior. “Do you know where Gabe-”
HISSSSSSS
Kevin slowly looked down. A dark, wet spot was spreading across his hoodie. His pistol slipped from his hand and hit the floor with a clatter.
Mandy’s wrists were now in front of her, a length of rope draped over them. She twirled a bright orange water gun around one finger. “Bang. You’re out,” she cooly declared like an ‘80s action hero.
Kevin gawked. “You faked the whole thing?!”
“The rope and gag were brought from Target yesterday,” Mandy chirped, tucking the pistol into her back pocket. “Oh, and Gabe is already out. I got him last night. I flopped down in front of his dorm room, and when he went to let me in, I soaked him.”
“But he texted me-”
“I promised to help him run lines if he helped me come up with a way to eliminate you,” Mandy answered. “The ‘fake hostage’ idea was his. He said you wouldn’t be able to resist rescuing me.”
Kevin groaned, dragging a hand down his face to hide his blushing cheeks. “Unbelievable. You got me good. Y’know, if you ever get kidnapped for real, I’m not gonna believe it.”
“That’s a risk I was willing to take.” Mandy shouldered her water gun, striding toward the kitchenette door. “C’mon. I’ll text Kevin, and we can tell everyone who won the tournament.”
Kevin followed her out, still groaning and blushing with the wet spot on his hoodie serving as a mark of betrayal.
The game had started with thirty people. By the second week, it was down to three.
The Honors College’s annual “Assassin” tournament was the stuff of legend on campus: water pistols instead of Nerf, anywhere on school grounds outside of class time was fair game, and elaborate traps and ruses that would’ve made Kevin from Home Alone look amateur, by comparison. For two weeks, students lurked behind bushes, ambushed each other at vending machines, and even organized a fake pizza delivery to a dorm to strike down their foes, all for the prize of bragging rights, a plastic trophy, and a $150 cash pool prize.
Only three names remained in the running:
Player 1 — Kevin Steeds: a meticulous and natural-born leader, known for checking around corners twice for would-be assassins. He had organized some alliances early in the game, but they had all either been eliminated by now or tried turning against him. But he always seemed to anticipate their betrayals and cut them down before they could take him. He was also said to have a (yet-unconfirmed) crush on…
Player 2 — Mandy Sariss: a psych major, good at blending into crowds to escape pursuers, hence how she was able to stay in the game for so long, taking a more passive approach to the game in lieu of going in, water gun ablazing.
Player 3 — Gabe Caplo: a drama major with a flair for traps. In fact, he had been the one who organized the aforementioned pizza delivery ambush in what had gone down in Snapchat DMs as the ‘Pizza Party Massacre.’
oOo
Kevin was currently sipping a Red Bull in the library, studying for a computer science exam. After all, classes didn’t stop for this 30-way war. But that’s when his phone buzzed.
It was a text from Mandy’s number with an attached photo that made his caffeine rush stop cold: Mandy in the Honors College’s kitchenette area, arms tied behind the back of a chair, ankles bound with rope, and a black bandana gag knotted tight between her teeth. Her wide eyes practically begged for help.
A follow-up came seconds later, from Gabe’s number: “Come save your damsel, hero, or else she’s out of the game.”
Kevin swore under his breath. He could practically hear Gabe’s attempt at a Snidely Whiplash impression as he reread the text. He stared at the photo again, judging whether it could have been photoshopped or AI-generated. The gag looked real, and the ropes did, too. Mandy’s expression wavered between slight terror and annoyance at being caught in this trap.
“Alright, Gabe” Kevin muttered, pulling his neon-green water pistol from his backpack. “Let’s dance.”
oOo
He entered the Honors College and crept toward the kitchenette like it was enemy territory. He checked a hallway mirror suspended near a security camera to see around the corner. Empty. He listened at the door for the telltale click of a water gun trigger. Nothing.
Kevin slid inside as if he were a part of a SWAT raid, his pistol raised.
Mandy was right where the photo had shown her: roped to the chair and gagged, frantically calling for him as if she were Lois Lane calling for Superman before a mad scientist shot her to the moon while tied on a rocket ship.
“Hang on,” he whispered, checking every corner of the room. Under the table? Empty. Behind the fridge? Nope. Inside the oven? Mandy rolled her eyes as he peeked inside, but he couldn’t afford not to be too sure with the tournament potentially on the line. But no, no Gabe.
Finally convinced, he hurried to Mandy and worked on the knots at her legs first. The ropes loosened and fell to the floor. He pulled the gag out of her mouth, letting it hang around her neck. “Thank you, oh my God,” Mandy spat the taste of the gag out of her mouth. “I knew Gabe was crazy, but never this!”
“You’re okay now,” Kevin assured her, trying not to sound like too much of a savior. “Do you know where Gabe-”
HISSSSSSS
Kevin slowly looked down. A dark, wet spot was spreading across his hoodie. His pistol slipped from his hand and hit the floor with a clatter.
Mandy’s wrists were now in front of her, a length of rope draped over them. She twirled a bright orange water gun around one finger. “Bang. You’re out,” she cooly declared like an ‘80s action hero.
Kevin gawked. “You faked the whole thing?!”
“The rope and gag were brought from Target yesterday,” Mandy chirped, tucking the pistol into her back pocket. “Oh, and Gabe is already out. I got him last night. I flopped down in front of his dorm room, and when he went to let me in, I soaked him.”
“But he texted me-”
“I promised to help him run lines if he helped me come up with a way to eliminate you,” Mandy answered. “The ‘fake hostage’ idea was his. He said you wouldn’t be able to resist rescuing me.”
Kevin groaned, dragging a hand down his face to hide his blushing cheeks. “Unbelievable. You got me good. Y’know, if you ever get kidnapped for real, I’m not gonna believe it.”
“That’s a risk I was willing to take.” Mandy shouldered her water gun, striding toward the kitchenette door. “C’mon. I’ll text Kevin, and we can tell everyone who won the tournament.”
Kevin followed her out, still groaning and blushing with the wet spot on his hoodie serving as a mark of betrayal.
-
TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
- Posts: 1267
- Joined: 7 years ago
- Contact:
Day 15: Retro (F/F)
Her name was Marjorie Rhodes, and she was like a time traveler in pearls. She greeted me at the door in a cherry red polka dot dress with a white apron around her waist, sensible red high heels, and a string of cream pearls around her neck. In comparison, I practically felt naked wearing my black cardigan and blue jeans.
It wasn’t just a costume. Inside, Marjorie’s house was a 1950s throwback: an avocado-green fridge hummed in the corner, pink floral wallpaper adorned the walls, and frilly lace doilies were perched under porcelain lamps. A record player spun a doo-wop tune sung by singers who were either long dead or current nursing home residents. I couldn’t even fathom a device in her house that accessed the online role-playing forum we had met on.
Marjorie smoothed her apron as if I were her husband, home from a long day at the office. “You’ll just love what I’ve baked up for you, sugar,” she said, her voice warm and syrupy.
As she walked away for a moment, I found everything to be adorable. However, as the seconds passed, I realized that the curtains had been tightly drawn, as if she were trying to block out anything that didn’t belong to her chosen decade of living.
That’s when the white frilly rag clamped down over my face.
I tried to pivot my body to get the cloth off, but her grip was steel. A chemical smell flooded my nose, and my knees buckled almost instantly. The last thing I saw as my eyes rolled back was Marjorie’s serene smile, unfazed, as if chloroforming guests was just part of polite hospitality, like taking off your shoes or hanging your coat in the closet.
oOo
When I woke up, I was no longer standing. I was perched precariously on a narrow wooden stool in the center of her kitchen.
My wrists were pulled behind me, bound tight with black ironing cord, and my ankles and knees were trussed with a pair of stretchy tan nylons. My mouth bulged with a knotted white and red-checkered scarf tied between my teeth, the scent and taste of cinnamon tickling my nose and tongue from the gag.
And then I felt it: the shadow behind me. I shifted my eyes up, and my breath caught in terror.
A heavy white iron dangled just above and behind my head, swaying faintly. Its cord looped through a hook bolted into the ceiling, then ran down to one of the stool’s legs. Every creak of the stool, every nervous tremor of my body, tugged the line just enough to make the iron edge forward. If I shifted too much, even by an inch, gravity would take care of the rest.
My heart pounded. I couldn’t stop the whimper I let out.
From across the kitchen, Marjorie hummed while she stood at the counter, flour sticking to her apron. She rolled out dough with a wooden pin as if nothing were wrong at all. She might as well have been June Cleaver or Mrs. Brady in a black-and-white television rerun, except for the fact that I was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey and one wrong move away from a headache that would take more than an Advil to recover from.
“Wakey-wakey, sweetheart,” she sang, not looking back at me. “Almost done with the filling. You just sit tight for me.” Her tone lifted into a playful lilt. “I wouldn’t wriggle too much…not unless you’re curious what that iron feels like upside your pretty head.”
I stiffened, fighting the urge even to breathe too deeply, lest it incur the iron’s weighted wrath.
She pulled the oven door open and slid the pie in. The rush of cinnamon and apples was intoxicating, almost comforting, and for a heartbeat, I forgot the danger above me. But then the stool creaked beneath my weight and the cord shifted ever so slightly. Terror jolted back in me.
Marjorie turned at last, brushing her hands against her apron. Her eyes looked over me like she was inspecting the house one more time before her husband’s work friend and his wife were coming over. “Oh, darling,” she cooed. “Look at you. Sitting so nicely for me. Doesn’t this feel just like home?”
This was a home I no longer wanted to stay in. I moaned into the gag, a garbled plea that she was going too far with this (especially with knocking me out. That was never discussed in our messages), and I wanted to be let go. Her lipstick-adorned smile only deepened.
She walked closer, heels clicking against linoleum, and every step made my heart skip. She leaned down so our faces were inches apart, the perfume of sugar and starch clinging to her. Her hand brushed my cheek, and her eyes glittered with dark amusement. “You came here for the retro experience, didn’t you?” she asked as if I were in any place to answer. “To see what it was like? Well, sugar, in my house, we do things the way they used to be. No modern toys. No safewords on a screen. Just electric cord, lacy cloth, and real consequences.”
I shuddered, half in awe, half in dread. Marjorie said that last word while looking at the iron behind me, a sword of Damocles over my head.
Marjorie straightened, humming again, and returned to her counter as though nothing remarkable were happening. She sprinkled cinnamon into a bowl, voice drifting lightly back toward me.
“Don’t worry, dear. You’ll be safe. As long as you behave.” She tapped the spoon against the rim. “But if you test me…well…that iron has quite a temper. My previous guests could tell you that…”
I closed my eyes and bit into the gag, every nerve straining to stay upright. I didn’t want to know if these ‘previous guests’ were locked in her linen closet or buried under her garden bed.
And all the while, Marjorie hummed and baked, the picture-perfect housewife in the killer kitchen.
Her name was Marjorie Rhodes, and she was like a time traveler in pearls. She greeted me at the door in a cherry red polka dot dress with a white apron around her waist, sensible red high heels, and a string of cream pearls around her neck. In comparison, I practically felt naked wearing my black cardigan and blue jeans.
It wasn’t just a costume. Inside, Marjorie’s house was a 1950s throwback: an avocado-green fridge hummed in the corner, pink floral wallpaper adorned the walls, and frilly lace doilies were perched under porcelain lamps. A record player spun a doo-wop tune sung by singers who were either long dead or current nursing home residents. I couldn’t even fathom a device in her house that accessed the online role-playing forum we had met on.
Marjorie smoothed her apron as if I were her husband, home from a long day at the office. “You’ll just love what I’ve baked up for you, sugar,” she said, her voice warm and syrupy.
As she walked away for a moment, I found everything to be adorable. However, as the seconds passed, I realized that the curtains had been tightly drawn, as if she were trying to block out anything that didn’t belong to her chosen decade of living.
That’s when the white frilly rag clamped down over my face.
I tried to pivot my body to get the cloth off, but her grip was steel. A chemical smell flooded my nose, and my knees buckled almost instantly. The last thing I saw as my eyes rolled back was Marjorie’s serene smile, unfazed, as if chloroforming guests was just part of polite hospitality, like taking off your shoes or hanging your coat in the closet.
oOo
When I woke up, I was no longer standing. I was perched precariously on a narrow wooden stool in the center of her kitchen.
My wrists were pulled behind me, bound tight with black ironing cord, and my ankles and knees were trussed with a pair of stretchy tan nylons. My mouth bulged with a knotted white and red-checkered scarf tied between my teeth, the scent and taste of cinnamon tickling my nose and tongue from the gag.
And then I felt it: the shadow behind me. I shifted my eyes up, and my breath caught in terror.
A heavy white iron dangled just above and behind my head, swaying faintly. Its cord looped through a hook bolted into the ceiling, then ran down to one of the stool’s legs. Every creak of the stool, every nervous tremor of my body, tugged the line just enough to make the iron edge forward. If I shifted too much, even by an inch, gravity would take care of the rest.
My heart pounded. I couldn’t stop the whimper I let out.
From across the kitchen, Marjorie hummed while she stood at the counter, flour sticking to her apron. She rolled out dough with a wooden pin as if nothing were wrong at all. She might as well have been June Cleaver or Mrs. Brady in a black-and-white television rerun, except for the fact that I was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey and one wrong move away from a headache that would take more than an Advil to recover from.
“Wakey-wakey, sweetheart,” she sang, not looking back at me. “Almost done with the filling. You just sit tight for me.” Her tone lifted into a playful lilt. “I wouldn’t wriggle too much…not unless you’re curious what that iron feels like upside your pretty head.”
I stiffened, fighting the urge even to breathe too deeply, lest it incur the iron’s weighted wrath.
She pulled the oven door open and slid the pie in. The rush of cinnamon and apples was intoxicating, almost comforting, and for a heartbeat, I forgot the danger above me. But then the stool creaked beneath my weight and the cord shifted ever so slightly. Terror jolted back in me.
Marjorie turned at last, brushing her hands against her apron. Her eyes looked over me like she was inspecting the house one more time before her husband’s work friend and his wife were coming over. “Oh, darling,” she cooed. “Look at you. Sitting so nicely for me. Doesn’t this feel just like home?”
This was a home I no longer wanted to stay in. I moaned into the gag, a garbled plea that she was going too far with this (especially with knocking me out. That was never discussed in our messages), and I wanted to be let go. Her lipstick-adorned smile only deepened.
She walked closer, heels clicking against linoleum, and every step made my heart skip. She leaned down so our faces were inches apart, the perfume of sugar and starch clinging to her. Her hand brushed my cheek, and her eyes glittered with dark amusement. “You came here for the retro experience, didn’t you?” she asked as if I were in any place to answer. “To see what it was like? Well, sugar, in my house, we do things the way they used to be. No modern toys. No safewords on a screen. Just electric cord, lacy cloth, and real consequences.”
I shuddered, half in awe, half in dread. Marjorie said that last word while looking at the iron behind me, a sword of Damocles over my head.
Marjorie straightened, humming again, and returned to her counter as though nothing remarkable were happening. She sprinkled cinnamon into a bowl, voice drifting lightly back toward me.
“Don’t worry, dear. You’ll be safe. As long as you behave.” She tapped the spoon against the rim. “But if you test me…well…that iron has quite a temper. My previous guests could tell you that…”
I closed my eyes and bit into the gag, every nerve straining to stay upright. I didn’t want to know if these ‘previous guests’ were locked in her linen closet or buried under her garden bed.
And all the while, Marjorie hummed and baked, the picture-perfect housewife in the killer kitchen.
-
TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
- Posts: 1267
- Joined: 7 years ago
- Contact:
Day 16: Discipline (F/F)
My private academy didn’t hand out demerits or standard punishments for breaking curfew. They believed in something more…personal.
I’d been caught sneaking out for the third time that week to midnight study groups, desperately cramming for our academy’s notoriously difficult midterms.
"You know the academy’s policy,” Rachel, my resident assistant, said the next evening as she marched me down the basement stairs of my dorm building. My nerves were rising. I had only heard whispers of this punishment during my few months here so far. It was now my turn to experience it firsthand.
The door to the discipline bedroom opened with a metallic groan. The cell was six by eight feet, lit by a single flickering bulb. A metal bed frame with a mattress stacked on top was bolted to the concrete floor. A nightstand sat empty in the corner. Heavy blackout curtains sealed the one narrow window. The air was cold, stale, and faintly smelled of antiseptic.
“Change,” Rachel ordered, pulling open a small locker by the wall. Inside hung a single set of pajamas: bright orange, fleece-lined, and footed. The academy’s crest was stitched into the center of the chest.
My stomach dropped. “Hold on. Please, I-”
Her raised eyebrow shut me up.
I stripped off my sweats and pulled on the pajamas. The fleece clung uncomfortably, the footed bottoms trapping my toes in stifling warmth and would likely make them smell horrible when they came off. The stitched logo felt like a brand pressed against me, a scarlet letter. I’d never felt more ridiculous.
“On the bed,” Rachel ordered flatly.
The metal frame creaked as awkwardly as a cough in church as I lay back. Straps appeared in her hands like surgical instruments: padded, brown leather cuffs with polished steel buckles. She worked quickly, cinching my wrists above my head to steel rings welded into the headboard. The cuffs bit into the fleece, pinching at my skin beneath. My ankles went next, strapped to the footboard so my legs were stretched just enough to feel exposed. Then, a belt came across my waist, pressing me flat, cutting off any chance of wriggling. I could barely move an inch.
Rachel set down the last strap and reached for something from the nightstand drawer: a padded black bit gag, thick and rubberized, attached to wide straps. My eyes went wide.
“Open,” she instructed.
I hesitated, but there wasn’t much else I could potentially do in my position. I parted my lips, and the bit slid into place, stretching my jaw just enough to ache. The padding expanded against my teeth, with drool pooling in my mouth almost instantly. She buckled the straps tight behind my head, sealing it in. My protests collapsed into indignant, muffled grunts.
“Better,” Rachel hummed.
Next came earplugs. Bright orange foam was pinched and pressed deep into my ear canals until the world became a congested, dull lull. The flickering bulb’s buzz vanished. Even my own breathing was audibly dimmed. The silence made my pulse sound louder in my skull. Finally, a black padded sleep mask descended, plunging me into suffocating darkness.
Rachel smoothed a hand over my hair. “Quiet and in bed before curfew,” I scarcely heard her say. Moments later, I could feel vibrations as the door closed and locked. I was alone.
I was restrained in orange fleece footies as if I were attending a prisoner’s slumber party and deprived of my senses. Every strap held me down as if I were welded into the bed. The academy’s logo pressed against my chest with every shallow breath I took.
I tried to fight out of the belts. The straps slightly shifted but didn’t give. The vibrations of my muffled grunts died into the bit gag, with some of the drool leaking down my chin in a fine line. The silence swallowed me whole.
Minutes blurred into hours. The footed pajamas trapped my body heat until sweat dampened the fleece. But the humiliation of this punishment burned hotter than fear. I was almost glad I was locked behind the basement door. If anyone saw me like this, I’d never live it down.
Eventually, exhaustion overtook my desire to struggle. By the time sleep finally dragged me under, I knew the academy had gotten exactly what it wanted: my perceived wild rebellion contained and disciplined through restraints.
My private academy didn’t hand out demerits or standard punishments for breaking curfew. They believed in something more…personal.
I’d been caught sneaking out for the third time that week to midnight study groups, desperately cramming for our academy’s notoriously difficult midterms.
"You know the academy’s policy,” Rachel, my resident assistant, said the next evening as she marched me down the basement stairs of my dorm building. My nerves were rising. I had only heard whispers of this punishment during my few months here so far. It was now my turn to experience it firsthand.
The door to the discipline bedroom opened with a metallic groan. The cell was six by eight feet, lit by a single flickering bulb. A metal bed frame with a mattress stacked on top was bolted to the concrete floor. A nightstand sat empty in the corner. Heavy blackout curtains sealed the one narrow window. The air was cold, stale, and faintly smelled of antiseptic.
“Change,” Rachel ordered, pulling open a small locker by the wall. Inside hung a single set of pajamas: bright orange, fleece-lined, and footed. The academy’s crest was stitched into the center of the chest.
My stomach dropped. “Hold on. Please, I-”
Her raised eyebrow shut me up.
I stripped off my sweats and pulled on the pajamas. The fleece clung uncomfortably, the footed bottoms trapping my toes in stifling warmth and would likely make them smell horrible when they came off. The stitched logo felt like a brand pressed against me, a scarlet letter. I’d never felt more ridiculous.
“On the bed,” Rachel ordered flatly.
The metal frame creaked as awkwardly as a cough in church as I lay back. Straps appeared in her hands like surgical instruments: padded, brown leather cuffs with polished steel buckles. She worked quickly, cinching my wrists above my head to steel rings welded into the headboard. The cuffs bit into the fleece, pinching at my skin beneath. My ankles went next, strapped to the footboard so my legs were stretched just enough to feel exposed. Then, a belt came across my waist, pressing me flat, cutting off any chance of wriggling. I could barely move an inch.
Rachel set down the last strap and reached for something from the nightstand drawer: a padded black bit gag, thick and rubberized, attached to wide straps. My eyes went wide.
“Open,” she instructed.
I hesitated, but there wasn’t much else I could potentially do in my position. I parted my lips, and the bit slid into place, stretching my jaw just enough to ache. The padding expanded against my teeth, with drool pooling in my mouth almost instantly. She buckled the straps tight behind my head, sealing it in. My protests collapsed into indignant, muffled grunts.
“Better,” Rachel hummed.
Next came earplugs. Bright orange foam was pinched and pressed deep into my ear canals until the world became a congested, dull lull. The flickering bulb’s buzz vanished. Even my own breathing was audibly dimmed. The silence made my pulse sound louder in my skull. Finally, a black padded sleep mask descended, plunging me into suffocating darkness.
Rachel smoothed a hand over my hair. “Quiet and in bed before curfew,” I scarcely heard her say. Moments later, I could feel vibrations as the door closed and locked. I was alone.
I was restrained in orange fleece footies as if I were attending a prisoner’s slumber party and deprived of my senses. Every strap held me down as if I were welded into the bed. The academy’s logo pressed against my chest with every shallow breath I took.
I tried to fight out of the belts. The straps slightly shifted but didn’t give. The vibrations of my muffled grunts died into the bit gag, with some of the drool leaking down my chin in a fine line. The silence swallowed me whole.
Minutes blurred into hours. The footed pajamas trapped my body heat until sweat dampened the fleece. But the humiliation of this punishment burned hotter than fear. I was almost glad I was locked behind the basement door. If anyone saw me like this, I’d never live it down.
Eventually, exhaustion overtook my desire to struggle. By the time sleep finally dragged me under, I knew the academy had gotten exactly what it wanted: my perceived wild rebellion contained and disciplined through restraints.
-
TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
- Posts: 1267
- Joined: 7 years ago
- Contact:
Day 17: Spank (Multiple F/F)
I walked up the creaking porch steps of the Delta Kappa off-campus house. The email had been vague: “Come by tonight, we’ll give you your answer.” I figured I’d be sitting in the living room, maybe offered a soda, and either welcomed or politely dismissed.
A sign on the front door read, “It’s open. Come right in!” with a heart in place of the dot on the exclamation mark. With that invite, I let myself in.
Inside, the sorority house was quiet…too quiet. The air smelled faintly of vanilla candles from Bed Bath & Bodyworks, and the hall lights were incredibly dim. “Hello?” I called.
That’s when hands swept out of the shadows.
I gasped as laughter erupted all around me. Fingers wrapped around my arms and waist. A burlap sack was yanked down over my head before I could scream or see my attackers. I stumbled as they dragged me deeper into the house. My sneakers squeaked on tile flooring, and then repeatedly thudded against wood as we descended a narrow stairwell, the hands taking care not to let me fall.
The sack came off, but was immediately replaced by a satin pink sleep mask. Only now did I realize that this wasn’t a results meeting. This was the initiation.
“On the stool,” one of them commanded.
Hands steered me forward until my thighs hit wood. They pushed me down, bending me over the seat. My wrists were pulled toward the legs of the stool, bound at the wrist with silky scarves that smelled faintly of perfume. More silk lashed around my ankles to hold them to the stool legs. I wriggled experimentally and found no give to them. Heat rose in my face as I realized I was trussed up, blindfolded, helpless, in the sorority’s basement.
Then I heard her: the pledge leader. She was the reason I’d signed up in the first place. She had that goth rockstar presence: combat boots, ripped jeans, short hair dyed dark violet, tattooed arms, and eyeliner sharp enough to poke someone’s eyeball out if she turned around too suddenly. I’d been crushing on her since the first mixer. And now her voice purred like a leopard just inches from me.
“Well, well, well. Little Riley Gates, finally ready for her initiation trial.”
The sisters giggled. My throat suddenly felt dry.
“You’re going to recite the Delta Kappa pledge, word for word,” she continued. “And with each line, you’ll take a spank from the paddle. If you screw up, you get an extra spank. Understood?”
I nodded quickly, knowing that any word I’d speak at that second would be babbled gibberish.
“Good girl.”
The words made my body feel as if it were melting. But I was brought out of my stupor when I felt the air move behind me. SMACK!
The first blow landed across my backside, the sharp pain striking through my denim jeans. I jerked against the scarves and hissed in pain. The girls cheered.
“Line one!” the leader barked.
My voice shook for a second as I began. “I, Riley Gates, pledge my loyalty to my Delta Kappa sisters…”
SMACK!
“…and I swear to stand by us-um-them-”
SMACK!
“Try again,” the leader ordered.
“…and I swear to stand by them-”
SMACK!
“…through laughter, through tears…”
SMACK!
Each sting left my cheeks burning hotter. My words quavered, but I got through every line with no more screw-ups. Finally, the last line left my lips: “And I swear never to forget the bond we share.”
One final SMACK! echoed through the basement. My whole body trembled. I couldn’t help but let out a whine.
Silence…
And then, the scarves were untied without a word being spoken. The sleep mask was tugged away. I blinked and found myself staring directly into her smirk as candles burned around us.
“Not bad, rookie,” she said before pulling me into a firm hug that made me want to melt again. The other sisters piled in, wrapping me in a group embrace. The humiliation and the stinging all melted into something else: warmth and a sense of belonging.
“You’re one of us now,” the leader said, cupping my face between her hands and locking my gaze with hers. “But don’t think I’ll ever let you live down how red you look right now.”
The other sisters cackled. Yeah, it wasn’t just my rear cheeks that were red.
I walked up the creaking porch steps of the Delta Kappa off-campus house. The email had been vague: “Come by tonight, we’ll give you your answer.” I figured I’d be sitting in the living room, maybe offered a soda, and either welcomed or politely dismissed.
A sign on the front door read, “It’s open. Come right in!” with a heart in place of the dot on the exclamation mark. With that invite, I let myself in.
Inside, the sorority house was quiet…too quiet. The air smelled faintly of vanilla candles from Bed Bath & Bodyworks, and the hall lights were incredibly dim. “Hello?” I called.
That’s when hands swept out of the shadows.
I gasped as laughter erupted all around me. Fingers wrapped around my arms and waist. A burlap sack was yanked down over my head before I could scream or see my attackers. I stumbled as they dragged me deeper into the house. My sneakers squeaked on tile flooring, and then repeatedly thudded against wood as we descended a narrow stairwell, the hands taking care not to let me fall.
The sack came off, but was immediately replaced by a satin pink sleep mask. Only now did I realize that this wasn’t a results meeting. This was the initiation.
“On the stool,” one of them commanded.
Hands steered me forward until my thighs hit wood. They pushed me down, bending me over the seat. My wrists were pulled toward the legs of the stool, bound at the wrist with silky scarves that smelled faintly of perfume. More silk lashed around my ankles to hold them to the stool legs. I wriggled experimentally and found no give to them. Heat rose in my face as I realized I was trussed up, blindfolded, helpless, in the sorority’s basement.
Then I heard her: the pledge leader. She was the reason I’d signed up in the first place. She had that goth rockstar presence: combat boots, ripped jeans, short hair dyed dark violet, tattooed arms, and eyeliner sharp enough to poke someone’s eyeball out if she turned around too suddenly. I’d been crushing on her since the first mixer. And now her voice purred like a leopard just inches from me.
“Well, well, well. Little Riley Gates, finally ready for her initiation trial.”
The sisters giggled. My throat suddenly felt dry.
“You’re going to recite the Delta Kappa pledge, word for word,” she continued. “And with each line, you’ll take a spank from the paddle. If you screw up, you get an extra spank. Understood?”
I nodded quickly, knowing that any word I’d speak at that second would be babbled gibberish.
“Good girl.”
The words made my body feel as if it were melting. But I was brought out of my stupor when I felt the air move behind me. SMACK!
The first blow landed across my backside, the sharp pain striking through my denim jeans. I jerked against the scarves and hissed in pain. The girls cheered.
“Line one!” the leader barked.
My voice shook for a second as I began. “I, Riley Gates, pledge my loyalty to my Delta Kappa sisters…”
SMACK!
“…and I swear to stand by us-um-them-”
SMACK!
“Try again,” the leader ordered.
“…and I swear to stand by them-”
SMACK!
“…through laughter, through tears…”
SMACK!
Each sting left my cheeks burning hotter. My words quavered, but I got through every line with no more screw-ups. Finally, the last line left my lips: “And I swear never to forget the bond we share.”
One final SMACK! echoed through the basement. My whole body trembled. I couldn’t help but let out a whine.
Silence…
And then, the scarves were untied without a word being spoken. The sleep mask was tugged away. I blinked and found myself staring directly into her smirk as candles burned around us.
“Not bad, rookie,” she said before pulling me into a firm hug that made me want to melt again. The other sisters piled in, wrapping me in a group embrace. The humiliation and the stinging all melted into something else: warmth and a sense of belonging.
“You’re one of us now,” the leader said, cupping my face between her hands and locking my gaze with hers. “But don’t think I’ll ever let you live down how red you look right now.”
The other sisters cackled. Yeah, it wasn’t just my rear cheeks that were red.
-
TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
- Posts: 1267
- Joined: 7 years ago
- Contact:
Day 19: Silence (MM/F)
She was barely a year into her acting career, but people were saying she had found her breakout role in the indie thriller Hostage of the Heart, which already had critics buzzing. But tonight, she wasn’t on set filming. She was in her dressing room’s bathroom, live on Instagram with a towel wrapped around her head, chatting with hundreds of fans.
Her iPhone balanced precariously against a stack of makeup palettes while the yellow-white glow of vanity bulbs bathed her tan skin in a soft, golden sheen. With a mascara wand in one hand and a blue velvet robe conveniently falling open to show off a lacy set of pink underwear, she leaned toward the lens with a grin.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she teased. “Yes, I’m doing this while drying my hair. It’s called multitasking.”
The comment section automatically scrolled up as more people joined and chimed in:
@glamqueen93: goddess
@shadowblaze: towel-haired queen
@cinephile13: Is this promo for HotH??
@lipglossfiend: ur skin is flawless omggg
@screamerfilmfan: this looks like the start of a horror movie ngl
@methodmaniac: girl is REALLY into method acting lmao
She chuckled, rolling her eyes at the horror movie comment. “Pfft… you guys said the same thing when my shampoo bottle fell over. You guys think everything’s a horr-”
Thud
The dull sound from behind the closed bathroom door cut through her sentence. Her smile faltered. She leaned forward, tapped the mute icon, and mouthed “be right back.”
The stream‘s audio went silent. The chat erupted in confusion:
@laceyrose: sound??
@trashboat2000: my phone bugging or nah
@omg_its_jules: she muted lol chill
@halloweyes: wait no fr this looks like a horror movie. feels like one too.
@prmoviewatcher: I think this is literally a scene from her film
She hesitated by the door. Before she could touch the knob, it creaked open. Black leather gloves slid through first, followed by two masked figures in black hoodies and sunglasses. They stalked toward her silently in her muted world.
Her eyes went wide. The mascara wand clattered to the floor. She turned back toward her phone, mouth opening in a scream-
…but the audience heard nothing. Only the surreal and soundless image of horror played out before them.
One figure lunged, their gloved hand clamping over her lips. Her hair towel slipped, sending brown and blonde curls tumbling free. The other tightened a black coil of cord, yanking her wrists together behind her back. Her lips shaped into frantic screams, but the audience couldn't hear them.
@kneecapcrusher: LMAOOOO this promo team is going CRAZY
@panicplush: nah bro she’s legit terrified
@shadowblaze: UNMUTE GIRL WE CAN'T HEAR YOU
@cinejunkie99: omg this is like her movieeeeee
@screamerfilmfan: SOMEONE CALL 911 WTF
The cords cinched. Her elbows lashed until her shoulders strained against the robe. A green washcloth stuffed into her mouth. Silver duct tape was wrapped again and again around her mouth and neck, sealing the gag in place. Mascara streaked down her cheeks as her eyes stared into the lens in a pleading manner. The mic caught nothing while the camera captured her mute, frantic performance of perfectly-acted fear…or was it?
“Perfect carry-handle,” one kidnapper said, tugging her robe sash. His lips moved visibly through the mask, but the sound never reached the stream.
They hauled her upright by the robe’s sash like luggage. She kicked once, catching the vanity, which caused the phone to topple onto its side. It caught her bound arms, gag sealing any sound away, and her makeup-stained eyes blazing in fear. Then the screen went black as the phone fell flat onto the table.
THANK YOU FOR WATCHING. THE STREAM HAS ENDED.
oOo
By morning, the clip had gone viral.
Some called it a marketing masterstroke. “Promo for her new film, 100%,” an indie film website confidentially asserted. Others swore they’d watched a real abduction happen live and were trying to reach out to the authorities.
Comment sections across different social media platforms were split:
@cineinsider: genius viral stunt
@paranormalgrl: no stunt. This was REAL.
@indiefilmhub: ngl…best PR campaign since Blair Witch.
@lostangel87: If this were real, why didn’t anyone do anything???
It looked staged. It also looked real. But at the moment, the silence from the studio made it impossible to know.
She was barely a year into her acting career, but people were saying she had found her breakout role in the indie thriller Hostage of the Heart, which already had critics buzzing. But tonight, she wasn’t on set filming. She was in her dressing room’s bathroom, live on Instagram with a towel wrapped around her head, chatting with hundreds of fans.
Her iPhone balanced precariously against a stack of makeup palettes while the yellow-white glow of vanity bulbs bathed her tan skin in a soft, golden sheen. With a mascara wand in one hand and a blue velvet robe conveniently falling open to show off a lacy set of pink underwear, she leaned toward the lens with a grin.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she teased. “Yes, I’m doing this while drying my hair. It’s called multitasking.”
The comment section automatically scrolled up as more people joined and chimed in:
@glamqueen93: goddess
@shadowblaze: towel-haired queen
@cinephile13: Is this promo for HotH??
@lipglossfiend: ur skin is flawless omggg
@screamerfilmfan: this looks like the start of a horror movie ngl
@methodmaniac: girl is REALLY into method acting lmao
She chuckled, rolling her eyes at the horror movie comment. “Pfft… you guys said the same thing when my shampoo bottle fell over. You guys think everything’s a horr-”
Thud
The dull sound from behind the closed bathroom door cut through her sentence. Her smile faltered. She leaned forward, tapped the mute icon, and mouthed “be right back.”
The stream‘s audio went silent. The chat erupted in confusion:
@laceyrose: sound??
@trashboat2000: my phone bugging or nah
@omg_its_jules: she muted lol chill
@halloweyes: wait no fr this looks like a horror movie. feels like one too.
@prmoviewatcher: I think this is literally a scene from her film
She hesitated by the door. Before she could touch the knob, it creaked open. Black leather gloves slid through first, followed by two masked figures in black hoodies and sunglasses. They stalked toward her silently in her muted world.
Her eyes went wide. The mascara wand clattered to the floor. She turned back toward her phone, mouth opening in a scream-
…but the audience heard nothing. Only the surreal and soundless image of horror played out before them.
One figure lunged, their gloved hand clamping over her lips. Her hair towel slipped, sending brown and blonde curls tumbling free. The other tightened a black coil of cord, yanking her wrists together behind her back. Her lips shaped into frantic screams, but the audience couldn't hear them.
@kneecapcrusher: LMAOOOO this promo team is going CRAZY
@panicplush: nah bro she’s legit terrified
@shadowblaze: UNMUTE GIRL WE CAN'T HEAR YOU
@cinejunkie99: omg this is like her movieeeeee
@screamerfilmfan: SOMEONE CALL 911 WTF
The cords cinched. Her elbows lashed until her shoulders strained against the robe. A green washcloth stuffed into her mouth. Silver duct tape was wrapped again and again around her mouth and neck, sealing the gag in place. Mascara streaked down her cheeks as her eyes stared into the lens in a pleading manner. The mic caught nothing while the camera captured her mute, frantic performance of perfectly-acted fear…or was it?
“Perfect carry-handle,” one kidnapper said, tugging her robe sash. His lips moved visibly through the mask, but the sound never reached the stream.
They hauled her upright by the robe’s sash like luggage. She kicked once, catching the vanity, which caused the phone to topple onto its side. It caught her bound arms, gag sealing any sound away, and her makeup-stained eyes blazing in fear. Then the screen went black as the phone fell flat onto the table.
THANK YOU FOR WATCHING. THE STREAM HAS ENDED.
oOo
By morning, the clip had gone viral.
Some called it a marketing masterstroke. “Promo for her new film, 100%,” an indie film website confidentially asserted. Others swore they’d watched a real abduction happen live and were trying to reach out to the authorities.
Comment sections across different social media platforms were split:
@cineinsider: genius viral stunt
@paranormalgrl: no stunt. This was REAL.
@indiefilmhub: ngl…best PR campaign since Blair Witch.
@lostangel87: If this were real, why didn’t anyone do anything???
It looked staged. It also looked real. But at the moment, the silence from the studio made it impossible to know.
-
TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
- Posts: 1267
- Joined: 7 years ago
- Contact:
Day 25: Escape (F/F)
(Note: Continued from Day 6's story, which can be read above)
Zatanna locked eyes with Cleo and then closed them. It was time to escape.
Her mind raced, trying not to panic. The sewage water was now nipping at her ankles, cold and smelling of decay. She took a deep breath through her nose and began to assess her situation: her arms ached, her legs were immobile, and the collar dug into her throat. Every muscle in her body screamed for her to thrash, but years of training had taught her to remain calm.
Zatanna opened her eyes and first focused on her hands. They were too far back to reach her gag, and her arms too strained to perform any delicate maneuvers. Her wrists were raw from her initial struggles, even with her jacket and blouse layered over her skin. Her fingers grazed to find the keyholes of the padlock, but she found she couldn’t reach them from her position. A surge of despair threatened to overwhelm her. “No. Every trap has a weak point. Even a smelly one like this. Just need to find that weak point,” she implored herself.
Zatanna's eyes flicked over her costume. Her fingers, though strained, wriggled just enough to reach the cuff of her left tuxedo sleeve. Hidden within was a small, thin metal shim used to pick locks during escape acts. She used her thumb to push it out of the seam, and the tiny metal sliver slid down her sleeve and into her palm.
Even with the shim now in her hands, it was useless on the padlocks with the keyhole out of reach. She needed to target another aspect of her restraints first.
Zatanna shifted her gaze. What about the collar around her neck? Her hands couldn't reach it, and her gag prevented her from using her tongue or mouth to poke at it.
A drop of cold water splashed on her face from the roof. The level was now up to her mid-calf. Cleo, watching from her perch on the crate, remained silent with a half-smile on her face as if she were watching one of her rats solve a puzzle to earn a treat. Only instead of a piece of cheese, it’d be her own life as the reward.
Zatanna had to improvise. She twisted her torso, her back grinding against the grimy metal of the grate, with the rust threatening to shred the back of her jacket. The collar held her firm, but the act of twisting pushed her shoulders in ways the designers hadn't anticipated. She felt her shoulder blades pinch together, and with a guttural grunt, she strained, rotating her entire upper body. It was a slow, agonizing process. Her muscles burned, but the collar shifted, twisting slightly on her throat. The change was minuscule, but it was enough.
Zatanna then pulled her arms forward, and the chains connecting to the grate strained and scraped against the metal. The friction was a grinding, horrible sound. "Mmph!" she grunted, a fresh wave of panic rising. “This isn't working!”
Zatanna took another deep breath and focused again. The grate behind her was solidly bolted down, but she felt a loose bolt where her right shoulder was pressing against it. With a massive surge of strength, she pushed her arm back and then slammed it forward, wedging the shim between the loose bolt and the metal grate. It wedged in place, a small but significant purchase.
Now, with a tiny bit of leverage, she was able to pull on the chain connecting her collar to the grate. The sound was a loud, rusty protest, but with a sudden, violent yank, the bolt on the collar's lock snapped. The industrial collar sprang open and fell with a ker-plonk into the rising water below.
The lack of pressure around her neck and the freedom to move her head were a rush of relief. Zatanna immediately began to work on her gag. With the collar gone, she could lower her chin and rub the canvas against her jacket-covered shoulder until the cloth slowly lowered. Opening her mouth as much as her jaw allowed, she spat the gag out with a groan of relief, the taste of air a blessing.
Cleo chuckled, leaning forward on the crate. "That was all done in one minute. You've still got the rest to go, though."
Zatanna ignored her. The water was now past her knees. She could’ve easily cast a spell and undo everything else with a bit of magic. But adrenaline turned that thought into an afterthought. If this rat girl had gone through the trouble of kidnapping and chaining her up for a show, then a show is what she would give.
She strained her head forward and placed the shim between her teeth. Carefully, she twisted her head, shuffling closer to the right arm chain. Her shoulder burned. Her teeth ached. But the shim touched metal.
She started picking. In a few seconds, a click and the shifting of metal teeth. Then…
CLICK
The padlock on her right wrist popped open. The weight of the chain fell away. Her right arm was free. Her now-free hand reached across her body, grabbed the shim from her teeth, and got to work on the left padlock while the water lapped at her hips. She grunted, twisted the shim, and jiggled the lock.
CLICK
She reached her free hands down to her ankle shackles. She pulled out the shim from her cuff and used it to pick the first lock. One ankle was free. Then the other!
Zatanna scrambled out of the basin, just as a sudden surge of murky water rushed through the grate, filling the chamber behind her. Had she been a few seconds late in escaping, she’d be submerged in sewer water right now.
But that wasn’t the case. She had escaped.
Zatanna rose to her feet, soaked and furious with her hair a drenched and dirty halo around her shoulders. Her ripped tuxedo jacket clung to her like shredded, wet paper. Her makeup was smudged, but her glare was razor sharp.
Cleo stood to meet Zatanna, her brown eyes sparkling with wonder. “Okay. First off…wow! That was amazing!”
Zatanna’s eyes didn’t flinch.
Cleo continued to pile on praise. “No magic. No backup. Just you, your muscles, and that lockpick.”
“You gassed me,” Zatanna said, her voice flat but controlled. “You chained me up, gagged me with a cloth whose origins I do not want to think about, and almost drowned me in sewer water.”
Cleo winced, her actions before the escape catching up to her. “Only a little! I knew you could do it.”
“You could’ve killed me!” Zatanna’s voice rose to a shout.
“But I didn’t…I knew you could do it,” she softly repeated, casting her eyes down. “I believed in you.”
Zatanna’s fists slowly unclenched.
Cleo stepped closer, looking sheepish. She pressed the lightning amulet into Zatanna’s palm. “Look…I’m sorry. I just wanted to see you up close…not from the rafters or behind a paywall. I wanted to know if the wonder and magic were real. And…they were.”
Zatanna stared at her for a long moment. Then, she turned to Sebastian. “…Your friend…does have a good nose,” she muttered, kneeling and offering him her gloved palm as she thought of Pocus. Sebastian nuzzled it gratefully.
Cleo blinked. “Wait…was that… a compliment?”
Zatanna smiled faintly. “How about you watch my show from the stage wings tonight?”
Cleo’s eyes widened as she gasped. “Are you serious?”
Zatanna didn’t answer at first. With some backward spells, her soaked clothes, hair, and aroma were refreshed to performance-ready condition. “Dead serious. You’ve seen me escape from up close. Might as well see my other tricks, too. Just one condition.”
“Anything.”
“You and your rats stay far away from my dressing room from now on.”
Cleo grinned widely. “Deal.”
(Note: Continued from Day 6's story, which can be read above)
Zatanna locked eyes with Cleo and then closed them. It was time to escape.
Her mind raced, trying not to panic. The sewage water was now nipping at her ankles, cold and smelling of decay. She took a deep breath through her nose and began to assess her situation: her arms ached, her legs were immobile, and the collar dug into her throat. Every muscle in her body screamed for her to thrash, but years of training had taught her to remain calm.
Zatanna opened her eyes and first focused on her hands. They were too far back to reach her gag, and her arms too strained to perform any delicate maneuvers. Her wrists were raw from her initial struggles, even with her jacket and blouse layered over her skin. Her fingers grazed to find the keyholes of the padlock, but she found she couldn’t reach them from her position. A surge of despair threatened to overwhelm her. “No. Every trap has a weak point. Even a smelly one like this. Just need to find that weak point,” she implored herself.
Zatanna's eyes flicked over her costume. Her fingers, though strained, wriggled just enough to reach the cuff of her left tuxedo sleeve. Hidden within was a small, thin metal shim used to pick locks during escape acts. She used her thumb to push it out of the seam, and the tiny metal sliver slid down her sleeve and into her palm.
Even with the shim now in her hands, it was useless on the padlocks with the keyhole out of reach. She needed to target another aspect of her restraints first.
Zatanna shifted her gaze. What about the collar around her neck? Her hands couldn't reach it, and her gag prevented her from using her tongue or mouth to poke at it.
A drop of cold water splashed on her face from the roof. The level was now up to her mid-calf. Cleo, watching from her perch on the crate, remained silent with a half-smile on her face as if she were watching one of her rats solve a puzzle to earn a treat. Only instead of a piece of cheese, it’d be her own life as the reward.
Zatanna had to improvise. She twisted her torso, her back grinding against the grimy metal of the grate, with the rust threatening to shred the back of her jacket. The collar held her firm, but the act of twisting pushed her shoulders in ways the designers hadn't anticipated. She felt her shoulder blades pinch together, and with a guttural grunt, she strained, rotating her entire upper body. It was a slow, agonizing process. Her muscles burned, but the collar shifted, twisting slightly on her throat. The change was minuscule, but it was enough.
Zatanna then pulled her arms forward, and the chains connecting to the grate strained and scraped against the metal. The friction was a grinding, horrible sound. "Mmph!" she grunted, a fresh wave of panic rising. “This isn't working!”
Zatanna took another deep breath and focused again. The grate behind her was solidly bolted down, but she felt a loose bolt where her right shoulder was pressing against it. With a massive surge of strength, she pushed her arm back and then slammed it forward, wedging the shim between the loose bolt and the metal grate. It wedged in place, a small but significant purchase.
Now, with a tiny bit of leverage, she was able to pull on the chain connecting her collar to the grate. The sound was a loud, rusty protest, but with a sudden, violent yank, the bolt on the collar's lock snapped. The industrial collar sprang open and fell with a ker-plonk into the rising water below.
The lack of pressure around her neck and the freedom to move her head were a rush of relief. Zatanna immediately began to work on her gag. With the collar gone, she could lower her chin and rub the canvas against her jacket-covered shoulder until the cloth slowly lowered. Opening her mouth as much as her jaw allowed, she spat the gag out with a groan of relief, the taste of air a blessing.
Cleo chuckled, leaning forward on the crate. "That was all done in one minute. You've still got the rest to go, though."
Zatanna ignored her. The water was now past her knees. She could’ve easily cast a spell and undo everything else with a bit of magic. But adrenaline turned that thought into an afterthought. If this rat girl had gone through the trouble of kidnapping and chaining her up for a show, then a show is what she would give.
She strained her head forward and placed the shim between her teeth. Carefully, she twisted her head, shuffling closer to the right arm chain. Her shoulder burned. Her teeth ached. But the shim touched metal.
She started picking. In a few seconds, a click and the shifting of metal teeth. Then…
CLICK
The padlock on her right wrist popped open. The weight of the chain fell away. Her right arm was free. Her now-free hand reached across her body, grabbed the shim from her teeth, and got to work on the left padlock while the water lapped at her hips. She grunted, twisted the shim, and jiggled the lock.
CLICK
She reached her free hands down to her ankle shackles. She pulled out the shim from her cuff and used it to pick the first lock. One ankle was free. Then the other!
Zatanna scrambled out of the basin, just as a sudden surge of murky water rushed through the grate, filling the chamber behind her. Had she been a few seconds late in escaping, she’d be submerged in sewer water right now.
But that wasn’t the case. She had escaped.
Zatanna rose to her feet, soaked and furious with her hair a drenched and dirty halo around her shoulders. Her ripped tuxedo jacket clung to her like shredded, wet paper. Her makeup was smudged, but her glare was razor sharp.
Cleo stood to meet Zatanna, her brown eyes sparkling with wonder. “Okay. First off…wow! That was amazing!”
Zatanna’s eyes didn’t flinch.
Cleo continued to pile on praise. “No magic. No backup. Just you, your muscles, and that lockpick.”
“You gassed me,” Zatanna said, her voice flat but controlled. “You chained me up, gagged me with a cloth whose origins I do not want to think about, and almost drowned me in sewer water.”
Cleo winced, her actions before the escape catching up to her. “Only a little! I knew you could do it.”
“You could’ve killed me!” Zatanna’s voice rose to a shout.
“But I didn’t…I knew you could do it,” she softly repeated, casting her eyes down. “I believed in you.”
Zatanna’s fists slowly unclenched.
Cleo stepped closer, looking sheepish. She pressed the lightning amulet into Zatanna’s palm. “Look…I’m sorry. I just wanted to see you up close…not from the rafters or behind a paywall. I wanted to know if the wonder and magic were real. And…they were.”
Zatanna stared at her for a long moment. Then, she turned to Sebastian. “…Your friend…does have a good nose,” she muttered, kneeling and offering him her gloved palm as she thought of Pocus. Sebastian nuzzled it gratefully.
Cleo blinked. “Wait…was that… a compliment?”
Zatanna smiled faintly. “How about you watch my show from the stage wings tonight?”
Cleo’s eyes widened as she gasped. “Are you serious?”
Zatanna didn’t answer at first. With some backward spells, her soaked clothes, hair, and aroma were refreshed to performance-ready condition. “Dead serious. You’ve seen me escape from up close. Might as well see my other tricks, too. Just one condition.”
“Anything.”
“You and your rats stay far away from my dressing room from now on.”
Cleo grinned widely. “Deal.”
-
TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
- Posts: 1267
- Joined: 7 years ago
- Contact:
Day 26: Latex (Creature/F)
“…containment breach at a laboratory on the west side. Officials say the specimen was being tested for military use. Citizens are advised-”
The news was on in the background, but Mei-Lin barely listened. She was too busy fighting the exhaustion that came after a long day of work. After changing into a comfy set of matching cranberry-colored sweats and brown, fluffy slippers, she tied her black hair into a ponytail, took the tea kettle off the stove, and poured a mug full.
Mei-Lin slumped onto the couch and reached for the remote. The anchor’s voice cut off mid-warning. She dragged a throw blanket across her lap and began to settle in for a rom-com marathon until she fell asleep.
That was when Mei-Lin noticed something from across the hallway.
It was small, black, and shiny. It could’ve been a muddy footprint, almost…except no one had walked across her kitchen floor since morning.
Mei-Lin shook her head. “I’m seeing things,” she muttered. “Gotta stop taking those double shifts…”
But then she heard a squeak.
Her eyes flicked to the hallway. Something glossy was creeping under the front door. At first, it appeared to be spilled oil, thin and sluggish. But then it lifted itself and slid forward like a snake.
Mei-Lin sat up straight. “What the…”
The black patch spread wider and thinner across the floor. When she stood from the couch, it froze. When she sat back down, it crept forward again. Her heartbeat thudded loudly in her ears.
“...hell?!” Mei-Lin grabbed her phone, but she wasn’t even sure who to call. The police? What would they do? Put this odd inkly blob in handcuffs? She dropped it back on the couch. “It’s just…something leaking,” she told herself. “It’s the pipes. Shitty paint from Ace Hardware. Whatever!”
Mei-Lin turned her attention back to the television to mentally escape from whatever this was with some mindless Hallmark slop, but the sound of faint, wet stretching made her glance up again. The glossy patch had climbed the wall.
Her stomach churned. “That…that’s not paint.”
The blob thinned itself against the ceiling, oozing forward silently until it was directly above her. Mei-Lin scrambled to her feet. The tea tossed and turned in the mug like a ship in a storm. She meant to bolt for the door. But when she moved, a long strand stretched from the ceiling and dropped. It landed on her forearm with a wet slap.
Mei-Lin screamed and tried to shake it off, but the latex clung on, stretching like slime before snapping tight against her clothing and skin. She clawed at it with her other hand, only for the black sheen to leap onto her fingers, coiling and spreading across her manicured nails and palm.
“No-no-no-NO!” she shrieked. She stumbled back into the couch, finally dropping her mug of tea across the floor.
The substance worked faster now. It rolled up her arm, layering itself around her wrist, her elbow, and then her shoulder. It felt warm, like hot candle wax. She tried ripping it away, but it only adhered tighter, sealing over her with a faint hiss.
By the time she thought to scream for help, the latex lashed across her mouth. Her cry was strangled into a muffled and desperate “MMPH!” as the black substance wrapped snugly over her lips, cheeks, and chin. It didn’t stop there.
She toppled sideways, thrashing, as her other arm was swallowed. The latex surged down her torso, compressing her arms to her body. Her legs kicked wildly, but the stuff surged downward next. Her thighs and ankles fused.
Within a minute, Mei-Lin was cocooned, encased from neck to toe in seamless and glossy black. She bucked and writhed, every muscle straining, but the shell flexed with her, holding firm, hugging tighter the more she resisted.
Finally, it crept up her face. Mei-Lin’s muffled whimpers rose into panicked squeals as the latex closed over her nose, and then her eyes and hair. Darkness swallowed her whole, save for two tiny breathing holes that the substance left at her nostrils.
Mei-Lin lay on her side, bound in black, chest heaving in shallow gasps through the twin pinholes. The latex began to peel itself away, but it didn’t release her. The cocoon remained, but a slick substance slithered across the carpet, under the door, and out into the night.
Wriggling and letting out strained and muffled sides, Mei-Lin shifted onto her stomach, accidentally landing on the television remote that had fallen off the couch at some point. The channel returned to the previous newscast. “Again, the adaptive latex is non-lethal but highly mobile and is able to replicate itself after being deployed. If spotted, avoid contact and alert authorities immediately.”
oOo
Across town, a middle-aged housewife hummed to herself as she folded laundry. She never noticed the glossy shadow squeezing in through the window behind her until it was too late…
“…containment breach at a laboratory on the west side. Officials say the specimen was being tested for military use. Citizens are advised-”
The news was on in the background, but Mei-Lin barely listened. She was too busy fighting the exhaustion that came after a long day of work. After changing into a comfy set of matching cranberry-colored sweats and brown, fluffy slippers, she tied her black hair into a ponytail, took the tea kettle off the stove, and poured a mug full.
Mei-Lin slumped onto the couch and reached for the remote. The anchor’s voice cut off mid-warning. She dragged a throw blanket across her lap and began to settle in for a rom-com marathon until she fell asleep.
That was when Mei-Lin noticed something from across the hallway.
It was small, black, and shiny. It could’ve been a muddy footprint, almost…except no one had walked across her kitchen floor since morning.
Mei-Lin shook her head. “I’m seeing things,” she muttered. “Gotta stop taking those double shifts…”
But then she heard a squeak.
Her eyes flicked to the hallway. Something glossy was creeping under the front door. At first, it appeared to be spilled oil, thin and sluggish. But then it lifted itself and slid forward like a snake.
Mei-Lin sat up straight. “What the…”
The black patch spread wider and thinner across the floor. When she stood from the couch, it froze. When she sat back down, it crept forward again. Her heartbeat thudded loudly in her ears.
“...hell?!” Mei-Lin grabbed her phone, but she wasn’t even sure who to call. The police? What would they do? Put this odd inkly blob in handcuffs? She dropped it back on the couch. “It’s just…something leaking,” she told herself. “It’s the pipes. Shitty paint from Ace Hardware. Whatever!”
Mei-Lin turned her attention back to the television to mentally escape from whatever this was with some mindless Hallmark slop, but the sound of faint, wet stretching made her glance up again. The glossy patch had climbed the wall.
Her stomach churned. “That…that’s not paint.”
The blob thinned itself against the ceiling, oozing forward silently until it was directly above her. Mei-Lin scrambled to her feet. The tea tossed and turned in the mug like a ship in a storm. She meant to bolt for the door. But when she moved, a long strand stretched from the ceiling and dropped. It landed on her forearm with a wet slap.
Mei-Lin screamed and tried to shake it off, but the latex clung on, stretching like slime before snapping tight against her clothing and skin. She clawed at it with her other hand, only for the black sheen to leap onto her fingers, coiling and spreading across her manicured nails and palm.
“No-no-no-NO!” she shrieked. She stumbled back into the couch, finally dropping her mug of tea across the floor.
The substance worked faster now. It rolled up her arm, layering itself around her wrist, her elbow, and then her shoulder. It felt warm, like hot candle wax. She tried ripping it away, but it only adhered tighter, sealing over her with a faint hiss.
By the time she thought to scream for help, the latex lashed across her mouth. Her cry was strangled into a muffled and desperate “MMPH!” as the black substance wrapped snugly over her lips, cheeks, and chin. It didn’t stop there.
She toppled sideways, thrashing, as her other arm was swallowed. The latex surged down her torso, compressing her arms to her body. Her legs kicked wildly, but the stuff surged downward next. Her thighs and ankles fused.
Within a minute, Mei-Lin was cocooned, encased from neck to toe in seamless and glossy black. She bucked and writhed, every muscle straining, but the shell flexed with her, holding firm, hugging tighter the more she resisted.
Finally, it crept up her face. Mei-Lin’s muffled whimpers rose into panicked squeals as the latex closed over her nose, and then her eyes and hair. Darkness swallowed her whole, save for two tiny breathing holes that the substance left at her nostrils.
Mei-Lin lay on her side, bound in black, chest heaving in shallow gasps through the twin pinholes. The latex began to peel itself away, but it didn’t release her. The cocoon remained, but a slick substance slithered across the carpet, under the door, and out into the night.
Wriggling and letting out strained and muffled sides, Mei-Lin shifted onto her stomach, accidentally landing on the television remote that had fallen off the couch at some point. The channel returned to the previous newscast. “Again, the adaptive latex is non-lethal but highly mobile and is able to replicate itself after being deployed. If spotted, avoid contact and alert authorities immediately.”
oOo
Across town, a middle-aged housewife hummed to herself as she folded laundry. She never noticed the glossy shadow squeezing in through the window behind her until it was too late…
-
TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
- Posts: 1267
- Joined: 7 years ago
- Contact:
Day 27: Sink (MMMFF/F)
The fluorescent lights in the kitchen of Bella’s Bistro buzzed like bees, casting their harsh glow over mountains of greasy, sauce-smeared plates. It was 19-year-old Mika Bonri’s first night as a busgirl, and she was already rethinking her decision to beg her friend, a hostess who had the night off today, for this job. Marinara sauce had splattered onto the apron tied over her black dress pants, mozzarella clung stubbornly to her white blouse’s sleeves, and the smell of garlic butter clung to the red bandana headscarf tied over her curly black hair and the black bow tie around her neck. She had barely survived the dinner rush.
That’s when Marco, the head chef with a thick mustache and a booming voice, pointed a finger at her. “Newbie’s turn for the sink,” he announced.
The rest of the crew, two greasy line cooks, Lena the waitress, and Lou the sous-chef, crowded close around Mika, grinning like hyenas.
“Um…what’s going on?” Mika nervously laughed.
“Tradition,” Lena answered with a predatory grin.
Suddenly, hands were set upon her. Her wrists were balled into fists and bound tight with duct tape. Oversized yellow dish gloves squeaked as they were yanked over the tape, with more wrapped over each end of the glove so they couldn’t be pulled off. A dripping sponge was slapped onto one glove, a limp dish towel onto the other, both taped in place.
“Perfect,” Marco chuckled.
Then came the gag. A sponge was stuffed into her mouth, and a blue-striped dish towel was tied over her mouth to hold it in. The faint taste of dish soap tainted her tongue. “HMM! WMMT THMM FMMK?” she muffled.
“And for the finishing touch,” Lou declared, tying her ankles together with an apron string. It’d be loose enough for her to shuffle around. The kitchen roared with laughter.
“Alright, busgirl. Wash up!” Marco ordered with a grin.
Mika was hoping this was some weird joke and they’d untie her after a few seconds. But it was clear as the staff moved to clean up the front of the house that they were serious about her going through this in this condition. And it wasn’t like she could say “screw it” and storm out with her looking like some weird performance piece for kitchen servitude.
Mika shuffled to the mountain of plates. Alfredo-slick bowls, greasy lasagna pans, and pizza trays caked with cheese and dough residue were all unwelcomely waiting for her. She plunged her absurdly customized glove into the suds. The sponge flopped uselessly, and the towel dragged dishes across the sink’s steel surface. She elbowed plates closer, used her shoulders to nudge the rinsing nozzle, and leaned her whole body into the sink. Water splashed up her arms and apron, soaking her uniform. The gag grew damp as water occasionally splashed onto the towel, the smell of soap wafting into her nose, but she kept scrubbing.
An hour passed. Little by little, the towers of saucy dishes dwindled in height. By the time the last fork was polished, her arms ached, but, even with everything working against her, she had done it.
Marco poked his head back in. “Not bad, Bonri. You survived the gauntlet.” He sliced the tape loose, tugged the gag free, and slapped her on the back. “Come back tomorrow, same time. You’re one of us now.”
As the crew began to file out, Mika stood alone in the humming kitchen, the nozzle of the sink dripping excess water. The thought of doing this again tomorrow, even if this was just some one-night hazing ritual, transformed her pride into a bubbling rage. Her eyes flicked back to the dripping nozzle. Without a second thought, she grabbed a piece of notebook paper and the pen used to jot down delivery orders. She gripped the pen in a stranglehold and scribbled her message out.
“Thanks for the ‘warm welcome,’ but I quit. Good luck with the mess. -Mika”
She pinned it to the corkboard, then twisted the faucet wide open. As water began to pour, she balled up the dish towel and clogged the drain. She stripped off her apron and donned her leather jacket. As Mika closed the door to the kitchen, she spied the water level beginning to creep over the sink and drip onto the floor.
Mika slipped out into the cool night air with a smirk. Only Lena stayed behind to lock the door. “Everything okay?” she asked.
“Uh-huh. Just had to wash up one last time,” Mika lied.
“No prob.” Lena locked the door and walked toward her call. “See you tomorrow!”
“Mmm-hmm,” was Mika’s noncommittal reply. No disrespect to the friend who got her this job, but damn her for not mentioning this twisted tradition. Let them clean up their own mess.
Mika’s first grueling shift at Bella’s Bistro was also her last and wettest one.
The fluorescent lights in the kitchen of Bella’s Bistro buzzed like bees, casting their harsh glow over mountains of greasy, sauce-smeared plates. It was 19-year-old Mika Bonri’s first night as a busgirl, and she was already rethinking her decision to beg her friend, a hostess who had the night off today, for this job. Marinara sauce had splattered onto the apron tied over her black dress pants, mozzarella clung stubbornly to her white blouse’s sleeves, and the smell of garlic butter clung to the red bandana headscarf tied over her curly black hair and the black bow tie around her neck. She had barely survived the dinner rush.
That’s when Marco, the head chef with a thick mustache and a booming voice, pointed a finger at her. “Newbie’s turn for the sink,” he announced.
The rest of the crew, two greasy line cooks, Lena the waitress, and Lou the sous-chef, crowded close around Mika, grinning like hyenas.
“Um…what’s going on?” Mika nervously laughed.
“Tradition,” Lena answered with a predatory grin.
Suddenly, hands were set upon her. Her wrists were balled into fists and bound tight with duct tape. Oversized yellow dish gloves squeaked as they were yanked over the tape, with more wrapped over each end of the glove so they couldn’t be pulled off. A dripping sponge was slapped onto one glove, a limp dish towel onto the other, both taped in place.
“Perfect,” Marco chuckled.
Then came the gag. A sponge was stuffed into her mouth, and a blue-striped dish towel was tied over her mouth to hold it in. The faint taste of dish soap tainted her tongue. “HMM! WMMT THMM FMMK?” she muffled.
“And for the finishing touch,” Lou declared, tying her ankles together with an apron string. It’d be loose enough for her to shuffle around. The kitchen roared with laughter.
“Alright, busgirl. Wash up!” Marco ordered with a grin.
Mika was hoping this was some weird joke and they’d untie her after a few seconds. But it was clear as the staff moved to clean up the front of the house that they were serious about her going through this in this condition. And it wasn’t like she could say “screw it” and storm out with her looking like some weird performance piece for kitchen servitude.
Mika shuffled to the mountain of plates. Alfredo-slick bowls, greasy lasagna pans, and pizza trays caked with cheese and dough residue were all unwelcomely waiting for her. She plunged her absurdly customized glove into the suds. The sponge flopped uselessly, and the towel dragged dishes across the sink’s steel surface. She elbowed plates closer, used her shoulders to nudge the rinsing nozzle, and leaned her whole body into the sink. Water splashed up her arms and apron, soaking her uniform. The gag grew damp as water occasionally splashed onto the towel, the smell of soap wafting into her nose, but she kept scrubbing.
An hour passed. Little by little, the towers of saucy dishes dwindled in height. By the time the last fork was polished, her arms ached, but, even with everything working against her, she had done it.
Marco poked his head back in. “Not bad, Bonri. You survived the gauntlet.” He sliced the tape loose, tugged the gag free, and slapped her on the back. “Come back tomorrow, same time. You’re one of us now.”
As the crew began to file out, Mika stood alone in the humming kitchen, the nozzle of the sink dripping excess water. The thought of doing this again tomorrow, even if this was just some one-night hazing ritual, transformed her pride into a bubbling rage. Her eyes flicked back to the dripping nozzle. Without a second thought, she grabbed a piece of notebook paper and the pen used to jot down delivery orders. She gripped the pen in a stranglehold and scribbled her message out.
“Thanks for the ‘warm welcome,’ but I quit. Good luck with the mess. -Mika”
She pinned it to the corkboard, then twisted the faucet wide open. As water began to pour, she balled up the dish towel and clogged the drain. She stripped off her apron and donned her leather jacket. As Mika closed the door to the kitchen, she spied the water level beginning to creep over the sink and drip onto the floor.
Mika slipped out into the cool night air with a smirk. Only Lena stayed behind to lock the door. “Everything okay?” she asked.
“Uh-huh. Just had to wash up one last time,” Mika lied.
“No prob.” Lena locked the door and walked toward her call. “See you tomorrow!”
“Mmm-hmm,” was Mika’s noncommittal reply. No disrespect to the friend who got her this job, but damn her for not mentioning this twisted tradition. Let them clean up their own mess.
Mika’s first grueling shift at Bella’s Bistro was also her last and wettest one.
-
TamatoaShiny123
- Millennial Club
- Posts: 1267
- Joined: 7 years ago
- Contact:
Day 30: Comfort (MM/F)
Danielle Warson’s life was a never-ending stream of work. Her phone buzzed relentlessly: emails from her boss about design ideas at 2 AM, client demands before dawn, and overlapping meeting reminders. As the executive assistant to fashion mogul Jack Derricks, she was the glue holding his empire together, scheduling his flights around the world, soothing his tantrums, and drafting his fashion show speeches. Each person walking on the street below the office acted as a constant reminder of the life she hadn’t lived in two years since taking the job in an effort to advance her career. No dinners with friends or no lazy Sunday afternoons; just the grind of being an indispensable cog in the machine.
That dawn, as she left her high-rise apartment in a pale blue blouse, a short white dress, and a white plastic headband, her black heels clicked on the sidewalk. Her phone vibrated with another urgent task Jack had just assigned her. She sighed as she rubbed her temples, unaware of the black van idling in the alley.
The kidnapping was a blur. The van door was thrown open, a black hood was yanked over her head, and hands gripped her arms, shoving her into a cushioned upright seat. Her heart raced as her hands were pulled behind her and secured with a ziptie. Her mind spun with questions: Who are they? What do they want? The hood’s thick fabric smelled like sweat and canvas, stifling her breath into panicked huffs.
The van lurched forward, tires screeching, and then…silence. Her phone had been knocked from her hands and left behind in the melee. No text alerts, no new events being added to the calendar, and no demands being thrust upon her. Just the hum of the engine and her own heartbeat, loud in the darkness. Danielle clung to that silence, a strange calm beneath her fear, as if the world had finally paused long enough for her to breathe.
oOo
The next thing she knew, the van stopped, and she was dragged into a building. Two sets of hands set her on a bed and snipped the ziptie off. They lay her in a spreadeagle position, and then bound her wrists, looping the coarse ropes around each one and tying them to the headboard’s metal frame. The knots were firm but not cruel, leaving just enough slack to avoid pain and for her to move her limbs a bit. Her ankles were next, each tied with a single rope to the footboard’s posts, the knots loose enough for her to shift her legs slightly.
A hand removed the hood, revealing Danielle’s flushed face and her short brown hair, with her headband tangled in the curls from the struggle. She blinked against the dim light of a motel room. The space was dated but clean; faded floral wallpaper, a flickering lamp, and a bed with a sagging mattress that looked softer than her own back home. She next gazed upon two masked men, one short and the other tall. “You’ve got the wrong person!” she blurted, yanking at the ropes. The metal headboard rattled, but the knots held.
The tall kidnapper shook his head, his black ski mask covering all but his eyes. “No mistake, Miss Warson. Your boss will pay up if he wants his assistant back.”
The word “boss” hit like a brick. Danielle’s body sagged against the ropes, exhaustion washing over her. For a second, this ordeal made her forget about her work life. Her boss, Jack, would pay to get her back; she was the one who managed his schedule and his life. She’d spent two years tethered to his demands. The only reason she wasn’t now was because she had been kidnapped.
But here, tied to this bed, she couldn’t answer his calls or fix his mistakes. For the first time in forever, she felt…relaxed.
oOo
Hours passed. The kidnappers brought her food on paper plates throughout the day as they entered and exited the room, likely contacting Jack’s office for the ransom. She enjoyed warm noodles with soy sauce, buttered toast, orange juice, and even a slice of cherry pie. Danielle ate each plate slowly, savoring the warmth of the noodles and the tartness of the pie, unhurried by email pings or deadlines. After carefully helping her to the room’s toilet, they tied her back to the bed and set a TV remote beside her bound hand, with her thumb just able to nudge the buttons.
“Put on whatever you want,” the shorter one said.
Danielle flipped through the channels, settling on an old episode of Friends, a comfort show she hadn’t gotten to watch in over a year. The kidnappers slept on the room’s couch that night. Meanwhile, Danielle fell into a deep, uninterrupted sleep.
oOo
By the following evening, Danielle was curled into the pillow, her hair mussed, her cheeks flushed from unbroken rest and contentment. The ropes felt like grounding limb coddles.
She looked up as the motel room’s door opened. The kidnappers returned, their masks still on, carrying a takeout bag. “Good news,” the tall one announced. “Your boss finally agreed to pay up. You’ll be free tomorrow morning.”
Danielle’s heart dropped. She sat up, the ropes tugging her wrists, her fingers gripping them as if to hold on. “No, please! Don’t let me go yet!”
The kidnappers froze, exchanging bewildered looks through their masks.
“You don’t understand,” Danielle continued, her voice cracking with desperation. “This is the best sleep and food I’ve gotten in years! Just…one more week. Please? Just say you want more money! That you want to show them you mean business! I’ll say you hogtied me on a cold, hard floor and treated me like dirt the entire time! I won’t tell anyone. Just don’t make me go back yet, I’m begging you!” Tears welled in her eyes, not from fear but from the weight of a life she dreaded returning to.
The shorter one hesitated, then set the takeout bag on the bed, sliding fries and a burger within reach. “Eat first,” he muttered, his voice softer than before. “We’ll talk about it after.”
Danielle smiled, tears slipping down her cheeks, and sank back into the pillows. The ropes tugged gently at her wrists, but she didn’t dare fight them. She had never felt more comfortable.
Danielle Warson’s life was a never-ending stream of work. Her phone buzzed relentlessly: emails from her boss about design ideas at 2 AM, client demands before dawn, and overlapping meeting reminders. As the executive assistant to fashion mogul Jack Derricks, she was the glue holding his empire together, scheduling his flights around the world, soothing his tantrums, and drafting his fashion show speeches. Each person walking on the street below the office acted as a constant reminder of the life she hadn’t lived in two years since taking the job in an effort to advance her career. No dinners with friends or no lazy Sunday afternoons; just the grind of being an indispensable cog in the machine.
That dawn, as she left her high-rise apartment in a pale blue blouse, a short white dress, and a white plastic headband, her black heels clicked on the sidewalk. Her phone vibrated with another urgent task Jack had just assigned her. She sighed as she rubbed her temples, unaware of the black van idling in the alley.
The kidnapping was a blur. The van door was thrown open, a black hood was yanked over her head, and hands gripped her arms, shoving her into a cushioned upright seat. Her heart raced as her hands were pulled behind her and secured with a ziptie. Her mind spun with questions: Who are they? What do they want? The hood’s thick fabric smelled like sweat and canvas, stifling her breath into panicked huffs.
The van lurched forward, tires screeching, and then…silence. Her phone had been knocked from her hands and left behind in the melee. No text alerts, no new events being added to the calendar, and no demands being thrust upon her. Just the hum of the engine and her own heartbeat, loud in the darkness. Danielle clung to that silence, a strange calm beneath her fear, as if the world had finally paused long enough for her to breathe.
oOo
The next thing she knew, the van stopped, and she was dragged into a building. Two sets of hands set her on a bed and snipped the ziptie off. They lay her in a spreadeagle position, and then bound her wrists, looping the coarse ropes around each one and tying them to the headboard’s metal frame. The knots were firm but not cruel, leaving just enough slack to avoid pain and for her to move her limbs a bit. Her ankles were next, each tied with a single rope to the footboard’s posts, the knots loose enough for her to shift her legs slightly.
A hand removed the hood, revealing Danielle’s flushed face and her short brown hair, with her headband tangled in the curls from the struggle. She blinked against the dim light of a motel room. The space was dated but clean; faded floral wallpaper, a flickering lamp, and a bed with a sagging mattress that looked softer than her own back home. She next gazed upon two masked men, one short and the other tall. “You’ve got the wrong person!” she blurted, yanking at the ropes. The metal headboard rattled, but the knots held.
The tall kidnapper shook his head, his black ski mask covering all but his eyes. “No mistake, Miss Warson. Your boss will pay up if he wants his assistant back.”
The word “boss” hit like a brick. Danielle’s body sagged against the ropes, exhaustion washing over her. For a second, this ordeal made her forget about her work life. Her boss, Jack, would pay to get her back; she was the one who managed his schedule and his life. She’d spent two years tethered to his demands. The only reason she wasn’t now was because she had been kidnapped.
But here, tied to this bed, she couldn’t answer his calls or fix his mistakes. For the first time in forever, she felt…relaxed.
oOo
Hours passed. The kidnappers brought her food on paper plates throughout the day as they entered and exited the room, likely contacting Jack’s office for the ransom. She enjoyed warm noodles with soy sauce, buttered toast, orange juice, and even a slice of cherry pie. Danielle ate each plate slowly, savoring the warmth of the noodles and the tartness of the pie, unhurried by email pings or deadlines. After carefully helping her to the room’s toilet, they tied her back to the bed and set a TV remote beside her bound hand, with her thumb just able to nudge the buttons.
“Put on whatever you want,” the shorter one said.
Danielle flipped through the channels, settling on an old episode of Friends, a comfort show she hadn’t gotten to watch in over a year. The kidnappers slept on the room’s couch that night. Meanwhile, Danielle fell into a deep, uninterrupted sleep.
oOo
By the following evening, Danielle was curled into the pillow, her hair mussed, her cheeks flushed from unbroken rest and contentment. The ropes felt like grounding limb coddles.
She looked up as the motel room’s door opened. The kidnappers returned, their masks still on, carrying a takeout bag. “Good news,” the tall one announced. “Your boss finally agreed to pay up. You’ll be free tomorrow morning.”
Danielle’s heart dropped. She sat up, the ropes tugging her wrists, her fingers gripping them as if to hold on. “No, please! Don’t let me go yet!”
The kidnappers froze, exchanging bewildered looks through their masks.
“You don’t understand,” Danielle continued, her voice cracking with desperation. “This is the best sleep and food I’ve gotten in years! Just…one more week. Please? Just say you want more money! That you want to show them you mean business! I’ll say you hogtied me on a cold, hard floor and treated me like dirt the entire time! I won’t tell anyone. Just don’t make me go back yet, I’m begging you!” Tears welled in her eyes, not from fear but from the weight of a life she dreaded returning to.
The shorter one hesitated, then set the takeout bag on the bed, sliding fries and a burger within reach. “Eat first,” he muttered, his voice softer than before. “We’ll talk about it after.”
Danielle smiled, tears slipping down her cheeks, and sank back into the pillows. The ropes tugged gently at her wrists, but she didn’t dare fight them. She had never felt more comfortable.