Making a Point about Backgammon

Making a Point about Backgammon

Ashley B. D. Zacharias

When Craig answered the phone, he immediately recognized Leslie’s voice.

“I haven’t heard from you for a while,” he said, somewhat tentatively. He had been wondering if he had crossed the line the last time he assisted her. She had a habit of playing backgammon online and punishing herself when she lost. He sometimes oversaw her punishments to ensure her safety. The last time she had lost badly and, though her self-imposed punishment had been long and elaborate, he had augmented it by asking her to keep her nipples permanently pierced. It had been the first time that he had taken the initiative and added something extra to her punishment. When he had not heard from her for several weeks, he feared that she had taken offence; or worse, lost her trust in him.

“I’m sorry about that,” she replied with forced casualness. “I’ve been a little busy.”

“I’m glad to hear that you’re all right.”

“I’m wearing your safety pins, as you specified.” She was referring to the penalty that he had imposed without her prior sanction.

The tone of her voice was flat. He could not interpret it. Was she pleased? Angry? Resigned? It was significant that she felt obligated to report to him about the punishment that he has assigned, even though he had been clear that her compliance was voluntary. He was not certain how he should answer.

When he did not reply immediately, she continued, “I’ll be able to change them for proper rings in another two weeks, as you permitted in your instruction. The piercings in my nipples have healed nicely, so that won’t be a problem. I’m looking forward to being able to wear something more comfortable in my bra.”

“I’m pleased to hear that it’s working out all right. I was worried that maybe something might go wrong.”

“Nothing wrong. Everything is good. At least, as good as it can be, considering that I don’t like having pierced nipples. It feels like I have been wearing the safety pins in them for a long time.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’m not. I took a chance and I lost. I can accept the penalty that I earned.”

“Okay.” Craig was relieved that she did not seem to be holding a grudge against him. He never understood why his friend liked playing backgammon and then punishing herself when she lost, but he wanted to be able to keep helping keep her safe.

“Anyway, I’m calling because I’ve been playing backgammon on the Internet again and I just lost rather badly yesterday. I was wondering if you’d like to help me once more.”

His heart sank. He never liked helping her punish herself, but he did not dare refuse because there was too much risk that she would accidentally injure herself or even die if he let her do it alone. “You didn’t ask me to watch you play the game?” Previously, she had asked him to watch when she played high-stakes games, presumably to ensure that she did not cheat on herself by ignoring her losses.

“No. I thought that it would be too boring for you. I’ve been playing a lot over the past few weeks and mostly I win. When I’ve lost, it has only been for minor penalties that I could impose on myself without your help. Things like wearing a tight chain pressing into my crotch while I take a walk in the park or not wearing a bra under a tee-shirt when I go shopping. Little things that I could do myself without any risk. Yesterday, though, I got a lot of bad rolls and I’m in pretty deep. I was wondering if you’d watch over me sometime when I pay this one off.”

“Sure. When?”

There was a long pause. Craig knew that she had to gather her courage before committing herself to a specific time. When she finally spoke there was a slight quaver in her voice, “Would this weekend be okay for you?” She must something in mind that would be especially hard. “If not, then some other weekend soon?”

“This weekend is okay. What time?”

She paused again, then said, “Well, that’s the thing. It’ll take all weekend. It’s going to be a long, drawn out affair.” She rushed to add, “But you don’t have to be there all the time. You just have to check in once in a while to make sure that I’m still all right and that everything is proceeding as it’s supposed to. If you could drop by every few hours or so, that’d be all the help that I need. It doesn’t even have to be that often. It’s only really important that you drop by for a few minutes each morning and evening.”

“Are you sure about that?” Craig would have preferred to be present all the time if she were doing something extreme.

“Oh, yes. I’m sure.”

“Okay, then. When should I come over?”

“If you could drop by on Friday evening? Say about nine o’clock? Would that be all right with you?”

“I’ll be at your place at nine on Friday.”

“I appreciate this.”

She sounded more dismayed than appreciative.

As requested, on Friday, Craig knocked on Leslie’s door sharply at nine. He was not surprised when she answered promptly; undoubtedly, she had been waiting anxiously for his arrival.

She was dressed only in a fluffy white bathrobe. Her feet were bare. He suspected that she was naked underneath.

It was no surprise when she handed him five sealed envelopes – her preferred means of scheduling her punishment was to have him open envelopes, one at a time, and follow the instructions contained within. He leafed through them quickly. Times were written on the outside of each: 9 PM Friday Evening, 9 AM Saturday Morning, 5 PM Saturday Afternoon, 9 AM Sunday Morning, 9 PM Sunday Evening.

As he leafed through them, she commented, “The times are approximate. If you want to sleep in, you can come later in the mornings, ten or even eleven o’clock. The most important time is Saturday afternoon at five. If you can’t open it exactly at five, be sure to open it earlier. It’s important that that one not be opened later. Also, you’re welcome to come by at any other time, day or night, just to look in on me, but that’s not really required.”

He could tell by the tone in her voice that she making a reluctant concession; that she knew that she needed closer supervision than that. “I understand. I’ll be able to keep pretty close to your schedule.” He could see no reason to reassure her by telling her that he intended to watch her more closely than the minimum that she had specified.

“Thanks.” She smiled weakly. “I do appreciate your help.”

He did not reply.

“I better get started, then, so that you can get back home,” she said. “Come on into the living room and you can open the first envelope.”

He followed her into her living room. She led him past a pole lamp that was partially blocking the doorway. The shade had been removed and he had to squint against the glare of the strong bulb. The living room was brightly lit by that lamp and by another identical one in the archway to the dining room. To his surprise, he saw that the room had been emptied of all furniture and decoration, including the drapes and rugs, leaving nothing but bare walls and a hardwood floor. His eye was drawn to a white plastic bucket that had been placed in the middle of the room.

He tore open the envelope marked “9 PM Friday Evening” and read:

Confinement: The chain that I lock about my ankle will confine me to this room for the duration of my penalty. Potential public exposure will ensure my discomfort. Boredom is a significant part of the penalty. Please do not talk to me or entertain me in any way when you come to check on me. If you like, you need only glance through a window to ensure that I am still okay. When the time comes to release me, you will find the key for the padlock hanging on the far wall.

He heard a sharp click and, when he looked up, he saw that Leslie had padlocked a chrome-plated chain – the kind that would be used in a leash for a large dog – about her ankle. The chain had small links so the padlock had to be small. Even so, it looked strong enough to withstand any attempt to break it by hand. The loop around her ankle was not tight, but it would not slip over her foot. His eye followed the length of the chain across the floor to the corner of the outer walls. There, it disappeared through a small hole that had been neatly drilled into the hardwood floor. Undoubtedly the other end was securely fastened in the basement, far out of her reach. Prompted by the note, he looked around and saw that a small brass key was hanging from a hook in the opposite corner of the room.

He could not tell exactly how far the chain would extend but was certain that it would keep her from reaching either the key to unlock her chain or the two pole lamps to turn them off.

The only things that she could reach were a plastic bucket and a case of bottled water. The water had been placed in the corner near where the chain disappeared into the floor. The bucket, though, was sitting in the center of the floor. There was a chain threaded through the handle that led to an eyebolt that had been screwed into the wall furthest from the corned where Leslie was chained. The geometry was clear to Craig. The chain on her ankle extending in one direction and the chain on the bucket extending in the opposite direction meant that she would be able to reach the bucket but not move it any closer to her. If she were going to be confined to this room for two days, the purpose of the bucket was obvious; and she would have to use it in its present location.

Leslie backed into the corner of the room where the chain disappeared through the floor and slipped the robe from her body, leaving herself naked. She held it out to him. “Please take this out of the room.”

The reason for her backing into the corner before disrobing was immediately clear to him. He house was situated on a corner lot. There were large picture windows on both outer walls that extended to within eighteen inches of the floor. The only place in the room that she would not be easily seen from the street through one window or the other was either backed into the corner of the room or lying flat on the floor near the windows. Even so, he suspected that if a person were to press his face to the window and peer in at an acute angle, he would be able to see her nude body no matter how she positioned herself. Worse, if the person went into her back yard and looked through the dining room window, they would be able to see into the corner where she was hiding quite clearly. There was no place in the room that she could hide without being visible through one window or another. And, being unable to extinguish the lamps that were shining brightly out of her reach, she would never benefit from the cover of darkness. If she stayed huddled in the corner, it was unlikely that anyone would either press their face to her living room windows or go into her back yard to peer through the dining room window. However, if she were careless and flash herself so that a passerby noticed something untoward, he would likely decide to investigate further. If she were not constantly vigilant, her nudity would become a public spectacle.

After he took the robe from her outstretched hand, he stared openly at her naked body. She was good to look at, not too thin but nicely rounded everywhere. He had seen her naked close up when he had monitored her previous punishments, but he would never tire of the view. He knew that she did not like to be ogled by anyone, especially her platonic friend, but she accepted it as part of her penalty for losing backgammon games and needing his assistance in paying her penalties. Though he was happily married and had always resisted taking advantage of her when she was helpless, she knew that he enjoyed the temptation of her body even though he had to work hard to resist it.

Looking at her, he noted that safety pins still pierced both nipples; the catches still crimped shut so that they could not be removed without cutting them. Soon she would be replacing them with proper rings or bars. It was a pity. The crudeness of the safety pins had a brutal appearance that emphasized their purpose: to punish her. The well-crafted jewelry that would replace them would look gentle in comparison. Once again, he wondered if he had overstepped his bounds when he had asked her to make her piercings permanent.

“There’s a key in the envelope so that you can use to lock the front door. I don’t want any strangers coming in.” She smiled. Her punishment had barely begun; she could still smile. Knowing her preference for punishments that grew more severe over time, he expected that she would not smile again until Sunday night.

But she had been clear in her instruction that that he was not giving her the comfort of any conversation. He said nothing as he pocketed the key and left the room. On his way out, he dropped the robe in a heap in the middle of the foyer near the lamp. She could see it, but not reach it; that seemed to be the theme of this stage of her punishment – to have the means of alleviating her discomfort in view but unattainable. When he left the house, he locked the door behind him and then pushed on the knob to make sure that it was tightly latched.

As he drove away, he glanced at her living room window. Leslie’s head was visible in the corner, partly silhouetted by the lamp that shone brightly behind from the far side of the room. She was watching him leave; watching her last hope of comfort disappear down the street.

He wouldn’t wait until morning to check on her. Before he went to bed, he would swing by again.

This was only the first hour of the first stage of her punishment, but Leslie already wanted the weekend to be over. She huddled in the corner of the room and crossed her arms over her naked breasts. It made no difference. If anyone saw her they would know that she was nude.

Huddled in the only corner of the room that the chain permitted, she could not be seen from either of her living room windows unless someone pressed their face against it. The dining room window was another matter entirely. If someone stood in the middle of her back yard, they would be able to see her clearly and she would never know. It was late autumn; the sun had set long ago and her undraped windows were shining like beacons beckoning to any voyeur who happened by. From the inside, the light turned all the windows into dark sheets of imperfect mirror. Leslie would be able to see a face that was close enough to be illuminated by her lamps, but could not distinguish anything in the dark beyond their range.

She could not resist watching the dining room window, constantly fearful that some perverted peeping tom would suddenly spring up and leer at her with hungry eyes.

Her only hope was that no one would dare walk across her front lawn and press their nose against her window for fear of being reported by a neighbor. Her back yard would be less problematic for a voyeur. It was unfenced so anyone could easily slip back there in the dark to see what he could see.

And if she were seen, what then? A voyeur could stand at her dining room window and stare for as long as he wished, especially in the middle of the night when the neighbors were in bed and their windows were dark.

The voyeur would see her naked, would see the chain about her ankle and know that she was helpless. Would he take advantage of her predicament; escalate beyond simply peeping at her? Would he be incited to break through a basement window or force her back door, come into the living room and rape her? And then strangle her to ensure that she could not identify him to the police?

The scenario seemed unlikely. Most likely no one would bother even glancing through her window on a chilly November night. And if someone did glance through the front window, even a pervert, he would not peer into the corner; he would see the barren room, think the house empty, and continue on his way.

Another, more dangerous scenario was that teenagers or young men would see the empty house, think it unoccupied, and break in without seeing her, hoping to find something to steal. But in that scenario, all she had to do was scream as soon as she heard them enter and they would flee before they came into the living room and saw that she was helpless. Petty thieves would not want to break into an occupied house.

As one slow minute after another crawled by, she struggled to convince herself that she was relatively safe but failed. No matter what scenario she spun in her mind, she was keenly aware that it was based on assumptions that could be false. Even if the odds were in her favor, the dice could always land snake-eyes and that she could find herself helpless in the hands of a murderer.

That possibility, though small, was real. And fear of that possibility was the punishment that she had forced herself to suffer all night long.

As the night wore on, she grew colder. Just before nine, she had turned the thermostat down to sixty degrees. She judged that to be a temperature that would be adequate to keep her acutely uncomfortable but not low enough to put her in danger of hypothermia. Once the temperature dropped that low, it would stay there until she was released on Sunday and permitted to reach the thermostat again.

Her arms pimpled with gooseflesh and she began to shiver slightly.

There were no clocks in view so she did not know if only an hour had passed or if the sun would be rising soon. She suspected that less time had passed than she hoped. The sun rose at about six in the morning now and she was certain that nowhere near nine hours had elapsed since the beginning of her confinement.

She stretched out full length on the floor, pressed to the wall underneath the window that faced the busiest street, rested her head on her hands, and tried to sleep.

The flooring was called hardwood for good reason. There was no comfortable or even tolerable position that she could adopt when lying on the cold floor. When she lay on her side, the bones in her shoulders and hips felt like they were pushing right through her skin. When she lay on her stomach with her head on her hands, her breasts were crushed flat and her knees and elbows began to ache from the pressure on them. And when she lay on her back, she felt entirely exposed while her buttocks began to ache from the pressure on them. She settled for a combination of turning from prone to supine at frequent intervals, punctuated by attempts to sleep in a sitting position wedged into the corner.

The night was a misery, but she knew that this was only the first stage; she would suffer much worse tomorrow. Both her vulnerability and her boredom would increase substantially when Craig arrived in the morning and opened the next envelope.

When Craig left Leslie’s house, he only drove around the block, then returned to park down the street and watch her house for a while. He knew that he could not stay there all night, but he wanted to wait for at least an hour to make sure that nothing obvious was going to go wrong. He listened to the radio and blessed his wife for understanding his need to help his friend. He did not give her all the details of Leslie’s elaborate self-punishments; he only told her that she needed someone to watch over her to make sure that she was not hurt too badly. And he assured his wife that his interest in Leslie was strictly brotherly. That was not entirely true – he could lust after another woman as much as the next husband – but the essence – that he would never cheat on his wife with Leslie – was law. He knew that all three of them, his wife, Leslie, and he himself would be equally destroyed if his self-control failed.

It helped that he knew that he would never be able to keep his betrayal a secret from his wife. He was not strong or clever enough for that.

After an hour, he went home and put his wife to bed. When he made love to her, he could not help thinking about Leslie, not so far away, naked, vulnerable, alone. If his wife suspected what fuel was powering his passion in bed tonight, she gave no indication. But she might well have comforted herself with the thought that the intensity of his passion proved that he had not already spent himself in Leslie, and that he did not intend doing so later when he returned to her house.

His wife was fast asleep when, just before midnight, he left quietly.

He parked a block from Leslie’s house and walked the rest of the way. He could have driven right into her driveway, but it was clear that she wanted to feel abandoned and vulnerable and he reasoned that he would destroy that illusion if she knew that he was checking up on her.

He half expected that he would see her head still poking up in the corner of the window. If so, he was prepared to retreat back to his car and hope that he had not been spotted. There was no need for that, though; she was nowhere in view.

He stayed on the sidewalk as he walked past her front living room window and then around the corner past her side living room window. He could see nothing of her from either place. He expected that she was still crouched in the corner of the room, out of view of either of those windows.

After he passed her house, he left the sidewalk and went into her back yard, walking slowly between her wall and her neighbor’s fence. Her back yard was not fenced, but the neighbor’s was, so he doubted that the neighbor would see him and call the police.

From the distant side of Leslie’s back yard, he could see nothing through the dining room window. It was high enough that he only had a view of the top half of the front living room window. Carefully he crept forward, seeing a little more with each step. However, he could not see her until his eye was within two feet of the glass. At that point he could see almost down to the living room floor where she was laying stretched out full length on her back below the sill. He watched for a minute, ready to duck down if she turned her head in his direction, but she remained motionless. At this distance, he could barely see her chest rising and falling with every breath. Maybe she was already asleep, or maybe she was merely resting and waiting.

He could see the silver chain glinting on her right ankle, held by the little brass padlock.

She looked as lovely from this distance as she did from up close.

There was nothing further for him to do so he retreated back to the sidewalk.

Now that he knew where she was, he knew how to see her through the side living room window. He had only to advance halfway across the lawn to see the lower half of her naked body lying beneath the other window.

If anyone suspected that she was in the room, they would only have to go to a small effort to see as much of her as they wished. There was no place for her to hide from all windows.

He wanted to stay until morning to ensure that she remained safe throughout the night, but he could not. He had already worked a long day, it was two hours after his normal bed time and he was tired to the bone. He would collapse from exhaustion in another hour.

This was her punishment, not his. He could best help her by getting as much sleep as he could manage tonight and then, in the morning, go to her house, open the next envelope and see what horrors she had programmed for herself for the next part of the weekend.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Leslie was overcome by both a powerful thirst and the need to pee. It always struck her as odd when her body could demand water at the same time that it was demanding to get rid of water. But biology is a mysterious science.

It was easy for her to crack open a bottle of water and drink half of it. It was harder for her to screw the lid back on and put it back without finishing it. She could not to go without drinking until Sunday, but she needed to moderate her consumption to ensure that she did not have to use the bucket any more often than necessary.

The problem was that the chain that she had looped though the handle of the bucket and anchored to the far corner kept her from moving it near the windows where she would have some small illusion of privacy. She could only use the bucket by going to go to the center of the room and squatting on it in full view of both picture windows. She could not turn off the two lamps with their hundred watt bulbs so, even in the middle of the night, her naked body squatting over the bucket would be clearly visible to anyone on the sidewalk on either side of her house. In fact, she would be perched high enough that the neighbors would be able to see her all the way from their front yards.

It was one thing to have to take her chances when peeing in the middle of the night; it would be another thing entirely to have to pee in the middle of Saturday afternoon when her neighbors were likely to be raking leaves, carrying groceries into their houses, and walking their dogs. Her neighbors had a hell of a lot of dogs and seemed to spend hours every weekend chatting with each other while holding leashes in one hand and bags of warm dog poo in the other.

Leslie was going to be damned thirsty by tomorrow afternoon and would have a whole case of water at her fingertips, but she would have to exercise rigid discipline to avoid scandalizing her neighbors. And their damned dogs. She was horrified by the image of a neighbor’s dog straining at its leash toward her window and barking at the top of its lungs to alert everyone that something unusual was happening in her living room.

Now, though, it must be well after midnight and even those dogs with the most frequent needs should be fast asleep in their masters’ beds.

Leslie peeked out the front window for a long time, not just examining the street and sidewalks, but straining to see into every single window in the neighbors’ houses, looking for any sign of movement in the darkness, terrified that one of them might be sitting in the dark, having a late night smoke. She saw nothing.

She repeated the procedure at the other window. Nothing there, either.

Gathering her courage, she crawled across the floor on her belly, rubbing her naked nipples against the cold oak; there was no need to increase her risk of being seen by rising any higher than necessary for any longer than necessary.

When she got to the bucket, she raised her head, took one last look around, then jumped up and squatted over it and peed as quickly as she could. She had provided no paper to wipe herself because she would have been able to use a roll of toilet paper to cover her nakedness, mummy-fashion. Instead, she had to shake the drops of urine from herself as best she could by bouncing up and down vigorously for a few seconds – if any voyeur were looking, he would be getting quite a show – then crawl back to her corner on her belly, letting any remaining pee dry in the cold air.

She did not intend to use the bucket for any other function during the next two days. She had not eaten anything since breakfast and had used a couple of Ex-lax to purge herself. As she had left no food within reach, she did not expect to have to move her bowels again for the duration of her punishment.

She already felt like she was starving and would unquestionably suffer excruciating hunger pangs throughout the weekend. But she told herself that she had lost four backgammon matches in a row and deserved no better.

She had calculated the duration of her punishment based on her losses. Before beginning to play last Saturday, she had decided on the sequence of events and decided to give herself three hours in each of the four stages for each loss. The first loss gave her twelve hours total – tedious, but tolerable. She had continued to play, hoping to win the next match and erase her penalty. When she lost the second time, she was committed to spending a total of twenty-four hours in these conditions – a true punishment. She had tried again, hoping to drive her time back down to only twelve hours, but, thanks to a couple of reckless, desperate moves, she had lost again. This third loss increased her penalty to nine hours in each condition – a total of thirty-six hours – which was more punishment than she wanted to endure. Foolishly, she had continued playing, certain that her losing streak could not last and she could reduce her penalty back down to twenty-four hours – a single full day. Instead, she had lost the fourth match and accumulated a staggering forty-eight hours of continuous punishment. She dared not play a fifth match because sixty hours would have been dangerous to her health. Instead, she had called Craig and begun preparing her house and herself to endure the marathon of suffering that she had earned with her intemperate play.

And that left her here – helpless, thirsty, hungry, tired, and cold; simultaneously bored and terrified – and only halfway through the first of her four pre-programmed stages. It seemed like dawn would never come. Irrationally, she hoped that sunrise was imminent even though she knew that dawn would herald a far worse confinement.

Craig slept only marginally better than Leslie. When dawn finally broke, he could sleep no more and dressed immediately. He would shower when he returned home again. Leslie had now been chained in her living room for nine hours – six since he had last looked in on her – and he had to make sure that she was not in distress. Or rather, that she was not in more distress than she had planned.

As on the previous night, he left the house without waking his wife and drove the three miles to his friend’s house. Once again, he parked a block away and walked the final distance.

This time, she was not sleeping. As soon as he approached within a few doors, he saw her face in the lower corner of her living room window. She waved when she saw him. He hoped that she was not waving for help, but merely in greeting.

As soon as he unlocked the front door and stepped inside, he said, “Are you all right?”

“As well as can be expected.”

He smelled stale urine as he stepped into the doorway to the living room. Leslie was crouched in the corner, hiding from the windows as best as she could. Her hair looked somewhat oily and was hanging in disarray, but other than that, she looked healthy enough. The room was chilly and he saw that she was shivering slightly, probably as much from fatigue as from the chill. “Has anything gone wrong?”

“No. Everything is going exactly as it should.” There was a pause, then she said, “Are you here for the next envelope?” He heard a quaver of fear in her voice.

“No. It’s not nine yet. I’ll come back when it’s time.”

“You can do it now if you don’t want to have to come back later, you know. The times aren’t exact.” He could hear the fear in her voice and knew that she was forcing herself to be brave. She did not want to have to endure whatever was in the next envelope for even an extra couple of hours, but she would be willing to suffer for that much longer in order to save him the inconvenience of an extra trip to her house.

“No,” he replied, gallantly, “I will be happy to leave you as you are and come back later to serve your wishes at the proper time.”

“Thanks,” she replied with a dry note.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, matching her ironic tone, as he left the house.

Craig returned at the proper time. He felt refreshed by a warm shower and clean clothes and fortified with a nice breakfast of bacon and eggs.

He knew that Leslie could obtain no such refreshment. She had no way to bathe nor had any food within reach. He knew that she must be acutely hungry after her long night and wondered if the sealed envelope in his hand included any provision for allowing her to feed herself. He doubted it; Leslie was harsh and unforgiving of herself.

He stepped into the room to open the envelope in front of her. The paper inside read:

Restriction: You will find a perforated plank, padded U-bolts and a wrench on the kitchen table. First, place the plank across my upper back and bolt my arms to it. Then buckle the stirrups about my feet and secure the buckles with the padlocks. They are keyed the same as the lock that chains me to the floor. Once I am secured, please leave quietly and promptly.

Craig was a little puzzled by the description of planks and U-bolts, but all became clear when he went into the kitchen saw the apparatus. Mostly it was a six-foot length of oak two-by-eight with chains attached by small U-bolts to the ends. The chains had small leather harnesses attached. There was a pile of larger U-bolts, cap nuts, and a wrench beside the plank and chains. As soon as she saw him reenter the living room, Leslie positioned herself face-down on the floor with her arms outstretched. He did not have to tell her what to do; she knew what she had programmed for herself.

He knelt by her head and rested the heavy oak plank across her shoulders. He did not know that she had weighed it and had determined that she would be encumbered by slightly more than fifteen pounds of wood. It not a huge weight, but enough to pose an on-going challenge when she wanted to change positions and would have only limited leverage to manipulate the plank.

The ten U-bolts came in a range of sizes that exactly fit through twenty holes that had been drilled in the wood. Each U-bolt was made from a section of quarter-inch threaded rod that had been bent to fit around a different part of her arms. Before bending them she had fitted latex surgical tubing over the center part for padding and, after bending, had screwed a nut on each side to hold it against the plank. To build the equipment for this stage of her punishment, she had purchased a vise, electric drill, pliers and crescent wrench; and had developed some new carpentry skills. She was pleased with the result. She appreciated the irony of being pleased with something whose only purpose was to give her many hours of displeasure.

As soon as he laid the plank across her shoulder blades, she bent her back and pushed herself off the floor slightly on her outstretched hands so that he could more easily slip the two largest U-bolts around her upper arms next to her shoulders and push them though the matching holes in the plank. She relaxed and lowered herself back to the floor while he fitted the nuts to the protruding ends of the bolts and wrenched them tight. He admired her attention to detail. The U-bolts were exactly the right length and she had provided cap nuts to fit over the ends. If she flipped onto her back, the smooth rounded protuberances would do less damage to her hardwood floors than the ragged sawed-off ends of the bolts that would be exposed by normal hex nuts.

She lifted herself again and he firmly fastened the middle of her upper arms and elbows to the plank with the appropriate U-bolts. Once it was attached securely to her upper arms, she glanced out the window to ensure that no one was passing by at the moment and then drew her knees under her and pushed herself into a kneeling position so that he could more easily affix her forearms, and wrists.

When he had tightened the last bolt, her arms were held completely outstretched. The U-bolts were not tight against her arms – there was ample room for good circulation – but were absolutely unforgiving. The only motion now available in her upper limbs was the ability to flap her hands forward at the wrists; the plank extended an inch beyond her fingertips so she could not flap them backwards.

As soon as the last nut was in place, Leslie ducked over to put her face near the floor. She had been completely exposed for a couple of minutes and was desperate to avoid being seen by her neighbors.

Craig was concerned that there was no mechanism for quick release from the plank. In an emergency, it would take some minutes to undo all the nuts required to free her arms. On the other hand, the plank was not affixed to anything, so, in case of fire or some other disaster, Leslie could be evacuated from the building with the plank still fastened in place.

The instructions had said to “buckle the stirrups about her ankles.” That instruction was obvious at this point. Lengths of chrome chain were bolted to the plank just beyond the point where her fingertips now twitched helplessly. Little leather harnesses were attached to the ends of the chains where they dangled to the floor a short distance from either foot. These harnesses consisted of three short straps connected by chrome loops. The straps would fit around her arch, instep, and ankle to hold her foot firmly at the end of the chain once the chrome loops had a padlock buckled through them. The chains were short, but her body was folded at the waist and knees so he had sufficient slack in the chains to fasten her feet in the stirrups without need her to move her legs apart. When he finished, there was a small amount of slack in the chains, but not much. He estimated that, if she were to try to stand, the chains would be short enough to keep her from straightening her legs completely. She would probably be able to keep her legs together and straighten her knees by bending at the waist as far as she was able but her back would be strained as much as if she were touching her toes.

The real cruelty of her self-imposed restriction came from having her ankles attached to a point beyond her outstretched arms. When her back was straight, the more she unbent her knees, the more the chains would pull her legs apart. She could not stay kneeling for the next day and a half. Yet, to straighten her legs completely, she would have to either bend far forward at the waist or spread her legs painfully wide. She would not be able to keep her back bent far enough to straighten her legs completely for more than a minute. Thus, she would have to spend the bulk of the next day and a half with her legs spread obscenely widely because she would need her knees to be partially unbent to allow the blood to circulate through her legs as easily.

When her inevitable suffering was properly ensured in accord with her wishes, it was time for Craig to leave her alone. The last line of her instructions made it clear that, as part of her punishment, he was to leave immediately. He was not to relieve even a bit her boredom with any moment of unnecessary conversation.

Just as he opened the door, though, he heard her call out to him. “One thing you should know, Craig. You do not have to come back here to follow the instructions in the next envelope. You can open it at home this afternoon.”

He would come back to check on her at various times during the day, regardless, but he was curious to know what he would be asked to do by the next envelope. Surely it contained instructions for him that would increase her suffering somehow. But how could he make her suffer more if he was not physically present?

As soon as she heard the door close, Leslie began testing the limits of her new restraint. When she had built it, she had not been able to bolt it to herself so she could not be certain how it would work in practice. She had thought it through as thoroughly as possible and had tested it as best as she could by holding it in position with her hands, but nothing was quite like the real thing.

Her knees were already beginning to ache from kneeling on them. Worse, she was exposed to public view in this completely bent position – if someone were to walk by on the sidewalk, they would probably be able to see her upper back through her window. Not only would the see that she was naked, they would see the bondage apparatus that kept her arms outstretched. She pushed forward and lowered herself onto her stomach. As she expected, she could not straighten her legs, no matter how wide she spread them. And when she tried too hard, she pulled the plank downward so that the U-bolts dug painfully into her arms at the shoulder. If she kept this up, she would have terrific bruises by the end of her period of restraint.

She could not remain face down for too long because her bent knees kept her ass stuck up in the air and her spread legs opened her pussy to public exposure if anyone were to get close to her window. Worst of all, her face was pushed hard against the floor and her cheek was already beginning to ache. She no longer had her hands available to rest on.

She raised her head slowly and looked out the window with some trepidation. Sure enough, she saw a car pull into the driveway across the street and her neighbor, a middle-aged woman with two half-grown boys, get out and begin lugging groceries into her house. Apparently Mrs. Jackson believed in getting her Saturday shopping done early before the stores were crowded.

Leslie crouched down as low as she could while still peering over her window sill. The boys undoubtedly ate a lot; Mrs. Jackson had to trot back out to her car to take half a dozen loads into her kitchen before she finally locked her car and retreated to her house for the last time.

Leslie wished that she were free to take care of such mundane chores. Making a bed or washing dishes had never seemed so appealing. Anything would be more exciting than spending the entire weekend crouching in her barren living room, her arms bolted to a plank, terrified to do more than peek over her window sills at the lovely late-fall sunshine outside.

Turning onto her back was a tricky business for several reasons. First, she did not dare return to a kneeling position. It must be nearly nine-thirty by now and she would attract a terrible amount of attention if anyone saw how she was restrained. Second, she could no longer retreat all the way into the corner. Her arms were outstretched, so the closest that she could get to the corner was an arm’s length. Third, she had little leverage available to turn herself over, especially when she had to be careful about kicking her legs too violently and bouncing the heavy plank against her back and shoulders. She would be wearing it for a long time and bruising herself now would greatly increase her discomfort later. Fourth, no matter how she turned, at the point where she was sideways, her upper torso would be most of an arm’s length off the floor, just about high enough to expose her breasts to public view and, worse, wave her uppermost arm well above the window sill, maximizing the likelihood that she would attract the attention of anyone passing by.

If she were discovered in this situation by her neighbors, she would have to sell her house and move to a different neighborhood to escape the humiliation. These people would be gossiping about her for years to come.

She squirmed as far into the corner as possible, raised her head to glance out the windows and make sure that no one was in sight, then push herself over and flop onto her back. To do that, she had to draw on all her strength and flexibility to twist and bend her torso far enough.

She lay for a minute, sweating from her exertion, listening for noise from outside, and watching all three windows for curious faces.

As she lay there, she experienced increasing discomfort. The sharp edges of the plank were digging into her spine and shoulder blades. The plank would have been resting firmly on the rows of cap head nuts that held the U-bolts in place, but for the chains that connected her ankles. When she relaxed her legs, her ankles pulled against the plank and twisted it, pressing the lower edge sharply into her back.

She laid quietly on her back for as long as she could stand it, maybe an hour, maybe two, then maneuvered herself back onto her face and knees – getting off her back was an operation that required even more effort than getting onto her back in the first place – and rested facedown against the floor for as long as she could stand that. She found that she could not stay face down for as long as she could stay face up.

The hours passed ever so slowly and ever so uneventfully. Flipping herself was the most exciting thing that she could do in these restraints and she dared not do that any more often than was absolutely necessary – every time she flipped, she risked discovery and further exhausted herself. On top of that, she was cold, thirsty, and hungry. But she suffered most from the boredom. The hours were agonizing. And that was the point. She could have left a radio playing but that would have defeated her purpose of punishing herself with hours and hours of tedium.

Instead, she listened to the quiet roar of distant leaf blowers rising and falling as husbands swept them back and forth across their lawns, the frighteningly frequent hiss of cars passing her house, and the occasional bird call. There was nothing nice about these bird calls; all the songbirds had migrated south long ago, leaving mostly the raucous caws of flocks of crows.

She amused herself for some time speculating about what would happen later tonight. Anything? Terrible things? A quick episode or hours of abuse? Would it be as bad as she planned? The third stage was the one part of her ordeal that she could not control in every detail; someone else would be deciding exactly what happened to her. For a control-oriented woman like Leslie, that was a punishment in itself. She understood her own psychology and had designed a punishment to maximize her mental suffering as well as the physical.

Throughout the afternoon, like the bass continuo in a Bach concerto, her stomach rumbled audibly and cramped intermittently as her thirst and hunger grew more acute by the hour. She would give anything for a cheeseburger. Or a bowl of pho: Vietnamese noodle soup. Or a bucket of fried chicken. Yeah. KFC rules! When she was finally free, she was going to buy herself a whole bucket of chicken. And sushi. She would kill for a plate of sushi. If nothing else were available right now, she would even gobble down sea urchin sushi. Who cared if it were reputed to be the worst tasting food on earth?

If there were food within reach right now, she would be powerless to stop herself from plunging into a frenzy of utter gluttony, even knowing that she would have to shit in a plastic bucket, naked, in plain view of her neighbors. That was how hungry she felt. She congratulated herself for having ensured that she would have not a crumb of food within reach.

She was almost as thirsty as she was hungry but she dared not drink again until sundown. She already had a small, nagging urge to pee and did not want to have to hold a full bladder for another half dozen hours. She was suffering enough without adding that agony.

Then she realized something else. She had a half bottle of water open, but what about the other bottles? Would she be able to open a water bottle with only one hand?

She wriggled over to her case of water, managed to get a single bottle out, and began working on it.

No dice. No matter how she held it, no matter how she contorted her hand, there was no way for her to get enough grip on both the bottle and the cap and twist hard enough to break the plastic top free. Only when her hand was aching beyond endurance, did she stop and admit defeat.

That detail had escaped her when she was planning the weekend. She berated herself for her failure to anticipate everything.

Her shoulders were already aching dully from having her arms stretched akimbo for a few hours. By tomorrow evening, they would be killing her.

The house was still cold, but the sun shining through the window helped her feel warmer. It was not much of a mercy, but she clung to whatever she could get. She only wished that she dared to squirm to the center of the room so that she could bask in the sunshine, but she would be too exposed there. That, like the key on the wall and the robe crumpled on the foyer floor, was a comfort that was visible but unattainable. She forced herself to stay in the shade, as close to the corner of the room as she could get when her arms were firmly stretched akimbo along a heavy oak plank.

Sometime in the middle of the day, she drank the remainder of the bottle of water that she had opened the previous evening. It was not enough to alleviate her thirst, but she had to get some fluid into her dry mouth. Her urge to pee would grow stronger soon, but she would have to hold it until late in the night when there was less likelihood that her neighbors would be looking though her brightly lit windows.

To pass the time, she counted breaths. How long did it take her to breathe? Three seconds? Four? Five? When she turned over, she was panting from the effort, but after she was lying on her back for a while, her breathing was probably less than a dozen times a minute. Maybe she was breathing six or seven hundred times in an hour.

She counted seven hundred breaths and told herself that she had just brought herself an hour closer to the next stage of her punishment.

She hoped that she was right but she knew that it did not matter. She was stuck where she was until dark and Craig followed the instructions in the next envelope.

Then things would get worse.

She began counting another seven hundred breaths.

Alex Chapman was at home, just about to start getting ready for his date with Leslie when he heard a knock on his front door.

The man standing on his front step identified himself as Craig, Leslie’s friend and offered his hand.

Soon after they had begun dating, Leslie had mentioned her friend, Craig, and had assured him that they had never been lovers. Alex was not sure how he felt about that. He disliked the idea of dating a woman who had another significant man in her life. No matter what Leslie said, Craig was not her family and could not really be like a brother to her. In his experience, men and women could not be platonic friends; there was always an undercurrent of sexual tension between them. The only variation was how deeply the sexuality was sublimated.

After they shook hands, Craig handed him a sealed envelop with his name and address written on the front in Leslie’s hand. “I don’t know what’s in this envelop but Leslie has asked me to be sure to give it to you personally before six o’clock this evening. I don’t know if you were expecting it or not.”

“I was expecting to take Leslie out this evening,” Alex replied. “We have a date. I’m to pick her up at her house at seven.”

Craig shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“I’ve got a reservation for dinner at La Grotte Méditerranée.” His attempt to pronounce the French words was rather bizarre, but criticizing Leslie’s boyfriend’s diction was not part of his mission.

“I think she has something different planned for this evening,” Craig smiled and shrugged, “but that’s between you and her. All she asked was that I give you the envelope. I’m pretty sure that you’re supposed to open it before you go to pick her up.”

What the hell was this? Had she written him a ‘Dear John’ letter? They’d only dated a half dozen times, it wasn’t like she owed him anything but surely he deserved better than being handed a letter by the other guy in her life.

Alex waited until he was alone again before tearing the envelope open.

The paper inside surprised him greatly:

Dear Alex:

You can’t guess how much I have been anticipating our date this evening. But I’m asking you to do something different than you had planned and, in the process, will let you see a different part of me.

I love going out with you. I love your tenderness and consideration. Almost all the time I want you to keep treating me as well as you have been treating me during the past two months. But, once in a while, I need something different. Once in a while, I need the opposite of tenderness and generosity. On rare occasions, I need to feel used.

Tonight is one of those rare occasions. I want you to come to my house and use me for your sexual pleasure. You will find a key to my front door in this envelope. Wait until dark, then let yourself into my house.

You will find me in my living room. You will see that I have put myself in a situation that ensures that I will be unable to stop you from using me in any way that you wish.

It is important that you do not try to talk to me, do not try to rescue me, do not try to console me. Take as much pleasure from me as you can however you want for as long as you want, then leave.

The greatest kindness that you can do for me tonight is to show me no kindness whatsoever.

You can think of this as a kind of test. I know that you can be kind and generous. In the weeks that we have been dating, you have consistently put my feelings ahead of yours and I appreciate that. Now I need to know if you can ignore my feelings completely for an evening and think only of yourself. I need a man who can do that when required. Can you be utterly callous when I need you to be?

I’m not asking you to rape me. Rape is an assault where the rapist’s focus is on the victim and her pain. I am asking you for the opposite. Do not focus on me. Ignore me utterly and focus entirely on yourself. Going out of your way to cause me pain would be as much an error as going out of your way to avoid causing me pain. Do what you want without thinking about anything that I might feel, good or bad.

Realize that whatever sexual acts you perform on me cannot constitute rape because I am giving you my unqualified consent right now, in writing, for you to do whatever you wish.

This is not a trick. I am absolutely sincere in wanting you to be utterly callous when you are using me. And, when you are finished, whether you take five minutes or five hours to extract as much pleasure as you can, you are to leave me in the same helpless state that you found me.

I will consider any act of kindness toward me, no matter how insignificant, to be evidence of your failure.

Let me repeat to make sure that you understand, I do not need to feel used very often, but when I do need it, I really need it. Tonight, I really need to feel completely and utterly used and then casually discarded.

I hope, after tonight, you will still want to keep dating me and will still be able treat me with the consideration and generosity that you have shown in the past.

When you come into my house, you will find a few useful supplies in the dining room.

Thank you in advance for treating me like a piece of raw meat tonight,

Love,

Leslie

There was a house key in the bottom of the envelope.

Alex cancelled the reservation at the French restaurant. On the phone, he told the maitre d’ that something had just come up and he had been forced to make other plans for the evening.

He read the letter again, just to make certain that he understood exactly what was expected of him. She had certainly made things clear and she certainly sounded sincere. During the next hour while he was waiting for darkness to fall, he sat at his kitchen table with the letter in front of him and worked hard to develop the appropriate mindset.

Leslie was asking him to play a role that was entirely foreign to him and he wanted to get it exactly right. He had to make himself completely self-centered. He began by making a mental list all the things that he would like to do to a woman who would permit anything.

The list alone was enough to make him hard. That was a big step in the right direction.

He read the letter a third time to reinforce that he was not deluding himself with wishful thinking. He really had been given written permission to do anything he wanted to Leslie short of violent assault. He could turn his most perverted fantasies into reality tonight. He could feel his lust beginning to slip its leash.

As Alex pulled into Leslie’s driveway, he was surprised to see her curtains pulled wide open and the lights blazing in her living room.

Her letter had said that she would be waiting in her living room so he glanced through the window after he got out of the car. He could see that the room was bare but for a white plastic bucket on the floor. Maybe her roof was leaking and she had moved elsewhere. Was she in her bedroom?

He had to repress a desire to ring the bell and wait for her to answer. Intellectually, he knew that that would be the wrong thing to do. She had put her house key in his hand, because a callous man with a hunger for raw meat wouldn’t stand on niceties. He stuck the key in the lock, pulled the bolt, and walked in as though he owned the place. That was the attitude that she had requested.

He heard a moan from the living room so went there first.

The sight amazed him. Leslie – lovely, shy, clever Leslie – was kneeling in the corner of the room, arms outstretched, head down on the floor, and butt raised high toward him as though offering herself for his use. His first impression was that, as beyond all his expectations, she had made herself completely ready to be used for his pleasure. Incongruously, there was a board with studs on it lying across her shoulders. As he walked across the room to examine his prize, he suddenly understood the purpose of the board. He arms were attached to it, rendering her helpless to cover herself or protect herself from him. He followed the chains from the end of the board to her feet. Not only was she helpless to use her hands, but her legs were being held slightly apart, forcing her crotch open: an irrevocable invitation to be fucked.

She moaned again – the position must be uncomfortable to the point of painful – but did not speak. He followed her lead and did not speak, either.

He was in no hurry. He stood for a long time and stared at her ass. On her knees, fully bent with her legs slightly parted, he had an unobstructed view of the woman’s puckered pink asshole and long glistening slit. Though he had made love to a few women, including Leslie, and had seen his share of them naked, he had never before been treated to such an explicit view of their most private parts, especially so brightly illuminated by the glare of two naked bulbs.

Leslie had permitted her body to keep no secrets from him.

He felt as hard as granite and wanted to throw off his clothes right now but the windows were a problem. He was keenly aware that he was exposed to public view. Did she expect that he would enjoy exhibiting himself to the world? Or did she expect that he would squeeze himself into the single sheltered corner where she was kneeling?

He would have closed the curtains, but there were none, just bare rods where the curtains should have been hanging.

She had said that he could have whatever he wanted. Well, first he wanted privacy. “Where are the curtains?” he asked in what, he hoped, was a tough tone of voice.

“Dining room,” she replied meekly.

Ah, right. Her letter said that he would find the supplies that he needed in the dining room. He had thought that might mean some kind of sex toys. It never occurred to him that he would have to hang curtains. Such a domestic duty seemed incongruous with his tough-guy persona. He would have ordered her to hang them, but the board and chains made that impossible.

With a sigh, he walked through the arch into the dining area.

He found a box of a hundred latex surgical gloves, a box of a dozen condoms, and a big bottle of lubricant in the middle of the dining room table; but no curtains. He looked around again and saw nothing. “Where are the curtains?” he called out.

“Cardboard screens against the wall,” she called back. He could hear her strain to speak loudly.

Right. He felt nothing like a rocket scientist. Of course. There were large sheets of corrugated cardboard leaning against the wall next to the sideboard. He picked up one, carried it to the front window, and unfolded it. It was not quite tall enough to cover the whole window, but a person would have to be ten feet tall to see over it from outside. He brought the second screen up and covered the other living room window.

There was a third cardboard screen leaning against the wall but he did not see any use for it. Leslie was a careful planner; she must have had something in mind. Then he noticed the dining room window. When he threw the last screen over that one, the living room was completely hidden from public view.

“Move your ass into the center of the room,” he commanded.

She raised her head, looked around to see that the screens were in place, then rocked back so that her torso was erect and walked on her knees to the center of the living room.

For the first time, he noticed the chain that tailed from her ankle to the hole in the corner of the room and realized that she was confined to this room until someone released her. She wasn’t going anywhere else for as long as he wanted to use her.

When she knelt upright with her arms outstretched, she looked like a crucified dwarf. She was not gagged but had no interest in talking unless absolutely necessary. She waited quietly to see what he would do next

Alex pulled a dining room chair into the living room and sat in front of her. “Stand up.”

He did not know that this was the first time that she had tried standing while wearing the stocks and chains. She rocked from side to side, putting one foot under her, then the other, then stood as best as she was able. The chains were short enough that she had to spread her feet wide apart, keep her knees bent, and lean forward slightly.

Where he was seated in the chair, her breasts were hanging at the level of his eyes. Perfect. He reached out and squeezed them. God, they felt great. Soft and smooth and heavy in his hands. He could keep himself happy for hours playing with them. He massaged them and kneaded them for a long time. Her back was probably getting sore, being bent over like that, but so what. He was getting his pleasure and that was what mattered tonight.

He and she had made love a couple of times before tonight, so he had seen the safety pins pierced her nipples. They were an odd touch – a Goth adornment hidden beneath crisp professional business clothes – but when he had asked about them she had put him of with a cavalier comment that it was just a whim.

Now he understood what kind of whims could seize this woman.

He pinched her nipples lightly around the pins and she moaned. He did not know if the moan was from erotic stimulation or if he had pinched hard enough to hurt; or maybe she was moaning about the pain her back. He told himself that he didn’t care and pinched them again. She moaned again. This time, he took perverse satisfaction in her moan because cause and effect were verified. His nipple pinch was the cause, her moan was the effect.

He leaned forward and began kissing her nipples, first one, then the other. Then he sucked hard and she moaned a third time. He finished by licking her breasts all over, from the line underneath where they folded against her abdomen to the long elegant double curve on top where they were pulled aloft. Every woman’s breasts are a magnificent collection of curves; there was not an angle or straight line anywhere. Alex found nothing so beautiful in the world as a woman’s breast.

But he was ready to move on to the second most beautiful thing in the world: the larger, simpler curves of Leslie’s ass. “Back on your knees, face on the floor,” he commanded.

She complied. Hampered by the chains and inhibited from using her arms, it was not an elegant or graceful movement. When she began to tip too far to one side, Alex’s hand shot out to grab the plank and steady her.

She gave him a look of disdain as she lowered her face to the floor.

Okay, he thought. If that’s what she wants then that’s what she’ll get. He pulled the chair away and walked back to the dining room.

He returned with a condom and the bottle of lubricant. When he set them on the floor in front of her face, her eyes grew wide. “Of course I’m going to fuck your ass. What else did you expect? We’re going around the world tonight and your asshole is my first port of call.”

He stripped off his clothing and tossed it aside, letting her see that he was already fully erect. He picked up the condom, tore open the foil wrapper, withdrew the rubber, and unrolled it on himself. Snatching up the bottle of lube, he walked around behind Leslie and poured a generous dollop on her puckered little asshole. He smeared another dollop on himself, knelt down between her spread ankles, positioned his cock against her hole, and began to push, slowly but firmly.

As he began to penetrate her, she groaned and pulled forward, away from him.

“No, you don’t. You get your ass back here where I want it.” He grabbed her hips and pulled her back toward him. As he began to push into her again, she began to inch forward again. He got a better idea. He leaned across her back, grabbed the plank that was strapped to her arms, and held on. Now there was no way that she was going anywhere. He pushed, firmly and steadily into her, then pulled out and pushed again, a little further this time. She cried out – a little mew of pain – but he forced himself to ignore her and kept going. He wanted in. Who cared what she wanted?

But, he knew that he was going slowly so that she had time to learn to adjust to his presence. When he put pressure on her again, she cried more loudly and he felt her sphincter pulsing a little around the head of his cock. That was right. She was learning. If she tried to shit his cock back out, she would reflexively relax the sphincter muscles and paradoxically let him in. That was the secret of success. Suddenly her muscles released him and he slid home.

He saw the muscles in her neck and back relax as she flopped her shoulders against the floor, keeping her ass high in the air. She wasn’t fighting against him any longer so he released his grip on the crossbar and grabbed her about the waist again. Slowly he began drawing halfway out and pushing in again. God, she was hot inside and her hole was so tight around his shaft. He looked down as he pulled almost all the way out and then slid back home. God, that felt good. He did it again, this time pulling out even further. He could see her asshole gaping open, relaxed, as he withdrew and then offering no resistance as he thrust forward and filled her again.

After a few minutes, his knees were aching on the hardwood floor, but he was too close to cumming to care. He was thrusting more vigorously now. She was grunting a little from the motion but he thought that she probably wasn’t feeling much pain. As long as he didn’t pound her ass too badly, she shouldn’t have a problem continuing to accommodate him.

She might not enjoy the act, but he had to believe her when she wrote that she needed to feel used. He was certain that she was feeling well used right now because he was using her as well as he could.

When he came, such joy flushed through him as he had never before experienced. It was multiplied by the knowledge that he not only had done something rare, but that he had no reason to feel guilty about enjoying it fully. She had not only begged for it, she had forced him to do it.

When she felt Alex pull out of her asshole and stand up, Leslie wanted to collapse against the floor and just lie there and sob.

She could not. The chains kept her from stretching her legs out and the plank kept her from folding her arms in front of her. All she could do was remain on her face and aching knees with her sore ass stuck up in the air like a horny baboon’s.

Her knees were aching worse than ever before. It was bad enough that she had to kneel on the hardwood floor frequently during the past twenty-four hours, bearing her own weight, but now they had just finished bearing a considerable portion of the man’s weight as well.

She could endure kneeling on the floor no longer. She was not a slave and had no obligation to wait for further instruction. After a moment’s rest, she lifted her head and shoulders and then twisted her arms up and over to flop over onto her back. She relaxed her legs as much as she could, spreading them apart as far as she could without straining herself, so that she could unbend her knees most of the way.

When she looked up, she found herself looking past Alex’s slowly shrinking cock and into his face. He looked back down at her with a hard expression. She never would have believed that her gentle and tender Alex could look so tough and uncaring. Would he look at her with tenderness tomorrow or had she unleashed a monster?

He was holding the deflated condom in his hand by the end. As she watched, a drop of semen drooled out of his cock and stretched down slowly toward her face. Alex raised an eyebrow and shifted his weight forward on the balls of his feet to position the drop directly between her eyes.

She remained where she was and let the cum settle over the bridge of her nose between her eyebrows.

Alex shrugged and smiled archly. Then he stepped around and settled back down into a kneeling position next to her head so that his half limp cock was positioned near her mouth. “You may as well lick me clean and get a taste of what’s coming next.”

Obediently, she raised her head as high as she could and sucked him clean, taking as much of him into her mouth as she could. While she as doing that, she could see him fiddling with the used condom. She was still sucking when she felt a touch on her breast. It was warm at first, then quickly grew cold and sticky. He had turned the condom inside out and was smearing his cum over her tits, not for any particular reason, but just for something to do while she was servicing him with her mouth. He had been inspired by the sight of his cum dribbling on her face.

Without comment, he suddenly pulled himself from her mouth, stood, and walked out of the room. She heard him climb the stairs to her bedroom, then, after a minute, heard the television playing. Perfect. He was upstairs, lying on her soft bed, watching his favorite program while she was down here, lying on hardwood, an oak plank digging into her back, feeling his cum dry on her face and breasts, powerless to wipe it off.

Eventually, she realized that she had privacy for the first time since Friday night. The lamps were still on, but the windows were blocked with cardboard. She had needed to pee for hours – not an urgent, pressing need, but a nagging, annoying complaint – and could relieve herself in private now. She struggled to her feet. She could only walk in a crouch because the chains were too short to let her stand naturally, but that was better than dragging herself across the varnished wood on her butt or knees.

Her urine splashed and echoed against the plastic bottom of the bucket. She hoped that it was not loud enough to be heard upstairs – she was going to be humiliated enough this evening without needing to add any more to her tally. There was no sense fussing about it, though, because there was nothing that she could do about the noise.

When she was finished, for a change, she returned to the corner, put her back against the wall and sat upright on the floor, her knees slightly bent for comfort. She could not do this when the windows were unblocked because it put her chest above the level of the windowsill and left most of her arm sticking out across the pane. With the cardboard in place, privacy was not a problem.

After a while, her backside began to ache a little but far less than her knees or back when she was lying or kneeling on the floor. Considering the alternatives, she was happy to tolerate a little pain in the butt. From this place, she could not help but look longingly at her dining room chair. It looked lovely and comfortable. Too bad Alex had pulled it out of her reach before ravishing her asshole.

His clothes were a different matter. He had scattered them on the floor within reach when he had disrobed. She thought about piling them up and sitting on them to cushion her backside but decided that would be a bad idea. She had not given Alex permission to punish her but she would be helpless to stop him if she made him want to do it. Better to leave well enough alone at this point.

Eventually the television went silent and then she heard her bed creak followed by footsteps down the stairs. Maybe an hour had passed, maybe less. Leslie contemplated that one of the reasons that she thought so much about time this weekend was because she had no way to measure its passage.

When Alex appeared in the doorway, he said, “Looks like you’re going to be stuck with using your mouth alone. I guess we’ll see how much talent you have for cocksucking.” He was partially erect when he pulled the dining room chair back into the living room and sat down in it.

Leslie didn’t need a roadmap – she knew what was expected. She struggled to her feet, crouch-walked over to his royal highness on his throne, and knelt in front of him. He watched impassively.

The plank stretched across the back of her arms was a problem. She had to kneel high enough to hold it over his legs and then try to push her head down far enough to reach his cock.

She couldn’t do it. Maybe when he was erect she might be able to encompass the head with her lips but in the half-erect, half-limp position, the head was down between his legs. She struggled with her position, stretching and twisting to try to improve it, but got nowhere.

When she tried pressing the edge of the plank against his thighs, Alex snarled, “Hey. Watch it. That board hurts.”

She wanted to yell back, Don’t you think I know that? You should try lying on it all night some time, but kept her temper under control.

“Put that thing underneath my legs,” he said and proceeded to put first one foot then the other over her shoulders.

That worked much better. Now that her head was properly positioned between his thighs, she had no problem reaching his cock with her tongue and lips.

She began licking and sucking with proper gusto, covering his cock with as much saliva as she could so that he would be nice and slippery in her mouth.

He rose to the occasion, so to speak, soon filling her mouth with his second rigid erection of the evening.

Once he was erect, she could only take half of him into her mouth. That wasn’t good enough for him. “Don’t you know what deep throat is? Get all the way on me.”

She tried, but gagged when his cock hit the back of her throat.

He leaned forward to position himself better, grabbed her greasy hair at each side of her head, and began pulling her hard onto his cock. She immediately began to gag, but he did not relent. He wanted to feel her tonsils caressing his dick. Reflexively, she began to swallow, trying to take him down past the base of her tongue, but he was not positioned properly and she could not get herself in any better position, either. She would have to get higher than she could when her arms were attached to the plank under his thighs. If he were lying on the floor and she kneeling over him, it might have been possible. As it was, all she could do was open her mouth wide, lick and suck as wildly as she could, and choke and gag every time he pounded his cock against the back of her mouth.

This wasn’t a blowjob, this was a full-fledged face fucking. She had no alternative but to endure and suffer. And she suffered for a long time; after having already cum once in her butt, he was not going to come nearly as quickly the second time in her throat.

She wished desperately that she could have her hands available to wrap around his shaft and jerk him off into her mouth, but that was only a nice dream. In the end, after what seemed like forever, he reached down with his own hand and finished himself off, bumping the edge of his fist against her nose and chin as she was pulled forward by his left hand that was still tangled in her oily hair.

Never in her life had she been so grateful to get her mouth filled with cum. She gladly sucked every spurt and swallowed every drop of his wad. It was the only thing she’d eaten in a day and a half. She wanted more in her stomach.

“Barely adequate,” was his verdict as he stood and pulled the chair out of her reach, leaving her kneeling in the middle of the room, gasping for breath.

A minute later, she heard him turn up the volume of the television in her bedroom and she returned to her seat against the wall to await the next phase of her degradation.

The first possibility, that he would use her once, coming quickly and then leaving her alone in the house, was long eliminated. The opposite possibility, that he intended to stay all night, using her again and again and again, now seemed to be most likely.

As degrading as this was, she preferred his abuse to the boredom of being left alone all night in a brightly-lit room with uncovered windows.

Funny how quickly circumstances can change a person’s preferences.

Alex lay on the bed and felt like dozing off. Trying to be a bastard was exhausting. He wondered how real bastards managed to keep it up all day long for their whole lives.

He felt like he was falling in love with Leslie but he didn’t know if he was merely feeling sympathy for her or if he was merely basking in the glow of having his lust satisfied. He had told her that her cocksucking was barely adequate but he had lied. There’s no such thing as a bad blow job. There’s no purer way for a woman to service a man and, as far as Alex was concerned, when he was cumming in Leslie’s mouth, she owned him, lock, stock, and barrel.

He hadn’t cum in a woman’s mouth nearly often enough in his life.

And fucking a woman in the ass? He’d never done that before, only read about it. The advice that he had read – use lots of lubricant, go slow – had been spot on. Leslie had made his life complete and he wanted to love her for that gift.

He had made love to Leslie a couple of times since he had begun dating her a few weeks ago. Those had been good times. Hell, they’d been almost great. But that had been straight, vanilla sex in a proper bed with the lights turned low every time. They’d both enjoyed themselves before but this was a completely different ball game. He had never known that it was in him to be able to use a woman without caring what she felt. It didn’t come naturally to him. He had to force himself to ignore her feelings; and he could only do it because her letter had assured him that she needed him to do it. Selfishness, though, was the ultimate new experience for him. Even if she never again felt the need to give herself to him so generously, that she had done so once was a memory that he would treasure forever.

Tonight, she was dirty and smelly and looked exhausted – dark circles under her eyes and pale lips that were slightly chapped – but tonight, to Alex, she looked breathtakingly beautiful.

And, right now, she was downstairs with nothing to do but wait for him to come down and use her again.

He dozed off to that thought.

When he awoke, the clock beside the bed said that he had been asleep for almost two hours. The erection pressing against the sheet said that he had been asleep for long enough.

As he walked down the stairs, he massaged himself idly to keep the stiffy. He carried the pillow from her bed under his arm.

Leslie was still awake, sitting against the wall, looking exhausted and beautiful.

“Middle of the floor, on your back,” he muttered casually.

She gathered her feet under her, leaned forward and twisted to balance herself, then rose as far as her chains would allow. After tottering to the center of the floor, she carefully lowered herself to her knees, then turned and lay down on her back with equal care.

The chains forced her to spread her legs for him in a most agreeable manner.

He could fall upon her right now and take her as she was, but he had little taste for dry cunt and no interest in foreplay. Maybe she would already be wet enough, but maybe not. Why bother taking the chance. He dropped the pillow between her spread legs, then fetched the bottle of lube from the floor where he had left it after the ass fucking. He squeezed a plentiful glob on his hand and massaged his cock with it. She didn’t have to be lubed if he was.

He dropped to his knees on the pillow and then thrust himself into her, hard and quick. She gasped, mostly in surprise, though she might have suffered a twinge of pain as well. What did he care? He reminded himself that it made no difference to him why she was gasping.

He pumped with long, smooth strokes, feeling the soft silky inside of her caressing the shaft of his cock, then stopped and pressed hard and deep into her, the head of his cock reaching for the center of her body, her nether lips pressing against the root of his shaft, and her clit flattened between their pubic bones. He paused for a minute and felt her begin to respond to him, beginning to work her hips forward and backward, looking for stimulation from him. He could not tell if she was getting aroused herself or simply trying to goad him into finishing more quickly.

To his amazement, she began rocking and thrusting against him harder and harder, her hands fluttering impotently at the ends of the boards and her feet rattling against the chains as though she wanted to be free to hold him tight while she came. And, as she came, she howled like a beast of the night, primal and savage. He felt her cunt contracting around his cock and he came, too. They both came, hard and delicious, at the same time.

He tried to not care whether she had taken pleasure from him or not, but knowing that, in some miraculous way, she had managed to reach her own climax despite her obvious discomfort made it so much sweeter for him that he wanted to cry.

He held her and hugged her and felt wet on his cheek. She was crying. Whether from exhaustion, relief, ecstasy, or maybe from the simple pain of being crushed against the hardwood floor and plank by his weight upon her, he would never know. Maybe she did not know herself. But he did remember that was not allowed to care. Not tonight.

So he pushed himself off her, gathered his clothes and began dressing.

She laid on the floor, watching him with wet, tired eyes, and said nothing.

He finished dressing without a word, then walked to the front door. She twisted her head to look at him as he reached to open it, and then said, “Wait. One thing before you go.”

“Yes?”

“I miscalculated something. I can’t open my water bottles with my hands like this.” She fluttered her hands. “Would you open a couple of them, please?”

He looked at her with suspicion and recalled that her letter said that he was being tested; that any act of kindness on his part would be a failure. On the other hand, she should have water available just for the sake of her health. How long had she been restrained like this without being able to drink anything? She looked exhausted and he suspected that she had been restrained long before he had been sent over.

He suspected that the correct response would be, I don’t care, and was about say that but suddenly realized that he could reply with an even more appropriate response. “What will you do for me if I do that for you?”

She looked taken aback. He could already do anything to her that he wanted, in fact had spent half the night taking all she had from her. What more could she offer? “Anything you want me to do.” It wasn’t literally true, but she would do an awful lot right now. Her mouth felt dry as a bone.

He looked at her for a minute, then said, “Amuse me.”

“What would amuse you?”

“I don’t know.” He looked around the room and his eye fell on the bucket. “Is that your piss?”

She looked at the bucket and said, quietly, “Yes.”

“Pour it over your head.”

She looked at him in shock.

He stared back impassively.

She looked at the bucket again and bit her lip. She was awfully thirsty. And it was her own urine, not poison. “Would that turn you on?” she temporized.

“Not at all,” he replied. “I’m not into golden showers.”

“Then why would it amuse you?”

“Because you won’t like it. It’s like watching a clown being forced to push a pie into his own face. It’s only funny because he doesn’t want to do it.”

She flapped her hands again, “I can’t. I can’t raise my arms above my head.”

“Too bad.” He turned to reach for the door.

“Wait,” she said. “Wait. I’ll do it.”

He watched while she struggled to turn over and then raise herself to her knees. She did not bother to try to stand, but walked the few steps on her knees to reach the bucket. There were only a couple of pints sloshing about in the bottom. Not more than a couple of hours ago, she’d been worrying that it would be embarrassing if he heard her peeing. Now she was going to baptize herself with her own urine.

She grabbed the edge of the pail with her right hand and twisted herself to raise it above her head.

“Aim carefully,” Alex warned. “You don’t want to miss your chance.”

She aimed carefully. She bent sideways to make sure that the bucket was directly over her head, tilted it slowly, and watched carefully to make sure that the piss was coming directly at her.

She began pouring it over her face in a slow stream. Because she had not drunk much, her last pee had been exceptionally concentrated. The piss that poured over her was strong, dark yellow, and smelled thick. She wanted to gag. She tilted her head toward it to make sure that the last half fell into her hair and soaked her entire head thoroughly. That was the request: that she pour it over her head, not just on her face. When the bucket was empty, piss was running down her face, over her eyes and mouth, and streaming out of her hair and down her back in yellow rivulets.

Alex clapped slowly and sarcastically. “Bravo.”

She put the bucket back in its place.

He walked over to her flat of water bottles, picked out three of them, and walked back to her. One at a time, he twisted the caps off and spaced them apart on the floor, each resting in the puddle of urine that she had just created.

“Enjoy.”

She did not answer. As he let himself out, she knelt in her pool of her piss and hated him. He had acted exactly the way that she had wanted him to act when she had decided to make him part of her punishment. And now she hated him for it.

As soon as he was gone, she set about drinking one of the bottles of water. Without the use of her hands, that was easier to say than to do. She had to lower herself far enough to get her lips on the mouth of the bottle without slipping and jamming it into her mouth. The bottle was too heavy to risk trying to lift and tilt it with her teeth and lips. Instead, she tilted it over, lowering herself further towards the floor so that the water flowed out and into her mouth.

She suspected that Alex had calculated the consequences of his placing the bottles in her puddle of urine. She could only drink them by lowering herself so that her tits were dragging through her cold piss. And she could only get the last quarter of the bottle by pushing her face all the way against the sopping floor. Not that that mattered so much because her face was already soaked with urine, but the act did give her that little extra boost of debasement.

One blessing was that Alex had not thought to remove the cardboard from the windows before he left. Despite the instruction in the letter that he leave her as helpless and vulnerable as when he arrived, he had failed in that particular. She was happy to spend the rest of the night in privacy. Pity he had left the lights on, though. She would have liked to be able to sleep in the dark for a while tonight.

Craig was cold and tired. He had spent most of the night standing in Leslie’s back yard, peering through her dining room window. Alex had been careless in his placement of the cardboard screen that leaned against the glass, leaving a narrow crack along the right side by the window jamb. It was just wide enough to let him see what was happening in Leslie’s living room when he pressed his face to the glass.

Craig told himself that, as a true friend, he had an obligation to watch over Leslie that extended beyond the specific instructions contained in her envelopes. He had been assigned an active role in her punishment when he had been asked to bolt her to the plank and to deliver the envelope to Alex. Though he had not opened that envelope, he had been able to feel the key through the paper. It had not been hard to guess what Alex was being asked to do. As the only person who knew what was likely to happen and having the responsibility of ensuring that nothing went terribly wrong, he had a duty to watch what happened to her.

That was what he told himself despite the wood in his pants. The thrill that he got from watching his helpless friend get ravished again and again in different ways was incidental. Leslie would be safer as a result of his vigilance, and it wouldn’t hurt her if he got turned on by it. It wasn’t like he was the man porking her.

The episode with the bucket of piss had been over the top. Disgusting. Craig could not understand why seeing it had made him harder than ever. He wasn’t into that kind of thing so why did it make his cock so rigid that it was painful? He had no choice but to give himself relief. It only took a few seconds for him to open his pants and jerk off right there in the shadow of her back yard. As he pulled at himself, he felt shame that he had become so aroused by his friend – more aroused than he had ever been with his wife – but the burden of guilt only increased the intensity of his climax.

Surely Leslie understood that, even though they would never make love to each other, that she was enriching his sexual life immeasurably. And, if he sometimes thought of Leslie while he was making love to his wife, that hurt no one, especially not his wife who lauded his passion in bed.

It was two in the morning when Alex finally left and Leslie settled down on her back to try to get some sleep. After watching for a few more minutes, Craig felt free to go home and grab a few hours rest before returning with the next envelope.

Leslie was so exhausted that she fell asleep despite her discomfort. She stayed asleep for more than three hours despite being unable to move her arms even an inch, despite being unable to straighten her legs completely, despite the edges of the oak plank digging into her upper back, despite the bruises that were developing where her arms kept pressing against the U-bolts that restrained them, despite the stinking, sticky urine drying on her face and in her hair, despite the cold air and glaring light in the room, and despite her desperate hunger. At least she was no longer thirsty. And, with the windows blocked by the cardboard screens, she no longer had to be afraid of someone watching her.

When she awoke, she was still tired and achy and shivering. Her back was sore and every joint was stiff. But those discomforts did not dominate her mood. Mainly she felt discarded. She had been used and abandoned. Not just used but abused before she had been abandoned. Alex had not had to force her to soil herself with her own urine. She had given him no such instruction. It was true that she had told him that he was not permitted to show her the slightest kindness, but he had taken that instruction past the point of reasonable interpretation. He could have simply given her the water, not as a kindness, but as a simple act of preserving her safety. Even pigs are given water as they are being taken to the slaughterhouse. That hardly indicates any kind intention on the part of the butchers, only that the meat must be preserved before it is harvested.

And he hadn’t been forced physically to leave her in this state. He could have ignored her instructions to some degree. At the very least, he could have stayed for a while and relieved her boredom with a little company. After she had let herself to him so completely, didn’t he think that he owed her at least that much a few minutes of conversation? He could even have tossed her a blanket or a pillow from her bed before he left. He could see how much distress she was in. If he really loved her, he would have ignored her letter and rescued her from her misery altogether; found the wrench and unbolted her; tossed her the key that was hanging in plain sight on the far wall.

By being so eager to follow her every instruction exactly to the letter, by interpreting her words as cruelly as possible, he had shown his true colors. He was so good at using a woman and discarding her, this must be his natural inclination. Everything else, his months of being kind and tender while they had been dating was merely an act; a ruse to lull her into accepting his abuse when he finally unveiled his true personality. Her letter had merely been the excuse that he needed to show her what he truly was.

The penalty that Leslie had designed for herself had been to suffer the ultimate debasement – to be used and then discarded as though she had no more value than a piece of toilet paper. Now that she had reached that state, she wallowed in her misery like a pig wallowing in its filth.

She loved her misery.

Alex had given her exactly what she needed and she deliberately turned her thoughts in directions that would ensure that she experienced her degradation as acutely as possible.

Though awake, she could no longer see out any window and did not know how long she had to wait before Craig returned with the next envelope and dialed her ordeal up to the next level. She dreaded what was coming next.

She struggled to turn over on her face and then knee-walked over to drink another bottle of water. She was no longer concerned about having to pee in the bucket. Her floor was already soaked with urine and would have to be cleaned before she went to bed tonight; when she had to pee again, she would just go on the floor.

When she bent over to suck on the open water bottle, her nipples, still adorned with large safety pins through her long-healed piercings, brushed against the sticky, mostly-dried urine in a most disagreeable way. When she tilted the bottle and pressed her face against the floor to drink the last quarter of the water without the use of her hands, her cheek stuck to it as though in were covered in cheap child’s glue.

The stench was appalling and made drinking the water a nauseating experience.

When Craig walked through the front door at eleven o’clock, his first thought was of a men’s room in a downscale bar. He had seen Leslie pour piss on her head last night, but had not mentally translated that image into the rank odor that reeked in his nostrils.

Not for the first time, he felt deep sympathy for his friend. Did she really want to spend hours lying in this mess? It did not matter. He would not clean her or her floor unless instructed to do so and he knew that the envelope in his hand would contain no such instruction.

He knew that forty-eight hours was too long to spend in punishment, even if she were serving a penalty for losing four backgammon matches in a row. But his opinion on that point did not matter, either. It was her decision and he would not overrule her.

But if she said one word about being released early, dropped even the slightest hint that she had changed her mind, he would rush directly to the wrench and release her without giving her a chance to change her mind back.

She did not indicate any change of heart. She said nothing, simply looked up at him with the most miserable expression that he had ever seen on a human face.

His one mercy had been coming late. She had said at the outset of her punishment that the times on the envelopes were not exact, that he could sleep in if he chose. He had actually been awake by eight this morning, and had swung by once to peer through the crack left by the cardboard over the dining room window but had chosen not to reveal himself then. Rather, he had returned home and delayed returning for as long as possible. He knew that, miserable as she was now, whatever was in the envelope in his hand would only put her in worse straits. If he could save her a couple of hours of that, if he could reduce her final stage from twelve hours to ten, then he would. And he had.

Now, he could delay no longer. While she watched in trepidation, he tore the envelope open and read:

Contemplation: You will find a hood and earplugs by the microwave in the kitchen. Use them to deafen and blind me that I will be less distracted while I spend the day in quiet meditation. If the windows are blocked, the screens should be removed.

Craig fetched the earplugs and hood as instructed. When he came back into the room, Leslie spoke for the first time. “There are latex gloves on the sideboard in the dining room. Put them on before you touch me. There’s no need for you to get my filth on your hands.”

He was about to reply that he didn’t mind, but recalling seeing her pour her own urine over her head, he decided that he would rather not have to drive home with that on his hands or take the time to wash them here. It was easier to don the gloves.

In anticipation, she had, with effort, flipped herself onto her face and then rocked back to rise to her knees. Now, sitting on her heels, she watched him approach with the hood and earplugs.

The earplugs were small orange foam cylinders. After compressing one for a few seconds, it was molded into a tight cylinder that easily slid all the way into her ear canal, leaving only the wide end visible. It slowly began to expand inside her, effectively blocking out most sound. He repeated the process on the other ear.

That done, he examined the hood. It was made of pieces of heavy black canvas stitched together. She might have purchased it, but it was more likely that she had made it herself because it fit her head perfectly. Once in place, it covered her hair, ears, eyes, cheeks, and jaw but a hole as wide as her mouth extended from the tip of her nose halfway to the point of her chin. The hood would not impede her breathing and was not tight enough to keep her from opening her mouth. It would definitely block any bit of light from reaching her eyes but it would be safe to wear, even if she had to vomit.

It fastened under her chin with two small buckles that distributed the stress to the top and back of her head. It was loose around her neck and posed no danger to her breathing. There was no need to lock it; with her hands still held outstretched by the plank and U-bolts, she could not reach the buckles beneath her chin.

As soon as he finished fastening the second buckle, he said, “All done.”

She did not respond: with her ears plugged, she could not hear him.

He walked to the dining room window and removed the cardboard screen. Not knowing where to put it, he left it lying on the floor.

Leslie, having been left untouched for a minute and knowing that the hood was in place, inferred that he must have finished fastening the buckles. Tentatively, she bent over until her face was resting on the floor. She dared not remain erect any longer because she would be clearly visible to anyone outside as soon as Craig cleared the cardboard from the windows. A consideration for the remainder of the day would be that she would not know if someone were outside or not. The only way that she could remain undetected until evening would be to remain as flat as she could as close to her protected corner as possible. She knew where she had been in the room before the hood was placed over her eyes, so she knew that her corner was behind her. Twisting to put one hand on the floor and shuffling on her knees, she turned around until she thought that she was facing in exactly the opposite direction. Then twisting to place her hands on the floor in alternation. She crawled forward until she touched a wall. Then she followed the wall until she found the corner.

Craig watched her slow progress as he removed the screens from the living room windows and carried them into the dining room.

When he was finished, he watched her lay on the floor for a while. She had flipped over onto her back, that being slightly less uncomfortable than resting with her face on the floor and her butt in the air, as well as giving her a lower profile lest someone peek into her window.

On her back, though, the plank held her arms wide open and the chains forced her legs far enough apart to open her pussy lips slightly in a faux invitation to coitus. No matter what she might be thinking, no matter what she really wanted, her body was forced into a “Fuck me!” position.

After watching her for a long time, Craig slipped quietly out of her house, went home and made passionate love to his own wife. As always, she appreciated his ardor and knew better than to question its source. She was wise enough to know that some stones should never be turned over lest something quite unpleasant crawl out.

Leslie could do nothing but wait and think. Though she could hear nothing and see nothing, she could feel everything more acutely in compensation for her missing senses. She could feel every ache and pain in her body, her desperate hunger, the chill of the room, and the pressure of her bonds against her arms every time she tried to move.

She knew that, as long as she continually inventoried her pains, she would only intensify her misery. She tried to turn her thoughts in some other direction in the hope of finding some modicum of relief.

Foremost in her mind was the fear that she was being watched. She could no longer see if there was a face peering through her window, could no longer tell if she was tucked as far into the corner as possible. She thought that she was, but maybe she was mistaken. She could not feel the walls with her hands – the plank extended beyond her fingertips. The only way that she could confirm her position was to push backward to confirm that the plank was jammed against the baseboard on both sides. But maybe they were hitting something else. Maybe she was lying in the middle of her floor, her legs spread wide in the direction of the window, the plank pressing against something else – an irregularity in the floor, the plastic bucket at the end of its chain, a chair that had been left out of place.

Maybe someone had discovered that she was on display in her living room like an animal in a zoo. Worse than an animal in a zoo because she could not see or hear her tormenters, could not crouch in a distant corner. Maybe word had circulated throughout the neighborhood. Maybe, even now, dozens of men and boys were lined up at her windows, three deep, silently jostling for a better position to see the slut living next door. Maybe cars had stopped all up and down the street, passersby curious to know what had drawn the crowd to this house.

Was a man’s cum dribbling from her asshole and cunt? Was her face dyed with yellow streaks of urine? Were people pointing at her in revulsion?

Surely it was not possible. But she could not see to know otherwise; would not be able to hear them if they were chatting among themselves outside her window, pointing and laughing. She would not know if they were taking picture after picture to post on the Internet.

Maybe, by this time tomorrow, she would be the latest international YouTube phenomenon.

And if that were happening, how long would it take for the police to arrive? Burst open her front door? Arrest her for lewd conduct? Ruin her life?

Maybe there were already reporters among the crowd at her window, already writing their stories, determined to make the deadline for the evening edition.

Surely not.

She pressed hard against the plank, forcing it as firmly into the corner as she could, trying to reassure herself that she was positioned to protect her modesty as best as she could.

And if the worst had happened already, or would happen before darkness fell, there was nothing in the world that she could do about it.

Time passed ever so slowly. This would be the longest day in her life.

She could not help but think about how Alex had used her and discarded her. He had treated her exactly as she had asked. She hoped that he had enjoyed using her. She was bemused to remember that she had cum when he had fucked her. What was that all about? She had been hurting bad, her tailbone jammed against the floor every time he thrust into her, her back scraping against the edge of the plank every time he rammed into her, the bruises on her abused arms beating against the steel bands that held them as she jerked back and forth. How in hell had that added up to arousal? How in hell had that brought her to a climax?

If she needed any confirmation that she was a genuine masochist, that orgasm provided an uncontestable empirical proof.

Sometime in the middle of the morning, the two bottles of water that she had consumed in the previous night caught up with her. She could not longer bear the mounting pressure in her bladder and saw no reason to try. She relaxed the sphincter muscles at the top of her urethra and let the warm urine flow down her crotch and across the floor to puddle under her hips and back.

Had anyone seen that? Was there a crowd at the window oohing and ahing at the spectacle of a naked woman pissing herself?

That was the high point of her day. She spent the next few hours feeling her puddle of piss quickly grow cold then slowly dry to a sticky, smelly film of goo.

As the afternoon wore on, the ache in her muscles grew to unbearable intensity yet she dared not move. If she tried to turn over, she would greatly increase her risk that she would make some clumsy motion that would be visible through her window and attract the attention of a neighbor. And, even if she succeeded, that would leave her with her ass thrust high in the air and her face pressed into the sticky half-dried piss that had pooled underneath her.

The pain was unbearable, but she had not choice except to bear it anyway.

So she waited and suffered and then waited even longer and suffered even more.

As time passed, the one concern that emerged as more prominent than all others was Alex. What did he think of her? Did he think that she was perverse? Disgusting? Insane?

She thought that she was all of those things, but did he? She liked him. She didn’t want to lose him. She had dated a variety of men over the past fifteen years. Usually she dated nice guys, but they could never satisfy. When she hinted that she sometimes liked a man to treat her brusquely, they failed to understand what she meant. No hint was enough to make them deviate from their natural course. And when she tried dating bad boys, she always regretted the result. She had no interest in being mistreated full time. She wanted someone who would care about her, care about her one way most of the time, but be able to care about her in a completely different way on other specific occasions.

Finally, she had decided to come right out and put her needs on the line; take the big risk that she would turn a man off by laying herself bare to him; or, worse, turn him into a man that she no longer liked.

During the two months that they had been dating, she had begun to speculate that Alex might be the one man that she would like to spend the rest of her life with. And he seemed to be equally interested in her. But that could not happen unless he passed the test. She had needs and she needed a man who could accommodate her needs.

He was the one that she would tell clearly and in specific detail what she needed. And then hope that he was able and willing to come through for her.

The problem was that there were so many ways that he could fail. He could have failed by not accommodating her, by either walking away without giving her the abuse that she needed or by rescuing her from her self-imposed distress. If he had freed her or taken any step to relieve her suffering, he would have shown that he did not understand her or did not trust her. She would have broken up with him. On the other hand, he would equally fail if he continued to abuse her after today. Up to this point, he had always treated her with kindness. Would he interpret this weekend as a signal that he no longer needed to do that? Would he think that he was now free to treat her as a weak, promiscuous woman? In the future, if he ever gave the slightest indication that he considered her less of a person now than before, she would drop him like poisoned fruit. The next few weeks would tell the tale. She hoped with all her heart that he would understand and be able to compartmentalize their relationship. That he would accept that he could never take the initiative in abusing her; that his role was limited to being a means for her to abuse herself, in the way that she specified, on the schedule that she determined. If, just once out of anger during an argument, he brought this weekend up to humiliate her, she would walk out on him and never return.

Was that fair? Was it too much to ask?

She had instructed him to take whatever pleasure from her that he wished last night, but she hoped that he had not enjoyed abusing her too much because she had not given him carte blanche to abuse her any time the whim struck him. If he did not feel that shared pleasures were the best pleasures, then he was not the man for her.

Maybe the point was moot. Maybe he had already decided that she was too perverted for his tastes. Maybe he had already broken up with her and was going to tell her as soon as he saw her again. Or maybe he would never see her again. Maybe there was already an email in her inbox that simply said, “I never want to see you again.” Maybe he was already telling his buddies that he had discovered that she was a disgusting slut. That he had no more interest in her. That if any of them wanted to bang her ass, they were welcome to use her in any way they wanted. No need to ask permission, she liked to be tied up and raped.

She might have to quit her job and move to another city just to keep from getting raped by Alex’s friends.

Her day was a maelstrom of fear, stoked by one uncertainty after another.

Her self-punishment was complete.

Craig spent most of the afternoon and evening sitting in Leslie’s dining room with The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver’s novel about a family of desperately incompetent missionaries in the Congo during the revolution for independence in 1960. The struggle of the wife and four daughters to cope with the self-centered and increasingly abusive husband against the backdrop of a culture and people that they were incapable of understanding and appreciating seemed appropriate for his current situation in an ironic way. He had to ask himself if he was as blind as the husband in the novel. He thought that he was doing the right thing for Leslie but he could be entirely wrong. Maybe he should be getting her psychiatric help rather than helping her abuse herself. Was she merely seeking strong physical stimulation or was she actually self-destructive? Had he become her enabler, paving the road for her slow, protracted slide to suicide?

He was certain that if he did not help her abuse herself, then she would do it without his help and would eventually accidentally kill herself. He had begun helping her when he stumbled across one of her self-arranged bondage sessions that had gone wrong and had rescued her from death. Since then, his justification had been that she was going to punish herself whether he watched over her or not, so his only choice was to try to make her self-abuse safer by taking an active role. But he was always nagged by the worry that he should be getting her professional help instead of tying her up and beating her in compliance with her instructions.

His doubts about himself were rooted in the knowledge that he enjoyed many of the things that he had done to her. He got a thrill out of opening each envelope and seeing how he was to abuse her this time. He was intellectually stimulated by the breadth of her imagination. He reveled in knowing that he had been given opportunities to do things to a woman that most other men would never get, from laying a switch into a woman’s ass with gusto to piercing her nipples, as slowly and painfully as possible.

And he had to admit that he enjoyed a kind of perverted illicit sexual relationship with her. They had never made love, never would. He would never have an orgasm in her presence. But she was a fine looking woman; she had a pretty face and a terrific body. He enjoyed seeing her naked body, enjoyed the casual touch when he bound her, loved to see her twitch and wriggle in response to the things that he did to her. No strip tease, no sex show, no pornographic movie could hold a candle to his experiences with Leslie.

Though Kingsolver was a terrific writer, the novel in his hand was dull compared to the reality of Leslie suffering her self-imposed punishment a few feet away. As he tried to concentrate on yet another few pages, these written in the voice of Kingsolver’s character who littered her thoughts with palindromes, a pithy critique of the novel sprang fully formed into his mind: Egad! No bondage! He would find The Poisionwood Bible so much more engaging if the characters were bound physically instead of merely psychologically. Yet, ultimately, Leslie’s bondage was only psychological as well. She knew with absolute certainty that she had only to say one word to him or to the other man, Alex, and she would be freed immediately. It was her only her will that put her in this position and her will that she continue to suffer.

And maybe she would change her desires with a bit of therapy. He could force it. He could strike a bargain with her that he would only help her punish herself if she agreed to enter into therapy. He could even make it acceptable to her by phrasing it as an extension of her punishment: that she would have to subject herself to the further humiliation of telling her therapist exactly what she did to herself.

Because he never proposed such a bargain, he had to ask himself if he was avoiding forcing her to get professional help because he wanted to let her keep punishing herself. He wanted the thrill of seeing how she would suffer the next time. How much was his judgment colored by the obvious conflict of interest?

Facing this dilemma, his copout was to do nothing but what she asked him to do. That was the easiest path for him. But it still left him stewing in self doubt.

And it did not help that he was enjoying nothing about today’s show. Leslie had been suffering for a long time. This was the longest period that she had endured punishment by far. The type of punishment was not as extreme as on previous days – this time it was limited to simple bondage, some small risk of public exposure, a few episodes of unwelcome sex last night – but the suffering was constant and the duration extreme and it was clearly wearing on her.

She whimpered almost constantly throughout the day. With the earplugs in, she probably did not realize that her whimpers were audible. And, with the hood blindfolding her, she had no idea that he was present in her home listening to her.

Craig found it difficult to stay in the same room with her. She was suffering and he found no redemption in it, either for her or for him. The hours ground on and on as he read page after page of his novel, trying to flee from the real suffering in this room and seek solace in the fictional suffering of the family in the Congo, described so vividly by Kingsolver’s wonderful prose. Surely he would find redemption there.

He needed to find it somewhere.

He opened the nine o’clock envelope early, at about seven, and was relieved to read, “Free me, please.” He had been afraid that she might have programmed some final, over-the-top torture for herself.

As the sun slowly set, he was tempted to free Leslie early. What would two hours matter? He could claim that he had some other affair to attend to this evening and had no choice.

He resisted the temptation. He knew how she thought. She had programmed herself for a specific time and would feel cheated if she were not forced to endure her full allotment of agony. Ever after, she would be disappointed that she had suffered only forty-six hours of punishment when she had committed herself to forty-eight. After all that she had endured, she deserved the full measure that she had requested.

So Craig was forced to endure listening to her twitch and whimper for the last two hours, waiting until the clock in the kitchen reached the exact minute that had been proscribed.

He spent the time planning every detail of the process of freeing her. The first step was latex gloves. He would have been happy to do it without the gloves, but he knew her. She would be embarrassed by the piss that covered her head and back, by the body odor that was inevitable after two days of physical effort without a shower, and even by her bad breath because she had no access to a toothbrush. She would be mortified if she thought that he was getting her filth on his hands. Knowing that he was properly gloved would give her comfort.

At ten minutes before nine, he began his preparations. He took the key from the wall and the wrench from the table and put them in his pockets. Then he extinguished the lamps that had kept the room as bright as day for the past forty-eight hours. The dining room chandelier would cast enough light for his work. He picked up the cardboard screens from the floor and covered the windows. The public was no long invited to discover her predicament. As he placed the last screen, he breathed a sigh of relief. Public discovery of her had been his greatest fear, in no small part because there was a risk that his role in this affair could have been revealed as a consequence.

Leslie never thought much about the risk that she was imposing on her friend.
Craig did, but it was a risk that he was willing to accept.

As soon as the kitchen clock reached exactly nine, he walked over to her. The soles of his shoes squelched through the puddles of sticky drying urine around her.

When he touched the buckles on her chin, she started and said, fearfully, “Craig?” She did not know if her time was up and she was being freed or if she had been discovered and the police had arrived to question her about what had happened or if a sociopathic rapist had noticed her and broken into her home.

“It’s me,” he said, knowing that his words were wasted because her ears were still plugged underneath the hood.

As soon as the buckles were released, he pulled the hood from her head. She squinted, her eyes habituated to darkness for so long, even this dim light was painful, but she was desperate to see who had released her.

As Craig reached around to pull the plugs from her ears, she said, “Thank you.”

He did not know if she was thanking him for freeing her now or for having left her to suffer for so long. It did not matter. “You’re welcome,” he replied as soon as she was permitted to hear again.

She squinted at his hands. “You’re wearing gloves. Good. I hoped that you’d think of that.”

“I try to think of everything.”

She looked around at the windows. Assured that they had privacy again, she twisted to try to sit up. “I’m an awful mess.”

“That’s all right. You can get cleaned up as soon as I get you unbolted.” He pulled her to a sitting position and then walked around to unwind the cap nuts from the bolts. One by one, the U-bolts fell away, first from her wrists, then from her forearms, then elbows.

The bands of bruising at her shoulders and arms were severe. She would be wearing long sleeves for some time. Mercifully, summer was long gone.

As soon as her elbows were free, she bent her arms slowly forward. “Ouch,” she said, “I’m really stiff.”

“I bet you are.” He continued working. He left the bolts nearest the shoulders until last so that the plank would be supported until he could finally free it completely. It was the exact sequence in reverse that he had used when he put it on her in the first place.

As he undid the final bolts, he said, “You have a raw line across your upper back where the corner of the plank was rubbing.”

“I’m not surprised. It’s stinging a lot.”

When he finally lowered the plank to the floor, she groaned and slowly crossed her arms across her chest to massage her shoulders. “God, you can’t believe how much my shoulders are aching. I never thought that it would be so painful to have my arms held straight out for a day and a half. How do people who are in body casts survive?”

Craig answered as he unlocked the stirrups from her feet, “They are put in a more comfortable position. They don’t have their arms and legs stretched wide apart like yours.” Finally, he unlocked the chain from her ankle. “Now, you go have a nice long hot shower and I’ll whip up some eggs and toast for you.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“You run along and don’t tell me what I don’t have to do.”

She smiled weakly. “Of all the food I fantasized about over the past two days, eggs was not one of them.”

“Would you like something else instead?”

“No. Now that you’ve mentioned them, eggs sound like the most delicious food on earth. I can hardly wait.” She limped upstairs.

Craig took the opportunity to watch her ass wriggle as she walked. She was stiff, but he was sure that she’d be okay. Her ass looked fine.

He didn’t start the eggs right away because he wasn’t sure how long it would take her to shower. Instead, he rinsed the urine from the plank and chains in the set tub in her laundry room, along with the plastic bucket, and carried them down to her basement. Then he poked around until he found a bucket and a mop in a closet and set to work mopping up her living room floor. That was beyond the call of duty, but he figured that she was in no condition to do it herself – she must be absolutely exhausted – and he could not let her spend the night here when the whole place stank like a latrine.

He finished cleaning about the time that he heard the shower turn off upstairs. He had just enough time to fry up three eggs and two slices of toast before she appeared in the kitchen doorway wearing her fluffy white robe and slippers.

“You’re terrific,” she said when he set the meal in front of her.

She fell on the food like a ravenous beast, which was pretty much how she felt by this time.

“You want milk or tea to drink?”

“Milk would taste wonderful,” she replied between bites.

The meal was gone in a few gulps. “Do you want more?”

“I think I better let this settle first,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt myself.” She looked at him. “You can leave whenever you like. I’m going to be fine now. As soon as I clean up the dishes and the living room, I’m going to bed and I’m going to sleep like a log.”

“You should go to bed right now,” he said. “I’ll throw these dishes in the dishwasher and that’ll be it.”

“I’m going to clean up the living room a bit, then.” She blushed at the thought of having her urine all over her hardwood floor.

“No need. It’s all done. I put your stuff in the basement and mopped up the mess.”

“What?”

“I cleaned the living room while you were in the shower.”

“You mopped my floor?”

“Yeah. There was some Mr. Clean in the closet where you keep the mop. It only took a few minutes and you’re too tired to worry about it.”

For the first time this weekend, she began to cry. Really cry, not just the few tears that had escaped after her orgasm with Alex. Now she sobbed deeply and great tears rolled down her cheeks.

He held her hand for a minute until her sobs began to subside, then said, “Let’s go upstairs. I’m going to put some Polysporin on that raw strip on your back and then tuck you into bed before I leave.”

And that’s exactly what he did.

As they dined on rabbit cassoulet, Alex entertained Leslie with stories about his work and commentaries on movies that he had seen recently. He did not mention the previous Saturday night until the waitress had brought the desert: apples sautéed in Calvados was the specialty at La Grotte Méditerranée. When they were alone again, he said, “I hope that I gave you what you wanted on Saturday.”

“You gave me what I needed at that time.”

“Well, if you ever need something like that again, you’ll have to give me more instructions. I don’t mind helping you but it’s not the kind of thing that comes naturally to me.”

“I appreciate that.”

No more was said about it.

That night, he made love to her in his usual tender style. She melted into his body with joy.

Three months later, he proposed marriage to her and she was thrilled to accept.

On occasion, she gave him envelopes containing sheets of instructions and he always performed to perfection. She maintained her friendship with Craig, but seldom needed to solicit his help. He was more relieved than disappointed.

Leslie counted herself uncommonly fortunate to be able to keep two understanding men in her life. It was two more than most women found in their lifetimes.