Sylvia 4, "The Lecture."
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It was a some time after the episode when I got locked out of the house. It was a real cold Saturday when the alarm clock woke me at eight o'clock.
George was up, as usual, busy about something round the house, banging a drill or something in one of the walls. I dragged my weary self out of bed and was surprised to find that there was a quite normal dress and all my usual day clothes laid out on the chair, waiting for me. It surprised me, because George, if he left me in bed at the week-end when he got up, would usually have some kind of kinky dress, restraint or at least something like
that waiting for me. Today, though, apparently, I was going to be a bit more normal than I'd expected.

I got downstairs and George just greeted me with "Good morning, Sylvia. We'll be going out this afternoon at about three. Please be ready at two thirty. I'll have your dress set out and we'll need a little time to get you disguised. Now, will you get the breakfast ready? I'll be busy all day until lunch-time, so I'm sorry, but you'll have to amuse yourself this morning."

I said, "Good morning, George. Right oh; I'll call in at Wharton's (our local supermarket). We're short of a few things and Ellen said she wanted to see me."

"O.K.," said he and we had breakfast and I went out, as I'd said. I'd made sandwiches at lunch time (we usually had only a snack) and fresh ground coffee and George actually complimented me!"

I was thinking, ' This can't happen! It's much too good to be true!' and after we'd washed up, George helping, I found out just how right I'd been.

He took me up to the bath-room and said, "Strip!"

Of course, when he speaks like that, I don't argue. I just did it and stood, completely bare in a few moments.

George had some black stuff on his hands and rubbed it gently all over my face. "Stand still!" he commanded me. He washed his hands thoroughly, then put a pair of handcuffs on me (behind, of course) and said, "Walk about for a few minutes. That blacking has to dry before you can get dressed."

He took my clothes and locked them away in the bedroom. I saw myself in the full-length morror in the bedroom and thought what a sight I looked. Black as night from my hair-line to my neck and completely nude everywhere else!

I suppose I'd been standing there for ten miutes or so when George came back. He had the green leather bikini in his (perfectly clean) hands. He unlocked me and told me to put the bikini on, then a thin white dress over it. He, himself was in his evening suit, which I thought rather peculiar for two thirty in the afternoon. Then he showed me two masks.

"We'll wear these when we get there."he said. "We'll take the car. It's not very far. I don't think any of the locals will see us on the way."

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Wainwright's." he said, shortly. I know he doesn't like me to ask, but I was curious. "Not the usual place. He has a house and he's invited a few of us to hear him lecture there. He'll need you as a model. He asked me last month and I agreed, but I don't want us to be recognised and that's the reason for the disguise. I don't want you to speak unless he asks you to, but I can't use your 'tongue restainer'. He  wants you to be able to
speak, but he did not tell me, why."

I thought, ' He might have asked me, too. Fancy lending me out like that!'
I felt a bit peeved, but I didn't say anything. George doesn't like me to show any opposition to any of his arrangements. Sometimes he has business reasons, sometimes it's just to punish me for something I've done. He usually tells me afterwards.

He fitted the green leather handcuffs and ankle cuffs on me after he'd blindfolded me. The thin chain between my ankles tinkled musically and I wondered if it was the one with the little bells on it -  Until I stepped forward one step, then realised that it was that one. I knew I was not going to go unremarked  this afternoon!

The car stopped and we went inside a room,George holding me to stop me tripping over the chain. He found chairs for us both and took off the blindfold, then replaced it with a mask. There were eye-holes and a nose hole, but most of my black face was hidden. My hair was also enclosed in a kind of snood. I thought, 'Not even George would know me if he hadn't
dressed me himself!'

There were several other couples present, but most of the people sitting in the chairs in that large room were men. I was the only woman in restraints, I thought, until I saw another girl also in chains.

"You are Number Five", George told me.

Then Mr. Wainwright came on to the platform at the end of the room.

"Good Afternoon, Gentlemen!" he greeted the assenbly.

( I wondered why it was "gentlemen" and not "ladies and gentlemen".)

"I should like to welcome you here and tell you something of the origin and reason for the existence of "Confidential Clothing Company" and of course, to show you some of our Company's products."

"In my early childhood, I had dicovered my liking for bondage. I loved tying up little girls at school. I was able, I'm glad to say, that I was always able to persuade them not to complain to the teacher, except for one occasion, which brought down the wrath of the authorities and that of my parents, resulting in my being sent to bed without any supper."

(There was a laugh from the audience and he told them some more experiences of when he was at school)

"This liking grew with me and by the time I reached the age for going to College, I'd supplemented it with a liking for girls themselves and for making them not only my captives, but also for dressing them up in beautiful things, as well as in fantasies of my own. I went first to a college to learn business and dress design, then on to an apprenticeship with a couturier in France.

"Number one!"

A nicely dressed young woman got up, climbed up on the stage, twirled round to let us see her dress. It was midnight blue, cut superbly to suit her slim figure (I just hated her!) and then, as she turned her back to us, I could see that her wrists were fastened behind her in two loops of apparently the same material as the dress.

"This is an example of just one from our 'Versatile' range of dresses which you could have your female wear anywhere. You can see, if I do this, (Here he did something to the dress)," the restraints can be separated from the dress and worn separately."

"Or if you wish," (he did something else), "You can discipline the woman without it being obvious to the company she is in.(The girl began to screw up her face as though she were in pain).This system is useful if you want to punish the girl without it being obvious.

"Inside the top part of the body, there are small rings, round each nipple, I can, if I wish, apply to her by radio, an electric shock, the strength of which I can adjust at will. At this moment, I am indicating my displeasure to her. She is being reminded that I do not allow any of my girls to swear at any time, wherever they are."

"For more regular kinds of restraint, we have the 'home prisons', invented, it is said, by the bondage artist John Willie. Number Two! Handy devices, easily portable, light in weight and, as I believe, totally secure."

Two women came up on the stageand sat down on the floor, whilst he fitted a device on one of them which kept her tightly curled up. He ignored her afterwards except to say, "She'll be quite comfortable for an hour or so. She won't be doing much until I let her out."

Then there was a sort of chair without legs and he put the other girl in that. She struggled a bit, but she couldn't move at all, although she was held in it by only a neck-strap.

"Of course," he said, "you won't want her to sit on the ground in an expensive outfit. So, if you want to keep her in one place, fully dressed - or undressed - as you wish, unable to damage herself or her accoutrements for as long as you like, we have the Handistat.

Number Three!"

"We make this in several forms. Picture!"

The room darkened and a slide was shown of a metal frame, like an arch, set in a concrete plinth outside a building. A second slide showed another view of the thing and a third, another similar device, all outside, but one had a sort of roof over it.

"It is often convenient to have a Handistat outside. Then it can be used for punishment, as well as simple restraint. The roofed version can be used if our weather makes the use of a Handistat reasonable on most days. An indoor one as well, might be considered rather a luxury, although one of my customers who has three daughters, tells me he had made very good use of both of the ones he has installed. Lights, thank you!" and we saw, when the
lights went up, that a smaller frame had been brought on the stage by two powerful-looking young men. Another girl, dressed in a flowery print dress, was standing between the two uprights.

"Elbows!" he said to her, and she rested her elbows on two curved arm-rests fastened to metal rods attached to the frame. He walked over to her and said "Right!"

She took a hinged arc of metal and looped it over her upper arm, then over her fore-arm.

"At this stage, I think it very unlikely that she could be able to wriggle free. If, however, we apply these other arm clamps, she will be here until the cows come home, or unless someone releases her. This can be anyone at all, other than the subject if you wish, or if you want the exclusive right to release her, you can operate the combination lock and then the restraint can only be opened by someone who knows the correct five-digit number. You
will see that it is impossible for her to hurt herself. The biceps-loops, although quite loose, keep the arms well back in the restraint and the fore-arm loops keep the whole arm from being either lifted or lowered. She cannot sit, kneel, or kick - the supports are too far apart for her to reach then with either foot. She must stand there, only able to look around, not
to influence anything except with her voice."

"Now we come to the fraught question of gags. Number Four!"

A young woman, dressed similarly to me, got up on the stage.

"You all know, the only type of gag that is effective  without the risk of suffocation, is the padded ball or plate gag. The plate gag is the one that I wish to show you. You will see that it consists of a head-band harness with a mouth-piece formed as a flat plate which holds the tongue down, whilst the foam plastic fills the space above it to muffle any soud that
she tries to make."

He fastened the girl's hands behind her with a green leather restraint, like the one which George held in his hands. As Mr.Wainwright fastened the girl's hands, George did mine.

The other girl struggled a bit, but Mr. Wainwright easily overpowered her and held her head under his arm. He pulled her hair and when she cried out, he pressed the metal article into her mouth. He fastened the straps round the back of her head, another under her chin and a third over her face on either side of her nose. Then he told her, "Stand up straight!" He turned, picked up a long rod, I don't know what it was made of, but it looked very
strong, and fastened it to one of the straps behind her head and the other end to her hands, so she couldn't possibly bend forward at all. Then he suddenly grabbed her dress and ripped it off her. Underneath, she was wearing a green bikini, just like mine.

It would seem that she tried to call out, but only a faint moan was all that we could hear.

"Effective, as I said. To make it quite clear -"

He picked up a thing like a ping-pong bat and smacked her with it. Still, we could hardly hear her crying out. You could see she was mad, by the way she kicked out at him, though I saw then that she was also wearing the same sort of ankle chain as I was, so he was easily able to keep out of the way of her feet.

"This type of gag is, as I said, quite effective, but it does not improve the appearance of the gagged person. Look at this impartially. It is good to keep her quiet, but you canot say the beauty of the face is improved by a huge ball jammed in the girl's mouth, can you?"

"I have for some time, been trying to develop an equally effective device which would:
a) be easy to apply,
b) be effective in preventing the prisoner for making too much noise without causing her any pain and,
c) not significantly alter her features ."

"Clearly, this can only be done from inside the mouth and whatever is in the mouth must not be so bulky that it distorts the external appearance of the gaggee."

"My philosophy is that there are only two ways to prevent someone doing anything. You cn make the action so unpleasant that the person does not want to do it, or you can physically restrain her, so she is unable to do the action."

"I make restraints, so all my efforts to produce an invisible gag, I call 'tongue restrainers'.
I am not normally in the business of making devices  to cause pain.  My early attempts, however, were designed to be painful for the wearer if she attempted to open her mouth, but over the past few years, I have been able to produce a device which, whilst not completely preventing the wearer from making any sound whatever, does meet most of the above requirements. Let me demonstrate.  -- Number Five!"

George nudged me, saying "Go on! He wants you up there." He helped me to stand, having fastened my hands and I reluctantly walked up to the stage.
The two male helpers lifted me up to where Mr. Wainwright was standing.

He did not grab me and force my head under his arm, but took hold of my braided pony-tail and pulled my head back. As he did so, my mouth automatically opened and he pushed a silvery thing into it. It seemed to slip round the outside of my teeth, sort of between my cheeks and my jaw, both top and bottom, but fitted high up on my gums at the top, down below my teeth at the bottom. There were pegs or something like that which fitted round the back of my back teeth and the thing was fast in place. Poking around with my tongue didn't do anything. The thing was fast stuck in and I couldn't move it at all. Then, when he put his hand under my chin and pressed, the thing seemed to close up and when he let go, I couldn't open my mouth at all. It was as if my whole mouth was welded shut.

He said to  me, "Well, what do you think of this?"

All I could do was mumble "Not very much." and my words were a bit distorted. He was able to understand, though and he took a little tool and did something to the part of the thing in my mouth that he could reach by lifting my top lip a bit, and then took it out again.

"I'm sure you were all able to hear that she could actually make herself understood, which illustrated the difficulty of rendering a woman speechless", he said.(and waited for a laugh). "She could not open her mouth, but even so, was able to articulate to some extent."

"Now, to prevent this, something must be done to restrain the action of the tongue. This can be unpleasant for the woman if she resists, but quite painless if she co-operates. Put your tongue out!" he told me.

I did as I was told. I've plenty of experience of what happens when I don't.
Now, he slid a loop of something under my tongue and as he pushed it in, I could feel that there was a flat bit on top of it. The side things slid smoothly along the sides of my gums like the other thing he'd put in before and I felt the bits at the back of my teeth click into place. When he pressed under my chin, it was like it was before, but now the front part of
my tongue couldn't move. It didn't hurt, but it felt as if it would, if I tried too hard to open my mouth.

Then he pinched me, real hard. It felt like a red-hot pincer on my bottom and I tried to yell, but that thing stopped me opening my mouth more than a tiny bit, because it seemed to grab my jaw, underneath my teeth. The sound that came out was like "L-l-l-l-l"

He told the audience." This was the sixteenth model.You can see that the subject is no longer able to make any sensible communication, although she can still emit quite a loud sound. For some purposes, that is sufficient, but to eliminate most of the sound emission, a little padding is necessary.
My current model, which is now in production, addresses this matter fairly well. All the three criteria I outlined before are dealt with, although the subject must co-operate if she is not to suffer some pain during the installation of the unit. Gentlemen, I now wish to demonstrate the most recent version of the 'Tongue Restrainer'. Hold still !" he said to me.

Again, he took the little tool he had used before and the device relaxed so he could take it out. He had me put my tongue out again and it felt like before, but I saw it and it was not metal, but made of some black plastic stuff. Now, there was something soft right up on the roof of my mouth filling the space between my tongue and  my teeth. When he pressed my chin again, it was a bit like having a mouth full of something to eat, except I couldn't swallow it or move anything at the front of my mouth. Further back, it didn't seem to stop anything. I could swallow, but the soft block near my teeth didn't move at all.

When he gave me a great slap on my almost unprotected bottom with something hard, making me try to shout out, ,the faint "L-l-v-v-v!" sound that I made, didn't sound very loud even to  me and when he did it again, three times. I still couldn't express my annoyance, pain and humiliation, especially after he had torn the white dress completely off me.

There was a bit of clapping and some idiot shouted, "Give her a few more, I couldn't hear what she was trying to say!" and a few people laughed.

Then he brought a microphone right up near me and said, " Try to say something!"

Well, it was impossible and he knew it. I tried, but I knew it was no good.
I could make a "Mmmm" sound but any kind of speech was completely stopped.

I made a rude noise by blowing through my closed lips and he gave me three more big slaps with the bat again. " As you can hear, her breath is not stopped. Even if the nose were blocked, she could be rendered speechless and still be able to breathe past the 'tongue restrainer'.

To prevent all sound being emitted from the mouth, that orifice would have to be sealed completely. Even if this were done, for example by an external seal, noise through the nose would still not be prevented.

I am of the opinion that complete silence would only be possible by means other than gagging. I have experimented with hypnosis and there is a drug, obtainable illicitly from a source on he Continent, which paralyses the vocal cords temporarily, but I do not advocate the use of such materials."

"Thank you, Number Four." he said to me.

I didn't know he was going to leave me with that thing in my mouth. It wasn't uncomfortable, but being stopped from even whispering, I thought, wasn't very fair. After all, that other girl had had the ball-gag taken out when he finished demonstrating. I stood there, pointing to my mouth and making "taking out" motions to him, but he said, "No. Your master has requested that I leave it until the end of the lecture. Please sit down.
No, actually, I can use you again. Stand over there!"

"We make in our factory, a good range of restraint devices.  This one," and he held up a collection of straps," makes the subject quite helpless, without preventing her from moving about, but a favourite of mine is this ring arm-binder. You will see that it consists of a bar to go behind the subject's back with relatively large rings attached at either end. The arms
are introduced into the rings, which are pulled up, above the elbows. Then the wrists are fairly loosely held to the bar with wrist straps. Optionally, a broad additional strap can be applied to the the forearms, to provide some padding between the spine and the hardwood bar. In this position, the arms cannot be drawn from the rings, being bent, and the wrists cannot be pulled away from the bar. The pressure on the subject's spine ensures an excellent posture and displays the figure to advantage. Furthermore, the subject is not subjected to too much strain and so the restraint can be worn for a considerable time without causing physical damage.

Whilst he was saying this, one of his men started straightening the straps out and at a signal from Mr.Wainwright, began undoing my leather wrist straps and fastening my arms in this arm-binder. It was quite like the ones George has for me, so there were no surprises in it.  I only felt a little bit of embarrassment at standing there, fully restrained, my forearms held parallel to the floor behind me, making me arch my back and push out my
chest. I was grateful for the blacking and the mask.

The other girl, the one who had worn the ball-gag before, now was brought up and fitted with all the same things as me. She was made to stand on the other side of the platform and I'm sure that we were only kept there just to make a decoration for the stage.

They fitted a leg-binder on us both too, with thigh-, knee- and ankle-bracelets in bright, shiny metal all fastened to bars behind our left legs, which kept our legs perfectly straight. We were kept on display there, standing, doing nothing whilst Mr. Wainwright had several other girls act as fashion model, displaying all sorts of dresses, underwear, shoes and boots, some of which were pretty, some being restraints and others just fashionable
things that anyone might like to wear.

At the end of the afternoon, he showed two other girls, apparently both completely nude, but locked in position by some kind of invisible fasteners.
I'm glad that George had told Mr. Wainwright beforehand, I was not to be displayed like that, as he told me afterwards in the car going home. He did say, though, that he was going to enquire of Mr. Wainwright if those fasteners were going to be available, because he fancied having me in them at home sometimes, if they were.

He had apparently got the new 'tongue restrainer' from Mr. Wainwright as a gift in return for lending me to him, because I was kept quiet with it until dinner-time and again until it was time for bed.  I have to wear it now, whenever I do the accounts or the translation work for the business. George says it keeps my mind on my work, but I can't see how that is true. It's no good complaining. I did once and he kept me speechless and hungry for a
whole day, whilst he went to work.