Our Story So Far:
HatChick and Commitment Girl, crime-fighting duo, have been tipped off that a robbery would occur at the Precovia's Indiscretion store at Blimmercrest Mall. What they do not know is that Precovia's Indiscretion is the secret hide-out of Big Hair Lady, infamous supercriminal and psychotic, and the robbery is a sham, designed to lure them into Big Hair Lady's trap.
During the stake-out prior to the staged robbery, their trusted sidekick Jeff has been surprised, and tied up, by Hillary -- a member of the Kat-gang recruited to do the robbery. Hillary is unaware the robbery is just a ruse.
The pert and perky crimefighters scatter the Kat-gang, capturing one - Hillary - for questioning. Then HatChick goes off to untie Jeff, while Commitment Girl sees to the supposed victim of the robbery - in actuality, Big Hair Lady herself.
Big Hair Lady captures Commitment Girl and suspends her upside down by her ankles, dressed in a black satin teddy designed to shrink to one-fortieth its size when wet. As HatChick sees to Jeff, she does not yet know of her partner in crimefighting's impending horrible death by asphyxiation and dismemberment.
Our Story Resumes:
HatChick shook her head as she headed over to where she had last seen Jeff - bound hand and foot. "He can't have gone too far," she thought with a smile.
But when the sleek blond crime-fighter got to the place where she had last seen their trusty sidekick, she was surprised to find he wasn't alone. He still sat on the floor, his hands tied behind his back and his ankles tied together - but wrapped around him was a very long-legged, slim girl, dressed in an oversized man's shirt tucked into faded jeans. HatChick could not make out the girl's features, as her back was turned to the crime-fighter. She was kneeling around the hapless male, cradling his head to her bosom as if protecting him.
HatChick made a polite noise of interruption. The girl whirled around, putting Jeff's body between HatChick and herself, but still keeping her long arms and legs wrapped around him. She moved shockingly fast - "in the blink of an eye," HatChick thought.
"Jeff," she said, speaking slowly and in modulated tones, "who's your new friend?"
"Her name is MeeG, HatChick" he replied, pronouncing the name "mee-gee". HatChick could tell by the tone of his voice that he was warning her - but of what, she was not yet sure. "She found me, and now she wants me to go with her."
"He's mine," the girl said defiantly. "I found him." Her hair framed her face in lank dirty-blond waves; her face was thin and very pale. Her eyes were huge ("moppet's eyes," HatChick thought), and her lips were pressed thin as if in pain - or hunger.
"I know," HatChick replied soothingly. "And he was easy to take, wasn't he - especially tied up as he is? Where were you planning to go with him?" As she spoke, HatChick approached slowly, crouching down to bring her to the girl's level. Jeff's eyes warned her - "not too close".
"She's dangerous," HatChick thought, "and Jeff is really spooked. But he doesn't want to provoke her by word or action." She resolved to follow his lead.
"To my - home. I'll take care of him now, since he couldn't take care of himself," the girl told HatChick, her arms encircling Jeff's arms and shoulders, her hands splayed, claw-like across his chest. HatChick noticed she kept her face very close to Jeff's neck - "as if she were preparing to bite him", she thought.
"He does seem to have been careless," HatChick agreed, watching Jeff for clues. She was kneeling now, very close - close enough to intervene if the girl made any sudden movements. "Does that mean you get to keep him - since he was careless?"
"He's unfit," the girl said firmly. "The unfit belong to me. He was careless, and he falls to me. He belongs to me."
"I see," HatChick replied. She studied the girl's hands - the fingertips especially. She had long, almost manicured fingernails. HatChick figured this was not the result of fastidious attention to hygiene. "Watch the hands," she warned herself; "watch the hands."
"What if he isn't helpless?" HatChick asked. "What if he has me to protect him?"
"If he wasn't helpless," the girl answered, "he wouldn't be in my arms - he'd be in yours!" She finished her logical leap with a triumphant emphasis. HatChick winced inwardly; she could only imagine how the girl's words were effecting Jeff.
"You're not helpless, are you?" Jeff asked. HatChick realized with a start that he was asking the question of her. "Play along," she thought. "He must know what he's doing, 'cause I sure don't."
"No, I'm not helpless at all," she said. "I'm very strong, and very capable. I can take care of myself and a lot of other people all at once."
"Enough talk," the girl said suddenly. "I know you want him for yourself." And she lowered her face to Jeff's shoulder, her mouth opening wide. "Stop her!" Jeff shouted, lunging forward in the girl's embrace. HatChick threw herself forward, grasping the girl's forehead and forcing her back from Jeff - no teeth marks on him, she noticed; just in time.
The girl now released Jeff - at least with her arms, she kept both legs wrapped around him - and latched onto HatChick's wrist with both hands. She was very strong for someone so thin. "Don't let her bite you!" Jeff cried; HatChick jerked her hand back, then shot it out again in a palm-strike aimed at the girl's head.
But as soon as HatChick had freed her arm, the girl had lunged forward at Jeff's throat; HatChick's palm-strike missed. She grabbed the girl by the only thing available to her - her hair, and pulled her bodily off her desperately-wriggling sidekick.
The girl leaped, and now her long arms and legs, spider-like, encircled HatChick. She wasn't strong enough to bind, but she was strong enough to hinder HatChick's movements, and she was extremely quick. "Watch her teeth!" Jeff shouted. "It's paralysis if she bites you!"
Ah - poison. So that was Jeff's concern. HatChick rolled backward, the girl clinging to her and trying to bring her teeth to bear. At the apex of her roll, HatChick got her feet under the girl and threw her over her head. The girl landed several feet away, rose to her feet, and started backing slowly away, into a gardened sitting-area intended as a shopper's rest area.
"Don't go after her," Jeff warned from the floor. "She'll try to ambush you, or lead you right into her web."
"I had no intention of chasing her," HatChick breathed, going to him and working the bonds around his wrists. "There's no chance I'm going to leave you alone and bound with her around.
"And what do you mean, 'web'? You're talking like she's a spider."
"That's exactly what she is," Jeff replied, rubbing the feeling back into his wrists. "She's what remains after a were-spider has started to go."
"A were-spider? Those things are real?"
"Yes - rare, but real. And no more improbable than a duo of teenaged, female crimefighters, I might add. From her behavior, I figure MeeG has been a 'were' for several years now - there's precious little left of the person she once was. Were-spiders are notoriously unstable - they can't maintain even the semblance of normal life for very long. The spider is just too powerful a persona, and too foreign to its human host for compatible existence."
"Just out of curiosity, Jeff, what would I have found if I had followed her?"
"She'll have webs strung in out-of-the-way places all over this mall. She would have lured you into one of them, let you get entangled, and then done what spiders do.
"Were-spiders aren't very strong physically, HatChick," he continued as he untied his ankles. "They need their webs to subdue their prey, or they hunt the weak or the - well, the helpless." He smiled ruefully. "They're opportunists, scavengers, and predators, all at once."
"Do I want to know what would have happened to us if she had gotten her teeth into me?"
He smiled at her, then shook his head. "No. I'm not sure of the details myself, but I don't think we'd find it pretty. Just think of what happens to insects in a regular spider's web, and increase the scale to human size."
HatChick imagined, then decided not to dwell on the image. "Okay; I get the picture. But CG and I will want you to brief us fully on these things sometime real soon - we can't have a human-spider hybrid running around a place like Blimmer unimpeded."
Jeff nodded, rubbing his feet to get blood flowing again. Then he looked at her, the pedant replaced by his serious and mournful look: "HatChick, I - "
"Don't say anything, Jeff. There's more to this caper than meets the eye, and you got sucked in more than I would have liked. But it's not your fault; those Kats targeted you specifically for attention."
"But how could they have known who I am? Oh - wait," he said, remembering his conversation with Hillary. "The - Kat who, um, attacked me - she had watched the show. Against all the covenants of the contract," he added, shaking his head.
HatChick smiled again. "Jeff, they're the bad guys - they're supposed to break the rules. I'd be surprised if they didn't watch the show, trying to get hints about our strengths and weaknesses. It's just one more aspect of the media effect on what we do."
"It just seems wrong."
"No more wrong than the virtually unlimited funding the bad guys seem to get. Did you ever stop to wonder where they get the startup financing for some of the elaborate deathtraps they prepare? The nets aren't in league with the bad-guys," she added, forestalling his exclamation, "but they know what makes ratings. If we win too easily, it's not entertaining. The price we pay for our public support - and our retirement programs, if we live long enough - is the added danger.
"Besides," she added, rising to her feet, "that's what makes this job so interesting. Now let's see how Kris is doing, and see if your Kat-friend is still hanging around." Kaivee felt free to use Commitment Girl's real name; she was certain the net would excise this whole conversation from any broadcast which might eventually result from this adventure. "Not that there seems to have been much of interest to them yet," she added to herself.
To their mutual surprise, Commitment Girl had not yet returned from speaking with the manager of Precovia's Indiscretion - and more disturbing, the heavy metal security grate had been dropped across the front of the store, and the interior was dark.
"What happened," HatChick barked at the Kat, Hillary. She was only a little surprised to see the girl hadn't taken it on the lam.
"While you were talking to that - girl," Hillary replied, looking meaningfully at Jeff, "one of the store employees pulled the grate down and turned off the lights. I - I think Commitment Girl is still in there."
"So that's it," HatChick remarked, scanning the darkened space. "The store itself was the trap - your supposed robbery was only the bait." The girl looked abashed, and HatChick chose not to try to make her feel better about it.
Decision taken, HatChick became business-like. "Jeff, we're in action mode. I'm going in - you take my back. And you," she said to the girl who watched her expectantly, "you get a free pass this time. I don't have the time or the interest for taking you in. I want you gone - out of harm's way - as soon as I'm in the store. Understand?"
The girl nodded. "One less civilian to worry about," HatChick thought. "One less complication."
"Good." HatChick gave Jeff one more stern look, which softened when she saw the worry in his face. "Jeff, this is business as usual - we do this all the time. Don't worry about us, and don't put yourself in harm's way. Keep watch out here, and call out if you see something weird." Jeff nodded.
HatChick squared off toward the Precovia's Indiscretion store, then deliberately reached up to her hat, firmly grasped the bill with both hands, and turned it around on her head - bill facing backward, ass-kickin' mode. It was her signature move, and she knew it made great visuals for the camera. She knew from the posters sold at Wal-Mart that this move accentuated her long throat and full, high breasts. Young girls loved it for the attitude; teenaged boys (and men) liked it for the cheesecake.
"Flaunt it while you've got it," she thought to herself, and strode up to the metal grate.
HatChick examined the metal security door minutely before touching it. She felt the urgency of time - "who knows what danger Kristal is in now," she thought - but she would be no help to her crime-fighting partner if she fell victim to the first deadfall in the place.
Satisfied that the security gate was just that - a security gate, and nothing more - she grasped two of the horizontal bars comprising the gate and started pulling, one up, one down; the metal was strong, but she was HatChick, and she knew it would yield to her strength. "Another great visual," she thought, feeling the heat in her pectorals, shoulders, upper back, and legs. From behind her, she heard the onetime Kat-burglar gasp as the metal slowly and loudly bent apart. She shifted her grip and pulled again - and soon she had an opening large enough to admit her body.
She looked back. Jeff was standing with a lost-puppy expression on his face, and the Kat was still kneeling where she had left her, with a expression of muted awe. With a nod of her head, HatChick entered the darkness of what she knew would be a bad guy's lair.
She paused for a moment once inside to give her eyes time to adjust to the dim light. Free-standing racks of lacey lingerie and other intimate attire were spotted about the floor; to her left, the sales counter provided a possible ambush spot. The walls were mostly covered with more filmy, lacey and silky things - they might conceal anything.
A quick movement in her peripheral vision confirmed the network was filming it all.
About thirty feet in front of HatChick, two long display units came together to form a narrow opening into a space beyond. HatChick circled toward the right - "never approach a dark doorway directly" - stepping as softly and silently as her long years of training had taught her.
Carefully, silently, she threaded her way among the free-standing racks of nightgowns and robes, her senses extended for the first sign of attack. She was almost to the opening when she turned to see a silent figure looming over her, ready to strike - she lashed out with a side-kick, low, and the figure crashed to the ground. She leapt, to land on -
A mannequin. HatChick grimaced. "A little too much on-edge," she thought.
She quickly rose and passed through the opening. This room was smaller, more open. At the far end, another opening, with a glow of light beyond. Commitment Girl - she had to be in the very back. HatChick started toward the light, brushing aside a swath of gauzy material hung artfully from the ceiling -
And was pulled up short when the flimsy stuff clung to her arm, wrapping around her back and other arm. "Major case of static cling," she thought, plucking it from her shoulder -
And found she could not lift her arm far enough. Another length of silky gauze had extended from the wall to her right on the faintest of breezes, and had wrapped itself around her body, pinning one arm to her side.
Now HatChick realized the nature of this trap. She looked to her left - sure enough, a ghostly whiteness was drifting toward her, and in the background she could hear the faint sound of a fan. "Automatically triggered entanglement," she thought. As the newest clingy swath reached her, she crouched down under it - but this brought the material trailinng from the ceiling into contact with her legs. It curled around her thighs, clinging; she tried to straighten, could not, and lost her balance, falling backward -
She never reached the floor. The sheer material held her suspended inches from the floor, legs hopelessly entangled, one arm pinned, and now her other arm - "my free arm", she thought - felt the gentle touch of silk.
"Have to stop moving for a moment," she thought, and stilled her breathing. Her mind followed, becoming calm, as she surveyed her situation. The noise of the fans had stopped - "no more silky entanglements coming at me" - but she was helplessly wrapped, hanging in mid-air without contact with the ground. "No leverage, and wriggling will only cause me to come into contact with more of this stuff," she thought. "This is the most passive-aggressive trap I've ever fallen into."
If it weren't for the fact that Commitment Girl was undoubtedly in danger, HatChick would have found her predicament funny.
"Static cling problems, HatChick?" came a soft voice. She looked back in the direction of the mall - it was Jeff.
"Don't touch this stuff, Jeff," she warned. "It'll wrap itself around you; it's pernicious stuff."
"I think I see the mechanism," he said, hunkering down. "You're on a very static-inducing surface - did you notice the carpet you're on is different from the stuff used everywhere else? All I have to do is stand on the non-static surface, reach out to you and -" he leaned out over the large circle of shag carpet on which HatChick was centered (and which she had not noticed, to her own embarrassment), holding on to a display rack for balance. When his fingertip came within inches of her shoulder, an electric shock passed between them, and she felt the powerful hold of the silky shroud loosen around her body.
"You should be able to free yourself now," he said, and sat back, expectantly.
"He's waiting for me to berate him for disobeying instructions and following me in," she realized. "He's ready to take his scolding - but he's determined to follow me into danger anyway." She felt a rush of gratitude for his blind, foolish bravery, and knew she couldn't send him back to wait.
Instead, she said, "we're close to Commitment Girl; help me get unwrapped here." He started gratefully to peel the long swaths of clinging material from around her shoulders and arms; they had become so tightly wrapped she could not move. It was close work, and as Jeff's hands brushed the soft swell of her breasts he was glad of the darkness, and hoped Kaivee wouldn't notice his red face, or his other physical reaction. HatChick smiled, missing nothing. Then she carefully unwrapped her long legs as he watched, and stood up. He waited a moment before standing, and she turned away so he wouldn't see her smile again.
Once they were both back on their feet, HatChick retrieved her hat, pulled it firmly and resolutely down, her blond hair flowing out from beneath, and said "keep my back, and stay close." Then she turned toward the back of the store, from which a warm glow emanated - "lights", Jeff thought; "Commitment Girl."
HatChick and Jeff came to the entrance to the back room together and looked through without entering. Their attention was riveted immediately on the tableau along the back wall. Under the glare of spotlights, a tall palm tree stood, curving toward the ceiling. Beneath it was a patch of sandy beach, some fake beach-grasses and a beach-ball. Suspended from the top of the tree, a brightly-colored rope hung, at the bottom of which, swaying slightly -
"Commitment Girl!" Jeff exclaimed. And it was. She was turned so that her back was toward them, but it was definitely the second half of the crime-fighting team of HatChick and Commitment Girl. She was hanging upside down from her ankles, her arms bound tightly behind her back.
"Careful, Jeff," HatChick said, with a cautioning hand on his arm (her touch sent thrills up and down his spine - this she did not notice). "She's alive - you can see her moving, and it doesn't look like she is being harmed. This could be the real trap; everything else was just prelude. All our lives depend on us staying sharp."
As Jeff watched, Commitment Girl's powerful back muscles flexed and twisted as she struggled to break her bonds. He spent an moment - just an instant - admiring her long, elegant legs; the inverted v-shape of her back; her slim, taut waist; and her beautifully-shaped, firm buttocks. Her slow, almost languid writhing, twisting at the waist and arching her back slightly as she swayed gently over the sand, were suddenly very sensuous to him, and he felt himself growing hard again ("this is why I don't go on capers with them," he thought).
Then Jeff realized something; HatChick was scanning the room for obvious traps, so she hadn't noticed yet. He had been so busy admiring Commitment Girl's physique that he had allowed to pass un-noticed the fact that he could see her ass entirely, with just a thong held between her cheeks. This was very unlike the practical-minded Kristal he knew.
"HatChick," he whispered, "she's not in uniform; she's wearing some kind of very tight, black costume and" -
Suddenly Commitment Girl gave a tremendous twist and swung violently, spinning around in slow circles that brought her face them, then away again. Her face was intent, as if in deep concentration, and she seemed not to be aware of their presence. Then HatChick and Jeff realized at the same moment -
"The teddy -- it's shrinking." Now Jeff could see Commitment Girl's expression for what it truly was - agony and grim determination - and her movements were those of an exhausted woman writhing in a futile attempt to gain a moment's release from the relentlessly constricting, strangling motion of the super-strong fabric around her body.
"We have to get her out of there before it crushes her," HatChick said with a sickened expression ("it could have been me," she thought). "You go right, I'll go left - don't go across the center of the floor. Move fast - but be mindful of traps."
HatChick reached her position without incident. "This is too easy," she thought. "No real resistance to my rescue attempt on the way in - the silk scarf entanglement was only a token - or a delaying tactic.
"This is a setup," she concluded. "They wanted me to make it here, but on their schedule. It's another trap of some kind, and Commitment Girl's the bait."
She signaled to Commitment Girl with a whispered hiss. Commitment Girl's head swiveled at the sound, seeking out the source of the noise; their eyes met, and Commitment Girl nodded ("I can hold on; do this right.")
Jeff came into position at Commitment Girl's right slightly after. This close, he could see how cruelly the fabric had cut into Commitment Girl's privates, and how tightly around her body it had shrunk - and it was still visibly shrinking. He stepped on to the sand, reaching up to untie Commitment Girl's slender ankles . . .
"Jeff! No!" HatChick cried, leaping out to stop him. He turned in surprise just as she reached him and
-- the floor disappeared and
-- HatChick crashed into him, momentariily and uncharacteristically out of
control and
-- there was a sickening falling sensattion, friction all around him and
-- then a drunken swinging, swaying witth
-- HatChick wrapped around him, holdingg him tightly, crushing against him but
-- he could not stand but did not fall;; could not move his arms; indeed,
-- could not move at all, except to wriiggle against HatChick's enveloping
softness
There was a moment's silence in which Jeff realized what had happened - what he had done. "A trap door, beneath Commitment Girl," he groaned. "And I fell for it."
"We fell for it, Jeff - don't beat yourself up," came HatChick's low voice in his ear. "It was a glaze of sand over an open pit - there's no way we could have detected it."
Now he and HatChick were suspended beneath the trap-door opening, their feet inches above a bare concrete floor, their bodies crushed together and surrounded by a closed-ended tube made of a sheer material. He looked up, and could see Commitment Girl high above them, suspended over the hole, and still in the clutches of the constricting teddy.
"This - tube - is so tight, I can't get my arm free," he said. Both of his arms was trapped between her waist and the sides of the tube they were in. HatChick's arms were both around him, and trapped between his body and the fabric. Even breathing was difficult, with the material circling his back and sides, and HatChick crushed against him face-to-face. Each breath either one took impinged on the other.
"It's a silk stocking," HatChick replied. "A special silk. They stretched it below the opening of the trap, attaching it to the under-edge. When we came through, the combined weight of our bodies stretched it right to its limit.
"That's why it's so tight around our bodies," she said, twisting her body against him. "It's stretched to about a hundred times it's original size. And you're right - I can't get my arms out either - the silk is so tight against my body, it's all I can do to wriggle my fingers."
HatChick looked up. "Hang on, Commitment Girl," she called up. "We'll get us all out of this. Somehow."
"I think not," came a voice. "And I must congratulate you, HatChick, on your astute analysis. You were exactly correct in your assessment - with one detail omitted."
They turned at the voice, to see the manager of Precovia's Indiscretion. But she was not as they had last seen her. She had traded in her conservative business suit for a man's dress shirt, open at the neck, revealing firm, full and womanly breasts. The shirt was all she wore, except stockings - sheer, which displayed her long, elegant legs. Her hair fell freely around her shoulders. Now she looked wild, unpredictable, and dangerous. Jeff was galvanized.
"Big Hair Lady," HatChick breathed. In her mouth, the very name was an indictment.
"At your service," the woman said with an ironic smile. "I must say this is an amazing development," Big Hair Lady observed. "The silk stocking trap was designed to hold you securely, HatChick - we fully expected you to rush to your partner's rescue, and I hoped you would make it past my poor preliminary entertainment. I could not have predicted this. The pressure on the both of you must be twice that required to hold you helplessly immobilized." She ran her hand lightly down HatChick's back through the thin silk shroud, her long fingernails lingering on the teenaged crime-fighter's firm buttocks before tracing a line up her side to the gentle swell of her breast. "So lovely," she murmured absently.
"And you," she said to Jeff, "here you are, about to be immortalized with the object of most of male America's desires."
Noting Jeff's expression, she exclaimed, "and you, my unfortunate young man, are no exception, are you? How sweet."
Then Big Hair Lady put her lips to Jeff's ear and whispered, "the stockings I'm wearing right now are the same stockings as the one you're about to die in. If it helps you to enjoy yourself when you are being slowly crushed to death, you have my permission to imagine my thighs, wrapped around you." She brought her lovely, powerful leg up against Jeff's back, caressing him with her thigh through the two thicknesses of silk
"Unless you'd rather not - then don't even think of how it would be to smother in my sweet softness, the tender skin of my inner thighs against you - gentle but firm; inexorable, wonderful, terrible and sure as death.
"And don't even entertain the image of me doing your sweetheart here in the same way - don't think that the silky death you are about to share is the silky death of my embrace; try to keep your mind pure."
She smiled coldly, sure from Jeff's mortified expression that her words and actions had had the desired effect on his body. And from HatChick's discrete attempts to shift herself against Jeff, she received her confirmation.
"There's something you did not guess about my little entertainment here," she said, at the same time grasping them with both hands and spinning them in a dizzying circle. She stopped them, then reached up (full breasts pressing against the back of Jeff's head), and tied a short cord around the section of stocking above them that had twisted closed. Now HatChick and Jeff were encapsulated in silk, closed beneath their feet and above their heads.
"This stocking is made" - she stepped over to the wall, in which was set a control panel - "of the same type of material" - she pressed a button, and a cold mist enveloped them from all sides - "as the outfit your partner upstairs has chosen to make her exit from this world in.
"After having stretched to seventy-two times its original size - nice guess, HatChick - it will now shrink to one-fortieth of its original size. You two love-birds are about to be commingled as few couples in the history of the world have been.
"Now I would love to stay," she continued. "But one part of the network covenant is indeed sacrosanct - I have to leave, to give you 'heroes' a chance to escape. Which you won't. So I will have to watch your actual death-agonies on television with the rest of the world.
"Goodbye, HatChick," Big Hair Lady said, caressing Kaivee's arm through the silk. Don't forget to look up now and again, to check on your partner's progress. She should be leaving us very soon now." And Big Hair Lady turned and left the room, leaving HatChick and Jeff cheek-to-cheek, feeling the first creeping sensation as their soft and sensuous prison began to constrict around them.
"Our only hope," HatChick said quietly as soon as the door shut behind the villain, "is to apply pressure against the opening above us - it's the weak spot. We can't rip through this fabric, but we may be able to force our way past the cord Big Hair Lady tied around the opening. If we can do that, we might be able to climb out before this thing crushes us."
"I'm so sorry," Jeff began to say; but she cut him off.
"There's no time for sorry - we can talk about sorry when we're all free. Right now, we have to stay focused. Now we can't stay like this - this silk is contracting more quickly laterally than it is vertically, which means our own bodies will eventually suffocate us if we stay in this position. Already our breathing is causing us to compete for space, and eventually we won't be able to expand our lungs enough to breathe at all. And soon it will so tight that - oh," she said, her voice ending in a low moan.
"HatChick, don't you lose it," he pleaded, but he too was struggling to keep his composure. His erection was pressed hard against her softness, and every movement they made, even the subtle swaying of the trap, provided gentle stimulation. And now the steady constriction around them was forcing them more tightly together - he feared that if he nudged her even accidentally with his hips, she would reciprocate, and he would not be able to stop his response. He could feel her heart pounding through her breast, pressed tightly against him, and he knew she could feel the urgency of the blood pounding his loins.
"It's death if we do," she whispered huskily, trying to lift herself up; her breast, tight against his chest, slipped free of her uniform as she struggled upward. Her nipple was erect, and another low moan escaped her. "I can't - get my arms free," she panted, "and I can't get enough purchase with my legs." The tightness of the silk held their bodies above the bottom of the silk stocking - there was nothing for them to push against in an attempt to climb to freedom.
She sank back down, her bare breast against Jeff's face; reflexively, he turned his face toward it, gently nuzzling her nipple with his lips. She moaned again, melting against him, and he found himself driving against her, urgently and rhythmically - and she responded. He lifted his face to hers and their lips met, tongues probing urgently, a long-forbidden kiss at the threshold of death, and still they could both feel the incessant constriction pulling them together, a sensuous, deadly caress assuring their doom.
HatChick looked up and saw, through the silk, Commitment Girl dangling above them and writhing in agony. "We have to focus, we have to get free," she gasped, "or Commitment Girl will die because of us." But their stolen moment of desperate and fear-driven intimacy had cost them precious moments, time enough for the silk to seal their fates. "I can't get free," HatChick whispered, "and the silk is shrinking vertically now, too; there's not enough room for me to slide up and gain us breathing space."
Their legs were intertwined, and now with the bottom of the stocking shrinking up toward them, and the top shrinking downward, HatChick and Jeff had no place left to go but more tightly against each other's bodies. With each breath Jeff drew, he could feel HatChick struggle for air; and with each breath she drew, she was pressed more tightly around him. "He'll smother first," she thought, "and then I'll be crushed over his body." She could not even turn her head enough now to look up to see Commitment Girl.
"I've failed them both," she thought. "If I had sent Jeff back to the mall, he would be safe. And if I had kept my head when he walked onto the trap door, I could have saved them both." She shifted - or tried to; the silk was curling her around Jeff's body, and there was no place to shift. With each breath, it seemed she could draw less air into her lungs. But each motion they made, including breathing, was still intensely stimulating - tiny shudders of pleasure racked her body, radiating out from her womanhood, and every inch of her body was sensitive to the still-sensuous touch of the silk which would kill them, and to the warmth and hardness of Jeff's body. She knew Jeff was trying even now not to touch her in an ungallant way, but now she found herself regretting the fact that she had not responded to his obvious infatuation with her. "Death-bed regrets," she mused; "way to young to be having them." Curled over the body of her faithful sidekick, HatChick wondered how long it would take to die in Big Hair Lady's silken deathtrap.
Commitment Girl heard the door slam shut in the room below, and for the first time allowed herself to give in to despair. She had nearly cleared her mind of all the sensations from her body by an act of sheer will, when HatChick's assault against the mannequin had brought her out of her meditation and back to reality. Even the on-rushing wave of pain had been bearable, looking at her indomitable partner and knowing that she would soon be delivered.
But then Jeff's improvident attempt at rescue had dashed her hopes. Looking down, she had met his gaze as he looked up at her from his soft prison, and the look in his eyes had been heartbreaking. "He thinks he's doomed me," she thought; and it wasn't so. "I may die, but it won't be Jeff's doing. I chose this life, and Big Hair Lady chose my death. He has no responsibility in it." But she could not tell him this for the scarf in her mouth.
Now it did not matter; there were no more superheroes waiting in the wings to come to the rescue this day. Waves of pain radiated from her womanhood, and every muscle screamed; her very bones seemed to be creaking under the slow, patient advance of the encroaching teddy. Her breathing had been reduced to shallow panting by the steady constriction around her body, and only by a supreme act of concentration did she keep from hyperventilating and passing out. "I will fight to be lucid right up to the end," she thought; "I will not die a drooling fool."
But then the material pressing up between her buttocks and bunched in her sex tightened measurably, constricting around her most intimate and sensitive parts, sending red waves of agony shooting throughout her entire body; and they did not stop. It seemed she could not catch her breath for the pain; she silently begged for just one second, one instant, of surcease, but the device was insensate. There was no caring for her suffering, it only did what it was designed to do - to constrict around a young woman's body until she had been crushed to death, slowly, and then dismember her.
At the beginning of her ordeal, she had struggled with confidence that she could escape this deathtrap, or that rescue would come. Even the first sensations against her sex had been merely interesting, as the material had begun to shrink and move against her. The teddy had not shrunk uniformly - it had contracted more quickly against her sex, between her legs and buttocks, and over her breasts. The first signs of tightness against her womanhood had been stimulating, and she had guarded herself against luxuriating in the sensation at the expense of her efforts to escape.
But then escape had proved more elusive than she had anticipated, and the tightness and pressure on her sex had become intrusive. At that moment, when she had tried to wriggle away from the insistent touch, she had first understood the horror of the trap; there was no evading the stimulation. Even after the constant movement and pressure had brought her to orgasm, it had continued, turning to a painful force against her tenderness. The satiny material shrank steadily, forcing her buttocks apart as it retreated toward a common center, finally and with cruel intentness forcing itself between the lips of her womanhood, and still not stopping even then.
Finally, stimulated, manipulated and laid bare as the helpless victim she truly was, she gave herself in to the agony to which she had been consigned by her captor. At that moment, when she understood she was truly owned by this uncaring force which held her so easily, she had felt the first stirring constriction around her torso, patiently closing in around her internal organs, her lungs, her heart. Taken to the brink of unbearable pain and held there indefinitely, she now could only wait impassively for the coldly constricting deathtrap to still her breath and grant her the release of unconsciousness. Even now she could not hurry death; the device would kill her at its own pace, holding her suspended, washed in pain, until its pleasure.
"I resign myself," she thought, battling the roaring which now filled her head. "I've given myself over; the trap has won."
Then, "I hope there are no more traps left," she thought to herself. "If I buy it, I can't think who'll save the day." This thought seemed foreign to her, but she could not spare the strength to ponder it.
The rope rocked and a new kind of pressure fastened itself around her body, but this hardly added to the sum total of pain she was feeling. Her world narrowed to a tunnel, at the end of which she could see HatChick and Jeff, looking up at her.
"I'll try not to drop us both through the trap door," she thought again, startling herself - these were odd thoughts, but she was watching the blackness at the edge of her vision move steadily inward toward a point at the center of perception, and could not be bothered.
"Hold on, Commitment Girl, this may be a bumpy landing." Now Commitment Girl was sure the words were not her own, as she suddenly flew away from the tree and landed, hard, on the wood floor. She shook her head, fighting for one last cognitive moment - and she understood now whose words they had been -- not her own, she lay on the floor, with the legs of the young Kat from the abortive robbery wrapped around her. She had to move her legs - they had been so long motionless - but she could not move them, and she realized she could not expand her lungs enough to draw even a sip of air. She tried to smile at the irony, as darkness closed in, that she should die at the moment of rescue, recipient of the ultimate wedgie and swimsuit model to the dead.
Pain radiated from her womanhood, from her buttocks, from her ribs - no, pain did not radiate; pain just was. She was pain. It would be easier to name the parts of her that did not hurt, than to list the ones that did.
But she was alive. Kristal opened her eyes - ceiling lights, supporting struts, industrial chic painted black. Her gaze shifted - a face. The Kat - what was her name? Kristal did not believe she had ever learned the girl's name - this girl whom she had almost killed, once, and who had now saved her life. Kristal tried to smile, but then a hiccup escaped her, and she realized it sounded like a sob, and the girl gathered her up and held her as she cried out the last hour of her life.
And then she stopped crying. There was work yet to be done.
"I grabbed the rope," the Kat said, "and wrapped my legs around you so you wouldn't fall in the hole when I cut it. We landed hard - I think I may have broken some ribs on you, either by squeezing you too hard or from landing too hard. Then you passed out, and I had to hurry and cut the costume off you - you may have a few scratches on you from my nails." She smiled, and shyly flashed the retractable metal nails affected by Kat-gang members. Kristal noticed the girl had shed her jeans, and wore just a black leotard, cut daringly high in the hip and demurely high at her breast; and thought "a superhero's costume for superhero's work. You go, girl."
She smiled: "you did fine. I can't imagine HatChick gave you permission to come in, but I'm glad you did." Then she remembered; "Hatchick! She and Jeff are in the room below us, in a constricting deathtrap that's shrinking around them now. . . we have to get them."
The Kat pushed her back down. "It's all right - I can climb down there and cut them loose. But we have to get you dressed before we bring Jeff back up here."
Kristal looked down at herself - naked as the day she was born. "Okay - but quickly. There isn't much time."
"Don't worry," the girl said. "This is the bathing-suit section of store - some of these must be made of gold old-fashioned non-shrinking nylon." Kristal smiled; then she tried to rise, and didn't. She sank back, her head reeling.
"You lie here. I'll get you something to put on, then I'll climb down and cut the other two free." The girl stood up and ran over to the wall, on which were tastefully displayed at least a dozen bathing suits in all cuts and colors, intertwined and knotted together to form a 'sunburst' design.
Hillary spotted a red one-piece suit, high legged high bust - just Commitment Girl's style. She grabbed it by the shoulder strap - and it grabbed her back. The bottom portion of the suit curled up and wrapped itself around her wrist. She turned back toward Commitment Girl, her hand still entangled in the soft, cool material: "um, Commitment Girl -- can you tell me what to do here?"
Kristal lifted herself onto one elbow and looked, then muscled herself to a sitting position, her heart suddenly racing. Lower down on the wall, a shimmering suit was even now reaching out, wrapping itself around the dancer's muscular calf; and another (white, with flowers), was snaking around the girl's other thigh.
In fact, the entire wall full of bathing suits seemed to be linking together, or wrapping themselves around the young Kat's limbs and body (here, a suit snaked through its own leg-holes, forming a noose which dropped over the now-alarmed girl's head; there, two iridescent suits wrapped themselves around her ankles; a pair of smooth racing suits stretched across her body just under her breasts, pulling her back into the display). Hillary just stood there, a look of surprise and alarm on her open face.
"Pull back!" Kristal shouted. "It's another trap!" But it was too late. With a progressive ripple, the loosely draped and dangling bathing suits tautened, lifting the earnestly-struggling girl right off her feet, catching her arms and legs, tightening, and forming the classic spoke-and-wheel shape of the web of an orb-weaver spider - with the body of the girl helplessly enmeshed, in the position of the spider's prey.
"Commitment Girl?" the girl called. "I can't get myself free. My hands are tangled in this stuff, and my legs are all wrapped up, and - oh!"
"What is it?" Kristal called, rising to her knees and waiting to let the room stop spinning.
"Behind you" - the girl's eyes were riveted on something on the floor just behind Kristal. She spun around, falling back to her haunches ("I wonder how long my ass is going to hurt," she thought).
There was a door set in the wall, behind a display of beach-robes. This door now stood open, just a few feet. But a few feet were all that was required for the thing which had issued silently through it, and which was now only a few feet away from Kristal's bare legs. She stared at its strangely familiar shovel-shaped head and multi-colored eyes, its forked tongue seemingly cut from a piece of red velvet, and its twenty-foot long, lime-green body covered in fuzzy velvet.
Kristal cast her mind back to her little-girlhood, so far away now, and dredged a name up from the story-books of her past; looked through the open door cut into the wall between Precovia's Indiscretion and the Weird Tales bookstore; and gave a name to the creature which now cheerfully, unabashedly, and intently, stalked her:
Kaa. The snake.
He fixed his wide-eyed cartoon stare on her, and his velveteen tongue licked the air with good humor as his tail tenderly coiled around Kristal's ankles. His touch felt warm and soft against her skin, but when she tried to pull one foot free, his hold was firm. He tugged back, and she skidded across the floor into the midst of his coils. "A little frog for my supper," he almost purred, as he extended his tail up the back of her legs, to form another loop around her thighs, just above her knees. "A naked little frog," he added.
Kristal's heart pounded, and her breath came in short gasps as she tried to tear her gaze away from the brightly-colored predator's eyes - but she could not break away. "Let's go back to my place," the snake suggested in a seductive voice. "Perhaps I could show you my -- etchings?"
Still suspended in the bathing-suit web, Hillary looked around desperately for some way to escape her entanglement as she watched the gigantic stuffed animal smoothly drag his prey back toward the open door. But her feet were wrapped tight together, and her arms were stretched out and tightly tied with swaths of thick, soft silk. The noose around her neck lay soft against her skin, holding her head against the web but still allowing her to breathe. She tried to wriggle herself off the web, but she only sank more securely into the nooses and loops closing around her. "I've got to warn HatChick and Jeff," she thought.
"HatChick," she called out. "This is Hillary, and I'm in trouble. Commitment Girl is being carried off by a gigantic toy snake and - I'm - trapped in some kind of -- really big - spiderweb . . ." her voice trailed off in a squeak as she looked down to see the figure approaching her from the shadows. It was a girl, tall, slim, with long blond hair framing a gaunt and hollow-eyed face. The girl had broad shoulders, large, high breasts, and thin arms and legs. She wore a leotard suit, in shimmering black which accentuated her long, smooth curves. The suit was entirely black except for a device between her breasts. Hillary racked her memory - the design was familiar -- as the girl said softly, and with menace,
"Are you helpless?"
And then it came to her where she had seen the design - like two red triangles joined at their points. And she recalled what it signified as the girl climbed the web to come face-to-face with her, long legs wrapping around her waist, and smiled at her with a malicious, hungry smile.
It was an hourglass; sign of the Black Widow.
To be continued . . .
By B. Ferrett