Malcolm gloomily surveyed the stack of videocassettes on the counter before him. This would not end well, he knew; somebody was going to get fired, and he would have at least a partial hand in it. As the new Assistant Manager at the Weird Tales bookstore, he felt fairly certain that responsibility for actually lowering the boom would fall to him.
And he already suspected who the victim would be. Somebody - some employee - had been playing with some of the displays in recent weeks, and it had gotten out of hand. Leo, the manager of the store, had finally had enough when he found several Career-Girl Betsie dolls in a compromising position with a Commando GI Jeff action figure. "This has got to stop, Malcolm," he had insisted. "Your first assignment as Assistant Manager is to determine who, exactly, has been tampering with these toys, and bring me sufficient proof for their dismissal."
"I don't mind a bit of fun, mind you," he had added as he turned away, "but this has gone too far for good taste. We can't have the customers finding the dolls having kinky sex - or any sex for that matter -- on the shelves."
Malcolm knew who was responsible, but Leo demanded unassailable proof for a legal and uncontestable dismissal. So - two weeks worth of late-night security videotapes loomed in Malcolm's future.
"I really don't want to fire anybody," he thought, "especially Carrie, as spooky as she is. Still, I make the big bucks now - I guess this is how you earn it."
Prospects for his immediate future looked up considerably when the next customer came in the door. She had never come into the store before - Malcolm was certain he would have remembered this one. She was tall, broad-shouldered and lushly curved, with long legs, sleek hips and large, womanly breasts carried high. A generous fall of auburn hair cascaded around her shoulders. Her mouth was firm and full, her lips delicately pursed. She wore a black, form-fitting sweater and slightly faded blue jeans, also close-fitting.
The look she gave him as she passed his station behind the register was open, frank, and inviting.
Malcolm watched her as she wandered through the store, catching glimpses of her as she seemed to glide through the stacks. Finally, as she paused in the books-and-toys tie-in section, Malcolm abandoned his post to render some "customer service".
"This is quite a display you have here," she remarked without turning as he approached.
"I might say the same," he thought, but did not say. He looked over her shoulder, trying hard not to stare obviously at her breasts, to see which display so interested her.
His heart sank. There were three Betsie dolls - Skateboard-Action, Lawyer and Veterinarian -- arranged around a half-naked GI Jeff doll (Special Forces edition). "This is gonna get me fired," he thought. "I thought I had these things all boxed away this morning."
But the woman's next words gave him hope for his continued employment. "I can see that position being interesting," she said, indicating one of the Betsie dolls, "but that one there looks uncomfortable. And that one" - pointing to the GI Jeff doll - "looks physically impossible. At least, without the aid of ropes and at least one pulley.
"Well," she added with a sidelong glance at him, "maybe just with ropes. I could certainly give it the old college try."
Malcolm turned beat red; he was imagining himself and this gorgeous, lush woman attempting something similar, and she knew it, and he knew she knew it. She looked at him appraisingly; "well, I'm done shopping. You can check me out now. If you haven't already done so to your satisfaction, that is."
And she turned smoothly and sauntered toward the registers with an easy, hip-swaying stride. Malcolm could only follow, completely flustered and aroused.
"I must say," the woman said as Malcolm ran her books over the barcode reader, "your little shop has inspired me. I'm anxious to try out some of the things I've seen here."
Malcolm's hands shook slightly and he almost dropped her books.
She smiled. "Perhaps you'd like to help me out - it's really no good with just one."
Malcolm dropped the books.
"I - I have to close," he managed to croak out. "I can't leave the store until nine."
"A pity. I was anxious to try this out while I'm in the mood to experiment." She favored him with a big, open smile, tongue slightly protruding between perfect white teeth. "Oh, well. Maybe I'll just go back to my gym and work up a good sweat with the weights.
"Malcolm stood there, silently imagining her perfect body in tight lycra, when a new voice intruded.
"I'll help you out".
The woman turned. A young man stood there, returning her gaze with an open, frank look and a slightly crooked smile. "I'm available right now, as a matter of fact."
She eyed him up and down once, slowly, then smiled back, extending her hand. "Lela."
He took her hand, bowing slightly with an ironical tilt to his head. "Charmed. Shall we go?"
Lela took the stranger's arm and turned her heartbreaker's smile one last time on Malcolm. "So long, book-man," she said almost regretfully. "Maybe I'll drop in and see you again." With a promisingly cocked eyebrow aimed at the hapless Assistant Manager of Weird Tales, the beautiful woman left on the arm of a tall, dark stranger.
While Malcolm stewed in silence, Lela drove in silence, her new playmate in the passenger seat. As she pulled out of her parking space he turned to her: "I'm - "
"A mystery," she answered for him. "A cipher. And that's just the way I want you." He smiled and sat back, his eyes on her. She liked the way his gaze traveled over her entire body - "he's taking possession of me," she thought.
She gave a brief moment's thought to her lost book-selling playmate, but no more than a moment. She would come back to him, and she would get to enjoy the look of surprise on his face when she turned her playful ways loose on him. But this one beside her - she did not expect he would be surprised at anything she did. He seemed more masterful than the bookish young man; more capable. "Tonight, I'm playing with danger," she thought, and shivered inwardly with delight.
At her place, they repaired immediately and without speaking to the back bedroom. He stood facing her, quiet anticipation in his face, as she began to undress him, leaving him in only his briefs. Then he undressed her to her panties, and she pulled him to the bed. Still he held himself back, watching her, awaiting her lead. "Good boy," she thought. "Let me control the play."
This was the most dangerous moment. She was very fit, and strong, but still no match physically for this man. Almost naked and alone with him, she had to trust this unknowable for a brief time before she had him under control. This moment of danger was the most exciting part of the game, for her.
She reached under her pillow and drew out the silk scarves. "The game," she proposed.
He nodded, eyes hard and bright on her face.
"I'll tie us both, in special knots. They're constricting knots - the more we struggle, the tighter they'll become. If we struggle enough, they'll draw tightly enough to strangle us both - we'll be victims of the strength of our own bodies."
His breathing had grown faster and deeper. "He's into this," she thought. Her own excitement grew - this would be a real challenge for her.
"If one of us escapes, they get to decide what happens next," she continued. "There's a safety loop in the knots - if you pull it, the constriction will stop in the whole system, but the other person will still be helplessly tied. So, if I get out first -" she leaned toward him, gently taking his hands and placing them behind his back - "I may stop the constriction and have my way with you. Or - " his hands bound securely, she brought both ends of the scarf back around his waist - "I may just decide to let you struggle for a while.
"The fun," she continued, patiently constructing the complicated weave of knots and loops around them both, "is in deciding how much you trust the other person, and how hard to struggle."
"Now I know why you didn't want to know me," he said, his voice husky. "You get off on the danger."
"Most times." She thought back to the slightly-built bookstore manager. She had known she had the strength to bring him swiftly to the point of asphyxiation, and she was curious about the sensations in easily overpowering a man. Still, there were attractions to the prospect of fighting for her life, and she found even the prospect of losing to this dark stranger very stimulating.
They were kneeling face to face on the bed now, bodies almost touching, arms behind their backs. "There's one more loop left," she said. "If I put my hand through and pull it closed, the constriction will begin with every movement we make. Are you sure you trust me?"
"No," he said, "but that's what makes this exciting." And he was excited - very, and obviously. Lela slipped her wrist through the last noose behind her back, jerking her arm up to draw it tight. "Then let the games begin," she whispered.
He immediately pulled his arms apart behind his back - or tried to. The effect was instant, as the silk lines drew their bodies together and they toppled over onto the mattress. "Got to stay on top," Lela thought, knowing that only by staying out from under his weight would she get the leverage she needed to work her bonds. Already the silken chords were sliding against their skin, tightening around their waists and binding their legs in a complex tangle, pulling her down onto him, and pulling him hard against her. And the strangling cords - the nooses encircling their throats - were already starting to close.
Most of Lela's partners became distracted by her breasts in their faces, and the moment they took to enjoy their position would give her the margin she needed to free herself - and then the game would change. But this one was cunning; he was working his bonds as hard as she was, and their efforts were canceling each other out; the silky web was drawing tightly around them both. They were evenly matched, and for the first time, Lela considered using her escape-hatch.
The hardness of his body against her, and the closeness of the silk around her were starting to stimulate Lela more than usual, and she suppressed a moan of pleasure as she slipped off his sweaty chest and sank hard onto his male organ. She could feel the strangle-cord against her throat now - the farthest she had ever gone without escaping. "I'm close to losing control," she thought. "Got to use my escape hatch".
With hands shaking from stimulation and adrenaline she plucked at the knot she had not told her partner about - the one behind her back, which would release the cords encircling her if she pulled on its ends. He had no such escape hatch available to him. "Learn never to trust," she thought, and pulled the ends of the knot.
And nothing happened. The constriction continued as she frantically scrabbled at the knot. Something was in the knot - hard plastic of some kind, with protrusions, which kept her from pulling the knot loose. Without her escape hatch, there was no way to stop the constriction; soon even their breathing would draw the knots more tightly around them. "We're going to die," she thought desperately, feeling the strangle-cord begin to bite into her throat.
Lela panicked, renewing her struggles with fresh fury. Her partner responded in kind, both moaning at the agonizing and frustrating stimulation, and the pain as the silken cords bit deeply into their arms and legs, bodies - and throats. "Got to stay still," Lela thought, even as she twisted and pulled in the implacably constricting embrace of the web in which she had trapped herself. But her partner's motions only increased the physical stimulation, and any attempt to escape the sensation set off a new wave of pleasure followed by an increase in the constriction.
Her breath came hard into her lungs, and she fought to draw air past the cord now tightly embedded in her throat. She twisted and craned her neck to see what it was that had jammed her pefectly-designed web, and saw, incredibly, an Aerobicizer Betsie doll somehow entangled in her escape-hatch knot.
Her twisting motion jammed her partner's hardness deeply into her and he climaxed into his briefs, every muscle in his body rock-hard and spasming at the same moment. The knots around Lela's body tightened savagely, and no air came into her lungs. She gasped once, and then the darkness rushed in from all sides at once. She plunged down, into a deep well, a hole, or the gullet of a great beast, toward a place of . . .
. . . light. Lela rocketed down and down toward a well of light, a spot which grew larger and brighter. In the middle of the light she saw a figure, standing waiting with arms outstretched to receive her. A figure which resolved itself to be, as she approached . . .
. . . a gigantic Betsie doll, dressed in lycra workout togs of bright red, purple and green. The figure was life-size, human size, and Lela jolted to a stop just before the unmoving, wide-eyed and smiling plastic face. The arms, long and segmented, closed around her, pinning her arms to her sides; the lips, cold and unyielding, fastened themselves to her lips; and the Betsie began to crush her life from her. She felt her arms shatter, then her ribs bend inward, ripping great holes in her internal organs before tearing loose and lancing into her heart. As Lela gave up her spirit in the murderous arms of the Betsie doll from hell (or so she thought), she finally achieved the orgasm denied her in her own silken deathtrap.
Lela/Betsie awoke in her own bed, the body of her latest partner recumbent beside her. Her own bonds had come loose, but he lay still bound, spent and breathing easily. The throat-cord of the silken web lay loosely against him; he had been spared the strangulation against which Lela had struggled.
"My god," he said. "That was incredible." He looked her up and down appreciatively, and then regarded his own bonds. "You had some sort of escape-hatch, didn't you?"
"Of course, darling," she answered. "I was adventurous, but not suicidal." Deep inside her, Betsie heard an appreciative chuckle from the Lela; or perhaps it was Lela who spoke and the Betsie who responded. Already it was difficult to tell who was whom, or which was which.
"Was that a one-time only thing?" he asked.
"I'm afraid so," she answered, mounting him to sit on his chest, knees on either side of his body. "It could never be the same again. But there are other games we can play." She slipped her feet under his back, hooking her ankles together, and he smiled slyly up at her.
"I like your games," he replied. "Even when you don't play fair".
"You'll find this one a scream," she said, tightening her long, powerful legs around his torso. "At least," she said, bearing down as he started to squirm in discomfort, "for a little while."
He opened his mouth once during the next several minutes, but no sound came out. Lela/Betsie continued the slow, constant constriction of her legs on his still-helpless body as he squirmed beneath her weight; he gurgled a bit when his arms broke under the pressure, and she leaned forward to still the sound with her breast. And still she tightened her legs around him. When his ribs were crushed to powder and caved in on his heart, she placed her own lips on his. And when his poor laboring heart finally quivered and stilled between her thighs, she caught his life-force energy in her mouth as it tried to escape the crushed husk that had been a man; swallowed him, and became that much stronger for her conquest.
At the Weird Tales bookstore, Malcolm the new Assistant Manager sighed and inserted the first of many security videotapes into the machine. He tried not to think of the auburn-haired woman ("the one that got away,") but it was hard not to.
"Some guys," he thought, "get all the rotten luck."
By B. Ferrett