Tandy examined the rope critically, pulling a length of it taut between her fists. "It doesn't feel any different from regular chord," she remarked with a cocked eyebrow.
"That's because it is just a regular chord - bought at the hardware store this morning," Scottie replied. "The magic is in the tying - they're constricting knots, not constricting ropes."
"Hmmm." She leveled a straight-arrow look at him: "can you teach me how to do that, once the test is over?"
He shifted uncomfortably. "Don't even ask me questions like that. This is how I make my living. Don't ask me to give away my advantage."
"What, are you afraid I'll offer you so much money you can't refuse?"
". . . but not enough to live on. Yeah, something like that."
Tandy smiled. "All right. I won't tempt you unfairly." She looked at his coffee cup, untouched on the table beside him. "You're cold - want a topping-off?"
"Sure - thanks."
"So tell me about the device you've selected," she said as she took two mugs into the kitchen. Scottie watched her appreciatively; she was tall, with blond hair pulled up off her long, graceful neck. She was slim, with sleek hips and a hard, athletic body. Her bare arms were sculpted without being unfeminine, and her long legs were firm in her close-fitting, faded jeans. Scottie realized she had stopped on her way to the kitchen, and was looking back at him expectantly. "Oops - missed something," he thought, even as he admired her large, firm and womanly breasts.
"Scottie, I do believe you're checking me out," Tandy said with a accusatory smile. She laughed when he blushed and stammered. "Don't worry about it," she said; "I think it's sweet -- still."
She laughed again as he turned an even deeper shade of red, adding over her shoulder, "although I'm sure I must have at least ten years on you - right?"
"Thereabouts," he agreed as she handed him a new cup full of still-steaming black coffee. "That is - I guess so," he added hastily at her mock-hurt expression. He grinned, realizing she was trying to put him at ease. "Considering how intimate we've been, and are about to become," he thought, "my reaction to her must make me look like an idiot."
She seemed to have sensed his thoughts, for she said as she folded her long legs under on the couch, "you don't really fit the picture I had of you in my mind, Scott. You're much closer to the way I remember you as a kid, than the reputation you've earned since then. How is it such a sweet guy like you has such a bad reputation - lady killer and all?"
"This isn't my usual demeanor. I've gotta admit, I'm kind of at a loss how to approach you," he replied. "Most of my, um, 'clients' are strictly unwilling participants. I come in as a sub-contract, usually, and I play my part - whatever the prime has defined for me. This situation is a little different, and I'm not really sure how I should be acting."
"Fair enough. Just treat this as a simple services engagement, with me as the client and the prime contractor. I'm paying you for your expertise and assistance. As such, I expect - and appreciate - a no-nonsense, businesslike approach to the work. But there's no need for us to be all stuffy and formal about it. I like what I've seen so far of your business approach - contract and all - and I just want to take a little time to get a feel for your personal style. I am taking a bit of a risk, here, after all."
He shifted uncomfortably. "I can appreciate that. And I appreciate your openness. Maybe we should just start over". He rose to his feet, extending his hand. "Hello; I'm Scottie - the Cat's Cradler. I'm at your service."
"Tandy," she said, taking his hand in a firm grip. "Interdimensional mercenary and hired muscle. I'm so pleased you've agreed to assist me in my training. Please tell about the configuration you have selected for me."
"It adheres to all five of Ki's principles for Elegant Entertainments," he said. "It has been used several times - 'as seen on t.v.' - twice by me in a sub-contract role, the others under license from me. In the two instances in which I was directly involved, it proved lethal. The others ended in rescue, or an imperfect application. In no instance has the guest released themselves from a properly-done application."
"And the 'lethal' instances were?"
"Armageddon Guy and FlexiGirl."
"Wonderful. I heard about both those cases. This is just the type of thing I need to test myself against. Tell me about the mechanism - unless that goes against your standard practice, that is?"
"Not at all. In my usual engagements, the client is told the details while in the throes of struggle, but given our unique arrangement there's no reason I can't tell you now.
"You will be tied up with normal cotton-poly rope. I've selected the specific blend for its strength and stretch characteristics, with a mind for the fact that you intend to survive; thus, I've taken special care to choose something that won't leave excessive burns on you."
"Thank you. That's very thoughtful."
"Not at all. Now as to the actual working of it: the configuration is my own design, copyrighted. Essentially, you'll be hog-tied - hands behind back, wrists to ankles; standard stuff. The difference is in the ancillary loops; more rope will circle your body, your throat, legs, and arms, with special knots in strategic places. Now for the beauty" -
Tandy had to smile, now; Scottie was fully into the elegance of his creation. He almost shone with his excitement for his work, and with his anticipation in seeing it in action. His engagement made him very attractive, and she revised her pledge not to try to tempt him. "When this is over," she thought, "I think I will definitely see if I can learn just what does tempt him." She almost laughed at her own rush of giddy excitement. "He's definitely infectious," she thought.
"Tandy? You with me?" Scottie asked.
"Yes - sorry," she said. "Just drifted away there for a second."
"Okay. Now for the beauty: most of the knots are uni-directional. They can be slipped in only one direction - usually, the direction of tightening. Each one-way knot is diametrically opposed by another loop or a knot, placed in a position of muscular opposition. The result is" -
"That each effort on my part to loosen a knot will have the exact opposite effect elsewhere on my body."
"Precisely. The more you struggle, the tighter it becomes. But wait, there's more" -
Now Tandy did laugh. And, replaying his own words in his head, Scottie had to laugh as well. "Okay, I know I'm running on. But here's the true deviousness of it; certain special knots will be placed in such as way as to directly stimulate your most sensitive and intimate areas. Your efforts to free yourself" -
"Will have the effect of stimulating myself?"
"Yes! Leading, in extremis, to a series of involuntary muscular contractions which will" -
" -- tighten other knots even further."
"Right; I call it the erotic-cycle effect. It's a perfect example of synergistic feedback in a physical system, entirely powered by the client's body."
"Okay; so far so good," Tandy said thoughtfully. "But what keeps me from just lying very still, rather than struggling to escape?"
"Remember, I said it satisfies all of Ki's principles. That includes number three -- Inexorability. Your breathing will directly power the action of the stimulus knots on your body, starting the erotic-cycle effect. And even if you are able to breathe without stirring - theoretically possible, but not likely - eventually your arm and leg muscles will cramp. The system will do what it was designed to do; the only difference is in how long it will take, and what will trigger the synergistic effect."
"Scottie," she said, looking at him with admiration, "if it does everything you say it will, this should be a most worthwhile challenge for me. I can't wait to get started."
"No reason why we can't start right away," he answered. "Where would you like to be?"
"My bedroom," she said, noticing that he no longer blushed or stammered. "He's in his element now," she thought Her heart trip-hammered in her breast, only partly from the excitement and fear at what she was about to do.
Tandy led the way to the back of her apartment. "I assume you found my contract revisions acceptable," she called over her shoulder.
"Yes, fine," he answered, his mind momentarily on the soft sway of her hips, the pert movement of her bottom in her tight jeans. "Have you chosen a 'safe word'?"
"Yes, I have." She stopped abruptly, turning in the hallway to face him. "Let's be very clear on the procedure," she said. "I fully intend to escape your entertainment through my own devices. But, in the unlikely event I need you to release me, I will say the word 'Caligula' three times. You are not to intervene under any circumstances in the absence of a three-time repetition of that word. Don't release me at one, or at two - it must be three. I don't want to inadvertently mumble it in my struggles, unlikely as that seems, and have you ruin my self-test. But - on the third repetition, you are to immediately release me. It's spelled out in the contract in exactly that way - is your understanding the same as mine?"
"Yes," he said, "exactly. 'Caligula' three times, no fewer, and certainly no more. I must hear the word 'Caligula' spoken by you three times before I intervene to save you.
"And - you will need me to intervene," he added. "You may be good, but I am very good." He smiled.
She smiled back. "It should be interesting to find out. Oh - I probably don't need to mention, you are to stay in the room, within hearing distance, the entire time."
"Of course," he laughed. "I'll be there watching - and listening - the entire time."
She laughed as well: "Just making sure," she said. She led him into a dimly-lit room, appointed with a huge four-poster bed, a dressing-table, two bedside tables and a large, overstuffed chair. It looked comfortable and very feminine.
Tandy felt herself becoming nervous, now that the moment had come. Before, while engaged in lighthearted banter and businesslike negotiation, she had been able to put aside the thought of what she was about to voluntarily submit herself to.
"Tell me," she said as she fumbled with the fasteners on her jeans ("damn these button-flys!" she thought), "how the two fatalities played out."
Scottie watched in fascination as her jeans slipped to the floor, leaving her in violet panties. Her legs were firm - all muscle, thighs sculpted, calves sinewy and elegant. Her hips and buttocks were smooth and shapely, pure feminine power and grace expressed in svelte curves.
"Armageddon Guy was all muscle," he said, as she lifted her t-shirt over her head. "Almost muscle-bound. He held out against the constriction for a long time - the rope was cutting into him well past the point in which he should have asphyxiated. In the end, his spine shattered under the strain of being bent almost double -his own muscles crushed his vertebrae." Tandy folded her t-shirt carefully, laying it on the chair. She was wearing a lavender silk camisole, to match her panties. Scottie watched in admiration as she flexed and stretched, swing her arms in wide arcs, twisting at the waist.
He remembered her as a teenager, when he was just a kid. Who could have imagined the slim, leggy teenager and the love-struck little boy would end up together again as truly messed-up adults playing out real-life fantasy games with real consequences? He smiled at her, at himself - at them.
"Sit comfortably on the bed," Scottie instructed. Tandy climbed up onto the soft mattress, sitting with her long legs out before her, ankles together..
"FlexiGirl was so flexible," he continued, climbing onto the bed and kneeling behind her, "she could have been folded in thirds without feeling any ill-effect. But she was a relatively little thing - eventually the ropes around her body were so tight, she couldn't expand her lungs to inhale. She suffocated. Put your hands behind your back, please."
Tandy took a deep breath, held it for a second, and then let it out in a controlled exhale. "Moment of truth," she thought. She placed her hands, palm-up, on the comforter behind her.
"How do you think I would end, in the same situation?" she asked.
"I don't really know," he answered truthfully, beginning to wind the soft white rope around her wrists and forearms. He passed the skein of rope around her body at navel level, then under her bound arms. "You're clearly stronger than FlexiGirl was, but you're also more flexible than Armageddon was - to be honest, just about anyone would be. The challenge for you will be to wait long enough before saying 'Caligula' to find out, without waiting too long and risking injury or loss of consciousness."
"You forget yourself," Tandy smiled in the near-dark. "I don't intend to need your help." She could tell he was smiling behind her as he continued to wind the rope around her body in a complicated web, but he said nothing in reply. She could feel the rope slide against the smooth silk of her camisole as she shifted her weight on the mattress - close, but not tight. She could feel Scottie's weight against her shoulders as he leaned over her, passing the rope beneath, around, and over her breasts. "I hope he's enjoying the view," she thought. From the feel of his body against her back, she got the distinct impression he was.
Scottie marveled at Tandy's firm arms as he wound the rope around her biceps, then across her back, around the other biceps, then back and across her taut stomach. She was strong, weight-lifting strong, but still smoothly curved, soft skinned and womanly. "Tell me why you're doing this," he said, to take his mind off her sleek curves and velvet skin.
"In less than a year, I'll be thirty years old," she replied over her shoulder. "I've been on my own since I was a kid, free-lancing for villains and heroes - hired muscle, backup, lookout, whatever. But it's a young person's game, and I need a way to keep myself sharp. No better way than to test myself against what's really out there."
"Good point," he said. He stretched two lengths of rope on the bed beside her, along her hips. "Lift your hips, please," he said, supporting her shoulders. She lifted, and he pulled the ropes up through her thighs, and then over her shoulders. "Please excuse the familiarity," he said, as he delicately began tying a three-cornered knot between her thighs.
"I test myself against all sorts of possible opponents and situations," she went on as he made more connections behind her shoulders. "I've wrestled snakes, spiders and plants, attended any number of Predator's Balls, even rented a pack of Joeys once." She looked down again as his hands returned to the rope between her inner thighs. The small triangle of interlocked knots was perfectly centered on the triangle of silk between her legs.
She watch with interest as he worked, snugging the triangular knot gently against the soft swell of her womanhood. The knot floated on the silk of her panties, moving slightly with her shifting weight. Tandy gained a sudden appreciation for the precision in Scottie's design - only exactly off-setting tensions in the ropes would keep the knots centered over her womanhood as she writhed in (theoretical) agony later on.
As he pulled the ropes around her hips, the triangular knot pressed a little more against her. "This is one of the feedback knots?" she asked.
"Yes."
A thought occurred to her. "How did you do this with Armageddon Guy?"
He paused, and she could sense rather than see his smile again. "I had a hench-girl do this part on him. The - um, 'configuration' of the knot is different for a guy, but the concept is the same. But your hunch is right - there's no way I was going to put that feature on him myself - even if he was unconscious at the time."
Tandy laughed, and Scottie joined her. Then, still chuckling, "now turn over for me and lie on your stomach," he instructed.
She turned over, feeling the complicated inter-weave of rope across her stomach and back, pulling slightly on her bound hands. She tried to watch as he gently wrapped her legs, sometimes together, sometimes separately, returning often to connect stray ends of rope to her hands, her shoulders, or the triangular stimulation-knot.
Finally he wrapped her ankles in a complicated weave, then gently lifted her feet. "This is the last connection, he said quietly. "Once I close this final knot, the only thing keeping the constriction from beginning will be this dowel." He held a slender piece of wood, about three inches long, before her eyes. "It will be held in the tension of two loops between your shoulder blades. When I remove the dowel, the loops will slip free, and the system will be in perfect balance - until you move. Or breathe."
"Tie the knot," she said, feeling her heart jump as adrenaline born of fear dumped into her bloodstream. "This is where discipline is bought," she thought to herself. She felt his hand as he placed the dowel between the two nooses - now there was a noticeable stiffness in the chords across her breasts. Then she felt as he tied the line from her ankles to the rope around her wrists.
"Done," he said. "Once I remove the dowel, the terms of the contract will be in force, along with the effects of the constricting knot. This is your last chance, Tandy, to call it off."
She swallowed, hard. For some reason, she was more nervous now than she had been in any of her previous tests. She had been in dangerous situations before - her training exercises were deadly serious. She had escaped the crushing embrace of a python; faced a great land-Kragen; even placed herself in the path of a pack of marauding humuncular Joeys. Each of those recent tests had been a near thing, but at no other time had she felt the quality of fear she felt now.
"'Caligula'", she thought. "I always have 'Caligula'". But she resolved not to use the escape word.
"Remove the dowel, Scottie," she said. "And sit back and watch."
"You've got guts, Tandy," he said softly. "I give you credit." There was a gentle tug, and the ropes around her breasts softened, conforming again to the gentle curves of her body.
Her heart pounded. She lay perfectly still, her hands resting on her buttocks, her legs extended, ankles tied together. With an effort of will, she controlled her breathing to minimize the movement of her body. "Take the time to take stock," she told herself. "Now it's me against the machine." She looked over at Scottie with a "so far, so good" expression. To her surprise, he still stood over her, fidgeting with something he held in both hands.
"Tandy," he said with real regret in his voice. "There is something I didn't tell you." He bent low over her, and she felt soft material between her lips, between her teeth, and over her tongue. She felt a pulling against the corners of her mouth, and tried to spit out the material. She felt the closeness around her head and knew he was tying a gag around her. "This was most definitely not in the contract," she thought.
Scottie knelt beside the bed, his face on a level with hers. "Yours isn't the only active contract I have right now," he continued. "I was contacted by another party not long after we concluded our arrangement. They insisted on executing a separate contract, to run concurrently with yours. They proved very - ah, 'persuasive", shall we say." He looked away uncomfortably, and Tandy realized he was both embarrassed and a little scared.
"I did insist," he said, "that nothing in the secondary contract could conflict with any of the provisions of yours - I have my honor and my reputation, after all. The second contract - I'm constrained from identifying the party by covenant - simply states that I am to place a gag in your mouth, and I am not to remove it under any circumstances.
"I'm afraid it won't do you any good to know this now," he said sorrowfully, "but you really should have insisted on a 'no contravening contracts' clause in your agreement with me. You would have saved us both a great deal of pain and anguish."
Tandy was momentarily confused: "why would anyone want me to be gagged during a training exercise?" Then she realized - with the soft cloth filling her mouth, it would be impossible to say the 'safe' word clearly. Her eyes widened and she looked at Scottie with new respect and growing horror. Respect, for the elegant way in which he had lured her into this trap, abiding by every letter of their contract, and yet also keeping his options open to honor her enemy's contract. "It's truly brilliant," she thought; "he can execute both contracts at once, kill me with a clean conscience, and still protect his precious reputation for scrupulous adherence to contracts."
Then the horror overcame her - her only possible escape denied her, she was truly dependent on her own devices. Her look became a glare of range, and she felt her muscles tighten with anger. Scottie settled back into her reading chair to watch - "honoring every clause in my contract," she thought in dull fury. She lifted her head from the mattress in defiance - and felt the first twinge of movement across her thighs, as the slack she surrendered in raising her head was accepted, not to be returned to her.
"My anger will play right into his design," she realized, and with an effort of will she stilled herself. Focusing inward, watching her own breath, she purposefully calmed her runaway heart, and relaxed her tensed muscles. In the moment of quiet thus gained, she considered this new situation.
"Nothing has changed from the moment I conceived this plan," she thought. "I never intended to avail myself of the 'safe' word - it was insurance only. Now I've just lost my insurance. I still have my will, my wits and my strength.
"I've always told myself I'd die before I ever take the easy way out. Now I'm being held to my word - the easy way out is gone." With this thought came a sense of freedom. She did not have to worry now about her will, or whether she was trying "hard" enough to escape. The knots would tell her in their silent, implacable way, whether she was up to the challenge. Knowing that she could not use the escape removed any worry that she would weaken. She was freed to concentrate on her body and the inexorably constricting embrace of the trap in which she had placed herself. Her last responsible act had been to instruct Scottie to remove the restraining dowel; now she was just an actor in a play which had already been scripted.
Now she had to play her part. She remained still, and with an effort of mind and body felt every inch of the rope around her limbs and body, felt it with her skin, traced its route over the contours of her body and around her arms and legs. She felt the slack loops lying gently against her, and mentally tightened them, to learn what to expect when they began to tighten of their own volition around her. With every inch of her body, with every nerve ending, Tandy parsed Scottie's creation, trying to learn its flaws, its weak points, the places at which it could be attacked.
And she discovered, with a pounding heart and rising excitement, that there were no weak points. It would work exactly as designed, and allow her no opportunity for escape. It was a perfect predatory creation - masterful, coldly uncaring, and casually cruel. She could fight with fury, or cringe helplessly in its hold, and the result would be the same.
"I'm already dead," she thought. "There is no escape, no survival. All I can decide is whether I will die like a victim or a hero." She resigned herself to death, and resolved to fully experience the minutes of life left to her. She smiled now at Scottie - "master of ropes, master of contracts," she thought - and forgave him his betrayal and his weakness. He was inconsequential now, just a spectator at the show she was about to make of the last moments of her life.
Scottie scanned the contracts again, both of them, making sure he had abided by all the covenants of both. His apology made - and heartfelt it had been - he was also free to experience the fruition of his design. It was a truly elegant device, perhaps his most elegant ever - Ki had given it high praise for its faithfulness to her principles of enlightened deathtrap design. And he considered Tandy the most worthy "guest" for his masterwork. He would regret her death, but this was the high-point of his career to date.
He had recognized the moment in which Tandy surrendered to her fate, and had been mildly disappointed; he had hoped for better from her, a tribute to his ingenuity perhaps, expressed in vigorous struggle. The thought that she would submit to its ministrations passively had been saddening.
But then he had seen the look in her eyes when she silently forgave him, and seen also the lively intellectual interest there, the curiosity and sense of adventure she expressed. Having surrendered her life, he realized, she was now going to challenge him, to become so much a part of the device that she would be, at the moment of her passing, more one with his design than he could ever be. Scottie felt such a rush of admiration and gratitude for her unselfish and giving spirit that he felt himself tearing-up. Then Tandy turned her face away from him and he knew he had been dismissed; she was already merging herself with the engine of her death.
Scottie closed his eyes. He traced with his mind's eye the path of his ropes, the contours of his knots. He paused at the triangular stimulation knot, felt the soft touch of her panties against its three contacts, felt also the warmth of her skin beneath the cool, smooth fabric. He traced the course of the rope from her softness, across her flat stomach, to the junction knot between her breasts. He felt the gentle, barely perceptible rise and fall of her breast, felt as she transferred breathing to her stomach - marshalling power through control of the breath.
Tandy started her exploration with her hands. She lay comfortably, legs fully extended, her head turned so she could look down the length of her body. Her hands rested on her buttocks, wrapped in layers of the soft rope. Now she wriggled her fingers, with no effect. She twisted her hands - nothing. She rotated her wrists - here the rope, wrapped around her wrists and forearms, resisted. She pulled her bound hands off her bottom, up toward the small of her back - "perhaps with better sideways leverage," she thought. . . and felt a slight tug across her buttocks, against the taut-stretched silk of her panties. "The first effect," she thought with satisfaction.
She moved her hands back down to their starting place - and found she could not; now she felt the first gentle touch of the rope closing around the base of her throat. As she had moved her hands up, the knots had taken in the slack, forbidding the return of her hands. Now they were higher on her back, in a position which would soon become uncomfortable, and the knots had tightened perceptibly around her in two places, holding her in position. "They'll give a little, but not give back," she thought. It was elegant, efficient and precise, and she silently congratulated Scottie on his design.
Perhaps a sideways movement would do it - she tried separating her hands laterally, across her back. There was no give, but she found her elbows being pulled gently together nonetheless, and felt also a tentative touch across her breasts. She inhaled sharply in surprise - the touch had been almost sensuous, centered on her nipples; "I didn't see those knots," she thought. And with her inhalation came a gentle pressure on her womanhood - the three-cornered knot.
"Let's see what the feet will do," she ventured, twisting first one foot, then the other, then trying a little scissors-move to separate them. Instantly, a long line between her ankles and her shoulders by way of her upper arms began to tauten, and her feet were lifted a few inches from the mattress.
One last exploration before trying combinations; she lifted her butt into the air, keeping her knees and shoulders down. A new constriction slipped around her slim waist in response, and when she lowered herself, it became more pronounced, and was joined by a sliding sensation between her thighs - the three-cornered knot again, not pressing, merely moving gently against her, another extremely sensuous and stimulating feeling. She twisted slightly at her hips in reflexive reaction, and found her breasts being kneaded, pushed from both sides and more firmly massaged by the knots across her nipples; she twisted back in surprise, and was again taken by a now-palpable shock of pleasure between her thighs; she moaned softly and bit off the inadvertent sound, but not before feeling the bite across her throat, and hunched forward in response - to feel ropes pushing between her buttocks, driving her panties before them and drawing them more tightly around her hips. "Even my clothes conspire against me now," she thought with amusement.
"You're writhing, Tandy," Scottie remarked lightly. He watched her slow-motion struggles, contracts forgotten in his lap. He was glad to have the paper over his thighs, to hide the obvious reaction of his body to the sight of Tandy's long, firm figure twisting and turning gently and sensuously on her bed. "You're responding," he continued. "Every response on your part engenders a response elsewhere, which begs a response from you - once you start, Tandy, you won't be able to stop."
"Watch me," she thought back, and with an effort of conscious will stilled her body. Her loins pounded with heat, her breasts begged for movement against the thin stimulation of the rope, but she succeeded in stilling her desire to move against the gentle caresses of the trap. But even now her breathing was elevating, and she could feel the minute but measurable constriction as several knots took in the slack created with each exhalation.
Her hands were no longer touching her body; they were extended back toward her feet, which now also were raised, her knees bent. She turned her head to look, and the twisting of her strong back pulled her feet farther up, pulled her hands farther down, and arched her back still more - adding pressure to her womanhood, and adding a new motion which wrenched from her an unwilled twist in her hips, and now the rope was deeply between her buttocks, and for the first time the pull on her feet introduced an uncomfortable curve in her back. Her arms and shoulders ached, and her breasts felt as if they were being squeezed in a vise, even as still-gentle knots played over them like lips, nuzzling and kissing; she shuddered once, deeply, and then moaned as the attendant tightening pulled the triple knots for the first time hard against her softness, dimpling the silken triangle of her panties. She writhed, away from the touch, and her finger-tips felt the closeness of her own feet. She tried to look over her other shoulder, and the concerted attack on her loins, her breasts and her buttocks drove her nearly to the edge of climax; she shuddered again from the close call, and this time felt shooting pain in her womanhood even as a warm wave of pure electric pleasure washed over her, rolling her over and over, lost for a moment in sensation; but when she surfaced again, the pain was still there waiting, and the stimulation continued, building to the next wave.
Thought was gone; strategy was gone. Tandy breathed, realized she was near the time when she knew she would have called out the word, would have whispered "Caligula" - and would have cursed herself for weakness, but would at least have been free. "Now it matters," she thought; "now it matters". Her back was bowed, her intimate parts under constant stimulating assault, her nerves on-edge and screaming to be allowed to twist, to writhe, to escape from something which could not be escaped. Her own body turned against her, Tandy reveled in the sensation of pleasure/pain. Again she was washed away in a tide of orgasm, and again. Each time, she returned to find no surcease from the constant stimulation, to find less pleasure and more pain.
Scottie barely breathed. This was much, much better than he had hoped it could be. By this time in his ordeal, Armageddon Guy had been a raging animal, still struggling to use his strength to break free, crushing his own spine with the force of his exertions; FlexiGirl had become silent and wide-eyed, unable to escape the sensations overpowering her except by retreat, but with all her efforts drawing the strangling chords more tightly around her. But Tandy played his tangled deathtrap like an instrument, her gorgeous long-limbed body creating music as she moved in concert with the constriction, muscles rolling beneath the cutting bonds, her own efforts seeming to pull the ropes together in new and artistic ways. Such control, he marveled; such strength. Every muscle in her body stood out in relief. The stimulation knots were embedded deeply into her skin and buried in the soft mound between her thighs, and yet her face was still and zen-like, focused inward, gauging perhaps the life left in her before her inevitable collapse. Scottie felt real regret now, for there was less time left her than the amount that had already passed, and he wanted this virtuoso performance to last forever.
He wondered briefly if she would expire in mid-orgasm, crushing herself in her paroxysms,, or if she would tire and fade away, quietly smothering in the ever-constricting ropes. Tandy surprised him; she did neither.
Her back was bowed, her feet pulled up past her wrists, the rope thrumming like a bow. Her breath rasped in her throat - the chords criss-crossing her torso dug deeply into her, restraining her lungs from fully inhaling. It seemed to Scottie she was in the end-game, helpless to effect what would happen to her next. But incredibly, she stirred, inhaled deeply and painfully, and with a long protracted breath outward, she reversed the arch in her back. Inch by inch, she forced her buttocks toward her feet, pulling her elbows apart and forward. Her muscles were rock-hard, every fiber defined, as she fought the unyielding bonds which tightened in proportion to her efforts against them. Her breathing became ragged, more pronounced, as she willed her body to reverse its curvature, willed soft flesh and pliable bone to defy the crushing hold of his trap.
Scottie closed his eyes, his mind tracing the course of his design, sensing the stresses on the rope fibers and on the girl's body. "Incredible," he breathed. "She has found the only chance."
For his design, though perfect, was not absolute. He sensed rather than saw that if she successfully bowed her back, pulling her knees to her face, and if she were able to bend at the waist against the force of the knot, she would be able to untie the knots around her knees with her teeth. In order to do that, her muscles would have to be stronger than the rope, and she would need to be virtually boneless in her flexibility. And even succeeding in reversing the curvature of her body, she would endure unspeakable pain as the chords bit deeply into her body, and the forces around her torso would be great she would not be able to expand her lungs more than a tenth of their capacity. "Assuming," he thought, "the constriction doesn't rip her ribs free and crush her heart."
Armageddon Guy had fought mindlessly, strength against strength, and lost. FlexiGirl had bent with the forces pulling on her body, until she ran out of room to bend and was slowly crushed in silent desperation. Only Tandy had achieved such unity with his design that she was able to feel the opportunity, and only Tandy had the combination of strength and flexibility to have any chance of success.
Scottie felt a new rush of love for this artist of endurance; in her efforts, she had perfected his creation. "Death is not the highest purpose of my design," he realized. He had thought of it as a device for inflicting pain and death on a human, never seeing it for what it could be - the device which enabled a human to pass through pain and death. In her surrender to its perfection, she had not surrendered to her own death, but had allowed herself to become lost in his design. And in finding her way through it, she had found the only way to pass through its slow, patient ministrations.
Tandy moved without thinking. There was no plan, for there was no thought. Only pain, and pleasure turning to pain, remained. Surrendering to the ropes, she had loosed her body to the design, become the design, and so had moved seamlessly into the only opening possible. Now she looked deep within herself as her body completed the circle begun when she had first felt the opening. Her wrists and ankles were close, so close she could grasp her ankles and begin to pull her bottom through. There would be no turning back - already the throat-noose was closing tightly around her neck, and the ropes deeply imbedded between her buttocks and in her womanhood sawed against her. Her body began shutting down as the weblike pattern around her body tightened with the force of her own muscles, squeezing her organs, turning her ribs inward upon her, compressing her laboring lungs. She had seconds to live, before lack of oxygen snuffed her out.
She rolled to her side, eyes closed, focused on her center, as her body steadily drew its shroud more tightly about itself.
Her knees came even with her hips - her head pounded from lack of blood-flow.
She curved her back, hunching forward - her arms began to separate from their sockets.
She opened her mouth, baring her teeth as she curled herself down toward her knees - focusing not on her actions, but on the excruciating pain radiating throughout her body.
Without thought she reached in blindness for the knots with her teeth. . .
And stopped. Fractions of an inch from her goal, she was stopped. Curled into a ball, wrapped more tightly than a human body can endure, she began to die. Her lungs ceased their painful expansion; her heart fluttered, slowed; in her mind, empty of thought and knowing only motion and pain, blackness seeped in and began to fill her.
Scottie watched, still and quiet. He could still feel the sluggish flow of blood in her veins through his ropes; he could sense her consciousness, still aware. And he could feel something else.
A flaw. An imperfection in his design. Two knots impinged on one another, two knots which would never have come into proximity, except for this situation of superhuman mental and physical effort. The two knots which now held Tandy back from completion of his design, from the perfect realization of his art.
He closed his eyes, joined with his creation. It was in perfect tension almost everywhere, a delicate balance seeking expression in motion inward, around the laboring softness surrounded by its tresses. At one point, the tension was out of balance, ruining the harmony of this moment. It was an easy matter to will the larger of the two knots - trapped hard against the smooth curve of one sleek hip - to flatten; to will the other to slip below the first. . . a matter, not of inches, but of molecules adjusted. A matter of balance re-established. He willed his creation back into balance, and it became so.
The gap closed. Tandy's lips felt the rope, her teeth grasped it. And so perfect was the balance of Scottie's creation, that with a single tug she pulled one knot loose.
A single length of rope knew slack. It traveled across her back, to another knot, held in tension -
Which slipped. As Tandy sank into blackness, she felt small tugs and pulls all over her body as Scottie's weblike design unraveled.
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Tandy opened her eyes. And breathed. Everything hurt. Above her, a shape which did not belong -
In a fluid motion, Tandy's long, firm legs whipped into the air and came down again, her thighs wrapped around Scottie's head, her ankles locked together.. Tandy allowed the momentum of her legs to lift her to a sitting position on her bed. Lying beneath her, his hands scrabbling ineffectually against her rock-hard thigh muscles, Scottie started to strangle.
"Caligula," Tandy said fiercely. She bore down, curling one leg under his neck to trap him in the bend of her knee.
"Caligula," she repeated, leaning into her own constriction as he turned red, his motions becoming jerky and unfocused.
"Caligula," she said very softly, squeezing once more for emphasis and releasing him to fall gasping to the floor.
Then Tandy turned her face to the mattress and slept.
She awoke once to find him sitting beside her, his face to the ceiling, lost in thought.
Finally, "you cannot improve on that design," she said softly in the dark.
"I know," he replied, "although I do intend to work on my knot-tying skills."
"Good idea. Your contracts?"
"Fulfilled; both of 'em, in every particular."
"Good." She reached up, cupped his neck and pulled his face down to hers for a long, lingering kiss. "You're a good man, Scottie-Cat's-Cradler. Make sure you lock the door on your way out."
Tandy the mercenary lowered her head back to the pillow and started to breathe the deep breath of the sleeping. Scottie padded out quietly, pulling her front door closed and turning to face the night.
The End
By B.Ferrett