Mountain Retreat

It was Springtime, and the whole family felt a need to get away.

My wife and I and her parents split the cost of renting a Mountain Chalet, and we all piled into her parents' large luxury car and drove off.  My wife's sister Karen came along, too.

I'd never had a lot to do with Karen.  She was always very nice, and gorgeous in her mid-thirties, but she seemed quiet.  She was an executive for a large insurance company, and I assumed that she primary immersed herself in her work.

When we arrived at the chalet, the first thing wanted to do was to explore the place to see what it had to offer.  It was on three levels.  The main living area was on the walk-in level, and the bedrooms were upstairs.

The lower level was set up as a private athletic facility.  There was a weight training room with a stationary bicycle.  Along a narrow hallway I noticed a sauna room.  Being a devotee of bondage since childhood, I always include bondage possibilities in any assessment of new surroundings.  It occurred to me that a two-by-four of the correct length could be jammed between the heavy wooden windowless sauna door and the opposing cinder block wall, trapping any occupant in the sauna.  Of course I didn't see any such board around.  What's the matter with people?  Doesn't everyone think the way I do?

A few steps further down the hall, there was a short row of lockers.  They were like high school lockers, but larger and much more sturdily built.  The construction was of heavy-gauge steel, and the rods that extended up and down when closed were over half an inch thick.  Apparently this athletic area was originally designed to be a public facility, and the lockers provided secure storage for people using the equipment.

The latching mechanism was a simple lift latch, with holes drilled for insertion of a padlock.  The inside of the door had a heavy sheet metal cover; the mechanism was not accessible.  But there was a hole at the level of the door handle.  You could lift the latch from the inside - assuming, of course, that there was no lock through the handle.

I pondered whether a person could fit inside the locker.  I thought so, but it wouldn't leave too much room to spare.  A series of thin vent slots were cut at the top and bottom of the door, which would provide an ample flow of fresh air.  My thoughts were interrupted by my wife's voice upstairs.

"Hey Lloyd, we're going into town to do some shopping.  Do you want to come?"

For my wife and her parents, shopping during a vacation meant a dozen gift stores.  I can take one or two of them, but not ten or twenty.

"No, thanks.  I might go check out the Recreation Center."

"Okay," my wife called as I climbed up the stairs.  "Karen's going to stay and catch up on some paperwork anyway."

My wife and her parents drove off.  I glanced over at Karen, who had set herself up at the dining room table.

"Insurance contracts," she said, indicating the mass of forms in front of her.

"No rest for the wicked, huh," I replied.

"Guess not," she said.

"Well, I'll leave to it.  I think I'll check out the Rec Center."

"Have fun," she replied.

At the Rec Center, I was tempted to play a bit of Table Tennis.  I was pretty darn good at it a few years ago.  But there seemed to be a great many people with the same idea, already partnered up and waiting for the table.  I decided to go back to the chalet.

I entered very quietly, not wanting to disturb Karen in her work.  The pile of contracts was still on the table, but no Karen.  I noticed that the downstairs light was on.  Curious, I crept silently down the stairs.  I saw Karen's clothes piled in the middle of the hallway.  Her bra and panties, as the last to be removed, were on top of the pile.  I assumed she had suddenly decided to try the sauna bath, when I saw something that took my breath away.

One of the partly open locker doors moved by itself!  No, not by itself!  Karen was inside the locker!  I was witnessing an experiment in self bondage!  She was obviously trying to simulate the experience of being locked naked in a locker!  Who'd have thought?  It's always the quiet ones.

I stepped back to observe.  She was apparently quite nervous about the experiment, as she was being very cautious about actually closing the locker door.  She pulled it halfway closed, then opened it again.  Then she pulled it almost closed, then opened it.  But cautious or not, I was almost certain that sooner or later she'd pull it closed.  "My kingdom for a padlock!"

Finding a padlock and key lying around was unlikely.  What else could I use?  A bolt!  But where could I find one?  Of course!  The furnace room!

I stepped around the corner and opened the door to the furnace closet.  Sure enough, the furnace installers had dropped a few spare bolts and nuts on the floor.  I selected a bolt that looked like the right size, and found a nut that fit it.

I silently returned to the hallway, just in time to see the locker door close all the way.  But the latch was being held up in the open position, and the door immediately opened again.  She was being as cautious about allowing the latch to close as she had been about closing the door.  But I knew that just as she had eventually closed the door, she would eventually let the latch drop to its fully closed position.

I crept up next to the door.  Breathlessly I watched the movement of the latch.  It came down halfway, then up again.  Then it came three quarters closed, then up again.  I placed the end of the bolt through the stationary hole in the hasp.  Luck was with me - the bolt was the perfect diameter, with only a tiny amount of clearance.

"Please, please, PLEASE," I thought, "let her close the latch."  "Just for a second!"  "Half a second!"  "A millisecond!"  That's all I'd need to seal her fate!  I couldn't pull it down myself.  I didn't want her to know anyone was here.

With baited breath I watched the latch descend to its fully closed position.  The instant the holes of the hasp aligned, I silently pushed the bolt through!  Almost immediately she lifted up again on the latch, but it was too late.

I heard a faint gasp from inside when the latch stopped hard, after less than a millimeter of upward movement.  Rapid successive attempts followed.  Under cover of this noise, I seized the opportunity to install the nut.  I screwed it all the way up the bolt.  There was occasional resistance, since the threads were clogged with dirt from the furnace room floor.  "Good," I thought.  "That means the nut won't back off by itself, even with a million jiggles of the latch."

Mission accomplished, I backed a few steps down the hallway, sat on the floor, took careful note of the time, and settled in to watch the show.

For upwards of fifteen minutes, she tried every conceivable way to lift that latch.  She lifted on it while pushing on the door, then while pulling on the door.  She applied upward force very slowly, then very quickly.  Then she tried a long series of rapid jiggles, hoping the vibration would dislodge whatever the latch was caught on.

Little did she know that all these attempts were thwarted in advance by a three-eighths inch, hardened, chrome vanadium steel bolt.  All she knew was that the latch - the latch that she had been oh so careful to ensure would open again - suddenly, inexplicably, catastrophically, wouldn't.  Finally, there was total silence.

I've always found it fascinating to watch a woman go through the various phases on her way to the realization that she is inescapably trapped in some sort of bondage.  First there's disbelief, often accompanied by phrases like, "It CAN'T be locked!"  Or the ever-popular, "But you said these handcuffs weren't real!"  Then there's a period of desperate, panicky attempts to free herself, which of course fail.  Finally she recognizes her situation as inescapable, and ceases all efforts.  If her captor is present, she might give him that priceless, placid look as if to say, "Well, you've totally got me.  Now what are you going to do with me?"

But in this case, she was her own captor as far as she knew.  I took the protracted silence to mean that she had concluded that either the latch was well and truly caught on something, or that, in some way she didn't understand, it had become locked.  Either way, she would need help from the outside.

She was evidently trying to think of the best way to summon help, and, more importantly, what to say when people arrived.  I could imagine her face turning a thousand shades of red and purple as she uttered her first feeble call.

"Is anyone in the house?"

I remained silent.  After a moment, she called more loudly.

"Hello.  Is anyone there?"

I quietly made my way upstairs before calling back.  "Karen?  Is that you?"

"Yes.  I'm downstairs.  Can you come down here for a minute?"

I stomped back downstairs, and walked down the hall toward the pile of clothes.  I then looked directly at the locker door.  I could see only her bright, wide eyes peering through the thin slots, but I could well imagine the rest of her naked body trapped inside.

"Uh, hi," she said in the most embarrassed voice I've ever heard.

"Hi.  What's happening?" I asked nonchalantly.

"Um, I just wanted to see if I could fit into this locker, and now the door seems to be stuck."  She remembered the pile of clothes.  "I, uh, thought I'd better strip down so I wouldn't get too hot in here."

I glanced down at the pile, then looked directly back at Karen while trying to suppress a smirk.  "And even your bra and panties threatened hyperthermia?"

"Can you PLEASE just see what's stopping the latch from opening?" she pleaded.

"Well, actually, it doesn't require too much analysis.  There's a bolt through the hasp.  In fact, I put it there myself."

A good five seconds of deadly silence followed.

"You bastard!  And you've been out there the whole time?"

"Well, yes.  For about, let's see, forty-one minutes."

"You asshole!  I don't believe this!"

"Now, now," I chided.  "Maybe you should reconsider your position before you start calling me names."

That calmed her down fast.  "Can you just let me out, please?"

I leaned back against the opposite wall.  "Well, let's see.  Maybe we could come to some agreement."

"What are you talking about?" she protested.

"Well, you obviously like to experiment with bondage scenarios."  She didn't bother to deny it.

I continued.  "I must admit I've had an longtime interest in it myself, and I wouldn't mind performing a few more experiments while we're here.  But for most of them, I'd need a partner."

"Oh I see," she said.  "But only for this weekend, right?"

"Right," I confirmed.  "There's just one more thing.  Whenever possible, I want you to perform these experiments naked."

"You've got to be kidding!" she exclaimed.

"What's the problem?  You're naked now, and you did it all by yourself."

"Oh, God.  All right... as long as no one else can see me."

"That should be easy enough to arrange," I said.  I unscrewed the nut, removed the bolt, and stood well back from the door.  I was afraid she might tear me to pieces as soon as she was free, but she just picked up her clothes and ran around the corner to get dressed.

Of course I had no way to enforce our agreement, but I knew she was curious about bondage, and I hoped that that combined with giving her word would do it.

At dinner that evening, both Karen and I were very quiet.  Whenever I'd look in her direction, she'd immediately look away as soon as our eyes met.  After dinner I went into the kitchen and whispered in her ear, "Meet me at the front door at midnight."

A sigh escaped her lips, but she nodded in agreement.

At midnight, with the rest of the household sound asleep, Karen appeared at the front door.  I stepped outside and she followed.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"To the parking lot," I replied.  She knew better than to ask any more questions.

On arriving at the parking lot, we approached my in-laws' big luxury car.  I held up the car's remote control.

"As you know, this remote operates almost everything in this car, including the opening of the trunk.  I've always wondered whether it would work from inside the trunk."

"Why wouldn't it?" she asked.

"Well, it should, but you never know till you try.  Maybe the body of the car will ground the electromagnetic signal or something."

"So you want me to get in the trunk and try it," she guessed.

"Right.  But first, strip!" I commanded.

"What, right out here in the parking lot?"

"This 'parking lot' is just a flat gravel area in the middle of a forest.  There's no one here."

A moment of silence confirmed that no voices or footsteps could be heard.  With a final glance around, she undressed at lightning speed, then picked up her clothes and held them in front of her body.

"Just throw them on the back seat," I ordered.

She opened the door and placed her clothes and shoes inside.  As soon as the door was closed I squeezed the remote, locking all four doors.  She instinctively pulled on the handle and shuddered at the realization that her clothing was no longer accessible.  She looked up at me, an increasing urgency in her eyes.

I squeezed the remote again, and the trunk popped open.  It was completely empty, carpeted all around.  While she stared into the gaping cavity that would soon contain her naked body, I reached into my pocket and switched the remote for an identical one from which I had removed the batteries.

"The sooner you get in, the less time you'll spend standing naked in the parking lot," I advised.

I handed her the useless remote.  She carefully placed her thumb adjacent to the button labeled "Trunk," climbed inside, and lay down.

"Give it a few seconds just for effect," I said, "then press the button and see if it works."  She nodded quickly.

I brought the trunk lid down.  When it got within an inch of closed, the electric motor took over and cranked it the rest of the way, finishing with a decisive click.

I then sat down against a convenient tree and waited.  About a minute later I heard the first plaintive report.  "It doesn't seem to be working."

I just made myself a bit more comfortable.

"Hello?  Are you there?  Hello?  Lloyd?"

A faint thumping could now be heard as she pushed up on the trunk lid.  For her safety, I had decided to limit the game to exactly one hour.  There was plenty of air in the spacious trunk for at least that long.

"Hello?  Let me out!  Is anyone there?  Don't leave me!  Hello?"

I wondered how many other futile utterances I'd be hearing over the next hour.
 

THE END
 

20.03.04