Unforeseen Circumstances

Part 1

Tara had always, it seemed to her now, been fascinated, or even obsessed with bondage. Ever since she could remember, she had always felt the need to tie herself up whenever she was alone. There was some strange thrill associated with being unable to move in the normal way; some weird excitement that surrounded the sensation & realization that she was somebody else’s captive.  Not that she ever had been, however, as all her bondage to date had been entirely self-inflicted. Not another soul in the whole world knew about her peculiar fantasies, although, by the time she left home at the age of nineteen, she had been practicing with her array of accumulated ropes & other restraints on an almost daily basis for several years in the secrecy of her locked bedroom.

There were both pros & cons to leaving the family home & buying her own small apartment. On the plus side, she now had no reason to worry about being disturbed whilst indulging in her favourite pastime; no need to keep her ears open for her parents’ footsteps coming down the corridor to bang on her bedroom door for whatever reason &, when they found it locked, having to explain why she always shut herself in & why it took so long for her to open the door. Was she hiding something, they always wanted to know? Of course she was. The time between the initial rap on the door & her answering was normally taken up with a frantic struggle to release herself from whatever situation she’d conjured up that day, then an even more frenetic effort to conceal all her bondage paraphernalia.  Then she had to make sure that she was properly dressed. Long sleeves were the order of the day, so as not to reveal the telltale marks on her wrists. For the same reason, leggings or dark coloured tights were important to hide the rope welts on her legs. Now, with an apartment of her own, these worries had entirely evaporated.

But there was a downside to this seclusion, insofar as she no longer got a thrill from the risk of being discovered; the danger that she might get caught in the act. And more than anything else, she missed the excitement generated by the knowledge that she was only a few inches away at times – merely the thickness of a wall – from people who were totally oblivious to what she was doing. Although she didn’t want her secret to be discovered, the fact that she might be caught in the act played a big part in heightening the tension & therefore the thrill of it all. Okay, she still received a great deal of pleasure from binding herself up in her empty flat, but that extra spark was no longer present. Therefore, to compensate for this, she began taking ever more daring risks.

Tara had, over the six weeks or so since moving out of the family home, diced with danger by indulging in several elaborate & well thought out schemes to increase her pleasure. She’d locked herself in a small cupboard at work, then tied herself up & stayed that way for her entire lunch-break; able to hear her colleagues only a few feet away, but with them totally unaware of her self-induced predicament. She’d parked her car in secluded woods, then got into the boot, closed the lid shut & restrained herself. She’d even, on one dark night when she’d felt daring, slipped a long cloak around her shoulders, handcuffed her wrists behind her back, then gone out for a long walk without taking the key to her shackles with her. She hadn’t however, reckoned with the strong breeze which had, on the homeward leg of her journey, begun to swirl with enough force to lift the cape on several occasions, revealing her manacled state. Fortunately, as it was late & there were few people around, nobody had noticed.

Tara’s schemes were getting more & more risky all the time, yet always, it seemed, she got away with it. So when she heard that her parents & two younger brothers were going abroad on holiday for three weeks, leaving the house empty, she had no reason to think that her latest plans would be anything other than plain sailing. To be honest, turning the family home into her own private bondage den for three weeks was, by her standards, fairly tame stuff, & something she had done on a couple of previous occasions when her family had gone away & left her at home. But her reasons for choosing to use the house rather than her own small flat were all to do with the abundance of binding sites in the former. Whereas her place was still sparsely furnished & with no cupboards or confined spaces that could double up as dungeons or prison cells, the rambling family home was positively awash with suitable binding sites.

Set in two acres of grounds, the house had a large attic, no less than two cellars, a staircase with sturdy banisters that were ideal binding points &, being old, there were numerous crevices, cubbyholes, cupboards & concealed spaces into which she could secret herself. As well as this, her parents had recently purchased a four-poster bed, the corner posts of which Tara was longing to tether her limbs to. The minute her family left, she vowed to herself, she would move in with all her bondage equipment.

But no, not as soon as they left. What if - the thought occurred to her out of the blue & caused a ripple of delight to surge through her - she crept into the house BEFORE they departed, trussed & gagged herself in either the attic or one of the cellars, then waited & listened whilst her family made their final holiday preparations, totally oblivious to the fact that their daughter/sister was luxuriating in self-bondage only a few feet away. That would be risky, but a real turn-on.

After much careful thought, she decided that the attic was the best place to bring this inspired plan to fruition. The most important quality this had over the underground locations was that the attic was used only as a storeroom & therefore seldom entered. The cellars, on the other hand, were frequented on far more numerous occasions. Not only that, but the cellars would be in total darkness, whereas the attic had a skylight – albeit a small one – to let a modicum of daylight in. It wasn’t that Tara minded being in the dark, it was just that, as her plans involved handcuffing herself while with the keys were stashed elsewhere in the house & not in her prison cell, she would probably have greater difficulty making her way sightlessly out of a pitch black cellar. If she were to trip & hit her head or injure herself in some way in the darkness she could have been in big trouble with no help at hand.

A bit of light, therefore, even if it was fairly inadequate for any other purpose, seemed like a sensible option. But the factor that really swayed her choice of site was the knowledge that her father habitually locked the cellar doors. Although a lover of captivity, Tara knew that being incarcerated in an underground, windowless room for three weeks without a hope in hell of getting out was definitely a step too far. On the other hand, the attic door, as far as she could remember, was NEVER locked. In fact, she couldn’t even recall ever seeing a key. So that was that – it simply had to be the attic. She would utilize the cellars once her family were gone, of course, but her opening bondage scene in this three week odyssey would be played out at the top of the house. 

The only problem now was how to sneak into the house without being seen. There would be so much activity in the few hours prior to her family’s departure that she couldn’t see how she could slip in unnoticed. She racked her brain for a way around this potential stumbling block, but could come up with only one solution; she would have to already be in the house on the afternoon beforehand. She knew that her father would be at work that day, & that her mother would, as always, leave the house at around three o’clock to pick up Tara’s twelve year old twin brothers from school. This trip would take around an hour. Having left home only relatively recently, Tara still had a front door key. She also knew that the chances of anyone entering her secret domain were slight, seeing as how the family would all be focused on getting packed for the next day. It would, she assumed, be safe to spend the night up there undetected.

It went without saying, of course, that from the moment she arrived & made her way into the attic, up until the time that the door slammed shut the next morning to signal that she was now alone in the house, Tara’s time would be spent roped, gagged & handcuffed. In fact, as she had no plans to take the key to the handcuffs up that final flight of stairs & into the attic, once she’d secured her hands behind her back within those bracelets of steel, she would have little choice but to remain thus shackled; unless she wanted her parents & siblings to see her in all her bound up glory, of course. The prospect of this scenario made Tara’s heart race, as she had never before put herself in a situation where she had been unable to release herself for such a length of time. She had often spent all night tied up, but that was through choice alone. Here, however, the decision as to when she could get free would be out of her hands.

The days passed slowly in the week prior to the commencement of the family holiday. Tara kept tying herself up at every opportunity, & the knowledge that this was just a fore-runner of what was to come filled her with an indescribable pleasure. As the time approached, the level of excitement steadily rose until she found that she could barely concentrate on anything else. Unbeknown to her parents, Tara had booked leave from work for the same weeks as they would be away, but while they & her brothers were enjoying the outdoor life, Tara would be shut away indoors for the vast majority of the time.

Finally, Friday arrived; the day before her family were due to fly off on their vacation, but the day Tara’s began. At around 2pm, Tara picked up her bag with her bondage equipment & spare clothing, then headed for the family home on foot. She waited down the road until her mother’s car was seen to pull out of the driveway, watched as it turned the corner & disappeared from view, then sprinted to the house. Letting herself in with trembling fingers, her first assignment was to hide the key to her handcuffs in a suitable place. The location in question needed to be accessible to someone with hands restrained behind their back, therefore not too high up. It also had to be hidden well enough so that one or other of her relatives didn’t find & move it before they left. The ideal place, it seemed to Tara, was her old bedroom, which still contained a lot of her stuff that she hadn’t got around to taking with her yet. And within that room, what better place than her old wardrobe?

She was on the point of depositing the key in a dark corner, when she hit on another idea. The wardrobe itself had a lock & key. What if, after locking the handcuff key inside, she hid the wardrobe key elsewhere? That way, another twist was added to her escape plans. Not one to make life easy for herself where bondage was concerned, Tara locked the wardrobe & hurried down to the wine cellar. Here she deposited the wardrobe key on the floor at the base of a rack containing bottles of wine. The dust & grime that encrusted the ancient looking bottles told her that they had been there for years & were unlikely to be disturbed today. She locked the cellar door again & replaced the key on a hook in the kitchen where she’d found it. This hanging place was quite high up & definitely out of reach for someone whose wrists were secured behind their back. However, Tara was confident that, with a bit of effort, she would be able to remove the key using her shoulder or her nose. Her teeth, which would have been an obvious choice to perform this operation, would be hidden beneath several layers of gagging material at the time in question.

Hastening up to her chosen prison cell now, Tara made sure that she had everything clear in her mind. To get herself out of the handcuffs she would have to negotiate the attic door, then make her way down two flights of stairs to the kitchen, remove the cellar key from its perch, unlock the door & get down a further flight of steps, recover the wardrobe key, go back up two flights of stairs to the bedroom, open the bedroom door & unlock the wardrobe, before getting into the wardrobe & rummaging around for the handcuff key in the dark recesses. She could then attain her freedom. All this would have to be accomplished with her hands behind her back & her legs bound together in several places. It seemed a daunting task, but this merely added to the tension & expectation that was growing stronger by the minute.

Tara closed the attic door behind her & gazed into the twilight. Although daylight outside, it was extremely dark within this space that was packed to the rafters with boxes, discarded furniture & other junk. Tara investigated the skylight, finding that it was barred on the inside, & this security measure was supplemented by a wire mesh covering on the outside of the dirt-covered glass. Although once openable, the combination of bars & wire meant that the window was now permanently sealed shut. Tara could recall the mesh being there before, but the bars were new, & she vaguely recalled her father saying something about a spate of break-ins in the area where the culprits had entered through attic windows. She guessed that the bars were a precaution against this.

But time was flying now & she didn’t want to still be moving around up here once her mother & brothers returned home. Tara deposited her bag on the floor, took off her clothes & began to dress in her favourite bondage attire. Once naked, she slipped on a pair of black tights, then began pulling on her pride & joy; a one-piece black, shiny latex cat-suit. This she pulled on slowly over her feet & up her calves, smoothing the material down as she went to alleviate any creasing. Once over her knees, she worked the skin-tight suit up over her thighs & hips, then over her breasts, before inserting her arms into the sleeves & pulling the suit up over her shoulders. Dexterously, she reached around behind her back & pulled the zip up to her neck. Smoothing everything down so that no wrinkles remained, she quickly encased her hands & lower arms in a pair of tight fitting elbow length gloves of soft leather.

Having perused each available area of the attic, Tara soon decided that her favoured location for spending the night was behind a large wooden packing case that lay on the far side of the room from the door. Sitting on the floor, she took the first length of rope, brought both ends together & found the mid-point. Winding this double cord around her ankles once, she slipped the end through the loop & pulled the ligature tight. She then wound the rope back again in the opposite direction several times, making sure that each circumnavigation of her legs was pulled as tight as possible. She cinched the rope between her ankles as securely as she could, before tying a double knot to ensure that the bond wouldn’t slip. She now tested her handiwork, finding that it stood up well to all attempts to wrench one foot away from the other. It was doubtful, she knew, that she would be able to get out of this without the aid of her hands to untie the knots.

Similar bonds soon encompassed the higher reaches of her legs, all bound to the same high standard as the first. There was one just below her knees, another just above, with a final one still higher around her thighs. Her legs were, to all intents & purposes, now useless to her.  Now it was time to silence herself.

Taking her well worn ball-gag & thrusting it into her mouth until it was wedged behind her teeth, Tara dexterously secured the straps at the back of her head. But that wasn’t the only precaution she took to make certain that she was incapable of spitting out this muffler of sound, as now she took a large, two inch wide, reel of adhesive tape, stuck one end onto her left cheek, then began winding this around her lower head, making sure that she lifted her hair up & out of the way beforehand. Three times she wound the industrial strength tape around her head, totally sealing her mouth. Once satisfied that the ball-gag’s strap & buckle were completely covered, she ripped the end from the reel & smoothed the whole thing down over her face. Trying to push the rubber ball out of her mouth with her tongue was now impossible, & the combined effect of this & the tape meant, she knew from past experience, that she was virtually incapable of any vocalisation whatsoever.

Now everything was in place, Tara was ready for the final stage of her immobilization. She encircled one wrist in the steel bracelet of the handcuffs & prepared to shackle her arms behind her back. For a second or two she wavered, wondering if she was doing the right thing, as the next action would mean that she was trapped like this all night. But the excitement of being bound within a few feet of her unsuspecting parents & brothers overcame any lingering doubts & she quickly placed both hands behind her back, fumbled her free wrist into the awaiting manacle & closed it promptly with her other hand. The clicking of the ratchets told her that the wrist was free no more.

As soon as her status as a captive was assured, Tara’s doubts returned. What if something happened & the holiday had to be cancelled at the last minute? It dawned on her that, for the first time in her bound up life that she REALLY was trapped here. Okay, so she could, at a moment’s notice if necessary, bang her feet on the floorboards & have her parents rush up here to find out what was going on in their attic. But that would be, to say the least, an extremely difficult & embarrassing situation to have to deal with. What if she couldn’t get to one of the keys? What if the handcuffs jammed? 

Her only option, other than to carry on with her plan, was to call the whole thing off here & now, make her way out of the attic, locate the keys & get herself out of her bonds. But that was a task which would take, she guessed given the nature of her predicament, the best part of an hour. Her mother, along with her two brothers, would, she was certain, be arriving home at any moment. Therefore, Tara knew that she had little alternative but to continue with her plans & remain here until her family departed the following morning. How far in the future was that?

Well, it was getting on for 4 pm now &, if her memory served her correctly, her father had told her that their flight was at 2 pm the following day. Taking into account the car journey to the airport, plus adequate time to check in, Tara reckoned that they would need to have left the house by around 10 am. In other words, she could go nowhere & do nothing for the next EIGHTEEN hours.

Tara’s doubts lasted no more than a few minutes. As the sound of the front door opening was swiftly followed by her two siblings’ excited voices, a strange tingling sensation of anticipation mixed with delightful fear ran up her spine. She was, she realised, going to enjoy this immensely.

Much of that evening’s activities, especially once her father had returned home & the family had taken dinner, took place upstairs, as all four of her relatives busily filled their suitcases & made ready for their departure. This meant, therefore, that Tara had to ensure she moved as little as possible at all times. She well remembered lying in her room in the past, when her father had entered the attic, & hearing the creaking boards or the shuffling feet above her head. Sound, she realised, however slight, could be detected in the rooms below. Even though her family were making a fair bit of noise themselves as they hurried around completing their last minute preparations, & would quite possibly not notice the odd creak or scuffle as she changed her position, she just couldn’t risk it. Dicing with danger was one thing, being caught another.

Tara had no idea how she would handle the situation should she be discovered, but she knew she would never live it down. Her brothers, she knew, would never let her forget & would probably delight in relating the story to their friends & letting the whole world know that their big sister was a bit weird. She envisioned, on several occasions as she languished there in the ever darkening attic, the look on her father’s & mother’s faces if they accidentally stumbled across her in all her helpless glory.

She could almost hear them asking what had happened & who had done this to her, even before they’d removed her gags. Then, once she was forced to reveal the true nature of her plight, they’d demand to know what the hell she was playing at. They’d listen incredulously as she informed them of the complicated route needed to release the handcuffs, & how she’d planned to remain here until they were away on their travels tomorrow morning.  Maybe - & this thought gave her a sudden thrill - her parents would decide to teach her a lesson & not set her free. Maybe, even, they’d be sympathetic & allow her to just get on with it. But no, these last two scenarios were merely wishful thinking on her part. There would be absolute uproar if she were discovered, followed by a long interrogation concerning what she hoped to achieve from all this nonsense. This would then end in a stern lecture on the dangers of such stupid practices. No, the consequences of being found didn’t bear thinking about.

But she so very nearly was!

After a period of great activity below her, the voices & sounds seemed to fade somewhat, & Tara assumed that the oblivious foursome had retired to the living room.  At last Tara felt that it was safe to move. She stretched her legs & awkwardly tried to change her position, as she was getting stiff from sitting still for so long. She wiggled her shoulders & gently tried to exercise her limbs & back.... then froze. Someone was coming back upstairs! This in itself was of no great concern to her, but when she heard her father’s voice shouting back to either her mother or one of the boys, “it’s probably in the attic, I’ll see if I can find it” her heart skipped a beat & a dreadful chill surged through her. There was no time to try to conceal herself by curling up into a ball in some darkened recess. And anyway, with the light switched on, there would be nowhere to hide if her father chose to venture near to the crate behind which she sat. The sound of feet pounding on the top stairs, the creak as the door opened, then the light blinking into action, told her that her worst fears were about to come to fruition.

“Aha, here it is” Her father seemed to be talking to himself. He seemed to be moving something heavy; something that he was having problems getting to grips with.

“Patrick? David? Where are you? Can you come & give me a hand?”

Tara hardly dared breathe. Her heart was pounding so loudly that she was sure that it must be audible to anyone within a twenty yard radius of her. Her father coming up here was bad enough, but he was focused on looking for one particular thing, which he seemed to have found straight away. Her brothers, on the other hand, wouldn’t normally have been allowed up here on their own, & would therefore, given half a chance, take any opportunity to have a good look around. She also suddenly realised, to her great horror, that her feet & ankles were sticking out past the end of her concealing crate. If he looked in her general direction now, her father would see a pair of panty-hosed feet protruding from tight black shiny latex, contrasting sharply with an encircling bond of white rope. Gingerly, with her whole body trembling, she lifted her feet a fraction of an inch from the floor & bent her knees so that her legs retracted back into the shadows. Ever so carefully, she brought her feet back to rest on the floor.

“Patrick? What are you doing? David?”

It seemed that they couldn’t hear. Or perhaps didn’t want to.

“If you want something done, you have to do it yourself in this house” her father muttered under his breath. Then he grunted slightly, as if lifting something heavy, & his footsteps begun shuffling across the floor; hopefully, Tara prayed, in the direction of the door. For what seemed like an age, but in fact was probably no more than half a minute, her father struggled to get this unknown object down the stairs. Then, with quicker steps, he could be heard ascending once more. Tara, having assumed that the worst of the danger had passed, had relaxed slightly, but tensed every muscle in her body again at the sound of his return. What else did he want?

Fortunately, at the flick of a switch the darkness returned, & she realised that this second trip was merely to extinguish the light & shut the door. Tara breathed a huge sigh of relief as she was left in solitude once more. That had been too close for comfort. So grateful was she that her presence hadn’t been discovered, that she failed to attach any significance to the fact that her father had spent longer than seemed necessary closing the attic door, with a series of faint clicks being heard immediately after it had been shut.

Tara found the most comfortable position available to her & relaxed. Although a huge scare at the time, that close encounter with catastrophe had caused the adrenaline to really pump. Now that the danger had subsided, she found herself going over & over the incident in her mind. It had threatened to ruin everything at the time & expose her bondage obsessions to her parents. But with hindsight it felt wonderful. There she’d been, bound, gagged & helpless in her tight latex suit, only inches away from her father who would, if he’d taken two or three steps more & peered over the top of the packing crate, have laid eyes upon his only daughter indulging in her favourite, yet secret, hobby. She had been extremely fortunate. Or so she thought at the time.

At what Tara guessed must have been around eleven o’clock, her parents retired for the night; her brothers having gone to bed about an hour & a half earlier. It hadn’t actually occurred to her until now, but as the sounds of her parents talking directly below her filtered through to her rooftop hideaway, she realised that this was probably not the best location to have chosen. With hindsight, she should have picked a spot that wasn’t over an occupied bedroom. If she’d been directly over her old room, or one of the two guest bedrooms, or even the bathroom, then she would have been less likely to have been heard if she moved. But it was too late now, & anyway, if she’d been elsewhere in the attic she might not have been so fortunate in remaining hidden earlier.

Tara slept very little that night; frightened that, should she fall asleep, any involuntary movement would give her presence away. Even above the sound of her father snoring, she knew that one false move could result in one or other of her parents trudging up those attic stairs again. And this time, if they were looking for the cause of some strange sound emanating from above, she doubted whether she would remain undetected. Eventually, however, Tara must have succumbed to her increasing drowsiness. She slept only fitfully though, & seemed to wake with a start.

As she had done earlier at the approach of her father, she froze; fearful that in her sudden awakening she might have inadvertently moved quickly or let some muffled cry penetrate her gags. The sound of rhythmic snoring, however, told her that she was safe. What time was it? It was only marginally lighter that before she’d fallen asleep & she knew her father to be an habitual early riser, so she guessed that it couldn’t be much after five. Cautiously, she pulled at the handcuffs, finding great delight in the knowledge that she had no way of freeing herself for another few hours yet. She would have loved to have indulged in a real full blown struggle right now, as this was always a pleasant reminder of how helpless she actually was. But she couldn’t risk this at the moment, as this involved a lot of wriggling & writhing, which would undoubtedly have been heard below. 

For what seemed like hours, the snoring beneath her continued unabated. Having spent the night lying on her stomach to alleviate the weight on her arms, carefully & oh-so-very slowly, she now manoeuvred herself into a sitting position with her back & fettered arms resting against a packing crate. The light through the grimy skylight window seemed to increase at an alarmingly slow rate, but eventually an alarm clock ringing only a few feet below put a sudden end to the incessant snoring & within minutes footsteps signalled the awakening of the household. Once she was sure that everyone was downstairs having their breakfasts, Tara finally got the chance to stretch & exercise her cramped limbs.

The ropes trussing her legs to each other still held as firmly as when they’d first been tied & her gags remained as she’d intended them. The cuffs, of course, still ensured that she could tamper with none of these other bonds. Although not in any great rush to be free from bondage, Tara found herself hoping that her closest relatives would depart sooner rather than later.  For one thing, she was intrigued to find out how long it would take to retrieve the keys & release the handcuffs. But more importantly than this, she was afraid of a repeat of yesterday evening’s close shave with her father. And besides, she was getting both hungry & thirsty. Not that she intended to remain free for long once she was out of this particular bind. In fact, the only reason she wanted to get loose was so she could freshen up & then tie herself again in another position & a different location.

After a long night on this hard floor, a few hours bound in a spread-eagled position on her parents’ four-poster bed would be a rather a pleasant way to spend the day, she thought. Then, after that, maybe a night hog-tied in one of the cellars. Or maybe in that old trunk that was kept in one of the guest rooms. She’d experimented with the latter once or twice in the past & found that the catch on the lid was a bit dodgy. Once inside, it could take either a few seconds, or several hours of jiggling & manipulating to open it again. With bound hands, of course, this operation became even more of a trial, but Tara thought nothing of the dangers involved. For her, the excitement brought about by bondage overrode every other consideration. Her philosophy was that, should she get stuck in a particular situation, then she simply had to persevere until that hurdle was overcome. She’d had some close scrapes in the past, but had always got free in the end. What she hadn’t realised then was that she was already more trapped than she could have imagined.

The final few minutes, as her family loaded up the car & checked that all the windows & doors were locked, seemed to take forever. At last though, the front door slammed & she heard the key turning to deadlock it. For ten minutes or so after the sound of the car’s wheels crunching down the gravel drive had faded, Tara waited. This was merely a precaution in case they realised that they’d forgotten something & returned to the house. There was no sign of this happening however. In fact, living in a secluded area, the only sound that reached her ears was birdsong from the trees outside.

Hoisting herself awkwardly to her feet, Tara stretched her legs & contemplated her first steps on the long road to freedom. The door was approximately twelve feet or so from where she had been hiding, but the path that she had to negotiate was strewn with boxes & other obstacles. If she tried to jump across that distance & fell, then she risked serious injury, as she had no hands to break her fall. So, taking this into consideration, she once more sank to her knees & began the more time consuming yet safer option of dragging herself towards the exit. As she did so, she tested the noise restricting powers of her gags. There was no real intent to summon help in this muffled outburst, of course, it was simply play-acting. She discovered, however, that even if she were to call for assistance for real, the gags were about ninety percent effective in sound elimination.

It must have taken Tara less than a minute to cover the required distance, then another thirty seconds or so to pull herself upright with the door at her back. Now at her full height, she could easily grasp the door handle & pull the door open. All had gone well until this final stage, but for some reason, pushing down on the handle & then pulling the door towards her failed to have the desired effect. She tried again, pushing the handle down as far as it would go then tugging with all her might. Still it failed to open. Something must be jamming it. Either that or it had been locked.

LOCKED?  The thought screamed out to her as she tried for a third time to get the door to open; but with exactly the same result. But it couldn’t be locked! This door had never, as far as she could remember, been kept locked. But what was that her father had said about burglars breaking in through attic windows? If he’d taken the precaution of putting bars on the skylight, then the chances of him locking the door as an extra precaution seemed logical. What also made sense to her now were the sounds that had directly followed the closing of the door last night. But logical or not, it now presented a serious problem for the bound & gagged young female.  She loved captivity, but eternal entombment was not her favoured form.

With her mind spinning, she tried to get her thoughts in order & assess the situation. She was alone in a house that she would be the only occupant of for the next three weeks. There was nothing up here to eat or drink, but even if there had been, there was no way of getting it into her mouth. What was she to do? It may seem strange to most people, but initially Tara wasn’t in the least bit panicked by this turn of events. She had managed to get herself into a few situations before where she had thought that escape might be beyond her, yet had always lived to tell the tale. The main difference between these brushes with inescapability & this current predicament were, it gradually began to dawn on her, that no matter how stuck she had become in the past, rescue would have come in good time if the hurdles confronting her had proved insurmountable. Now, though, she could envisage no hypothetical rescuer coming in her hour of need. So it was entirely down to her to extricate herself from a mess that was mostly, but not entirely, of her own making.

Slumping down onto the floor, Tara awkwardly manoeuvred herself into a position from which she could align her eye with the keyhole. Peering into the tiny aperture, she encountered no view of the stairs & landing beyond. This was good, as it meant that the key was still in the lock. Looking downwards, she could see a thin, pale shaft of light penetrating under the bottom of the door. If she could find a sheet of paper, or something else flat that she could push under the door, then find something thin & pointed that she could insert into the keyhole & dislodge the key, hopefully she would be able to reel in the paper with the key on it. Provided the gap at the foot of the door was wide enough. There were a lot of ‘ifs’ & ‘maybes’ involved, but she could come up with no better plan at present.

But first, before putting this plan into operation, she would need some equipment. Dragging herself away from the door, she began looking for items that met the specifications for the task ahead. To her left there was a large box with its lid partially removed, full to the brim of old magazines, so finding a mat for the key to land on was no problem. The difficulty lay in finding something that could be poked into the keyhole. A knife or screwdriver would have been ideal, but there was no such implement available up here as far as she knew, & most of the packing crates were sealed shut with their contents unknown to her. Away from the skylight, in the darker corners of the attic, it was difficult to deduce, even now that it was broad daylight, exactly what might be lurking. She needed more light to work by if she was to search these areas.

Dragging herself across the floor with limbs that weren’t able to function properly was tiring, but Tara knew that she desperately needed to find something to remove that key. She again used the door to help her to her feet, before trying to reach around with her shackled hands to put on the light. Unfortunately, the mechanism for turning the attic light on & off was by a cord that hung from the ceiling. And this was out of Tara’s reach in her current predicament. If she’d had the use of her mouth, she would have been able to grab the cord with her teeth. But her mouth, of course, was tightly sealed. With the cord at around shoulder height, Tara had no other way of grasping it & giving it the sharp jerk it needed to cause the bulb to function.

Tara flopped down to the floor in dismay. Once more she pulled herself across the attic floor; the once shiny latex of her skin-tight cat-suit now covered in dust. Crawling between debris of her family’s lives, she squeezed into the darker recesses of the attic, in hope of a chance encounter with some long thin object that could potentially save her from permanent entombment here.  Two broken chairs, an old rocking horse & scores of boxes & crates were strewn around, but nothing of the size & shape that Tara required.

Having made her way around the attic, & looked as best she could between each & every box, Tara was beginning to get really worried. It was now nearly two hours since her parents had departed, but she now found herself desperately wishing they would return; a thought that would have been abhorrent to her not so long ago. There had to be a way out, she kept telling herself, but her sense of optimism was diminishing by the minute. By now she was back in the centre of the attic, directly beneath the skylight. She looked up at the dirt encrusted glass & through the years of accumulated filth she could see a sky of grey clouds. There were, she reasoned, only two possible exits from the attic; the door & this small, angled window in the roof above her.

Using a heavy packing crate for leverage, she hoisted herself to her feet once more & stood directly beneath the only source of light available to her. If she stood on tiptoes – a dangerous manoeuvre with her legs bound – her eyes just about reached the lowest of the horizontal metal bars that her father had added in the not too distant past. The bars looked sturdy & strong, but Tara had no way of testing their efficiency with her hands manacled behind her back. From this vantage point, she could just make out through the dirt & the mesh covering beyond, the tops of some trees away to her left. There were no other buildings in sight, just trees & sky. And if she could see no other buildings, than it stood to reason that no one from any of the surrounding houses would be able to see her.

Trapped. The word kept pounding in her head, although she did her utmost to keep a positive outlook. It was, however, becoming increasingly difficult to remain calm. In desperation, she hopped across the floor back to the door; no longer caring if she fell in the process. Once there, she lowered herself onto the floor & began kicking out with her bound legs at the wooden panel that barred her exit, in the forlorn hope that it would break or come away from its hinges. After ten minutes or so, however, she was exhausted but had done little damage to the sturdy obstacle before her. Tears welled up in her eyes now, & she began screaming into her gag for someone – anyone – to come to her rescue. The ball-gag & tape that she’d so adeptly applied to her face, however, ensured that the volume of sound emitted was but a fraction of her normal noise making capacity. She began struggling against her bonds, but for the first time in all her bondage experiences this failed to excite her, instead merely serving to highlight just how securely trussed up she really was.

Then she saw it. Through tear filled eyes, Tara caught sight of the bag that she’d brought up to the attic containing her ropes, gags & other bondage equipment. At some point the bag had been overturned, with pieces of unused rope now strewn around a section of the floor in semi-darkness away to her left. But the ropes weren’t what caught her eye. What interested her was the glint of light on metal that emanated from some object half in & half out of the upturned bag. Of course! Her other pair of handcuffs. Immediately she realised that the answer to her problem had been staring her in the face all along.  She needed two pairs sometimes, if she spread-eagled herself to a bed, for example. Or occasionally she simply applied two sets around her wrists at the same time, just for the hell of it. Now though, they were to be used for another purpose; instead of their usual role as instruments of captivity, they would, if her hunch was correct, be a central component on her passage to freedom. When opened, the arms of each bracelet on the handcuffs were long & slender. Although curved rather than straight, Tara was certain that this wouldn’t thwart her aim of inserting one of these ratcheted arms into the keyhole & thus force the key out the other side.  

With renewed vigour, not to mention optimism, she pulled herself over to the bag & retrieved the cuffs, then took one of the magazines from the open box close by. Heading back to the door, she tore several pages from the magazine – not an easy task with both hands clamped together behind her back - & began pushing these under the door. This too was not as easy a job as it sounded, as the gap between floor & door was narrow &, what with having to work behind her back, the paper kept crumpling up.  Was this a sign that the gap was too small for the key to be retrieved through? That sort of thing didn’t even bear thinking about.

After a few minutes of trial & error, however, she succeeded in inserting sheets of the glossy paper through the gap from the left hand side of the door to the right. Whether they protruded far enough the other side was both unknown & unknowable, but there was nothing she could do about that; she simply had to hope & pray that the key, when - or if - it fell from the lock, would land on the paper & stay there. Lifting herself up again to the height of the keyhole, & with the second set of cuffs in her hand, she pushed the open arm of the bracelet into the slim aperture & began jiggling it around as violently as she could, hoping that this would dislodge the key. For a minute or more she continued to probe & prod with the open cuff, until finally she thought she heard a faint thud from the far side of the door; as if something had hit the floor. Removing the cuff from the keyhole, Tara turned herself around until she was on her knees, then with a silent prayer, placed her eye to the keyhole. To her great joy, she now had a clear view of the wallpaper on the landing beyond. With a muffled cry of triumph, Tara began to pull the sheets of paper back from under the door.

But her moment of joy was short. Whether it was the fact that the key was too big to fit through the tiny gap, or whether it had bounced after falling & therefore come to rest on a section of the carpet that she hadn’t been able to cover with paper, Tara had no idea. Maybe the paper had screwed up as it made its way under the door & didn’t, in fact, cover as great an area as she’d assumed & hoped. But whatever the case, it was no consolation to the still trapped woman when she gently eased back each piece of paper into view, to discover that the key wasn’t resting on any of them. This desperately disappointing conclusion, after so much strenuous endeavour, was the final straw for the now very reluctant prisoner. She could contain her misery no longer. Curling up into a ball on the floor, she wept hysterically. She was, it seemed, doomed to die here.

For several hours Tara lay in this same position, praying that, when death came, it would be quick & painless, but knowing that it was more likely to be a long, drawn out agonizing affair. As the passing afternoon marked the completion of twenty four hours in bondage, Tara trembled & whimpered on the dusty attic floor hoping that she would pass into unconsciousness & never waken. Although it was spring, with summer just around the corner, it wasn’t long before twilight set in & the light in the attic began to fade; a situation exaggerated by the dreariness of the day’s weather. The wind too, had got up quite considerably in the past hour or two, making strange eerie howling noises as it battered the roof of the house & rustled the fledgling leaves on the trees.  Occasionally, a gate would slam in the stiffening breeze, & far off a dog barked for what seemed like an eternity. Tara lay in her despair listening to these sounds, knowing that the banging of a gate or the bark of a dog would probably be the last things she ever heard.

But wait, what was that? For a second or two a strange scraping noise reached her ears, before trailing off again. Probably just some piece of gale-blown debris colliding with the roof, she thought. But there it was again, this time louder & more prolonged. Two seconds later, another sound, this time more of a scuffling noise, & it seemed to come from very close at hand above her head. Then, to her great joy, she heard a sound she had presumed she would never hear again.  She listened carefully in case she’d been mistaken, but no, it was definitely the sound of a human voice; the owner of which seemed to have climbed up onto the roof of her parents’ house.

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