Chapter 8: Stories of Death

Then she started to cry, her body shaking, the tears flowing like rain.

I held her, tried to do what I could to calm her down, but it was no good.

I admit I felt a little guilty thinking that the stress of the kidnapping was finally coming out.

I pulled her close feeling the warm smoothness of the leather corset against my skin.

She started to mumble something and as I listened I gradually came to realise that this had nothing to do with the kidnapping or with me.

I understand grief through bitter experience.

It is a slow subtle poison.

If you try to bury it or run from it then the loneliness and pain get a power over your life and they start to eat away at your soul.

I loved my grandfather, he had been a strong generous man always willing to help a neighbor or a grandson prone to trouble.

In our community he had held a special place, never elected to any office, never qualified in any profession yet somehow always the one people turned to in times of crisis.

He was if anything the perfect human being, a strong man who didn’t pick on the weak, a proud man always willing to admit when he was wrong.

During the long hot Indiana summers of my boyhood we had walked and talked and fished, all the things boys and grandfathers are supposed to do together.

Then in my senior year at High School he died, no illness, no warning, just one day I came home from school and found my mother crying in the kitchen.

The shock and the grief hit her all at once and she was never quite the same again. As for me? Well one of the constants in my life was missing and the pain was worse than anything my young mind could imagine.

Then I did a foolish thing.

My parents had always treated me as an adult and I was graduating High School at the age of fifteen.

So I tricked myself into thinking that I was an adult and bottled the grief inside so as not to upset my mother any further.

I played the dutiful son and buried my feelings so deep that when it was all over and I wanted to cry I found I couldn’t.

That feeling stayed bottled up eating away at my guts every day for eight long years.

Then late one night as I lay alone in a hotel room in San Francisco all that burst to the surface and I cried all night.

I don’t know what had happened after Josh died but I know that Caroline hadn’t dealt with it.

She’d buried that grief as I had and it had lurked in the back of her mind.

Now it had picked it’s time and place finding that moment of weakness as it had in that dark hotel room in San Francisco.

I held her shaking body encouraged her to scream into the privacy of the soundproofed room and waited for the storm to pass.

She spoke a little between the sobs and with some gentle encouragement I persuaded her to tell me their story.

She had known Josh Petersson all her life.

The Petersson’s were a local farming family who had lived in this backwoods part of Iowa since great grandfather Olof came from Scandinavia in the eighteen nineties.

They lived close enough to the Reverend Conway and his family to be considered neighbors.

They shared barbecues in the summer, exchanged gifts in the winter, attended the good Reverend’s church and involved themselves in local fund raising.

Josh was three years older than Caroline and had voted himself the title of honorary big brother.

She had grown up with him always about but never really saw him as anything but a friend.

Then when she was fourteen he had asked her out on a date.

It seemed to have come without warning and I got the feeling that she had accepted almost by reflex.

Almost accidentally she had fallen into the relationship, then deliberately she fell in love.

Knowing that her father would not approve, she had kept their romance a secret.

Over that summer they had seen each other more and more, meeting in private, lying to friends trying to keep the truth away from the tell tales and gossips common to all small towns.

As she was underage they had agreed to limit themselves to oral sex and heavy petting until her sixteenth birthday.

For six months they had done what kids do and I think these were the happiest weeks of her young life.

Then Josh started to busy himself on some project.

He was unavailable most weekends and would not tell her why.

She became jealous, and started to think he had another girl.

When she finally confronted him he’d just laughed and asked her to meet him at a small empty cottage on his father’s land.

His family called it “Patrick’s House” and his grandfather had built it for his parents when they were first married.

She had been there before of course, it was one of the few places were they had any privacy.

This time she went with some trepidation thinking that perhaps he wanted to break up.

Instead he surprised her with an engagement ring on a silver chain she could wear it around her neck and a promise of marriage.

Then they walked through the empty rooms looking at the work he’d done to make it their home and planned their new life together.

It had started to rain so they couldn’t leave immediately.

The moment had seemed so perfect that she took him by the hand and led him upstairs and they made love for the first time one week before her fifteenth birthday.

It took a lot of coaxing to get her to tell me about his death.

I knew from experience that it was necessary, that if she didn’t get it in the open it would continue to haunt her.

It was painful and she cried like a child as she went through his last day.

They’d had a fight, he’d wanted to formally ask her father.

She had said no.

Angry words were said then he’d stormed off.

He’d apparently gone hunting, something he did quiet often when he needed to think, when he didn’t return this family sent out search parties.

They had found him at the bottom of a dirt bank in a lonely wood.

She told me how he had slipped and fell shooting himself in the process then bleed to death unable to climb out again.

At that moment she broke down completely, it took another hour before she was cried out.

I held her until the end encouraging her to let it go providing the physical comfort a person needs at that time.

When she finished she was weak and emotionally drained.

I took off the posture collar and replaced it with the usual one.

I had intended to remove the corset and boots but right now she needed to sleep.

I attached the wire and freed her hands.

Then I gently dried her face and brushed her hair aside.

“Thank you,” She said.

“What for?”

“For listening.”

I smiled.

“Comes with the territory,” I said, “If you can’t talk to your master who can you talk to?” I pantomimed looking around the room for some other person and discovering only myself there.

She smiled, and I knew she was going to be all right.

I turned to leave but at the door on impulse I stopped and looked back.

“Who are you?” I asked gently.

“A slave for your pleasure, Master.”

I looked into her large blue eyes.

Tomorrow when she’d had chance to recover it may be different but at that one vulnerable moment I think she really believed what she was saying, at that moment she really was my slave.

The night was still relatively young so I busied myself preparing my laptop for the trip.

About twelve I made a hot drink and settled into my favorite chair.

A quick check on Caroline showed her asleep, a calm almost radiant look on her face.

It looked as if the release of all than angst had done her some good.

It really had been a roller coaster ride tonight and as I sipped my cocoa I went back through the events to look for a trigger.

There was the sex of course.

This time it had seemed much stronger than before.

I’d been overwhelmed by the power of it all.

Tonight she’d been somehow sexier, more vibrant than on previous occasions.

I tried to find a reason why, when we’d had sex before she had seemed to enjoy it and I knew for a fact that she’d orgasmed so what was so different this time?

I knew that if I kept her excited long enough she would throw away her inhibitions when we finally fucked.

In fact when the time came she was now an enthusiastic partner.

I may have been keeping her here against her will, but there could no longer be any doubts that the sex was consensual.

Of course I didn’t kid myself.

I kept Caroline tied and frustrated for most of the day, by the time we fucked she was desperate, her body crying out for relief.

When I offer to fuck her of course she co-operates as she would with a vibrator or a wine bottle.

I could see that from Caroline’s point of view sex with me was just a way to for a girl to masturbate with her hands tied.

Then I remembered the little “I’m sorry Josh” line she’d said.

Did she feel unfaithful to his memory?

I could force her to have sex, I could even make her body betray her so that she enjoyed it but I couldn’t make her invest any emotion in it.

Was that the answer?

Had sex meant something more than pleasure to her this time?

Had the guilt of that discovery burst the dam wall of all that pent up grief?

I didn’t know and felt not for the first time that a degree in psychology would be more useful right now.

Then I remembered Caroline’s textbooks still sitting in the back room of my garage awaiting the furnace.

Perhaps the answer was in there?

I decided to rescue them and find out.

Now though it was time for bed so I started the dishwasher and headed upstairs.

I settled down and for the first time that I could remember I had a dream.

It started in the parlour of my father’s hardware store.

I think I was about ten and it was one of those timeless Indiana summers that I remembered so fondly.

Long hot dusty days with school a distant memory, and the smell of the corn fields on the breeze.

Then a sudden cut and I was out in the street chasing after Grandpah trying not to drag the fishing pole he gave me in the dirt, wanting him to slow down; but never wanting to admit I was too young to keep up.

We sat fishing and talked as we had so long ago, and though part of me knew he was dead, I was filled again by the joy of his presence.

I could have stayed there forever, but for some reason he sent me back to the house to pick up some fruit we’d forgotten.

As I headed back towards the path something drifted into my view ... Caroline floated above.

She was naked but for a large number of thin leather straps, each about the width of a boot lace that bound her legs together and her arms at her sides.

I paused for a moment, shocked to see her in such an idyllic place.

I noticed that the straps were very tight, her hands and feet were blue and bloated.

One strap ran up through her shaved pussy and disappeared between her cunt lips.

This seemed so tight that it almost cut her in two.

A seemingly endless flow of blood trickled down her exposed thigh.

She was looking at me, big blue eyes above the wide padded strap that gagged her.

Much to my surprise there was none of the accusing looks she normally gave me.

Instead she had a rather pained expression, eyes slightly puffy like she had wept for a long time.

I found myself opening the big knife my grandfather had given me and I nervously stepped forward.

Bringing the knife to the crotch strap I cut the thin leather lace above her pussy and started to pull it from between her cunt lips.

Much to my surprise it refused to budge.

I pulled harder and was shocked when a large ball of the leather cord popped out of her hole.

Almost immediately she started to thrash and moan behind her gag and I realised she was orgasming.

More blood poured down her body as the straps literally cut her limbs.

I felt frightened but somehow stepped forward.

Her rapid motion caused her to slip from my grasp and a found her drifting off in the wind like a bizarre fetish balloon...

I followed but whenever I approached she just seemed to drift further and further away.

In the end I started running but just as I caught up with her she squealed and rolled herself into a ball.

I closed in, making comforting noises and after quite a struggle managed to undo the buckle on the gag strap.

However as I pulled it from her face I became aware of the blood encrusted on it.

I looked down and cringed for beneath the gag her lips had been sewn together with stitch after stitch of the foul leather cord.

I woke with a start.

Was this the dream that I’d had the night before?

All I knew was that I was shaking.

It took me almost an hour to calm down and start to think rationally of the images in my mind.

I felt sure of one thing, the dream was somehow significant; my subconscious was trying to alert me to something.

I thought at first it was guilt, but Caroline’s bonds had been horrific, the sick work of a sadist and though I may be many things I wasn’t that.

I admit that I’m a control freak and that I use pain to get that control but I don’t revel in it and I don’t use it for its own sake.

So what did it mean?

A quick video check found her still asleep.

It was dawn and I didn’t feel like sleeping again so I put on a pot of coffee and went into my office.

There underneath one of my computer tables was the box of important papers I’d taken from Caroline’s apartment.

I should have moved it into the dungeon some time ago; there is little point hiding the slave and leaving boxes of her stuff just lying around.

For now though I just reached into the box and pulled out the picture album.

I spent about half an hour going through it I knew what I wanted should be there.

I carefully picked though page after page of Christmas’s, birthdays, and Thanksgivings with no luck.

In the end I found it tucked away in a little wallet like thing inside the back cover.

It was a picture of Josh and Caroline.

Of course he looked young, he’d died when he was seventeen, a tall friendly looking boy his Scandinavian heritage evident in this lanky frame and dirty blonde hair.

He looked nice but dull.

The standard all American kid, not smart enough to be a nerd not athletic enough to be a jock.

The kind of kid who somehow just makes it through life.

Except this one hadn’t.

She looked young and very happy, caught in that spontaneous moment that was either reality or Pearson.

For I while I tried to imagine what their life together would have been like if he’d survived.

One thing seemed clear Caroline wouldn’t have been an unwilling guest in my basement.

I could almost see her dragging a dusty faced blonde daughter around that cottage in Iowa, with perhaps another child on the way.

Even when times were tough I got the feeling they would be happy.

Josh Petersson and Caroline Conway; a future that didn’t happen.

Time to make breakfast.

I figured she’d have quite an appetite when she awoke, so I started into a more lavish spread than normal.

Soon I’d have to start controlling her calorie intake and arrange for some exercise or the enforced inactivity would start to have its effects on her waistline.

For now I indulged her with a meal designed as much to comfort as to feed.

By seven it was ready and I went downstairs to collect her.

She blinked in surprise as I woke her.

Up until then, I’d waited until she was awake before fetching her.

Her face was still red and tear-stained so after she had used the toilet I freed her hands and had her wash up.

The rest was almost a ritual.

I refastened her hands, attached the leash and led her to the table.

Once there she sat on my lap while I fed her by hand.

I’d found that I liked feeding her, like having a gag always dangling about her neck it was a constant reminder who was in charge, who had the power in this relationship.

I was pleased to see her eating well and I could feel her strength returning.

This time I dispensed with the syrup trick, I needed this outfit in good condition for the next posture session. So after fastening the collar to an overhead wire I released her and told her to strip.

She did in an almost mechanical way and I could see there was something on her mind.

I admit to having something planned too and as she wiggled out of the leather I was positioning the photofloods to point at one of the restraintless walls.

She watched silently as I retrieved some clothes from the wardrobe.

Walking over I threw them on the table.

“Put these on, everything but the gloves.”

She complied quickly and I stood back to admire the result. The outfit was not that much different from what she had worn on her first night.

A shiny black latex halter top came first.

The rubber was ribbed to give it a corset like effect. It hugged her upper body pushing her tits up and out in a pleasing way while leaving her stomach bare.