Chapter 6

The contact established with Zoe’s mother impacted the routine. Zoe took the train down to Palo Alto every Monday and Thursday mornings to visit with her for a few hours. Becca asked how that was going and Zoe told her most of the time her mother was asleep or just unresponsive. Zoe said she took that time and the time on the train to keep up with her work. Most of her art and illustration work was done or at least finished on her new laptop so it was easy to sit in the room with her sleeping mother and work. Becca did not press for any more details.

However, this contact did seem to have an impact on Zoe’s preferences for activities. Becca had noticed her wearing her nipple clamps when she came home a few times but did not think much of it. Zoe’s red and green cards began talking more about spanking and flogging, and she did present her Mistress with a “training flogger.”

But all of that took on another dimension when Becca was sent home early from work. Construction workers had cut a major power line that supplied the clinic. With no power, they could not see patients, so everyone was sent home. Becca wanted to take Zoe out for a surprise lunch date so did not call. But she was the one surprised.

The house was not large and took just moments to determine Zoe was not on the main floor. The only two options left were that Zoe was gone somewhere or was down in the garage/basement doing laundry. Zoe was in the garage, but was not doing the laundry.

Self-bondage is an art. The subject has to contrive a binding or predicament that meets their stimulation needs, design how to get themselves into it and then, reliably get themselves out of it. Accounting for tension, pressure, pain levels, restrictions and malfunctions are a part of the planning process.

Zoe had planned carefully. A large bucket held rocks from the landscaping outside. It had been placed on top of a bar stool from upstairs but with a stick across it to make the rock bucket easy to topple off by pulling the string attached to it. Sometime earlier in the morning, Zoe had pulled the string.

While the bucket slowly swung back and forth, Becca traced the line holding it off the floor. The handle of the rock bucket was connected to a short piece of chain that ran through what looked like, a tub of ice cream. Water was dripping from the container, along the short chain and into the bucket. Connected to the other side of the container was a rope that ran up to the heavy wooden beam overhead, through an eye bolt, and down to the binding around Zoe’s elbows. Her thighs and ankles were bound together, with her ankles supported higher than the floor with a rolled-up towel. This changed the leverage and kept her from trying to stand.

Zoe’s head was covered in a black leather hood that blocked her vision, not that she could see much anyway. Her elbows were pulled upwards, with almost all of her weight on her knees and her head was hanging down. Becca took a step towards her and her shoes made a crunching sound. She looked down and saw uncooked rice on the floor. Looking closer she realized Zoe was kneeling on a pile of the rice. Becca backed up and sat on the stairway and watched, trying to decide what to do. She saw the bound girl make slight adjustments in her position, sometimes trying to pull her hands down or rocking her weight from one knee to another. Any adjustment made her breasts swings in very interesting ways.

Without warning, the chain pulled clear of the ice cream carton. Becca thought Zoe might pitch forward onto her face, but instead she collapsed back on her thighs. The binding holding her elbows together had been a looped belt that slipped free when the tension was released. She rolled off of her knees and onto her back, moving her arms to restore circulation. Becca expected her to unbuckle her legs or take off the hood, but instead Zoe reached down and began to slowly stroke her sex with one hand and pulled on a nipple with the other.

Becca looked down at the girl’s knees. Both were covered with indentations where the hard uncooked rice had been pressing into the skin. She could not imagine how uncomfortable it had been to have all of her body weight pressing down on the rice.

Zoe had begun unsnapping the hood. As the black leather came off of her head, Becca said, “I am disappointed. We agreed to be safe, open and honest with our relationship. This ... this we need to talk about. I am going upstairs and fix a sandwich. When you get yourself together, meet me up there.”

“I have always felt a greater need for stimulating bondage when I feel stressed. I have been ... needing something that you do not have experience giving, and I was afraid that pushing you would break our relationship.”

“Is it the situation with your mother that has you on edge?”

“I know that is part of it. I have also been anxious about approaching this topic with you anyway.”

“So, what was that down there?”

“I have experience in self-bondage. It was how I lived for years. It was what I was doing when my mother found me tied to that damned tree. That was a “fail.” Sometimes machines fail and if you’re relying on them to for your safety, bad things can happen, like getting caught.”

“That, down there in the garage, was not mechanical?”

“No, well not really. Think about it this way. Pretend I designed a bondage situation that relies on a battery-powered timer to release the binding. What happens if the batteries die? Other issues can come from the house power failing, the string holding a key gets tangled, the lock jams like it did with me before. People have died because of a single failure like that. I was using ice.”

“Ice cream?”

Zoe chuckled, “No, the carton was just camouflage. I could put it in the freezer without anyone suspecting. I froze water in it with a chain and a piece of rope that didn’t touching each other. The ice holds them together until it melts enough for one to slip out. It’s not precise, but a little experimentation can give you a ballpark of how long it will last. But in a space that is not freezing cold, the ice will always melt and release.”

Becca tried to picture again what she had seen and began to piece the mechanism together, “Was that the first time you ... did that here?”

Zoe looked down at her plate with the uneaten tuna sandwich, “No. I have walked around wearing handcuffs. I have used rope to bind my breasts up. Little things like that kept my desires from getting out of hand.”

“But the bucket and everything. Was today the first time you took it that far?”

“No, it was the second. The first was last week.”

“Same setup?”

“No, they always change as you experience it, perfect it. I made two changes. The first time I could pull down enough to relieve the strapaddo...”

“The what?”

“Strapaddo. The position of my arms being pulled back and upwards. There was not enough weight in the bucket to keep the upward pressure on my arms. I added more rocks.”

“Oh.” was all Becca could say.

Zoe just kept going, “The other change was the rice. That ... was hard. I had to get into position on the rice before I pulled the bucket off of the stool and became committed. The pain from my knees almost made me back out.”

“But you still did it.”

“Yes, it’s not about coming to the edge and stopping. It’s about ... skydiving. For it to mean anything, you have to step off the edge. I was sure, a quantity that was known, was that nothing I had done would kill me. But the unknown was how it would feel. That is why you jump.”

“Like our adventure with the raincoat. Scary but not really dangerous.”

“Sort of like that, but more intense and more personal.”

“The pain...”

“There are so many sensations that are described as ‘pain.’ I would not enjoy having my arm broken. That is one kind, flavor, color of pain. What I just did is another. A weightlifter experiences pain, but they gain something from it that keeps them going back to the gym. I can’t explain the need, but it is a real need for me. I was afraid that if I asked you to fulfill that need, something bad would happen between us. I knew I could get my dose without involving you and damaging us.”

Becca took a couple of bites of her sandwich. She needed time to consider what she had seen and heard. To her, the most disturbing thing had been that Zoe was not comfortable coming to her about something. She needed to find a way to break down that wall.

“Two things need to happen. I need to prove to you I can give you what you need, or prove to myself that I cannot. We cannot play this halfway. The second is that you will be punished for going down this road without me. I will not do that now for a couple of reasons. I need to understand this more before I can act in an effective manner. The other is that I am mad, and someone told me never to punish when mad, because bad things happen.”

Zoe had told her that.

“So, how can I prove to you, and to myself, I can do this?” Becca asked.

“Well, one way is to skydive.”

“What?”

“Like I was saying before, you find an edge and then jump off. There is ... something that I have been thinking about that we could do. I can’t do it today, how about Thursday after I come back from seeing Mom and you get home from work. It might take me a day or two to get some stuff anyway.”

“Ok, but this is not your punishment. That is still to be determined.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Do I need to do anything?”

“Bring home some gloves?”

The note was sitting next to Zoe’s phone and a set of wireless earbuds. It simply said, “Please shower and change. Then, put these on and play the audio.”

It had been a light work day for Becca, so she was not tired. She pulled off her scrubs and quickly showered. Lying on the bed was a lacy black bra, matching panties and her black boots. When she had dressed, she went back into the dining room and picked up the phone and hit “Play.”

Zoe’s voice came through the small headphones, “Good evening, Mistress. There will be times in this recording where I will ask you to pause this playback. If you touch the side of the earpiece it will pause. I am down in the basement waiting for you to arrive. I can’t wait to see you in that sexy outfit. Please push pause, then, come find me waiting. Push again to unpause the recording when you’re ready to begin.”

Becca walked down the narrow stairway into the tiny garage. Some additional light came from a long string of white Christmas lights that were attached to the overhead structure circling the post. She found Zoe kneeling on the hard floor with her face to the floor. She could see that she was naked except for something black covering her head.

She pushed play.

“Mistress, I want to remind you that, when we begin, I am going to be living out a fantasy I have had for a long time. Finally, do not be afraid.”

The garage was cool, and Becca had on very few clothes, but she seemed to be sweating. She did not want to fail her friend or her husband. She also felt that fizz of excitement in doing something very naughty, dangerous or forbidden.

“Mistress, you need to secure me to the post. So, pull up on the buckle on top of the head harness, guide me to my feet and slowly move me backwards until my back is to the post. Pause until you have buckled the harness to the post.”

Becca stood in front of the kneeling redhead. There was a black snap buckle on top of the headgear she was wearing so she took ahold of that and slowly pulled her head up. Zoe’s face was completely covered by a hood except for her eyes. The face portion of the hood was covered by some kind of hard muzzle that was connected by the straps that ran behind and over the top of her head. As Becca kept pulling, the girl came to her feet and began backing up.

Becca looked and saw that the post had been modified. A curved foam cushion was attached to the post slightly above Zoe’s shoulder height. The other was a black strap that had a snap buckle, the mate to the one on Zoe’s head harness. All of the sudden, Zoe was taller, then she realized that the girl was standing on a wooden block that had been placed next to the post. This made bringing the two ends of the buckle together much easier. With a snap, the two parts mated. Becca unpaused the recording.

“Please use the strap end of the buckle to pull it tight and pushing my head against the post.” Becca found and pulled the tab and took off of the slack out of the strap. “The next step is to secure the rest of me to the post. By the washing machine is a roll of the packing wrap that is used when securing boxes to pallets. Put the end of the plastic in my left hand and begin wrapping me to the post. Make sure it’s tight and wrap my arms to my side and to the post. Don’t go higher than the bottom of my ribs, leave my breasts exposed, but wrap all the way down to my ankles. Make at least five passes to make sure I am secure. There is a utility knife with a hook blade behind the post. Use that to cut the plastic roll when you’re done, but be sure and put the knife back where it was. That is the safety knife. Pause this until you have completed this step.”

Around and around Becca walked, keeping tension on the eighteen-inch-wide roll of packing wrap. She guided the plastic down past the girl’s knees to her ankles then back up again to just below her tits. Her arms were secured from above the elbows to below her fingers. Zoe’s back was forced to follow the contours of the piece of foam. Finally, she was sure the task was done and used the knife to cut the roll free. She pushed the earpiece again.

“The next step is to secure my head. The small roll of packing plastic is next to the where you found the big one. Use the six-inch roll to secure my head to the post. But please note. The facepiece covers my nose and the mouth. The facepiece has two breathing hoses that go under the ears to the back of the neck. Do not cover them. Do not cover my eyes. Wrap until my head is firmly secured to the post with no movement possible. Please pause.”

Becca did locate the breathing hoses and only wrapped above them. She pulled the plastic both across the facepiece and across the forehead. When she was finished, Zoe’s head was pointed slightly upwards and her neck followed the contour of the curved foam attached to the post. Nothing was going to move. The arch in the foam and the fact that they were uncovered indicated that the focus was going to be on Zoe’s tits.

Unpause.

“Now locate the knife and make sure it’s directly behind the post. Again, this is the safety knife and how you will release me when we are finished. The next safety check is to look into my eyes. Ask me ‘Is everything good to go?’ One blink for yes and two blinks for no. Please pause.”

One blink. Deep breath.

Unpause.

There was a popping sound, and the recording had a slightly different sound, “Shit! I am so turned on by making this recording I had to stop and edge! I wish I could finish!. Ok ... there is one more adjustment but that is for later. Look to you right and you will see four blankets. One is blue, one is green, one is white and one is red. We will uncover them in that order but only when we are ready. To complete this task means you move through all four stages.”

Becca looked down and could see the blankets laid out. She could not tell what was under each but some were quite bulky!