As soon as her parents drove away, Laurie McKay crept into their bedroom to search for the key to the closet. Being a curious girl, she wanted to know what kind of strange object they had stowed away in there. Whatever it was, her parents considered it such a secret that they didn't even speak openly about it in front of her, even to acknowledge its existence. It was up to Laurie to find out what they were hiding.

She knew only what she had picked up from fragments of conversation that she had overheard when her parents didn't know she was listening. Apparently it was a gift from her father to her mother, who had some kind of medical condition that neither of them wanted their daughter to know about. They had apparently gone to see some kind of specialist, who had recommended this object, probably some kind of medical device.

One day, her dad had installed a lock on the door to the walk-in closet in their bedroom. That was strange; normally closets didn't have locks, and even when they did, they were built with the locks originally. A couple of days later, Laurie had noticed a large box in her parents' bedroom, opened and unpacked, partially filled with foam peanuts. She had asked her mom about it, who had blushed and said it was just some equipment Laurie's father had ordered. There was nothing unusual about that; her dad was the foreman at a construction company, plus he had a shop in the backyard filled with all kinds of woodworking and metalworking machinery. But the fact that this box was sitting right in front of the mysteriously locked closet, coupled with her mother's embarrassment, suggested that this "equipment" was something special.

Now, a couple of weeks later, Laurie would finally get the chance to see what it was. It was Saturday morning, and her parents had left her home while they went out for the day. They wouldn't be back until late that night, which would give her plenty of time to search for the key.

She stood in the middle of the master bedroom, glancing around and wondering where she should look first. Obviously the key wasn't in the closet, which left two dressers, a television set, a desk, a night stand, and the bed as possible hiding places.

She first went to the desk and started going through the drawers. She found no key there, only business documents, the usual office supplies, and an old paperback novel. She was about to close it and go look somewhere else when she spied her dad's appointment book in the top drawer.

She grabbed it and opened it, scanning the entries for anything that might give her a clue as to the nature of the object. She checked the date that the box had shown up to see if it mentioned what kind of package they were expecting, but it didn't refer to it at all. Then she searched the dates when she had overheard her parents talking about the specialist who had recommended the device.

Suddenly, there it was. On Tuesday a couple of weekends ago was an appointment with a Dr. Coleman.

Dr. Coleman? That didn't make any sense at all. The only Dr. Coleman she knew was the mother of a girl who went to school with Laurie. But Tina's mother's work didn't have anything to do with medicine; she was some kind of marriage counselor.

That certainly didn't clear up the mystery; in fact, it confused her even more. As far as she knew, her parents didn't have any marital problems. They didn't even get into minor disagreements, much less full-blown fights. They seemed genuinely happy together. In fact, on more than one occasion Laurie had found herself hoping that when she eventually married she could have the same kind of relationship that her mother had with her father.

Maybe she was assuming too much, she decided. It could be a different Dr. Coleman. The last name was common enough; there could be several different Dr. Colemans in the area. Or in fact, the appointment could be with the woman she was thinking of, but it had nothing to do with her mother's condition.

Unless...

Unless the flaw in Laurie's thinking hadn't happened today, but two weeks ago. She couldn't recall the conversation exactly, especially since she wasn't supposed to be listening to it, but she had assumed that the word "condition" meant a medical condition. But now that she thought about it, it could just as well be psychological.

But what kind of psychological condition could be treated by a mysterious machine hidden in a locked closet? The whole thing was beginning to sound like some kind of horror movie. The object must be some kind of nasty machine that her parents used to gruesomely torture victims that they lured into their closet. She laughed as the image of her parents as a couple of psychopaths popped into her head. No, that was certainly not it.

She closed the appointment book and slipped it back into the drawer. Disappointingly, it had given her no illumination into the secret world behind that locked door. No doubt she would have to actually open the door to discover the identity of that strange object, and that meant finding the key.

Her parents had obviously gone to some trouble to hide it from her. She just hoped that they hadn't taken it with them when they left. That disappointing thought almost made her give up; she could search for hours and never find it because it might not be in the bedroom, or even the house, at all.

Still, she hadn't exactly exhausted her possibilities yet, so she could at least go over all of the possible hiding spots once before admitting defeat. She knelt down by the bed and peered under it, but found nothing there but a sock and a shoe box. She pulled the shoebox out and opened it, but found inside only an old pair of tennis shoes. She then lifted up the mattress on the bed in several spots, but none of them revealed the key either.

Determined not to stop until she had searched at least the obvious locations, she then headed over to her mother's dresser. The drawers were filled almost too high with clothes, which wasn't particularly odd if one assumed that at least some of the clothes had been removed from the closet to make room for the mysterious object. She had trouble opening and closing the drawers, and even had to rearrange the contents of one drawer to get it to close properly. She hoped her mother wouldn't notice. She dug down inside the clothes in each drawer, searching around on the bottom.

In the top drawer she encountered something long and firm. Curious as to its identity, she withdrew it and stared at it. As soon as she saw it, she blushed and shoved it back into the drawer. That was a little more than she wanted to know about her mother.

In the third drawer down, her finger brushed against something small and metallic. A grin spread onto her face as she closed her hand around it, realizing that it was a key! She withdrew it and examined it. It looked fairly new, a good sign considering her dad had installed the lock only a couple of weeks ago. Her heart racing in anticipation, she picked it up and strode over to the closet door. She slipped the key into the lock and turned, and with a solid click the door opened a crack. Laurie stuck the key in her pocket, then opened the door and peered in.

Like she suspected, all of the clothes had been removed, and a strange device had taken their place. The closet had an internal light, so she flipped the switch and stared at the thing in the middle of the floor.

It was a chair.

Colored a rather pleasant lime green, it was made of contour-fitting molded plastic, like some futuristic, ergonomic device. In fact, now that she had a chance to really examine it, she decided that that was what it must be. Other than a couple of metal hinges and bolts, as well as a leather seat back, it was all made of this plastic. Rather than having four legs and being mostly empty space underneath, it looked solid and probably heavy. No doubt the plastic cover hid a mass of electronic machinery underneath. It had what appeared to be several moving parts, and a series of digital gauges on the arm rests and the side. A smaller device resembling a television remote control lay on the seat.

The device did, in fact, remind her of some strange torture device, bringing back the amusing thought of her parents as sadistic psychopaths. It wasn't that it had any pins or spikes or ropes or chains or even any sharp angles. In fact, it was quite sleek and comfortable-looking. But there could be no getting around the position it would put someone in if they sat in it. Instead of putting the feet in front, there were a couple of contoured leg rests extending at an angle to the side. The person would have to sit with their legs spread wide. There was also a large bulge in the front, as well as a kind of hinged cover that appeared to lock in place over the pelvis by sliding extensions of the cover into slots on the side of the chair. The seat back was set at a reclining angle, and another hinged piece came down from the top like the safety bar on a ride at the amusement park, but at chest height. This one, though, wasn't just a bar, but another heavy piece of equipment.

Laurie walked around the machine, running her fingertips over it as she examined it from various angles. The leg rests had metal bars attached to some kind of cloth cover that looked like they might curve over and lock the legs into place like an automatic seatbelt in a car. The arm rests didn't have the same thing, but it did have hollow rings at shoulder height that looked like they were meant for the person to slip their arms through when resting in the chair. There were a couple of plastic plates in the front bulge that appeared to open, but she ran her fingers over them and could detect no mechanism for doing so. It was probably automatic, operated by the remote control. What purpose it served, though, she didn't know. Why would someone want to sit in a chair that had electronic devices positioned right in their lap?

She tried to close the cover, but it wouldn't budge. Then she tried to bring down the "safety bar" with no more success than the cover. It was probably all operated by the remote control.

Naturally, she picked this up and took a look at it. It had seven buttons on it arranged vertically along the right side, each with words next to it to the left. The buttons were labeled, from top to bottom, "Extreme - Use Caution," "High," "Medium," "Low - Penetration," "External Stimulation Only," "Lock in Place," and "Unlock."

That sounded a little scary. Whatever the chair was meant to do, she didn't want to have any part of it. She hurriedly replaced the remote control, then closed and locked the closet door. Let her parents have their little secret; she had already found out too much already and really didn't want to know any more. Now she wished she had never let her curiosity get the better of her.

She went into the kitchen to make herself some breakfast. Toast and cocoa sounded good, so she slipped a couple of pieces of toast in the toaster. As she pressed the button down, she thought back to that remote control. The word 'Penetration' came back to her mind, just like the toast penetrated the toaster. Penetration. Thrusting something into something else. Maybe it just meant the way the extensions in the cover inserted into the slots on the side of the chair.

But no, that couldn't be it, since there was a "Lock in Place" option on the remote. It was quite obvious that that button closed the cover and safety bar; that much she had figured out on her own. And of course, "Unlock" did just the opposite. The other buttons, however, remained a mystery.

The toast popped up, and she cursed her absent-mindedness. She was supposed to heat some water in the microwave while the bread was toasting, not stand there daydreaming. Now her toast would be cold by the time she had mixed up the hot chocolate.

There was nothing to be done about it now, so she filled a mug with water and placed it in the microwave, then hit the buttons to heat it. That made her think of the buttons on the device again. It bothered her that she didn't know what they meant. If she could do something as complicated as tell the microwave to heat the water for a minute and forty-five seconds, she should be able to figure out a gadget with only seven buttons on it.

She sighed, trying to think of something else. It didn't work. Her thoughts kept returning to that strange high-tech device sitting in the closet. She was a curious girl, and just had to see if she could figure out its purpose.

Laurie ate her breakfast in silence, not even really tasting her toast or cocoa. In fact, she was surprised when she stared down at her plate and realized that she had no toast left. She had eaten the whole thing without realizing it.

"Okay, I'm going to go back and take another look at the chair," she said aloud. Now that she had made up her mind, she wasted no time. She rose from the table and headed back to her parents' room. After retrieving the key from its hiding spot, she opened the closet door once more and stared at the gadget that might as well have come from a flying saucer for all she knew of it.

Her parents were aliens. That explained everything. Laurie laughed to herself at the absurd thought, then walked around the machine once more, examining it from all sides. This second perusal yielded no more insight than the first, not surprisingly since the device looked exactly the same as it had previously. She couldn't imagine what those words on the remote control meant.

There was no way around it. She was going to have to experiment. The buttons were obviously arranged in order from the least extreme on the bottom to the most extreme at the top, so she decided to press them in order. She pointed the control at the chair and pressed the "Unlock" button.

Something lit up on the cover. She moved over to take a look at it, and noticed a digital readout displaying something upside-down. That seemed strange, until she realized that it was designed to be read by someone sitting in the chair with the cover closed. With the cover pushed up and forward like that, of course it would be upside-down. She tilted her head until she could see what it said.

"Already Unlocked."

Well, that made sense. She hadn't recall expected that button to do anything; she had just pressed it because it was the first one. At least she knew now that the control actually did operate the chair.

She pressed the second button. Immediately the machine came to life. The cover swung down, locking into place just like she had expected. At the same time, the safety bar lowered, then drew in closer to the chair. The bars in the leg rests moved in an arc over where the legs would be, drawing the cloth with them. Another bar that she hadn't seen before but similarly curved, moved over the chair where the person's stomach would be, bringing another cloth with it.

It was just like she suspected. With the chair in the locked position, it would be impossible for the person sitting in it to scramble out of it. She wondered why anyone would want to lock themselves in the chair like that. On the other hand, as long as they retained the remote control, they should be able to escape at any time. In theory.

The display on the console lit up again, and this time it was angled properly so that she could read it if she stood next to the chair instead of in front of it.

"No Occupant Detected," it read.

At least it didn't use the word "Prisoner." This whole thing was a little unnerving. She would think that it was meant for some malignant purpose except that she knew her parents would never buy such a device. No doubt what she felt was just the fear of the unknown.

Now she pressed the third button: the "External Stimulation Only" option. The machine responded with an annoying beep, and the words "No Occupant Detected" flashed three times on the display. Okay, it wasn't going to operate without someone sitting in it. Well, Laurie was certainly not going to volunteer. If it was going to be stubborn, she would be too. She pressed the "Unlock" button, and the device returned once more to its original configuration.

She stood there staring at it for a minute. Maybe she was just paranoid. It had unlocked immediately as soon as she had pressed the button, after all. If she sat in it, she could easily free herself. It wasn't designed to take her captive, after all. And despite her reservations, she knew she would never be satisfied until she figured out what it was for. Unfortunately, she wouldn't be able to do that without sitting in it herself.

She made up her mind. She would at least try out the lowest setting. She climbed into the mysterious chair, spreading her legs to fit them in to the rests and slipping her arms through the shoulder rings. Once she was in place, she relaxed a little. Despite her misgivings, it actually was rather comfortable, other than the tightness of her jeans with her legs spread that wide. Maybe the device worked better with looser clothes.

She knew, however, that if she got out now to change, she would never work up the willpower to get back in, so she decided to stick with it. She took a few deep breaths to calm her nerves, then pressed the "Lock in Place" button.

Just like before, the parts all moved, locking in around her thighs, wrapping her legs and stomach in cloth, and pressing the safety bar against her chest. In moved in rather tightly, she thought, not allowing her much motion at all. Unfortunately, it was positioned right at the widest part of her chest, her breasts. Maybe she was just imagining things, but she thought it had adjusted its height specifically to aim for her there.

She laughed nervously. "Yes, Laurie, the chair wants to grope you," she said aloud. "Maybe you should take it as a compliment that even inanimate objects get horny over you." She glanced down at the readout on the piece covering her thighs. This time it just had a number 0. Now for the first time she noticed a button next to the display labeled "Reset." She tried to press it, but the shoulder restraints kept her from moving her arms that far forward.

Before she tried anything else, she wanted to make sure she could get out. She pressed the "Unlock" button, half-expecting it to result in some maniacal laugh as the chair refused to let her go. She was almost disappointed when the restraints obediently released and moved out of the way.

Her fear was beginning to dissipate. Twice she had locked and unlocked the machine now, and it had done exactly as she had told it. So far there was no indication that she could not escape at any time if she so desired. Still a little nervous, she pressed the "Lock in Place" button again, and the restraints once more covered her. She noticed that the cloth pieces around her legs and stomach were snug but not uncomfortable, just stretched tight enough to keep her from moving her body around. In fact, this whole thing seemed designed to keep her motionless.

Now it came to the moment of truth. It was time to find out just what purpose this device served. "If the 'Lock in Place' button makes the chair grope you," she grinned, "I guess the 'External Stimulation Only' button makes it rape you." She laughed, then pressed the button.

The words "Warming Up" appeared on the display in her lap, and a low hum started in the machine, along with a slight vibration as it came to life. There was also the sound of running water, as if through pipes, below her, and she wondered what that was for. For about ten seconds the chair did nothing else, then she felt something being pressed into her back. For a moment she wondered what was happening, then she felt the thing moving along her spine, vibrating as it did so. Several others appeared, all of them moving along her back. No doubt they were under the leather seat back, just pressing against it rather than coming through it. The motions felt surprisingly like a series of hands working over her muscles, and she laughed in relief as she realized what was happening. This chair was nothing more than an automatic massage device! That explained everything. Her mother's medical condition must be a bad back, so she needed something like this for physical therapy. No doubt the other buttons on the remote control were just to give her a more powerful workout if she needed it. She hadn't really thought the chair was going to rape her, except as a joke, but now that she knew what its real purpose was, she decided just to relax and enjoy it.

A moment later she gave a startled shriek as something pressed against her crotch. In panic, she hit the "Unlock" button. Immediately the electronic hands stopped massaging her and the thing between her legs retreated. The words "Cooling Down" appeared on the display, but it didn't unlock. For a moment she had the sickening feeling that it had refused to release her after all, but about ten seconds later, the restraints returned to their open position, and she hurriedly scrambled off of the machine, literally falling to the floor in her haste to get away from it. She picked herself up and dashed out of the closet and the bedroom.

She rushed up the stairs to her own room, where she closed the door and locked it, then climbed onto her bed and clutched the covers to her chest as she stared at the door, half-expecting the chair to come to life and follow her up the stairs. She sat there for five minutes in terror, afraid to even move for fear that it would hear her.

Calm down, Laurie, she told herself in her mind. It's not some kind of monster. It's just a chair. It doesn't have a mind of its own, and even if it did, it doesn't have any way to move itself. It's just going to stay there in the closet. That self-talk seemed to help, and she found her heartbeat slowing and her breathing coming more under control. As she grew more calm, her rational side overcame her emotions, and she was able to think it through logically.

It was no monster. It was just a chair. A high-tech, electronic chair, but still just a chair. A machine, and all machines served a purpose. It had no will of its own; it was just doing what it was designed to do.

But what was that? What kind of a machine would massage your back while at the same time attempting to violate you?

There had to be something she was missing. Had she just imagined that sensation between her legs? No, it had been as clear as the things moving over her back. Was it just another part of the massage? Possibly, but that kind of massage one received only in illicit massage parlors. The machine had tried to touch her in a private place; there was no doubt about that. And that came right back to rape.

Rape. Forced sexual intercourse against a person's will. For a machine to attempt that was unheard of, outside of bad science fiction movies. If the machine had tried to rape her, and yet it had no will of its own, then that meant it was designed specifically for that purpose. But why would her parents buy something like that?

Then it suddenly hit her. There was a very simple explanation, one that she should have thought of before. The spread legs, the restraints, the pressure between her legs, the words like "Penetration" and "External Stimulation," they all pointed to the obvious conclusion that the machine was designed for sexual purposes. But rape was only rape if one party didn't consent. The machine, having no will of its own, no self-awareness, no consciousness, neither knew nor cared whether the person sitting in it consented or not. It simply did what it was designed for. Sexual stimulation. Nothing more, nothing less. Whether that was rape or not was entirely up to the person being stimulated.

That brought up another interesting question. Why would her dad buy her mom something like that? Obviously it was for her benefit, but, despite the fact that Laurie preferred not to think of her parents in that way, wasn't it his job to stimulate her? How could a machine take the place of a man?

On the other hand, she already knew her mother had at least one other device designed for that purpose, though nowhere near as elaborate. So maybe it wasn't so wrong after all. If her dad was okay with it, why shouldn't her mom be allowed to enjoy herself in whatever way she wanted?

There was also the issue of the medical condition. And now this was beginning to make sense as well. What kind of condition could be solved by a machine designed for sexual stimulation, at the suggestion of a marriage counselor? The link between the doctor and the machine was obvious; sometimes marriage counsel dealt with sexuality. So that meant that the "medical condition" had something to do with sex.

Now it all became clear. Laurie had read her share of women's magazines, so she knew a thing or two. She knew that some women achieved orgasm more easily than others. Some could climax just by the friction of their legs as they walked down the street, but on the other end of the scale, there were the unfortunate few who couldn't achieve orgasm through normal means at all. It tended to cause problems in marriages when the husband couldn't satisfy his wife, so more than one couple had visited a marriage counselor with just that problem.

No wonder her parents were reluctant to talk about it in front of Laurie. It didn't really bother her; it was no different than if her mother had diabetes or high blood pressure or food allergies. But given the sexual nature of the condition, it was probably embarrassing for her mother, especially considering the extremes she had to go to to get satisfaction.

That "monster" downstairs was no monster at all, but a friend. If it was meant to keep her parents happy and together, then why should Laurie fear it? She smiled and climbed out of bed. At the very least, she should close and lock the closet door so that her parents wouldn't find out that she had been snooping around.

She opened her bedroom door a crack and peeked outside just in case her overactive imagination was right this time, but the hallway was deserted. She pranced down the stairs, no longer afraid now that she knew what the chair was designed for. In fact, she was quite curious as to how it worked. Laurie had never had a difficult time achieving orgasm herself; although she had only had sex a few times, the feel of her own hands was quite familiar to her. So she wondered just what a machine could do that experienced hands or a good man couldn't.

The chair sat motionless, just as she had left it, in the closet.

She reached out nervously and let her hands glide over its sleek frame, as if petting a dog to reassure herself that it wouldn't bite. She once more tried to pry open the panels on the cover between the leg rests, but to no avail. Whatever had touched her between the legs had no doubt come from one of those panels. It was just too bad that she couldn't see what it was. It was probably something completely harmless, not frightening at all. After all, why would a machine designed for pleasure have any remotely harmful pieces?

Still just the slightest bit worried, she picked up the remote control and sat down in the chair again. She scooted in to a comfortable position and rested there for a minute. Not surprisingly, the chair was ergonomically designed for maximum comfort and relaxation, aside from the spread legs. Even the arms in the shoulder loops were fine if she kept her hands on the arm rests.

For the third time, she pressed the "Lock in Place" button. The covers closed on her thighs and chest, and this time she watched carefully, noticing that the machine really did adjust itself to press against her crotch and boobs. The chest piece tightened around her, not enough to be constricting but enough to keep her from moving a lot. There was a spongy, cloth-like material on the inner face that molded itself around her.

She glanced around as if in embarrassment; she was about to do something very naughty indeed. No wonder her mom kept this machine in the closet and refused to speak of it. Even without anybody watching, Laurie blushed as she pressed the "External Stimulation Only" button.

The humming and sound of rushing water returned, and she waited for the massage to start. The electronic "hands" began to dance around on her back, and this time she just relaxed and let herself enjoy it. It did feel nice after all, but then again, that was what this machine was designed for.

After about a minute of this treatment that helped to relax her, she felt the sensation between her legs again. Instead of fearing it, she let it do its work. It was blunt but not rigid, and seemed to vibrate and give off heat. Through her jeans the sensation was subdued, so it wasn't particularly pleasurable.

Then she felt something moving inside the chest piece, wriggling up against her tits. It felt like fingertips running all over her, groping and kneading her. She closed her eyes and imagined that they were the hands of a man feeling her up. She could sense her nipples stiffening inside her bra, which suddenly felt all too stifling.

This wasn't working, she decided. She hit the "Unlock" button, and immediately the motions throughout the device stopped. It took a moment to cool down, then released her. She climbed out of the chair and stood next to it, wondering if she had the courage to take the next step.