Chapter 16: Welcome to the Machine

Marie shifted suddenly, realizing that the catgirl she had fought with at the Halloween party was in fact her dear friend Angelica. She stopped short, her wrists tugging on the X of chain connecting them to the cuffs on her ankles. She stared, slack-jawed, as Angelica set her sunglasses on the desk and popped out the cat-eye contact lenses.

"Yoooou! You..." Marie stammered, but Angelica simply placed a finger over her lips, pointing discreetly at the cameras mounted in the room's light fixtures.

Wordlessly, Angelica shuffled over to a large mahogany cabinet, swinging the two doors open to reveal a padded floor. On the right side of the interior was a steel helmet, mounted along the wall. From the inside ceiling hung a thin chain, ending in a pair of rubber-lined steel cuffs.

Marie shuddered as Angelica heaved on the cuff-chain inside the cabinet, causing the metal hood to butterfly open, revealing a thick penis-gag at the mouth. Marie stood up, resigned to further bondage at the hands of her old friend, the manacles keeping her bent forward just slightly.

The thought of the steel helmet closing around her gagged head nearly made Marie begin crying again, and she pulled up on her chains in frustration. Looking up at a camera in the chandelier, she considered trying to run.

When her attention turned back to the cabinet, however, Marie realized that Angelica was kneeling on the padded floor. She was held straight as a board by her locked corset-dress, and she had snapped one of the cuffs closed about her left wrist. Once her hands were cuffed behind her, Angelica bent forward slowly, lest she tumble forward onto the phallus.

As her lips brushed against the rubber gag, Angelica turned her head toward the dumbstruck Marie.

"Submit gracefully," she whispered, her uncovered eyes pleading and full of fear "and it will be easier for both of us." With that, she took the helmet's phallus into her mouth and leaned forward against it, the two halves of the steel hood clanging shut around her head. At that moment, another weight seemed to fall, pulling on the cuff-chain behind her back.

Marie watched in disbelief as Angelica's head was bound in steel and her arms pulled up in a severe strappado. She stumbled forward as best as her manacles would allow, but the cabinet doors swung shut. Marie scratched on the wood with her clawed hands, but the doors were solidly locked.

In no time at all, the office door burst open, and two large men in white rubber smocks and surgical masks lunged toward Marie.

"Nooooo!" Marie screamed as they grabbed her upper arms, dragging her away from Angelica's prison. "Let her out! You bastards! LET HER OUT OF THERE!!"

Marie screamed and thrashed, her manacle chains rattling with her struggles. The men overpowered her quickly, and as her yells softened into sobs, Marie realized that she could hear Angelica screaming in pain from inside the cabinet.

"Come quietly." One of the orderlies commanded, "Resistance results in punishment. First for her, and then for you." Marie sunk into the men's heavy grip as the screams inside the cabinet died down. Sniffling and moaning, she let herself be led out of the office and into an elevator at the end of the hallway.

The lift ran for several minutes, finally reaching the bottom basement of the building. The doors opened into a gleaming white tile room. The lights buzzed with harsh energy, glinting off the menacing steel contraption at the center. Marie thrashed involuntarily against her two escorts as they dragged her toward the device.

It was a large ring of steel, arranged vertically, with pistons and flywheels mounted around it on springs and cantilevers. Cables snaked back and forth through block-and-tackle pulley assemblies, and the whole device had a human- shaped gap right in the center.

The men worked efficiently, using small radio devices with loop antennae to open the cuffs around her wrists and ankles. They released her limbs one at a time, transferring her body from the X of chain in front of her to the demonic frame of steel around her. Pistons hissed with air as the men tuned the tension against her extremities, pulling her taut. When she was finally locked into the device, her body spread-eagle and her head secured at the throat and forehead, the men tidied up quickly and returned to the lift, steel doors closing as it rose once more.

Marie counted her breaths in an effort to determine how long she waited. She lost count after what must have been fifteen minutes, and began testing her bonds. The framework she was in seemed to react to her struggle, providing opposing force for each tug and push. Whenever she pulled against a section of the machine, it pulled back a little harder, and she instinctively tensed against that force.

Her heart beat quickly as she sent the machine into amplifying waves of pulling and pushing, the gyrations building until they threatened to tear her apart. The pistons and springs of the machine hissed and groaned as they kneaded her like dough.

Struggling against her desire to struggle, Marie closed her eyes and began the breathing exercises she had been taught in her confidence-building sessions. She imagined herself outside her body, and massaged her limbs with her mind until they relaxed into stillness. She felt herself adrift on a calm blue ocean.

Satisfied and relieved, Marie returned to reality and opened her eyes again. The device was still tight against her limbs, but it no longer fought with her. With a heavy sigh, Marie concentrated on staying relaxed. This seemed to work for another short while, but an itch in her back started to make its presence known.

"Oh no." Marie muttered, her mild squeak echoing in the empty tile chamber. She focused on breathing, imagined a warm energy flowing through her shoulder and keeping it from twitching, but the itch began to grow. Marie clenched and flexed her fists, trying to take her mind off of it.

Just as she felt that she had gained control, the sound of high heels against linoleum echoed from someplace behind the device. It was as though someone were walking down a long hall toward her. Marie focused on the rhythm of the footfalls, calming herself with their regularity.

She nearly started as a door opened and shut behind her, the clicking of heels echoing loudly in the empty room. Marie bit her lip, hearing paper rustle behind her, then a metallic tinkle. The heels tapped idly, paced occasionally, and finally there was a high-pitched mumble of satisfaction.

"Well sweetie, it looks like you're here for a clean-up!" chirped the sweet girly voice. "First a costume inspection, disrobing, then a shower, and finally a settling of accounts and preparation for your first assignment. I think we should get to work!"

Marie counted the items on the girl's list in her head, focusing on the regularity of the sequence as a way to keep herself calm. She continued counting in her head, over and over, as the footsteps clicked to her right side, the girl finally revealing herself.

In front of Marie stood a short pixie of a girl in a powder blue rubber nurse outfit. The short skirt ended just below her crotch, and her pale skin showed through at the thighs between the hem and the tops of her gleaming white stockings. The neck of her uniform was open enough to reveal the chrome slave collar about her throat. Her ruby-red lips pursed together to form a glossy cupid's bow, and her high elfin cheekbones made her eyes seem to smile. Her strawberry-blonde hair was pulled up tight about her head and held on with a rubber nurse's tiara. Red crosses adorned the hairpiece and the center of each breast.

The nurse smiled up at Marie and waved with a slender hand. She looked down at a clipboard and fussed at the floor with the toe of her powder-blue court shoe. Reading over the top sheet, she strutted back around behind Marie and wheeled over a metal cart draped with white linen. She hung the clipboard on a hook on the side, and fished out a bundle of red rubber from the bottom section.

"Let's begin with the inspection, shall we?" The nurse wriggled one of the red rubber gloves onto her left hand and stretched it up to her elbow, snapping it dramatically. "It says on your roster that you're wearing a Jack Gummi custom job, so it's five lashes per tear instead of the usual two." She pulled the other glove on and fished out a wand-like device, passing it over the rubber skin of Marie's catwoman costume.