Anna wandered around the labyrinth. Her hands were enclosed by mittens, leather cuffs making sure she wouldn’t be able to take them off. The short, but heavy chain connecting the cuffs in front of her bounced on her bare thighs with every step she took, as she was dressed in only a bra, panties, both made of suede and moccasins. Her ankles were cuffed as well, the cuffs being connected by a longer piece of chain.
Lastly, she wore a heavy iron helmet, designed in such a way it prevented her from moving her head, edges all around making sure she had very little, if any warning, should anything unexpected occur. The helmet also had another function, as it was designed to completely block out all sounds, except for the very strongest.
She knew that in the middle would be a key she had to take with her outside; but she also knew she had to compete against five other youngsters, both boys and girls, all of them shackled the same way she was, and just as eager to get free.
“It feels like I’ve been in here for hours!” she thought. “I wonder how the others are doing. I hope I get to the key first and win the prize, whatever it is.”
She turned a corner, and there it was; the green light indicating that behind the next corner was the centre. She walked as fast as she could, and was relieved to find the key to her shackles. That told her the others were still out there somewhere.
She walked up to it and found it was placed on a pedestal and attached to a ribbon which she, somehow, had to place around her neck, without the use of her hands.
After having thought it over for a couple of seconds she hunched and managed, after a couple of tries, to winkle it over the helmet. She rose and looked for the way out, and found it marked by a post painted in green, on the opposite end from where she entered.
“At last; a couple of minutes from now, I’ll emerge as the victor of this years’ competition! I’ll be very relieved when they take all these heavy things off,” she thought, as she twisted her body around to look for any sign of anyone else. This was only the first part of the competition. She had to compete against the others in two more events, and win at least one of them, before she could be declared the winner. She was fairly confident she could win the “get out of a crate”-event (which was next), but the last one, the one where she had to stand against a pole with her hands cuffed above her head, she wasn’t so sure about.
“Oh, well,” she thought,” I’ll worry about that hurdle, when I come to it.”
She raced towards the exit, considerably faster than she had entered the middle.
When she emerged and had her helmet removed, she learned she not only was the victor, but also was the new record-holder, as being the fastest person ever to have completed the task.
Anna was placed cross legged in a crate, her hands once again cuffed together in front of her, the chain between the cuffs short and heavy. Her legs had also been cuffed together, about halfway between the ankles and the knees.
There was an unwelcomed surprise added this year, however. The judges said it would add to the suspense, if the contestants didn’t see how the others were getting on, just heard the crowd. Therefore they had an additional cuff around their necks, which was connected to the same bolt as the keys via a chain, which was so short they had to sit with their backs bent.
Anna looked at the big set of keys put on a ring bolted into the ground in front of her. There were, at least, ten keys on the ring, if not fifteen and she knew she had to go through each and every one of them to find the right ones, so that she could unlock her cuffs. It was obvious from the start some of them wouldn’t fit, as they were too big or too small but that still left an unwelcomed amount of keys to choose from.
They had been told there was no specific order in which to open the cuffs, but all of them had to come off, before they could get out of the crate. She started with the hardest cuffs first, which of course were the handcuffs. She had almost become desperate when she finally found a key that fitted the lock, and after some fiddling she managed to get them opened. She stopped to try to take a reasonably deep breath, before taking on the cuffs holding her legs together.
She could hear the crowd go “Oh,” and “Ah”, applauding occasionally, so she thought she had a pretty good picture of how the others were doing.
She found the key to the leg-cuffs, and opened them, and then there was only the neck-cuff left. This gave her an unanticipated problem, in that she realized she wouldn’t be able to actually see what she was doing, or which way the lock was turned, she had to do it all by touch, but with the narrowest of margins, she was declared the winner. There was a bit of a confusion first as it looked like Anna and another girl, Patricia, stood up at the same time, so the judges was forced to look at the video several times, before they could actually tell who won that event.
That meant Anna had already won the competition, but as she wanted to make it a clean sweep, she entered the last event too.
All the competitors once again had their hands cuffed in front of them, and had been taken to an open space, where there were six large posts driven into the ground. They were told to each pick a pole, stand with their back against it and lift their hands, so the cuffs could be locked onto rings, driven into the posts. From then on, it was just a matter of stamina; the one lasting the longest was declared the winner.
As it was a bright, sunny summers’ day, the judges had allowed people to bring them water, and to see if they were about to pass out, in which case the competitor was taken away for immediate medical treatment.
Anna stood by her post, and as she was quite tall she could have her elbows slightly bent, which gave her an advantage over some of the others, who were so small they almost had to stand on their tippy-toes. Predictably, those were the ones who gave up first. After two hours only Patricia and Anna (who were about the same height) were left to battle it out; who was the one with the most stamina?
Another hour went by, before it was declared Patricia couldn’t go on any more, and Anna was declared this years’ undisputed champion.
In the car going home, Anna, who now was dressed in her usual three-quarter length dress, and had her hands cuffed behind her back said:
“Please mum; could you enter me into next years’ competition? I’d like to be the first to win two years in a row.”
Her mother looked at her in the rear view mirror, and said; “We’ll see, honey. We’ll see!”