The door opened and two young men, Jimmy and Mike, entered.
“Oh, there you are! At last!” the young woman impatiently said. “I’ve been waiting for you for so long. Shall we get started?” She approached them, and crossed her hands in front of her. She was dressed in a floral patterned, ankle-length black heavy plush skirt, with several lace petticoats, and a long-sleeved white lace-blouse. Around her waist, a wide light blue silk ribbon, several yards long, was tightly wound and tied off in a bow-tie in the back.
The men, dressed in cut off denim jeans and white t-shirts, uneasily looked at each other and the taller one, Mike, asked:
“Are you sure about this, Jenny? It just seems a bit; well I don’t know, over the top somehow, that’s all.”
“’Cause I’m sure!” she self-confidently answered. “What a silly question, boy! You tie my hands together, put a blindfold and a gag of your choice in my mouth, take me to your car and drive me to a secret location, within easy reach of the subway- and/or bus-network, where you will tie my wrists behind my back, and my feet, and possibly my knees, together. Of course, all the knots have to be put in places where I can reach them, just not too easily. I will then attempt to escape within four hours; it’s as simple as that! If I succeed, fine; it’ll then be my turn to try; if I fail, fine; you can do whatever you want with me.”
Being called a boy made Mike frown, and he was just barely able to hold back the sharp words, that so wanted to come out.
He grabbed her hands, tied them together maybe a bit snugger than was really necessary, took a scarf from his pocket and blindfolded her with it, and told her to open her mouth. When she did, he stuffed a bunched up handkerchief inside, and tied a second scarf around her head to hold it in place.
“Move it!” he growled in her ear, grabbed her arm, and shoved her out the door, down two flights of stairs, and into the back-seat of a car waiting outside. He slammed the door shut, and went over to sit in the front passenger –seat, and the car drove off.
As Jenny sat there, she started feeling for the knot to try to undo it. Then she remembered she was still in a speeding car with nowhere to escape to.
“Patience, girl!” she told herself. “You won’t have any trouble getting free. Remember, you’ve practiced this so many times, you can get out of almost anything, in your sleep!”
The car came to a sudden halt, the door opened and someone grabbed her elbow, and helped her get out.
“What do you think? Is this what you were looking for?” Jimmy said, with a lot of barely contained pride in his voice.
“Let me have a look.” Mike replied and Jenny could hear him turn around. “Hm, subway-station over there, check; a bus-stop over there, check; an abandoned old house over here; check. It meets all the requirements I gave you. So far, I might ad. Let’s get inside, and see what it looks like. Come on, you.” The last remark was made to Jenny, as he once again grabbed her arm, and pulled her inside, though being kind enough to lift her skirts up a bit, so she wouldn’t stumble on them, on her way up the five steps.
She was told to sit down in a chair and her arms were, temporarily, released. Then they were tied behind the back of the chair, with several both horizontal and vertical loops.
A rope was tightly wound around her waist and her wrists, pinning them to the back of the chair. One last rope tied her ankles together.
“O.K,” Jimmy said, “I’ve set a timer to go off in thirty minutes. Not until then are you allowed to start your attempt to get free. You will then have an additional three and a half hours to get free and get home. If you are not; well, we’ll see what happens then shall we? Enough money to buy bus- and subway-tickets is in a purse, placed on a table next to the entrance. We both wish you the very best of luck, and see you back home. Your time starts NOW!”
Jenny could hear a “BEEP!” as the timer started counting down the seconds.
As soon as she heard the door close, she started feeling for the knot, which tied the rope around her wrists together. After some wiggling about, she found it.
“That’s an easy enough knot to undo.” she thought. “The only problem is; I can barely reach it with my fingers! Oh, well; it’s not entirely out of reach. Now, all I have to do is waiting for the timer to go off. Are the rest as easily accessible, I wonder? Only time will tell.”
At last, the timer started “BEEP”-ing, and she was allowed to start trying to get free.
“Let’s see, if I can do this while still having my blindfold on?” she challenged herself.
To her surprise, the knot on the rope around her wrists was even easier to undo, than even she had imagined. The rope around her waist, which at the same time pinned her arms to her sides, however, had a much more complicated knot, which took her for ever to find and undo, as it also was half-hidden inside the bow on her back.
The rope around her ankles had the most complicated knot of them all. For one thing, she had a hard time bending over because of the tightly wound, wide ribbon around her waist, and she was all but ready to give up the attempt, when she eventually found it, and could start working on it.
The knots to her blindfold and gag Mike had cleverly hid in her mane of curly hair, but were fairly easy to undo.
“Well, that was about time!” she thought, when she had undone every knot and could stand up. “All I have to do now is; get out of here, find a bus-stop or a subway-station, and go home!”
When Jenny came out of the house, she discovered she was on the other side of town, and had to change buses as well as subway-lines a couple of times, before she got home.
When she eventually did, the house was eerily silent, as if no one was home.
“That’s strange?” she thought. “You might think, they would be home waiting to see if I made it in time, or not.”
However, ever since she walked through the door, she had been aware of a strange mumbling sound, coming from upstairs. She lifted her heavy skirts and went to investigate, and found both boys sitting on foot-stools in their bedroom. They had their hands tied behind their backs, and their ankles were also tied together, and they were gagged with handkerchiefs stuffed in their mouths, and bandanas.
When they saw her they started “mph”-ing wildly, as if trying to make her aware of something behind her. Before she had time to react, something wet was pressed against her mouth and nose, and everything went black. Before it did, though, she thought she heard someone say:
“Let’s see if you can get out of this kind of trouble. I seriously doubt it!”