Problem: I needed to re-write with a different motivation for one of the characters.
However: with a single bound . . . Snobound . . . flew in to the rescue. Thanks, mate. I owe you one!
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THE CAVE SPIDERS
We’ll just leave you guys to discuss this for a few hours, then.” said the driver as the three kidnappers departed.
“How the fuck do you expect us to do that?” shouted Danny after the retreating abductors, or at least he would have done if there was more room in his mouth. As it was, his carefully folded sock didn’t leave much room even before the oval gag was strapped round his head holding it in place.
Then the lights went out leaving the underground store in complete darkness.
Danny supposed that he’d been in worse predicaments but he couldn’t remember when. Neither could the big guy, who was having difficulty seeing anything clearly even before the lights went out and even though he hadn’t been blindfolded, and he’d had thirty years’ more experience of life.
At the other end of the spectrum, the third net that was hanging from the ceiling seemed hardly weighted down at all by the little Dutch kid in it. But he’d been tied nowhere near as severely as the older men and the net seemed to have very much a life of its own.
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It had been a boring day and all Chris’s friends had better things to do than visit him and he was really pissed off. Didn’t anything ever happen in this place? Then it did!
He should have been used to it by now but the sudden attack caused him to panic more than a little bit. “Ever been to the States?” said a voice in his ear. “Want to go? Oops, too late to refuse.”
Chris quickly found himself almost mummified with gorilla tape from his ankles to his shoulders. His feet had been stripped bare and one of his socks had been taped into his mouth. A quick tickle session caused his abductors to conclude that he was gagged efficiently enough. An old nylon pop-sock was pulled down over his face and more tape was wrapped around his eyes and his mouth and vertically round his head and chin so that he couldn’t open his jaws.
“Aw, cute!” said one of his captors. That didn’t please Chris at all.
“It’s a good thing the brat speaks good English.” remarked another, “He might be able to make things easier for himself.”
By now, Chris knew that he hadn’t been captured by any of his friends or relatives and he was as happy as a sackful of wet cats. In spite of his frantic wriggling, the tape wasn’t giving at all and the third abductor warned him not to resist as his colleagues and he picked him up and folded him into a very small box and put the lid on. That made the tape give a bit.
Even though the box was quite heavy, Chris was so light that two of the kidnappers removed it from the premises easily and dumped it in the back of a van. Chris heard a knocking on the box followed by a voice, “OK kid, quiet or drugged, it’s your choice.” Chris decided to be very quiet indeed. Following the usual subterfuges, Chris was eventually landed in America and taken to the warehouse where he was stripped of the gorilla tape, his trousers and his t-shirt, leaving him in just his blue briefs. No one bothered to remove the tape from his head. Chris was feeling cold.
“Use the John, It’s your last chance for some time.” Chris was instructed as he was shoved into a toilet cubicle at the back of the basement. He knew it would be better to sit and do as he was told rather than to try to remove the tape round his head. After a few minutes Chris heard the door open and at least one of his abductors come in. He was taken from the cubicle and handcuffs were locked onto his wrists. A look at Chris quickly convinced his captors that his wrists would not stay behind him for long so they got a special strap with two buckles about thirty centimetres apart between two ends with enough holes in them to accommodate anyone’s arms no mater how big (or small) they were. Once it was fastened above Chris’s elbows, the ends were fastened at the last available hole. A similar leather strap was fastened about his ankles and the kidnappers pronounced themselves satisfied.
Chris was carried over to where a cargo net had been spread on the floor and he was dumped unceremoniously upon it. The metal loops around the net were gathered by a chain and the kidnappers didn’t even bother to use the hoist as two of them simply lifted the net while the third one looped the chain over a hook. Hanging there Chris looked like a nest of cave spiders that was about to hatch – he couldn’t see any reason now not to struggle.
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There are worse things to do with a couple of days off than grading papers but this wasn’t quite what Danny had in mind.
He was lying in his bed minding his own business; he hadn’t even bothered getting up early. How the three guys made it into his room without anyone, let alone himself, noticing, he just didn’t know but there they were: large as life and twice as ugly.
“Oh no, not again! What have I done this time?”
“Calm down, calm down, nothing. Our boss just need a little help.”
At least, having gone to bed in his customary way – naked – left his visitors with one job fewer than they thought they might have. It also meant that the sock they picked up from his floor was probably not very clean.
Danny reached for the proffered garment, much to the amusement of the intruders but he quickly realised that he wouldn’t be wearing it. “Make your choice, you do it or I do it.“ said the tall intruder with the blue oval gag in his hand. Then his colleague handed over the manky sock. Danny folded it carefully and packed it into his mouth. “That’s a good boy.” said the tall man and he shoved the hard blue oval thing in Danny’s mouth and buckled it rather too tightly behind his neck.
Danny, on a reflex, reached for the buckle but the other two intruders immediately grabbed his arms, pulled them into painful locks and shoved Danny’s face forcibly into his carpet. With his wrists forced further up between his shoulders than the twenty-five year old would previously have believed possible, Danny felt adhesive tape being wound round his biceps trapping his forearms and preventing his pulling his elbows apart. The prisoner’s protruding wrists were then quickly cross-lashed. Danny had been bound in less uncomfortable ways. A thick bag of some sort was then forced over his head and tied, Danny thought, more tightly than was strictly necessary to blindfold him.
Before long Danny’s legs were taped together in four different places and his feet were taped as well. Once his big toes had been tied with a bootlace, even his foulest muffled language was of little comfort to him.
Getting Danny out of the building could have been a bit of a problem. That’s what the carpet was for. Two of the kidnappers brought it in and started to unroll it on Danny’s floor. Danny was lifted onto it and one of the intruders straddled his chest, placed one sweaty hand over his mouth and squeezed his nose for long enough for him to think that he would pass out. “Now, we can do that again for longer or you can cooperate, what will it be?” and he pinched Danny’s nostrils together again, “Cooperate?” A light-headed Danny nodded.
It took longer to roll Danny into the carpet than his captors would have believed but, once they had done so and secured it with tape at four places, there was very little sign that it held a captive. After that, it was the work of two minutes to remove the carpet and its contents to the waiting furniture van.
The journey by van took a couple of hours and, by the end of it, Danny was just about stifled. At least he wasn’t knocked about too much due to his being wrapped in the carpet. After the journey, the carpet was carried into the underground store and the kidnappers couldn’t resist unrolling him like Cleopatra.
The swearing started again. “Shh, shh.” said a voice as Danny felt his nose squeezed again and his mouth covered. “No dirty language, please.” Danny calmed down.
Another cargo net was produced and Danny was rolled onto it before it was chained closed. This time his captors decided to use the hoist and lifted him high enough from the ground to enable them to transfer him to a fixed hook. The journey and the pain that was setting into his arms had taken quite a lot out of Danny and he needed just to hang there and recover for a while. Before long the third victim arrived.
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Jason answered a knock on his apartment door. “Delivery for Mr. Toddman.” Jason wasn’t expecting anything but had little reason to be suspicious so he admitted the caller, a very tall, wavy-haired youngster of about eighteen years of age. “Boys ‘Я’ Us home delivery, Sir.”
Jason tended to take things somewhat literally but he knew there was no such thing. He had invented Boys ‘Я’ Us for some of his illustrations. As he was closing the door, the tall guy forced his way in followed by a couple of his colleagues who had been keeping out of sight. “Some of your friends bought you a present. They bought you one of our home visits. This is it. Now, if you’d be good enough to remove your shirt and shoes, we can begin.” Jason was starting to believe in this but, no, Boys ‘Я’ Us just didn’t exist. Did it?
It wasn’t often that Jason suffered from a lack of imagination but right now he was confused.
“Sir, your shirt and shoes, please.” By now there were various reasons to cooperate, the main one being that there were three young men looking as though they had muscles in their spit standing in front of him wearing Boys ‘Я’ Us polo shirts and with determined looks on their faces. Jason did as he was asked and before long he was face up on his own carpet with three muscular young men sitting atop him. Christ, it had been a long time since that had happened to him and Jason started to relax. When all three removed their polo shirts leaving them bare-chested, Jason started to believe in God once more.
“We’ve read your stories and our boss was really pissed off when you used our firm’s name but he’s the forgiving sort so . . .“ and he started flicking Jason’s nose. Jason travelled back forty years in an instant. “OK, now down to the real business.” announced the tall one. At that point the youngster nearest his feet turned around and seated himself again and the one in the middle climbed off his customer leaving the other operative pinning his arms with his legs. In his younger days, Jason might have put up a fight but there was really no point and, in any case, he still wasn’t sure that he wasn’t enjoying re-living past pleasures.
The three visitors went into what was obviously a well practiced routine and Jason was soon bound by his ankles and knees and very shortly afterwards handcuffed with his arms tied firmly to his torso. Other than the fact that they hadn’t bothered to fasten his hands behind him, they were as good as the best of his childhood captors. The addition of an inflatable butterfly gag which was pumped to provide a gag more silencing than any Jason had ever experienced before completed the initial stage of the bondage.
“Now for the ‘Extras’.” announced the tall one as his colleagues brought a stretcher into the apartment. Jason was lifted onto it in the usual assured, “one, two, three, lift” manner of a practiced ambulance crew. Various straps came into action fastening their customer securely onto the stretcher and a blanket was draped “snugly” from Jason’s nose downwards.
“With drugs or without drugs?” asked the smallest intruder brandishing a syringe. There were probably two good reasons why Jason indicated that he could do without. The smallest guy then removed Jason’s glasses and lodged them in a pocket in the stretcher. The “Boys ‘Я’ Us” operatives had replaced their polo shirts with what would pass for paramedics’ tops and two of them lifted Jason into a waiting van. Not even the neighbours across the drive should notice the fact that Jason was being abducted and should assume that he was being taken to hospital.
It wasn’t more than about an hour and a half before he found himself hanging in a net alongside Chris and Danny but not before his captors had tested his flexibility to its limits by adding just a few more restraints now that he didn’t need to lie straightened out on the stretcher. By then he knew that his fifty-four year old body wasn’t as fit for the TUGs as his teenaged one had been but, if it ended now, he knew he would treasure the experience for ever. But what if it didn’t?
TBC