Chained and Chastened

Those dreams! Unaccountably uneasy at night, alone in her elegant apartment (somehow, her social life has tapered off to nearly nothing--'I'm too tired from work', she murmers, gently declining the many calls for dinner, the theater, weekends, etc. that she receives), she is restless, unfulfilled. She has everything, but something is missing; what? She drinks an extra glass of wine now before bedtime. She tosses in her satin sheets, increasingly lapsing into an elaborate fantasy just before falling asleep.

She dreams of two lovely women, one blonde (herself?) one brunette (who?). They are always half clad in exquisite lingerie , garters, hose and heels. Clearly they are lovers, but it is all so tasteful, so--romantic--that no one could take offence. Sometimes one is gently dominant, sometimes the other, dressed as a maid. Each night the imagining grows more elaborate, more detailed, now including sound (little moans) smells and touch (textures of fine silk, yielding warm skin). She wakes up troubled, hot.

*

And the dreams that follow! Sometimes she's back in Gretl's evil camp, more often than not in strict bondage, perhaps suspended in leather. One night she finds herself tied to the guard house bars in Colette's place, but a stern woman, not a guard, is whipping her. That dream startled her awake, screaming, bathed in sweat, almost feeling the harsh lash. And some nights it's herself, weirdly floating in featureless space. elaborately chained.

* * *

.*

Kristin was beginning to look a bit haggard, her smile too fixed, her elegant wardrobe slightly askew, her colleagues at work noticed. 'She's just working too hard!' one whispered to another. Well, not quite. In addition to the fantasies and the increasingly disturbing dreams. Kristin was beginning to assume a new nighttime persona.

She gradually found herself drawn to the lesbian scene. At first she convinced herself that she was just gathering data, like any self respecting journalist would, doing research for her column, or perhaps a book. That would require interviews, of course. In what she called her 'dyke' wardrobe--leather jacket and tight jeans, mostly--and a brunette wig, she began hanging out in gay bars. She has a few exploratory encounters, first at the bar, then one night back in her apartment. (There was a little bit of playful bondage with silk scarves; Kristin found (why was she surprised?) that she preferred being the 'bottom' rather than the 'top".

In a few weeks she had slipped into a darker cycle: pick ups almost at random, more intense bondage and submission, one or two gruff unlovely bull dykes, one of whom left her hogtied and gagged, sore from whipping and slapping and sexual abuse. *

Now she found herself going home to her 'date's' apartment, or, often, make believe dungeon. It was amazing haw many straps, ropes, chaIns, pulleys and elaborate wood devices existed in quiet Washington D.C.'s sedate apartments!

*

One morning, her bottom sore from a vigorous taste of her 'Mistress's" leather paddle. Ray found Kristin sitting uncomfortably at her desk, computer screen blank. He'd been watching her for weeks now, with increasing concern. He approached her, laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. She jumped, whirled around and, as she saw the worried look on his face, began to weep, hiding her face in her hands. He let her cry quietly for a few minutes, then led her to his private office. "Now Kristin. Honey. What's this all about?"

She knew she could trust Ray Collins. Haltingly, she muttered a partial confession: the vague feeling of incompleteness, her increasing fascination with--youi know, kinky stuff, her inability to forget Gretl and even Dashka, and--she didn't really want to tell him this--her beginning habit of--going to lesbian bars. She broke down again, unable to tell the whole sordid story.

Ray waited patiently. When she had dried her tears and blown her nose again, he said: "Believe it or not, I've heard this story before. You--You're just slightly confused, I think. Sudden fame, working too hard, all of that. You need to see someone; a professional."

Kristin looked at him, frowning: "Oh, Ray, it's not that bad!" (She knew it was) "Maybe a vacation, get out of town. Maybe some kind of tranquilizer..."

He shook his head. "No. You need real help. I know a therapist--well, I don't know her, but in a similar situation she helped a good friend of mine. She's unorthodox, I hear, but she gets results. I'm going to make an appointment for you. No arguments now. I can't afford to lose my best reporter! " She tried to return his smile, not very successfully.

In her apartment that night Kristin tried to minimize, to deny the state she was in. She wasn't going to see a shrink, no way! She drank nearly a whole bottle of wine. Suddenly not able to face her fantasy and awful dreams, she pulled on her jeans, motorcycle boots and leather jacket and half staggered down to The Pussycat. That evening she let herself be picked up by a tall poised greyhaired lady with a British accent. "My place, my dear. I insist!" She soon found herelf in an elegant library. 'Why, it's just like my fantasy place!' she told herself, half drunkenly.

Not quite. The British lady said: "I am your schoolmistress, and you have been a naughty schoolgirl. Is that correct?"

"I--I guess so."Kristin muttered.

"Excellent! Take off that wretched biker costume, and slip into this little red dress. Excellent. Now stand in the corner, you wretched thing, while I tie your hands. There! And now I'll change into my correctional costume."

She soon returned in a black bustier. garter belt, black hose, high black heels and an assortment of whips. She smiled grimly at Kristin. "Now, child." she said: "Now we begin!" The night was long and painful. *

At the newspaper the next morning, Kristin's whipped ass was so sore that she couldn't sit down. She bent over her desk to read her interoffice mail. The message from Ray simply said: Your appointment with Dr. Amanda Riggs-Johnson is at 4 this afternoon. Be there; no excuses." Throbbing with pain, disgusted with herself, she gave in. "I need to do something" she said to herself, gingerly touching her flaming bottom.

Six hours later her ass was still sore, much sorer, in fact. The session with Dr. Riggs-Johnson had been a disaster. She had had a bad feeling from the very start, when the doctor--angular, not particularly attractive--and black--curtly ushered Kristin into her office. After listening to her patient's somewhat abridged narrative (the part about Gretl was so hard to tell!} she said, gravely: "You are at a serious decision point, my dear. As you know, I specialize in perversions, all sorts. You are on a dangerous, and may I say, downhill path. I strongly recommend Aversive Reaction therapy, starting today! Right now!

"Aversive..what's that? I mean, what do I...?" Kirstin said.

"First I'm goiing to give you this injection. Bend over, pull down your panties, I'll use your hip. There! That will enable you to better experience and learn from your --therapy. And, incidentally, prevent any tendency you might have to resist me. NOW! Take off your clothes. All of them. Now, kneel on that table! Rump in the air!"

The quick acting psychedelic drug was already taking effect. Numbly, Kristin complied with the psychiatrist's bizarre request.

"By reliving and heightening the shameful experiences you keep acting out, we rid you of them. " She picked up a leather whip with multiple lashes. "That evil Colonel Schmertz that haunts you. You must will her begone!" Slash! The first whip stroke seared across Kristin's already tender buttocks.

The doctor was wild eyed now, lashing in a frenzy, "Begone! Begone, I say!" Kirstin could only moan and try to dodge the stinging blows. Somehow she had been strapped to the table; in her drugged state she hadn't noticed. But she really noticed the pain; the drug enhanced it.

*

After an eternity, the beating stopped. The doctor unstrapped Kristin, now half swooning, helped her off the table and into her clothes (she was too sore to wear her panties). She called a cab. "You made wonderful progress for a first session", she told her suffering patient. "You are beginning to unblock your unconscious mind, I think! Come back in two days and we will continue!" She helped Kristin, still groggy and almost unable to walk to the waiting cab, helped in by the driver, who grinned at the black sadist. He had driven some of her drugged 'patients' before.

Some hours later, leaning against an armchair in her apartment (she was still vague about that long cab ride home. Had the driver....? Now reasonably intact again, except for her throbbing welted ass and unacountably sore vagina, she knew one thing for sure. She was never going back to that crazy sadistic bitch! She called in sick the next morning, resisting the urge to tell Ray just how bad his advice had been. After a long soak in a lukewarm tub, three percodan and another half bottle of wine, she was feeling no pain, Well, much less pain.

That night though, her fantasy was coarser, more sexual: the same blonde and brunette, but the dreams that followed were frankly bizarre; all sorts of chains and shackles and elaborate sexual humiliations. And interspersed in her multiple debasements and submissions, one wild scene where she was suddenly dominating-- some unruly brunette on aa leash, she couldn't quite see who. Dashka, maybe?

* * *

Several days afterwards she still hadn't left the apartment (she could finally sit down; she slept on her stomach; no covers). She was eating Chinese take out, mainly, and trying to drink less wine. She had called Ray, told him the therapy wasn't going to work--and never recommend that bitch to anyone again!--and asked for a two week vacation. Which he granted, concern still in his voice.

She had reserved a quiet cabana on the quietest Virgin Island, St. Croix. She would fly there in three days. Her final fantasies--she tried to resist them--now showed who was firmly in charge and getting meaner--the brunette. No contest. And she was looking more and more like Gretl. *

Well, soon it would be over, she hoped. Just a passing bout of weirdness. 'Three weeks of absolute quiet, that's what I need.' she reassured herself. Still, the last night before her flight (she had already packed) she got a sudden irrational but powerful tug to revisit the scene of the crime, so to speak, Her mind stuttered. "No! Don't! Bad idea! Just once, like goodbye, that's all. Maybe one drink.'

Despite her better judgement she finds herself again ('One last time! I mean it!) in her wig, jeans, jacket and boots, at the dimly lit bar at The Pussycat. Standing there she feels a strong grip on her arm. She inhales a too well remembered musky scent. A gutteral low pitched voice close to her ear whispers:

"Hello, mein schatzie, my slave. We have a score to settle, I think."

Kristin doesn't have to turn around. Suddenly all of the confusion and self doubt of the last two months seems to fall away. Unbidden, she puts her hands behind her back. She hears the dull click and feels the harsh metal handcuffs bite into her wrists. Her head a wild jumble of terror and anticipation, Kristin knows that nothing will ever be the same again. Meekly, she allows Gretl to lead her into the street. The night is overcast, dark, starless.

THE END

i

CHAINED AND

CHASTENED

by Kurt Knout

DAY ONE

"Welcome, ladies--or, should I say warriors? You are about to begin the most rigorous phase of your training. As you know, you have been carefully screened for your top secret mission, and have completed the physical and weapons courses. This psychological stress segment of your training may well be an even more demandinig challenge. Colonel Schmertz will give you the details; I'll leave you to her--tender care."

The trim greyhaired general surveyed his audience with cold eyes. The small briefing room at a secret CIA base held fifteen young women, smartly dressed in marine corps camo uniforms, upright on their folding chairs, awaiting their next challenge.

They were volunteers, they thought. Actually, they had been selected by a sophisticated computer program designed to study women under extreme stress--and break them. A high CIA official (a secret bondage and discipline devotee with links to private corporations) had got funding for the project under highly irregular circumstances.

Blondes, brunettes, redheads, all young, attractive, physically fit, mainly caucasian, but blacks and asians were also represented. Unbeknown to them, they had also been selected for a lack of significant contacts; families, spouses, close friends. Should they 'disappear' at the end of their training, no one would care too deeply. One candidate, Kristin Nyquist, was a bit of a ringer. She had volunteered along with the others (with phony

credentials); actually she was a skilled reporter assigned to do a newspaper expose of the program when--and if--she completed it. So far, so good, although the physical drilling, the combat courses, the firearm range had been difficult. The strict military discipline was hard at first, but she and most of the others had grown used to it. She had lost a few pounds, her already well toned body glowed with health. There had been few dropouts.

Now she waited with her small unit: what was this next challenge to be?

Colonel Schmertz stepped forward. She was a striking woman, a bit forbidding, her lush body only partially deemphasised by her severe tightly tailored uniform. Her glossy dark hair was drawn back into a bun, (possibly a wig? Kristin wondered), her lips were tight, unsmiling. Her eyes gleamed behind hornrimmed glasses. She strode to the microphone and coolly surveyed her audience, tapping her swagger stick--or was it a whip?--against one high leather boot.

"Ladies. Here is your assignment. It is not for the weak. From this moment forward consider yourselves no longer trainees, but prisoners in an enemy detention center much more brutal and severe than you can imagine. Much more. Your time of incarceration will depend on how well you withstand the ordeal. I will be the commandant, if you will, of your prison camp. I am not, as you may suspect, a soft hearted person. You may have noticed the armed guards who have entered the room. As you file out, please initial the 'hold harmless' forms at the rear of the building. This is your last chance to decline this defining mission. Patriots do not flinch in the face of the unknown. "

The women looked at one another. Murmers, consternation, faint protests. "What's this prisoner shit?" "she's just trying to scare us, to get us to drop out." "I been in jail before, ain't no big thing." "Marcia, this is kinda scary; I'm not sure I..." "Cool it, they're just doing a trip on us; this is all bogus."

Kristin was silent, and excited. This was what she had hoped for, an inside look at some of the CIA techniques, the tactics they had taught the Central American officers at Fort Benning, the Abu Ghraib fiasco. What else were they hiding? She sensed a scoop; a mingled feeling of excitement and a bit of fear. Prison? Brutal enemy? How bad could that be?

She was soon to find out. Only three of the women opted out; Kristin was not one of them. Having signed away her freedom, she was herded with her classmates into a bleak concrete building. The uniformed MPs hustled the women along with wooden batons. Inside, in a stark room lit with sputtering flourescent lights, the women were prodded rudely into two lines.

"Attention, prisoners. No, you are not ladies, or cadets, or anything else. You are my prisoners! You are scum! And you will obey my every demand. Is that clear?"

*

The captives gasped. Somehow Col. Schmertz had shed her uniform and stood before them in a gleaming, skintight leather jacket and corset; now she was blonde, with a Nazi officer's cap and leather jacket. She confronted them, holding a .45 automatic at her side.

"Oh shit! She's a bull dyke! I got a bad feeling about this!" Angie, a long haired busty folksinger turned computer programmer, murmured to Kristin, who also was feeling a twinge of terror. 'What was this creepy dominatrix--that's what she looked like-- up to?' she asked herself. Schmertz continued:

"My first order is: take off your clothes. Strip!"

The women were stunned, disbelieving. A few fumbled at their shirt buttons. The rest protested: "Hey, what kinda shit is this? " I never signed on to.." "Get those cops outta here." "This is outrageous!" And so on.

" Silence! Prisoners! Strip! Completely. You are no longer marines. You are my personal slaves. Now, get naked. Or my--policemen will be glad to help you."

Kristin glanced at the beefy cop near her, leering, sliding his hand suggestively over his night stick. Shuddering, she unbuttoned her camo shirt, then stepped out of her pants. Bending over, she unlaced and discarded her combat boots. And stood.

Around her, the other girls were reluctantly stripping, one or two in tears. LIke Kristin, most had kept their underwear on, until Schmertz's voice screeched through the microphone. "Prisoners! I said naked! Bare assed naked! You there, with the wonderbra! Take it off! Now! Do it now! And stand at attention!"

Janeesha, a statuesque social worker, refused to budge at first. One leering guard moved closer, his hands about to touch her magnificent black ass. She gave him a haughty look and shrugged out of her panties, unhooked her bra amd stood, proud and naked , flaunting her sexuality.

*

Kristin took off her bra, pulled down her panties, took a deep breath and tried to stand as tall as Janeesha had, facing front, pretending to ignore the grinning cop (or was he a cop?) at her side. She blushed and dropped her

eyes as she exposed herself. She was proud of her body; her usual wardrobe was provocative; but now, naked in front of the grinning guards she was mortified, strangely shy. This was more than she had bargained for. "Hey." She told herself, uneasily. "Whatever happens now, this is going to be a totally dynamite story!' The old saw, whistling in the graveyard, came to mind. *

All the women were naked now, some defiant, some whimpering, their proud marine uniforms and boots at their feet. Kristin realized: 'my digital camera's in my pocket! Nothing to do about it now!' The women with the best tits stood most proudly, Kristin noted; she was one of them. Vanity never sleeps. 'So, now we're naked, humiliated; that's what they want, I guess. What next?'

* "Excellent!" Col. Schmertz surveyed the twelve naked women with a tight smile. "First, you are to remain silent! Secondly, you will be restrained and processed..."

A slender blonde wearing glasses interrupted her: "Restrained? Processed? You are violating our--mmmph!" Before she could finish her protest, two of the flanking guards had seized her, gagged her with a ball gag, and handcuffed her arms behind her, moving with terrible efficiency.

Schmertz smiled once more. "I said silence, remember? Bring her here! Now!" The two uniformed men muscled the blonde up to the podium, where she stood, trembling now, but still defiant . She glared at the leather clad officer; the gag muffled the words she would have liked to say.

"Disobediece equals discipline. Harsh discipline! Watch closely, prisoners! " To the guards: "Bend her over!" * The blonde librarian, Alice, was bent at the waist, her glasses fell off. Schmertz lashed her savagely with her riding crop. One, two, three swift slashes marked her pale bottom; the red welts were clearly visible to her shocked fellow prisoners. As she writhed and moaned behind her gag, there was an audible gasp and one or two sobs.