Alice in Thunderland

"Then I think I am already properly dressed," she answered. "I assume that my master can clothe me otherwise if he so desires?"

"Of course," he answered.

As Alice pushed against the final door, the young man added, "Enjoy your time at Thunderland. And remember, 'Delete me; delete me; delete me,' and you return to your normal reality."

***

Alice had no idea what to expect on the other side of that final door. If she had been given a thousand guesses, however, none of them would have been the 18th Century sitting room in which she found herself. A middle-aged man sat in a stiff-backed padded chair with a drink of some sort in his hand. Since he was holding a snifter, she assumed it was brandy.

"Have a seat," he said pleasantly, motioning with his drink hand toward an overstuffed chair that faced his own. "We have much to discuss before we begin."

There was something mysterious about this man. He was rugged and handsome. Alice had no problem envisioning him in a military uniform of some sort, but he seemed to her to be more of an explorer than a warrior.

The only things not perfect about the figure were his eyes and the color of his skin. The eyes seemed almost too big for his face. It broke Alice's train of thought as she remarked to herself that the programmers would have to work on that imperfection. Surprisingly, she had no more than thought of it when the eyes adjusted to a more appropriate size. Likewise his skin color flushed from the slightly gray to a more normal skin tone.

"You wish to be overwhelmed," he said casually, "and I shall do that." He swirled the drink in his hand. "And you wish to experience an overloading of your senses." He laughed slightly. "I shall do that also."

He paused. "But before we begin, you must understand that the overwhelming will be physical and may be more than a little uncomfortable." Another sip of his drink. "And your senses will be overloaded with both pleasure and pain." He paused for emphasis and to swirl his drink and take a sip. "Some of that pleasure and some of that pain will be sexual in nature. ... Some will not."

He sat back against his chair and swirled his drink once again. "I am going to give you one minute to reconsider your choices. During those sixty seconds, you may say 'Delete me; delete me; delete me,' and return to your normal reality." Another sip of the drink. "But at the end of that time, you will be my prisoner until I decide to release you."

He sat forward and looked directly into Alice's eyes. "Understand fully that once I claim you as my slave, your escape phrase will NOT work until I release you."

He lifted Alice's face slightly so that their eyes were once again in direct contact. She had not realized that she had looked down. In the same forceful voice he said, "If you use the escape phrase, I will stop what I am doing, but you will not return to your normal reality unless I release you."

He was silent for a moment and then sat back up and lifted his brandy snifter toward Alice. "Do you understand that?" he asked.

"Yes, I think I do," she answered.

"You think you do or you KNOW you do?" he replied. His voice was louder and even more firm.

"I understand," Alice said.

"Good," he replied. "Then I will wait for sixty seconds. If you are still here when the clock chimes, we will begin."

The handsome man leaned against the back of his chair and sat slowly swirling the brandy in the snifter while the ticking of a large grandfather clock filled the silence. Alice looked nervously around the room. This was her final chance to back out.

'No,' she said silently to herself, 'the pearl has been peeled down to this inner layer. My inner desires have been brought to the surface. It is time to see if they are truly what I want.'

The chime of the clock and the loud mechanical snap of iron manacles trapping her arms and legs to the chair occurred simultaneously. The minute was up.

The handsome man stood from his chair and removed the light gray smoking jacket / robe that he had been wearing. Beneath it, he was dressed in black leather. He still looked more like an explorer or scientist than a warrior, but he now looked like a very dangerous explorer or scientist.

He reached out and stroked Alice's hair. Her first thought was appreciation for the game's ability to make her truly feel his touch. Then the pleasure of his light stroking overtook that thought and she gave a slight contented moan. This felt good.

"Close your eyes," he commanded, and she did so.

The hand left her head. It was now totally silent in the room. Something brushed against the tips of her nipples. She gasped in response. He was now stroking her breasts with his fingers, first one breast and then the other. As his fingers came together over her nipples, he would give a quick pinch of the nipple itself. Alice could feel herself becoming wet.

The fingers continued to tweak and tease her breasts, but now the fingers of his other hand were brushing lightly over her pubic hair. She could feel herself starting to squirm under his touch. Suddenly the fingers at her breasts held tightly to her nipple and two of the fingers between her legs slipped into her sex.

"Ahhhh!" she gasped.

"Quiet, Alice." he commanded. "Do not speak. Do not make a sound. Just respond to my hands and my voice."

Alice struggled to remain quiet as fingers continued to tweak and pinch her breasts. It was at the edge of being painful, but somehow, that edge kept receding into the background as pleasure flowed through her body.

The fingers in her cunt were slowly sliding in and out. Each penetration ended with the rest of his hand making contact with her now throbbing clit. And each withdrawal ended with the fingers sliding over that very sensitive nub. Alice was drawing short gasps of air in through her nostrils as she attempted to remain quiet. As the passion rose within her, she found herself pulling against the iron restraints on her arms and legs.

"Open you mouth," he suddenly ordered, and Alice did.

A sudden, somewhat sour, taste filled her mouth as two fingers thrust against her tongue. "Have you ever tasted yourself before?" he asked.

Alice could not speak with the fingers in her mouth, but she wagged her head from side to side to say 'no'.

"Clean off my fingers," he said and Alice closed her mouth over them and began licking and sucking.

"Open your eyes and come with me," he then ordered.

As Alice opened her eyes, there was a click and clang of the manacles releasing. At first she found it difficult to get up. Her body wanted more of what she had been experiencing in the chair and was reluctant to leave it.

"Now!" he barked, and Alice found herself nearly jumping to her feet.

He walked toward a dark wooden door that matched the paneling of the room. As he reached for the handle, he turned toward Alice and said, "This is my play room. I designed it hoping that someone like you would come by and want to use it."

For a moment, his eyes were once again too large for his face and his skin color was much too gray. Alice thought of one of her professor's comments in an advanced programming class. "The programmer always shows through in the finished product. Someone who truly understands programming can see your thoughts and even your personality buried amongst the code."

Alice had thought him silly at the time, but now she wasn't so sure. For a moment, she was sure that she was getting a glimpse of the man who had created Thunderworld... or at least this portion of it.

***

As Alice entered the room, the door closed solidly behind her. From this side, the door was just one of the panels in the wooden wall. The decor was still Baroque and the walls looked like the luxurious walls of an 18th Century French castle, but the furnishings, except for two chairs and a divan, had a much more modern touch. Or, at least they seemed that way to Alice.

She wasn't sure. She really didn't have that vast a knowledge of 18th Century BDSM devices. There was a large X-shaped cross with leather restraints hanging from the ends mounted on one wall of the room. A padded punishment bench of some sort sat in the corner. A set of stocks which were made of highly polished cherry wood stood in the middle of the room. And across the back wall of the room was a slanted rack.

Alice had seen racks before. They were featured in historical documents from the Inquisition and from Medieval times. She had even seen an actual rack in the Tower of London with large wooden spools on which to tightly-wind the ropes which would pull some unfortunate soul's arms and legs out of their sockets.

This rack was different, however. For one, it used chains rather than ropes. It also had an iron or steel mechanism with a much finer gear and pawl system that would allow the tension to be increased in much smaller increments. But the thing which made this rack most different from any rack Alice had ever seen was the padded stocks for the feet and padded restraints for the wrists.

The foot stocks were completely covered in leather and had what appeared to be sheep's wool both within the ankle hole and on the bottom side of the stock. The arm restraints were almost long enough to reach the elbows and included a bar that could be clenched in the hand to prevent damage to the wrist. To be sure, this rack was capable of pulling someone apart, but it was obvious in its design that the intent was to create the tension without permanent damage to the person being stretched. Even the fact that it was slanted rather than flat implied that a person was intended to willingly place themselves in its pulling grip.

"Within this room you will call me 'Master' or 'Sir'," he said as he turned to face her. "Do you understand that?"

"Yes, sir!" Alice found herself answering in almost a shout.

"What are you to call me?" he asked.

"'Sir' or 'Master', Sir," she answered. Her voice was more controlled, but just a little.

"Do you know what these devices are?" he asked. His voice was calm and reassuring, almost as if he did not want to unnecessarily scare her.

"Yes, sir, I do."

"Then explain them to me," he replied.

"The large cross is a Saint Andrew's Cross," she began. "It is used to hold someone firmly with their arms and legs spread out. The person can be either facing the cross or with their back to the cross. It can be used for whipping or other actions while the person is spread wide and helpless."

"Go on," he said with a smile.

"The rack is normally an instrument of torture that was used to very slowly and painfully pull a person apart. This rack is modified so that the tension can be more carefully controlled and the restraints are padded. I assume that is to allow someone to be taken to the very threshold without the actual destruction of their body."

"You are very observant," he replied. "Please continue."

"This," said Alice, setting her hand on the padded leather of the punishment bench, "is commonly called a spanking bench or punishment bench. A person kneels on the low pad and puts their body over the higher pad where it is strapped into place. Sometimes there is a stock for the hands and head, but this bench instead has an additional pad which seems to be intended to support the shoulders. It would appear that the arms are restrained down along the supports for that pad.

"You seem to know a great deal about these instruments. Have you studied them?"

"Yes, sir," Alice answered. She looked down at the floor. "I find myself drawn to them." She squirmed under his gaze. "I have read a great deal about their use."

"But you have not yet experienced any of them have you, Alice?" he asked.

"No, sir, I have not." She found herself flushing red as she answered because she was thinking that she was about to find out how each of these was used.

"And what is this final item used for?" he asked.

"This is a stock," she answered. "It was used for public humiliation and punishment." She thought to herself that she was starting to sound like a tourist guide. "A person's hands and head were locked in the stocks and they were displayed in the public square. The people of the town, including the children, would say terrible things to them and throw mud and garbage at them."

"I am sure that is what you read in your history books," he replied, "but there was much more to it than just children throwing mud." He raised the top of the stock. "A person was sentenced to the stocks for anything from an afternoon to several days."

He motioned for Alice to step forward, then he guided her head and hands into the holes in the stock. "If it were for but an afternoon," he continued as he closed the beam, trapping her in place, "then what you read was probably accurate."

He stroked Alice's back. "But if you were in the stock for several days, that meant you were bent over and vulnerable like this all night." He gave a deep resonant laugh, "And a lot could happen overnight to a man, and especially to a woman."

He slid his hand on down her back until he was stroking her ass. His fingers slipped between her legs and she moaned slightly. "You are dripping wet," he said. "Is that because you are imagining all that could happen to you overnight, bent over and vulnerable like this?"

Alice suppressed another moan and answered, "Yes, Master, it is."

"Sometimes the women of the village, when the opportunity presented itself, would get their revenge against a tart who had been teasing their husbands by stripping her naked in the middle of the night and leaving her to complete her time in the stocks open to everyone's view." He rubbed his fingers through Alice's slit almost causing her legs to buckle.

"But that was a risky thing to do," he added, "because the punishment for a woman interfering with a prescribed punishment was a public birching in these stocks." He patted Alice's asscheeks and asked, "Do you know what that entailed?"

"I'm not sure," Alice moaned. She was starting to have trouble following the conversation.

"Women were not supposed to interfere with men's decisions," he said softly. "They could throw mud or garbage, but they couldn't change the nature of the punishment. That was not a woman's place. So if they were caught adding to or subtracting from a public punishment, they were stripped, or at least had their dresses put up over their heads while they were trapped in the stocks, and publicly birched."

He walked over to pail of water sitting on the floor. There were a number of small tree branches soaking in the bucket. "These are birch switches," he explained and he picked up the bundle. "Soaking them in water makes them more supple and they swing with greater flexibility." He laughed, "Of course, you can also soak them in salt water so that it multiplies the sting if the switch breaks the skin."

He whipped the bundle through the air. "They can be used as a single switch, or as a bundle. Then it is called a whisk." He held the dripping bundle of switches in front of Alice's face. "Which do you think would hurt worse?" he asked. "The whisk or the switch?"

"Most likely the single switch, sir," she replied. "It would concentrate the force of the blow into a smaller area."

"Let us experiment, then," he said merrily. "I will switch your bare arse nine times with this bundle of switches." He patted her asscheeks and continued, "I won't be too severe at this point. We are, after all, just beginning. Then I will strike you once with a single switch and let you tell me which hurt worse. ... Until then, I expect you to remain quiet."

Alice could not see him, but could sense him moving around behind her. She could hear the swishing of the bundle and feel water droplets sprinkling her back and legs. Then there was silence for several seconds followed by a louder swish and a loud smack as the bundle of birch switches struck her left asscheek. Alice gasped and squeaked, but remained more or less silent.

"One," he said. There was another swish and another loud smack, followed by another squeak from Alice that was more of a muffled grunt.

"Two," he counted. The swish, smack, squeak continued through three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine. Then he came back into Alice's view as he returned all but one of the birch switches to the pail of water. He stood there where Alice could see him, swishing the rod back and forth in his hand. Not only was it a single switch, he had stripped all of the twig branches from it so it was more like a small, whippy cane. It had a much different sound than had the whisk as he snapped it back and forth. It almost sounded alive, like an angry insect waiting to strike.

Again, Alice could not see him, but she could hear the buzzing of the single switch. She could feel herself tensing her asscheeks waiting for the strike, but it did not come. Then the sound stopped. It was silent for five or ten seconds. She felt herself start to relax. Just as the muscles of her asscheeks unclenched, there was a rapid buzz followed by an immediate very sharp smack.

That was followed by Alice's scream.

"I'm sorry, Master," she sobbed. "It took me by surprise and yes, it was much more painful than the bundle of switches. I intended to remain quiet. Truly I did, but I couldn't."

"You wanted to be overwhelmed, and you were," he said. He patted her ass and ran his fingers over the thin welt created by the switch."Be careful what you wish for. You may get it."

He continued lightly running his fingertips along the small raised welts left by the switches. "It would seem our little experiment has been a success, hasn't it, Alice?"

"Yes, sir," she answered. "A single switch does hurt much more than a bundle of switches."

"But there was a second experiment," he said. "Do you know what that was?"

"No, sir," she answered.

"This," he said as he ran his fingers through her slit. "The experiment was to determine if you would remain wet during the birching."

He held his hand in front of her face and continued, "Not only did you remain wet..." he thrust his fingers into her mouth and she quickly cleaned them with her tongue. "... but you flowed in even greater quantities."

He raised her head so that she was looking into his eyes. "Did you know that your sex juices are running down the insides of your legs?"

Alice reddened with embarrassment. "No, sir, I didn't know."

"There is no shame in that," he said. "It means that you are meant for this room and this room is meant for you."

He raised the upper portion of the stock and smiled at her. "Let's overwhelm you in a different way. Please move over to the cross and stand with your back against it."

Alice did as she was instructed and he bound her wrists and ankles with the restraints which were attached to the cross. The cross was slanted slightly so as she was pulled tightly against it she was also pulled back slightly off of her feet.

He now stood in front of her, but she could not see what he had in his hands. She felt herself trembling slightly. Was it fear? Was it anticipation?

"Close your eyes."

She did so.

"You do not have to remain quiet. You may scream and yell as much as you want."

The trembling was now almost a shaking as Alice waited for whatever it was to assail her body. Was it better to tighten her muscles or to relax them in preparation for the blow. And then she felt it. There was no swish or any sound at all, just the gentle tickling of the feather's edge as he traced it slowly down from her neck to where her legs were pulled tightly apart by the shape of the cross.

The edge of the feather slipped across her clit and started down between her legs, but then it was turned so that its touch encircled her throbbing nub. A shrill, "Aaahhhh" escaped her lips. She thrashed against the leather which held her tight to the cross.