Stiffkey Blues Pt. 03

Chapter 6: Penny's Predicament

Penny was wondering what on earth was going on. She and Krysta had been chatting. Krysta had been admiring her dress -- a candy-striped, seersucker, shirtwaister with a stand-up collar. Then they'd been discussing her latest story. Penny had described how her heroine was going to be enslaved by a man she had long admired. She was particularly pleased with a scene that she had just finished where her heroine found herself handcuffed and forced to wait on her captor and then, when she protested about his treatment of her, she was gagged with a ball that he pushed into her mouth over the niqaab she was wearing. It was only when she finished that Krysta realised she hadn't seen Madeleine for a while. She looked out of the back window of the cottage. She said, "That's funny. Maddy isn't in the summer house. Where has she got to? I'll see if I can find her. We ought to think about some food, I guess."

Penny said, "Fine," and Krysta had gone out to the garden.

There had been that thumping noise, like Krysta had knocked over some of the tomato boxes that were stacked by the path and then, after a while, the sound of the wind pump. Penny had looked out to see what was happening just as the sails ground to a halt. Now everything was quiet again but there wasn't any sign of Krysta or Madeleine returning.

Penny suddenly felt very lonely.

She thought she heard a knock at the front door. Hoping it was Angela or Celia, Penny dashed out into the hall and opened it. There was no one there. Telling herself she must have imagined, it she went back to the living room.

As she went into the room she was suddenly seized from behind, a gloved hand clamped over her mouth. For an instant she felt as though she had been transported to one of her own stories but the terror of the situation broke through as something sharp pricked against her ribs and a voice hissed, "Keep very still and quiet if you don't want to be hurt. All right?"

Penny whimpered "Mmm" into the glove.

"All right. So put your hands up slowly and turn around."

Penny did as she was told and found herself facing a woman dressed in a black all in one suit and wearing a ski mask. For a moment she wondered if this was some game that the others had cooked up but this woman was slimmer and shorter than any of her week-end companions.

The woman was holding a broad bladed knife pointing at Penny's belly. With her other hand she held out a wad of cloth. "Push this in your mouth," she ordered.

Penny knew what to do. She'd tried it often enough in her own self-bondage games. 'Research for the stories' she had told herself it was but none of her "research" had prepared her for the frightening reality of her current situation. She crammed the cloth into her mouth, the dry, stuffing sensation at once familiar and frightening. She finished and raised her hands again, feeling foolish as she stood there, white cloth spilling from her mouth.

"Now take this cable tie and pull it around your mouth to keep the cloth in," Penny took the strip of plastic. "And pull it tight or I'll do it for you."

As Penny pulled on the cable tie another masked, black clad figure, appeared. "I'll take her upstairs," a male voice said.

Penny looked around panic stricken.

"Don't worry, he's not after your virtue," the woman said.

"Come on," the man said impatiently, grabbing Penny by the arm and pushing her towards the stairs. She staggered and half fell up the stairs, keeping her hands up in a show of surrender, not wanting to do anything to antagonise her attackers.

He pushed her through the first door at the top of the stairs -- Madeleine and Krysta's room.

"On the bed, face down, hands behind you," he ordered.

Penny felt faint with fright. The whole thing was made worse by the fact that scenes such as this had featured so often in her fantasies. The reality was more terrifying than anything she had imagined, though. She felt the man kneel astride her and pull her wrists together. A ripping noise was followed by the feel of tape being strapped around her wrists and a crushing sensation in her fingers as he taped those as well. The man followed up with the same treatment to her ankles and above her knees, catching her skirt in the tape. He went on with more below her knees and then around her chest, locking her arms against her sides. He rolled Penny over onto her back and plastered more tape across her mouth, over the cable tie and the mouth stuffing cloth.

As he finished, Penny heard a low whistle from down stairs. The man looked up in response and then said, "OK, stay there," before he got off the bed and left her.

Penny tried to struggle against the tape that held her, groaning ineffectually into her gag, but it held her more tightly than she had ever managed to bind herself. She told herself to be calm. After all in many of her stories the helpless victim managed to struggle free from bonds just like these. It didn't take her long to discover that, in that respect, her writing had most certainly been fiction. After only a few minutes efforts, soaked in sweat, she sank back against the bed, defeated and desperately scared.

Chapter 7: Return From The Pub

Madeleine was shivering, cold and wet, on the floor of the pump tower. She had been half drowned by her terrifying experience in the sluice and while the woman that had pulled her from the water had taken the trouble to wrap her in some old sacking, her clothes were still soaking wet and she was shivering with cold. She had been dragged over to one of the other pillars and tied against it, to stop her, as the woman had said, getting into any more trouble.

Krysta had been rewarded for the struggles that dislodged the brake with a rope around her neck holding her head back against her pillar. Intended to discourage her from further efforts to free herself, it was working, Madeleine could see the terrified look on Krysta's face as she stood hardly daring to move less she choke herself.

Their attackers had left them about fifteen minutes before. Now Madeleine could hear the sound of Celia's car returning as she and Angela got back from the pub. Madeleine first thought she should try to attract their attention; then feared that it would only warn their attacker; then that Celia and Angela represented their only hope of freedom. And where was Penny? Had she been seized as well or had she somehow managed to escape?

The slamming of Angela's car doors told Madeleine that if she was to try to attract attention it had to be now. In desperation she tried to cry out but her gag was no less effective for having been jammed in her mouth for half an hour or more. There was no sign that she had been heard.

"Spooky noises!" Angela exclaimed as she and Celia headed for the door of the cottage.

"What WAS that? It sounded like some strange bird or something. Could be an owl, I guess. We'll ask Krysta; she'll know," Celia said as she opened the door.

The two girls stepped through the door into the dark of the lounge. As Angela fumbled for the light switch Celia pushed the door shut.

Before she could turn the light on, Angela felt someone grip her hand, spin her around and pulled her backwards. She collided with whoever it was that had grabbed her as a hand clamped over her mouth. Thinking that Penny was attempting to recreate some of her stories she was perhaps less panicked than she should have been.

Celia was experiencing something similar. As the door swung shut, she too had been gripped with cry-stifling efficiency.

It was only when the lights came on and the two girls realised that their masked and black clad captors were not any of their other week-end companions, that the terror began.

++++++

Angela was wrestled face down to the floor in spite of her struggles. The weight of her assailant laying on her back pushed her down hard against the floor as a man's voice hissed, "Keep foocking quiet". With the man's gloved hand firmly over her lips she could do little else as the man pushed the barrel of a pistol where she could see it. "And foocking still too," he snarled as he slid the pistol around to press it against the back of her neck.

Celia was treated no less harshly. Her captor, span her around and slammed her back against the wall, knocking the breath from her. By the time she had recovered, she was staring into grey emotionless eyes, a gloved hand was clamped over her mouth and the wide blade of a knife was pricking against the underside of her chin. "Very still, ducks," a woman's voice said, "Very still and very, very quiet."

Celia whimpered behind the woman's gloved hand and was rewarded with the order to "Open wide!" Leather fingers pushed between her lips and pressed a wad of cloth between them stuffing her mouth full. "Don't try to spit that out."

Celia looked across at Angela. She could see her eyes wide in terror, white cloth spilling from her mouth like some rabid froth. She knew that she looked just the same. Somehow she felt guilty for Angela's situation. It wasn't her fault, she knew but she felt guilty just the same. All she could hope, as Angela did, was that heir attackers would take whatever they had come for and then leave. Unfortunately for them both, this was just what their attackers intended.

They set to work securing the girls' wrists and ankles with broad strips of tape satisfying themselves that their limbs were locked hopelessly immobile before adding tape to their mouths and across pads over their eyes. Only then did the masked man and woman feel able to relax.

++++++

Reg Tobin allowed himself a grunt of satisfaction. The girls were, as planned, trussed, silenced and blindfolded. He pulled the ski mask from his face, glad to remove it, his skin sweaty and prickly beneath it.

Deirdre did the same. They looked at each other. It hadn't been too bad, so far. The business with the girl in the mill -- which one was it? oh, yes, Madeleine -- had been a disruption but not a problem in the end.

Reg looked out through the cottage window. He stared longingly at the Anglia and the Eriba connected up behind it. Deirdre knew what he was thinking. She shook her head. That wasn't in the plan. Reg acknowledged her admonishment with a grunt and a shrug of his shoulders. What was in the plan was to take the Land Rover and tow the sailing dinghy on its trailer down to the nearby slipway.

Deirdre went to fetch the Land Rover while Reg unzipped the tarpaulin that covered the boat. He went in to the mill first of all and then into the cottage returning each time with one of the girls over his shoulder. One by one he threaded them through the gap in the tarpaulin, sliding their helpless forms down into the well of the dinghy. He didn't bother with a sedative, they weren't going very far.

Deidre arrived back with the Land Rover and together they hitched up the launching trailer, bringing muffled squeals from the girls as the movement added to their sense of panic. The two climbed into the Land Rover and drove off.

Under the dinghy's tarpaulin, the girl's bounced against one another and the wooden inside of the dinghy's clinker built hull as the Land Rover crunched down the uneven drive that led to Mill Cottage.

At the nearby slipway, the girl's distress became heightened as they realised the boat was being launched. Lapping water and the drop in temperature as the boat slid into the waters of the North Sea told them they were being set afloat. Their cries of panic, still stifled by the wadding, the cable ties and the tape, sounded like an alarmed flock of marsh birds. The sound fell away as the boat drifted off with the last of the ebb tide.

They couldn't know, of course, that a darkened launch was waiting a way off shore to take them in tow for a few miles out to sea before taking them on board and cutting the dinghy adrift..

Reg and Deirdre climbed out of the Land Rover being careful to leave their foot prints only where they would be washed away as the tide turned.

They watched the dinghy slip away and then headed back to their own car, their work for the week-end completed.

Chapter 8: An Unfortunate Discovery

"Freddie, can you come down to Prep Reception for a minute, There's something I'd like you to look at." Connie Mbazu's voice seemed tense, Freddie thought.

As he stepped out of his office, Sarah bustling along behind him, Freddie was concerned. The Norfolk pick up had been hastily organised and whatever was concerning Connie almost certainly meant trouble.

Prep Reception, where the new arrivals first started to realise the nature of the organisation whose hands they had fallen into, was the usual scene of barely contained panic, terror and distress. As Freddie arrived the eyes of the latest group of captives swung toward him and Sarah.

Sarah knew from her own experiences what they were feeling now. 'Another one! How many of these people are there? And none of them wear masks. Don't they care that I'll recognise them? What does that say about my fate?"

All five of the girls were there. There was the normal disarray. The tape that had silenced of all five had been changed for the heavy rubber ball gags that were used as standard for the first few days in the Centre and the girls were all either whimpering, groaning in discomfort or grunting angrily as they rolled around on the floor of the room.

Connie's people had started stripping two of them. Madeleine and Celia were almost naked. The first step for new arrivals was always to cut their clothes from them. They'd had a long debate, Freddie remembered, when they changed the procedure from forcing the girls to strip. Some had thought that the new way stamped the authority of the Centre on the girls more quickly, others that the old way got the girls used to taking orders sooner. There had been a lot of argument about the change. It hadn't made any difference, as it turned out, and this way was certainly quicker.

Madeleine and Celia were laying on the tattered remnants of their clothes, their dresses sliced through from hem to neck, bras and panties cut away as well. Madeleine, her knees and ankles still taped together as they had been for her journey to the centre, was trying to wriggle away from beside where Freddie was standing. Freddie looked down, almost compassionately, she really should save her effort, was his first thought. But then, as he saw the way her breasts jiggled with her struggling, perhaps she shouldn't.

Connie was standing beside the helpless Penny who was laid on the floor still with much of the tape that Reg has used to bind her in place.

"Problem?" said Freddie.

"Possibly," said Connie, pursing her lips. "It depends on what you think about this." As she said it she took hold of Penny's heavily lacquered hair and pulled. A wig came away in her hands, showing a shaved scalp beneath. She pulled open Penny's blouse and sliced through the strip of cloth that joined the cups of her bra. As the bra fell open, two wads of padding fell away revealing a flat, male, chest beneath.

Freddie looked down at where the skirt of Penny's shirt-waister had already been unbuttoned to the waist. "I suppose I don't have to ask what you found under there," he said, sounding depressed.

Connie gave a resigned look. "Rather more than you'd normally expect beneath the skirt of one of our guests," she said.

"All right," said Freddie. He thought for a moment. 'Penny' looked backwards and forwards between Freddie and Connie. He didn't look any less distressed than the rest of the collection from Norfolk. Freddie came to a decision. "Just sort him out with the others and then we'll all have a chat about what to do about the customer. I'll get the team together."

Freddie was fuming as he headed back towards his office. This was just the sort of thing that happened when you did things in a hurry. He was going to talk to Harry and Rick, and they weren't going to enjoy it one bit.

But then 'Penny" wasn't enjoying things either. His clothes had been cut off just as the clothes had been cut from the women. Connie's team weren't any rougher on him than on the rest, but they weren't any gentler either. Madeleine was sitting on the floor, where she had been left. As his wrists were locked in shackles behind his back, just like Madeleine and the others, the girls saw the truth about the person they'd known as 'Penny' and 'Yasmin'.

Connie picked up the wig and perched it back on the head of the helpless 'Penny'. As he looked up at her, she smiled down at him. "Don't worry," she said, "we'll see you're treated just like the rest of the girls." She looked across at the two guards waiting. "Put them on the pegs for a while. I've got a meeting to go to." She stalked off as the two guards stubbed out cigarettes and turned to their charges.

Krysta was the first to be taken out. Two guards gripped her arms and pulled her to her feet, half pulling half dragging her from the room. The look on her face showed the terror she felt. If she was upset by discovering Penny's masculinity she wasn't showing it. She had more important things to worry about.

"The Pegs" as Connie had called them were in the next room. 'Penny' felt himself wrestled through the door by the guards in spite of his struggles.

"Now be a good girl," one of them said. Penny would have been annoyed by the sarcasm if they hadn't used the same tone to Krysta.

Along the long wall of the room a series of curved metal rods jutted out from the wall at about waist level. Each one curved down in a hook-like shape until it turned up again to finish with a large phallic projection. At the far end, Penny could see that Krysta had been impaled with one of these pegs in her cunt before her ankles had been shackled to rings in the floor spreading her legs wide apart and preventing her from freeing herself from the penetration of the peg. A chain ran from her wrists to a ring high up on the wall, pulled tight so that her upper torso was tipped forward.

"Guess we'll have to use the other hole for this one," one of the guards laughed as they pulled Penny to his place alongside Krysta. While the first guard reset the angle of the peg by adjusting the rod at its mounting plate on the wall, the other shackled Penny's ankles in the same way as Krysta. "Now I'd back on to this real easy," the guard said as he gripped Penny by the shoulders and held him firmly. Penny felt the prod of the greased end of the phallus against his arse as the other guard swung the rod up slowly between his legs and pushed it home. Together with the way that his legs were spread he was unable to move and once the adjustment for the peg was screwed down tightly at the wall bracket he was fixed quite rigidly. Distracted by the sensation of the plug in his arse, Penny forgot about the last part of the guard's plan until he suddenly felt his arms being pulled up behind him as a chain rattled over a ring behind him. As he was bent forward, he could see nothing but the floor in front of him and, by turning his head, the distressed face of a similarly captive Krysta, her mouth distended by her ball gag, spilling drool to the floor between her feet.

One by one the others followed Penny and Krysta into the room until all five were skewered on their pegs and left, whimpering and struggling to keep themselves steady in an attempt to minimise their discomfort. "Connie will be along to see to you later," the first guard said.

None of the five captives thought that this was anything to look forward to.

Chapter 9: Freddie's Meeting

Harry, Connie and Rick were sitting on one side of the table. Freddie and Elly sat facing them.

Freddie was sitting with his eyes closed, his hands folded on top of the open file of research on the table in front of him. He was very still, very quiet. It gave the other three no comfort at all that he wasn't pacing up and down furious at the turn of events on the Norfolk collection.