The Straitjacket

One last tug, and cinch, and it's done. The bed lurches, rebounds, the sudden movement translated to your cheek and nose and pried-apart mouth as they settle deeper into cool pillows. The warm presence that sat astride the small of your back is gone. The air conditioner thrums, and a mechanical breeze brushes the backs of your thighs and the roundness, exposed, that tops them.

Above the waist, you hold yourself in a forced embrace, in canvas and buckles and institutional white. The rough trim of the straitjacket tickles the underside of your neck as you move experimentally, flexing shoulders, craning. What you can see of the room lies in the subdued greyness of drawn drapes. Traffic rumbles beyond thick glazing and concrete floors. You slump, exhale. It sounds loud. Where did they go?

Time passes. Below the waist, you are bare. The only adornment is a solid black bar, fastened at ends to each of your ankles, holding your legs just a little short of uncomfortably far apart. The unrelenting hush of cooled air, sighing up legs and thighs, over curves and down between, is a constant reminder of the vulnerability you are held to.

Increasingly chilled by the frigid air, you grow restless. You bend your legs, in synchro, and kick. Again, while twisting your upper body to the left. Again, and to the right. You remain, implacably, face down. Restrained. Exactly as you were.

"Are you quite done?"

You buck in sudden fright, but the movement is entirely contained within your bonds, fingers flaring inside canvas, finding no purchase. Fighting down a surge of adrenaline, you nod muffled assent.