In the Coils of Death
by Johnny Mills
Chapter 1
Krissy Samuels moved quickly across the University campus, her long tanned legs covering distance rapidly. On a warm May day like this one she would ordinarily have been wearing shorts, walking shoes, and a light casual blouse, with her honey-colored hair tied back in a ponytail. But today she was on her way to an important job interview, so she had on heels, a dark skirt which ended just above her knees, a long sleeved white blouse, and a dark business jacket. Her carefully combed hair swung loose, just brushing her shoulders.
She was vaguely aware of quick footsteps behind her but paid little attention until a light grasp took hold of her left elbow at the same moment a man's voice said "Excuse, please?"
"Yes?" Krissy said in a somewhat irritated tone. Generally she was polte to a fault, but she'd had a late start and barely had time to get to the interview site as it was. She saw a rather mousy man who would have been shorter than herself even had she not been wearing heels. He smiled at her and swallowed heavily.
"Ah, excuse, lovely girl. You are going for job interview? In History department? This is so?
"Who are you?" Krissy countered. She had no intention of discussing her schedule with a stranger, no matter how harmless he appeared.
"Excuse. I am Travisi, guest lecturer at accounting class here. Good day to you. Now you are going for interview with Head of History department?"
"I am, yes. And I have to go right now. I don't take or plan to take any accounting classes, so..."
"Yes, no, fine. But please do not continue to this interview. Come with me, and..."
Krissy pulled free of the light hold he still had on her arm. "I'm sorry, this is important." She injected more firmness into her voice. "You'll have to excuse me now."
"No, no! Important, I agree! You must not go!" He caught the girl's arm again as she started to move away.
Krissy pulled away again, this time with a stronger motion. As a beautiful young woman, she had encountered a number of men who didn't want to take "No" for an answer. But this wasn't the time for either a knee to the groin or an extended verbal exchange. Then, as if in answer to a prayer, a Campus Security Patrolman came into sight about a hundred feet behind the agitated little man who was again clutching at Krissy's arm. She shot the Security Officer a desperate glance, and he moved over quickly.
"Is there a problem here?" he asked as he came up beside them a few seconds later.
"Not really, but I have an appointment with Dr. Dowell in a minute, and this gentleman won't let me get going."
"All right sir, let's just let the young lady be on her way. Do you attend classes here?"
"I instruct! Travisi! Accounting! This girl must not go to see Dr. Dowell! This is life and death matter!"
"Well sir, why don't you come with me to the office and tell me all about it?" He made a head motion for Krissy to go, and she moved away. She gave one backward glance and saw the little man arguing in an agitated manner with the Patrolman, who now appeared to be talking into his radio.
Five minutes later she knocked on Dr. Dowell's office door and was invited inside. As she entered and apologized for being a minute late she was immediately aware of great heat and humidity inside the room, which had all of its window shades down. She was also surprised to see another person in the room, a black haired woman of perhaps fifty. The woman seemed completely unaffected by the heat, but Dr. Dowell was wiping his face with a handkerchief.
"It's I who must apologize to you, Ms. Samuels, for the temperature in here. First warm day of the year, and the air conditioner went out. Ah - this is Ms. Mouri, one of the University's greatest benefactors. The job for which you're interviewing wold be with her. Ms. Mouri, this is Krissy Samuels, one of our best students."
"Working for her?" Krissy asked, while Ms. Mouri rose from her chair and moved languidly toward her. "I thought it was a University job."
"You would basically be a liaison between the University and Ms.. Mouri," Dr. Dowell explained. "Helping to catalogue the artifacts she so generously loans and donates to us."
"I see," Krissy smiled. Ms. Mouri, a small smile of her own widening a bit, came very close to the coed and slowly circled around her, well within the usual personal comfort zone. Several of her right knuckles, perhaps by accident, brushed against Krissy just under the swell of her hips, and the younger woman started slightly and even shivered for a second despite the room's stifling atmosphere.
Ms. Mouri returned calmly to her seat and nodded to Dr. Dowell. "She will do quite nicely, as I had thought."
Krissy, who had been expecting a long and detailed interview, was relieved and ecstatic but incredulous. "I... I have the job?"
"Apparantly you do!" Dr. Dowell smiled. "To celebrate, and to take the edge off the heat in here, let's have some refreshment." Two glasses of iced liquid were standing on his desk. He handed one to Ms. Mouri and moved the other closer to his own chair. Then he produced another glass, poured into it from a pitcher, and brought it around the desk to Krissy.
"Oh, I really shouldn't," the girl demurred.
"It's just lemonade - sugar free," Dr. Dowell assured her. "We will have to fill out some papers while I brief you on the specifics of the position, so please..." he gestured to the room's other chair.
"Come, come my dear, " Ms. Mouri chided. "It wouldn't be polite to refuse to join us. You aren't going to deny my very first request to you, are you?"
"No, of course not," Krissy smiled. She sat and after raising their glasses to one another, they drank. Although Krissy had intended to take only a small sip, the cool liquid was such a relief in the room's heat that she took several swallows before lowering the glass.
"Please, a little more," Ms. Mouri told her. "We must drain our glasses, or it cannot be a successful toast, you know." Krissy drank again, although there was still some liquid among the ice cubes when she set the glass on a nearby table.
"Splendid," Ms. Mouri remarked as she rose smoothly from her chair. "And now, you will have to excuse me, as I am expecting a very important delivery at my home in the near future."
She glided toward the door, pausing for a moment by Krissy's chair. She rested her right hand on Krissy's right shoulder. "I am looking forward to seeing you again soon, my dear, and working with you." Her hand, rather than lifting directly up from the girl's shoulder, slid down across the upper slope of her right breast before moving away.
Krissy smiled up at her, though making sure that it was a professional, courteous smile, nothing else. "I'll try to do a very good job for you, Ms. Mouri. Thank you."
"You will, my dear, you will. I am confident you will give me exactly what I require." The click of the door closing was the loudest sound she made as she exitted.
Krissy wondered to herself if this strange woman could possibly be expecting more than administrative or secretarial duties from her. That was crazy, she decided, believing she was reading things into a couple of small happenstances than were deserved. And if it turned out to be otherwise, well Krissy was confident in her ability to shoot down unwanted advances from a woman just as surely as from a man.
Dr. Dowell was shuffling papers on his desk. He handed a sheaf of them to her and began to talk about when the job would start and exactly what would be involved. Krissy paid close attention, but after a few minutes the man's droning voice and the room's heat were making her head throb. She drank another sip of the lemonade, but it didn't help at all.
Finally despite herself she had to reluctantly interrupt. "I'm sorry," she said apologetically. "You're going to have to excuse me for just a moment. I need to go out..." She tried to stand up, wobbled, and leaned against the arm of the chair unsteadily.
"Ms. Samuels? Are you ill? Can I help you?" He came aound the desk hurriedly.
"I just... just nee... jus' needo..."
He got behind her, held her against him with one arm, and quickly snapped the handcuffs he had taken from his jacket pocket onto her wrists behind her back. While Krissy was still trying to understand what was happening, he clamped a hand over her mouth and pulled her backward to his desk. She stumbled against him, unable to keep her balance moving backward on heels with her mind spinning from all the diverse things assaulting it.
Dragging her around the desk, the man spun her in a half circle.. His right hand came away from her mouth from behind but was almost immediately replaced by his left hand from in front. In the instant of freedom, only an "Oh!" could escape from Kriss's mouth.
Dr. Dowell opened a desk drawer and pulled out a roll of wide duct tape. Pushing her over the desk on her pinioned arms and back, he tore off a strip of tape using his free hand and teeth. He brought it over and slapped it over the girl's lips as he jerked his left hand away.
The pain of having her shackled arms pinned between the unyielding desk and the weight of two bodies cut through the girl's clouded mind and spurred her to resist. Krissy twisted her head and body as best she could, trying to scream and escape, but her condition - drugged, she now realized in horror - worked against her as much as the much larger man's bulk, strength, and position. It was not artistic, but in less than a minute several pieces of tape from the bottom of her nose to beneath her chin held her lips closed.
Dr. Dowell smiled with satisfaction and eased his body off of her, and in her mind Krissy shot off the desk, raced to the door, and escaped out into the hallway. In reality she slowly sat up, took three drunken steps in a diagonal direction, and fell to the floor.
"Don't be ridiculous," Dr. Dowell scoffed. "All you're going to do is hurt yourself."
Krissy tried to kick him as he approached, but he easily caught her feet, and then crossed them as he knelt and taped them together. Then he taped her legs together above and below the knees. He picked up her feet and dragged her back to the desk, smiling again as the carpet rubbed her skirt high up on her thighs.
Dropping her feet unceremoniously, the man walked over to the room's air conditioner and turned it on to full power, smirking at his captive as he did so. The noise of the machine completely drowned out the mewling and humming noises which Krissy made. Desperately she began to roll over the floor toward the door.
The man allowed her to reach her objective, but as she twisted around to kick at the door, he grabbed her from behind. Each of his hands latched onto one of her firm breasts and he lifted and pulled her back to her starting point. "They feel as good as they look, Krissy-kins," he whispered into her ear.
"You are an obstinate and energetic little slut," he continued. "You should be in dreamland by now. Well, you will be soon sugar hips, don't worry."
He still had lots of tape on the roll and used more of it now, wrapping several turns around her arms and body just below her bustline. He pushed her over face down on the carpet and momentarily raised her hopes by unlocking the handcuffs and returning them to his pocket. "Never know when you might need them," he told her jauntily.
Krissy's hands and forearms were flailing about, trying to take advantage of and increase their freedom, but even her fogged-over mind could tell that her efforts were weak and ineffectual. Seconds later Dr. Dowell had no trouble bringing her wrists together and taping them tightly. Deciding to use up what was left on the roll, he ended up taping her arms together from the middle of her forearms to the ends of her fingers.
"Ther you are sweet cheeks, your very own little singleglove," he proclaimed, slapping her on the thigh as he stood up. "Don't say I never gave you anything."
Krissy rocked slightly on the floor, her limbs feebly trying to extricate themselves from their bonds. Tears gathered in her eyes and weak, coughing sobs sounded in her throat.
"There, there. Everything's just fine," Dr. Dowell told her. "how about Daddy tells his little Princess a bedtime story?" He moved his chair in front of the air conditioner and then pulled Krissy up from the floor, seating her on his lap. He forced her head down on his chest with one hand while his other hand pulled open her jacket. The cold air from the air conditioner blowing directly on her chest started to harden her nipples, and he pinched at them to speed the process.
"Once upon a time, there was a nice lady. Well, maybe not so nice, but a very rich lady, from a faraway land. The rich lady gave some money and nice presents to a man at a school, and said that she had much more that she would be happy to give.
"And for these presents, the lady didn't want a building named after her, or her picture put up, or a statue, or an honorary doctorate, or lots of fancy parties. All the lady wanted was to be given one pretty girl every seven years."
Krissy tried to shake her head against his hold on it. "No, no!" she mumbled weakly.
"Yes! Yes!" Dr. Dowell contradicted, pinching the underside of first her left breast and then her right as punctuation. "the man would find a few likely candidates who had no close family, and the lady would choose one. Then the man would change the school's records to show that the pretty girl had told the school she was dropping out.
"Just one girl every seven years in return for lots of money - and statues, carvings, and other treasures which have made our Middle Eastern department the envy of almost every University in the country. Seven years - lots of time for any heat to die down, and any questions to go away. It really wasn't much of a dilemna. I mean, at least a couple of you tramps get drunk or drugged up and die one way or another every year, right? One girl every seven years? An absurdly small price.
"Not to mention," he added, "that I need and deserve the money. This miserly place, after all I've done for it, barely pays me six figures.. It's an outrage."
Krissy struggled weakly, realizing with disgust that her movement on his lap was only adding to the man's enjoyment. Her eyes were starting to close against her will, and a dark ring was forming around the edges of her vision.
"I'm not sure what she does with them - sells them overseas maybe? Don't really need or want to know. Too bad they always have to be hotties, but there are plenty more like you out there, right?" He smiled at her amicably.
Krissy glared at him wearily through her half-closed eyes and tried to say "You bastard."
"Well, I don't suppose I can expect you to agree or understand," the man admitted. "You certainly are a ripe little plaything, and I'd love to feed it to you right here and now, but she insists that..."
There was a knock on the door. Krissy gave the loudest scream that her gag and condition would allow until Dr. Dowell slapped both palms over her taped mouth and used a thumb and finger to pinch her nose closed. "yes?" he called.
"I have come," said a man's voice from the hallway.
Dr. Dowell pushed Krissy off his lap onto the floor behind the desk as if she were an annoying cat. He walked to the door, smoothing out his clothing on the way. "make sure there is no one in the corridor to see," he instructed.
A second later there was another rap on the door. Dr. Dowell opened it and a swarthy man of medium build entered, pushing a large trunk strapped to a cart. "It is ready?" he asked.
Dr. Dowell answered by closing and locking the door and then striding over to the desk. He pulled Krissy out from behind it by the shoulders and then switched his grip, grabbing a handful of her hair and painfully pulling her up onto her knees as she squealed in pain. Her narrow, teary eyes pleaded to the other man.
The newcomer made no comment and did not even change his impassive expression. He merely started to undo the belts and latches which kept the trunk closed.
Dr. Dowell was pulling Krissy to her feet, using her breasts as handles. "why can't you leave me alone?" Krissy tried to say. "Can't you just let me rest?"
"Into your carriage, Princess," Dr. Dowell said pleasantly. The two men lifted her and then lowered her into the trunk, folding her body to make her fit. Straps inside the trunk were secured around her bound form to hold her in place.
Krissy squinted up at the letterboxed portion of the room she could still see. She could see both men staring down at her. Dr. Dowell was smiling, though a bit ruefully. The stranger gave no hint of what he might be thinking.
Then the lid began to close, and either just before or just after it shut, Krissy's eyes closed too. Darkness claimed her for the next several hours.