This is the story with which I began writing erotic bondage fantasy. It was published in two parts, the first in Bondage Life, Vol. 1, No. 2, March 1978, pp. 46-47; the second in Bondage Life, Vol. 1, No. 3, August, 1978, pp. 49-50.

It helped to give a kick-start to the nascent magazine, if only because it hit a nerve by raising a controversial issue. There was no by-line because I had not yet invented my pseudonym. In this version the two parts are brought together, but the didactic warning about safety precautions is omitted, and I have changed the heroine’s name. The illustration above appears in Bondage Life, No. 15, March 1984, p. 33 for a compilation of quotations from Gothic novels I contributed under the title ‘In the Gothic Bind.’ It was drawn by an artist above the initials ‘JRB.’ I have cropped the hair on the .jpeg.

While this is not strictly speaking a romantic adventure, like the ones I wrote immediately after, it contains most of the images and motifs that I use in the other early stories, sometimes too heavily I think.

Rona could truss herself up very thoroughly, but for obvious reasons she could not go all the way and experience the feeling of complete helplessness that she would have had at the hands of a caring man friend or girlfriend she could trust. Then one day she read about a new technique which would allow for total helplessness while on her own, together with a means of freeing herself, though with difficulty.

At the end of the week she locked herself up in her isolated old house by the sea, turning out the lights so that she would not be disturbed by visitors, and spread out a selection of soft cotton ropes and scarves in her large basement room. One of her favorite bondage fantasies was to imagine herself as a movie or TV heroine captured by the villain, awaiting rescue. She dressed the part: dark black high-heeled shoes, black sheer seamed stockings and suspender belt, a billowing blue velvet skirt which fell to mid-calf and a wide black belt, and a white satin blouse. Properly tied, she could pose for hours in front of the full-length mirror on the wall.

She set to work preparing for this fantasy of capture. But before starting the tie-ups, she placed a sharp knife on the floor of the adjoining hallway as the essential safeguard for freeing herself. She would have to struggle over a lot of floor space to reach it, and that would give additional excitement to the game.

First the gag. To her pretty mouth she applied an intricate and tight gagging arrangement using scarves. She folded a thick chiffon scarf into a tight, square wedge and rolled it up in a flimsy silk neck-square, starting from the apex after having first folded it into a triangle. This pad fitted neatly into her mouth between her teeth, pressing her tongue down. The ends of the scarf, drawn back against the corners of her mouth, were knotted securely beneath her dark shoulder-length hair at the backof her neck. Another scarf folded into a pad was placed between the knot and the soft skin at the back of her neck to take some of the pressure. Next, she folded another silk scarf over several times into a rectangle until she had a long narrow band of cloth about two inches wide, placed another flimsy neck-scarf folded into a square pad into the front of her mouth just behind her teeth, and bound it tightly in place with the narrow bandage. Finally, she took a large square scarf of pure Indian silk crisp and new (she had bought it that morning for the purpose), folded it like the rectangular bandage but into a strip three inches wide. This she bound over the lower part of her face, covering from just below her nose to the tip of her chin. Like the other scarves, it was tied tightly at the back of her neck below her hair. Its newness and crispness meant that the silk was non-slip.

Now for the bonds, she thought. Starting with her ankles Rona wound the first length of cotton cord, made a double-knot, a reef knot which would not slip, and cinched it by winding the cord ends between her ankles, taking several turns each time. She did the same below and above her knees and around her thighs, cinching as well. The knots were very tight, but the windings were made so as not to cut off circulation. For her arms and body she used two separate long pieces of cord wound four times about her waist just below her breasts and above her breasts. They had sufficient slack for her to force her arms down into them with some effort.

As she worked with the ropes she tested the effectiveness of the four-layered gag, trying to free her mouth and experimenting with the sounds she could make. She could not budge it, nor could she do more than whimper faintly in her throat.

Next came her wrists, the key she knew to making herself helpless. She forced her arms behind her as far as they could go, through the bindings above and below her breasts. They at once became very tight. At the beginning she had prepared two small 17 inch X 17 inch silk scarves, folding each into a triangle, rolling it from the apex to the base and so creating a narrow band, and tying the ends together non-slip. Each scarf when it had been looped in this way, then doubled, formed a circlet just narrow enough for her to wriggle her wrists into. This she did now with the first of the scarves so that it made a snug double loop about her wrists. Her hands went into it from the same direction. At this stage she could still free herself.

She made a circlet with the other scarf in the same way and slipped one wrist into it from one side. She paused with her other hand halfway through the circlet from the other side. Taking a deep breath — this was the moment of no return - she tested the gag as a precaution against choking or suffocating. It seemed safe enough although it was very tight and silenced her thoroughly. Trembling, this is it, she pushed her other wrist through the silken loop, forcing her thumb under it, and worked both wrists all the way in. The two scarves together made cross ties that effectively prevented her from getting loose.

No sooner had she done this, however, than she struggled, trying unsuccessfully to fight back the hot panic that arose in her. Rona was as helpless as if trussed expertly by another, only here there was no-one to free her if she could not free herself. She twisted and struggled on the floor, whimpering frantically through the gag, the pressure of which made her hot and flushed, dried her mouth and made her jaw ache. The bonds seemed to grow tighter around her arms and they began to cramp, especially above the elbows. Try as she might, she was unable to free her hands.

But the knife was not far. She should have kept it in the room for the first experiment. In the mirror, as she struggled upright, she saw a wild-eyed dark-haired young woman staring back. It was time to get the knife. The scarves would be cut easily. Many would be ruined if she kept this up, the thought.

But it was harder to reach the door than she expected. Her struggles, which were real, had almost exhausted her and she could not move her arms at all, pinned back as they were. The door was standing partly open, and in her eagerness to get through she misjudged the awkward swing of her legs and nudged it the other way. A light draught from the hallway was enough. The door swung shut before Rona could do anything to prevent it. Her frantic struggles succeeded only in exhausting her still further to the point where all she could do was lie still the next hours, heaving for breath, sobbing against the gag.

*

Rona’s large basement had no window, nor was there a clock in the room, so she was unable to tell whether it was still Friday night or Saturday morning. Intermittently she struggled till exhausted, rested, then struggled again but she could make no headway on the bands of silk encircling her wrists snuggly. The tightness of the cords wound around her arms and body above and below her breasts interfered with circulation. Her arms were numb and her hands and fingers tingled and prickled uncomfortable. Even if she could reach the knife lying in the hall on the other side of the firmly shut door, she doubted whether she could now manipulate them sufficiently to cut the thin material. Although it was ordinarily soft to the touch, she found that the silk when stretched tight could chafe, making her wrists raw.

It could be days before anyone found her, or longer. Work at the secretarial agency was slow that month and if she did not turn up on Monday she would not be missed, not till a day or two later. I’ve really done it now, she thought. But I can’t just lie here. Please, please someone come. She strained her ears, listening, but all she could hear was the distant sussuration of the surf, her stifled breathing and, it seemed, the rapid beating of her heart.

Then there WAS something else. Usually in the beach house she had no visitors, no deliveries, could spend a weekend reading and writing without seeing anyone until her return to the city. And she liked it that way. Now the sound of a car approaching along the gravel path filled her with hope.

There was silence. She listened fearfully. Had she been mistaken? Then the sound of the door chimes tinkled through the house. Her answering cry seemed to be entirely in her head. She tried again but could make only a muffled sound in her throat. The gagging arrangement in and over her mouth was immovable and totally efficient. When the chimes did not sound again she screamed desperately, but could produce only a thin throaty squeal. There was no sound that she could make, even by thumping with her heels on the floor or the door, that could be heard from the other side of the door, let alone the house.

The visitors had gone, whoever they were. They would not think to look in the garage where she had parked her car, and anyway she had locked the garage door. Rona tossed her head from side to side, fighting hopelessly against the gag. At least she was not choking or suffocating. However, what distressed her most was the gag. She could not close or open her mouth properly and the attempt to bite at the wedge jammed firmly between her teeth only muffled her more. She wondered how long she could last without water, especially with her mouth filled with cloth. Choking might come with dryness.

In a book on survival she had read how to cope with being bound. It described how to flex her muscles and stiffen her limbs when the ropes were being tied and she had used that trick successfully when a friend was practising knots on her. The book had recommended that if she was ever tied inescapeably she should not panic but simply wait until someone came and freed her. That was not relevant in this situation, she thought bitterly, remembering how she had succumbed to panic from the start and how it was still very close to the surface. Secure bonds and tight gag reduced outward signs of hysteria to a minimum. Inside, she was in turmoil.

The book had suggested too that a gag might be loosened if rubbed against a rough surface, like a carpet, or hooked on something, like a handle. Rona had not been thinking straight for hours. That strategy might give some relief. However, she was doomed to disappointment. The silk bandaged taut about her face could not be moved, either against the carpet which was deep and soft, or the smooth rounded plastic handles of the chest of drawers, the only items of furniture it was possible to catch the cloth on.

She rolled awkwardly away from the drawer handles and lay on her side, her knees bent slightly, her head drooping tiredly to the floor. Her luxurious mane of dark hair was tousled about her face and she shook some of the heavy locks out of her eyes. Her blue velvet skirt had ridden up and bunched high around her thighs. The third button of her white satin blouse had come adrift and the flimsy lace of sheer black bra peeped from the upper curves of her breasts. Even in such a disarray, or perhaps because of it, in the plight she was in she would have been devastatingly beautiful to the eyes of many men and women had they been present.

An hour later, after she had recovered a little from disappointment and exhaustion from fighting her gag, Rona lifted her head and looked around the room, which had to all intents and purposes become her prison. What would a film heroine have done in this situation? She would have made a small grimace if not for the tight gag, because it was the very enjoyment she had watching the bondage scenes in movies which had got into this mess. She had certainly overdone this experiment! What possibilities were there left?

Ignoring as best she could the numbing and ache in her arms and the smothering constriction of the gag, she did her best to remember how it was done so often on the screen. There were no heroes to rescue her. In the film ‘Artists and Models,’ Shirley MacLaine had been able to bounce the chair to which she was tied close enough to a door to allow her to open it with her teeth, and all that while gagged with a white cloth tied between her jaws. Could Rona somehow open the door and reach the knife in the hallway?

She lifted her head and looked at the lock. It was high and the handle was small. Twenty minutes later she lay on her face near the door, once more exhausted. She had succeeded in working to a standing position against the door, but, as she had expected, it proved impossible to raise her arms further because they were secured to the small of her back. When she did attempt this by bending forward, she lost her balance and fell heavily, almost winding herself. She had no strength left to try again.

Closing her eyes, Rona sobbed quietly in frustration and hopelessness. She felt a cold and lassitude creeping over her. She was slipping into shock. She lay there for what seemed like agonising hours before she could again think clearly. She rolled onto her side once more and looked wearily around the room. Was there no hope? She searched her mind for other films she had seen. In ‘Apache Woman,’ the cowgirl heroine was tied to a chair by the villains with plenty of rope, and her own white neck scarf had been tied between her teeth as a gag. She had freed herself by overturning her chair and cutting her bonds on the sharp edges of glass from a broken bottle that she had knocked off the table. It had been a long sequence, and it looked real enough. But there were no bottles in Rona’s room, nothing that could be broken.

With a distressed moan, Rona rolled over onto her back and closed her eyes. But she could not shut out the situation. She rolled once again on to her side and lay staring ironically at the reflection in the mirror of tousled hair, the heap of silky and now bunched and creased garments, the ropes, her face half hidden beneath the broad silk bandage. I wanted to play the part of a captive, she thought, and I certainly have my wish!

For a long time she stared at herself, then her eyes grew wide and her heart began to beat fast with excitement. The Mirror! Of course. The way out had been staring her in the face all this time. A mirror was made of glass. It could be broken. And seven years bad luck could not be worse than lying for days bound and gagged like this.

With a tremendous effort, the pain of her arms and the aching in every muscle of her body bringing tears to her eyes, Rona sat up. Slowly she wriggled her way closer to the mirror, her skirt riding higher up her thighs. She kicked awkwardly with her heels at the glass, at first weakly, then stronger as her hopes began to rise. If only the glass was not too firmly glued to the wall! It took many blows to crack the mirror, and many more before a large chunk fell out of the frame onto the carpet by her feet.

There followed another hour of wriggling and straining, with many pauses to rest, before Rona felt the bands of silk at her wrists slacken and fall away one by one. Very slowly and with great difficulty, she worked one arm out from the two sets of windings around her body. Circulation was restored. Her arms and hands burned and prickled, and she could not prevent whimpering behind the gag. It was a long time before nerveless fingers could pluck at the knots at the back of her head with any chance of loosening them.

Rona found that it was Sunday morning when she staggered upstairs. The first thing she did was to run a glorious hot bubble bath to soak out the aches and bruises. My God, I was tied and gagged for more than thirty-six hours, she thought shakily. There would be a next time, but she told herself to be far more careful with future experiments.