Robbery at the Swank Boutique
by
Brian Sands
Untitled American Soap, from a Chinese didcap site.
Chapter One: Boutique Ambience
‘That will do for now. You won’t try to push that out with your tongue, will you dear?’ said the Woman in Black as she tucked the remaining layer of silk into Simone’s mouth, making sure that it rested behind her teeth.
The bound woman shook her head but, with an involuntary shudder, her wrists fought the three turns of thin cord that imprisoned them, wanting to raise her hands to extract the gag.
‘Because if you do,’ the woman continued, ‘it will only be replaced, more fiercely. Understand?’ Again Simone nodded. ‘Good.’
Simone watched as the woman busied herself crating the merchandise. She could not believe how quickly it had all happened, and in broad daylight with people milling around on the spacious floors of the Swank Boutique. The premises were situated on one of the busiest streets in one of the most up-market quarters of the city.
The gang must have been watching for weeks. They seemed to know every corner of the old building, where the store rubbed shoulders with others in the newly renovated shopping arcade. The boutique and the other shops had been grafted on to the old architecture. This meant that within many sections of the building there were ‘blind spots,’ areas that appeared to lead nowhere until one came upon an almost abandoned stairwell or a strip of passageway with glass-fronted doors leading off into abandoned office spaces.
Simone was the floor manager of the boutique. She was dependable, and with that dependability came an established routine. The gang members had obviously been watching her daily movements, matching the young woman’s meticulous organisation with a lot of attention to details of their own. They must have known to the second when Simone left the store.
What usually happened when she finished her shift was that she walked to the underground car park, hopped into her Jaguar sports with the open top in summer, and drove to her beach condominium where she reviewed the account registers. People were coming and going all the time, but there was one unfrequented passage that Simone had the habit of using as a short cut. She entered from a stairwell behind the boutique, but on this day she did not emerge into the car park below. In a move as finely calculated as in a horror movie, the second member of the gang stepped from the shadowed recess of a doorless cupboard, wrapped one arm around Simone’s slim waist and clamped a huge gloved hand over her mouth. Simone vanished with no more than a surprised ‘hmmph.’
Now she was sitting on the cold cement floor of a remote basement of some sort, her wrists bound behind her with a piece of thin cord and her ankles loosely hobbled with another piece of the same sort of cord.
She felt a little foolish to have to sit quietly with the wadded scarf in her mouth when she could so easily push it out with her tongue. But she understood the woman’s warning and resisted the temptation. All the same, the young woman surreptitiously pushed the wad past her teeth so that part of it bulked a fraction beyond her lips. This manoeuvre seemed to go unnoticed. It reduced the choking feeling and the gagging reflex that she felt earlier.
Simone could hear no sound from outside the thick walls, so calling for help was pointless. She shivered. The ankle-length skirt and white silk top that came with the contrasting black jacket that she wore did little to insulate her from the cold. The silk was all right but the thin satiny material of the skirt and jacket definitely let in the chill.
The black clad woman was now joined by the man who had seized and bound Simone, and together they shifted and stacked several more crates.
‘That’s the last one for now, Dougie,’ the woman grunted.
‘Yers. Half full an’ half empty like yer said Madam,’ the man responded. ‘Plenty a room for more o’ the best eh?’
‘You said it Dougie. No one visits the stock room at this time of day so I’ll bring down another armload. You look after her.’ Madam nodded in Simone’s direction. ‘Make sure she doesn’t yell for help or get free. But maybe allow her a drink of water,’ she added as she opened the door. ‘It’s stuffy down here. The air conditioning doesn’t filter this far. And we don’t want any harm to come to our high class lady ... We don’t mean you any personal harm,’ she continued, addressing Simone, ‘We want your merchandise, and the full set of keys and security cards you were carrying.’ She patted her shoulder bag. ‘You’ll have to be uncomfortable for a few hours, that’s all.’
The woman started to walk out the door but had a second thought and turned back to Douglas. ‘One more thing, we’ll have to move Mam’selle Simone from time to time so that one of us can always keep an eye on her. Think about the places we might stash her, and give me your ideas when I get back, okay?’
‘Yers, Madam.’
When the woman had gone, Douglas knelt and retrieved a small thermos from a kit bag that stood by one wall. He ambled over to where Simone was sitting, unscrewing the top of the bottle as he came, and hunkered down beside the young woman.
‘Yer heard what Madam said, din’t yer? Not a peep outa yer, unnerstan’?’ Simone nodded vigorously.
Douglas reached up and pulled the wadded silk from Simone’s mouth, letting it fall into her lap. The girl breathed a sigh of relief. The flask was held to her lips. It contained water, kept cold by the thermos, and she drank slowly and gratefully. She had discovered that the gagged made her mouth dry.
When Simone indicated with a nod that she had drunk enough, the stopper and the screwcap were replaced. The man rose, picked up the scarf from Simone’s lap, and walked back to the kit bag where he carefully stowed the thermos away. He then returned to Simone, folding the scarf into a wide bandage as he came. He seemed to do everything with a slow methodical ease. He crouched down next to her.
Without a word he brought the scarf over the girl’s head from behind and bound it across the lower half of her face from immediately below her nose to the edge of her chin, leaving her nostrils free to breathe. The silk was damp with saliva, although the scarf had not remained long enough in her mouth to become sodden, and this made it cling tenaciously to her lips and cheeks.
‘Yer c’n make noise through this but it won’t travel far. So jus’ don’ try, lady.’
Simone grunted faintly in response and became resigned to sit out the rest of the time in silence. She worked her lips against the cloth that imprisoned them. The damp silk was already making her cheeks itchy.
During the next half-hour, Douglas took the opportunity to doze by lying across three of the cardboard cartons that stood next to the crates. Simone shifted into as comfortable a position as possible on the cold cement floor and did her best to relax. But the chill seeping into her bones set her shivering, and even worse was the continued chafing and silky smothering cling of the gag.
Then the door handle rattled and a shadow appeared on the threshold. Madam in Black stepped through and took in the scene with a smile. ‘Up you get, you lazy oaf!’ she said cheerfully to Douglas. ‘Time for your shift. You’ll find some armloads at the top of the steps.’ Douglas shuffled out and the woman turned her attention to Simone.
‘Are we treating you well?’ she asked with an ironic grin. ‘It can’t be helped, but ... here, have another drink.’
The gag was pulled down from Simone’s face to hang loose around her neck and again the cool lip of the thermos was held to her mouth. Once more Simone drank appreciatively.
Madam was undoing the knot of Simone’s scarf when Douglas stumbled into the room carrying an armload of pricey designer outfits in pastels and brighter colour combinations. Silks, satins, artificial materials that begged the eyes to tell the brain to buy and the hands to stroke and hold. Simone felt it as a personal affront to see all her wonderful stock being taken so brazenly. And she was unable to do anything about it!
‘One more load I think,’ said the woman, ‘then we’ll figure out our next move. We have plenty of time.’ Madam had the knot free now and was shaking the scarf out. ‘You’re being a good girl, Simone,’ she went on conversationally. ‘Just make sure it stays that way.’
Simone licked her lips, ‘P- Please, can’t you ...?’
‘Uh uh. No my dear. You are not required to say a word! That’s the rule. You stick to that and we’ll get along just fine.’
Holding it by one end, the woman whirled the scarf and twisted it before bringing it over Simone’s head and drawing it between the young woman’s jaws. She tied it off securely and Simone was again silent.
Gagged in this way, she could not close her mouth. In fact, the knot was so tight that the silk pulled back the corners of her mouth and kept her jaws open. Almost immediately she could feel her palate become dry as she gulped in the room’s stuffy air. The way that she had been gagged before, at Douglas’s hands, meant that she could breathe more or less only through her nose. This different sort of gag allowed her to breathe through both her nose and her mouth, but she was not so sure that it was an improvement. It certainly was not more comfortable. After only ten minutes the gag was hurting. Twenty minutes later her jaw was beginning to ache.
Madam and Douglas during those minutes of agonised silence meticulously repacked the dresses so that the boxes and crates still had plenty of room for more.
‘This time we’d better reconnoitre together,’ said Madam. ‘Your turn to see to our pretty prisoner. I’ll wait at the top of the stairs.’
Once again the thermos of blessedly cool water was produced. It was more of a relief however for Simone to have the gag untied. As the silk came away, she worked her jaw from side to side and licked her lips. She drank, then the thermos was stowed away in its place with the same slow care as before.
Douglas took up the now creased scarf and shook it out, then folded it into a bandage as he had done earlier. He paused in thought a moment, then made a knot in the centre followed by a second knot over the first. This was brought over Simone’s head. She opened her mouth to receive the knot with reluctance. She even attempted to fight it a little, turning her head to one side, which elicited a patient chuckle from the man. ‘Come on, sweetie. ‘S gotta be done.’
The knot was pushed deep into Simone’s mouth, then the ends of the scarf were drawn to the back of her neck under her shoulder length hair - in the same way all the other gags had been tied - a knot made, snugged in place, then jerked tighter. Simone squealed in pain as the threads pinched the skin at the back of her neck and caught and pulled several downy hairs, and tears for the first time appeared in her eyes.
Douglas looked at her with a frown. ‘I said it can’t be helped. We’re goin’ to be out awhile so I gotta make sure you don’t yell loud enough t’ be heard down here.’ He checked the young woman’s wrist bonds and grunted in satisfaction. But he released the loose tether at her feet and, after crossing her ankles, retied them just as tight as her wrists. He finished by tying a short length of the cord from her ankles to her wrists, putting her on her side in a loose hogtie. Then he left the room. The cold of the cement floor began to spread through Simone’s body as she wriggled helplessly. A faint moan escaped through the gag. It could only have been heard in the small room if the listener was standing close to her.
Simone had read stories about danger situations when one was bound and gagged. She had even organised staff briefing sessions with a police community group, so they might know what to expect if the store was ever robbed. When she read the advice from The SAS Urban Survival Handbook it all seemed so easy. She ran the statements over in her mind. What to do if you are gagged. Try to catch the cloth on your teeth so it might not be tied too deeply in the mouth. Well, she had tried, too late, to catch her teeth on the gag she was now wearing. The scarf had been tightened so quickly that the knot was wedged firmly before she had time to react.
What was the other piece of advice? Try to hook or rub the gag on something to get it out of your mouth. That’s all very well, thought Simone, but what can I do tied down like this? And anyway there was nothing she could see in the bare concrete room that she could hook the gag on - no pipe fittings or obtruding metal - even if she could wriggle across the floor.
The way she was tied, she could probably manage to inchworm her way about, if there was anywhere to go. She had visions of getting herself out of the room and negotiating the steps till she was in an area where she was more likely to be found. But that was impossible with the door closed. There was no way she could get to her feet to reach the handle with her ankles tied to her wrists in this way.
Rubbing the gag on the cement floor seemed a possibility, until she tried it. The gag was too tightly embedded in her mouth and all she’d succeed in doing would be to skin her cheeks if she persisted in the attempt. With a sigh, Simone gave up and rested her head on the hard floor. The position in which she lay was very uncomfortable, with no support for her head or neck.
And to think I almost suggested that we have practical training sessions, she said to herself ruefully. Would they have helped her now? She had a momentarily diverting thought of how those young assistants would look all trussed up in ropes and gags, especially that chatty little gossip they had just hired. She gave a mental shrug. She would not wish this moment of fear and discomfort on anyone. Okay, they said they’re not gong to hurt me, but just lying here like this is torture.
Another thing, thought Simone, I could probably make a lot of noise through this gag. It’s only a silk scarf with a big knot tied in the middle. But my mouth’s so dry that if I yell there won’t be much sound coming out. That’s what a gag’s for! It was a startling insight. Those flimsy pieces of silk they put over the heroine’s mouth in the movies, or tie between her teeth, would become pretty effective if the heroine had to wear them for a long time. In panic she twisted her hands against the cords that held her wrists. There was nothing she could do but lie there freezing, waiting for the thieves to return.
There was a sound. A key turned in the lock. They’ve even locked me in! Simone felt butterflies of fear in her stomach as she realised that she was totally helpless in the hands of these so well organised people.
ã Brian Sands 2002