#7 Andreabound in the Basement – Part One

Simply the best part of my new house is that it has a basement. My house is built into a hill and I have to go up a flight of stairs to gain entrance to the front door. At slightly below ground level, and at the end of a sloping driveway, is a double garage. The garage area is large enough so I can now park my car under cover for the first time and have plenty of space left over for a workshop area. A door at the back of the garage opens onto a basement area that covers the back half of my house and stretches the whole width. This is my new playroom.

The only other door in the basement opens onto a staircase that leads up to the ground floor and comes out in my hallway opposite the kitchen door. Apart from a small barred window, high up on one of the side walls, there are no other openings into the basement.

My basement area is just one large room with no features other than a couple of metal support posts that presumably helped spread the load of the upper floors. In one corner there’s an old sink with a coldwater tap and the boiler is against the dividing wall between the garage and the basement room. The room is also host to a plethora of wires and pipes, the purpose of most I can only guess at. As most of these conduits ran discretely along two of the walls and along the ceiling, they were not going to present an obstacle. This room would be ideal for my purposes, the only slight disappointment being that the ceiling was low at just over six feet, limiting the options for suspension.

Now I’d had a chance to settle in to my new home it was time to sort out the basement. I hadn’t covered major building projects on my woodworking course but I felt I had grasped the principles of construction well enough that I could apply the huge amount of advice on the internet in an attempt to transform my basement.

Surprisingly, the basic building materials weren’t too expensive which was a good job given the state of my finances for the first couple of months after I moved house. In any case I only needed to buy the materials as I used them and at the pace I could work on the project that wasn’t going to be a problem. It took me the first two months to build the walls I needed. The workout involved in mixing the mortar and lifting the heavy cinder blocks meant I could afford to skip the gym and instead use that time on my building project.

I first built a new L-shaped wall starting out from the back wall of the basement, building out six feet and then turning towards the side wall for another three feet. As I’d started building six feet from the corner, this left a gap of about three feet between the end of my new wall and the side wall of the basement. So I now had a six feet square cell in the corner furthest from the two doors.

Three feet in front of the entrance to my jail cell I built another wall extending six feet out from the side wall of the basement. This additional wall was mainly to hide the cell arrangement from anyone wandering into the basement and to provide a screen so that the only view out of the jail cell was that of another brick wall.

I’d wanted to fix the bars of the cell into the floor and ceiling but I found that the concrete used for the floor was too hard to drill such big holes. In the end I settled for building a larger version of my earlier cell door; a wooden frame with holes drilled into the top and bottom to allow the bars to be inserted. The bars were made of black plastic waste pipe into which I threaded wooden dowels for strengthening. I would have really preferred proper steel bars of course but couldn’t work where to buy them and in any case I had no way of working with steel. So the plastic covered wooden bars would have to do.

Although not made of steel, the bars were still pretty strong, but I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be able to break my way out. I drilled large holes in a couple of lengths of four-by-four and fed the bars through these holes to form cross struts at one third and two thirds of the height of the frame. Holding the whole lot together and maneuvering it all into place was really hard work but eventually I had the frame held in place by several heavy-duty hinges fixed to a wooden batten I’d previously bolted to the side wall of the basement. This meant that the door was in the corner and opened outwards to lie flat against the original basement wall. It was kept closed by means of a couple of slide-action gate bolts fastened between the doorframe and the adjacent wall. The bolts had holes to allow padlocks to be inserted preventing them from being opened and were intended to be used to secure a garden shed or gate but they would be put to a better use here. I painted the wood of the framework black to look the part.

I entered my cell and closed the door reaching through the bars to draw the bolts. Although it would have been more convenient to attach the bolts on the inside of the door, it seemed appropriate for them to be on the outside. I didn’t bother with the padlocks for now but just spent the next ten minutes running at, and practicing my kickboxing, and trying everything else I could think of to try and force the door open or otherwise break my way out. All to no avail, which was a relief. Once those padlocks were in place there was no way I was getting out of this cell. I now had a workable six-by-six cell and view of walls in every direction. Even looking out of the door just provided a view of a wall.

Feeding a hose through a hole drilled into the side of my cell just above floor level and connecting it to a water tank sitting on the floor of the basement just the other side of my cell wall, would ensure I had an adequate supply of water for even lengthy stays in side my prison. After my last session in a self-imposed jail, I wasn’t going to risk going without water again. I also fixed boards on the ceiling of my cell to cover up the dusty floorboards and joists that held up the ground floor. I filled the gap with fiberglass to help make the cell soundproof to anyone who happened to be upstairs. I also added several bulkhead lights into which I fitted really bright light bulbs. These could only be controlled from outside the cell and once the basement window was boarded up, I would be able to use a timer to decide whether I had permanent light, dark or a random artificial day and night for my prison stays; just another level of self-induced torture that would add spice to my sessions.

A selection of fixing points I added around the cell at various heights would offer me a number of different ways to add to my restraints during each visit to the cell, depending on the scenario I was imagining at the time.

Visiting a local outdoor shop I picked up a cheap folding, metal-framed bed which came with a thin mattress. I bolted the bed to the floor of my cell against the back wall and taking the mattress outside, I rolled the mattress in a muddy puddle outside the back door and left it outside to get rained on. Bringing the mattress back indoors a few days later I let it dry out in the cold basement and was pleased to find it had acquired the desired dishevelled look and musty smell of a much used prison mattress.

All that remained to do was to find a reliable method of providing a long-term release for the locks and some free time to allow me to serve out a sentence.

Andreabound in the Basement – Part Two

A couple of weeks later I had the perfect opportunity to spend some time in my cell. My editor had sent me home to work on an assignment. I thought that if I could rig up a power supply for my laptop and phone into the basement I could work just as well from my cell as from the spare bedroom I’d set up as a home office.

Whist waiting for this moment I’d thought some more about the release mechanism and decided that the only time I’d not used ice for my release was the only time I’d nearly got stuck In the end you couldn’t beat the reliability of ice as a release system. It always melted, eventually; it didn’t require the intervention of other people and didn’t rely on an uninterrupted electrical supply. So I spent the next few weeks freezing different size blocks of ice, hanging them on a bracket I’d installed on the wall opposite my cell door and timing how long different sizes and shapes of ice took to melt. Of course, I had to take into account the temperature of the basement too and it all became too complicated to calculate the exact timings after factoring in all the variables. But I was still able to come up with a rough calculation of the size of ice block versus the time it took to melt. So in the end I froze a block that was about eighteen inches long and about a foot high and wide and, contained at its center, one of the keys to my padlocks. A length of string was attached to the key at the center of the ice and, once the block had been placed into the wall bracket, the other end would be tied to one of the bars of the cell door.

Since I had to work whilst in my jail, I needed to come up with a believable scenario to allow the presence of high-tech equipment in my cell. The scenario I came up with in the end had me as a legal clerk who had gotten on the wrong side of a judge during a murder trial and been sentenced to a week in the cells for contempt of court. I wasn’t supposed to speak in court, just assist my employer who was lawyer for the defendant. I guess shouting out that the proceedings were unfair as one of our key witnesses was driven to tears by the veracity of the prosecutor’s cross examination wasn’t such a hot idea after all. As soon as the case concluded I was arrested by the court bailiff and taken down to the lockup still wearing my best suit.

Of course in the real world there is no way I would be allowed a phone and laptop whilst incarcerated but the scenario was still more fitting than the original medieval fantasy I had planned for my first session inside my new cell. Well they certainly didn’t have cell phones and wireless laptops back then!

Also I wished to create a realistic jail-time experience and that would mean being as stimulus free as possible. I made sure my laptop was fully charged which would give me about 4-5 hours use and borrowed a spare battery from the office. Between them I guessed the batteries would provide about nine hours of serious working time. As I had a serious assignment to turn in I wouldn’t be tempted to relieve the boredom by using the laptop idly to surf the net all night. Once my work was done for the day I would be without any outside stimuli.

I also charged up my cell phone and with a full charge it should be operational for up to a week, assuming I didn’t actually use it to make any calls. I wasn’t planning on calling anyone but I did need to be available should my office call me. Having the cell phone in the cell with me did offer a means of escape, I could just call a colleague or friend and have then come over and let me out, but I would just have to let the obvious consequences of that situation keep me from making that call. I wondered if in future I could make a case that would let me get at the buttons needed to answer a call but prevent me dialling a number myself. That was a project for later. For now I merely reset the clock on the ‘phone so I wouldn’t be able to use it to measure my stay.

Everything was ready. I had already placed the frozen block of ice in its bracket opposite the cell door, placed my laptop and ‘phone in the cell and set the timer for the lights to random. I retired to my bedroom to dress for the part. After the rigors of building my jail cell during which time I wore work clothes, an old pair of torn jeans, coveralls and workman’s gloves and boots, I wanted to feel feminine again so I rummaged through my wardrobe and selected my costume from the most delicate items in my collection.

Rolling up a nude colored stocking, I pointed my toes and slid the end of the stocking over my right foot. Rolling the stocking up my leg it reached almost to my crotch where I clipped it to my lacy ivory colored garter belt. The other stocking was next and I rubbed my legs together, luxuriating in the feel of the shiny fabric as I slid one leg over the other. The feel of the silk sent tingles up and down my legs and I could feel my pulse racing. Reluctantly, I parted my legs and continued my dressing. Next item was a matching lacy thong that trapped my garter belt and held the straps against my thighs. The set also consisted of an ivory push-up half-bra which I positioned so that my nipples just poked over the top of the cups. My breasts aren’t huge as I’m a slight girl but the push-up bra made the most of my assets and I posed in front of the mirror for a while viewing my enhanced profile from different angles and running my hands over my silk-and-lace encased body. It seemed so long since I had worn anything quite so sensuous.

I had selected a cream colored short-sleeved silk blouse and I slowly buttoned this up enjoying the electric feeling of the silk rubbing against my nipples. To complete the transformation into the feminine, but business-like, office bitch I put on my best dark blue pinstriped suit that had a tailored coat and knee length skirt. The skirt had a short slit up the back revealing even more of my stockinged legs. The suit was a heavy wool mix and the weight of it pressed against my undergarments and just served to ensure I was even more aware of the delicate materials beneath. I added makeup and jewelry consistent with my image of a legal clerk out to make an impression in court and finished off with a pair of white leather pumps with three-and-a-half inch heels. These days I don’t tend to wear heels shorter than four inches but these were the only pair I owned that would lock on and I was therefore going to be stuck wearing them for up to five days - way past my previous record.

One last pose in front of the mirror, I certainly looked the part. And as I strutted through the house and down to the basement I certainly felt the part too. The knowledge that this proud office girl was about to be transformed into a humiliated and lowly jailbird made me very excited indeed.

On reaching the basement I set the timer for the lights to random and threw the switch. The lights stayed off; fine, whatever. I found a torch and turned the main basement lights off. I had sealed the basement window well and placed tape around the door leading into the garage so, even though it was still daytime, the basement was completely dark. I used a torch to find my way into the cell and attach the end of the string coming from the ice block to one of the bars in the cell door. The key on the other end of this string was for a padlock that I would use to secure all the other keys I would need for my release into a metal box. I used two large padlocks to seal the cell door closed and placed the keys into the metal box.

Sitting on the bed, I bent down and closed the ankle cuffs around my stockinged ankles. The sound of the ratchets closing one click at a time echoed around the bare cell was delicious and sent shivers down my spine. Double-locking the cuffs to prevent then from pinching me, I placed that key in the box too. The chain between my ankle cuffs would allow me to move around the cell, as long as I didn’t want to move more than eighteen inches at a time.

Next a chain around my waist was locked on with a large padlock after I’d fed the chain of my handcuffs though the hasp of the lock. I put a leather collar around my neck and used a small padlock to lock it in place. Another small padlock attached a chain that ran to a fixing point on the rear wall of the cell to a ring on the front of my collar. At five feet in length, the chain linking my collar to the cell wall was not quite long enough to allow me to put my face to the door. These keys also went into the metal box.

Checking the laptop and ‘phone were working I slipped my left wrist into the handcuff dangling from my waist chain. Click, click, click; again the sound of the ratcheting cuff sent waves of pleasure though me and I sat there for a minute, on the edge of the bed, savoring the moment before I closed the other cuff and completed my bondage. Holding the remaining empty cuff in my left hand I placed my slender wrist in the half-moon of metal and used my fingers to lift the other half of the cuff up and over my wrist, trapping it there. Another three echoing clicks and my restraints were complete. I used the last of the keys to double-lock the handcuffs and dropped it into the box. I had one last padlock on the bed and I used it to lock the metal box shut and with it all my other keys. Sliding the box under the bed, I realized I was now a prisoner until that ice melted and freed the key to the box, giving access to the means of my release. I reached through the bars of the cell door and rolled the torch out of the cell and out of reach.

Here I was, a smart city girl trapped by a misplaced word, in a place more suited to the prostitutes and petty thieves I usually defended in my sharp suits and expensive shoes. I revelled in the shame of it, the embarrassing knowledge that my colleagues back at the office would be laughing and joking at the sudden fall from grace of the office bitch. I hung my head in defeat and reaching under my skirt, slowly bought myself to a crashing orgasm.

Andreabound in the Basement – Part Three

I awoke on the bed; it was dark. I wondered how long I’d been asleep and debated whether to use up some of the precious battery on the laptop to check the time. The laptop was under the bed and was therefore easy to locate. Waking up the laptop from its slumbers revealed the time to be early evening. I reckoned it must be dinnertime so I used the glow of the laptop screen to locate my store of protein drinks – the only food I was allowing myself during my incarceration. At least these next few days of enforced abstinence should help my dieting! Since my hands were cuffed at my waist I couldn’t lift the bottle to my lips and had to pour the contents into the doggy dish I had placed on the floor for this purpose. In the end I couldn’t bear the thought of kneeling on the floor to drink so I put the bowl on the bed and knelt at the side of the bed to lap up the thick artificial-tasting goo. Three or four days of this? Yuk!

When it was time to wash my dinner down I realized the water bowl would have to stay on the floor as trying to move it onto the bed would undoubtedly result in a spill. Opening the tap on the end of the pipe sticking through the wall, I filled the bowl. To drink from this meant leaning forward and resting my weight on my cuffed hands so that I was more lying on the floor than kneeling anyway. At least I had water; I consoled myself, remembering the unpleasant experience of running out of drinking water during my last stay in a jail cell.

The laptop had been glowing for a while now and I wanted to turn it off to save the battery as soon as I could. I would have to learn to do all this in the dark in future. Finishing my drink, I found I needed to pee and I certainly didn’t want to have to do that in the dark so I quickly moved over to the other corner of my cell, awkwardly pulled down my thong and sat on the portapotti that I had bought from the camping store. At least this toilet had a built–in seat that would make my life a little more civilized than last time; I had no intention of spending the next few days living in a puddle of my own pee again.

Pulling up my thong and straightening my skirt as best I could with my hands attached to my waist, I quickly shutdown the laptop and felt for the bed. It was so dark that I wouldn’t have been able to see my hand in front of my face; if I’d been able to lift it there, that is!

With no power and no light in the cell there was nothing to do but lie back on the bed. I realized I had done an excellent job of making the mattress into a seriously unpleasant place to lie. It smelt nasty and was lumpy, an unforeseen side-effect of my earlier mistreatment, there was no pillow for my head and I could feel the cheap springs of the bed frame poking me in all sorts of uncomfortable places. At least it was better than sleeping on the floor I told myself.

Sleep would have been a nice distraction, but having awoken just prior to my dinner, the sleep I desired eluded me. As I lay there waiting for my body to tire again I imagined all the various inmates in the cells adjacent to mine and as I put myself in their shoes one-by-one, I was able to bring myself to orgasm a few more times. But eventually even that fantasy dried up and I just lay on the bed trying to get comfortable, thinking about nothing in particular.

Typical! I was finally just drifting off to sleep when the lights came on. The sudden glare shocked me out of the drowsiness that had been stealing over me. I’d fitted the four bulkhead lights in the ceiling with 150w halogen bulbs and the brightness they produced between them didn’t disappoint. I’d designed them to be an irritant, knowing my handcuffs would prevent me form lying on my stomach and the lack of a pillow would mean I had nowhere to hide my face, I was stuck with the, oh so, bright lights shining directly on my face.

They were designed to disorient me and prevent sleep and they were certainly doing that. I rolled over on the bed so that my face was pressed as close between the bed and the back wall but it was impossible to escape the unrelenting glare of the lights. Of course I had no idea of how long I would have to endure this as I had put the timer on to the random setting. After a while of lying there unable to sleep or get comfortable, I decided I might as well get some work done. So I pulled the laptop from under the bed and started typing.

The fact that I was now tired, the clock claimed it was after midnight , meant that my typing and concentration were not running at optimum. The handcuffs were a real hindrance to efficient typing and mousing too and the glaring lights made reading the screen hard work. I only kept going because I knew there was no chance of sleep whilst the lights were on.

By five in the morning though, I had made good progress with my work and seeing that the low battery indicator was on, I finally shut the laptop and lay back on the bed to rest my eyes. Although I had got somewhat used to the constant dazzle of the lights, they were so bright that I could still see the glare with my eyes closed. Now I was really tired and wished the lights would switch off so I could get some much needed sleep.

I didn’t remember falling asleep but sometime later I awoke to find myself in darkness again. I used the laptop to provide light for me to use the portapotti and some of the one roll of Charmin I had allowed myself as a luxury. I could also, with some difficulty, brush my teeth, something I was determined not to manage without, and splashed water on my face. That was the limit of my bathroom pleasantries though, as I had brought no soap, towel or hairbrush with me into the cell. I struggled to sort out breakfast, which like last night’s supper consisted of a protein drink and water. It tasted no better this morning.

With nothing else to do, I pulled out the laptop and typed away until the battery finally died. I thought about replacing the battery with the spare and carrying on but once I’d used up that battery too there really would be no stimulus until my release.

I lasted until what seemed like afternoon, judging by the rumbling coming from my stomach, took another ration of protein washed down by water and booted up the laptop for another session. It was hard going again and the handcuffs were beginning to chafe my wrists but I soldiered on. By the time I looked up at the computer clock to find it was after six, I had almost completed my work assignment. I figured I had about an hour of battery life left before the laptop gave up for good.

It was fun toying with the idea of using my phone to call one of the junior staff to drop over another battery and watching the look on their faces as they found me like this. Wasn’t going to happen though, and anyway the office would be closed for the night by now. I decided instead to take another disgusting meal and get some sleep whilst the lights were off.

Awaking to complete darkness I was disoriented for a moment. I couldn’t work out how long I’d been sleeping. It felt like a long time, so why wasn’t it morning yet? I opened the laptop to give me some light to use the toilet and to check the time. Something wasn’t right; I couldn’t get the stupid thing to start up. Surely the battery couldn’t be dead? I fumbled in the darkness to insert the other battery and tried again. That worked ok although there clearly wasn’t much power left in it. My replacement battery was obviously out of juice so I used the last of the original battery to finish my toiletries and then I was without any power, source of emergency light, or means of telling the time for the rest of my stay in here.

I haven’t a clue how long I lay in the dark, getting up for occasional exercise and pacing around the confines of my cell with mincing steps limited by the chain between my ankle cuffs. It really was dark in here and I was forever bumping into the edge of the bed and kicking the water bowl about the cell. As soon as I stood up to stretch my legs I seemed to lose all sense of direction. It was very frustrating.

Andreabound in the Basement – Part Four

Then without warning, the lights came on again. At the time I was trying to peer into the gloom to find the bed and so the sudden transition from utter blackness to blinding light took me completely unawares and so I almost fell over with the shock. I knew the minimum on time for the lights was likely to be in the order of five minutes but after that I might well be thrown back into darkness for the remainder of my sentence, so it seemed prudent to make the most of what might be a brief moment of vision and use the facilities.

After so long in the dark, however, the light hurt my eyes and I had to squint for a while before I could see clearly about me. In that time I managed to fit in another meal, two drinks, a quick wash, and a more prolonged visit to the toilet. An hour or so later my eyes had adjusted to the light and I found myself sitting on the bed feeling bored. I tried both batteries again but they weren’t going to allow any more use of the laptop. I wished for the millionth time I had thought to bring a vibrator into my cell with me. So I just sat there, almost wishing the light would go off again and I could at least make the time go by faster by sleeping it away.

But it didn’t. I wondered what I must look like by now. I didn’t have a mirror but I could see that my suit was dirty from crawling about the floor to eat and drink, my stockings had ladders and were ripped at one knee, my shoes were badly scuffed and, were they not locked on, would have been discarded long ago. This was the longest I had ever worn a pair of high-heeled shoes and I was torn between the regret of having locked them onto my feet and the relief that they weren’t one of my pairs with really high heels. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what a mess my face was in and as for my hair; don’t get me started!

Eventually the light went out and I lay back on the bed to get some much needed sleep. Unfortunately the lights decided to tease me for a while and so no sooner had I closed my eyes than they came back on; and off, and on, and off. They seemed to be stuck in a pattern of cycling on and off every five minutes or so. Not exactly five minutes, of course; that would be too easy to cope with. No they were determined to keep me guessing and so they cycled randomly but often for what felt like the best part of twenty-four hours. Not that I had any real idea of the time, or even of which day it was by now, I was so disoriented by the constant switching between utter darkness and blinding light. Any chance I had of sleep was gone. If the lights were on long enough I might just have got used to them sufficiently to find the rest my body craved, but with the lights switching on and off so frequently I found the sudden switch to light or dark would instantly bring me fully awake again. Sleep would have to wait until the timer stopped playing its silly games.

I had originally planned to keep a diary of my experiences. You know, like Day 1, Day 2, etc. But using up the available laptop power, on what was probably the second morning, had put paid to that idea and the disorientation of the light cycles meant I hadn’t a clue as to how long I’d been in here. Was this the third or fifth day; I really couldn’t tell. I switched on my phone to see what the time was. I’d set it to a random date and time before I’d started but I should be able to work out the duration, but the display made no sense to me. I realized why torturers would create random periods of day and night for their prisoners. The confusing effects of the artificial days working at odds with my body’s own internal clock and the consequent sleep deprivation had me in a complete spin. I was thinking through a fog, I couldn’t seem to focus on any one thought clearly, and the distinction was completely blurred between being awake, daydreaming, and being asleep; if indeed I was sleeping. Where before I was trying to work out how much longer I had to wait before my release, now I wasn’t even sure I wanted release. It seemed an abstract idea at best and I couldn’t concentrate on the notion long enough to think it through properly.

In this semi-conscious state I think I mostly just sat on the bed in a daze with my back against the wall. During this strange timeless, time the light timer must have given up on its constant indecision and plunged me into a longer period of darkness. I awoke to find myself somewhat refreshed and sounder of mind and my first coherent thought for a while was, “Why do I keep doing these crazy things to myself?” After the blur of the last however long it was, I now had no inkling of what time had passed and what time was left of my incarceration. But with the benefit of a clearer mind, I had the obvious idea of checking on the state of the ice block; of course it would have to wait until the lights came back on. Meanwhile I had more pressing needs and I once again had to eat, drink and use the bathroom facilities in complete darkness.

Whilst kneeling on the floor to drink, I noticed how cold it had become, especially felt on my knee where it was in direct contact with the floor thanks to the hole in my stocking. I climbed back up onto the bed, wishing for the first time that I had a blanket to wrap around me. I lay there suddenly much colder and starting to shiver. Was this just the cold or maybe a reaction to my situation and lack of proper food and sleep for such a long time? All I could do was lie and wait for the light to come back on and show me the state of the ice block. In fact for ages that was all I could think about and because there was nothing I actually could do about the situation, my thoughts became somewhat fixated on the imagined state of the block of ice. I desperately, desperately, needed to see that block of ice. It became an obsessive thought and I found myself grinding my teeth with frustration at the lack of light and caught myself a few times slowly banging my head against the mattress where the pillow would have been.

I had to snap out of this and calm down, so I tried to distract myself by using my fingers to pleasure myself. But my wrists were now so sore from the handcuffs that moving them so, just made me cry with the pain. In fact, now I thought about it, I was hurting in a lot of places. My ankles were bruised from the ankle cuffs, my thin stockings offering little protection form the hard steel. My neck had been rubbed raw from wearing the leather collar so long. I had thought leaving it a little loose would help prevent chafing but instead, there was just enough movement so the collar was always moving around my neck. Without even looking I could tell my neck had angry red welts around it that would take days to disappear.

Although my shoes were fairly comfortable, my feet were now feeling the effect of being trapped in them for so long. The pointed ends were really starting to pinch my toes and I knew my feet would be sore for days after this abuse.

Still, this was punishment; it wasn’t meant to be a holiday. I would just have to bear it all stoically; like I had a choice! If only I knew how much longer. I couldn’t believe the lights hadn’t come on again since their frequent blinking of a few hours or days ago. I began to wonder whether the filaments had blown. No, not all of them at once; that wasn’t possible. The timer may have died or blown a fuse. If so I was in trouble, but those possibilities seemed unlikely too. I would just have to accept that the timer had a mind of its own and was determined to torture and tease me beyond endurance. Yes, that was a much more likely scenario.

So I just lay in the dark waiting, my mind a blank. Then I became aware that I could hear children. There weren’t any children living nearby as far as I knew, but I could definitely hear playful voices. I listened more carefully, and realized the sounds were coming from some distance away. But children playing? That meant it had to be daytime and maybe it was Saturday already. If so, I had been in here for nearly six days. Surely the ice must have melted by now. I cursed the darkness again and lay back on the bed in despair. What if the lights really weren’t going to come on again? What would I do? How long would I have to wait in here?

Eventually the voices faded and it seemed to grow slightly colder again. Another night spent in my cell, I guessed. Damn those lights! On cue the room was filled with an unbearable brightness and I lay with my eyes shut and watering. When I was able to see past the spots in front of my eyes, I looked around. The cell was in a terrible state. Sometime in the last few hours or days I had knocked the stack of protein drinks over and they had rolled all over the floor. In my travels round the cell I had punctured one of the bottles, presumably with a heel, and the contents had been squirted all over the floor. There was also a pool of water where the tap had been left dripping and the portapotti was not in its original corner. At least it hadn’t got knocked over.

Tearing my eyes away from the state of the cell, I could finally check on the progress of the block of ice. I stared at the ice block uncomprehending of what I saw there. The block had gone. I panicked for a moment, thinking all the worst things, until I realized the obvious and simple truth. The ice had melted. And there to prove it was the key dutifully lying on the floor against the bars of the cell door. How long had it been there? Maybe I could have freed myself ages ago, even in the dark, if only I’d thought to check for the key. Instead I was so focused on the block of ice I had missed the chance for release. Grrrr!

Snapping out of my reverie, I reached through the bars and grabbed the key. Trembling slightly with anticipation, I dragged the metal box from under the bed and inserted the key into the lock. I never heard such a lovely sound as that key turning and the click of the padlock‘s hasp sliding free. I quickly unlocked my handcuffs, followed by the rest of my restraints. I was tempted to tear off my filthy, disgusting, clothes right then, but I would keep the last of my dignity in this jail, and so I hobbled upstairs to my bathroom to disrobe and run a long overdue bath.

The person looking back at me in the full-length bedroom mirror was a far cry from the confident office girl of a few days ago. Instead of the smart, no-nonsense, office bitch, there now stood a forlorn creature, her shoulders hunched, aching from having her hands held immobile at her waist for so long. This girl’s make-up had run and spoiled her good looks and her hair had never been so tangled. The sharp suit had seemingly been replaced by a disheveled rag, her blouse stained with the pink goo she had been forced to consume during her confinement and the whole look finished off by the sight of her stockings hanging from her legs in untidy strips.

I slept peacefully all Saturday night and most of Sunday morning and spent the after noon cleaning up the mess in the basement and putting the finishing touches to my work assignment. I did indeed have a fair collection of red marks around my wrists, ankles and neck. Luckily they were gone by Monday when I had to return to work.

I still have no idea how long I had laid there in light or darkness. The more I think about it the more the whole experience seems like some fading dream. I think next time I will take along the means to keep a diary and will experiment with the lights to really disrupt my sleep patterns. It will be interesting to read my notes about the effects after the event. Will I really go temporarily insane? How long would it take for me to become unhinged? I researched the topic on the internet since, and I can’t seem to find a definitive answer; so it looks like there’s only one way to find out.

23.05.07