Nora’s legs and feet ached horribly, and it wasn’t much better for her wrists or neck to be honest. She had no way of knowing exactly how long she’d been in her self-bondage predicament, but it had to be quite a while, and that terrified her. Not because of the length of her bondage or that anything had gone wrong. No, it was because of the consequence she had set for herself if she failed to escape within an hour. Her selected punishment for failure terrified her in a deep and primal way, but that was the point. She got a hell of an adrenaline kick when she had a predicament to work against, and today’s certainly classified in her mind.
For her session, she’d wanted a punishment that was genuinely bad for her. Deprived of her sight by a padlocked blindfold across her eyes, the passage of time was elusive, creating uncertainty about when that consequence would befall her. Only a half hour could have passed, or she could be mere seconds from her greatest fear being realized. The mere thought made her heart quicken; anxiety churned in her stomach. Her breathing hastened beyond even what her bondage and efforts at escape drew from her. The sound of her rapid, panicked inhales and exhales gave a strange eerie echo as it reverberated off the steel box locked around her head.
The box was a specialized commission that her dear friend John had helped design and make. It was well made, with a few fun features they had collaborated on. It was airtight except for a small mesh covered grate on the underside that could be adjusted larger, smaller, or even sealed. It did a wonderful job keeping the outside world at bay, just what Nora usually enjoyed in her bondage sessions, but right now that isolation left her with her thoughts, thoughts riddled with terror. It was another layer of sensory deprivation hiding how little time she had before she failed, before fear turned reality. The enclosed space around her head felt hot and oppressive. She needed out; she needed to escape the fate she had set for herself.
Padlocks ensured Nora couldn’t remove the device without keys, and despite it being pulled taut upwards by a chain connected to a beam in her apartment, she could feel the cruel weight of the thing. A reminder of impending doom, a physical manifestation of her heavy dread. Being hoisted up also forced her to stand on the balls of her feet, straining her legs fiercely, particularly her calves. The box though wasn’t the only bit of restraint; a pair of soft leather cuffs were wrapped around her wrists connected by an adjoining padlock. Petrified by what might transpire soon, Nora futilely tugged at the cuffs, hoping by some miracle they might just break or evaporate. All the effort did was worsen the pain starting to burn in her wrists. She let out a ragged, terrified groan past the ring gag holding her mouth ajar, warm wet spittle flying out down her chin. The pitiful noise seemingly amplified in the confined space.
As her mind raced in fear, the precious few moments of lucidity that slipped through called her attention to the need to free her hands first. The rational part of her mind peeking through knew pulling at her restraints did nothing. She would need to get the key to unlock the padlock. That was easier said than done. She’d have to resume picking up the scattered keys on the floor with her toes. Stretched up onto tip-toes made that a lot harder than Nora had ever expected. Without any testing, she had thought she’d be able to retrieve a key per minute at minimum, so to make her predicament challenging, she had, in her infinite wisdom, chosen to mix the four keys she needed with fifty-six others.
As she began flexing her cramping digits again, she tried to wrap them around another hard metal key, and the pain flared anew. To ensure she could reach the keys, she had John, who had assisted her with this setup before leaving, pile all sixty into one spot that she had then stood on. A necessary, but painful, predicament. At this point, she was sure some keys had slid out of the limited reach of her feet, and she knew for a fact she had dropped at least three. All she could do was pray they were dummy keys, or else she’d have to wait in bondage, with her worst nightmare until her safety, John, returned and freed her in another two hours.
A sharp inhale came as she managed to wrap the tortured toes of her right foot around a key. It pressed hard into the tender flesh between her toes and the rest of her foot. A precarious grip, certainly, but Nora couldn’t risk resetting. Time had to be running out. She gingerly lifted her foot towards her awaiting hand. Nora wasn’t particularly flexible, so she had to strain her shoulders back so her fingers could just barely reach the key. Once the key was safely in hand, she let her exhausted leg drop, her tender foot impacting harshly against the wretched, taunting keys. A distressed grunt escaped into the blackness surrounding her.
Despite her vast experience working locks while bound, in her haste, she fumbled with the lock a bit from exhaustion and panic, but eventually pressed the key home. Then the moment of truth, Nora tried to turn it. Nothing. She whined into the ether. Tears started seeping out beneath the blindfold. Her dismayed sobs bounced back to her ears, a horrid reminder of the steel holding her captive.
The task that had so enticed her, that seemed so arousing in her mind, was proving Sisyphean. After her most recent breakdown, Nora, crestfallen, reluctantly and mortifyingly admitted there would be no way for her to find all four keys before the hour ended. Her worst fear, the thing that fueled nightmare upon nightmare would come to pass. She pictured that appalling moment.
When the hour ended, randomly one of the two small trap doors John had designed at the top of the metal box would yank back pulled by a magnet activating, and in would drop either a massive scorpion or a furry cluster of spiders. Cold shivers ran down her spine. Nora didn’t have a simple fear of bugs; no, she had a true phobia that could leave her frozen at the mere mention of the tiny terrors, to say nothing of being trapped with them inches from her face. Of course, her entomologist roommate, Akemi, if she had been there, would have pointed out that technically spiders and scorpions were arachnids and not ‘bugs,’ but that mattered little to Nora’s fearful mind.
One would think it bizarre then that since college Nora had chosen to cohabitate with someone studying the bane of her existence, but that would ignore one vital fact, Nora had fallen madly, head-over-heels, in love with the damn bug lover. In a weird, twisted way, that love was what had truthfully prompted her to include the little arachnids in her bondage session. Sure, it was arousing to have such a compelling torture to try and escape, but some demented part of Nora’s mind had rationalized that if she failed to free herself in time she’d be confronted with her worst nightmare, and maybe, just maybe, it would act as a sort of exposure therapy. It was a terrible and misguided plan for sure, but Nora wasn’t exactly known for erudite decision making, especially when it came to her predicament bondage.
The image of the creepy crawlies gripped Nora’s mind. She imagined the spiders crawling into her ears and nose, laying eggs as they went that would eventually hatch and skulk back out. She could practically feel the scorpion stinging and pinching her soft tongue as it worked its way into her mouth through the ring gag. Nora began shrieking and twisting her head, fueled by the fright of what was to come. Her fingernails bit into the soft flesh of her palms. She stamped her aching feet excruciatingly against the pile of metal. Her heart rate was far beyond anything resembling a resting rate. The tantrum went on unabated for nearly two minutes, eating deeper into the rapidly diminishing hour.
Trying in vain to rest some sliver of hope back, she resumed the unbearably slow task of picking up more keys with her toes. She really should have tested how hard that would be, but still she managed to progress. The next two proved useless, and she threw them carelessly away, the muffled clang of those keys clattering against the far wall reaching her ears. In her desperation and despondence, it never even occurred to her they might be needed later for opening the metal enclosure around her head or the blindfold. Logical thought had long fallen to the irrationality of pure fear. The third key she raised a bit too quickly and her straining, anxiety ridden fingers knocked it free. It flew from between her middle two toes, landing far away from her reach. She cried out once more in frustration. The wail helped bring back a tiny iota of focus.
She took greater care with the next key. She ensured it was tightly held between her big and middle toes. She raised it smoothly and slowly up into range of her hands. She pressed her shoulders painfully back. Just as her fingers grazed the cool metal, the unthinkable occurred. Nora heard a world-shattering noise, a simple faint click. One of the two trap doors had tripped and now either spiders or a scorpion could fall from the small plastic enclosures affixed to the top of the metal box.
Nora had never had a fight-or-flight response. She simply froze when scared, and now was no different. Her leg remained uplifted, fingers barely brushing the key held aloft by battered toes. Her chest ceased moving as she held her breath. Then, without warning, her whole body began to tremble. When would she hear the plop of a scorpion hitting steel to her right or feel the faint tickle of tiny legs scrambling up her neck? Some small part of her mind wanted one of those to occur to end the anticipation so maybe she could finally start moving. Yet nothing seemed to happen.
Had she missed the sound? Had John not actually loaded the critters into the device? Suddenly, a spasm ripped through her arched foot. Her leg slammed down, the key flying off into some unseen corner of the room. Nora’s lungs worked again as she let out a series of grunts while she tittered on her tormented toes, trying to stand and work out the cramp. For a brief few seconds, she forgot about the terror lurking somewhere in the confines of her metal box, all attention on her pained foot. As relief finally came, Nora’s mind returned to the denizens that were now her neighbors in the darkness, and abject horror returned as well. Still, they had shown no signs of their presence. Confusion reigned in Nora’s mind, and it only deepened when she heard the small hinged flap at the front of the box squeal open, metal banging against metal, and cool air from outside the box brushing the exposed skin of her cheeks.
“Confused, my wayward roommate?” Akemi’s familiar and sweet voice drifted in, a faint echo created by the metal casing. A confused and undignified gurgle escaped Nora’s gagged mouth.
“John called to ask if it was safe to use the spiders and scorpion you selected for your little game. I politely told him no as both, while not lethal, did have venom that could cause health complications. You know, Nora, you’ve always been a bit brash, but this stunt is on another level of insanity.” Akemi’s words were cold and precise despite English being a second language for her. Nora tried to apologize, “Sahwy Akemmeh. Pweesh fohgivhe mhe,” but Akemi cut off any additional pitiful attempt.
“Silence! I am going to speak, and you are going to listen!” There was a fierceness to her words that Nora had rarely heard. “I have to admit, I was furious with you when John explained what you had planned. It felt like a violation of my space, of me, to use some of my lovely little specimens in your kinky play. I couldn’t believe that after seven years of making sure to only transport my insects and arachnids in and out when you were either asleep or out of the apartment, you would go behind my back and selfishly abduct them for such an absurd purpose.”
Shame now spread through the restrained and blinded woman. Akemi wasn’t wrong. This had been an abuse of her trust. Nora wanted to explain herself, to confess the strange twisted logic that had led to this moment, but the gag and Akemi’s orders held her affixed in place and silent.
A sigh came from Akemi’s disembodied voice before it continued, “Then once I was done screaming at John over the phone for twenty minutes straight about how stupid and reckless this was, he explained your ulterior motive in this. And before you get mad at him, I think my tirade made him bumble into the confession unintentionally.” A stunned Nora couldn’t believe her unrequited love for Akemi had been requited by John, of all people. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t how she wanted the person she cared for so much to find out about her feelings.
The soft touch of Akemi’s hand on Nora’s shoulder was a surprising and comforting sensation in the tossed sea of emotions she was drowning in. “Look, I wish you would have come to me about trying to work through your phobia. I might have been able to come up with something more scientific, or at the minimum, sane.”
She’s just talking about the fear of bugs, Nora thought. It brought both a sense of relief that her innermost secret remained hidden from the one person who should never know it, and yet there was also a deep sadness that it remained secret. Nora tried to prepare herself for a further lecture, but Akemi’s next words turned the situation upside down again. “Wanting to overcome this fear you have, just so you feel you can be with me, that’s beyond romantic, but it was foolish. Of course, you wouldn’t be the woman I love if you weren’t so beautifully naïve.”
Love? Be with me? Nora’s mind tried to understand the words spoken by her longtime friend. Wait, Akemi loves me?!
A nervous laugh preceded Akemi’s next words, “Heh, it…feels nice to have those words out there. It feels as if a weight is off my shoulders. Such a weird way for it to happen, but I suppose we’ve always been a little odd.”
“Ih, luvfgh yugh tuh Akemmeh.” Nora managed to say as drool poured out her gapping mouth.
A small giggle escaped from the other woman. She was clearly entertained by the effort, and she planted several tender kisses across Nora’s bare shoulder and clavicle.
When Akemi’s voice returned, it was awash with a sly, devious lilt, “You know, I’d like to see you prove it then. Prove that you really do love me…I want you to pick between two punishments for your attempted misuse of my little dear arachnids.” She paused as Nora let out a faint, confused grunt. Akemi continued, “Will you accept your punishment? I know how you like your punishments, so you’ll love a punishment from me, right?” Another faint kiss at Nora’s clavicle, accompanied by a soft hand cupping her bare chest.
An aroused Nora moaned before exclaiming, “Yesh, pweesh! YESH!”
“Good, now I am going to let you pick your punishment. Option one: I drop the four keys that I’ve kept in my pocket for the last hour and that you need to free yourself, on the floor to join the pile you have so diligently been sifting through in vain. Then I’ll sit and watch you struggle until you free yourself, since it’s been so much fun to watch for the last hour.”
Nora felt shock again, her efforts until now had been truly pointless. Akemi had the keys to her liberation the whole time. And instead of being out for the day, the woman had watched the whole thing unfold. John must have been complicit in it as well. She’d have to have a word with the bastard.
“Or option two: you get a modified version of your original punishment, except in place of my prized lovely friends, I’ll dump a few horse flies in there with you for a few minutes.” To physically exhausted Nora, that second option actually sounded better. Flies were one of the few bugs that didn’t absolutely terrify her. They were gross and annoying for sure, but not painful or terror inducing. Trying to unlock her bondage herself could take a long time, but a few minutes of annoying buzzing in her ears? That was quite doable. Still, there was a nagging feeling at the back of Nora’s mind. There had been a slight puckish tint to Akemi’s words that left her unsettled. Taking a breath, Nora asked for option two, her words slurred by the gag.
“Really? Are you sure?” Akemi asked.
“Yesh,” Nora responded, but with far less confidence.
“Okay!” Akemi exclaimed with a little too much glee. Soon something knocked at the front slot of the box. The din of buzzing soon filled Nora’s metallic prison. Then a sudden clang as Akemi had closed the front port to the box.
The buzzing was going to get old quick, the bound woman considered, but it was tolerable. Then she felt something surprisingly large land on her cheek, and an instant later her mind exploded with a sharp burning pain from that spot. Nora howled in agony, and her body jerked.
A small laugh came from Akemi before she explained, the words muted by steel, “I guess you are learning firsthand how painful a horse fly bite can be? It’s no threat to your life, but awfully painful.”
Another searing bite happened an instant later, this time on the bottom of her chin. Nora grunted and slammed her chin down against the metal floor of the box, a wet feeling indicating a successful squishing of the attacker. As Nora recovered from the second bite, something landed on her tongue in her mouth. Her mind spun in fear. She stomped her aching feet against the unforgiving metal keys strewn below, and instinctively pressed up with the threatened appendage, smashing the invader against the roof of her mouth. The fly exploded, a foul taste permeated Nora’s mouth. She prepared herself for another bite, but it never came. The buzzing was gone.
Akemi’s voice came through after a few silent minutes, “It seems the two flies were either not very hungry or are already asleep. They are only active in the daylight you see.” Nora in her prison smiled around the gag a bit, knowing they weren’t sleeping.
“You know, my little masochist, I don’t feel like two or three bites are much of a punishment for your sneaking about behind my back. Tell you what, here, hold these.” Nora felt three keys pressed into one of her hands. “Those are the keys to the box and the blindfold. Meanwhile, I’ve placed the key to your cuffs among the others on the floor. So, now you get to finish your escape attempt! Isn’t that sweet of me, my love?”
Nora moaned in disbelief. She suspected her roommate had planned to make her endure both all along. Akemi was being unfair and cruel, but it was exactly the sort of treatment Nora longed for. Her sex was slick already when suddenly she felt her panties pulled down, dropping around her ankles and something glide into her. The intruder began vibrating and Nora instantly recognized it as her favorite vibrator humming away at full blast. Nora could barely focus on Akemi’s next words, “If it gets to be too much, drop the keys in your hand and I’ll release you. Now then, don’t take too long and don’t drop that reward between your legs. If you do, I’ll shove an uncorked vial of fire ants in that wet pussy.”
The idea of such a terrible thing befalling her was both motivating thanks to the fear it instilled and arousing as her masochistic mind irrationally relished the pain it promised. A powerful orgasm pulsed through her. She barely managed to clench her legs and lower lips to hold the buzzing device in place. A close call. Once the first orgasm finished, Nora set about her task. First, she annoyingly flicked away the panties at her ankles. Then she started the repetitious act that was so familiar now. The fatigue of the last hour, combined with the need to keep her legs together so the vibrator wouldn’t slip free, made her move sluggishly, but one by one she pulled the keys up to her fingers with her toes and tried them. After five failed attempts, Akemi broke her silence taunting, “Tick-Tock, my Nora. I’m getting bored, and I’m starting to think you need the fire ants to motivate you.”
Nora whined in protest, but she tried to appease Akemi, working faster even if it was riskier. The result was three of the next five keys never even made it to her free hand as she dropped them from her toes. Akemi laughed each time and teased her about how far away each landed. The fifth key in the recent sequence, tenth overall, proved to be the winner. Unfortunately for Nora, the excitement at her imminent freedom was eclipsed by another orgasm hitting. Her mind and body couldn’t take anymore and Nora fell into the orgasm, her mind blanking and her body convulsing uncontrollably. When sanity returned, Nora heard a slow clap from somewhere in the room followed by Akemi’s voice, “Bravo my bondage puppet, that was a remarkable climax and it seems you’ve actually unlocked your cuffs. Unfortunately, though, you failed to keep your friend in place between your legs. You know what that means?”
Nora immediately started blubbering and sobbing out pleas of mercy fearfully, but for some reason, she didn’t drop the three keys in her now freed hands. In truth, she couldn’t drop them. Not because she needed them to unlock her remaining restraints, but instead they were a symbol of her recently revealed love for Akemi. Dropping them would mean failing her, a denial of their mutual feelings finally laid bare. No, those keys would never drop so long as Akemi didn’t want them to. Nora would endure anything Akemi demanded. Any punishment would be a trifle compared to letting the other woman down. Her resolve hardened. Nora awaited the coming pain, Akemi’s gift to her. She would accept it willingly for her.
Nora finally felt Akemi’s presence near her, then her touch, not below, but wrapping her in a gentle embrace. Akemi spoke, the cruelty and coldness gone, her words now warm and soft as they usually were, “Nora, your will never ceases to amaze me. Don’t worry, I never planned to actually use the ants. Now let’s get you down and see to those bites.”
…
Epilogue
Nora lay across the couch, her bandaged head resting in Akemi’s lap. She stared up into those dark, but sweet eyes, a smile stretched on her own face. The entomologist smiled back, until her features scrunched, a hand tracing the edges of where she had treated the horse fly bites, “I’m so sorry, Nora. I let myself get swept up in the moment. I knew better. Can you ever forgive me?”
Nora sat up. She winced, everything ached. She pulled her face to no more than an inch in front of Akemi’s, “It was every dark nightmare and beautiful dream I’ve had wrapped into a perfect package.” Nora planted a kiss on the worried woman’s lips, continuing after the pause it created, “And I would endure anything to make this a reality.” She leaned in again for another kiss. Nora still didn’t like bugs, but she would find a way to put up with them and face her fear for Akemi, and after today, she had to admit she could see how useful they might prove.