Virtue
by Brian Kimberling
[ fiction - may 07 ]
He waited till after the honeymoon, though he had readied everything beforehand. As soon as they had entered the apartment and he had put the luggage down on the floor he fetched the handcuffs from where he had hidden them near the door. He grabbed her nearest wrist and encircled it with one thin metal cuff.
"Oooh," she said. They had tried silk cords before, and she trusted him. "Feeling frisky?"
He smiled and led her to the bedroom, holding on to the other handcuff. She was surprised that he did not lead her toward the bed. Instead he crossed the room and shackled her to the radiator.
"What are you doing?" she asked breathlessly, trying to be sexy but clearly miffed. He smiled as he lifted her skirt and pulled her underwear down and off. Then he disappeared into the closet.
She heard a metallic clang and this bewildered her more. There wasn't anything metal in the closet that she knew of.
"Honey," she called.
He reappeared with a large sports bag in hand that clinked as he moved.
"I was getting lonely without you," she said as she tried to smile relief. He smiled back. He withdrew a larger set of manacles from the bag and chained her legs together at the ankles before she could protest. He reached in the bag and withdrew a roll of duct tape.
"Sweetie," she said, fully nervous now. "I can't move with my legs chained, sweetie." She forced a smile. "We can't - "
He produced a long hunting knife from the bag with his free hand.
"Sweetie," she said - almost yelled. She wanted to shout, scream, what the hell are you doing? Let me go! But she loved him and she would not shout. "We can't make love!" she cried. "I mean I'm not very comfortable!"
He had cut a piece of duct tape from the roll with the knife as she spoke and placed it firmly over her mouth. She squealed and squirmed but he simply laid the knife and the duct tape down on the wooden floor and watched.
There was a brief moment after she had stopped struggling when he could see that her eyes were searching his for love or reason or something to trust. Some thing to indicate that whatever this was it would be over soon. He let her search. He even vaguely wondered what she would find, and whether in the end it might not be to her liking.
At any rate not until she resigned herself to immobility and began to look at the ceiling did he pull the last item from the bag. Its moving parts clanged and she looked down again at the sound.
At first sight she thought that it was a large, misshapen helmet. It had holes that intuition said were meant for eyes, though close inspection revealed that the holes were one in front and the other in back. There were also enormous areas where the side of the head would have been exposed if it had been a helmet. Still she couldn't work out what it was. She wondered if it were some kind of medieval torture device.
He somehow deftly split it in two parts, and laying one part on the floor, began to lift her body up and slide the second part beneath her. She felt the cold metal against her buttocks and began to understand. She tried to scream and resist but she was effectively immobilized and he was much stronger. Soon he had affixed the top piece to the bottom firmly and pocketed a small metal key.
Looking down she saw that from the tops of her legs to the bottom of her belly she was encased in metal with only two tiny apertures for her basic scatological needs.
Her alarm grew when he unshackled her feet, uncuffed her wrists, and ripped the duct tape from her face so swiftly it almost didn't hurt.
"Come on," he said, helping her to her feet. "I'm hungry."
