“It was a warning,” Trish said adamantly, tossing her auburn hair back.  She looked relaxed in a short-sleeved camouflage shirt and trousers.

We were sitting on the back verandah the next day – Monica, me, Trish and Mary.  Our abduction was raising all kinds of conspiracy theories, including whether it was in fact a practical joke.  Monica had – most insensitively, I thought – grilled the other girls as to whether they’d been in on it, but with horrified denials and hurt looks being the only result.  I knew they’d never dare, and they knew they’d never get away with it if they did.  We had established it was not a robbery, for nothing was missing from Monica’s bag and my wallet had not been touched, nor had anything been stolen from the van.

“A warning about what?” I asked.

Trish shrugged her shoulders and speculated with the husky voice I found irresistible.  “I don’t know.  What have you two been up to lately that you shouldn’t have?  Who have you got following you from a past life?  What secrets are you hiding?”

“Nothing, nobody and none,” I said firmly.

“Nobody is that boring,” Mary observed.  She was looking just a tad out of place amongst the four of us, sporting her Gestapo uniform with the long black leather skirt, black knee-length boots and tight-fitting white shirt and tie. She looked lean and mean, and I was glad I didn’t have to answer to her for any misdemeanour.  Her peaked cap lay on the table on top of a riding crop, while her black jacket hung over the back of a chair.  I reckoned she had been giving one of our regulars, Isobel, a bit of a touch up.

Monica was thoughtful.  “I think Trish is right,” she said, “though I can’t for the life of me see the point.  There’s no doubt in my mind that whoever did it is in the business.  The bondage was too good, too thoughtful.  And the vibrator and clips were too typical.”

“So who might have it in for you?” I asked. “Have you got enemies?”

“Maybe, but none that I would really identify as such.  In this business you get some funny customers.”

“The practitioners are a bit odd as well,” I remarked.

Mary tucked an errant strand of her short black hair behind her ear. “Speak for yourself,” she said.

“So it could maybe have been a disgruntled customer from here hiring a rival establishment to carry out a hit?” I ventured.

“We don’t have disgruntled customers, Steven,” Monica said firmly.

“I imagine Wayne Bennelli was the ultimate disgruntled customer when he woke up in the crate at the Bi-Bikers headquarters in Sydney,” remarked Trish.

“Paying customers, dummy,” Monica retorted.  “People who break in here deserve what they get, and somehow I don’t think Wayne Bennelli would stop at a simple overnight bondage scenario when he could have had us in some long, slow, torture.  No, there’s something more to this – something we’re missing.”

“What about other competition?” I persisted.  “Just how much is there here in Brisbane?”

Monica took a sip of her wine before replying, then eased herself back in her chair.  “There are more places than you might think, Steven.  We three have all worked in other places before I got the money to set up here.  Some are one-woman outfits, some have several girls, and there’s at least one larger than ours.  Mistress Heather, if I’m not mistaken, Trish?”  Trish nodded. “She’s down on the south side.  Not in our class, of course.  Size isn’t everything, is it girls.”  She smiled.  “Quality and style count for something as well, and I don’t believe we have too much competition in that regard.”

“So it’s not a turf war?” I said.

“I don’t think so.  It’s not like we’re having an ongoing dispute with any of these others.  I get on quite well with some of them.”

“Which leaves us where?”

“A warning that we don’t understand,” Trish concluded.

There was silence around the table.  None of us was particularly happy with that conclusion, but none of us could think of a better explanation.

Jill emerged from the kitchen at that point, also wearing a camouflage shirt and slacks, both seeming a size too small, giving her quite a sexy appearance in the eyes of one who liked girls in uniforms.  She looked fit and tanned from the late summer sun we had recently experienced, her blonde helmet of hair bobbing around her neck as she walked.

“Isobel is about to make her escape,” she announced.  This statement put paid to further discussion and we stood as one to leave the verandah.

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes later we were all in position.  What we were about to try out had originally come from Monica as a variation on the World War II theme that had evolved with Isobel, one of our regulars.  Isobel was into the Resistance in a fairly major way, such that she had spent a number of sessions in the basement at the hands of Mary, our Gestapo Queen, where Isobel endeavoured to resist Mary’s persuasive powers.  Sometimes these were in the form of stringent bondage and painful floggings, while at other times they included some methods of a more pleasurable nature – the carrot and stick approach.  As with all our clients, we were always looking to make their fantasies larger than life, and it was Monica who suggested we should be making better use of the large wooded acreage to the rear of Bilboes for this purpose.  After some discussion we decided that an assault course could be built – something that could provide an extension to the rigours of the electrically-modified exercise machines in Jillian’s gym, with a series of physical tests overseen by the Bilboes staff.  The ease with which the course could be completed could be controlled by the degree of restraint users were forced to endure in the process. 

Of course one thing led to another as the idea developed – not surprisingly, given the high degree of imagination within team members.  It was Trish who had suggested the course could be adapted as part of a fantasy escape for Isobel.  I thought it then needed some real-life encouragement, which was how we got on to the paint ball idea, and which was now why Trish and Jill were wearing fatigues and lying in wait for their hapless victim who would inevitably blunder into their hands.  Beyond that point I was not sure what would happen.

In this instance Monica had left the construction to Trish and myself.  We had decided on certain things that we wanted, while Monica had reviewed the overall plan and safety elements that went with it.  We had spent a week with a small bobcat excavating and installing pipes, posts, nets, pools, paths, poles and tripwires.  Then had come the logistics of controlling the whole thing.  We had built a small tree fort, just big enough for four people, some ten metres up in a large gum tree, from where we could see most of the assault course.  Fifty metres distant was a second observation post that could pick up areas not visible from the first. 

The area of the course was about three hundred metres by fifty, being the rear of the long block, the front of which was occupied by the house.  It was lightly wooded, with some open grassy areas and some areas of long grass and undergrowth, through which ran a stream in a small gully.

Monica and I now stood on the main observation platform, with a pair of binoculars and a small walkie-talkie.  On the second platform was Mary, while Trish and Jill lay in wait in the nearby undergrowth.  Isobel would first have to travel over the assault course, moving away from the house towards the end of the property.  The course ended here, at which point she would follow the track in a U-turn and have to run the gauntlet of Jill and Trish to get back to the house, which represented safety.  Like us, the other girls had walkie talkies, and the odds really didn’t look good for Isobel. 

“Mary told her she was going out for half and hour, leaving Isobel time to think about her answers,” Monica told me.  “She said if Isobel was not cooperative by the time she returned, Mary would hang her upside down, beat her, then use a cattle prod up her bum and battery clamps on her nipples.  Knowing Mary she’s put the fear of God into Isobel, who I’m sure will believe Mary capable of just that.  The idea is that when Leila sneaks in and offers the opportunity of escape, Isobel will jump at it.”

“Who in their right mind wouldn’t?” I murmured. 

“Quite. But then these are people who like pain and bondage, so let’s not bring issues of sanity into it,” said Monica with a wry smile. 

“Of course.  And you are people who like inflicting it, so the less said the better, yes?”

Monica smiled again, but made no comment, instead raising the glasses to her eyes and watching the house.

“Here she comes now.”

I watched as two women appeared over the ridge from the house beyond.  One was the blonde Leila, the other the dark Isobel. Both were dressed in nineteen forties style, but while Leila wore strappy shoes with her flowing floral dress, Isobel wore knee-length black boots.  They were not exactly wartime style, but Monica had decreed that safety was of more importance when there may possibly be the odd snake about, and where there would definitely be the odd tripwire.  The other difference was that Leila had her limbs free, and she was guiding Isobel by the arm.

Isobel had her wrists secured in front by leather cuffs locked together, with similar cuffs about her ankles secured by a half-metre length of chain.  This was longer than the average hobble chain, and would prove somewhat of a hindrance, I suspected, with a tendency to catch on all manner of things.

Monica handed me the binoculars.  I focused on the running pair.  Isobel was running blind, her eyes covered with a black scarf.  A black ball gag was strapped into her mouth and she struggled to keep pace with Leila.  Isobel wore a long sleeved floral dress which flowed to below her knees.  It looked as though it had come in for some rough treatment from Mary, for it was torn in places, most specifically in two vertical rips that showed glimpses of bouncing breasts as she was hustled across the grass.  In amongst the breast flesh I saw silver clips protruding through the tears in the material, with small weights bouncing at the end of the clips.

“They’re locked on,” Monica said, as if reading my thoughts. “Even with a bit of freedom for her hands she won’t be able to get them off.”

“A la Madam Wong?” I queried, recalling our painful encounter in Macau with the local bondage queen there. 

“Yes.  We gained some knowledge from the experience.”

“I expect she did, too,”  I said, recalling the last we had seen of her, chained up painfully in the lightwell of her house with restraints that would have taken a fair (and embarrassing)  amount of cutting free.

“Has the route been cleared of nasties?” Monica asked, changing tack.

“I understand Jill did a thorough trample through the area, and the pipes have been flushed to get rid of any snakes or other inhabitants.” 

“Good,” said Monica.  “That’s one aspect of it which I wouldn’t like.”

“So you’d enjoy everything else about it?” I teased.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You just thought it – I know.”

Leila and Isobel disappeared from sight at that point.  Mary’s voice came over the radio.

“They’re entering the shed now,” she announced.

We could not see the start of the assault course. This particular point of commencement was a prefabricated garden shed of the kind you can pick up at most garden centres.  It was about two metres by one and a half, and in this instance had been half buried in the hillside.  Once a person was locked inside, the only way out was to crawl out through a tunnel, made up initially of  inverted U-shaped concrete channels about seventy centimetres square.  It was no worse than crawling under a table, except that the floor was of dirt and it was pitch black.  We had sealed the shed tightly to prevent ingress of snakes and the like, and the outlet of the tunnel was such that snakes could not enter. 

The concrete tunnel sloped downwards slightly for about five metres, before it changed to a circular section made of sheetmetal ducting, of the type used for air conditioning ducts.  At this point the slope of the tunnel became steeper and steeper until it was nearly vertical.  There was only a short section like this and the outside light would now be visible, such that anybody going down head first would see the mud pool before they let go and dropped into it.  By this time, however, there was no option to go back.  The duct was supported away from the bank with a series of steel struts, ending up like one of those drop-chutes builders use for directing rubbish into a dumpster from a multi-storied building under construction.  Trish and I had had a lot of very dirty fun in testing the thing. After some experimentation to get the consistency of the mud right, and to keep it so, I had resorted to adding some bentonite, a substance used in ground drilling.  Bentonite is like a liquefied clay and is thick and slushy and slimy.  In short, the pool was a mud-wrestler’s delight.

I watched as Leila came into view from behind a tree, to stand watching the pool.  From our position we could just see the duct outlet above the mud hole. Evidently Isobel must have been having second thoughts about escaping, for a long time seemed to pass before there was a sudden wail and a body dropped headfirst from the duct, which was about a metre above the surface. 

Isobel disappeared in a spurt of mud and came up looking like the creature from the black lagoon.  The mud was pretty dense and wasn’t exactly stuff to sink to the bottom of.  In any case, it was barely chest deep directly under the duct, as Isobel found out, and the bottom of the pond sloped rapidly up to the only way out on the opposite side. 

Isobel was spitting and wiping her face and hair with muddied hands as she got her bearings.  I saw that she was wearing swim goggles – a precaution we had decided on.  Not only did they protect eyes from mud and other possible hazards,  but these particular ones were designed for underwater vision, and wearing them topside tended to distort things considerably, which all added to the fun.  In Isobel’s case, rather than the normal rubber headband, they were secured with a buckled strap locked behind her head, and another at right angles, running from her temples under her chin and locking there.

Isobel was now minus her gag.  While this had evidently been locked in place during the escape with Leila, it had apparently not been too tight, for left to her own devices, Isobel had been able to work it free, and it now hung around her neck.  This was again part of the strategy, for we did not want clients choking in mud or water.

Leila kept watch as Isobel scrambled up the steep bank, slipping and sliding back several times on the surface we had recently hosed down for just that effect.  Then, satisfied that the prisoner was all right, Leila turned and headed in our direction.

The mud hole had only one exit route, which was lined with barbed wire, directing the escapee to a small gateway, about a metre square in a block wall twice that size. The gateway appeared to be closed by a black polythene sheet, which had to be pushed aside.  Isobel soon found that the sheet actually stretched back from the gateway, and was secured to the ground such that she was soon obliged to crawl on all fours, and then on her belly, such was the tightness of the sheet.  The polythene sheet, of industrial grade and doubled over for strength, went for nearly fifteen metres, and again we had made sure the ground was nice and muddy underneath.  At the ten metre mark we had overlaid a heavy rope cargo net over the top of the polythene, of the sort used in playgrounds and on ‘real’ assault courses.  From personal experience it was hard enough crawling under the sheet, without the weight of the rope net on top, and I knew the clips and weights locked on Isobel’s nipples would be catching and being tugged repeatedly, but there would be no going back now, and she knew it.

Her bonds would also be causing her some difficulty, for normally under such conditions one would keep one’s arms slightly ahead of one’s face, but I doubted with her wrists cuffed together whether this was an option.  That meant arms and breasts were running interference.  Mmmm, painful, I thought.

Leila joined us on the platform as the lump under the black polythene and netting paused, obviously wondering how long the crawling torture had to continue. 

“How’s she doing?” Leila asked, catching her breath from the climb up the rope ladder.

“About as unfit and out of breath as you are, I reckon,” I needled.

“Don’t be awful to me,” she said, poking her tongue out.  “Mon, make him stop…”

“Now children…”  Monica chided. “Be good or Auntie Monica won’t let you tie each other up and whip the crap out of the other.  Isobel’s doing fine, though she won’t be breaking any records, I suspect.”

“That crotch belt won’t be helping,” Leila said.  “She has a number one front and a number two in her rear.”

“Oh dear,” said Monica, smiling unsympathetically.  “And with all that mud lubricating things too.  I can’t wait for the pole.  You really are wicked, Leila dear.  I don’t know where you get these ideas.  Hullo – she’s made it to the hole.”

Isobel’s head had popped out from the polythene sheet through a hole just near the end of it.  She found herself still under the net, which now rose up above her over a beam supported on two three-metre posts.  Under Isobel was a second net, again going over the top of the beam, sandwiching her between the two.  Climbing this was not difficult under normal circumstances, except for the hamper factor created by the top net.  And except when your hands are cuffed together, your feet are on a hobble chain, and nipple weights keep catching on every strand of the net.  And that was before we got to butt plugs and dildos working around inside you to take the edge off your concentration. 

Isobel struggled up the net, pausing a number of times to untangle the weights as they caught on the ropes, before easing her way through the tight space between the nets as she slid sideways over the beam.  I was sure I heard a cry of pain as she did so.  Nasty clips, I thought.  Then she was down and finally lifted the edge of the upper net to find herself in the clear. 

‘Clear’ was not quite the right word, for it would normally imply some sort of freedom of choice.  In fact Isobel’s path was defined through this part of the course by a barbed wire corridor a couple of metres wide.  Inevitably these enforced guidelines directed her through a couple patches of waist high thistles, which we had utilised, before she topped the rise leading down the gully into the stream. I watch her through the binoculars as she slipped and slithered down the path to the stream.  She looked like a refugee from a mud-room beauty treatment, her once clean dress now a brown mess clinging provocatively to the curves of her body.  I knew the bentonite would be making its way into every orifice, sliding and lubricating.  It would also be inside her boots, squishing between her toes and calves and making walking more difficult. 

The barbed wire strands narrowed at this point to converge on a pole spanning the stream. The stream was about a metre deep and about three metres wide, but any contestant was not going to have the luxury of washing themselves – not without falling off the pole and having a difficult climb up the steep bank.  Isobel paused as if considering her options – not that she really had any choice.  The pole was an old telephone pole about twenty centimetres in diameter – plenty strong enough, but too narrow to walk over.  Poor Isobel had no choice but to sit astride it and inch her way across.  This was where the hobble chain really came into its own, for it meant her feet were bent at the knees and trailing behind her.

“That puts a lot of pressure on your pussy,” said Leila. 

“Have you tried it?”  Monica asked.

“Trish told me.  Apparently she and Steven did a lot of experimentation on it.”

“Oh did you?”  Monica gave me an arch look.

“All in the interests of safety and customer satisfaction,” I said.

“And what about Trish’s satisfaction?”

“You’d better ask her,” I suggested, doing my best to avoid the issue and not go down this road.  Such things always got me or somebody else into trouble.

At that moment Isobel, about to climb on to the pole, slipped on to her backside with a cry that just carried to us.  Obviously her boots, half full of mud and with three-inch heels, were not the best for negotiating steep stream banks that were muddy in their own right.

“I bet that hurt,” said Monica with just a touch of suppressed glee.  “A number two, was it, Leila?”

“Yes, Mon.  Pain in the arse, huh?”

It would have been.  Isobel got up stiffly, trying vainly to massage her bum with her cuffed hands.  She rearranged her dress as best she could, tugging it free from where it had ridden up into her crotch, as she reluctantly contemplated the stream crossing before her.  The end of the beam was buried in the side of the earth bank.  Isobel leaned over the beam at a point where it was around waist height, then slid herself on to the pole, dragging her chained feet up so that they straddled it behind her, held there by the chain draped over the top.

At this point Isobel realised that getting across was not going to be so easy, stretched out on her stomach.  She managed to sit up, with some difficulty, tucking her feet in closed to her arse like a jockey with high stirrups, then tentatively began to work her way forward, sliding her hands a little way then following with her body, then dragging her legs.

It was not hard to see that between the combination of the mud, her limited movement, and the weight of her body pressing down on the dildos embedded inside her, a certain amount of stimulation was going to occur.  Looking at her through the binoculars I surmised that I saw a flush on her cheeks under the streaks of mud, but it was hard to tell.  I could not help but notice the walnut-sized lead nipple weights swinging freely, back and forth, as she inched her way forward.  Her reliance on her hands for support on the beam meant she could not even temporarily relieve the painful tugging on her nipples by supporting the weights in her hands, even for a few moments.

The orgasm caught her about halfway across, I reckon.  It wasn’t hard to tell, even for me, and I’m no expert on women.  In this case Isobel’s forward movements became smaller and she abruptly laid herself facedown on the pole and clasped it as best she could, with her elbows each side.  Her body now slid backwards and forwards against the wood, obviously well-lubricated by the mud.  She managed to pin the weights against the side of the pole with her arms long enough to focus on the climax building inside her, until finally she was humping the pole like one possessed.

“The little tramp,” observed Monica. “Some people just have no shame, carrying on like that in a public place.  You’d never catch me doing that.”

“These things can be arranged,” I murmured, loud enough only for Leila to hear – or so I thought.

“Don’t even think about it, Steven,” Monica said.  “Not if you know what’s good for you and not if you want to see your next birthday from a position of relative freedom.”

“Yes Ma’am,” I acquiesced lamely.  But the seed had been sown.  Would I dare?

Isobel was in the throes of it by now, jerking and arching as the orgasm overpowered her control and she lost her grip in more ways than one – certainly on the pole in any case.  With a shriek and a splash she tipped sideways and fell the metre or so into the stream.

“The original cold water treatment,” smirked Leila.  “Works every time.”  We were all grinning at Isobel’s plight as she stood up somewhat unsteadily and took advantage of the unexpected dip to wash the worst of the mud from her hair and face.  “Trish reckons the water’s not that warm, either,” Leila added.

“She looked like she was plenty heated up,” Monica observed.  “But she’s losing time.  What did you tell her about that?”

“I said she’d have to hurry to beat the guards at the end of the route, who were on lunch break,” Leila said.

“When in fact the guards have no lunch break and will get her no matter how long she takes?”

“Correct, but she doesn’t know that.”

“Too bad.”

Isobel had obviously decided she had better get a move on, for she scrambled out of the water and up the steep bank at the other end of the pole with a most undignified haste, her now dripping wet dress clinging to her body.  At the top of the bank the barbed wire corridor continued again, leading to a series of stepping stones in a wide mud pool. While the pool was barely ankle deep, Isobel had no way of knowing this. The stepping stones were flat and reasonably sized, but they were also just far enough apart such that a person with a hobble chain had to actually jump between each, rather than step.  In all there were six of them, and Isobel crossed the pool with a series of standing jumps, no doubt feeling the hard jerk of the lead weights on her nipples with each landing, for she needed her arms outstretched to gain momentum, and could not protect her tender flesh from the ravages of the weights.  It was a cruel but very effective trick.  I was sure we heard a couple of cries reaching us on the breeze as she completed the pool traverse.

After the pool the barbed wire led her in a gentle U-turn, until she was lined up on a straight run home through relatively open bush and grass.  There was a path through the middle of this, but after the fugitive had been felled several times by trip wires in the first fifty metres, she decided it might be better to stay off this.

That was when I opened up with the battery-powered loud hailer.  It was located some eighty metres from our position in the tree, connected by a cable to a microphone hanging on a nail beside us.  When I first used it, Isobel was less than ten metres from the megaphone and she nearly died at the voice suddenly yelling from a nearby bush.

“Achtung! Achtung!  Prisoner Leroux!  You cannot escape!  You are surrounded!  Give yourself up!”

Isobel dropped into the grass while we chortled at the mortified expression on her face. 

“Hande hoch!” I said in my best German, trying hard not to sound like Sergeant Schultz.  Monica gave me a thumbs up.  “Stand still and surrender!” 

Isobel stayed where she was for about a minute before cautiously raising her head and running in a crouch to the shelter of a nearby tree trunk.  I noticed she had her cuffed wrists crossed so that she could hold the nipple weights while she ran.

“It’s no good hidink behind zer tree, Isobel Leroux.  Give yourself up und zings vill be easier for you!”

“Liar,” Leila murmured. 

I estimated Isobel was only twenty metres from where Jill and Trish were hidden, and she had to pass between them. She continued to make her way forward, slowly this time, probably wondering how much I was bluffing and why she was not being attacked if she was that obvious.  That was when Trish and Jill popped up and opened up with their paint ball guns.

We had purchased a number of these guns with a view to operating a more sophisticated version of the normal war games, in the area we were now watching.  We had checked out the usual paint ball games and found them somewhat lacking in sophistication, not least through the focus on firing as many shots as rapidly as possible.  We were in the midst of finalising our own “bondage paint ball”, where the guns were modified to only fire every three seconds, with every ‘hit’ resulting in a limb being restrained somehow – a sort of ‘bondage wound’. We had done some experimentation with this and it had proved a lot of fun. But in the scenario now in front of us, the guns had been returned to their original rapid rate of fire with the paint ball magazines mounted on top.

This was, of course, another reason why Isobel had the protective swim goggles strapped on. In this instance she was hit by a barrage of red and yellow paint balls that splattered all over her now pretty dishevelled dress.  She fell to the ground in confusion as Trish and Jill emerged from their hideouts and rushed to stand over her.  They looked quite fearsome in their camouflage fatigues, their heads hidden by black balaclavas and the sinister dark green protective face masks normally worn in paintball games. 

Together they grabbed Isobel by the arms and dragged her to her feet, hauling her the last fifty metres through another patch of thistles and into a clearing near the edge of the bush. Here Isobel was prepared for her fate.  Pushed against a tree trunk, her elbows were joined with a rope around the back of the tree, thus immobilising her in one action.  A second rope joined her ankles via the same route, stretching them back around the tree trunk as much as the hobble chain would permit.

One of the masked figures took the ball hanging around the prisoner’s neck and refastened it in Isobel’s mouth, obviously securing it considerably tighter than it had been originally. Then Mary appeared, having left her viewing post, striding imperiously out of the trees into the clearing.  We were too far away to hear the words that were said at that point, but it was evident that the jack-booted and leather-skirted Mary was far from pleased and that Isobel’s attempted escape had been doomed from the start. There was much shaking of the head from Isobel, but I could not see the expression in her eyes because of the goggles still locked in place.

Mary stood before the helpless woman and slowly began to unbutton the bedraggled dress.  It had buttons all the way down the front, and Mary was clearly in no hurry.  She opened the dress to reveal Isobel’s nakedness beneath it.  The woman’s breasts were small and jutting, the nipples turned down from the presence of the clips with their dangling weights.  Mary tugged at the clips far from gently and Isobel’s head jerked.  The breasts heaved in an unfortunate response as she obviously caught her breath in reaction to the pain. 

I watched all this through the binoculars, seeing actions and lip movements like a television set with the sound muted.  With the removal of the dress, which now hung open over Isobel’s arms, still cuffed together in front of her, I could see the glint of sunlight on a steel chain around her waist, with the crotch strap disappearing between her spread legs.  As if registering my observation, Mary let a black-gloved hand drop to Isobel’s pussy and work the secured dildo deeper inside her victim.  Isobel stiffened and her head shook again as she tried to arch herself upward and forward with the movement of Mary’s hand.  Mary continued with the stimulation, driving Isobel to bounce faster and faster on the balls of her feet, making rapid pelvic thrusts before finally shuddering and jerking in the manner of a puppet on a string.

It seemed Mary had in fact been granting the condemned one last wish, for she now pulled a black bandanna from her pocket and tied it behind Isobel’s head, over the top of the goggles, before stepping back.  Mary appeared now to be declaring Isobel had finally gone too far and her time was up.

Unseen, but no doubt sensed by Isobel, Jill and Trish took up their positions a few strides away from the woman bound to the tree.  Isobel was now shaking her head more vigorously and trying to struggle against her bonds as Mary directed the firing squad.  The “Ready… Aim… Fire!” carried to us as the fusillade of paint balls splattered into the naked body of Isobel as she writhed under the impact.

Paint balls sting, which is why players usually wear varying degrees of protection.  Fired from close enough, they can bruise the flesh, but not as much, of course, as a severe thrashing from Mistress Mary.  On this basis it could be argued that Isobel was getting off lightly, as the spurts of red and yellow erupted over her breasts, stomach, thighs and pussy.  Jill and Trish emptied their magazines – a process which took perhaps two minutes, allowing for some judicious pauses to permit the prisoner to undergo a rather slower death than normal.

With this experience hard on the heels of her orgasm, Isobel slumped in her bonds, inasmuch as she could.  Clearly she was physically and emotionally exhausted, a fact rammed home as the three soldiers turned and noisily headed back to the house.  Isobel hardly moved.  The only sign of life was the slow heaving of her breasts as paint ran down her stomach and legs, congealing in a pool on the ground.

“Excellent,” Monica said.  “Leila, why not go and read a book nearby for half an hour before taking our client to the sluice room to clean up. Maybe she’d like some nice treatment after that, or maybe she just needs to sleep it off.  Whatever she wants, okay.”

Leila grinned.  “Sure, Mon.”  then she turned and disappeared down the rope ladder.  Monica turned to me with a satisfied smile.

“Very well, mein Herr.  That was very good.  You are to be commended on your organisation and ingenuity.”

“Danke,” I said, endeavouring to click my heels, but finding this didn’t work in sneakers.  “I think we’ve all earned lunch, nein?”

“Sure, whatever.”

*   *   *