“Care to be the artisan’s assistant?”  I asked.

“Delighted,” she said, giving me her bewitching smile that always seemed to make me blush.  Considering the things she had managed to do to me when I was incapable of resistance, compared to the one and only time I had got my own back, it was a pretty bizarre relationship we had developed, and even stranger that nobody had caught us actually at it.  For the moment – unless Jill had been pillow talking to Emma -  it remained our own little secret.

I explained to Jill what I had been tasked to do and what I needed to be done, and we made our way into the dungeon.  Madam Wong, still bound to the bars, raised her head at the sound of the door opening and our footsteps crossing the concrete floor.  Neither Jill nor I spoke.  We had decided to add just a little uncertainty to the process.

Jill let her fingers begin to explore the helpless woman’s body, slipping in and out of her pussy and lightly caressing her breasts.  In no time the pink nipples were erect and hard, and were made more so as Jill nibbled at them and teased them with her tongue.  Madam Wong began to breathe heavily, her breaths tinged with soft moans of pleasure. At my signal Jill stepped aside to allow me to smooth a piece of plastic cling film over each breast, smoothing it down over the plump flesh and ensuring it clung tightly to the hard, pointing nipples that stood proud of the surface.  Madam Wong had small, pink areolae and nipples that were high, almost as much as a fingertip. I gave them each a final tweak as the plastic stuck to the flesh, eliciting a shudder from the prisoner.

The next step was to mix up a batch of builder’s bog – a rapid-hardening paste from a tin which was made to harden by the addition of a chemical hardener.  There was an art to this.  What I was trying to achieve was a workable impression of Madam Wong’s boobs, with the nipples erect.  To do this I needed her upright, since women’s breasts tend to go odd-shaped in the prone position, unless artificially supplemented. In the vertical position, the use of pourable materials would not work, leaving me to use a paste. Builder’s bog can set in a matter of minutes if too much hardener is used, and can become unworkable in half that time.  When hard, it has the consistency of wood, able to be drilled, sawn and sanded.  In this case I had to mix and place the stuff as fast as I could, with Jill’s fingers keeping the nipples erect by judicious manipulation down below.

I pasted the goop on with a spatula.  It did not matter what the outside looked like – it was the inside form that was important. Madam Wong grunted at the feel of the paste on her boob, but could do little except wonder what we were up to, I guess.  It took me about two minutes to cover her right breast with the stuff, then the same time to mix up a second batch.  Five minutes later she had two rough pink covers over her breasts, looking rather like someone had splattered her very accurately with a couple of small plates of pink whipped cream.  I gave Jill the thumbs up and we returned to the Observation Room for a quarter of an hour to let the bog harden.

“What will you do with it now?”  Jill asked.

“The next step is to remove the stuff intact, so that we have two moulds of her boobs.  We then use these moulds to cast positive replicas of her tits.  I’ll probably do that with clear resin.  When that is done, I’ll use the replicas to cast another covering over them, again in clear resin.  These will be about a centimetre thick and will perfectly fit over her breasts with the nipples erect.  They’ll be like a cross between something from Barbarella, Boadicea’s armour, and your most provocative female robot.”

“The point being…?”

“The point being, my dear,  a tit-for-tat response –if you’ll pardon the pun - for the injuries she inflicted on me and Monica in the same area.  You see, these will fit so exactly they’ll be like a second skin.  And they’ll be stuck there with superglue, remaining until the skin eventually exfoliates in a month or so. For that time she’ll have exceedingly heavy tits, not to mention tits that are totally insensitive, are so uncomfortable that she can’t lie face down, and that stick out like something Madonna might have dreamed up.  They will have permanent and very pronounced bumps on them, indicating a continuous state of arousal, which, of course, will be exactly the opposite of what she is really able to feel.”

Jill sat there open-mouthed.  “Don’t tell me – Monica thought this one up.”

“You’re so perceptive, Jill.  Yet another attribute for your CV, over and above your ability to take advantage of helplessly bound males as the urge seizes you.” This time it was Jill who blushed. 

“I haven’t heard any complaints,” she murmured, avoiding my eye.

“Hardly possible at the time, and not really likely afterwards,” I said.

Jill looked through the one-way glass at Mary.  She had removed Megan’s hood and the tape from her eyes and was obviously shouting at her.  We had the microphones turned off, but it was plain what was happening, and I was glad I did not have to face the Gestapo Queen in this mood.

“Should it be hard now?”  Jill asked.

“What?” I was only half concentrating.

“The bog-stuff, silly.  What did you think I meant?”

In the circumstances, after the close encounter with Madam Wong, and the view of the naked Megan getting the treatment, Mr Willy had raised his head and I wondered if Jill had noticed. 

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, she should be done by now.”

*   *   *

Removal of the moulds turned out to be easier than I expected, and sure enough there was a perfect impression of a breast inside each one, albeit with faint cling wrap fold lines that could be sanded out in the positive moulding stage. 

Waxing the inside of each mould and pouring clear acrylic resin into each was straightforward.  We had plenty of the stuff lying around since Trish and Mary had bought far too much at the time when they had dealt to Wayne Bennelli while the rest of us had been in Macau.  Before long I had two perfect breasts lying on my work bench, the nipples stiff and upright.

I had wondered how best to create the “add-ons”, as I called the two pieces which would ultimately be glued to Madam Wong.  I wanted to do them in resin, since it had fluid properties that would enable a very close fit, rather than the rough builders bog.  Eventually I opted to used the bog moulds again, partially filled with resin, then with the acrylic breasts pushed down into the moulds keeping a thickness of about a centimetre away from the moulds.  It worked a treat, with the surplus resin dribbling over the top of the mould before the stuff finally set.  Pulling off the mould and extracting the acrylic tits left me with two ‘add-ons’, again in clear plastic.  I spent the rest of the afternoon painting concentric circles on them in black and white.  Who said builders weren’t artistic.

Monica was delighted and insisted we try them out at once.  Madam Wong was still bound to the bars, but was sporting the two terrible steel clamps that Portia had applied to Jillian when she was first imprisoned in the smallest niche under the stairs.  The Chinese woman was sobbing and moaning into her gag and as Monica roughly unscrewed the clamps Madam Wong shook her head violently and screamed  into the rubber ball.

Since we required her nipples to be erect, Monica had then to do a bit of cajoling in the pussy area, which brought forth more moans, this time of pleasure, but mixed with pain as Monica coaxed the nipples erect again.  Jill was looking in on the procedure as well, and thought it a huge joke the way I had painted the enhancements.  They fitted perfectly like moulded armour and gave Madam Wong a strange sixties look from the days when psychedelica ruled the fashion industry.   Monica tapped them with her knuckles.  Madam Wong, still unable to see what was happening, made a plaintive noise.

“Very good,” said Monica to me. “You really are a talented person.  We won’t put them on just yet.  We don’t want to hide those luscious nips too soon. There’s so much more pain they have to experience.” Madam Wong sobbed some more and further runnels of tears slid down from under the blindfold.

“Jill, it’s time for the operation,” Monica ordered.  Go and fetch Emma and Portia, please.”

*   *   *

I didn’t ask the details of what Monica had in mind, but suffice to say when I returned to the dungeon an hour later to collect some tools I had left there, both Portia and Madam Wong sported new adornments of a rather permanent kind, for both had had their labia pierced.  Emma was tidying up the sterilising equipment and was preparing to leave.

Madam Wong had not moved from her spread position on the wall bars, while Portia had been brought in and bound face up on the whipping bench.  Her legs had been parted and bent backwards down the sides of the bench, the ankles roped to an eyebolt.  Her arms had similarly been pulled forward down the sides and secured to the same anchor point.  Portia’s mouth was taped closed with multiple turns of duct tape wrapped around her head.  I could see the damp tear courses on her cheeks and from the corners of her eyes. 

“What do you think of my handiwork?” Emma asked.  I looked closely at Portia’s crotch and saw four small stainless steel rings inserted through each pussy lip in a neat row.

“You did this?” 

“With help from Monica and Jill.  What goes around, comes around, you know,” she said seriously.

“It’s very tidy,” I commented, noting that Madam Wong was now similarly adorned.  As we left and I closed the door behind us, Emma said:

“Those rings will eventually give them a nice little erotic thrill over and above whatever else they do to themselves down there.  However, in the meantime, if they were to be locked closed, that might tend to inhibit such erotic thrills, wouldn’t you think?”

“Much like certain inhibiting devices that were locked on to Leila and me?”

“And just as difficult to remove without the right tools.”

“So the plot sickens?”

Exactly.”

*  *   *

With the success of Madam Wong’s breast enhancements, Monica wanted a pair for Portia as well, so the following day was in part devoted to a repeat performance.  For the rest of the week I was busy most of the time working on designs for the float with Trish. She was the artistic one of the team and between us we worked out our materials list and spoke to Debbie in Sydney.  Trish must have been in a forgiving mood, for she had got over her stint on the Jolly Rogerer and was on speaking terms with me. 

She was also on speaking terms with Debbie after the latter had convinced Trish the Tax Office was about to bust Bilboes while Monica and the rest of us had been in Macau.  At the time Trish had got her own back by putting Debbie through a long period squirming and climaxing in my specially designed saddle, but not before Debbie had worried the hell out of Trish with the whole bogus scenario and Trish had been convinced she had betrayed the whole team.  Of course Monica had seen it as a great joke, and had returned the favour by forcing Trish to endure two hours in the saddle as well. 

In the short time that Debbie had stayed with us immediately after the prank, she and Trish had become firm friends.  Debbie worked as a freelance in a similar sort of establishment in north Sydney, and was now our point of contact for the entry of the Bilboes float in the Mardigras.  We had spoken to her and ascertained the dimensions of the truck we were hiring, and hence what our limitations were on the scope of the project.  We had then marked out the dimensions of the tray of the truck on the lawn and experimented with various layouts.

While all this was going on, Portia and Madam Wong were undergoing various torments in the dungeon.  I was beginning to think the Mardigras, for all its national and international exposure and resulting humiliation (if we had our way) would be light relief after the physical torture that our guests would be experiencing in the basement.

With two exceptions, I was not required to be involved in concocting these devious trials.  The first of these was to fasten two of the stainless steel collars that we had worn, around the necks of Portia and her employer.  As Emma had said, ‘what goes around, comes around’, and in this case it was quite the case, literally.  However Monica – as always – wanted to go one step further.  After I had drilled out the remaining rivets of a couple of collars and re-riveted them around the prisoners’ throats, Monica wanted to preclude the possibility of easy removal, and insisted that I weld them such that they could not be easily drilled out.  Stainless steel welding is a difficult art, and not one that I claim to be proficient at.  In this instance I compromised and deposited a glob of weld on each rivet, which would make it a real bugger to remove by drilling.  This process was not without its difficulties, and I had to make sure the necks and heads of the prisoners were well protected.  This was readily solved with leather discipline helmets, which just might have been purpose-designed for the situation.

The pair were decidedly not happy with the circumstances now forced on them, particularly when the little zapper power boxes were bolted on to the collars.  The women were released on to the back lawn with their wrists tied behind them at that point, where Monica and Jill spent an evidently enjoyable half hour chasing the pair about with bullwhips, snapping them at their arses. Again, the buried cable proved its stopping power as more than once the pair blundered into its zone of influence.

My second involvement in the revenge process came a day later when Monica asked me to make a couple of what she called ‘back plates’.  There were very quick to make, using a jig saw and some 16-millimetre plywood. Essentially they consisted of a piece of ply shaped like a rough hourglass to match a woman’s body.  Tight straps fastened it to the victim’s back, under the armpits and around the body above and below the breasts. Further straps hugged the waist and came through the crotch around the top of each thigh.

“It does wonders for posture,” Monica enthused as the boards were strapped to Madam Wong and Portia, and their wrists were cuffed to a ring at the bottom of the board on each side.  The pair were given some food in bowls on the back lawn.  All they had to do was to figure out how to eat it.  Both made the mistake of trying to bend forward from a kneeling position, which was impossible. They wound up on their faces in the grass and found it impossible to get up again.  They could roll on to their backs or sides, but the total inflexibility now forced on their spines left them unable to get to their feet.  They spent the afternoon that way, their restrictions made more discomforting by having to dodge further whips and through sporting rather weighty nipple clips.

*  *   *

While all this was going on, Mary had been doing a particularly thorough job on Megan. By Thursday night the poor girl was in an exhausted sleep and we had as good a picture of her background as we could ever hope to obtain. Monica had been doing some background checks with her friends under some official guise of being a bank wanting character references from her friends.  She had pieced together her life story and found that Megan Blake in fact had an accounting degree from the University of Queensland, and had decided that figures on paper were pretty dull when you had a suppressed urge to get off by beating the crap out of people who were prepared to pay for it, and to occasionally lighten things by having the reverse done to you. 

Megan had evidently dabbled in this, working part time as an accountant for the Citadel, her establishment on the south side of the river, and one thing had led to another – more specifically to Megan buying out the business.  She had a head for business and had soon turned a marginal operation into a very profitable one.  It was a slightly larger enterprise than Bilboes in terms of staff, but did not have live-in accommodation like ours.  It sounded quite different, in fact, and my curiosity was piqued when Monica said we would be paying a visit to the Citadel the next morning, personally guided by Megan.

Where Megan had gone wrong, it seemed, was in the fact that while she was a good judge of what constituted a good business opportunity, she was not so hot in judging the characters that presented that opportunity.  In this particular case, when she had been approached by Portia with dollars up front to act as a partner with local knowledge in what amounted to a joint venture, the dollar signs that came with siding with a billionaire’s wife with an unlimited budget were too large to resist.  To Megan it was just another business takeover, and since Bilboes was both a rival to hers and had the potential to substantially increase her turnover through a merger, the opportunity was too good to go past.  Add to this assets – people and property – which would be incorporated into Citadel Corp for next to nothing, and you had a thick layer of icing on the already very nice looking cake.  Megan was clearly lured by the prospect of taking the tangible assets, while Portia and her employer had the satisfaction of total humiliation of their nemesis, namely one Monica Armstrong.

Since she had arrived at Bilboes and seen the approach taken by Portia and Madam Wong, Megan’s scruples had begun to surface and she now bitterly regretted her actions.  I was told that this regret had been expressed time and again, not always under direct duress, but frequently loudly and usually with tears.  Our Megan Blake was a very unhappy teddy and the uncertainty of her fate was evidently weighing heavily on her mind.  I wondered exactly what fate Mistress Monica was dreaming up for the unfortunate inhabitant of the Interrogation Room.

*   *   *

Citadel Corp was in a semi-industrial part of Bulimba, bordering the Brisbane River.  Much of Bulimba is now becoming trendy, centred around the al fresco dining and cinemas of Oxford Street, yet just a kilometre away is an area of warehouses, small manufacturers and fabrication businesses on land which evidently has yet to be classed as residential, for it will be worth a mint once that happens.

Citadel Corp was a low three-storey warehouse.  Its walls were of concrete and the roof of a dark green steel.  The perimeter had been landscaped with high hedges but here and there the chain link fence with the barbed wire on top was visible. 

Monica swung the BMW into the entry gateway with an automatic gate.  She punched in the code Megan instructed from the back seat where she sat beside me.  She was wearing black leather pants and a long sleeved lycra roll-neck of dark green that hid any marks that might have been evident.  I did not know if this was the case, nor did I really want to.  Megan looked tired and pale, like someone caught up in a nightmare that seemed to offer no way out.  I had seen the remote activation module sitting on the seat beside Monica and I had a fair idea that Megan would have that evil zap plug embedded in her arse, just waiting for her to try something silly.

As the steel gate swung open, a roller door began to rise in the building five metres beyond.  I was struck with the realisation that this was where Monica and I had been taken during our first kidnapping, and where we must have waited while our captors rifled Monica’s bag and black book. 

There was no obvious personnel entry point other than a small door alongside the roller door. There was no reception sign, no front office.  It was all very strange, with the words “Citadel Corp” hanging in heavy gothic lettering above the roller door, black and silver against the grey of the concrete wall.

Inside the building it looked like a typical warehouse, lit by bright orange lights hanging from the roof.  It had been some sort of manufacturing plant at some stage, for along each of the long walls, high up, was a crane rail, with a gantry crane spanning the full width of the warehouse which I guessed at being around thirty metres.  The building was perhaps twice that in length, one side being subdivided by a high wall that ran centrally down the length of the building.  The area we now drove into was obviously the car park, with painted car park spaces separated into “Mistresses” and “Slaves” .

Without asking, Monica pulled in to a Mistress space and got out, followed by Megan and myself.  Megan led the way to a door made like a portcullis and pressed a buzzer.  Moments later the door unlatched as somebody must have pushed a button inside.  I noticed a small cctv camera on the wall above the door.  Immediately below it was a welcoming quote which read:

 “I will show you something different from either 
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you: 
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. “

“T.S.Elliot,” said Megan noticing me reading it.  “It’s from ‘The Waste Land’.”

“Scary,”  I commented.

“I hope so.”

Inside we found ourselves in a bare office with what looked to be very uncomfortable wooden benches on two of the walls.  The room was gloomy, lit only by a single low wattage unshaded light.  On the opposite side to the entrance another door, with a sign above it, the Gothic lettering on it reading:  “Abandon hope all ye who enter…” 

Beside the door was a high counter, with windows above it.  One of these slid open as we approached.  A young woman with severe gothic makeup and black straight hair looked down at us.  I reckoned the floor behind the counter must have been at least half a metre higher than where we stood, thus automatically giving the receptionist – if that was what she actually was – a natural height advantage.  The severe creature smiled at Megan, the sudden change in expression making her suddenly seem human.

“Megan!  We thought you’d given up on us!  How’s the Special Project going?” 

There was a moment’s hesitation before Megan smiled back. “It’s going well, thanks Caroline.  What’s happening this morning?”

Caroline consulted something in front of her.

“It’s quiet at the moment.  Mr Hickson’s in three, with Ann,  Bryan’s got a bungie in two and Mr Jeffries is on display.”

“Fine.  Any problems while I’ve been away?”  The girl shook her head.  “Good.  I have to go to Sydney tomorrow and I should be back next weekend.  I’m just showing a couple of potential clients around.”  She indicated us with a nod of her head.

Megan seemed a little more at ease in familiar surroundings.  She moved to one side of the room and I was astonished to see a large erect penis protruding through a hole in what looked like a steel plate half a metre wide running full height up a section of wall.  At chest level there were two smaller holes with strings running through them.  At the free ends were two brass bells each the size of a plum.

“This is our display,” Megan explained.  She fingered the member which abruptly stiffened and made as if to withdraw, prompting a jingling of the bells as the strings were tugged together.  She spat in the palm of her hand and gave the protruding phallus a gentle massage.  I thought I could hear moaning from the other side of the wall, but it was very faint.  She worked her speed up a little then stopped abruptly and seized a small multi-tailed flogger where it hung on a nail next to the steel panel, and gave member several rapid blows.  The bells jiggled and clanged and there was more muffled protesting but the object of the blows did not withdraw.

“He’s gagged with a ball that is locked to a u-bolt welded to the steel, on the other side,” Megan explained.  “He can’t withdraw, partly because of that, but also because there are two sharp needles on a stand immediately behind him.  Any backward movement and he gets jabbed in the bum.  He has no idea who is doing things to him, and we encourage passing staff to give things a grope, fondle, suck, smack, whatever they like.  He has no idea what will come at him when.  And although exposed to other visitors, his identity remains concealed.  It’s humiliation without exposure.”

“Clever,”  Monica commented.  “I like it.”

Megan led the way up a set of stairs, past a balcony and door at first floor level, and up to a point above where I thought the second floor to be – if there was one.  We emerged from the stairwell through a door on to a catwalk suspended close to the roof.  When I got my bearings I realised it was some sort of maintenance access way running along the length of the building above the gantry crane, which spanned from wall to wall just below it.

The steel-framed access way was over a metre wide and had been carpeted.  We walked a few metres and I saw that this side of the warehouse had been divided into a series of rooms and that as we walked along the access way we could look down into each of these rooms in turn.

“The first one is the cyber area.  We have two consoles set up there to do cyber interaction,” said Megan.  The room was at first floor level, open to our view and set up like an office with two workstations with computer monitors, while the rest of the area was more like an airport waiting lounge.  It was all very modern and comfortable.   “It also serves as a relaxation area for the girls when they’re off duty.”

The next room turned out to be more typical of the remainder.  It was about five metres wide, being half the spacing of the warehouse steel frames, by ten metres long – about a third of the total building width.  By Bilboes standards it was huge, and gave ample scope for all manner of improvisation and innovation, I thought.  The walls were full a full two stories high, made from plastered blockwork, imprinted and painted very effectively to look like large sandstone blocks.  The concrete floor had likewise been recoated and imprinted to give the impression of being a flag-stoned dungeon floor.  At the level of our catwalk, there was a steel ‘ceiling’ of bars.  Various pulleys hung from this and I could see several timber planks laid on top of the bars, presumably for access to lights which were positioned just below the bars, and also to position pulleys and ropes.  The whole effect was one of an enormous chamber, very brooding and overpowering.  In this particular one there was much dungeon equipment, rather like our own, including a rack, a St Andrew’s cross, stocks and several whipping benches.  I thought all that was missing were a few flaming torches in lieu of the lights.

The second ‘room’ was constructed exactly like the first, but was essentially bare, except for more suspension facilities, most of which were cleated off to the side walls.  It was more like a training room for circus acrobats.  At that moment it was occupied by two people, one female and one male.  The female was naked, save for a solid-looking leather strap harness, not unlike a parachute harness, supported as it was at the shoulder straps with the supports attached to a short horizontal bar just above head height.  This bar was in turn was connected to a beam at roof level by bungy cords, which left the victim – since that was what she appeared to be – suspended just above floor level. 

We stopped and watched the pair.  The girl was blonde, her long hair in a pony tail.  She hung in the harness, her eyes covered with a leather blindfold and her hands tied behind her.  The man was heavyset, dressed in black leather trousers and a black tee-shirt.  His hair was thinning on top and ran down into a trimmed brown beard.  As we stood there, he flicked at the girl with a riding crop.  She yelped and twisted in the harness, her reaction making her begin to swing.  The man grabbed her by the hips and pulled her downwards until her feet were on the floor and her knees bent.

“Aaaaahhh!” she exclaimed.  This was followed by a further, shorter series of “oo’s” and “aahh’s” as he let her go and  she bounced up and down like a yoyo.

“Large dildo inside her,” Megan commented casually, explaining the sound effects.  “Very effective and very frustrating when you can’t get any purchase on anything and don’t know which way you’ll be bouncing next.”

The girl’s exclamations were starting to speed up, and she began to launch into a series of profanities that ended in “ohgodohgodohgod…”  The man gripped her by the nipples at that moment, prompting a shriek as she came to an abrupt halt. 

“You need to be taught a lesson in nice talk, my dear,” said the man.  “If you can’t talk politely, you shouldn’t be allowed to talk.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please let me have some more, Master…”  The man let her hang there for a minute as she squirmed in the harness, trying to continue what had obviously been started.  “What are you doing?” she asked timorously, sensing his movement behind her.

“Shutting you up,” he said, “ -not that it’s any of your business what I do.”

“No!  I’ll be good!  I’ll be – urf! Gurk!”  Her pleading turned to splutterings as the man pulled her head back by the pony tail and forced a large red ball gag behind her teeth, then buckled the strap behind her neck.  He followed this with a series of strokes of the crop across her backside that made her jerk and bounce, her untethered legs swinging about wildly as she yelped nasally into the rubber ball with each blow.  I moved close to Monica where she stood apart from Megan.

“Did that girl sound like anyone we know?” I whispered in her ear.

“Yes…It did.  Refresh my memory.”

“Pain slut Lisa?”

“My God – you’re right,” she murmured.  “Hmmm.  This makes things more complicated.  Well spotted.”

We moved on along the catwalk, Lisa’s muffled moans and cries drifting about the rafters as she bounced about on the bungy. 

“The sound carries upwards,” Megan said, “but not much gets through the walls.  The rooms are surprisingly well insulated from each other.”

The third room immediately caught my interest, not least through the soft hiss of a vacuum pump.

“What’s going on here?” asked Monica, obviously intrigued.

“Vacuum play,” said Megan.  “Part of the installation that was here when the place was first converted was a vacuum pump and compressed air system.  Apparently they’re pretty standard in a place like this involved in mechanical engineering. The great thing about the vacuum system is that it is really powerful and can sustain that pressure.  Kirsten is quite good at this.”

We stood there and watched as a young dark-haired woman knelt on a table.  She was naked but not restrained in any way.  In her mouth was a plastic pipe protruding from some sort of mouthpiece, a bit like the adapter snorkel mouthpieces we sometimes used at Bilboes.  The pipe stuck straight out from her mouth and she looked with some trepidation at what was about to happen to her.  This was a complete envelopment in a large plastic bag, on which she knelt. 

The enveloping process was being done by a girl wearing a black leather catsuit and improbably high heels.  Her auburn hair was pulled back into a pony tail and she wore a half-mask covering the upper part of her face.  She was all business as she pulled the top edges of the clear plastic bag up over the head of the victim and tied the top closed with a couple of cable ties, after inserting a rubber hose that was connected to a steel pipe fixed to the wall.  Having sealed her charge in, the brunette picked up a small knife and made a hole in the plastic for the mouth pipe to stick through, then taped the plastic against the pipe to seal the joint.

”Ready, Jo?” she asked.  There was a nodding from the plastic bag.  Kirsten picked up the rubber hose and opened a small screw valve on it.  At once the air was sucked out of the plastic bag, pulling the plastic tightly against the kneeling figure, drawing the loose folds into crevices between limbs and outlining every curve and bump.

Kirsten prodded the figure.  It seemed to have lost all flexibility, almost as though it had been turned to stone.  Carefully she laid the woman on her side.  There was no movement from the figure – every limb remained transfixed by the force of the vacuum and the restraining power of the plastic.

“Okay?”  Kirsten asked.

There was a faint “wooo” from the pipe in Jo’s mouth.

“Every done this?” Megan asked.  Monica shook her head. 

“I’ve read about it, but never had the equipment.  Very impressive.”

“It’s amazingly effective.  You can hardly move a muscle.  Totally scary the first time.  Quite freaky, in fact.  It can be a struggle to breath, although the lungs are very strong muscles.  Any position you like – its like instant freezing.  The pressure inside the bag is unexpected.  Add a vibrator or two and things can get quite intense.  We’ve also got the compressed air, as I said, but haven’t worked out quite how to deal with that yet.  It’s a bit harder than the vacuum, and could potentially do more damage.”

We lingered a few minutes as Kirsten moved close to the bagged figure on the table and began to torment it with a pair of clamps placed over the plastic on nipples and then a series of warm-ups with a riding crop.  The figure heaved and tried to struggle as much as it could, but it was pretty futile in the enveloping clasp of the heavy plastic.

Elsewhere within the room there was another table, the size of a double bed, padded and fitted with numerous restraining straps, while in the corner were three steel cages.  One was perhaps a metre and a half on a side – high enough for most people to nearly stand up in, and certainly to move around a bit.  A second was barely larger than a kneeling person, and looked as though it would be extremely uncomfortable, while a third was circular, perhaps half a metre in diameter and the height of a person.  It hung from a cable connected to a winch on one of the steel columns.  These people were clearly investing serious money in some of their gear.

Monica was already moving on to the last room of the line.  Here the high walls had stopped although there were a further three bays yet to be used and the access way continued to the end of the building. The interior of this last ‘room’ had been subdivided.  For the length of one long wall there was an open corridor we could look down on, running at right angles to the access way.  The remainder of the space had been split into three smaller rooms.  They were closed in by ceilings at around three metres, considerably lower than the main dividing walls, and all we could see were the tops of the joists and the lighting fixtures as they poked through the ceilings themselves.

“These are holding cells and other, more intimate rooms, such as you guys have,” Megan explained.

Beyond the last full height blockwork wall the access way continued.  It was not a place for a person afraid of heights, perched as we were ten metres above the concrete floor.  We looked briefly over this area, noting a few cars parked there, evidently for staff parking.  It was all a very cosy set-up.  Near to the first car were what had obviously been vehicle inspection pits.  Monica looked thoughtfully at them.

“They’d make very good below-ground cages,” Megan said, evidently reading her thoughts, for Monica merely nodded.

“All right,” Monica said eventually, turning to face us and the way we’d come..  “I’ve seen enough.  We can go now.”

Megan, realising the guided tour was over, at once became less loquacious and meekly asked Monica: “What are you going to do with me?”

“Oh don’t worry, Megan, I have plans for you,” Monica told her, at once condescending and conspiratorial.  “They involve a return to Bilboes and a trip to Sydney, after which things may get better for you.  In the meantime I need to be convinced that you entered this whole business in a naive but greedy moment, not understanding the seriously twisted minds you were getting involved with.  I think you’re making progress on that score.  Tomorrow you will be with us when we drive south and you will have a long time for thinking about what you need to do to be a little more convincing.  Before we leave tomorrow I will make you a proposition, which you would do well to consider before answering,” she continued enigmatically.  “Now it’s time to return, and don’t forget, dear Megan, that I have the remote which you and your friends enjoyed so much in tormenting poor Steven here, not to mention Leila and Emma.  And you, of course, have the plug buried in your arse.  If you haven’t worked it out already, my sweet, I do not like my staff being abused, so I suggest you watch your tongue on the way out, just to keep everybody happy.  Shall we go?” 

*   *   *