Monica's Games 2.20

by Richard Alexander (Gromets Plaza)

(story continues from Monica's Games 2.19)

Chapter Twenty: Mary Takes Her Guard

Day Two

Afternoon Event: Fencing
White Team: Mary
Black Team: Marilyn
Points at Stake: 5
Start Score: White Team: 15 Black Team: 0

I felt a bit sorry for Debra as the equipment for the fencing was set up.  The girl was kept bound on the bench for several hours while I helped Steven prepare the electrical wiring ahead of lunch.  At one stage Leon poked his head in to look at things, and could not resist standing over Debra and doing half a dozen rapid pulls on the bar. Deb had reacted predictably, struggling in her bonds and garbling her outrage through the ball still in her mouth.  Up until then I had not paid much attention to her, since ending up in such a situation was a hazard of the job.  If you couldn’t stand the heat, you shouldn’t be in the kitchen.  Sure, Deb would be frustrated and annoyed at missing lunch, but she had lost the game, so that was what happened.  But having an arsehole like Leon coming along and taking advantage of you like that was not in the script, however, and there were some things that were just not done.

I was the only other person there at the time, for Steven had gone to fetch some gear from his ute parked outside.  I was working over the other side of the open area, marking out the fencing strip on the floor, when Debbie’s annoyed but unintelligible noises had caught my attention.  Leon was yanking the bar for all he was worth, while Deb squirmed and struggled in her bonds, her wrists cuffed behind her and her ankles still bound parallel with the floor.

“Hey Leon!  Get your grubby hands off her!”

He turned, pausing in the job of mechanically screwing his helpless victim.

“Says who?”

“Says me,” I told him, not bothering too much about the correct grammar.  I walked across to the weight bench, meeting his expression.  He was in mid-pull on the bar and let go of it with a dismissive gesture.  The bar shot up under the pull from the weights at the rear and Debra let out a little squeal as the phallus thrust up inside her again.

I had not spoken to Leon previously, but had heard of him by reputation.  He was one of those in the industry who move from job to job, filling in here and there when the demand is high and nobody better can be found.  He was a B & D drifter, with the ironic aspect being that he had no discipline himself.  Apart from being a shoddy worker, he either did not seem to learn from his mistakes, or else he simply didn’t care.  I reckoned he was in his early forties, his receding dark hair and beard closely cropped and showing the first intimations of grey.  He grinned at me, showing crooked teeth, but the smile did not reach his eyes.

“Leave her alone,” I told him.  Debra looked up at me with big pleading eyes, but there was nothing I could do for her.  Her punishment for losing would be whatever Mistress Lynx and her Gang had decided, and I for one was not going to interfere with that.  But I was damned sure it did not include this thug taking advantage of Deb’s position.

“Oh, you’re in charge here, now, are you?” he asked softly.  “Just what brought you into that exalted role?  This one here played the game and lost, so she takes whatever’s coming to her.”  Debbie moaned and rolled her eyes at me.

“I suppose that’s the best that you could manage anyway, but giving Debbie a mechanical rogering was never ordered my Mistress Lynx, so bugger off.”  I had approached him as I spoke, and we were now eyeball to eyeball.  For a moment I thought he was going to hit me, and I would have welcomed the chance to take a shot at him, except that was when Steven returned carrying a toolbox.

“Is there a problem?” he asked, not picking up on the tension between Leon and myself.

“No,” I said, as Leon broke eye contact and turned.  “I was just showing the finer points of the bench press to Leon.  He was just going.”  Leon glowered at me and stalked off.

I did not mention the incident to Steven.  He was a sweet guy but some of the finer points of human communications sometimes went over his head, and he would then wonder why things turned out as they did.  He could never be a woman, were such possible.  Too much ingrained male insensitivity.  I looked at Debbie and she did her best to smile her gratitude to me around the ball still strapped in her mouth.

“Han gyu,” she gurgled as quietly as she could.  It was a girl thing, just between us two.  I wouldn’t want my reputation besmirched as being a bit soft.  I noted that I would have to swear her to silence on this later on.

*   *   *

Watched by Debra, Steven and I marked out the fencing strip with black tape on the floor. The strip was an area of floor about two metres by ten, with a cross-line in the middle marking the halfway point.  There was going to be nothing technically precise about this event.  Just to each side of this halfway line went the counters that had been used for the weight lifting.  Each counter would be connected to both contestants.  For my counter - that is the one which counted the number of scoring ‘hits’ - one wire would run from the metal tip of my ‘sword’ back to the counter, and from there run down the other end of the fencing strip then back to my opponent, Marilyn, there to be connected to the target areas on her body.  Contact between the tip of my sword and the target area closed the circuit and did two things.  Firstly, it registered a strike on the counter, and secondly it would initiate a bit of a shock to certain parts of our bodies.  

I hadn’t seen the full gear we would be wearing, other than the basic suit, which I had tried on for size.  It was a heavy rubber wetsuit, with long sleeves and long legs. Mine had been spray-painted white and looked rather snappy.  I reckoned it would be pretty hot, but evidently it also served as insulation both electrically and from stray blows from the swords.  I had done the fitting of the suit with Mistress Lynx, the result of which was cutouts being made for my breasts and a narrow one through the crotch from front to back.  It wasn’t hard to guess where this was going to end up, but I was sure I had had worse.  It couldn’t be all bad, I had thought, looking at Deb and Trish getting their rocks off on the weight benches.  You might argue it was ruining a perfectly good wetsuit, but Rashid and Mohammed weren’t exactly on the poverty line.

On top of it all came the motorbike helmet - white of course – with those damnable locking steel flaps under the chin that made it impossible to remove without the key.  I had experienced this before, in one instance in particular, when Monica had let me wander over half the property while trying to get free.  She had taped up my head with duct tape before the helmet went on, effectively gagging and blinding me, but even with my hands free, I couldn’t get at the tape under the locked helmet.  This one had a clear plastic visor which was riveted in place, and generally it was a snug and comfortable fit.

The weapon was a rattan cane about a metre long.  It was lightweight, and Steven had modified the handle so as to be comfortable and protected with a circular guard immediately above the grip, to stop sliding blows glancing off one’s knuckles.  The last part of the sword was a metal sheath on the top five centimetres at the tip.  A wire was soldered to this and ran back down the cane, taped in place by silver duct tape.  This gave the impression that the cane itself was metal, and leant an added style to the weapon.  From the cane, the wire ran loosely back to the counter which would be behind me, and which would record my score.

I had established the fact that Marilyn was as new to this sport as I was.  In essence it would be the incompetent fighting the incompetent.  However if I say so myself I am no mean hand with either a stockwhip or a riding crop, and wielding a cane was nothing new.  How hard could this be?  I hefted the sword in my hand and swished it through the air a few times.  It felt good and balanced.  I was quite looking forward to getting stuck into the American girl.

*   *   *

Lunch was provided on a little area of landscaped lawn to the rear of the main warehouse.  The Citadel was not set up for catering the way we were on the back verandah at Bilboes, but picnic rugs, chicken and champagne was fun, though I was told in no uncertain terms by Monica to lay off the champagne.  

After lunch I used one of the rooms to get dressed in.  Trish helped me with this, for the rubber suit was ridiculously tight.  It was probably a size too small and must have been of the heaviest grade you could buy.  It certainly wasn’t the nice neoprene fabrics that hang on the display rack of every surf shop you go into.  This was serious deep diving stuff, I reckoned.  With Trish’s assistance I struggled into the garment and she hauled the zipper closed.

“This is like a damned all-over corset,” I complained.

“Don’t be such a sissy,” she said. “It makes your tits stick out and your waist go in.  It’s the ultimate control garment any woman could wish for.”

“Yeah, as long as they don’t expect to breathe or move anywhere in a hurry,” I grumbled.

“You look lovely,” said Trish.  “The White Lady rides again.  Now, let’s get these boots on you.”

The boots were my own, and reached to the top of my calf.  Trish had to roll each leg of the rubber suit up to my knee like a tourniquet, zip up the boot, then roll the leg down over the top before my circulation got cut off.  I thought it was like a pressure suit that fighter pilots use to resist g-forces.  I did not see why we had to wear our boots.  The heels were three inches high and would make movement difficult in an athletic situation, but I figured that was part of the intention.

I hauled on the thick rubber hood that sealed snugly at the neck and left only my face exposed.  I could not see why this was necessary, either, since I would have the helmet on over the top, but I had to admit that to date Mistress Lynx had a record of coming up with the unexpected for contestants to deal with.  The last items for my wardrobe were the heavy-duty white latex gloves that Trish dragged on and smoothed down over the rubber sleeves on my forearms.

She had just finished with this when our referee appeared with the inevitable briefcase of implements, as we had now come to expect.

“I’ve just finished preparing Marilyn,” she announced.  “Now it’s your turn.”

She opened the suitcase and came up with a roll of duct tape. 

“What the hell’s that for?” I demanded. “Haven’t you got me squeezed and compressed enough already?”

“No,” said Mistress Lynx acidly.  “Your mouth can still yap, and I will not be on the receiving end of contestant talkback.  You, of all people, I would expect to give me trouble.”

“What?”  I was indignant.  “How can you say such a thing?”

“It’s common knowledge, my dear Mary.  Now open wide and put this between your lips and teeth.” 

Reluctantly I took the oval piece of rubber, which I figured had come from one of the off cuts of the suit I was wearing, and wedged it in the front of my mouth like kids sometimes do with a segment of orange peel.  I grimaced at her, displaying the white rubber insert.

“Very good.  Now shut your mouth and hold still.”

Then came the silver duct tape, and I knew now why I was wearing the rubber hood, by the time the stuff had gone horizontally around my head over my mouth, then on an angle to end up vertically locking my jaw closed.  Mistress Lynx did it deftly and skilfully, making it tight enough to do the job but not so unbearably tight as to cause headaches and pain over what was the least fleshy part of the body.

“Comfy?” she asked, in an almost commiserating way.

“Fffk erf,” I said, conveying as much annoyance as I could through my nasal exhalation.

“Good.  Now for your inserts.”

I had a feeling something like this was coming – you didn’t have to be Einstein to work out what the crotch opening was for, and in this instance it was the stainless steel crotch strap and waist band, complete with front vibrator and rear plug.  It was the same device that we had originally made for the treatment of the Twins the previous year, and which had subsequently been used on us by mad Portia and her Mistress.  The device had a small receiving pack at the back which was sometimes used with a remote control, but in this instance I saw a short wire with a plug hanging down from the pack.  My mind went through a lot of possibilities for a moment, before Mistress Lynx made an irritated gesture for me to get on with putting the two inserts in place.

The curved stainless steel strip was as wide as two fingers, with the two inserts standing up from it, and wires trailing to the small flat pack at the junction with the waist belt, which was of identical material.  It was not designed to be put on by one person, and Trish had to hold the two ends of the waist piece apart while I manoeuvred the crotch strap with its erect appurtenances into the appropriate positions.  It is always awkward – not to mention causes strange sensations – when two go in at once.  In the front there is a nice satisfying sensation, while in the rear there is the awareness of a filling overlain by pain as the bulb finally squeezes past the sphincter.  The two at once is just plain weird, and I was making undignified grunting and snorting noises by the time they finally slid home.

Trish released the ends of the waist piece and they sprang together, to be locked snugly along with the crotch piece by Mistress Lynx.  And snug they were.  They pressed tightly against the thick rubber through my crotch and around my waist, as though things weren’t tight enough already.  That was when I noticed two small modifications to the belt, namely a pair of screwed studs sticking out from the front of the belt, one each side of the lock.

“This goes on there,” said Mistress Lynx, picking up what appeared to be a circular target, about twenty centimetres across, painted with concentric red and white rings.  It slipped over the two protruding bolts, and Mistress Lynx secured it in place with two butterfly nuts.  “Marilyn has one exactly like this.  That’s what you’ll be aiming for.  You can bet she’ll be aiming for yours, and you can bet she’s all fired up.”

Well thanks for sharing that, I thought.  How did she make that clear to you?  With semaphore?

“There’s just one more thing.”  Into the case again and out came two nipple clips.  I should have guessed my boobs would have been in for some treatment since the rubber had been cut away.  I looked down as she fastened the jaws a little behind each nub, into the less tender part.  My breasts were pretty nice, and had always been one of my better points, pardon the pun.  I confess I am possibly the least well endowed at Bilboes, but because of that my mounds remain firm and protruding, like two half mangoes.

The clips were modified wooden clothes pegs, but I saw that they were connected to wires, and that each peg had a metal contact point on the inside of each jaw that lodged in the flesh each side of the nipple.  I reckoned I knew what this meant, as the woman sorted the wires out so that they ran down to the belt then round to the flat box in the small of my back.  From there, three wires – two white and one black - trailed a couple of metres.  Mistress Lynx picked them up and showed them to me.  They all had small plugs on the end.

“See these white ones?  This one connects your sword to the back pack.  The other white one then connects to your counter and to Marilyn’s target, to register when you make a hit.  The black one connects to her counter and registers when she scores on your target.  Easy, huh?”

“Phfft!” I said, nonchalantly.

“All right Miss, now the helmet.”

I whined in feeble objection, like a kid not wanting to go to bed, but only because it brought back less than pleasant memories for me.  I was sure Monica had had a hand in the choice of restraints for this event.  The helmet came on over the hood and the tape, and it was very snug.  I was sure I looked like one of the stupid Power Rangers, decked out totally in white.  The new Empress of the Universe.  Shame I could barely move in the complete embrace of the rubber suit.

Trish held the door open for me as I went out into the corridor and then into the open section of the warehouse.  The plugs jammed inside me created more distracting sensations as they bobbed about – something I could really have done without.  My nips weren’t too bad – the pegs were light and I had certainly experienced a lot worse.  They were almost starting to become a turn on, I decided.  Marilyn was just ahead of me, being led by Kris, and from the applause that greeted us, you would think that we were two boxers entering the ring for a world title fight.  The usual Gang of Four occupied the space at the halfway line, and entered into the mood with clapping and whistling, while the remainder of the audience took the respective ends from which we would each be moving forward.

Steven and Mistress Lynx attended to the plugging in.  Steven handed me my sword.  I attempted to look him in the eye, intending to give him “The Look”, designed to shrivel him with a severe guilt trip for not telling me in more detail what was going to happen.  He must have known, being the electrical maestro.  But he would keep.  I was tempted to give him a wallop with my sword but refrained, though only with difficulty.  He would definitely keep.

I watched as Mistress Lynx plugged in the sword to one white cable, then plugged the other white tail into a long one leading to my ‘hit-ometer’.  The last one plugged into the black cable leading to Marilyn’s counter.

Then we were ready.  I felt awkward as hell in the rubber, never mind with cables trailing behind me.  Mistress Lynx summoned us to the halfway point and announced the rules loudly enough for us to here under the helmets and tape.

“This will be the best of three games.  Each game is the first to ten.  With each hit against you, you will find that an electrical current will make itself known up your arse, and through your nipples as well.  And just to make it interesting, the vibrator will start up after five hits and continue until the end of the game.  There is to be no hand to hand wrestling.  Any grabbing and you’re likely to end up further incapacitated.  I strongly recommend against it.  You will now step back two metres, and when I drop my arm, you will commence duelling, and continue until the end of the first game.”

I stepped back obediently, watching the black rubber-suited figure do likewise.  She was identically decked out except for the colour of her gear.  The heels of her boots were even higher than mine, which gave her a slight height advantage, but the thinness of the heels would make her balance more difficult.

Mistress Lynx dropped her arm and settled into a chair on the halfway line between the brothers.  The excited chatter dropped to a murmur – or so it seemed in the muffled world inside my helmet.

I looked at Marilyn.  She was quite athletic, I reckoned.  Not petite and not a push-over.  She seemed to move as though she had worn high heels all her life, and showed none of the awkwardness I felt in the rubber suit.  Suddenly my confidence evaporated and I felt nervous as all hell.  

I decided attack was the best form of defence and went for her, hard and fast. I thrust at her but missed as she turned half aside and I found myself almost impaled on Marilyn’s sword.  It bounced off my target and I felt a sudden cramping pain flash through my anal cavity and jump across each of my nipples.  I gasped under the tape and made a grunting noise that probably nobody heard.  I was astonished at how it got to me, and left me stunned by the unexpectedness of it.

I staggered back and by some sort of miracle managed to flick her target in passing, observing with some satisfaction a stagger in her movement as I did so.  I lunged again, trying to catch her off guard, and succeeded with my blow.  Emboldened by this I went all out, and it was only some desperate defence by Marilyn that kept many of my blows from connecting.

But some did, and as I stepped back for a momentary recovery, I realised I had scored five to Marilyn’s one, and that the vibrator would now have started.  I knew that this was the best chance I would have, and that once on the attack you had to keep pressing home the advantage, and that this was the secret of winning.

The second part of the game was more of the same, although Marilyn managed to get a couple of lucky hits in, which made me jump a bit.  With the score at eight three, I closed in for the kill, and sensed Marilyn’s desperation.  That was when she grabbed my sword in a moment of weakness, and I – like a twat – grabbed hers.  That was enough for Mistress Lynx, who leapt in waving her arms and bringing the contest to a standstill.  She was spewing and within two minutes she had bound our offending arms well out of the way.  We were both right handed, and my left wrist was now firmly bent up towards my shoulder blades and secured there with a cord that ran over my right shoulder and down to be tied to the crotch belt.  As though we weren’t under enough stress.  Mistress Lynx had made her point, and now we had no choice but to use only our swords.

Things were getting hard, but I managed to catch the target twice more, leaving Marilyn all but on her knees as the first game came to an abrupt end and we were sent to our seats for two minutes to recover.  It was like boxers in the corner between rounds, except that no amount of fanning with a towel was going to stop the heat that was building up inside the rubber suit.  I had forgotten how debilitating violent physical exercise could be while totally encased in rubber.  It was far from the first time I had indulged in such pastimes, but usually there had been less of a forced element present.  Free will, I think, was the term - not being railroaded by some leather-clad ex-madam control-freak.

The bell went and I hauled myself to my feet.  I was surprised at how much strength seemed to have been drained from me in the short rest period, when the adrenalin drained back whence it had come.  After the buzz and high of the first round I found it difficult to get back there, and Marilyn’s frenzied assault at the start of the second round left me retreating under a flurry of blows.  I reeled from successive jolts through my nips and arse and then two more when I would have sworn the blows had deflected off my arm and hip.  

I tried to counter attack but succeeded only in making a single hit, while winding up with an errant blow from the American bitch catching me across my tit, which really was painful.  I tried to use the pain to motivate myself, but another lucky hit – which again I was sure had missed, started the vibrator up.

Shit, that was all I needed!  Marilyn came at me again in a flurry of blows, and this time I knew she didn’t make contact, but again I was stricken with two jolts through my nips and arse.  Someone was setting me up here!  Something was going on with this electrical stuff.  Enraged, I half-turned to Mistress Lynx, forgetting in my anger that my left hand was tied behind my back and my mouth was taped over.  I mmphed  furiously at the Gang of Four, gesturing with my sword at my nipples and trying to indicate what was happening.  The net result of this was that Marilyn came at me from the side and I collapsed as three quick jolts rocketed through me while my guard was down.  I wasn’t sure how many of the three were genuine hits – I was in too much pain, but I knew the round was over.  My nipples were on fire and my arse was delivering all sorts of cramping messages.  I got to my knees and ignominiously staggered back to my end, to slump down on the chair.  Desperately I tried to focus on what was happening to me.  In the whirl of blows that had come at me, nobody could tell whether they had really hit or not.  The counter was the only thing that mattered, and somehow the match was being fixed.

The bell went for the last round, and I summoned my last reserves of energy.  Sweat was streaming down my face under the helmet and I had no way of wiping it clear.  The rest of me was hot and sweaty inside my suit, and as if the dildo and plug jammed in my lower orifices needed any further lubrication, the sweat provided it.

I would like to say that the last round went better, but alas, it was more of the same.  Marilyn seemed to have got her second wind with her victory in the second round, while I had gone the opposite way.  This was turning out to be a total humiliation, as once more I found myself on the receiving end, and before I knew it the vibrator was sending tingling ripples through my over-heated nether regions.  I was on a literal hiding to nothing, and was furious that I could not work out what was going on or communicate my situation to the judges or to my team.  As I lost all will to fight under the rapid electrical onslaught coupled with the vibrations and the cloying heat of the rubber suit, I knew that my reputation as the Bilboes tough nut was in serious jeopardy, but try as I might, I could not find the reserves of energy I needed.  I scored a couple of lucky hits but knew I was done for when a swish that barely grazed my waist made Marilyn’s counter display the number ‘9’.

I was not intending to make a dramatic exit, but the sweat had accumulated inside my boots such that the ankle support was not there, and when I was forced back and tripped on my own cord, I fell awkwardly and lost my sword.  Marilyn stood over me like the Black Avenging Angel and for a fleeting moment I thought this was what dying must be like.  Marilyn paused momentarily then drilled her sword into my target, holding it there for what seemed forever while the sickening pain shot through me and I curled up in a ball, this time wishing I really could die.

*   *   *

After that things were a bit of a blur. Mistress Lynx bound my right wrist up behind my shoulder blades across my left wrist, and I was walked across to the van.  Once inside my ankles were bound as I lay on the floor and the rest of White Team (except Monica, of course) climbed in beside me, sitting on the padded benches on each side.  Steven must have been driving, with Mistress Lynx in the front.  Trish, Emma, Leila, Jillian and Shawnee were keeping me company as we drove back across the city.  The mood was depressed, for we – more specifically yours truly – had suffered our first defeat of the Games, and it was not a fun feeling.  The Black Team were full of themselves and Marilyn was their heroine.  I felt like crap, doubly annoyed in the way the victory had been pulled off, and in the fact that in my still gagged state I could not appraise anybody of what had happened.  For that matter, I still hadn’t worked it out myself.

The worst thing about my predicament was that the damned vibrator had not stopped when all the cables had been disconnected.  There was a battery in the flat metal box in the small of my back, and I guessed that had either recharged during the event, or else had simply come on as a back-up once the main power source had been removed.  I now lay there, on my back, staring up at the roof of the van, while my nipples throbbed under the clothes pegs still fastened there, and my pussy began to get more and more aroused.

One of the most frustrating things is experiencing such physical arousal when you are emotionally not in the mood.  In this instance not only was I depressed at having let the team down, but I was physically exhausted and sore from the hiding I had received at the hands of Marilyn. Yet the insidious buzzing in my loins continued and I could do nothing about it. I groaned and rolled on to my side, curling my legs into a semi-foetal position.  I could not communicate my problem to my team mates, and I was sure they could not detect the soft hum of the vibrator buried deep inside me under rubber and steel, and overlain by the noise of the engine.

By the time we had neared Bilboes (or so I reckoned), I knew I could not hold out any longer.  I rolled on my stomach, knowing the bite of the clothes pegs would either overcome the rising tide or else finish me off. It turned out to be the latter, for the pegs had only heightened the sensitivity of my nipples, and did not produce the piercing pains that the electricity through them had done.  Before I knew it there was a flood of warmth from my loins and I ground my rubber-clad pelvis into the floor as best I could, groaning in my sweat-drenched state beneath the helmet and tape.

I’m sure the girls knew what was going on, although with my ankles bound it was not as pronounced as it might have been.  Suffice to say it was another embarrassment in what was turning out to be a pretty crappy and humiliating day.  Even the momentary rush of ecstasy was not enough to cure my disappointment at how things had ended up.

My grovelling was brought to an abrupt halt along with the van.  We had not turned into the Bilboes drive, as I had expected, and as I found out moments later when the back doors opened and Mistress Lynx untied my ankles and helped me out.  I blinked in the late afternoon sunlight as Mistress Lynx steadied me.  She ran her finger down under the steel crotch strap and verified both that the vibrator was operating and that I was wet as a summer rainstorm.  

“In case you haven’t worked it out, you’re on the back road to Bilboes.  Only a kilometre or so from the house.  We should be able to let you out when you get there.  Enjoy your walk.” 

She closed the doors on the occupants and climbed into the front of the van, which trundled off down the track in the direction of the house.  Thanks a lot, I thought.  I just felt like a stroll in the evening sunshine to warm me up a bit.

I set off wearily, my arms bound uncomfortably behind my shoulder blades and the vibrator still doing its best to get me aroused again.  I thought that at if the worst happened in that department I would at least have a little privacy.

Before long, I was feeling a little better, left to my own devices, and the peace of the bush was having a calming effect on me, such that I was content to let the warmth from my loins slowly build up.  I searched for, and found, a good-sized log and sat astride it, rocking on the steel strap until the tell-tale signs of an impending climax began and I felt a hot flush in my cheeks.  I was preparing myself for the final explosion when there was a sudden explosion of a different kind, as pain seared through my nipples and up my arse.  I doubled over, gasping from the unexpectedness of the attack.  It only lasted two seconds, but that was enough to quell any rising orgasm like a bucket of cold water.

I stumbled to my feet and looked around.  I had been seated in a small recess amongst some bushes beside the track, but on peering across the undergrowth I could see no signs of anything untoward.  Admittedly the tape and helmet did nothing to enhance my hearing, and my vision was limited to a small area immediately in front, somewhat dulled by dirt on the visor, so the search was far from conclusive.  But the coincidence was too strong.  I had the feeling I was being watched, and had it not been trapped under the rubber hood, the hairs on my neck would have been standing up.

The sun was low now, and the shadows were lengthening in the bush.  I looked around again, and decided I had better hurry along to Bilboes.  I stepped up my pace, conscious that if someone was lying in wait for me there would be precious little I could do to defend myself.

I had barely gone thirty metres when the pain shot up my arse again and I stumbled.  I knew someone was nearby, either watching from a point or somehow following me.  I began to trot, and the jolts began to come with a regularity that grew shorter as my pace increased.  

The blood pounded in my ears as I jogged down the road as fast as I could, every ten seconds or so getting zapped painfully for my efforts.  By the time I reached the gate at the mud hole I was sobbing under the helmet in my frustration and suffering.  I sloshed through the mud and scrambled up the worn slope on the other side, to crest the ridge which lay behind the house.  It was at that point that I realised the jolts had stopped.  I looked back but I was staring into the sinking sun and could see nothing, although I thought I heard the engine of a car.  

Somebody, somewhere, sooner or later, was going to pay for this.

*   *   *
 
 
 
 
 

12.10.03

story continues in Monica's Games 2.21

o0o