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Vanishing Act 3

by Richard Alexander (Gromets Plaza)

(story continues from Vanishing Act 2)

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Vanishing Act
Chapter Three
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The relationship with Graham carried on from there.  I guess that evening was “the hook” – the bait that dragged me in to the point where I couldn’t fight my own desires.  I went to Graham’s place a number of times after that.  Each time things got a little more severe.  The positions became more stringent, the clamps more frequent, and the paddling turned to a flogging which turned to a whipping.  But I couldn’t help myself. 

I learnt how to kneel beside him, how to mix his drink, and I even cooked several meals for him.  These things were to a large extent incidental to the bondage, however.  I put up with them because they were a forerunner to the main event, the thought of which usually made me wet long before Graham started on me.  I think it was the expectation and the uncertainty, tempered with the knowledge that whatever happened I would walk out at the end of the session, even though I would be helpless to resist until that point.

There was no point in getting Ash to phone in every hour.  This merely destroyed my focus and interrupted the flow of the session.  The sessions themselves, while becoming harder for me, were no less in intensity than I had experienced on the first evening.  However Graham himself seemed to be becoming more distant - and less forgiving.  I felt that he had been easy on me the first time, but his patience was markedly less now, and any deviation from his rules was punished.  And despite my whippings I still came back for more, and still emerged exhausted but fulfilled in a way I would not have thought possible a year previously.

Graham’s attitude did not allow me to get closer to him.  There was no sharing of thoughts and emotions, nor the initial warmth that I had found in our first meetings.  My fondness for Graham waned, but I still couldn’t wean myself from the punishment he handed out to me – or the pleasure.

All this time I continued to email Ash, and he leant me moral support and guidance, for which I was thankful.  At the same time I was searching for a more permanent job than the temporary positions I had filled since arriving in Sydney.  It was during the course of such job-hunting that I was interviewed by a partner for a medical practice in Brisbane.  The interview took place after a seminar in Sydney where I had met him.  I had never been to Brisbane, but the offer that followed the interview was an attractive one, and they gave me two days to think it over.  That was the day before I had another appointment with Graham, and I told him over the phone what I was thinking of doing.  In hindsight I recognise now that it might not have been a tactically astute thing to do.

*   *   *

Graham did not mention the possibility of my moving to Brisbane – at least not in our initial contact that night.  But I could sense there was a change in him.  I knew better than to ask questions.  He appeared moody and uncommunicative. There were no pleasantries, just a brief greeting. 
“Go to the garage, undress, and lock your gag and collar on.”
Yes sir,” I said meekly, going through my periodic routine of hating myself the way I carried on sometimes.

I entered the garage, with it’s by now familiar smells of leather, wood and sex.  My collar was on the floor, attached by a six-inch chain to an eyebolt set in an exposed patch of the concrete floor in the corner.  What was this all about, I wondered?  It was a departure from our usual routine.  Beside the collar was a red ball gag on a matching strap.  Two padlocks lay on the concrete.

I slipped off my dress and sandals.  I no longer wore underwear to these sessions.  I had decided it was superfluous, what with me getting excited enough before I arrived, and then not having the strength to be bothered dressing properly when I left.
I worked the ball into my mouth and behind my teeth, then pulled the strap behind my head.  This had become part of our routine, part of my training I guess.  The act of making me gag myself was perhaps designed to humiliate me just that tad more.  I at least had the luxury of making sure the thing sat properly, but not of leaving it loose.  I had done that once and had had a nasty attack of the riding crops as a consequence.  I had plaited my hair into a single rope to keep it clear of the strap and make such buckling exercises a bit easier.  The pin of the buckle slipped easily into the customary hole and I clicked the lock home through the next hole and the D-ring.  It sent a shiver down my spine every time I felt a padlock close.  It excited me with the finality and helplessness of what was about to happen and over which I had no control.

Then I turned to the collar.  I checked the room, but there were no other collars lying about and I knew this was the one I had used in the past.  The difference was the fact that it was chained to the eyebolt in the corner.  I knew there was no mistake, and crawling on to my knees I managed to get the collar buckled up and locked with the second padlock.  In that position my nose was almost touching the ground and my head could be rested against the two adjoining brick walls.  It was not a comfortable position, for the concrete beneath the carpet was cold, and I felt immensely vulnerable with my bum either resting on my calves or raised in the air.

Even though I was not blindfolded I could see very little from my position in the corner.  Graham did not appear within a few minutes and my first feelings of unease began to reappear.  Time is a very relative thing in bondage, I had discovered.  In sensory-deprived situations ten minutes can seem like an hour without a reference point.  Perhaps half an hour had passed and there was still no Graham.  Then I heard the front door close in the distance, and faint steps culminating in a car door opening and closing beyond the front wall of the garage.  It was Graham getting into his Audi.  The engine started and he drove off. 

Jesus, I thought, suddenly panicky.  What was going on?  All sorts of bizarre ideas raced through my brain.  He was on his way to the airport, leaving me here for the night – or days…  He was on his way to pick up some mates to come and take advantage of me… He had set light to the house for insurance purposes… Now I knew I was behaving stupidly.  All my scientific training with its analytical basis of observation and deduction suddenly seemed to go out the window.  I struggled with my bonds, tugging at the collar with all my might, but it was immovable, and try as I might I could not dislodge the gag.  I moaned piteously and managed not to cry only through delving into my recesses of self-control.  I finally convinced myself that Graham was playing his mind games again, letting my thoughts conjure up these very images that were so disconcerting for me. 

It was perhaps half an hour later that the car returned and I let the sense of relief flood over me.  I was starting to shiver from the cold of the concrete.  I had had to alternate the cramped kneeling position with lying down, which was less restricted, but even colder.  Then the door opened and Graham entered the room.
“Still here?” he asked unnecessarily.
“Epph ur,” I intoned as best I could around the ball in my mouth.
“Excellent.  You’ve coped well.”  There came the faint footsteps on the carpet and I knew he was behind me.  I was kneeling again at this stage when he roughly grabbed my wrists and pulled them together, crossed, behind my back.

“I think we need these out of the way before we go on,” he told me.  The removal of my hands from where they had been helping support my weight up front put extra stain on my back, and I shuffled my knees closer to my chin to spread the load less unevenly.  I felt the familiar sensation of the cotton ropes being wrapped securely around my wrists, melding one to the other.  I always found the crossed-wrist position more hurtful if I dared to move, for they seemed to offer less scope for arm movement.  A couple of minutes later my wrists were secured rigidly at right angles to each other.  I knew there were a couple of tails, or trailing ends, floating about, as they periodically brushed my buttocks.  The tails were there for a purpose, however, for no sooner had he tied my wrists than the tails were obviously threaded through an eyebolt higher up the wall, and my arms began to get hauled up behind me, rotating at the shoulder.  Predictably my head went down until it was pressed against the small patch of exposed concrete next to the eyebolt in the floor. 

I groaned and protested as he pulled on the rope and pain seemed to fill my arms and back.  I raised my rump in an effort to lessen the angle between arms and back.  That was when he stopped and tied off the rope at the eyebolt.  His next point of attention was my ankles, which he proceeded to work further apart before tying them to some sort of short pole.  My legs were nearly at right angles, parallel with the two walls forming the corner.  I was starting to get really uncomfortable now – or so I thought.

Up until now Graham had always stayed away from my arse, other than to give me a flogging on a fairly regular basis.  Now, it seemed, he was preoccupied with things more penetrative.  It was a decided turn for the worse which I did not like.   I had never had anal sex – possibly the prospect had never appealed to me, for they say it is something that really has to be experienced to be fully appreciated.  There was no doubt in my mind that this was not the time and place as Graham inserted first a nozzle load of lubricant then his finger in my back passage. I moaned and tried to shake my head.  I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of my safeword just yet, but hoped he would tire of this avenue. 

Alas it didn’t seem like it was going to happen, as two fingers then continued their exploration.  They withdrew only to be replaced by something rather more artificial, and I realised I was about to be the recipient of a buttplug.  No, Graham, please – not this, I thought, as the first sharp pain came with the penetration.
“Relax, Jan,” came the voice.  “Don’t clench your muscles – it will only hurt all the more.  This is going to happen one way or the other.  Your little butthole is going to be reamed very thoroughly, you slut!”
This was a new tone in Graham’s voice – sharp and abusive, and suddenly I was afraid.  Something was happening – something had made him angry, and then I knew it was the remark I had made about maybe going to Brisbane. 

There came another sharp pain from my anus as he thrust the plug in further, then withdrew and pushed again.  The pain was awful, but I willed myself to relax my muscles as much as I could.  It felt like my sphincter was going to split, even though I knew from my work what a marvellously flexible muscle or group of muscles it was.  There was a sudden spasm of pain and then I knew it was fully inside me, filling me in a strange sensation as the pain eased. 
Things stopped at that point for a short while.  I was conscious of Graham’s presence, and me with my arms and arse in the air, the latter no doubt sporting the base of a plug for the world to see.

“So you’re off to Brisbane, eh,” came the voice.  “Off to your other phone Dom.”  I remembered I had told him about Ash in Brisbane.  Was that what this was all about, I wondered?  Was it a jealousy thing?  I tried to say that I hadn’t even made up my mind to accept the job, but other than a few nasal pleadings I didn’t get very far. That was when the first cane stroke fell.
I screamed into the rubber ball.
“Nnnnnn!”

I had experienced the paddles and floggers from Graham before, and didn’t mind them, in my own private fantasy world.  But this pain was so far beyond anything like that.  It seared across my taut bare buttocks like a welding rod.  He struck me again, the smack of the cane preceded by a fearful swishing as he made several air shots that made me cringe, as much as I could. 
With the fall of the second blow I went wild, jerking frantically at my bonds and making desperate ‘mmmph!’ noises around the rubber ball wedged behind my teeth.  I started on ‘happy birthday’ – humming for all I was worth.

The third blow fell, criss-crossing the previous two.  My bottom was on fire and I was absolutely helpless.  There was a pause, as though he was lining me up, and a fourth strike landed, not so hard, but vertically, straight down my crack on to the base of the butt plug.  I almost left the ground, forgetting my rendition as happy birthday dissolved into incoherent pleadings for mercy. 
Tears were streaming down my face as the fifth stroke cut into my flesh.  I felt the joints in my shoulders revolt as I tugged hard on the bonds holding my arms up high.  My neck hurt where I tugged in terror against my chain and collar.  What was this monster going to do to me?

The sixth stroke saw me almost pass out with the pain.  I had visions of my flesh raw and bloody, and knew I could not take much more.  I was snivelling and crying and grovelling in a jumbled nasal rendering of happy birthday again, when he finally stopped.
“That was six of the best, my dear,” Graham announced.  “You don’t expect to go to Brisbane without some sort of souvenir, do you?”  I could hear the cold sneer in his voice.  “A little something to remember your Master by?  To remember your submission?”
I was sobbing almost uncontrollably now – something that is very difficult to do when your mouth is stuffed full.  My nose was getting blocked and in desperation I just blew, not caring the mess I looked.

He let me carry on for another ten minutes, as the searing agony died to a slightly less fierce burning.  Then he released my arms and collar from the eyebolts, and untied the pole from my ankles.
“Come, my dear, on your feet.”  He helped me up with a consideration that was not matched by the expression in his eyes as he wiped the mess of tears and other outpourings from my face.  “There, that’s better,” he said with a smile.  But it was a cold smile – one that sent a shiver down my spine.
I tried again, my ‘happy birthday’ interspersed with snuffles and whimpers.

“Oh no,” he said, shaking his head with an expression of amused tolerance.  “You will be going nowhere, my dear.  Not for quite a while, until I decide that you have atoned for your presumption that you can walk away without so much as a ‘by your leave’.  You forget your role in this relationship.  You forget that there are certain fundamental things that require consultation.  You do not walk away from me and expect me to accept it without some input into the decision.  That input I am about to provide you with, tonight.”

I tried to struggle, not really knowing what I was doing, but he gripped me by the shoulders and forced me over to a low vaulting horse.  Again the tails on my wrist bonds were pulled over a beam above, and I found myself bent over the horse, helpless.  With my body leaning on the black padded top, my ankles were lifted and I was slid so that I lay face down on the horse, my wrists still in the air above me.  My ankles and knees were then bound tightly with more coils of white cotton sashcord, after which the tails attached to my ankle ropes were threaded through my wrist bonds.  I found myself in a hogtie which suddenly became more acute as he hoisted my wrists higher towards the ceiling.

I moaned as my back bent into a bow and my shoulders were again stressed with the angle of my arms.  My breasts lifted clear of the leather and I whined in a futile plea for mercy.
“Is there something you wish to tell me, my dear?” Graham asked, in the tone a priest might use in a confessional.
“Mmnnn…” I moaned, nodding my head in misery.
“Would you like that ball out of your mouth?”
I nodded again.  Unbelieving, I felt his fingers undo the lock at the back of my neck and then the strap come undone.  With a none-too-gentle movement he popped the ball out of my mouth.
“Oh God, Graham – let me go – please!  Whatever I said, I didn’t mean-“

That was as far as I got before he grabbed my plait and jerked my head back.  I gasped with the pain, my mouth opening just in time for his fingers to insert a leather-bound metal ring between my jaws, which was strapped in place.  My mouth was held open, allowing me to make bizarre sounds of protest from my throat, none of which made much sense, but at least I made myself heard.

Of course that didn’t last long.  Moments later a stopper of some sort was screwed into the ring, effectively silencing me in the same way that the ball had.  This form of gag, however, with the rigid ring, was far more strained and uncomfortable for my jaws.  But not content with this, he then tied a short rope to my plait which was in turn attached to my wrist bonds.  I moaned in despair, now unable to move any part of my body, so tautly was I strung out.
“How long do you think you can manage that position?” he asked, his face inches from mine.  “Perhaps you’ll be repentant in the morning?  Yes?”
“Nnnnn!  Nnnnn!” I whined in despair.
“But we need something to focus your mind on your transgressions, n’est ce pas? I think these nice little clamps on your nips will do the job.”

I screwed my eyes shut as the jaws closed on my tender nipples.  More nasal sounds escaped me as the biting pain seared through my tender flesh.  I screamed, after a fashion, but it really didn’t amount to much.  The clamps were joined by a short length of chain, the mid-point of which was hung over the end of the horse.  My eyes widened when I saw the lead weight the size of a golf ball that he lowered towards the chain.  I shook my head as much as I was able, making plaintive mewing noises, which turned into stifled screams as the weight came on to my nipples.  Tears flowed again, coursing down my cheeks while I lay there, trapped in a web of hopelessness as my tormentor turned and left the room, turning out the light and closing the door with a brutal finality.

*   *   *

It was at that stage that I knew all hope had gone.  My misery was complete, plunged into black despair in the darkness.  My body was bent like a bow, every joint screaming for release – my neck, my back, shoulders, arms and legs.  My nipples were on fire and my backside still burned from the caning.  I lost myself in time and a morass of self-pity, subsiding into a distant world of suffering.  Was this the sub-space that Ash had talked about?  I tried to focus on things that would take me away from my pain.  Sweat ran down my back and between my breasts, in the closeness of the room, pooling on the leather of the padded top to the horse.  I lost track of time, not believing that I could be here all night.  I was utterly at Graham’s mercy, unable to move or resist until this other human being decided to end my torture.  I could not believe how wrong I had been about this man – how off-beam my character assessment had been.  There was now no doubt in my mind that I was in serious trouble and the fleeting thought crossed my mind that I might not survive the night.

The idea sent shivers down my spine and left a horrid feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Desperately I fought off the rising panic and confined the terrible thought to the dark depths of my mind where it belonged.  No, Graham was not capable of such a thing – not murder.  Maybe only serious deformity or mutilation, my mind came back.
I was lost in my world when the lights came on again.  Disoriented, I looked up at the figure now standing before me.
“Are we prepared to submit?”
“Urr,” I mewed piteously.
“Good.”  He untied my plait from the rope.  I groaned as my neck was released from the tension.  Next came the plug from the ring gag, leaving me gasping and uttering throaty noises of relief.

“Don’t get too used to that,” he said.  “I have something else for you, instead.”  That was when I realised the whole set-up he had planned.  The horse was exactly the right height for it, I found, as he unzipped his trousers and produced his dick in front of my face.  I had no real chance to protest – not that I could.  Happy birthday was not top of the hot one hundred in this place.  He fitted snugly through the ring gag and forced himself deep into my mouth. 
I was no stranger to oral sex with Graham, but I had always had the option in the past – or at least I had maintained that illusion in my own mind, anyway.  Now, here I was hogtied on a bench and forced to give this man a blowjob.  There wasn’t a choice in this case, and I resigned myself to the inevitable.

He kept me at it for maybe fifteen minutes, stopping and withdrawing every so often.  The movement placed more tension on my limbs and exacerbated the pain in my nipples, but again, there was nothing I could do to resist.  My eyes were stinging with perspiration as a result of my concentrated efforts to please my captor and to keep the agony in my body at bay.  I could not understand what he was doing when he finally pulled out without climaxing and let go of my plait allowing my head to slump forward.  I was coughing and gasping at this point, not knowing what was coming next.

A blindfold was coming next.  I should have guessed it was the one little pleasure I had not experienced at that point.  This one was a black silk scarf that wound around my head three times before it was knotted tightly and I was in darkness again.
The relief when he undid the tails of my wrists and ankles was palpable.  I was so exhausted from the hogtie I had endured that I could do nothing more than lie quivering on the horse.   But releasing me from the bow had the unfortunate side effect of lowering my upper body squarely onto my breasts with those terrible jaws on my nipples.  I moaned and cried out – an act which only prompted the insertion of the plug back in my ring gag.  My jaw was really aching now – a fact with which I was unable to acquaint my captor, who was in any case busy untying my ankles.

For a moment – a very brief one – I almost thought my torment was at an end as he hauled me to my feet and the weight came back on my nipples.  I squealed with a series of gasping noises through my nose at the terrible pain.  Of course it made no difference whatsoever, for Graham was wholly intent on what he was next going to do to me.  I felt myself positioned on a spot, although in relation to what I could not tell.  My legs were parted and I underwent the familiar stretching that came with the spreader bar cuffed to my ankles. 

Then it was my arms again, up in the air, with my head going down.  Up and up went my arms while my head was forced down.  He paused momentarily to walk me forward a couple of tiny steps, to feel my head bump into a post I knew to be in the middle of the room.  That’s when I saw his plan as he pulled my wrists that last distance and bound them to the post.  My arms were now vertically against the post, upwards, as were my shoulders and head, downwards.  Another rope bound my elbows together and to the post while I begged in muted tones to be set free, promising I would never do anything he didn’t approve of.

I was now absolutely immobile again, my legs spread wide and the rest of my body held rigidly against the post, with my bottom about as vulnerable as it could possibly get.  I was still conscious of the butt plug in place and I was petrified of what might be next on his list of tortures. 
There was the sound of a riding crop or something like it, slashing through the air.  God, no, Graham! Please! I moaned desperately, but my words came out only as a series of  “Nnnnm!” s. 
Thwack!  A slash across the buttocks.  I screamed into the gag, shaking my head as much as I could and trying to hop from one foot to the other.  Thwack again, on the base of the buttplug. I went wild with a continuous “Nnnnnnnnmmmm!”  My eyes were streaming beneath the scarf and I was lost in a purgatory which appeared to have no end.  Then there were hands groping over my doubled up body and fondling my breasts as the weights hung from them.  My screaming had now merged into a continuous series of nasal keenings.

He entered me at that point, driving between my legs and forcing me against the post as he pumped hard and fast.  Predictably, after what I had done to him from my hogtie, it did not take too much to make him climax, though through the red haze of pain I was conscious of him trying to hold back the inevitable.  He was clearly wanting to make me suffer just that little bit more.
His orgasm sent shudders through me, reinforced as it was by the thrusting of his body against the buttplug and the pain from the tender flesh on my buttocks.  And then he was out.  There was no suggestion of any climax on my part – I could not even have contemplated such a thing.  It was true that he had taught me that a climax could be heightened with a little pain in the nipples or a mild paddling beforehand, but this was a quantum leap from those times.  I was left there, trembling in the darkness, stretched more than I could bear, until I heard the clink of chain.  I wept further, dreading what he was no about to do to me with chains.

I felt the chain wrapped around my waist and padlocked just below my navel.  The loose end was then pulled none too gently between my legs and padlocked in the small of my back.  A third padlock evidently somehow secured my buttplug to what was an uncomfortable crotch chain.  My arms were released at that point and I was allowed to stand up.  I felt my wrists undone.  Was this the end?
“Stand still!” his voice hissed in my ear.  “You will not move until you hear the door shut.  You will then hear it lock.  You may then leave by the outside door.  If you dare to knock on the inner door or to do anything other than leave directly, you will spend the rest of the night hanging inverted from the beam overhead while I whip your breasts and pussy.  Do I make myself absolutely clear?”
I nodded, still sobbing uncontrollably.
“I am taking your dress as a souvenir.  Come looking for it and as I said, you will be hanging upside down from the roof with triple weights tied to your tits.  Don’t go looking for the keys to the locks, either.  They’ll go in the rubbish tomorrow.  You can keep the locks, chain and plug as your own souvenir from me.  Now go home.  I never want to see you again, you little slut!”

I was left alone, still standing, legs apart, gagged and blindfolded, quivering like jelly as the emotional reaction set in.  There came the sound of a slamming door and the key turned in the lock.  I raised my arms slowly and worked the silk scarf off.  My arms were stiff from the long period pulled behind me and my shoulder joints ached.  The room was in pitch darkness.  Not a chink of light came under either of the doors, and I worked entirely by feel.
I eased the nipple clips off very, very slowly, letting the blood gradually return to my nips, but that didn’t stop me crying with the pain.  Tears were running freely now, unhindered by the thought of what lay ahead, and prompted by the fact that my torment was over.  I undid the gag strap behind my head and prised the terrible ring out from between my jaws, again sobbing with relief and working my mouth to get some feeling of normality back into it.  I had undone the ankle cuffs and freed myself from the awful spreader bar before the implications of my situation really dawned on me. 

I was naked, with a crotch strap and buttplug chained in place.  Jesus.  I felt my way along the outer wall to the side door and opened it.  The night was warm and the perspiration slowly began to dry on my body.  I paused for a moment in the doorway, letting the dim glow of the city night percolate into the dungeon.  Eventually my eyes became adjusted to the light and I could just make out the outlines of some of the furniture.  Leaving the door open I searched the room as best I could and found my shoulder bag with the car keys inside it, and my sandals.  I looked around for anything I could use to cover my nudity, but there was nothing.  Graham had made very sure of that.

At that point I sat down in the doorway and wept again, so wretched did I feel.  I had been betrayed, beaten, raped and humiliated.  Even now, his legacy was still with me in the form of the buttplug chained in place. He had not screwed me in the arse, deeming me unworthy of this.  Rather, he had arranged for an artificial device to do it instead, to leave me suffering and degraded.  Life had reached an absolute nadir for me, and I could not think straight.
I don’t know how long I sat there in my self-pity and misery, before I finally got it together sufficiently to consider the practicalities of my predicament.  I knew I had to get to my car and I had to get home.  After I had done that I could think about how to get the chain off.  In the meantime I had to drive across Sydney Harbour Bridge naked, such an act being part of the denouement in the Degradation of Jan Sherwood.

It was, I guessed, nearly eleven o’clock.  My car was parked outside Graham’s place near a streetlight.  I skulked behind his Audi under the carport, listening for signs of anybody walking their dog or doing a late night jog, but the street was silent.  The lights were out in Graham’s house, but I wondered if he was watching from a window.  Maybe.  Or maybe I was not considered worthy of his time any more.

I pulled out my keys and scuttled across the grass verge to my car, fumbling with the lock and then letting myself in.  The interior light came on automatically, and despite all the times I had blessed such an innovation, this time I cursed it.  Sitting down in the drivers seat drove the buttplug home most uncomfortably, and there seemed nothing I could do to ease the unpleasant feeling of fullness it gave me.  I let my fingers briefly explore the connection between chain and plug, establishing that there was a small eyebolt in the plug through which a padlock connected to the chain.

The interior light went out.  I reached into the back seat and found a small hand towel which I had kept for previous, less traumatic episodes, where again I had arrived hot and sweaty.  I towelled myself down and draped the towel as best I could under the seat belt and over my breasts.  Then I started the engine and drove away. 
It was probably the longest drive of my life.  My head was buzzing with a mad confusion of thoughts, while my naked body continued to shake such that I had to grip the steering wheel hard to keep my hands steady.  The act of driving focussed my mind sufficiently to push my experience into the background. I drove through the back streets as much as I could, avoiding traffic lights and any chance that I would have to stop beside a vehicle whose driver could look down on my nakedness.  Fortunately, no such incident occurred, and I arrived home just on midnight by the clock in the car.

My street in Balmain was notorious for its lack of parking, and frequently I had been obliged to walk a hundred metres or more from the nearest parking space.  It was also devoid of trees and any other sort of cover that a naked woman could utilise.  I knew the only choice I had was to double-park for long enough to get inside and cover myself up.
I drove down the street slowly, passing my house and noting the lack of lights in the neighbouring buildings.  There appeared to be nobody about when I returned and double-parked.  Taking a deep breath, and again checking that nobody was around, I slid out of the car, scampered across the footpath and up the steps to the front door, forgetting the automatic external light that came on and lit me up for the entire world to see.  For several long moments I panicked, scrabbling for my keys, dropping them, then finally getting the door open.  Once inside, with the door closed behind me, my breath rasping in my ears, I struggled not to break down again.  Sniffling and wiping my eyes I pulled on a pair of jeans and a teeshirt and returned to park my car further down the road.

On my return to the safety of my house I stripped and stood for a long time in the shower, letting the hot water run over me.  It was there that I finally broke down and cried again, sitting in the corner of the shower with my head against the tiles.  Even here, in the security of my private refuge, my humiliation was unfinished, with Graham’s parting gift still chained immovably inside me.  The Degradation of Jan Sherwood was complete.
  12.07.01
updated: 26.06.02

story continues in Vanishing Act 4

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