Darkness and silence. When she tried to scream, bolts of electric energy shot through her cunt and breasts. It was worse than the whipping or canings she had already endured and she stopped making any noise at once. Time stopped. She slept, awakening now and then and feeling nothing other than her bonds and the silence. Eventually, there were sounds outside the coffin and then vibration and she assumed that the tram was now moving. She heard the high-pitched sound of the electric motors and felt the different vibrations. The puzzle of what was happening was more than she could stand. She struggled and fought the straps and cuffs and metal restrains, but succeeded in getting nowhere. The tram stopped and started, hundreds of times. Each time, the stop was preceded by a shock to her breasts, ass or pussy. It wasn’t long before she realized that some sort of signal in the tram activated the shocks, but it would be several days before K understood that her new place in life was in a wooden electrical closet in the rear of an Amsterdam tram, receiving shocks each time a passenger pushed the button signaling that they wanted to get off at the next stop.
Why? What was the reason for this continuous and endless punishment? True, they came for her each night in the tram barn. They removed her, forced her into two hours of strenuous exercise which was rewarded with a fucking or a beating, then they cleaned and fed her and placed her in a tiny stone cell until the pre-dawn hours when she was again bound and locked into her moving coffin, forced to endure the day and evening in boring solitude with only the rumblings and squeals of the tram and the endless electrical charges to accompany and sustain her. It was boring. It was endless. The punishment that she had initially rationalized and even welcomed became nothing to her. She knew her mind was going. She knew that these people, with their beliefs that exponentially exceeded in strangeness the beliefs of the cult where she once lived, were doing this for some reason, but K couldn’t begin to fathom why.
Chapter Three
One evening, months later, a woman she did not recognize appeared and presided over her late night respites, directing the bathing and preparations for the night. They didn’t beat her that night. No one tied her to the steel bed frame and fucked her ass or her cunt. Her meal consisted of soup and tea, a much different offering than the crap she usually got. When the crew finished their tasks of exercising, feeding, bathing her and escorting her in chains back to her cell, this woman remained, standing with her arms folded, blocking the open steel doorway, staring at K who was, for once, neither gagged nor hooded. The others were dismissed and then the mystery woman spoke.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked quietly, knowing the answer.
“No,” K said, shaking her head, trying to make out the woman’s face in the back lighting from the corridor outside the cell.
“I am Lois Brant.”
For a moment, the name meant nothing to K. She stared at the woman, saying nothing. Then, it clicked. She knew the name Brant. She waited, wondering what, if any connection this woman had to her past and her present situation.
“You fucked my son, William,” the woman said in the same monotone. “More precisely, he fucked you. But he was only a boy. You were teaching a class. You were the substitute teacher.”
Like a jolt from the tram’s electric charges, the entire memory suddenly flooded K’s head. She slumped backwards into the cage and lay back on the straw pallet, struggling to recall the details, but remembering the scene.
“He,” she began and then stopped, gathering her wits and seldom used voice. “He was no kid. He was twenty,” she said. “He came on to me and I was not his teacher, but he came to the school and I was in the library. He said he needed help and we talked. Later that night, he seduced me.”
“I assumed that you were wonton and willing,” Lois said, still without any emotion. “I assumed then that you led him on.”
“It was the other way around.”
“Yes, I know… now. But you left him stranded there in that village of idiots. They found out what you two had done and condemned him…and you. I found you after a long and expensive search, thanks to your passport, a close law enforcement friend who owed me big time, credit cards and some hard cash in the hands of immigration people. They told me where you were going. Your boss, Edna, at Comslots, told me about your leaving there and heading for Europe.”
“How?” K murmured, trying to put it all together.
“When you flew out of O’Hare, I followed you through the airport, took the same flight and was amazed and distressed that you got so lost on the trams. I waited at your hotel and when you failed to show up, it took more Euros to find you.”
“You set this up?”
“No,” the woman said slowly. “Well, yes. Part of it. It was a coincidence, the couple who took you that night was out prospecting for a victim and you fell into their arms. They sent your baggage to the hotel. I took care of that.”
“I figured that they would release you and so I stayed in the background until the right moment when I convinced them to keep you. It was costly, but I had plenty of money. I paid them to keep you. I wanted you to pay.”
“What month is it now?” K asked, astonished at what she was hearing.
“June,” the woman said.
“And now. Why are you here now?” K asked, still confused. After so many nights of brutality, she was wondering why she hadn’t been flogged or fucked this particular evening.
“I came back here, yesterday, to Rotterdam, to try to get you out and ask you to forgive me for what I’ve done.”
“Now, six months later?” Katrine asked, incredulous.
“William, my son, died last month. Auto accident. He was fleeing from the village and drove off a bridge. EMS got to him in time, but his injuries were fatal in the end. His dying words were that it was not your fault. He told me that he enticed you and led you to his apartment and took you, more or less, he said, against your will.”
“Rotterdam?” K asked, still confused and unable to keep up with all of Lois’ information.
“You were taken from Amsterdam that first night.”
“I thought I was still in Amsterdam,” K whispered. “I understand now. William was a good man, but very confused. I tried to help him and only wanted to talk with him, but he tied me to the bed, stuffed my panties in my mouth and tied them there with my bra. Then he raped me over and over again. I have not forgotten it, but I forgave him long ago. I made the wrong moves. I shouldn’t have left the college with him. I am a classic fuck-up.”
“Can you forgive me?”
“I don’t even know you.”
“My name is Lois.”
“You said that. Can we get out of here?”
“Of course. I will unlock your chains and have you brought some clothes. I have a private car waiting. We’ll go to my hotel. You can recover there in privacy. I will try to make my peace with you and then be gone, you will never see or hear from me again…unless you want to.”
“Okay,” K said, trying to absorb the sudden change in situation and holding up her chained wrists to be released.
They left the old stone Museum building on the Rotterdam waterfront and drove quickly back to Amsterdam, taking the A4 and making a rest stop near Leiden. By midnight they arrived at the luxurious, hundred-year old Intercontinental Amstel Hotel on the river of the same name. Despite the late hour, smiling and courteous hotel staff awaited them and took them to a small, but luxurious suite overlooking the river. They showed her the original clothes from her suitcase in the closet and dresser. Lois saw to it that K was well taken care of, then left her to get some sleep and recover.
Katrine didn’t sleep. Wrapped in a thick, fluffy, white bathrobe, she sat in a deeply cushioned chair by the window and watched the boats and barges go up and down the river. In the morning, Lois returned, knocking quietly before entering and placing her traveling bags by the doorway. They had breakfast in the suite and Lois tried to answer K’s many questions about the missing months in her life.
“What do I do
now?” K asked, pondering, as she had since they left the cell, what she was going to do with the rest of her life. She had only a few clothes and, if they hadn’t raided her luggage, a few hundred dollars.
“That’s up to you. But perhaps I can help,” said Lois, reaching into her large briefcase and producing a group of elegant leather folders and envelopes, which she placed in front of K. “These may help in some small way.”
“What is this?” K asked, eyeing, but not touching the stack of envelopes.
“I want you to take your time and read through everything here…or as much of it as you can. Some of it is simply history and details to fill in the blanks of why and how you got here and why I’m here now. It will help you absorb the personal history I have had fabricated for you so that if anyone cares or asks, you have a logical and viable story to cover the last decade or so. We’ll meet again for dinner or later if you wish and I’ll try to answer any additional questions you have. When you are comfortable and without any more questions, I’ll leave you. The suite is yours for as long as you want to stay.”
“Okay,” was all that K could muster. She ate a small piece of toast and a bite of the scrambled eggs on her plate, wondering what was happening.
“Take your time, Katrine. You are entitled to a rest and hopefully, a short recovery. I will help in any way I can,” Lois added standing up and moving towards the door. Call my room, 206, when you want to chat again. I have made an appointment with the hotel hair stylist for two this afternoon. She will come and cut and style your hair as you wish. They will do a manicure, pedicure and anything else they can to help you fit into your new life.”
“Okay.” K looked at the stack of envelopes.
“Please read the document in the A-sized envelope first,” said Lois. “It will clarify things somewhat, I hope. I’ll see you at dinner in La Rive, the restaurant downstairs, at seven thirty.” Lois picked up one of the luggage bags by the door and left, closing the door quietly.
“Okay,” Katrine said to the empty room. She sat in the chair by the window, looking out at the river for the rest of the morning. The terror of the closet on the tram drifted in and out of her head. Some part of her still feared that she’d be sent back to the cell in the Rotterdam building and then be put back on the tram again. Eventually, she opened the top envelope and read the computer-printed pages quickly at first and then again slowly, letting the details sink in. When she finished, she read everything once more. According to the documents, she had financial assets in excess of five million Euros in three different banks, all in her name. The files she read explained that in order to give her as much flexibility as possible in the uncertain global economy, the banks had been chosen carefully for their stability and discretion. One was, as she might have expected, in Geneva. Another was in Bahrain and the third in Singapore. She discovered that she now had a home on Nevis, a small island in the Caribbean, that was hers free and clear with all taxes and maintenance fees paid for the rest of her life. As she read the documents yet another time, the hairdresser and her assistants knocked at the door and for a few hours, K was distracted by the attentive, meticulous care these professionals provided. They devoted a lot of time to helping her decide about nail polish and adjustments to her hair color. And just when she thought they were finished, there was another knock on the door and two well-dressed women entered pulling three metal racks of clothing. The sight of the metal racks momentarily frightened K as they reminded her of the frames she had more than once been strapped or chained to, but the women seemed to understand her reaction and helped her select a few items of clothing that she might never have even thought about before.
“We know what happened to you,” the senior cosmetologist said gently. “We understand. After so long and such terrible treatment, we are here to help you adjust once again. Ms. Brant, who is paying for all of this by the way, told us about the kidnapping and everything.”
K was a bit stunned, but it seemed to her that the easiest thing to do was to go with the flow and let these experts reshape her looks and wardrobe. After all, according to the documents she had read, she was now extremely well off and should probably look the part.
Her personal life had been meticulously reconstructed and arranged to include new credit cards, passports, driver’s licenses and other necessary documents that had either been lost or expired. Lois had used considerable personal resources to reassemble K’s life in a more appealing and logical way and this meant, of course, to K, that Lois was a very, very wealthy woman. Now it was up to K as to what direction she would take.
She spent the rest of the afternoon day-dreaming. If she handled it right, her life would come back to her in a different form than before, but she would recover…mostly, she thought.
At times, she knew that she would dream about the beatings, the chains, the coffin-like closet on the tram and awaken at night, wondering if it ever happened.
That evening she dressed in one of the new conservative, but fashionable dresses the women had helped her pick out. The dress had long sleeves which helped to cover the marks on her wrists from the cuffs and chains. They had already done her make-up and hair, so at seven-fifteen, she cautiously left the suite and found her way to the formally elegant restaurant where she was quickly greeted by the manager and shown to a table that looked out on the river. Lois joined her shortly and they enjoyed a pleasant and lengthy dinner, talking mostly about the information K had absorbed from the information in the folders. They parted in front of K’s suite door at eleven thirty and did not make plans for the next day, K saying she might wish to sleep in and would call Lois when she woke up.
Around mid day, K phoned the front desk and was told that Ms. Brant had checked out, but left an envelope for her. They asked if she wanted the package delivered to her room and K said, “Yes. Please.”
In an envelope of the hotel’s elegant stationary was a hand-written note:
Katrine, I apologize for leaving early, but unfortunately, I have important other business to attend to in Rome.
I will contact you again soon, but I think you will do fine without my further interference.
Joan Breamer, a woman from my solicitor’s office, will contact you tomorrow and provide assistance in getting your assets in order and helping with anything you may need. The hotel concierge is also ready to assist you at any time, should you want to shop, tour, dine or just wander the city, with or without an escort.
By the way, the black leather Hermes bag by the door is for you. I may be totally wrong, but I thought you might enjoy the contents.
Again, my apologies for your suffering and pain.
Lois Brant
K stepped back from the door and noticed the bag for the first time. She picked it up and found it much heavier than she expected. She sat on the floor, carefully opened the bag and discovered its strange contents. One by one she removed the items, placing them on the carpet at her feet. There were five objects:
1. A heavy metal collar, meticulously made to hide any seams or mechanisms to open or lock it. In a tiny, red silk bag attached to the collar was a strange key and a folder with printed instructions. She put the collar down and examined the next item.
2. A similarly made set of steel manacles with a short chain between them. This too had a silk bag with instructions and two keys.
3. She examined the pair of steel shackles, slightly larger than the manacles and also joined by a short chain and bearing the same silk bag and keys.
4. The next item was a cleverly made, hinged steel gag device with a handmade and magnificently finished leather mouthpiece attached in front and an adjustable locking cylinder at the back.
5. Finally, there was a heavy cloth bag containing two lengths of polished chrome chain, one long and one short and three locks, each with matching keys.
Totally puzzled by the package and its contents, K sat back and gazed out once again at the cold, black water of the canal and the passing boats. The sun shone on the Amsterdam
winter landscape. A single beam of sunlight, reflected from the nearby bridge, came through the window, illuminating the array of stainless steel objects on the floor.
K felt something strange awaken inside her. It wasn’t a quite a longing; it was more of a resurrected wish. Touching the cold steel restraints, she recognized what she had felt over the many years with the cult and again when her abductors took her in Amsterdam. She wondered why on earth Lois would give her a bondage chain set. As if in answer, she saw another handwritten note at the bottom of the bag. It read:
“K, I have the feeling that you may, sooner or later, miss some of the events in your past and so I have taken care to assist you, should you desire, perhaps in privacy, to share the good parts.
Tomorrow, another bag will arrive. It will contain some more intimate devices that you may also wish to use from time to time. It was supposed to be ready for you today, but craftsmen are sometimes annoyingly unpunctual.”
Katrine took off the heavy white, cotton robe with the hotel’s embroidered logo, slipped out of her newly acquired bikini panties and removed the keys from the collar’s silk bag. Following the directions in three languages, she pressed the key to a slight repression on the side of the collar; it sprang open, revealing a single hinge and a mitered lock. Slowly, Katrine slid the cold steel band around her narrow neck, not surprised to find that it fit perfectly. She closed the lock. There was no sound, but the collar was secure, its three D rings arrayed one on each side toward the back and one just below her chin. By using the magnetic key, K opened the collar once again and then locked it firmly in place.
Ingenious, she thought. Beautifully ingenious. I can wear this under a sweater and no one will know. Lovely. It would pass for fine jewelry anywhere.
In the minutes that followed, K fitted each of the remaining cuffs to her wrists and ankles, first reading the instructions and checking the magic of the magnetic locks that always operated flawlessly. She discovered that one key operated all locks, allowing her to place the rest of the keys in safe storage places. She locked her hands in front, connected the shackles, wrist cuffs and collar with the longer chain and placed the second, shorter one around her tiny waist. At the front, just above her sex, she locked the waist and connecting chains together. As the final move, she put on the strange, contoured metal gag that, like everything else in the set, appeared to have been made to her exact measurements. The leather plug fit easily in her mouth, depressed her tongue and when the encircling steel bands were snugly closed and locked, silenced her extremely well.
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