Carried Away

by Whitney Williams

  As soon as the platform locked into place, the curtain was drawn, and everyone started moving quickly. Waiters cleared and cleaned the table while stagehands changed the set. They moved my cherry tree sleeves to hang behind the frame that turned out to be a weapon rack, which they loaded with decorated (but seemingly functional) swords, spears, staffs.

  Yumiko-sensei and one of the stagehands were behind me, cutting up the rest of my beautiful, color-shifting obi into thick, silk strips. They retied my hands and arms into a complicated weave, palms together between my shoulders, fingers pointing up toward my neck. They wound their silken cords around my arms, shoulders, neck, chest, whipping the bitter ends through so fast I would have been badly burned without the protection of my inner kimono’s thin, blackish-red sleeves.

  The stagehand fed me the tail of my obi until it overfilled my open mouth, then he neatly wrapped a thick strip around my head, reaching all the way from just below my nose to the tip of my lowered chin.

  Yumiko-sensei finished the weave around my chest. As rough as she had been with me earlier, I was thankful she did that part herself. When she was finished, I couldn’t even breathe deeply, and my breasts, looking cartoonishly huge tied as they were, herniated out through the cords as if they were struggling to tear through the silk of my kimonos. At least the bindings would hold them closed. I guess that was appropriate, since they were made from my obi.

  The whole arrangement held fast and snug around me, scarcely leaving room to squirm. Despite that, it was reasonably comfortable except for the cinching feeling around each of my breasts with every breath. I imagine it might have been quite painful had any part of it been mis-measured.

  All of the night’s culture and solemnity had been packed into the first act, with my successfully-accidental spill marking a turn toward comedy and mirth. The second act was more like dinner theater. Yumiko-sensei danced and sang, sometimes playing a musical instrument from the weapon rack. My part was to sit there and look chastened for pouring hot tea on one of the guests. That’s pretty easy when you’re tied up and gagged.

  I was an excellent prop, giving a balance of form and color to the rack at the table’s far end and watching Yumiko-sensei in awe. It looked to me like she wanted to get them drinking during that course, and she gets what she wants. The men laughed and toasted, occasionally backing her up with their increasingly slurred and off-key baritones.

  Our third descent was more dinner theater, but she took it in a blatantly sexual direction. She had removed my cherry blossoms and cut a slit down the back of my red inner kimono so they could extend the weave around my chest to a snug harness down my entire abdomen, holding my thin film of silk tightly to my skin and leaving no room for imagination. Elaborate knot work between my legs tickled with every breath and did more than tickle if I tried to move.

  Yumiko-sensei had carefully ripped and scorched her own clothes while the stagehands exchanged all the set pieces for burned and broken counterparts. Then she told a story. It was one they all knew, some history or legend involving a damsel in distress. She was down on the surface of the table close to them at all times, moving among the men. She held one’s tie, delivering over-affected lines an inch from his face. She rolled over in a way that exposed a whitewashed leg all the way to her hip, then bashfully covered herself. She cowered toward one and begged another for rescue. She had them literally drinking sake from her cupped hands.

  During the fourth course, she was a prop too. She lay stretched out down the middle of the table, spears and daggers driven through her kimonos and into the wood, pinning her in place, tares showing her whitened skin. Above her shoulders, a pair of swords were sunk into the table and crossed above her neck, leaving just enough room for her to keep from cutting herself, but no more. The men playfully tugged and cut at Yumiko-sensei’s robes until their hands roamed freely over her body while she writhed and moaned under a pile of silken rags.

  That course’s entertainment consisted solely of ineffectual struggles and feminine flesh, so I got to participate too. I had been excessively anchored to my pedestal like a guyed tower, and any swath of silk that covered more than a palm print of my skin was torn open for display. Tied and kneeling as I was, not much of me was left that they could touch, but the silk straps and their soft, frayed edges touched everything, everywhere, all at once.

  By the time we hovered up into the ceiling again, my pretend struggles to achieve freedom had smoothly segued into very real struggles to achieve something else. My efforts continued while they changed the set.

  For our final descent into the pit of lechery, my hair was taken down and woven among my guy wires. Yumiko-sensei’s arrangement took some time. She was tied into a harness of what looked like natural fiber rope. That must have hurt. She stood in the center of the platform with ropes leading away from her in all directions, tied to her all over her body. They even braided two different ropes into her hair. All of them were carefully measured and anchored to predetermined points, some on the platform, some off of it, some along the heavy lines that suspended us. She closed her eyes, breathed several deliberate and steady breaths, then nodded.

  As our platform sank down, slower this time, the ropes anchored to the green room’s black floor rose from its surface. Yumiko-sensei leaned forward as her hands pulled away from her and her feet started to slide in different directions along the platform. She became the bright white center of a web of dark ropes that twisted her and stretched her limbs awkwardly akimbo, revealing her to be almost as flexible as I was.

  The weapon rack opposite me had been loaded with a collection of implements I will not describe and of some of them, in all my travels, I have never since seen the like. The platform needed more slack than it had been given in order to come to rest, and it took what it wanted from Yumiko-sensei’s body along with a scream that rang true in its terrifying honesty. Ropes in all directions drew tight like bowstrings. Lashings cinched and slipped, leaving shadows of bare skin as they scraped away her carefully painted makeup. Her body quivered with the ropes; her mouth hung open, still trying to scream; her big, brown eyes stared off at something miles and miles behind me. She blinked.

  Everything was deathly silent, or no, there was talking I would not hear, motion I would not see. I cried out to Yumiko-sensei, screaming through my gag. I leapt forward as far as I could and reached out to her, which only tightened my bindings, proving to me for the first time in my life that I could be physically restrained against my fiercest will. I had been bet, carried, dressed, measured, handled and hit, groped and gagged, packed and pinched, teased and tied, owned and overpowered, scrubbed, sprayed, slapped, stripped, spanked, smuggled, fed, folded, flipped, fingered, frightened, forced and fucked, but every last instant of it had been with my consent, by my decision, with little hesitation and zero regret.

  That time, and only that one time, it was different. Some people honestly believe in telekinesis, mystic powers, click your heals together, et cetera. It’s all bunk. If there were any relationship between thought and action in all of this universe or any other, Yumiko-sensei would have been freed.

  I was still screaming and flailing (whimpering and squirming) while he loaded me into the car, which this time was indeed a limousine. He propped me up on the back seat and knelt in front of me with his face squarely in front of my wide eyes. He held me still with one hand behind my head, over my shoulder. The fingers of this other hand gently stroked my forehead and temple as though brushing away wisps of hair while he hushed me over and over until I was still. As soon as I looked at him instead of looking through him, he untied the sash holding my gag in place and ever so gently unwound it from my head. Then he eased the wadded silk from my mouth, moving his face in front of my eyes any time they wandered.

  I had started thinking again. I knew I couldn’t move, but I could speak.

  “Please,” I started, rifling through my vocabulary for the most persuasive words I could find. “Please, Master, Yumiko-sensei, she…”
I hadn’t found any yet that seemed adequate. “Please, we mustn’t leave her, Master, she…” Again, thinking about Yumiko-sensei’s body back in that web derailed my train of thought. “I’ll… Please, you’ve been so good to me, Master, and she… Please go back for her! Leave me instead. I’ll do anything. PLEASE!!!”

  I had exhausted the entirety of my panicked lexicon and had not produced any indication of progress toward the action I urgently needed. My head fell forward, and I cried hard.

  With his face low in front of me, he tried to find my eyes, saying, “This was all Yumi’s idea. She worked on setting it up for a long time. I doubt she would take kindly to any interruption now.”

  I didn’t understand. Exasperated, he continued, “She didn’t want to include you because she was sure you’d ruin everything. I had to talk her into it.” Collapsing into the seat next to me, he sighed heavily. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

  Her scream had completely driven from my mind the incomprehensible fact that she willingly put herself there. I managed to find room between weeping and wailing to squeeze in two words: “But” and “Why?” The limousine rolled calmly and smoothly through the city streets. Raindrops pattered softly on its windows. Endorphins flooded my brain. I kept crying, but I was quiet. We were both quiet for what seemed like a very long time.

  He sighed again, then answered slowly, staring out into the light rain. “She visits the iniquity of fathers upon their sons to the third and fourth generations of those who fail her.”

  Who had failed her? The iniquity of fathers? I wanted to know what he meant, but I was still working with a limited vocabulary and had already asked once. He would tell me if he wanted me to know.

  He did. “There are not a lot of ways to move capital in and out of China, and none of them involve the front door. Hanshu Steel and Mining has run interests here since the war and occupation. They were smart enough to back the Maoists, and they’ve been greasing the right palms ever since. Hanshu is old money. They’re samurai, and this is their fiefdom.

  “Japan has always been an aristocracy, and it still is, and it’s still just as closed and xenophobic as it ever was. Only the weapons change, not the dynasties. It’s impressive how they adapt, but they always stay a step behind, just like Pearl Harbor. They concentrated on the battleships, but by then, aircraft carriers were the new capital ships. There never was the great blue-water, battleship shootout they expected. The board game is almost satire: E-4? Miss. They never listen. Yamamoto knew better. He knew it, but the order was given, and he did the best he could with it. And still, that closed-minded culture prevails in the upper echelons. Sexual misogyny is only an outward symptom of the disease, and it is an easy one to exploit. She is at this moment stripping them of the fear they ought to have of her, and she will shortly rob them of any ability to think critically in her presence whatsoever. To say, ‘To say that seeing Yumi tomorrow at the final contract negotiations will catch them off guard would be an understatement,’ would itself be an understatement. She hates their arrogance, and she is using it against them. 32-B”—he laughed sardonically—”Hit.

  “Of course now the weapons are industry and finance, but they still don’t listen. They’ll never inflate the Yen because fiat currencies just aren’t the samurai way. Yumi was fed with a silver spoon too, but she knows better. She knows it, and she holds those men personally responsible for the blinding arrogance that has hobbled her nation for a thousand years. That seems a little harsh to me, but I’m sure as hell not going to argue with her. She was cum laude at Wharton, first in her class at Harvard Law, edited the Review. Those sons of bitches won’t know the meaning of the word ‘fucked’ until a few weeks from now when their legal department reads the fine print. They won’t even challenge the contract as unconscionable because to do that, they would have to admit why she got the better of them. Yumiko is my attorney, and I’m glad she’s on my side. Then again, maybe I’m just lucky to be on hers.”

  He sat staring out the window again, as if the rain would tell him which it was.

  So this was a trap, and Yumiko-sensei was both the bait and the hunter? I searched my heart for any trace of pity for the men I had last seen gathering around her, taking off jackets and unbuckling belts. I found none. I had only met her that day, but she was my friend. Not counting people I aimed never to see again, she was my only friend.

  I paused and wondered whether or not that was true. She was an F-5 tornado of charm and beauty that could rip pavement out of the ground, and she had touched down right in front of me. Maybe I had just been in the path of the storm. This certainly wasn’t Kansas.

  Our limousine flowed silently with the city’s traffic, draining up into the hills, away from the harbor. The rain had stopped. It wouldn’t answer my questions either.

  He had a penknife in his pocket, and he started at my bindings but only made six cuts. Then he wrapped his suit jacket around me, buttoned it and turned up the collar. It felt good to straighten my knees and to lower my hands more comfortably behind my back. That left some slack around my arms, which I wriggled inside his jacket to distribute around my torso.

  “Come on,” he said. “The night sky is beautiful.”

  The car, like the rain, had stopped. We were back at our hotel. He stepped out, pulled me toward him, then hoisted me over his shoulder. I could have walked, but I was barefoot. I would have felt uncomfortable walking through the lobby anyway, even with his jacket mostly covering me, so I was glad he carried me. I was already pretty good at suppressing my enculturated tendency to feel puritanically self-conscious about my body, but the day’s events had sapped my strength.

  I hate it that we still do that to girls. Most of the world has gotten over it. If America were any more prudish, they’d have us all wearing hijab.

  I didn’t get a look at the sky until we were back in our room, out on the balcony. He lowered me from his shoulder to sit on the chest-high wrought-iron railing. The scrollwork on it was lovely and fit the room’s decor, but knowing how high up we were made the building seem silly. Our hotel was a 17th century French skyscraper in Hong Kong. I suppose you sit wherever you are when the music stops.

  I leaned back over the edge with his arm around me, but I could only see clouds. They looked a lot closer than they had down on the harbor, mostly because they were. We were on the 64th floor of a building perched precariously on a very high hill. Looking left and right, I thought the clouds must have continued forever, like the world had been tucked in for the night under a soft, rumpled, gray blanket. Then he let go of me.

  I screamed as I fell backward, trying and failing to wave my arms, then trying and failing to reach for the rail. I had kicked my feet up to try to stay balanced, but they didn’t catch under his arms. I hooked them back to catch the rail too late and felt my calves hit the railing hard and slide off. I was gone.

  While I plummeted to my death, the silk cords woven all around my body pulled suddenly tight, and his hands took my ankles to snatch me back from the jaws of gravity. He had tied some of the lines that had immobilized me on my pedestal earlier onto the railing before dropping me over! The bands I had wriggled loose in the car cinched tight with my full weight, and the cords suspending me pulled my bottom hard into the railing’s cold scrollwork. I suppose you could say I was sitting on the side of a building, feet pointed up into the air, arms behind me as if to prop myself up.

  I threw back my head and screamed again while his jacket slipped easily up over my head and fell into oblivion. It wasn’t a scream of surprise or fear, but of madness. I howled at the night, at the darkness, at the city, at the inky black harbor so far below. I howled at Yumiko-sensei and her dance, at kimonos stacked to the roof of a little shop somewhere, at too-high water pressure, at room service, at tiny suitcases on airplanes flying back and forth above those low, gray clouds. I howled at the angry wind tugging my hair out to sea, at the frayed silk groping me everywhere at once, at the hands on my ankles, spreading my legs, at the knots a
nd wrought iron digging for my clitoris, at the heavy, cold, wet air tickling and caressing my bare skin, eddying around my breasts, breaking over my nipples. I howled at the lights of ships and buoys miles above my head, floating on their watery firmament, at the speckled light-cicles hanging down from the hills, dripping red dots to stain the blanket of clouds below them, at the throbbing, sodium glow of a living city, hungry in the night. I howled for the pain of new penetration, again hard and again, for my sore but jealous vagina, wondering if it would have hurt more or less to receive him there instead, for the recoil of my breasts bouncing and leaping through the bars of their cruel, silk cages, for the swing and slosh of my vision, torn loose from the landscape and reeling with my wagging neck. I screamed out all my fear of the future, all my hatred of the past, all my insecurities and doubts and all my life, such as it had been and such as it would be.

  As delirium rolled in slow and soggy like a fog on the harbor, I howled myself out of my body and up into the fuzzy gray oblivion beyond my feet. I saw myself pass out. I watched him lift me gently back over the railing. I heard his big, calm heartbeat from far away. It thumped a steady march for me, leading me through the fog, across the fragile boundary between my cheek and his chest, bringing me home.

  I woke up alone again, out of most of my rags but still with my arms behind my back. I should have stayed in bed, but the suite was full of tiny puzzles. How do you brush your teeth without using your hands? I like puzzles, I thought to myself, one foot in the sink, holding the toothbrush steady.

  Breakfast was continental and half eaten. He expected me to sleep in. I kissed a croissant and walked to the windows with it. The clouds had broken, not quite as white and puffy as the lobby’s fresco. I leaned back and forth, turning my head, putting my hair behind my shoulders, leaving my chest bare except for the two silk straps that came up under my armpits and over my shoulders. It was a few hours since the croissant had been fresh and warm, but it was still delicious by my previously impoverished standards.