(No "action" in this one, FYI)
Once again, it was amazed and delighted. There seemed to be no end to the variety of devices humans had designed to restrain each other. Canvas cuffs, thick ropelike ties...
The straitjackets were confusing, but of course it snagged one for further study. Then it stumbled upon a device that seized its attention. Quick, elegant, ruthlessly effective.
Tightly woven nylon webbing. Thick, deceptively soft, wide cuffs with noisy outer layers that gripped tightly, not yielding to applied force - adorning each corner of a padded steel bed that could roll or be immobilized. Straps that could be pulled tight in a hurry, readjusted for any height...
It was mesmerized by the gurney.
Immediately, it knew just what to do with it - picturing a certain someone held down on that green vinyl.
What an amazing building! No end to the supplies, all these rooms and hal-
In the oldest building, it found just what it was looking for. The hallway. Even the elevator had been reprogrammed so it wouldn't stop on this floor.
It happily carried the new gurney up three flights of ancient stairs. This room? Maybe, but first it checked out the oth-
Wow. Oh, yes.
Windowless room swathed in old cotton padding. Roof above, thick concrete between floors, and ignored clutter in the room below. Solid metal door. It stole a light bulb and raced back - and the power was still hot. Perfect.
All those drugs close by. Food, hygiene supplies -
Wouldn't even need a gag here. Incredible find. Lacking only, say, a couple cartons of smoke, a few dozen... helping hands. Orderlies, under its supervision.
A knapsack was loaded... and a fast car was borrowed.
It rousted him from a dead sleep. Put a bigass smirk on his face, kept it there while he pulled on a black t-shirt, sneakers, jeans...
Grinning around a 'Boro as he drove, ditched the car and walked the last three blocks, scurried up the fire escape. On the roof he started a new cig and looked over the sleeping houses, enjoying the outdoors for what would be the last time for a good while. Behind him, the stairwell door opened a inch, hinges squealing loudly.
He headed over, pulling it open just enough to slip in, found another open door, a half-flight of stairs, a last door. He squinted in the hallway; a single bulb was on at the far end, just so he can make his way. The doors and linoleum tiles were old, like a movie set. A museum.
He strutted past a closed door, then another... Tugging happily on his smoke, swinging the knapsack by its straps. The next room on the left - and he slowed down obediently, pushing on the open door...
Dark. Something just ahead. He peered, trying to make it out -
The light came on. Not too bright, but he squints for a few seconds while his eyes adjusted. Then he saw what was prepared for him. Looked around the room, but there was nothing else to see. Vacant expression.
Behind him, the door closed. He looked back at it without concern, and ate smoke.
It released the mental grip.
He blinked a couple more times... and stared at the formidable wrist cuffs waiting on the pad. One, two, th-
He moved - fast! - and dropped the knapsack. His cigarette went next, as his hands flew for the doorknob -
There was no doorknob. He slammed into the padding that covered the door, and dust puffed out. No knob?
A metallic grating noise was faintly audible. The old-style lock, being set. There.
While it was fairly sure he could bounce off the walls and yell all he wanted without drawing any attention, it was eager to see how its newest restraining discovery would do. It grabbed his biceps and pulled him backward... and up. He flailed hard - and despite all the smokin' he's had to do this past year, he's a little more of a challenge to take down than he was the last time.
A look of total bewilderment covered his face as it pulled him onto his back, inescapable pressure on his breastbone pinning him. It brought his arms above his head, grabbed both ankles and spread him out, enclosing each limb in a wide nylon embrace. Keen, triumphant joy swept over it as he was tethered, wrists and ankles almost simultaneously. It pulled the straps taut, through the hinged teeth - there!
So easy, done in maybe fifteen seconds... And then it could just sit back and enjoy the show.
Seems nobody heard him yell. What an incredible system for reining him in... The sturdy frame was long enough to hold him fully stretched out... All the pulling in the world wouldn't help. Amazing stuff, that fastening "cloth". His fingers didn't reach the cuffs, so there was no chance of him peeling the "sticky" layers apart. The whole rigid setup hardly even creaked...
He threw his head all around. As he twisted, one of its tattoos came partially into view. His smokes slid out of his t-shirt and toppled to the floor. Sweat began to shine on the dull vinyl. Under him, on a makeshift shelf over the wheels, a laundry bag bulged with the essentials to start him out - some liquids, some ointments, shaving gear, and some new fun...
It picked up "his" knapsack and opened it. Dozens of wearable hands, hidden away... It left these alone and pulled out the carton. He watched it float up, scowling but not surprised. Then he tugged some more and shouted for help. It patted the pockets of his jeans and pulled out his lighter, unfazed by the fighting legs that were so magnificently anchored.
When he stopped yelling, he got that first cigarette. The straps were none the worse for his ongoing struggles. He kept looking around at the padded walls, the wide restraints... the carton by his side - a familiar enough sight.
He smoked four or five 'Boros and kept trying to summon help. Two floors directly below him, in a dingy little lunchroom, an old refrigerator hummed loudly. The third floor, right beneath him, was completely empty.
The smoke he exhaled rose up toward the lone bulb overhead. The old ventilation system wasn't working, and the rooftop turbine fan didn't turn too quickly anymore. The familiar bar-room haze was coming along nicely, already diffusing the light. And there'll be plenty of his own odors, can't forget those.
In a muffled "rubber room" - ironic name for the place! And accurate, just wait 'til he found out - he had another cigarette. Safe from objecting nurses... sweating, but hidden away from candy-stripers and aides. The custodial staff would definitely not be popping in to tidy up here. At least a couple decades since a doctor made the rounds on this ward.
The whole environment of... therapeutic care, of healing, was working out beautifully for its purposes. And he'd yelled for most of an hour, without a soul knowing he was there.
It gave him a pint of water and another 'Boro. He was almost relaxed now - this was old news, being leashed snugly, burning a dozen packs. It kept his memories of the last three confinements very shadowy, and his mind raced with vague flashes: laying on his back like he was now, squeaky sounds, delirium, Camels, fatigue, slithery sounds, vitamins, arousal, lanolin. He tried to make sense of the thoughts while he got down to some serious smokin'. The quicker, the sooner...
He had no way of knowing this was an exception to the old pattern. Not two hundred yards from where he was, there were large storerooms of supplies and medicine. Skin care, nutritional supplements, sore throat remedies, oxygen, stimulants. Hormones. This was a golden opportunity to experiment - and learn.
The pack was finished off. He was watching for the next one to levitate toward his face. It snuck a loop of plastic around his left wrist, startling him with a faint snapping noise.
Just below the huge cuff, he saw a... bracelet. Patient ID thing, snug around him. He squinted darkly, unable to read the faded type. Just a discarded label it had found, with a special touch added for him to see, drawn with a black permanent marker, cartoon-style: a pair of outlined... gloves.
His face reacted to the emblem, but he couldn't remember why. It had shown off its skill with gloves a dozen times. They brought stuff, helped him out... They gotta have gloves in a hospital.
A tap from below, under the gurney - and he watched a clipboard approach, a pen being uncapped -
And a blood-pressure thingy. Computerized. Click, and beep... He kept watching the cuff circling his bicep and the papers shuffling almost over him, the pen scribbling away -
The cuff started to hissed and tighten. He was restless...
A little hammer came into view, and he wriggled a lot more. The computer gave four short beeps and started to release. A button on the BP machine sank down and popped back up. The pen had retreated a couple of inches.
Upside-down capital letters on the bottom of a form caught his eye...
CONSENT FOR TREATMENT
"Wha?," he muttered to himself.
A bottle of orange juice appeared from below, being shaken vigorously. The cuff started to reinflate.
He cocked his head and squinted at the top-most paper on the clipboard, which hung down toward his arm.
Next to Dx: , the pen had written:
DERMATOTROPIA
Then,
INV. PALP, ACETATE (CONT)
He couldn't make out the preprinted lines, but some of the blank spaces were filled in with ALL and FULL, REP., ENTIRE, TO RESP., ANY, AS IND. .
In an area that looked like it was meant for comments:
Hvy Smoker - 80 / d OK
And below that,
COMBATIVE, CONT R's
Two spaces surrounding to: had blue lines slashed across them. That seemed to puzzle him. If dates were supposed to be written in - such as today, and the day he'd get released...
Then he saw that the Patient Signature: space contained another long blue line - not ignored, but actually crossed out like it didn't even matter.
No duration? And shouldn't he get to sign that one field?
"Hey. Lemme see that," he barked.
The readout beeped. The pen moved back to the clipboard, wrote something, and they started floating away. Almost simultaneously the orange juice bottle came to his lips and tilted, so it was either drink it or wear it. The BP cuff was peeled off and hauled away. He watched the clipboard drift to a hook near the door -
As he tried to drink, something hit him. A... hammer, tapping below his right knee. Little doctor-mallet, finding the jumpy spot and making him choke. Juice - bitter enough to make him wince - ran down his chin, and the hammer kept plunking decisively... about twenty times.
A bag rose, crinkling as it was opened. The juice bottle didn't leave until it was empty. He wasn't given a chance to see the white sludge of excess dexedrine at the bottom of it...
He wriggled as his left knee got a couple dozen prods. A pack of 'Boros rose up to his left. On his other side, clear tubing uncoiled and was plugged into a large pouch, which descended below. A smaller bag came, and opened...
A cigarette pressed on his lip. He bit it, took a light, and stopped in mid-drag - having felt another odd tug, somewhere -
His fly was being unbuttoned. Sliding out of the rustling plastic bag, the newest medical thing looked a lot like... a rubber.
He fought and yelled all over again.
Two white gloves floated up.
They were the first ones he'd seen in a month. He was not glad to see 'em, but couldn't reckon why that would be.
Full, shiny... Empty. As usual. Way too large for... well, seriously oversized. They went to the condom-like thing and peeled the packaging open. One pulled down his underwear, getting his meat -
"Forget it, no way," he yelled, as he tried to swivel hard.
They...
It was sticky. Adhesive.
The surface of the gloves was soft. They were just doing a job, though. Getting this scumbag-thing on him -
One hand pinned his stomach down, and the other double-checked the rubber's seal. Both were unyielding, the hand on his gut strong enough to steady his midsection. Like a rock. A cool... slippery rock.
Contact - and the feel of the satin was really bugging him, but he couldn't figure out why.
The gloves took off, and a new cig came.
He sucked it down, and another one after that. He looked over at the clipboard and tried to decipher that "Derm" word (Some kind of drug? Maybe something to do with hair, or your face?) and the abbreviations (Palp? To Resp.? What do Cont R's have to do with wanting to fight?), but got nowhere. Apprehension, but no understanding. He wouldn't be kept in the dark too much longer...
More water, with more speed. Plenty of help to get a hard-working man through a long, exhausting night. And this was a hard case, safe in its clutches...
He started to fidget as the dex went to work.
After some thought, he pissed, watching the tube turn yellow...Exhaling new smoke, he saw a glove rise up, with metal -
Scissors.
He wrestled, cussing sincerely.
Three more satin hands came and took hold of his right shin...
It worked slowly, snipping without any hurry. All the way to his waistband, the other three gloves steadying the denim, holding his leg still. Down the other leg... Finally, pulling his Levi's apart, and taking them away, his underwear...
Happily, it snipped off his tennis shoes. Since it had made him skip putting socks on, the back of the blades slid across the top of his feet, and along the sides. He got restless again, trying hard to make trouble... but he just couldn't bend his ankles or turn his feet at all.
His t-shirt was stripped away. It looked forward to shaving him. Furless pecs, gut, armpits... All over. New, dry satin, to start - the lubes could wait 'til later. The gloves stayed about level with him, off the pad and closest to his left shin. The scissors had been set aside.
Now that he'd been bared, it would allow him one more 'Boro. He hunkered down and tugged on that baby, thanks to the dex. He'll be up for a while now. He can crash, get some Z's... maybe tomorrow afternoon. Time is irrelevant, here. No longer a concern. Everything he could possibly need right on the premises, keep him at his peak..
Those long weekends of smokin', even the last time it caught him - five howling days. Kid stuff. But here, stashed away, wearing only the admirable straps and his hospital check-in band... one severely "dermatotrophic" patient.
Patient, all right - it's obsessed with patiently riding him. Firm, consistent, overwhelming therapy.
He huffed out smoke, watching the motionless gloves and trying to be nonchalant about it.
Gloves by the dozen, just what the "doctor" ordered - full, continuous, entire, any and all to response. And he'll stay right in place while it palpates, secure in the commendable R's.
He sucked down that last drag, as the 'Boro was pulled from his lips. Lazily glancing over for the next cig...
Out of his view, a butt plug was lifted and coated with Vaseline.
The smoke is dropped in an old metal bedpan, with thirty other butts.
Cloth emerged from the knapsack, expanding... Flashy white satin, taking the shape of gigantic bulgy hands. Fourteen gloves. Twenty. Twenty-eight.
All was in order. He was prepped, waiting. So ready.
Instead of a new cig, he tracked more gloves floating up. They came into view from the foot-end of the gurney. Plump fingers waited past his heels, as others turned to face his insteps. Two were poised over his knees, and others hung over his thighs.
He watched with concern, but with stronger curiosity.
It had his thoughts in exactly the state it wanted, making its pleasure even more intense as the smooth palms started to land... wrap -
And move.
22nov98