The sublevel is lined with layers of dark, sound-muffling brick. That's the best thing about the building, of course.
Rooms behind the old duct-work have years of dust and cobwebs. Cool, slightly damp, they're so peaceful that they might as well be a hundred feet under the earth. Only that would make the setting better yet - if it required a long time to get out, up through a dark, stony passage. A tunnel giving every opportunity to stop the flight of someone who was not going to get away quite yet, seized and turned around for the certain trip back down to the locked, private brick room.
Perhaps they were filled with coal, once. The rooms are narrow, perhaps ten feet wide. A rusty old hand-pump is over in the corner of the smaller chamber, above a small iron grate. The next room is a good fifty feet long, and it's surprising to see it empty - not even storing old furniture or lumber - but really there's enough other space down here that's easier to reach. Whoever came along later and built the tenants' storage closets made it impossible to swing the old door out more than a few inches...
It would take so little effort to get that door open further.
A hand saw slid back and forth against the studs. The residents hardly ever came down into the basement, and certainly not at three in the morning.
With six cuts through the frame, the front wall of the nearest closet sagged out.
Smaller lengths of pine were glued above the old boards... and the face of the storage locker swung over, allowing the door to be opened almost completely. It pivoted back without revealing the new work. While it wasn't a durable hinge, it didn't have to be. Soon it would be closed for a long, long time.
So the space was more easily reached, without that fact being obvious.
Cleaning supplies were borrowed from the janitor's closet. After a good scrubbing, the larger room held even more appeal. Now it was prepared for eyes to look around wildly at the imposing, unyielding brick...
A door was hung between the small and large rooms. Decorated, carefully, with thick oak and aged iron. The deadbolt was disguised.
Yes, it would do the trick. Keeping the room sealed was the main priority, of course - but the inner side of the door matched the formidable weight of the walls now. Pounding and kicking would never affect the imposing security of the room.
Next, patio torches were brought down. Set in more rustic holders, the effect was incredible...
Sadly, there was no way to vent the smoke and fumes without creating the possibility that noise would travel too. Wires were run through the door frame instead.
Wire-caged bulbs looked sinister on the grey concrete ceiling. When only one bulb was lit at a time, the room took on a hopeless cast. It became a place where no one would choose to live.
It was permanent and timeless. Compuslory lodging where anything could happen. Keep happening...
Next, with great care, the iron plates were bolted to the walls.
They anchored massive chain links which waited for manacles, holding motivated arms up and apart. The next set was located for the immobilization of ankles.
Cuffs almost as thick as horse-hobbles were hung from the chains. Empty now, but ready for use, they seemed to speak of permanance in yet another firm, emphatic dialect.
More rings were strategically anchored in walls and ceiling.
A large foam rubber pad was brought down and covered in black rubber. Then a feather-bed was next - and the various bondage devices which fit so well, each one definitely belonging, in the dungeon.
The pump was repaired, and the drain mucked out. Now there would be water close by.
Food, a microwave, and boxes filled with specially chosen supplies lined the walls of the smaller room.
Next door, the transformation was almost complete. Rails and leather webs were in place, only partially hidden by shadow. Daunting hardwood surrounded padded holes for the sure confinement of maddened wrists and ankles. Chrome and steel was in position for nylon straps and rope, cables, riveted lengths of ink-black leather to stretch and anchor. Whips and hoods were positioned, on their hooks, teasingly available.
It was a dream-space. Sixteen different stations, always ready to contain and immobilize. That many options would be particularly intimidating to a single prisoner. The reason for so much gear nearly filling the room would be obvious enough - after a long interval of feverish solitude - when the next carefully selected man was dragged inside, and then a third...
The room and its contents, absolutely ready and yet vacant, fairly cried out to be used.
Three more locks were installed, and disguised, on the door.
The excitement of accomplishment was strong, but the mood would give way to unparalleled satisfaction only when the last component was in place - a nuisance requiring unceasing care, but that attention and nurturing would pale in comparison to the fever-bright energy to be contained, savored, and revived at will.
Three good prospects were close by, and each was exciting to consider.
Jock with a weed habit, but too often patching things up with his best fuckbuddy...
Quiet gay guy, not as obsessed with being cut as the jock but still a little hardbody, with some nice porn which could neatly foreshadow the hot times in store.
And the janitor of the next building over seemed as if he wouldn't disappoint.
"You should take a trip," his mom told him. "Enjoy yourself."
"I'm enjoying myself fine," he drawled, punching out his cigarette.
"Before taking on another project. The timing is perfect, honey. You've got the money, that two-faced moose is out of the picture, and you can't say you don't have the money. Enjoy it. Go wander around Spain for awhile."
"Spain," he chuckled. "You never got tired of talking about that place."
Their conversation was decisive - to another interested party.
It was easy enough to add a crushed white pill to his dinner. He wasn't in the room when the wooden spoon stirring the powder into his marinara sauce...
Yawning steadily, he managed to get off the couch and stumble to his bed.
Tests on a half-dozen key areas had already confirmed his suitability. Even drugged and mostly asleep, his reactions confirmed the impending need for a room where no one could possibly hear or find out.
After two false starts he woke up, groaning quietly. His head moved in a way that suggested relaxation and comfort. He did not smile.
Then he saw the gloves.
His body immediately moved to the right, but the restraints didn't permit him to get up from the bed.
"Uh... Fuck," he blurted. "No. Leave me alone."
Steady as always, the fingers kept drifting down to him. There was far too much interest enlivening them. His body was trapped just right, and no other circumstance remained which could make it necessary to abort the plans.
"Go away," he grumbled, trying to twist around on the mattress. "Stop it, stop it, just... aw fuck."
Some of the gloves had found their mark. The soft fingers trailed along his ribs - tender, intimate, unstoppable.
A last groan stopped suddenly - and he started to giggle.
The hands skated back up now, and the unwilling noise turned into nascent laughter.
So many sensitive spots were uncovered, hobbled, and there for the taking.
The fingers rode and petted and squeezed. More of them came and snuck under his calves.
All of his whooping and bouncing couldn't drive the gloves away. He was becoming hysterical.
Hands stroked across his belly, making him jerk around - and when they pinched gently under his knees...
Stroking his neck with exquisite tenderness made the ferocity of his howls increase yet again. Fingers traced smoothly from chest to armpit... worried his heels, clamped over his hips and traveled up, up -
A last wrenching jerk marked the end of the laughter. The expression on his face left no doubt that he was virtually paralyzed by every instant of contact. He was feeling the burn with everything he had, and wriggling wasn't going to distract him from the powerful, successful, untiring hands.
Roaring laughter at them didn't stop the gloves either. Nothing did. Locked away in the dungeon, there was no resource left that could or would stop the assault - not today, and not tonight, and not the week after next.
He shivered from time to time, but for the most part his flushed body had lost the ability to move. Fingers and palms stimulated it anyway, becoming acquainted with the intricacies of his most ticklish spots.
The energy just radiated from him - more than enough to fuel the gloves and brushes, the crops and paddles, razors and cock-toys. In the light of the single bare bulb, the marathon of tickling continued. Overwhelming him completely, the fingers eased from one skittish target to another.
Toe rings were put to use.
A studded leather pouch floated between his legs, buzzing for a moment as the vibrator's battery was tested.
Soft brushes began painting oil all over his soles and ears. That got him flailing around immediately, whooping more desperately than ever. But the restraints - like so many others in the cell - were fortified beyond any reasonable need.
Gloves and toys roamed all over him, letting him rest over and over before they resumed their craft, for the next six hours.
When he woke up, feathers were already taking position near his toes.
During the fourth or fifth week, a travel poster appeared on the wall.
"Oh, f-fuck," he finally said, laughing for a long while. "I get it. I'm in Spain, is that it? Wandering around. Won't pick up a phone." He whooped for almost a full minute. "I mean, I'm not locked in the basement of my own fuckin'... b-building. Right? Laughing my a-ass off. Oh, shit, she's gonna think I'm... in... E-europe -"
And then he had to laugh so damn hard, because the fingers were working under his knees again.
Yes - he was staying, right here. Sometime next year his routine would become evident - to his new roommate, the first of many, coming to laugh and howl... and stay. By this point it was already obvious beyond all doubt that the tickling and other exciting things he'd been enduring there would continue without even the possibility of discovery, or curtailment, or conclusion.
11jul05