CHAPTER NINE - BACKWOODS PRISON: Trish's Story

 

Not for the first time I wondered why things seemed to happen to me whenever Monica went away. While she had been in Hong Kong, Wayne Bennelli had broken into Bilboes and had all but carried off this same terrifying abduction, prevented then only by the presence of mind of Mary and Shawnee. On our round the world trip - following along behind Monica - I'd wound up in the hands of Portia in Hong Kong, and then the sadistic Earl of Penrhoth in England, having very painful things done to me.

If those instances had been bad, this one was terrifying. I lay on my side in the boot of the car, bound hand and foot and gagged very securely with duct tape that was wrapped around my mouth trapping a sponge ball inside and locking my jaw shut. Everything seemed to hurt at the moment. Ropes melded my wrists together and tugged painfully at my elbows. Once he had got me into the boot, Wayne had bound my ankles and knees, then had run a rope from my ankles to my wrists, back between my knees, and up to my neck, where he tied it off. I was bound into a ball, and any attempt to struggle just pulled everything tighter and would start to threaten my breathing. The big butt plug jammed up my arse and the painful clips still gripping my nipples told me he wanted to make us suffer at every available opportunity.

Mary lay beside me in the darkness. She had not had the nipple clips fitted, but she was blindfolded, whereas I was not. For all the difference it made, I would far rather have been in the dark without the biting ache on each of my most tender places. Mary, too, had been bound into a ball. I'd watched the expression of relish on Bennelli's face as he had pulled the ropes immovably tight, perspiring with the effort that brought forth grunts from Mary with each tightening tug. Now she was immobile as we were transported somewhere, with the road noise and vibrations from a clearly non-maintained car drumming through our bodies. If Mary made any sound, I couldn't hear it above the road noise.

At one stage we must have pulled into a petrol station. There was a clunking of a nozzle against the side of the car, somewhere close to my ear. I strained at the ropes and made plaintive mmphing sounds around the ball and through the tape, but I was sure I couldn't be heard. Certainly any attempts to kick or bang the inside of the car boot were hopeless. I could barely move my fingers, and the feeling was slowly disappearing from them while my feet were also turning numb. That only left my head, and I wasn't about to knock myself out on the remote chance of somebody hearing.

Then we were off again. The road noise changed to a rougher, bumpier ride, and there seemed to be more and sharper curves. We were going slower than before, but I'm sure Bennelli was still travelling faster than necessary for the road, just to ensure his bound cargo slid about and had an unpleasant time. If I could have talked I would have been able to assure him he was doing a good job.

I have no idea how long the ride lasted. Maybe an hour and a half, maybe two hours. It seemed to go on forever, and I was getting woozy from fumes when we finally stopped. There was a pause and what might have been the sound of a gate swinging open on squeaky hinges. Then our driver was back in the car and we had turned off the road on to a gravel track of some sort.

There was another halt while the gate was closed again, before we were bumping up a rutted, potholed trail that was obviously meant to be taken at a walking pace, but which our captor took at a faster speed for our benefit. Mary and I were bounced about, sometimes against the sides, sometimes each other. There were some tools and other rubbish, as there always seems to be in car boots, and I kept landing on something hard, which dug into my left side. I knew I would have a nice display of bruises from this, and Mary would be even more painfully decorated, adding this to the beating she had already received from Bennelli. I already felt guilty about causing her unnecessary strokes of the cane, but then Mary never knew when to shut up herself. Dearly as I loved her, she sometimes had an attitude problem.

More bouncing, then grinding to a halt. The boot lid opened and I drew in a grateful breath of fresh air, looking up at Bennelli's ugly frame silhouetted against a pale blue sky starting to darken with the onset of dusk.

"Enjoy ya ride girls? Good. 'Cos it's one long ride from here on. It'll get better every day." He laughed and pulled out a wicked-looking knife. For a moment I thought he was going to stab us right there, but he sliced through the rope holding my body bent into a ball, then hauled me clumsily out of the boot before dumping me face down in a mud puddle. I squealed under the tape, both with the unexpectedness of the cold clinging mud, and the fact that my dress was open down the front and my breasts took much of the impact, along with the terrible nipple clips. I squirmed onto my side, feeling the slippery mud sliding between my thighs and snorting through my nose to get rid of the bit that I had managed to inhale. He laughed again, and moments later Mary was dumped face down beside me.

"Fancy a mud bath?" he grinned. "Good for ya skin, eh girls." Mary, blindfolded with the tape, also squirmed in the mud, not knowing what she was in, but managing to wriggle upright, mud all over her pvc top and lycra skirt, which now clung even more closely to her thighs.

He reached down and grabbed Mary's ankles where the ropes wrapped around the leather of her thigh boots, and raising them to a convenient height, began to drag her across the grass around the side of the car. Mary mmphed and grunted with pain as her skirt rode up and her already bruised bottom was subjected to further discomfort. No doubt the butt plug was bumping up inside her. I couldn't see where they were going because the car was in the way, but I used the brief time I had to struggle into a half-sitting position and to look around.

We were in a small valley, with low but steep forested hills on one side and cleared but scrubby coverage on the other. The car was parked beside what might have been a barn of some sort, but it looked pretty derelict. The ground sloped up from the barn for fifty metres, to an old house that was probably shearers' quarters at some stage in a past life. It was a single storey wooden structure with the typical Australian veranda all round, and hadn't seen a coat of paint for fifty years.

Behind me, in the opposite direction to the house, the sun had dipped behind the trees and the hills, and the bottom of the little valley was in the shadow that was the prelude to dusk. At any other time the scene would have been idyllic - peaceful and pastoral, the calm broken only by the odd squawk of a crow or the distant laughter of a kookaburra. 

The tranquillity was shattered by the return of Bennelli, and I knew I was about to get the same treatment as Mary. Sure enough, he grabbed my boots and dragged me roughly through another small patch of mud, and on to the grass. My undone dress immediately rode up around my waist and my backside was subjected to the bumps and tussocky humps that sprouted through the long grass. I grunted behind the tape as I slid about in the course of a twenty-metre haul that predictably made the butt plug thrust uncomfortably up my arse, more so with each thump over a grassy knob.

I saw my destination - a cage of sorts that stood alone in the grass next to the barn. It was about two metres by one and rectangular in shape, built around four solid poles that were embedded into the ground and rose a metre and a half high. A wooden floor had been constructed of split poles, leaving a crawl space beneath the floor. There was no closed roof, only the same heavy gauge galvanised reinforcing mesh that made up the walls. The mesh bars were maybe five millimetres thick and spaced too closely to get a hand through. A barred grille formed a door in the middle of one of the long sides, and this now stood open. Mary, still bound, gagged and blindfolded, lay on her side on the floor of the cage.

When we reached the cage Bennelli picked me up easily and dumped me on the floor beside Mary, his hands encircling my breasts and groping them roughly, tugging on the chain linking the two nipple clips. I moaned behind the tape as the pain shot through my tender flesh like two needles - a reaction which prompted further tugging by him, further stifled screams by me, and his obvious amusement. He climbed in beside me and picked up a heavy chain with one end already locked around a corner post. The free end he now locked around my neck, and I saw that Mary was already similarly secured to the post diagonally opposite. Escaping from this cage was clearly not going to be easy - or even likely, if I admitted our true plight to myself.

Bennelli climbed out and without ceremony swung the grille shut before snicking a heavy padlock closed at top and bottom.

"See you later, ladies. Have a nice night." Then he was gone, walking up the path in the rapidly fading light, towards the house.

I lay there for a couple of minutes, catching my breath and letting my heart rate settle down. We were in a real predicament, and couldn't stay like this all night. Bennelli had no concept of safe bondage, and everything he did was designed to inflict maximum discomfort and pain. He didn't care if our circulation was cut off, nor would he be back to check on us. Even if we could somehow free ourselves and open the cage, with the chains about our throats we wouldn't be going far.

Mary groaned softly. I mmphed back to her, but it's hard to express moral support with a sponge ball taped inside your mouth. Unfortunately Mary couldn't see and thus could not properly appreciate our situation. Both of us, however, had experienced enough bondage situations to know where our best chance lay to free ourselves - our only chance, for that matter.

Stretching out along the cage, I worked myself beside Mary - my feet at her head and my bound hands against hers, as we lay back to back. The split pole floor was made with the rounded sides upwards, and was hellish uncomfortable to lie on. It was also very solid. Nothing about this cage looked like being sub-standard, I admitted to myself.

My fingers were becoming numb as I began to work on the ropes binding Mary's wrists. It was not easy, for the knots were many and some were difficult to reach. Every so often I had to stop and ease the cramps that were setting in, but I was making some progress. The ropes tight at my elbows were really starting to hurt, now, and it was probably these as much as anything that were affecting my circulation.

After perhaps a quarter of an hour I finally got the ropes off Mary's wrists and squirmed further down to get at the ropes binding her elbows. I found I could not reach them, however, and for a moment I panicked, as the chain drew tight around my neck as I was a few centimetres short.

"Mmrry! Ur hrrn rrsh ur..." I garbled unintelligibly to Mary, trying to convey the problem. I managed to grasp her pvc top and pull it a tiny bit down the cage, and she realised my intention at once, wriggling sufficiently to allow my hands to reach the elbow ropes.

The knots were tight and it took me ages to get them free, by which time darkness had fallen and there was a decided chill in the air. I had the feeling we were in for a very cold and uncomfortable night. When I finally freed the last rope, I was exhausted. It had been a simple task, seemingly, but lying in a constant tensed position while concentrating on mentally picturing what I was doing had drained me. Mary groaned - a sound made up of relief and respite from the biting cords. She slowly straightened her arms out in front of her, making small grunting noises as she did so.

I expected her to undo the tape on her head, or at least the cords at her knees and ankles, but instead she rolled over and began to undo - by touch - the ropes bound around my wrists. I felt enormous gratitude at this, and comfort in that Mary and I were like minded. We knew when the other was in pain, and that some things were more important than others. We had been together too long not to understand the realities of this life.

I snorted with the exquisite pain that came as my blood flowed back through my arms and hands after Mary finally got the knots undone. It was too dark to help her undo the tape on her head - we would have to manage this on our own. Knowing that it would not be a quick process, both of us in our gagged state in the darkened cage attended to priorities first. I gasped and groaned as I slowly eased the terrible bite of the jaws on my nipples, finally removing the clips and dropping them outside the cage. I zipped up the front of my dress, for I was feeling decidedly cold, and then set about undoing the ropes around my legs. Both of us were quiet for quite a while as we attended to our bonds, with only the sound of our laboured nasal breathing breaking the night silence.

With the blood returning to my legs I could finally undo the rope around my waist and then the doubled up one through my crotch. The pressure eased on the butt plug that had remained trapped up my arse until now, and I squatted in a corner to work it free as slowly as possible. It was a case of not wanting to crap in one's own nest.

I could then turn my attention to the tape wrapped around my head. Removing it was a long process. A nearly full moon rose over the mountains as I laboriously found the ends of the tape by touch and slowly unwound it, making little sounds of pain as I tried to detach the tape from my hair in the least painful fashion.

I was finished first and waited patiently for Mary to catch up. In the cold light of the moon we found we had just enough length on our chains to hug each other as the night closed in on our prison cage.