Vanishing Act - Excerpt

 

My name is Jan Sherwood.

I'm thirty-three. I'm a nurse. No, I was a nurse. My occupation is now prisoner, kidnappee, hostage, captive, slave, call it what you will.

I shall describe myself. I could walk across to the full-length mirror that is fixed to one wall. It is covered by a sheet of perspex, just in case I get any ideas about breaking the glass and slashing my wrists. I could stand in front of the mirror and observe the reflected figure.

I am naked. This is my normal form of 'dress', if you could call it such. I believe that some or all of my clothes might be stored upstairs, but I don't really know this. Nakedness is my normal state of being - naked of body, naked of mind and naked of soul. I have long since passed the stage of embarrassment, such have been the indignities and humiliations that I've had to bear in this dungeon.

I've lost weight. I stand at 180 centimetres tall. My hair is an auburn colour, but I've seen the first faint hints of grey appearing at my temples in the weeks I've been kept prisoner. Such is the price being extracted from me, although physically a grey hair or two is the least of my torments. At least I've been allowed shampoo and conditioner and a hairbrush to keep some element of shine to my locks. My hair sits on my shoulders. He has cut it once since I've been here, which perhaps told me that maybe three months has passed since my incarceration. 

My eyes are a grey green colour. In the right light you can sometimes see little hints of gold in the iris. My cheeks are now slightly sunken, showing my cheekbones more prominently than they used to be. I never thought of myself having the thin model look, but that's where I appear to be heading. The puffiness that surrounded my eyes when I first arrived here is gone. That was the result of a lot of crying and not much sleep. Nowadays I seemed to have overcome those obstacles - it's amazing how the body adjusts. Meanwhile the little lines are appearing at the corners of my eyes, but they're not laughter lines...

My body is lean. I was never overweight, but what little surplus flesh I had, has been shed under the cruel punishments and the forced isometric exercises I have endured. My food intake has varied, depending on his mood. I went two days without food in one instance, wondering if he had suffered an accident, but it turned out he had merely been visiting his mate and had decided I was not a high priority. The weight I shed makes my breasts seem bigger than I remembered. I am now so much more aware of my own body than before - aware of size and proportion, of colour and skin changes. When you're locked in a 7-metre by 7-metre cell with no clothes, no company, and only a mirror for a diversion, you tend to notice these things. 

I knew every inch of my body in a new way, now, as does he. It seems every inch has at one time felt the sting of the cat, the sharp crack of the riding crop, or the tightness of securing ropes. I knew the sensation of my own weight and how it tugs on strapped and suspended wrists or ankles. As I said, my breasts appear bigger. While not over-large, they are big enough for him to bind with rope so that they bulge and protrude in a way that delights him but causes me only more pain and discomfort, magnified many times if he decides to hang clamps and weights off my nipples.

You can almost see my ribs, but not quite. My stomach is still firm as it slopes down to where the downy triangle of hair used to be. I suppose I should thank him for the exercises I had undertaken that have tightened my abs. If only I had not been bound in such severe positions during the sessions, it could almost be as tolerable as a hard gym workout. But it isn't. And of course he shaved me. Being the way nature intended was clearly not to his liking, and my pussy had to have its little mop of hair removed. This was yet another part of his debasement program.

My thighs and calves are toned and muscled, which is not surprising, considering the amount of time I've spent either squatting, hogtied, or attached to a spreader bar on tiptoes. All these positions amount to strenuous isometric exercises, but with a significant incentive to maintain them. The incentive is usually a whip, leading to a beating that leaves me bruised and marked.

My tan is long gone, and my skin has become deathly pale in the absence of sun. I am still trying to persuade him to let me see the light of day and to get some vitamin E, even just for a short while, on whatever terms he wishes to specify. My resolve is growing, not weakening, I have decided, and using my mind to outwit him remains my focus.

I said that I am naked. Naked except for my chains, of course. They rattle when I walk, but I have nearly become used to them. Let me describe my ensemble. Around my neck is a stainless steel collar which he must have had made especially for me. It is about the width of two fingers and is riveted on - quite light and comfortable, but very strong. 

The edges are slightly rolled so that it does not cut into my neck, with just enough clearance to get a finger between my neck and the metal. On the front there is a U-shaped fitting to which a chain can be locked when it pleases him. It is almost pretty, were it not for what it has come to symbolise, and such was clearly his intention.

Around my waist is a larger version of the collar, slightly wider and with a U-fitting on each hip supporting a steel ring the diameter of a fifty cent piece. This steel belt is also riveted in place and is snug, provided I don't put on any weight - not that there is much danger of that.

I wear steel cuffs on my ankles and wrists, faced on the insides with a thin layer of dense foam - the kind that sleeping mats for campers are made from. The cuffs can be locked in place and usually remain so until he decides that maybe ropes or straps would be more appropriate, so that Jan can be made much more uncomfortable. 

The cuffs are all in place now, as I stand looking at myself in the mirror. Additionally, a thin chain connects my right ankle to my right wrist, and an identical one connects my left ankle and wrist. These chains run through the rings on my waist belt at each hip. When I stand straight, the chains pulled taut so that my wrists are pulled in against the rings and I looked like a gunfighter waiting to draw. If I want to scratch my nose I have to bend one leg upward to give me enough slack for the attached wrist. It is a devious configuration. It forces me to eat either cross-legged or kneeling. I have to wash my hair or clean my teeth the same way. Again, all part of the slave culture. Additionally, with a single padlock he can lock both wrist cuffs to my collar and leave me unable to do anything except waddle about the room in a crouched position. It is no wonder my leg muscles have toned up. 

I should also describe my room. It is a converted double garage underneath his house. It has been entirely lined with a newly constructed concrete block wall. Anyone opening the garage roller door would be greeted with this blank blockwork wall immediately inside the door. To all intents and purposes it is soundproof. When the properties of the exterior wall are added to the sound-deadening qualities of the blockwork, the room is silent, with the only sounds being those of its inhabitant - me. I can hear him when he is at home, for the timber joists are exposed above me, and some of the rooms above appear to be uncarpeted. I have got to know the creaks of the floorboards and the sound of footsteps and all the small noises that indicate the workings of a house.

My room has a double bed, a shower and a toilet. In the middle of the room there is a steel post supporting a steel bearer under the overhead floor joists. This post is one of his favourite anchor points when I am to be tormented. I have grown to fear it, if one can do so of an inanimate object.

You enter the room through a door in the corner. Central on the opposite wall is the double bed - iron-framed and bolted to the concrete floor and set slightly away from the wall. There is about a metre-and-a-half between the foot of the bed and the steel post. To the left of the bed, in the corner is the small shower. Next to that is the toilet. The only other objects to break up the room are a steel chair bolted to the floor near the corner diagonally opposite the shower, and a wall-mounted steel cupboard next to the door. This cupboard is locked, and contains the many and varied instruments of torture that I have experienced in my time here. The perspex-covered mirror is mounted on the wall next to the steel chair, so I can sit there and do my hair, or alternatively watch my expression of pain as I am subjected to the sting of the lash while bound to the chair.

Looking around the room, some faded oil stains on the bare concrete floor are visible, but the concrete block walls remain pristine. I thought about trying to make marks for the days of my incarceration, but I have no idea of the passing of time, since I cannot see daylight. Even the food he brings me seems to be randomly delivered and appears to be whatever he found handy, rather than any form of breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Dangling from the exposed joists are several pulleys and a chain block, attached to which I have spent many unpleasant hours. Under the cold glare of the fluorescent lights it is a grey and depressing place, filled with memories of pain and humiliation. The lights are turned on and off in a seemingly random manner. Sometimes it is like I am in pitch darkness for twenty-four hours, then the next session is only a quarter of that. It continues to disorient me and disrupt my sleep patterns - not that I really have such a thing any more. It is obviously intended to lower my morale and will to resist. And it works, in an insidious and stealthy way.

So that is where I am. But I must tell you about the beginning of it all, and how I came to be held captive in this dungeon...