…With a foreboding feeling making me sick to my stomach, I realized that this man's few words to me, combined with his further acts of restraint, not to mention silencing me as he had, led me to the conclusion that I wasn't going anywhere in the short term. The cops WOULDN'T be called either, this man and his employers dealing with me directly, and likely far more viciously than the law could possibly allow. Just as a common burglar rightly fears an armed homeowner far more than the police, I would have been wise to fear this eventual outcome myself. The cops had rules to follow, where this man was setting me up to just up and disappear, the only apparent rule for him, and his employers, was to protect their collection at any price.
As if to confirm my worst fears, my frame, with me gently swinging while suspended naked from it from well over a hundred points of contact, was wheeled to the freight elevator, and then we rode it down to the parking garage level. I felt like an object, a hanging thing, certainly something less than human at the very least. Nobody was there yet, but I wasn't exactly sure what time it was either, so this may or may not have been telling as to my long term fate.
For myself, this crime I had become so good at - besting much smarter security men to steal their treasures - had an almost sexual component to it. So, it only seemed logical that this large man would have a bit of the same in capturing me, confirming my suspicions that the police wouldn't be involved anytime soon, and that he at a bare minimum would be taking his proverbial pound of hanging flesh in a much more personal way. This man was wise enough to devise an intricate trap like this that may or may not even be legal, but had no obvious interest in preserving any physical evidence of my "crime," telling me as well that there would never be any official report on the matter. The window would be repaired, and the museum would open on time with the patrons none the wiser. Would a woman, fitting my general description and using my I.D., be in my own first-class seat while wearing my found clothes and returning my rental car, flying down under to perpetuate the illusion that I was on extended holiday vacation? One doesn't look all that hard for what isn't yet missing - I had used this very tactic myself in my crimes - and in constructing the perfect getaway, I may well have given this man and his employers an unintended gift.
If they wished to be a bit ruthless once I got where they're taking me, I'm sure they could compel me to reveal all my past crimes, and the locations of the remaining pieces, and even the few known details of who had bought the ones I had sold. The cops would have been a welcome alternative to all this, and as I hung in my suspension and was loaded into the back of a box truck backed up to the secure loading dock for a destination unknown, I reflected of how truly and completely fucked I was!
One of the very last things I remember from the back of the box truck was the roll up door being closed, the man who captured me so easily just as easily securing my fate. There was a finality to the sound, but once closed with a bang two men came back from the forward portion of the truck, one strapping down my hanging frame, and the other starting a hanging IV and telling me "nighty-night sweetheart." A last thought permeated my mind before whatever was in the IV took effect, none of these people have taken any effort at all to hide their own identity, telling that either I'll never escape, or that these people have such connections that no charge of kidnapping or cruelty will ever be heard…
…I woke in a strange place, still hanging in my suspension, but with perhaps even more sticky little threads holding me aloft, and no obvious wheeled transport frame. I'm in a massive open-front display case tucked into a wall; the three D display reminds me of a full scale diorama from a museum exhibit, but the scene is specifically the museum I had just visited. That means that they had built this ahead of time, that they had anticipated both my visit and capture, and I wondered about that.
"Greetings Fly," a thin older Japanese man eventually greets me cheerfully. "This is your new home, a kind of interactive display to celebrate your failed attempt to steal our treasures." He's dressed well in a suit and jacket, as opposed to somewhat more traditional garb. Does this tell me we're still in the states someplace? I wonder, or am I just that ignorant of this culture that I intended to pilfer from?
I lick my lips thinking of some witty response - even though I'm still muzzy from whatever they gave me before transit - and then I realize that I'm no longer gagged with that long choking thing from earlier. I think to deny my guilt, or perhaps melodramatically tell this man that he'll never get away with this, or even scream at the top of my lungs, but none of those things will prevent him from just silencing me again and making this conversation very one-sided. I need to engage his brain, make him think, shock him in some way.
"A clever trap that was sir. You are to be commended for thinking it up."
The man just looks at me, this maybe about the last thing on earth he expected.
"Am I to be punished?" I ask with all the sexy undertones that I can put into it. This is still a man after all, and I know how I'm presenting; very vulnerable and deserving. Is this "lowered inhibitions" mood that I seem to be in a result of my desperation, or the I.V. I was given?
"I can be most accommodating you know, and to be fair you have rightfully won the prize. I can be as passive, or as resistive as you like, I could even scream at the top of my lungs and struggle if you'd prefer."
"You're impossibly beguiling, perhaps it's best not to."
"Surely you're not afraid of little old me all trussed up and hanging helpless like this. Surely you'll want your pound of flesh."
"I would hurt you."
"Promises, promises!"
"Besides, I've promised my associate that he can have a poke first, to put it rather crudely, he's earned it after all."
"Who, may I ask, is that?"
"Hiroto, he is the head of my security division, the large man that captured you."
"He's a beast of a man too, it might be wiser if you went first, just sayin’."
"Why?"
"Because he's as big as a house and he's likely hung like a bull, that's why!"
"Is sex the only thing you think about?"
"It does seem to be the best card that I have left to play at the moment."
"Touché, but why steal from others? That was the 'why' I was referring to."
"Because you guys make it so easy, because you guys only stole that stuff from somebody else to begin with." It was an honest observation, and based on the way he was now looking at me I had at least succeeded in engaging his brain.
"Two wrongs don't make a right."
"In mathematics two negative numbers multiplied together make a positive."
"That's justification, children and crazy people do that all the time… You know, this would just be so much easier if you weren't so human and likable."
"Perhaps maybe I'm redeemable? Nobody's perfect you know."
"Perhaps, but I have given my word, it's up to Hiroto; your fate lies in his hands."
With that being said a receptionist says something in Japanese, and the man I'm interacting with answers in kind; Hiroto, the large man who captured me so cleverly then walks in, he's all smiles. It's a powerful stride, but then again he's a powerful man. He's maybe here to collect his physical prize, but who could blame him? He looks at me in my hanging display like a hungry powerlifter does at the menu in a steakhouse, almost salivating with the thoughts in his head. Will I survive this? I wonder. This man is a beast, and I'm tiny, but so are a great many other women from his own culture. But he likely likes them, has respect for them, where I am only a loathsome thief, a failed thief even; somebody to be punished with his fleshy club! Has anyone ever been fornicated to death? I then wonder.
Some lengthy words are then exchanged in Japanese and the older man looks briefly to his left and laughs, and then Hiroto looks from me to his boss, and then back again; I wish I had some command of this language of theirs. A bow is then exchanged, and the beast man turns and departs without another word.
"What was that all about Sir?"
"Hiroto has consented to leaving you here and untouched by him in the short term under the condition that you never displease either myself, or my guests ever. If you should though, I have agreed to allow him to release you at night into our African Safari drive through game preserve, where either he, or the gorillas and jaguars will have their way with you instead. You might of course evade all three hunters, but the wagers on such would be a good revenue generator too, and we have plenty of cameras and drones there to catch the festivities."
"Sounds like a ghastly pay-per-view sir, now I know why he laughed, but why specifically gorillas?"
"They think about sex often too apparently," and I follow his eyes back to the other displays in this rather strange office.
I take in the display across from my own, seeing it earlier, but not really seeing it with my more immediate concerns. It's a jungle scene with a jaguar resting on a fallen log, some other smaller and lesser animals and ornate birds, and a massive male mountain gorilla down on all fours right in the center. Even low like that it's clear that this is a massively powerful creature, and one would be powerless to stop it from doing anything it might like.
"As I said Sir, I can be most accommodating, and you both have seen to it that my motivations will be focused. How may I properly serve you and atone for my misdeeds going forward?"
"We shall see…"