4: Scare Me
Nel was an actress as well as Greg's girlfriend. She had a strange request for him: Scare me. She had a role coming up in her current play and as hard as she tried, she could not wrap her head adequately around her character's situation. Part of the play involved her character being betrayed and captured by a former lover who was now with the bad guys and left her tied to a chair in a room with a ticking time bomb. Nel was having trouble wrapping her head around the desperation, the emotions around being left in that sort of situation. Of course, in the play she gets rescued at more or less the traditional last second by the hero. So Nel asked Greg to find a way to help her, safely of course, to experience that so she could relate to her role. They were wildly kinky in their very active sex life. They had sex constantly it seemed and often she was tied up, usually naked. Which was fine with her. Above and beyond the fun and orgasms there were often acting opportunities. She spent so much time out of her clothes - especially out in the desert hills where no one else could see them - that her full-body no-lines tan was starting to be difficult to explain.
After about a week Greg told her he had figured it out for her. At his request she drove to the small desert town's one mall. It was a very familiar place to her, since she worked in one of the fashion shops there. She climbed into his car; it was just before noon on a Saturday and he assured her they would be back by six so in the busy parking lot her car would be fine. She wore a white blouse and a dress she really didn't like but he had insisted on for today. She wore it occasionally for Greg, a denim tube mini-dress that buttoned top to bottom down the front. It was one of his favorite outfits, she thought mostly because it could be taken off her and she rendered naked while she was tied hand and foot. Which based upon what she had asked for was a strong possibility. He'd been acting a little weird lately, sort of distant, starting right around the time she had asked him for his help with the character. She figured she must have done something to piss him off, perhaps an afternoon of torrid kinky predations on her willingly offered body would fix it. That had normally worked in the past. It was worth a try.
The desert town where they lived was a railroad town, and had a military base just south of it. The main line railroad tracks ran through the town and the switch-yard therein then down to the coast. A second, much less busy line ran north for when the trains needed to avoid the coastal city. He drove her, talking little, out the highway that went parallel to the northern line. They drove until they were about thirty miles away from town in what looked to her like a really desolate area. There was nothing around as far as the eye could see, just the tracks a little to the west, barely in sight, and the desert hills way in the distance.
It was late winter, almost spring, and a decently warm enough day. She admitted to herself if she had to be naked out here she wouldn't get cold, although if he wanted erect nipples he’d have to rub them himself. He parked to the side of the road, the car would probably look broken down or out of gas, and not truly abandoned. He grabbed his backpack out of the truck bed. He asked her to leave her blouse here which she had expected to be asked to remove long before now. Once she did and joined him, he told her, "Let me show you what I had in mind" and led her off toward the train tracks. She followed clad only in her denim tube dress and her flip-flops.
It wasn't that she didn't look good in a microdress or microskirt, she looked well enough she thought. She knew she cut a figure: very white, nearly alabaster, flawless skin, jet black hair straight and well down her back. There wasn't an ounce of fat on her legs and she thought she looked plenty, plenty hot in something this short and two or three-inch heels but it just wasn't her. She did outfits like this every now and then out on dates with Greg, and once in a very great while at school. As a general rule a miniskirt was the best Greg got at school because that was what every other boy in school got when she was wearing it and while she had no problem at all with such things or a whole lot less in front of Greg she really didn't want to do it in front of every other boy at school.
Besides, if he wanted to see her in skimpy clothing all he had to do was visit her at work. It was a fashion shop and all the girls while working were to wear things available in the store, which meant flirty and baring lots of skin. But walking into work and walking out of work she was normally in a t-shirt and shorts or jeans just like anyone else.
After a short walk they arrived at the tracks. There were three tracks, one for northbound trains, one for southbound, and a siding spur, about a quarter mile long that made no sense way out here to Nel. Railroad cars could be shunted off the northbound tracks onto the spur if it was wished. Looking south, back toward town, the tracks curved east about a half-mile away, removing the tracks in that direction from further view. Greg outlined his plan: He'd tie her to the spur line, damsel-in-distress style. Her neck would be laying across the rail but he'd put some firm foam padding underneath her head and back to support her and keep her level and relatively comfortable. She could lay there and think about it and experience it for a while. The story would be that she'd been tied to the tracks and left there and when the next freight train came through she'd still be there. The next train was in fact due through here around 3:30, about two hours away. It would give her plenty of time to experience and work through the feelings. She'd be plenty scared when the train came through, it was terrifying to have that much metal in motion that close no matter what. That many tons of weight moving that fast made a hell of noise and made the ground shake. "Even the rails squeak and ping" He added, "but only the rails the train is actually on."
"Naked of course?" She asked rhetorically.
"Of course." He replied. "And freshly fucked, too." He smiled.
She gave a little laugh. "Of course." She agreed.
She looked a little askance as she walked down to the track switcher with him. It was a bit up the grade. Greg wanted her to see the switch so she felt safer being tied to the spur line. The switch could only be moved by hand and it was locked to provide a straight-thru run for the northbound rail. The way the spur joined up a northbound train would have to stop and back up to use the spur anyway.
Greg took both of her hands, looked straight into her eyes. Whatever was coming, Nel knew it was important. "You've asked me to scare you and I think I'm going to. But remember, no matter what I say and no matter what I do that you asked me, wanted me to scare you and that I love you more than anything else in this world. Promise me you won't forget that." She nodded. Of course!
He pulled a pair of handcuffs out of his backpack and motioned for her to put her hands together behind her back. She looked at him, hesitant. "Don't you trust me?" He both asked and challenged her. She thought about it for a second and put her hands together behind her back as requested. She did trust him; they'd been dating and screwing wildly for almost two years. Of course she trusted him. The cuffs ratcheted down on her wrists behind her.
He then produced out of the pack the blindfold they often used in their sex games. He generally, and she saw this would be no exception, had tape on the inside to make sure it could not be slipped off, or even moved, thoroughly effective. She probably would have objected to the handcuffs if she had known the blindfold was coming but that was probably why he didn't pull the blindfold out until her wrists were already helplessly pinned behind her. There was no point in asking him not to. It was an unwritten rule between them that in bondage scenes he pretty well did whatever he wanted. She stood still as the blindfold came down over her eyes and plunged her into the total and complete darkness. She felt a twinge pass as she wondered, did she trust him? Why did Greg want to use the blindfold here and now?
She got a partial answer as he led her back down the grade toward where they started. He stopped at one point, led her off to the side across the tracks to what she understood to be the spur line, then spun her around a few times, then continued leading her back and forth across the rails, spinning her around so much that she was no longer 100 percent sure which way she was facing or which grade she was standing on. The sun, straight overhead, was no help, and the three grades were all level with each other, she could not get a clue from the ground underneath her flip flops.
Finally they stopped. She thought she had been able to follow all the turnarounds and track changes and that she was seated on the spur line but she wasn't entirely sure. She heard him put the pads down, some of those firm sleeping bag foam pads still folded up for height, then he settled her butt down on the padding and pulled off her flip-flops. Blindfolded, she had no idea where they went. He tied a rope around her waist, unlocked one handcuff and quickly secured the open cuff to the rope around her waist while he held her free wrist. He reclined her back until she could feel the warm steel of the rail supporting her neck. Giving her no chance to work at the blindfold he stretched the free wrist straight out on the inside of the rail. She started to freak out but he, without releasing her wrist again he asked her if she trusted him. After a few seconds she relaxed. A loop of rope went around the wrist and it was stretched tightly out away from her. A moment later her other wrist was uncuffed and stretched similarly tightly in the opposite direction. She felt Greg tie each arm to the inside of the rail in two more places, one just above the elbow and the second just below each shoulder, each tie going around the rail to something on the ground immediately beneath it, maybe a railroad spike. She realized the effect was to hold her arms fixed against the inside of the rail, which meant that she wouldn't be able to move her neck at all, and her neck was right where the wheels of the train would pass her if a train was to go down that rail. Couldn't move her neck at all. Couldn't get away…
She felt him unbutton the three bottom buttons of her dress which brought it open almost to her waist. He stretched each ankle wide apart, obscenely wide if you asked her since the dress was open and she wore no panties. Wide enough to be painful for a lot of people but she was limber enough to do it. He tied the bottom of each foot to the inside of the opposite rail, to what felt to Nel to put her legs at almost a 120-degree angle, confirming Nel's opinion of "obscenely far apart." She could tell from the sunlight and the wind running gently through her pubes that her crotch was fully displayed to his eyes. Several times she started to say something, but he always just responded with an impatient "Shhh. Trust me!" She felt him untie the rope around her waist and unbutton the rest of the buttons and the midday sun kissed her now completely exposed chest and stomach. As expected the dress was pulled out from underneath her, leaving her fully naked and spread wide and helpless on the track. He fixed the padding under her back and then there was a delay that sounded like him putting the handcuffs, her dress, and her flip-flops back into his backpack.
He heard a squirting sound, smelled suntan lotion. Good. Greg was going to keep her from getting sunburned and the all-over body massage would be nice. She lay still and enjoyed the feeling as he coated her thoroughly everywhere. She felt comfortable she wouldn't get a sunburn. But why the blindfold still? she was now helplessly tied to the tracks. Surely it didn't matter… or did it?
"Greg…" she began, "Tell me which grade I am tied to." She sucked in a breath, stifling her panic. She asked again, firmly this time. "Tell me you tied me to the spur line and not the northbound tracks."
Greg stopped and there was a long silence that took her breath away so she couldn't scream. "Can't do that. You're tied down now so it doesn't matter if you know. You're right, you're tied to the northbound rails. A train will be by in about an hour and three quarters and…" She felt a fingertip run gently horizontally across the length of her neck. "I'm not going to let you loose. You'll be right where you are when the train gets here. It's too late now, you shouldn't have trusted me."
Her blood ran cold. Could this be true? They had a good relationship, a great relationship, didn't they? They certainly fucked all over the place and seemingly all the time. As she often thought rabbits had nothing on them. He was kinky as hell and she generally obliged him. That'd be real hard to replace. She'd sworn this morning he'd take a bullet for her. Maybe she had been wrong.
Then again, maybe he was lying. Maybe she was on the spur line and he was just telling her this to give her the experience he understood she wanted. If that were so, he was dead wrong. She could muster up all the emotions she needed just fine from the safety of the spur line.
"Take off the blindfold then." She demanded. "Prove it to me."
"No." He responded casually. "I thought about it, and I don't want to do that to the train engineer. He's going to see you as he comes around the bend, it'd be even worse if he could see your eyes. For that matter neither do I. If I saw the look in your eyes when you finally realized that I am not going to let you go that might make me change my mind and I can't allow that. Besides, I don't want to and you can't take them off, now can you?"
Could she indeed? The key ropes keeping her on the rails, whichever rails she was on, was the two stretching out her wrists. If she couldn't get out of them, she wasn't going to get out of any of them. Even if she could get a wrist out he could just re-bind the wrist before she could do anything useful with it. But she had to at least try. She jerked as hard as she could on each wrist, but all she got for her efforts was a minor tightening of the ropes on each and a bit of pain in that hand. She gave up.
Well, she thought darkly, it was a binary situation: Either she was truly on the northbound line and would be dead in a short period of time, or she was on the spur line and she was safe. But this was a pretty sick game for him to be playing. What in the hell was he thinking?
"You love me, don't you?" She asked. "Why are you doing this to me?"
"Why indeed?" He agreed as she heard him sit down beside her. He began gently drawing lines on her breasts and chest and stomach with his finger. Initially she flinched but that only demonstrated how pitifully little she could actually move so she decided to not bother with that any more. "You see, I've got a better offer but one of the conditions of that offer is that I get you completely out of the picture." The finger now also was running through her pussy hair and around the upper half of her legs. She waited with gritted teeth for him to slide the finger inside her. She'd have prevented it any way she could if there were a way. She couldn't and they both knew it and they both knew he was easily the kind to do it. She was going to thrash as hard as she could when he did anyway and he knew that too. He'd probably punish her for it, damn him, like he normally did. When they did sex scenes like this she played it like she was, a spunky, defiant fighter. He teased her, tortured her really. As he spoke and ran his finger over her he would run it up or down her slit, sometimes even stopping there, and she'd hold her breath waiting for him to push in but he'd just keep going. She could picture the evil smile on his face as he did that.
"You see, I was approached by Wanda Schwartz about two weeks ago with a really interesting proposition. Totally unexpected, really."
Wanda was another senior at school, Nel thought: cheerleader, vivacious, very pretty - well, Nel thought, genetically gifted - and used it to her advantage. Every once in a while Nel had found herself envious. Wanda was about five foot ten to Nel's five foot seven, had long blond hair way down her back and normally wore it feathered beautifully in a golden frame around her pretty much flawless face. Wanda was about a 38D to Nel's own 36Bs and she, as a cheerleader, every Friday wore a tight spandex top and a cheerleader skirt that amounted to damn near nothing below the waist. And she looked good in that. She did have the legs that went on forever even in the one-inch heeled shoes that went with the cheerleader uniform. She was easily one of the prettiest girls at school. One Friday, for some reason or another, she didn't wear a bra under the top. Nobody else female was happy about that, including Nel, but the males in school were transfixed. Unhappily for Nel that included Greg and Don, and it took her more than a few days to get Greg completely re-focused on her after that. If someone else was going to grab Greg's attention Wanda was definitely a thought. But Wanda was in a whole different social stratum than she and Greg occupied. Wanda probably knew who they were but Nel couldn't imagine why a girl with that much in her court would proposition Greg. Greg was tall, okay looking, maybe even a bit handsome, had a future, but none of them were anywhere near Wanda's league.
Greg picked that moment to push his finger inside of her. She bucked as hard as she could, which was a little, maybe four or six inches vertically. Greg just rode her out, keeping his finger buried to the hilt in her until she gave up.
"Naughty naughty!" he chided her. Then his finger left her crotch and began running upward and she knew what was coming. Sometimes in the sex games that they played he would pinch her nipples as a punishment and she didn't like it. It hurt, it wasn't sex, it was just pain, but that was why he did it. He seemed to like to do it but that only made sense; it wasn't his nipples getting pinched. He was almost certainly heading there now. He usually pinched harder and longer after she did things like she just did. Like most other times he did it she was tied up hand and foot and had no way of stopping him. His fingers closed around her nipples and squeezed hard. She gave out an "Ow!" and jerked reflexively as the pain hit her like a wave.
Normally the game they played was to see how long she could stand it. Of course, she really didn't like that game. He would pinch one or both nipples until she begged for him to stop. Sometimes he would keep going if he felt he hadn't punished her enough. She generally lasted about forty-five seconds. When it was just a sex game her competitive streak came out and she actually tried to hold out as long as she could before begging for mercy. She had on occasion won by bearing the pain long enough for him to be the one to stop.
She didn't see any point in this one. This was just to punish her. She waited for about ten seconds, nothing really, and gasped out "Please stop. I'll be good." Thankfully, he immediately let go.
"You see," he began, "Wanda broke up with Steve about two weeks before that." Nel did remember hearing that the two of them did in fact break up about that time but she hadn't heard why. "He had started playing a little kinky, she told me, and Wanda found she really, really liked the dominance and submission stuff with her as the submissive. He'd do it a little, when it was his idea, but he really wasn't into the trouble of doing that for her the way she wanted and as fully as she wanted. So she dumped him. She started checking around to find out who was the kinkiest guy in school and concluded it was me. So she came up to me and asked if she could be my sex slave."
Yeah, Nel thought, every male senior's wet dream. Greg continued. "She would do anything I asked, without hesitation. All I had to do was tell her, once I was her master.
"She said she had heard rumors about you and I, and she wanted something just like that with her instead of you. I had to get you completely out of the picture first but once I did she would become my complete and utter sex slave. The first thing she wanted me to do with my new slave is to tie her up naked and take pictures of her, including her face, so she couldn't back out, not that she'd want to anyway. The thought of being under someone kinky's complete sexual control made her wet and she had been getting herself off to fantasies of that ever since she realized what it would be like and now she wanted it for real. She didn't much like pain but she said that as my sex slave I could do anything to her I wanted, include pinching her nipples as hard as I could for hours and she'd take it like a good slave. It probably would be better if she was tied up but if I wanted to make her just stand there or lay there take it of course the master would do with his property as he wished. She didn't mind being tied up, and sex was absolutely an option. I needed to understand that if I came and she didn't she'd be grumpy but as my slave I could do that for any reason or no reason at all."
Nel recalled the times she and Greg had played with her as a complete sex slave and he as master. She wasn't often in the mood for that and it was always just a scene for a limited time. She'd never been open to her being trapped in that situation for long periods of time much less being trapped there willingly. But she recalled that Greg did ask her to play that game to which she usually said no and any time she was willing Greg was more than willing and quite happy with her for a while after.
"She heard you and I would go out into the hills and I would tie you naked to the hillside or down on the ground and then I’d play with you and fuck you for hours." Quite correct. They did that a lot. "That was fine with her. It sounded like fun and of course she'd obey her master in such things and if she came she'd even enjoy it. She said there were a lot of places in school she had tried out and was looking forward to having sex with me, including under the bleachers. It was up to me whether she was tied up when it happened."
"Just as a joke, I asked her if I was her master and ordered her to, if she'd walk across the commons naked with her hands cuffed behind her back at lunchtime." Nel gave a start. It was pretty much a private joke between Greg and her, an example of something that even if he begged her for a million years that she would never ever even think of doing. The commons was a large grassy area, about fifty yards square in the center of school. There was normally more than a hundred people there at lunchtime hanging out or eating.
"She thought about it for a moment then answered she would not be happy about it but she would." Nel flinched again in disbelief. "She said she would bring a set of clothes to school if I thought I might order her to do that and keep them in her locker. If her master told her to do it she would take her books and the clothes in her locker and the handcuff key and leave it in the bathroom on one side of the common then walk across the common to the bathrooms on the other side. She'd take off all her clothes and handcuff her hands behind her back then start walking. She said she had thought about it already, that having a master sometimes meant doing hard things but a slave did anything and everything asked of her because pleasing her master was the only thing that mattered. Of course if she did that I needed to be prepared for the consequences; she wouldn't protect me from them. Her reputation would be gone forever. She'd be in trouble with the school, most likely get suspended, maybe arrested, and definitely kicked off the cheerleading squad. But she would be my slave, just as much afterward, and a slave must obey and she had already decided that she would do anything ordered of her, even the hard things."
Nel wasn't sure if she believed it. She sure didn't see anything like that in Wanda but she hardly knew her and if Wanda had wanted to conceal that sort of thing from people it would probably be easy enough. Nel and Greg concealed - possibly used to conceal, if he wasn't lying about which track she was on and near-term events - that sort of stuff themselves. If Greg wasn't lying, not as well as she thought. She wondered who had squealed.
She heard his pants unzip, then it sounded like they hit the ground beside her. She knew this was coming, sooner or later, no matter what. She wasn't wet at all but Greg was ready for that. She felt him rub lots of lube into her and doubtless on his straining cock. Then he climbed on top of her and she felt him slide easily inside of her and begin to pump. "One last time before you're gone." He proclaimed then in silence took about ten minutes going in and out of her. He tensed up and gave a groan and she felt him spurting deep inside of her.
Gotcha, she thought; she almost laughed. When Greg was done, she asked him "Now that you've come inside of me, if I'm hit by the train, how do you explain to the police how it got there?"
"Easy," he offered, "I will tell the police I was at home this afternoon. I left my phone there so the cell tower records will show that. I've got a program running web pages I visit every so often so the Internet log will show I was there too."
She heard him fumble for some things in his bag while he spoke. Blindfolded she had no idea what was happening, but as he continued to explain, she heard duct tape being torn off a roll and presumably taped around things a few times. Then she felt something, something vibrator-sized, poke into her sex and slid up into her. She recognized the feeling, it happened on occasion before. Greg had taped the bottom of a vibrator to the top of a stick or something and had pushed the vibrator up into her. Unless she missed her guess the stick would be long enough to end up against the same rail her feet were tied to, which would, with the little she could move, leave it stuck fully inside her until it was removed. They did that from time to time, but normally when she was tied standing up and the stick rested on the ground.
"Wanda and I worked this out. She will say she ran into you at the mall around noon. You told her you had just broken up with me. This morning you had taken me to your apartment and had sex with me one last time and then broke up with me around 10 AM or so. They won't be able to tell just when we had sex, just that we had done it sometime today and they won't be able to disprove my time frames. She'll also say that you told her that you'd left me for a GI from base that you'd met while you were at work and that he wanted to take you to Brownsville for dinner and a movie and how you were so excited. Yeah, you and I had been pretty kinky, but he promised to be so much more and you were really looking forward to getting to know him in all the right ways."
It was plausible, she thought. Brownsville was the first major town north of them, the other end of the road that they took to get out here. It was indisputable that she had a lot of lonely single GIs happy to come into the store and browse and spend some time talking with her and the other young, pretty, and well-dressed girls that worked at the store. The police would probably go crazy trying to figure out from the store tapes which one of dozens was her mystery man.
"But you and I didn't meet until noon…"
"Yes, but I was sitting down the street from your apartment over that time. Cell phones don't provide an exact location, just within a quarter mile or so. It will look like just what she said, that I was with you over that time. And you met your new boyfriend and he took you out but not all the way to Brownsville. He stopped here and somehow got you tied to the tracks and left you for the train to run over. Even if they can tell someone had sex with you while you were tied up here, they will only find my semen there and just think he used a condom to not leave any obvious traces with your body."
She bit her lower lip, a nervous tell of hers when she was worried about something. "I'll be back in a few minutes." He told her. "I gotta go take a leak."
She heard him walk away, in the direction opposite the road. As his steps faded she became more aware of the feeling of the wind gently blowing across her naked body, the occasional sound of the desert around her, the cars driving by, any of which might help her but none would because they couldn't see her to know she needed help. Right where they were on the tracks you could stand up and still not be seen from the road.
She tried again at the ropes holding her wrists. After two years of practice, yes, Greg knew how to tie her up so she could not get out of it. So her wrists were still tied to the inside of the rail, the bottom of her feet still tied to the opposite rail, and if she was indeed on the northbound track and he didn't untie her from her current predicament she would be quite dead in an hour or two. This made no sense at all. They had a good relationship. She loved him and thought he loved her, thought they had a future together. Yeah she had some lines he really wished she would cross but everyone did and a hell of a lot of lines that no other girl would cross with him were no problem at all for her. While she enjoyed the sex and being his play toy that didn't mean she'd give up who she was to him. She'd asked him to scare her, and from the crawling feeling in the pit of her stomach he was succeeding pretty well. Surely this was just a head game, he wouldn't want her to die.
Then again, she'd heard on her own that Wanda had broken up with her boyfriend.
If he wanted her to experience the feelings, she could do that perfectly well from the safety of the spur line. She could work herself into the right moods and feelings just fine and just put herself mentally on the northbound line. But he wouldn’t take the blindfold off so there was no way she could be sure, or safe. They played a lot of games, a lot of scenes in their sex life, she was an actress and she had fun taking one role or another and he always seemed happy to play his parts. Maybe this was just one of those.
Then again maybe everything he was telling her was true and she was about to die horribly. She didn't know. She truly wished she did.
She thought about it and if he really had tied her to the northbound rails, and if she was going to die horribly, he had just screwed up by peeing only a short distance away. She couldn't imagine the police would not walk the area around the scene of her murder and not find the wet spot where he peed. And perhaps the urine could be analyzed, proved to be his, placing him out here with her no matter what his cell phone location said. And if this was just a stupid game gone wrong the railroad police probably wouldn't check any further than to just make sure they were not still on the rails. She decided not to mention these thoughts to Greg. Just in case.
She heard Greg's footsteps approaching. He generally was truthful with her, especially in response to a direct question. She waited until he sat down beside her again and touched her stomach.
"Greg…" She asked. "Am I really truly tied to the northbound rails?"
"Yup," was his response.
"And there's a train coming down this rail in about an hour and a half?"
"One hour twenty-six minutes, if it stays on schedule."
"And you're not going to untie me before then?"
"Nope."
"And you're just going to let it kill me?!" Her voice was almost an epithet.
"That's the plan."
"BUT WHY?!"
"Already been over that."
"Because you and Wanda want to be together, and you don't want me to interfere?"
"Basically."
"Then why don't you just let me go? If all you want is me out of the picture, all you need to do is let me go. You, you bastard, are willing to kill me, and you think I would ever again be anywhere near you? Greg, all you have to do is untie me and take me home and you'll never ever see me again. Wanda can have you if she's that stupid and sick. You can have what you want and you don't have to do this to me. Just take me home."
"OK, just get yourself loose and we'll go."
It was a nasty retort he sometimes used. The rules were that if she was able to work her way out of being tied up by him he lost and they did whatever she wanted for the rest of the night as a reward. It was the flip side of the deal where she was really, fully tied up when he tied her up and he was under no obligation to let her out of a scene because she was unhappy with it. They had agreed long ago there was no such things as safewords between them; when he did her it was real. Every once in a while she regretted it but she left it that way because it kindled her competitive spirit, he liked it, and at least for her it made the play more real and more fun. Except for times like now. She had no response for him. She knew what he was saying just like every other time he said that. He tied her up there because he wanted her there and she could expect no change from him. She could expect to stay tied up until he was satisfied and done, or perhaps in this case when she was dead. She was really starting to have a bad stomach about it now.
She started to cry. She decided not to fight it, maybe it would help. It didn't. He stayed beside her until she was done. "I don't want to die, Greg. I'll do anything you want. I will go away and leave you and Wanda alone. I will be your complete sex slave for the rest of our lives. You can weld a fucking collar around my neck and I'll wear it happily. I will walk across the commons any time you ask until they kick me out. You can do anything, anytime with me. Just don't do this to me."
He listened, but made no response. After a long moment with no answer she struggled for a second and then cried out: "What do I have to do to stop this? Just tell me? Tell me and I'll do it. I swear!"
There was a long silence. "I know you're freaking out, but just trust me, baby. You can do that, yes?"
"BUT I'M HERE!" she screamed back.
It took him aback, she could tell. Then he stood up, she heard him pick up his bag. "I gotta go. There's about forty-five minutes until the train gets here and I really need to be somewhere with witnesses by then." He brushed her hair tenderly with his hand. "It's been fun. Thank you."
She was speechless and she heard his footsteps walking away. After a few minutes she heard the sound of his truck start up, turn around, and wind down the road back toward town. Even with the noises of the desert it was a deadly stillness.
She first insanely hard tried to break loose. Thrashed violently, hurt her wrists. If she was on the main line didn't matter a bit. The stick and vibrator he had left inside her was just an irritant. After several minutes of trying she gave up. She wasn't getting loose. She wasn't going anywhere.
She just lay there, felt the wind rustle gently across her pubic hair. Pubic hair that apparently not been enough to make someone love her little enough to not leave her here like this. She felt the same wind blow across her breasts, breasts that she had planned to nurse children with, see them grow strong and smart, launch them successfully into the world. Not going to happen; within an hour all that dream would be spread bloodily all over her immediate surroundings. She had no illusions about what a freight train at sixty miles an hour would do to her bound body.
She would not have the joy of her father walking her down the aisle, giving her to someone who still couldn't love her as much as he did but would try. There was a time she saw the person at the altar as Greg but that was gone now. Her mother was starting to show her age, Nel wasn't going to be able to provide and take care of them in their waning days as she had planned. She started to cry again. Her father had a statement, "I didn't raise any stupid children." I'm sorry Dad, she thought, I guess one slipped through. But it's ok, it's getting fixed today. And she cried bitterly again.
And then she heard it. Very faint, very far off in the distance to the south. A train air horn. Maybe ten miles away in the flat undisturbed desert.
She threw herself frantically at her bonds. Her wrists felt like they were about to break. That would be an acceptable bargain if it let her get off the tracks.
She pulled desperately at the ropes holding her feet. Nothing budged, including her. And it fell on her, finally, like a black curtain weighing a million tons: she was alone, and not getting off the rails, and the train was almost here. She wanted to scream but settled for just crying. Crying for what she was about to lose. Crying for her parents, for the pain her mother would have, and crying that she had trusted so completely, misjudged so completely, someone who decided to kill her.
She could faintly hear the engines coming. far off in the distance and moving fast, drawing closer. Fast-moving freight trains were 8,000 tons and took miles to stop; the engineer had not a prayer of stopping in time for her with so little warning as he would have. She struggled a little more to no effect and then finally gave up. Paralyzed, just listening to the roar of the end of her life approaching.
She felt the vibration in the ground, first faintly and becoming stronger. It lasted for a while, and then added in was the high-pitched twanging of the rails as the train approached. And then she heard the sound change as the lead engine rounded the curve a half-mile away. Probably about 30 seconds of life left. At least it would end fast.
The engineer blew his horn. It was incredibly loud. She would have covered her ears if she could have but then it cut off. The engineer probably realized what was happening and knew she wasn't able to, and would not be getting off the rails before the train hit her. The ground was shaking like an earthquake. A quarter mile. Seconds left. She took a deep breath, closed her blindfolded eyes, and said a brief prayer good-bye to her parents and brother and sister and hello to God. Then the rumble and the ground shaking was just too much and she was paralyzed for the last few seconds. She was dimly aware her bladder had let go. The train was so close, only seconds. The ground shook like and ocean. She struggled and screamed…
And the train roared past on the northbound rails twenty feet away from her. It was still deafening and terrifying. The ground was shaking uncontrollably (or was it her?) and then the heavy roar and vibration receded off into the distance, the tone of the sounds dropping with the Doppler effect of the departing train engines. Left behind was a little vibration, comparatively but still loud, of the cars passing and the rhythmic gallop of the train wheels passing over a nearby joint in the rails. And then the last car rolled past and all the sounds were fading into the distance.
Except for one. Someone standing over her. Her feet were cut free, then each of the ropes on her arms. She scrambled up, jerked the blindfold off. She threw it as hard as she could and then crouched there, naked and shaking uncontrollably. She had a fire of hatred in her she would not have believed she could possess.
"Let's get going." He told her, misinterpreting her stance, as he picked up scraps of rope and the pads. "No doubt the engineer has radioed it in and we need to be gone in the next ten minutes or so."
She took two steps toward Greg and backhanded Greg with all of her strength which with her rage was incredible. Completely not expecting it, Greg was a compliant target and the hit knocked him back three steps and almost off his feet. She herself almost lost her balance.
She saw his anger flare, then turn to confusion. "WHAT WAS THAT FOR?!"
"You bastard! I thought, I really thought you were going to kill me!"
He was holding his jaw, rubbing it, but stopped and looked at her with astonishment. "No! I love you! I want to spend forever with you! You said you wanted to be scared, like Geraldine in the play and I thought this up to give you that experience. You were never in danger. Never!" She was shaking and he was now acutely aware of how angry she was and that she was genuinely dangerous in this state. "You said you wanted to experience it. Everything I said, especially about Wanda, is a flat-out lie. Made up. I would NEVER hurt you! I love you!" He looked into her eyes and saw that none of it was getting through. "You said you trusted me…"
"Hand me my fucking clothes and take me home, NOW!" He reached into the bag and pulled out her dress and started to move to her to hand it to her but stopped when she tensed up for another attack. He tossed it to her, then her flip-flops, then her blouse. Watching her, he gathered up the foam and then, carefully watching her, moved back toward the highway and his truck. She following warily a short distance behind. It was old and rusted but she had picked up an old railroad spike she had found somewhere on the tracks.
They had made it away unscathed, at least in terms of police, both state and railroad, but there was other horrific damage. They hadn't said a word to each other all the way back to the mall and the silence was like a razor blade. When they arrived she had gotten out of the car and told him that she needed time to get over this; he was not to contact her. When she was ready she would find him. He had left flowers, roses at her work. She ran them through the back office shredder. As she worked through it she realized she really should not be angry at him. He had just been trying to give her what she had asked for. They had several classes together at school. The first time he had tried to talk to her, to tell her how truly, incredibly sorry he was, she shut him down so hard that he kept his distance and hadn't said a word to her since. That was fine with her. He reached for her once before one of the classes, she pulled away hard, reached into her purse, and pointedly began cleaning under her fingernails with a folding knife that was completely illegal at school. He had asked several of their common friends to check on her, to find out how she was doing. They all wanted to know what he had done to her to cause this to happen. She told them all that it was a great big misunderstanding but it was something she needed to get over. She did send him one message: she had no problems understanding her play character at all now.
She finally, after almost two months, came by the lunch area to talk. Cindy grabbed Don and they were both gone. She had talked with Cindy, Cindy had been her therapist and Nel had told her everything. Cindy at first was pissed as hell at Greg but after watching him had seen he had never meant to hurt Nel. When this meeting came Cindy grabbed Don and ran because she knew what was happening. It looked to Nel like Greg too had seen how things were going to happen. Maybe Cindy had tipped him off. It didn't matter. Nel told him she understood he still loved her but it was over. She had zero feelings for him; just a big blank spot. Nothing at all. She knew in her head that she shouldn't blame him but she concluded that her heart just was not getting the message. If by now it wasn't coming back it was not coming back at all. He was an incredible person she had loved and she had lots of fun with him but it was over.