When I was twelve years old in the summer of 1977, I spent three weeks at my Aunt Jean's house, where I played tie up games with my cousins Donna (13), Shirley (11) and George (7; who mainly watched) the neighboring kids Karen (13), along with Becca (14), and her brother Jim (12).
On Thursday of my first week, I was one of the victims of a dastardly kidnap plot launched by Karen, the sweet little girl next door. She snuck over to my Aunt Jean’s house and held my cousins, Becca and I hostage by tying us all up in the girls’ bedroom. The plan was to hold us captive until our parents were forced to pay our ransom by her accomplices in town. Once the ransom was paid, Karen released me, and promptly left. No sooner did I untie the girls than we were swearing vengeance against Karen. Becca wanted to go right there and then to Karen’s house and extract her revenge.
Donna, however, politely declined the offer, explaining that since Karen attacked them so early in the day, they didn’t have a chance to do some chores yet. Shirley and George weren’t too pleased to hear their older sister say this, but they grudgingly went along.
And so only Becca and myself made up the strike force that would wreak retribution upon Karen. Since I was still clad only in my pajamas, I dashed off to my room to make a speedy change of clothes.
My pajamas were nothing more than a pair of red cotton shorts, which I favored whenever I slept over at my Aunt Jean’s. I exchanged these for a pair of cut-off shorts; these were a pair of denim jeans with legs that were cut off at the mid-thigh to create a pair of shorts. I decided not to wear a shirt or shoes. When I came back out, Becca took one look at me and muttered, “You might as well have left on what you were wearing!”
Becca wore a matching two piece, light blue outfit which consisted of a pair of short-shorts and a mini tank top that exposed her mid-rift. And like me, she was barefoot. Her long blond hair flowed down her shoulders and around her face like a golden waterfall.
We grabbed a bondage bag (a regular paper bag that held the usual tie up game goodies like rope, tape and handcuffs), a couple of water pistols, and set off for Karen’s house. She lived right down the block in a cul-de-sac. When we arrived, Becca discreetly gave me a few strands of rope from the bag and whispered for me to go around to the back, while she entered through the front door.
Reliving just about every cop show I’ve seen on TV up to that point, I made my way to the back door and was happy to see that Karen had left it unlocked. She was an only child, with both parents who worked, and there was no sign of her caretaker, an elderly woman who lived next-door, so we knew she would be alone. As I entered the kitchen, my bare feet silent on the floor, I had images of a bound Karen dancing (or writhing?) in my head.
However, Karen was nowhere to be seen. When I heard a commotion further inside the house, I entered the hallway and saw a sight that made me stop dead in my tracks. Becca was arguing with Karen, who held a water pistol to Becca’s face. “Donna told you, didn’t she?” Becca angrily said. “She called you just as we were coming over, right?”
Karen, who still wore the shorts and tank top she had on when she “kidnapped” us earlier, had a broad smile on her face. “Just lay down on the floor,” she calmly said, “and put your hands behind your back.”
Becca gestured at me. “Yeah, well, he’d better be your captive, too!”
“You are both my captives!” Karen cried. To help emphasize this fact, I dropped my pistol and held up my hands in surrender. Karen turned to Becca and added, “Now will you please lay down on the floor?!”
Muttering angrily under her breath, Becca laid face down on the floor. I found out later that Becca had been sneaking down the hallway when Karen jumped out behind her from a doorway and got the drop on her. I wasn’t sure what made Becca madder, the fact that Karen caught us, instead, or that Donna had ratted us out.
My first command as Karen’s captive was to tie up Becca-an order that, I admit, I really had no problem carrying out. We moved into the living room, where Becca laid face down on the carpeted floor. I knelt beside her and used several lengths of clothesline rope from our very own bondage bag to bind her wrists together behind her back. Karen even made sure that I double knotted Becca’s wrists; meaning that I tied a separate strand of rope vertically over the original bond.
I have to say that there was an awful distraction. I mentioned that Becca wore a mini tank top which exposed her mid-rift. Well, as I tied Becca’s wrists, I fought the compulsion to tickle her bare sides. And it was a major temptation, let me tell you! But my better nature prevailed, and I moved down Becca’s body to bind her ankles together in the same double bound fashion that I tied her wrists. I even avoided any temptation to tickle Becca’s bare soles. I was a good little captive.
Once Becca was bound to Karen’s liking, she escorted me to her favorite bondage spot in the house, the guest bedroom. Karen told me to lie face down on the bed. Once I did this, she bound my wrists together behind my back with clothesline rope. When my wrists were tightly fastened, Karen moved down to my feet, which she bound together at the ankles. Then she hog-tied my bound ankles to my wrists for good measure.
When I let out a grunt after she tugged on the rope binding my feet, Karen instantly asked, “Are you uncomfortable?”
“Isn’t that the idea?” I said with a chuckle.
“I mean it,” Karen said, deadly serious, “if you’re not comfortable, let me know, and I’ll loosen the ropes for you.”
I told her I was fine. While my bonds were very snug (I certainly wasn’t going anywhere!), they weren’t that uncomfortable.
Karen left me alone so she could get Becca. When they returned, Becca still had her hands bound behind her back. She automatically started to take a seat on the opposite side of the bed from me when Karen stopped her.
Karen made Becca sit down in a hard-backed, armless, wooden chair. The back of the chair was too broad for Becca to slip her bound arms around, so Karen untied her hands and then retied them behind the chair. However, there was still the problem of the chair being too broad to allow Becca’s wrist to be bound together in back. So Karen solved this by binding Becca’s wrists to the first two spindles of the chair’s back. Actually, the ropes secured Becca’s wrists and forearms to the back of the chair. It was a pretty elaborate tie up job. Karen then wrapped a rope around Becca’s upper torso and secured it to the back of the chair.
Once her captive’s arms and upper body were fastened down, Karen went to work on Becca’s legs. She tied Becca’s ankles together, and then secured them to a length of rope, which was bound between the two front legs of the chair. This served to keep Becca from moving her already tied feet back and forth. As if all of this wasn’t enough, Karen tied another piece of rope around Becca’s legs, just below the knees.
One thing I noticed while I happily watched this little bondage scene was that Becca kept grunting and groaning throughout the entire procedure, and Karen simply ignored her. I thought it was funny how earlier, when I let out one little grunt, Karen immediately offered to loosen my bonds, and yet all the while Becca kept giving obvious signs of her discomfort, Karen hardly gave her a second glance!
Karen stood back with her hands on her hips and admired her rope work on Becca.
“You used more rope on me than you did on him,” Becca said petulantly.
“That’s because you’re more annoying,” Karen said deadpan as she started for the door. “I’m gonna get gags. You two stay right where you are!”
“Ha, ha!” Becca said sarcastically. She then turned to me and added, “We’ll have to get her good…her and Donna.”
Becca had a point. Donna was asking for it. And it was nice for once to be on Becca’s side when she was swearing vengeance against somebody. But there was a little problem: in order to take our revenge, we had to get free, first. And, presently, that was easier said than done.
When Karen returned with a roll of duct tape, she happily gagged Becca-not with one, or two, or even three, but with four pieces of duct tape. The lower half of Becca’s face was covered in gray. I was only gagged with one strip of tape; after which Karen placed her finger over my gagged lips and went “Shhhhhh!”
Karen left us long enough to get a magazine. When she returned, Karen made herself comfortable on the opposite side of the bed from me. She casually flicked through the magazine as she kept an eye on us, while lazily bouncing a bare foot up and down on the mattress. After a while, we heard the front door slam, and then the singsong voice of Karen’s elderly caretaker calling her name throughout the house.
Then Karen sprinted out of the room and into the sugar plum world where her caretaker resided. I could hear faint echoes of their pleasant conversation from where I lay on the bed. This only served to reinforce the fantasy of being captured for me-that and watching Becca writhing as best she could against her bonds certainly didn’t hurt, either! Once Karen left, Becca went all out in her struggle to break free of her bonds. To this day I’m uncertain whether she did it for my benefit, but Becca’s thrashing against the ropes was quite a sight to behold. It was also something to hear, as well. In addition to her constant mmmmfphing under her gag, her physical exertion caused the chair she sat on to creak and groan in protest.
I quickly gave in to my own little fantasy that Becca and I were a couple of junior detectives who were captured by the bad guys and stashed away in this stuffy bedroom. I started my own bout of writhing and struggling against my bonds, and it wasn’t an act, either. I gave it my best shot and tried to pull my wrists and ankles free of their bonds, but it was no use.
I gave up and listened instead to the muffled lighthearted conversation that wafted into the room. It was very easy to imagine that they were the voices of our captors, who were celebrating their good fortune at having caught these nosy kids, and were now plotting what they would do with us. Donna and I had been in a similar situation like this as captives of Karen last summer, and I was very happy to be experiencing it once more. God help me, but I truly loved every minute of this stuff. And when I saw Becca gaze back at me with a sparkle in her eye, it was obvious that, despite her bluster, she also enjoyed playing these games as well, either as a captor or captive.
When we realized that Karen’s caretaker was staying far longer than just a simple check-in visit on her young charge, Becca decided to use this to our advantage by hatching an escape attempt. But this proved to be easier said than done!
Becca told me later that she had planned to move her chair over to the bed I laid on, so that I would reach out with my bound hands and untie one of her wrists. However, that plan fell to pieces once Becca realized that she could not, for the life of her, move the chair she was bound to even an inch! She had planned to slide it across the floor with her bound feet, but (1) there wasn’t enough leverage for her feet to be very effective and (2) there was wall-to-wall carpeting in the guest bedroom, which made any sliding around of furniture (whether by a bound or unbound person sitting on it) pretty hard to do. The carpeting was thick, and once the chair’s legs had sunk in, it might as well have been mired in mud.
However, all was not lost, at least for me. Because once again, I had the joy of watching Becca writhe and wiggle her bound body around in the chair. I couldn’t help but marvel at her determination (among other things) as she fought a losing battle. It wasn’t long before her skin glistened with sweat, causing her bangs to stick to her forehead in dark blond spikes.
Finally, Becca let out a sharp exhale of breath through her nose and slumped back in the chair. Not being able to give her proper condolences, I gave her a little wink of reassurance, to which she simply rolled her eyes in frustration.
After being bound for a good thirty minutes or so, Karen came back inside and started untying my wrists. She explained that her caretaker was making lunch for all of us, and decided that this would be a good time for a break. Karen also wanted to know if Becca and I could act as if we had just come inside. However, once we were untied, we didn’t even get to the front door before the old woman saw us and started making a fuss over seeing me for the first time since last summer. If she knew Becca and I had been bound and gagged in the guest bedroom all along, she never let on.
Since she called the break, and we didn’t escape, Becca and I remained Karen’s captives, even while we were free. I didn’t mind a break. Since I had been playing tie up games non-stop since literally waking up this morning, I skipped breakfast, and now my stomach was letting me know how famished I had become.
Karen’s caretaker served a delicious lunch of cold cuts and salads. We were about two-thirds through our meal when the old woman took her leave, telling us to simply leave everything. However, no sooner did Becca and I finished eating than Karen bound our hands behind our backs and gagged us with duct tape, right at the table. Then, she did something really interesting.
With our feet still untied, Becca and I were escorted into the laundry room, which sat between the kitchen and the back porch. Karen made Becca and I sit cross-legged on the floor, right next to the washer and drier. Then, with a small smile on her face, Karen turned and headed back into the kitchen and began cleaning up.
Becca and I exchanged wide-eyed looks of puzzlement over our gags for a few seconds, and then she promptly uncrossed her legs, got up and knelt down next to me so that her back was facing me. I turned my body so that her bound hands could reach mine, and thus we began a desperate little race to untie each other before our captor noticed what we were doing.
Becca let out an annoyed groan when Karen abruptly stuck her head into the laundry room, and said, in her best shocked tone of voice: “What are you two doing?!”
After grabbing some more rope, Karen came over and pulled us apart just as Becca was getting some headway in loosening my bonds. Once both of our wrist bonds were rechecked (and mine were retied), Karen escorted us out to the back porch; which had a roof, and was screened in on all three sides. We were made to sit down on two separate pieces of garden furniture. I sat in a wooden reclining chair with cushions, while Becca sat on a similar-style sofa. Karen forced Becca to lie down on the sofa on her side, where she bound Becca’s legs together at the ankles and knees.
Then Karen came over to me and also bound my legs together at the ankles and knees. Appearing satisfied that we wouldn’t be able to help each other out; Karen gave us a big grin before she left us once again to presumably resume her clean up chores.
Becca, who lay facing me, began twisting and writhing around on the sofa in an effort to turn her body around 180 degrees. As for myself, while I once again enjoyed watching Becca’s strenuous exercise session, I had to admit to feeling a little self-conscious about being tied up out doors. However, there wasn’t anybody in sight, and the position of Karen’s porch made it hard for anybody to see us.
When I heard an annoyed grunt, I glanced back and saw Becca had successfully turned around on the sofa; her back was now facing me, and her bound hands made a grasping gesture towards me. I didn’t need to be told twice.
I got up and hopped over to where Becca lay. Bear in mind that this was easier said than done; however, it helped that the sofa was right next to the chair I sat in. After a couple of unsteady hops on my bound feet, I landed (crashed landed is a more apt description) next to Becca. With a glance over my bare shoulder, I quickly found the knot that bound Becca’s wrists together and started to pull it loose. As you might have guessed, all of this was doing wonders for my “junior detective” fantasy! As far as I was concerned, little Doug and spunky Becca were fighting to free themselves before the big, bad villains foiled this escape attempt, as well. Once free, we were going to run to town and call the cops so these dastardly thieves won’t get away with the money they stole from the orphans fund. (my twelve-year-old self actually wrote this little fantasy out in my bondage journal back then; if you didn’t know I was a weird kid, now you do)
Once I pulled Becca’s wrists free, she sat up and pulled off her tape gag. Then she spun around and, with her legs still bound, removed my gag and untied my hands.
As luck would have it, Karen came back out just as Becca was untying her ankles. I didn’t even get my knees untied. Karen casually leaned back against the wall and waved a water pistol at us.
Becca’s reaction to this was to stop untying her ankles and fall wearily back against the sofa. “Oh come on, Karen!” she moaned.
This made the three of us-even Becca-laugh uproariously. Karen said later that she deliberately left Becca and I alone just long enough to almost untie each other, and all the while she would be discreetly watching. Then she would run in at the last possible minute and spoil our escape. In addition to being the most insidious psychological torture I’d ever encountered, it actually made the game all the more thrilling for me.
Karen graciously allowed for the game to be put on hold for the rest of the day-but only after securing a promise from both Becca and I that we were still technically her captives, and would restart the new game as such.
And we did resume the game the following day; with Becca and I facing more thrills and chills from Karen. That story will be next.