The Famous Four and the Oubliette.

CHAPTER ONE

  'OK, Robbie,' I said into the microphone. 'Lower away!'

  I stood close to the curved wall, as far from the circular aperture above me as  I could, my bare back brushing the rough stone. The bale of straw descended the seventy feet from the surface and hit the floor with a thump, and I detached the rope and watched it snake upwards out of sight. I cut open the bale and spread it over the stone floor, then called for another. I grew hot and dusty in the circular space, and I marvelled at how many bales were needed to cover the floor to an adequate depth. Evadne had warned us of that, saying it would pack down, and it did. But finally I was satisfied with its level, and even succumbed to the urge to roll about in it for a few minutes purely to feel its fragrant prickliness on my naked body whilst Robbie prepared to test the downward flow into the trough below the opening of the pipe hidden behind the stone walls.

  There came a faint slithering sound, and water flooded the shallow trough, spilling over on to the straw. 'OK!' I told him, and waited for him to lower the canvas chair which was the only route to the  surface. Evadne had wanted to lower the flagstone in the kitchen which sealed the entrance to the chamber deep below, in order that I could check that no sound from above could be heard, but Robbie had already tested it, using the sensitive microphones he'd installed along with the infra-red cameras high in the chamber wall. I was glad of that, for I dreaded the thought of being sealed up in the darkness so far underground.

  At the top of the shaft, I stepped from the chair into the sunlight and colour of the outside world. Brushing dust and tiny particles of chaff from my body, I accompanied Robbie to the long table under the kitchen window where beer was waiting for us in a cooler. I sat and sipped gratefully, staring across the yard and enjoying the soft touches of the warm breeze on my body.

  'Finished?' enquired Evadne. Robbie and I nodded in assent, and Robbie remarked that the monitoring equipment was working perfectly. 'So I can tell him to come over whenever he likes?' persisted our questioner, and at our nods of assent, she rose from the table and went inside to her computer.

  'What was it like down there?' asked Rebecca quietly, pouring me a fresh glass of beer. I reflected for a few moments, recalling the curved walls around me and the darkness overhead. 'Like being in a small, round room with no ceiling,' I told her. 'But what it would be like in pitch darkness...'

  Rebecca shuddered and turned her head away from me. 'He's a tough cookie, is Jason,' Robbie said quietly. 'He'll need to be!' I remarked. Then: 'I wonder if he'll really go through with it?' 'He's paid our costs,' replied Robbie with satisfaction. 'So we won't lose by it if he chickens out.'

  Evadne returned, a smile on her narrow face. 'I've told him,' she announced. 'And he's acknowledged. He says he'll be here in a hour or so.' 'Rather him than me!' grunted Robbie, and we all agreed to that.

CHAPTER TWO

  Jason leapt lithely from the seat of his expensive little car. Tossing the keys to Robbie for him to put the vehicle away in the barn, he joined the rest of us at the table in the sunlight. It was a beautiful morning, the sun high in a cloudless sky, and I marvelled at Jason's desire to cut himself off from the light and colour of the day. I even thought he might change his mind as I noticed him looking around him wistfully. I thought he paled a little at the prospect before him, but his cheerful, fresh face soon adopted its normal expression as he discussed with Evadne the method he'd invented to ensure a stay of indeterminate length in his prison. Rebecca and I listened carefully, as did Robbie, who'd joined us after putting Jason's car away, but it seemed simple enough.

  Jason was obviously on edge, flushed with excitement as he gulped his tea. Evadne glanced at him, than asked quietly if he was ready. He nodded and rose to his feet to accompany Robbie and me into the kitchen, the girls remaining tactfully outside.

  Inside, I saw his eyes rise to where the heavy flagstone was hoisted to the ceiling, then he gazed apprehensively at the gaping mouth of the hole in the kitchen floor and the canvas chair waiting for take him downwards. He removed his few garments swiftly to stand naked before us and Robbie passed him the little plastic gag. Jason inserted it into his mouth, biting down hard to secure the little plastic cups over the matching teeth on either side of his lower jaw, the flat bar linking them pressing his tongue down firmly to the floor of his mouth. Grinning, he tried to speak, but could only produce a few uncouth animal sounds. Then he extended his hands for Robbie to slip over them the padded leather mitts and secure them around his wrists. He was trembling with anticipation, and with sexual excitement, too, for his member had risen and stiffened, and a tiny globule of milky sperm stood at its tip as he took his place in the canvas chair, hooking his forearms around the ropes to steady himself as we began to lower him the seventy feet into his prison.

  Using the winch Robbie had rigged up, we lowered the chair slowly and carefully to prevent it spinning under Jason's weight. Finally the ropes went slack and, after a few moments, when we began to hoist the chair up again, it moved easily.

  Evadne came into the kitchen just as we'd finished dismantling the hoists. She glanced at the flagstone, now in place on the kitchen floor, the recessed ring in its surface safely clipped down against us tripping on it.

'Well,' she said. 'That's that!'

CHAPTER THREE

  The oubliette lived up to its name. Out of sight was really out of mind, and I found I'd virtually forgotten Jason's very existence after a few hours. He had water, and by common consent we'd decided not to feed him until tomorrow. That had been his own idea anyway, for he'd said that he wanted to be hungry enough to eat the swill we'd be feeding him on.

  Over time, we'd developed a rough and ready roster for clearing away after meals and washing up. Evadne, as she did most of the cooking, was excused, and after dinner that evening Robbie began to scrape the remains of our meal into the plastic bucket we kept under the sink. Everything even remotely edible would go into the bucket over the next day, and our prisoner would be fed his single daily meal in the evening. But then Robbie, who'd installed the six inch wide pipe down which Jason would be fed and watered, said that there'd probably be insufficient bulk from our leftovers – for Evadne was a frugal cook and made enough just for the four of us – to take the food all the way down the pipe and into the trough. It was then decided to wait until the bucket was half-full before tipping its contents down the pipe, leaving the times between Jason's feeding variable within a day or two, which we all agreed wouldn't harm him.

  As it had turned out, it was Saturday on the day following Jason's arrival, and the others, as usual, went that evening to the nearby village to dine at the pub. Also as usual, I stayed behind: I hated wearing any clothing and hadn't left the farm more than twice in the year since we'd taken up residence. I ate a simple meal of cheese and salad, along with a slice of the chocolate cake Rebecca had made on Friday, then took out the bucket and put into it the few remaining scraps; some bread-crusts and a couple of sliced tomatoes, and some wilted lettuce leaves I hadn't fancied eating. The bottom crust of the slice of cake had been baked too hard (a usual occurrence with Rebecca's hit and miss cooking) and I dropped that in it also.

  The bucket was nearly half-full, and its contents were a mess, to put it mildly. Most of it was the remains of the lasagne Evadne had served up for yesterday's dinner; it had not been an entire success, and nearly a quarter of it had been left uneaten. As for the rest, there were apple cores and peels, vegetable scrapings and the like, and two large and over-ripe tomatoes no one had liked the look of, along with the usual debris from breakfast this morning; porridge, soggy cornflakes, bacon rinds and the like, along with all the used tea-leaves from our innumerable brews.

  I stirred the mixture with a stick I fetched from outside, then lifted the grating over the end of the pipe by the side of the sink and peered into the darkness. Nothing could be seen, for the hinged flap three feet below needed to be operated by means of a lever to allow its burden to fall. I emptied the contents of the bucket into the pipe, than replaced the grating before pulling the lever, fancying that I could hear the faint slithering of the mess down the pipe below. Jason would, I already knew, receive no warning until the scraps fell into his trough and I switched on the communal laptop on the kitchen table to watch the pale green outline of his body adopt a position on all-fours at the faint rectangle which was the trough. Jason was  eating ravenously, and I turned up the sound from the microphones to listen to his snortings and snufflings as he wolfed down his meal.

Later, I poured half a bucket of water down the pipe to clear any remnants of food that may be clinging to its walls, imagining Jason's reaction deep below at the sudden flood.

  Outside in the soft, warm darkness, I sat drinking beer and musing affectionately on my house-mates, how we'd first met a little more than a year ago and how we'd taken to each other at once. We were all eccentrics in our way; Robbie insisted on wearing nothing but women's panties and a satin slip, whilst I, for my part, wore nothing at all, going naked throughout the year. Rebecca was a lesbian of the clinging kind, and Evadne shared her favours amongst all three of us without discrimination, sleeping with whom she chose and causing not one jot of possessiveness or jealousy.

We'd hit it off immediately, and had all decided to live together, renting for a pittance a disused farm high on the moors, with our nearest neighbour four miles away. It was a struggle sometimes, owing to our lack of a steady income, for we were all self-employed, but if two can live as cheaply as one, four can certainly live as cheaply as two.

  Evadne had produced the idea of utilising the farm's facilities to cater for those requiring odd forms of BDSM, of whom there were more than I'd thought possible. Would-be animal role players were what she'd had in mind, but the first signs of interest were shown by Jason, a young man wealthy enough to pay for the materials used to construct his prison, and to pay us further for lodging him; a win-win situation, as they say. The website Robbie had built for us hadn't been long in operation, and nearly all enquiries to date had been from what Evadne called 'time-wasters,' interested only in having us explain to them, in minute detail, how they'd be treated by us when they came to stay in their animals roles. But as Evadne, in her wisdom, had decided to make correspondents pay a fee of ten pounds via Pay Pal to even have their messages read by us, this had weeded out most the more egregious of that ilk. Emails now were few and far between, but at least we could guess the senders were serious.

  Hearing the sound of a car labouring up the long, steep track down to the lane below, I went in and fetched more beers. Moments later the headlights swept over over me, and I smiled. My friends were back from their weekly excursion.

CHAPTER FOUR

  All of us being in jobs which left us free to work whenever we chose, Sunday was a day very much like any other. That is, we went about our normal tasks as usual. Evadne, however, always cooked us a roast beef dinner to which we did full justice, the uneaten beef reappearing in various guises over the next few days. It was the turn of Rebecca to clear away and wash up, but she challenged Robbie to a game of 'Spoof' for the privilege, and won. Robbie, who ought to have known better, having been the victim of Rebecca's uncanny skill at this game in the past, accepted his defeat with some good-natured grumbling, and Rebecca was good enough to help clear the table and leave him a clear field for washing up. 

  We were outside at the table, sipping wine in the light of an oil lamp, when the question the necessary conditions for Jason's  release came up. He'd claimed it was a fool-proof procedure involving sending an email to his girl-friend's laptop from the mobile phone he'd left with us with the simple message 'O.K.' We'd done this immediately he'd gone into his prison, but had received no acknowledgement. But Jason had warned us of this possibility; she might well have gone out to visit her parents for the weekend. He'd made a point, he told us, of not knowing for sure whether she was to do this or not, but she would see the message on her return and acknowledge it. What yarn he'd spun her we didn't know, but he'd told her he'd be in a dead spot and wouldn't be able to reply. Apparently, she was  off again on Monday to go sailing with friends, and she'd send a message when she returned home after a few days, the number of which was indeterminate, dependent on wind and tide. That was the clever part, Jason had said cunningly; the length of his stay with us depended on the length of her travels. She was unlikely to be away for more than seven days or so, but, depending on how she enjoyed herself, she might stay away longer – and she was a scattered-brained girl at the best of times. But when we got her message on her return it would be time to release him. Simples!

  Evadne was edgy, saying that the girl still hadn't answered, and wondering what we should do if she didn't. But then, as if in answer to her worries, the phone beeped and Rebecca snatched it up.

It was the expected acknowledgement, and with it the announcement that she was to go off with her friends almost immediately and that Jason was to be sure and take care of himself whilst she was away. We grinned at each other at that, and then we went inside to watch television.

  Monday morning was well advanced when I stopped work and went into the kitchen to make a mug of tea. Evadne and Rebecca had gone out in the car on some mysterious feminine errand, and Robbie was tinkering about in his workshop on some commission or other. Whilst the kettle, I took up the empty teapot to scrape out the used tea leaves, only to find that the swill bucket was well over half-full. In fact, judging by the level, Jason hadn't been fed since I'd done it myself on Saturday evening, more than thirty-six hours ago.

  The contents of the bucket were a real mess, a real 'dog's dinner' of vegetable scrapings from Sunday mixed with cold, greasy gravy and the remains of the apple pie and custard we'd ate afterwards, along with the debris from two breakfasts and soggy tea leaves from our numerous brews. Added to which, someone had poured in a quantity of milk which had been 'going off,' probably on Sunday morning, for the milk had turned sour, and when I stirred the contents of the bucket I had to turn my head away to avoid the smell.

  The kettle boiled and I made tea. Whilst it brewed, I lifted the cover over the pipe and emptied the bucket down it, following it with the usual half-bucket of water. Then I replaced the cover and poured tea for myself and Robbie, who always appeared from nowhere at such moments.

  The days passed, and it was Thursday afternoon when we next discussed Jason, and only then because Robbie appeared with the charger for the latter's mobile, which he'd 'borrowed' for some purpose of his own. Evadne scolded him; suppose the phone had gone flat and a message was waiting, she said. But it hadn't, and we fell to discussing, over our tea and biscuits, just how Jason was getting on in his dark prison under our feet and how long he must stay there until his girl-friend returned and contacted us.

  Listening to the others, it seemed to me that the oubliette was more than living up to its name, for they all admitted they'd not spared Jason a single thought for days. I could well believe it, for, somehow, it always seemed to be me who fed him, and that kept him in my mind some of the time at least. 'I wonder if he's all right?' Evadne said anxiously, and Robbie turned on the laptop and positioned it where we could all see the screen.

  Jason, we could see, was sprawled on the floor of his dungeon, his steady breathing and the slow, muffled beating of his heart plainly audible. As we watched, the green outlines that were his limbs retracted as he came to all-fours. The blob that was his body seemed to contract, and Rebecca wondered aloud what he was doing. Robbie switched to another camera, and the image sharpened to show Jason squatting by the wall opposite his trough. 'What's he doing,' wondered Rebecca. We grinned at each other and laughed, and Rebecca flushed a bright red as realisation came along with the hiss of urine into straw from the sound system of the laptop. 'Oh!' she gasped. 'That's so GROSS!' and we laughed all the more, asking her what else she expected Jason to do. 'It must be AWFUL down there! And he can't even wipe himself!' she wailed, and we grimaced and changed the subject.

  That evening, as I was scraping the contents of the swill bucket into the pipe, I recalled Rebecca's outburst. It must indeed be 'awful down there,' for, added to Jason's own wastes, the straw would be damp with the excess water spilling from the trough – as I'd seen myself. More, what food he couldn't eat would stay in the trough unless he cleared it out, and it would to lie on the straw and rot, and be trodden into his bedding by his movements as he blundered about in the pitch darkness. Already a hint of the stench below was noticeable when the cover of the pipe was lifted, and I shuddered to think of what conditions would be like in the oubliette after a few days more.

  On Sunday a debate broke out on just how long Jason had been in the oubliette; whether he'd arrived a week yesterday or on the previous Friday. No-one, including me, could quite remember, but we all agreed in the end that it didn't matter, and the subject was dropped until a week later when it was calculated that our guest had been with us, ignored and mostly forgotten, for sixteen days and nights, and still the message which would lead to his release hadn't come. But no-one was particularly bothered; Jason had warned us of this. Besides, every day he stayed with us brought fifty pounds into our joint bank account, transferred from his, and we needed the money. He seemed healthy enough, continuing to eat and move about according to Robbie, who checked the monitors on most days, and I suspected that, at the back of every one's mind, was the guilty realisation that we could keep Jason in his prison indefinitely without anyone but ourselves being the wiser.

CHAPTER FIVE.

  It was late afternoon on the following Wednesday that the long awaited message came – an airy few lines from Jason's girl-friend saying that she'd been away longer than she expected, and that she'd been home since Monday and had forgotten to message him until today. 'He did say she was scatter-brained!' chuckled Robbie, and we began to discuss of Jason's release. 'No point in letting him out now,' said Evadne briskly. 'By the time he's cleaned himself up, and had a good meal and a natter, it'll be quite late. Best haul him up tomorrow morning.'  We all agreed with this reading of the situation, and when I fed Jason that night I wondered if he could possibly guess that this would be his last meal from the trough.

  As it happened, it wasn't his last meal in his prison, for on Thursday Evadne remembered that she had an appointment with one of her employers in a nearby city. After telling us that she didn't know when she'd back, and ordering us not, on any account, to release our guest before she returned, she drove away, leaving us to shrug and carry on.

  But it was late that night when Evadne returned, tired and cross, from a series of meetings that had lasted much longer than she'd expected. The same considerations applied as on the evening before, and we decided to release our prisoner on Friday morning without fail.

  Friday morning came. Breakfast was eaten in silence, no-one wishing to bring up the subject of the forgotten man deep below us. But finally Robbie made a move, persuading the girls to leave the kitchen to sit on the terrace at the side of the house. 'It'll be pretty bad down there,' he said quietly as he began to throw open all the windows.

  Evadne hurried the ashen-faced Rebecca away, and Robbie and I began to rig the hoist above the thick slab covering the entrance to the oubliette. After locking the hook to the ring in the flag-stone, Robbie straightened up and we exchanged glances, our noses wrinkling at the foul stench seeping upwards. 'Here goes!' he said, putting his hands on the rope next to mine.

  We hauled away steadily, the geared-down pulley above us seeming to take an age to raise the slab to the ceiling. Robbie braked the winch and hurried to the laptop. 'He's standing,' Robbie announced. 'I think he's looking up. The opening must seem dazzling; we'd better wait a few minutes before we send down the chair.'

  We did; watching the screen, we saw the green figure move round and round its prison, now and then stopping to look upwards as if in wonder. It was no good trying to shout down to Jason; we knew that, and we began to lower the chair, slowly and carefully to prevent its ropes twisting together. 'It's down!' exclaimed Robbie at last, and we stared at the laptop screen once again.

  The outline of the canvas chair, halted about two feet above the floor, was plainly visible, but the figure of Jason seemed oddly reluctant to climb in it. 'His thought processes must be as slow as treacle,' I said. 'He's probably wondering what it is!'

  But few minutes later the ropes creaked as he climbed in, and we seized the rope and began to haul him up, slowly and carefully as before, now and then stopping to steady our load and prevent it spinning. Once Jason's head, we hauled as fast as we could, bringing the chair clear of the kitchen floor with one mighty heave before securing the hoist and hurrying to him, stopping a couple of feet away as the ripe, powerful odour of his dirt-streaked body hit our nostrils.

  Jason sat unmoving for some minutes, a forearm over his eyes to protect them from must be, to him, the intolerable glare of daylight. Hesitantly, he out one foot on the floor and then the other, finally standing upright and taking a pace away from the chair. He was absolutely filthy, his skin caked with dirt, a damp, brown patch of which was still drying on his left thigh, buttock  and flank where he'd been lying in some unmentionable substance, the origin of whose smell was only too apparent. 'Here, Jason,' I said gently. 'Hold out your hands, and I'll get your mitts off.'

  He looked at me blankly for a few moments, perhaps in surprise at hearing a voice after so long in silence. Then he obeyed, and I unlocked his mitts, handling the soggy leather distastefully and throwing out of the door to begin drying them out in the sunlight. Robbie pointed to the open door of the shower off the kitchen, and Jason shambled zombie-like out of our sight. Seconds later, we could hear the pattering of falling water, and we began dismantling our equipment and lowering the flagstone into the floor. As for the oubliette, I was resolved to tell the other to go to the Devil if they even suggested that I go down it to clean out the filthy straw. But Robbie pre-empted any objections, remarking that the bedding could be left to dry out on its own when it would lose its smell and be easy to clean up. But it could even be used again, although it was sure to become a sodden, stinking mess much more quickly next time.

  It was half an hour before Jason reappeared, his skin glowing with cleanliness. We were all waiting for him at the table outside, and he came out to us unselfconsciously naked apart from a pair of sandals and took a seat next to me where he gratefully accepted a steaming cup of strong, sweet tea.

  We all looked at him covertly. Perhaps we'd half-expected some haggard figure of a man, but Jason, now he was clean, seemed exactly as he'd been three weeks, his cheerful, fresh-faced appearance unchanged. He grinned at us; then spoke for the first time, his voice oddly rusty-sounding at first. 'Wow!' was all he said, and he buried his face in his mug of tea again.

  'Well!' Jason said at last. 'I expect that fluffy-headed girl of mine was away longer than she meant to be? It was supposed to be for three days, but I'm sure I was down there for six or seven!'

  As we looked at each other in astonishment, he began, with a certain pride, to explain his method of calculating the length of his imprisonment. He'd soon realised he was being fed twice a day, he told us, although only once on that first Friday. Some of the days had seemed very much longer than others, he admitted, but he put that down to the permanent silence and darkness of his prison where he spent most of his time dozing. He'd lost count of his meals after the seven or eight, but he hadn't had very many since then; enough for about two or three days more. 'Seven days is my guess,' he ended cheerfully. 'God; it's good to see sunlight again!' he ended.

  Evadne cleared her throat. 'You were down there for three weeks exactly,' she said quietly, explaining to our astounded guest that he'd actually been fed a total of eleven times or so, an average of once every two days. 'On one day we fed you twice,' she told him, 'and once we forgot to feed you for more than three days. No wonder the length of your days seemed to vary so much!'

  Jason was stunned, his face a comical picture of incredulity as Evadne's words sunk in. I imagined  him as he'd been for the past three weeks, alone in silence and pitch-darkness, with only the unheralded appearance of food or water to allow him any notion of the time passing.

  'Wow!' he said feebly. 'It can't have been that long, surely?' Rebecca told it had, and went to say that it had been mostly her fault he hadn't been fed regularly, admitting that she'd forgotten all about him for days on end, as had we all. But Jason was ecstatic, exclaiming that our attitude to him was exactly what he'd sought; to be ignored and forgotten in his dark pit.

  After he'd eaten and dressed, Jason drove away in his smart little car, thanking us profusely before leaving. 'He'll be back,' prophesied Evadne, staring after him. 'The urge will come on him again, mark my words; and next time his conditions will be even more elaborate!'