Chapter Ten
My foray outside proved uneventful, contrary to my more pessimistic
expectations. Then life became dreary again. Up until that time Ash had seemed
to be at home on a random basis. He explained that he had used up his holidays
in order to get me settled in and to deal with of the various asset disposals he
had to undertake. I gathered my day outside was a Sunday, for the next five
days were spent in my dungeon, locked up with a book and occasionally a video,
if he could be bothered recording something for me.
Life was pretty boring, without a doubt. I had my usual breakfast and dinner,
and would have had precious little else to occupy myself with if Ash hadn't
decided I needed a bit of stimulation in his absence. Which was why I ended up
with my wrist cuffs locked behind me. This in itself was no big deal, but with
Ash every small matter was part of a greater whole.
To this end I had the stainless steel crotch strap locked on me again, with, of
course, the vibrating butt plug and the vibrator switched on at breakfast time.
But Ash, predictably, was not content with the status quo as it had been
previously. This time, I found out, the two intruders were screwed to the steel
strap, linking the movements of all three pieces. I also discovered that on the
outside of the strap, between my legs and midway between the two devices was a
steel U-lug to which Ash locked a chain connected to each ankle. The end result
of this was that when I walked, the movement of my ankles, forwards and
backwards tugged on the strap, which in turn made my inserts move inside me.
Which in turn gave me a sore arse but made my loins squirm and convulse whenever
I had to move too much. This, in truth, wasn't necessary, but then, even
sitting still made me horny as hell, and I really couldn't access my crotch with
my hands behind me, which left me with little option other than to walk about my
dungeon in order to bring myself to a climax.
But even this was hard work, for in locking my cuffs together behind my back,
and in locking on the strap-to-ankles chain, I could no longer straighten my
legs properly, leaving me walking in a half-squat, or at very least with a
pronounced stoop. In short, it was exceedingly hard work, and one that left my
knees and thighs aching from the stooping, never mind from the inevitable
rubbing against the bed frame that I ended up doing. Invariably I ended up
sweating and cursing as I struggled to climax, then crying out unashamedly as
the spasms rising from my crotch overwhelmed any semblance of control I had
left. My strength decreased in proportion to the number of times I climaxed,
and once I had achieved the first one, I rapidly fell prey to further orgasms.
By a hypothetical lunchtime I was ready to sleep, oblivious to the occasional
stirrings (real or artificial) within my pussy and arse.
On Ash's return I was allowed to remove the strap for the night, and
surprisingly Ash did not demand sex. Perhaps if he had been planning such, I
would not have suffered my daytime treatment.
Thus was the pattern for that week, and I desperately hoped for a change on the
weekend, for I found the saying that you could have too much of a good thing to
be palpably true, given my inability to resist the unending stimulation from the
vibrators over the course of a morning.
Came Saturday and the same routine was repeated, although this time Ash did not
fasten my cuffs behind me, nor did he turn the vibrators on. While I knew
something new was coming, and I welcomed the change, I did not like the thought
of another of Ash's demonic tricks.
This time I was oiled up and taken outside straight after breakfast, my crotch
strap in place and connected to my ankles, but with just enough slack so that I
could walk upright. My cuffs were not joined and I could walk almost normally,
but I quailed at the sight of the clothesline with the clips hanging on a cord
from the end of one of the horizontal arms.
"N-no sir, please..." I whispered as he drew me towards the line by the chain
clipped to my collar.
"What?" His voice was sharp as he stopped and turned towards me. "What did you
say?"
I shook my head, staring at the ground. He jerked me across to where the cord
hung from the bar. "By rights you should be gagged as a result of that," he
commented, as he unclipped the chain from my collar and fastened the two metal
clamps on my nipples. I gasped with the sudden pain, biting my lip to stop
crying out. "But I think it might be more fun not to, this time." He bent down
and switched on the small motor that started the clothesline rotating. There
was a sharp tug on my nipples and I began walking, round and round. How long
was I going to have to endure this time, I wondered?
Once again I decided that the decision by Ash not to gag me was not a spur of
the moment whim. He knew perfectly well what I was going to suffer, and he told
me so in no uncertain terms.
"There are two things you must do, Jan. The first thing is that you must stay
silent. The second thing is a negative - you must not climax. I will assist
you in this because I'm in a generous mood, by not turning your little friends
on. I suspect, however, that knowing you, simply walking around with them
moving about inside you will prove difficult to resist. If of course you do
climax, and are somewhat vocal about it in the process, you can expect to be
treading that circle for a long time. Or at least until I think of something
more appropriate. As things stand - again, because I am so generous, I'll allow
you twenty minutes for your walk."
With those directions, Ash disappeared around the side of the house and returned
with a folding director's chair and a newspaper under his arm. With studied
concentration he set up the chair beside the pole supporting the clothesline and
settled down to read the paper.
It was another lovely morning. Good old Queensland - beautiful one day, perfect
the next. Or so the tourist blurbs would have had us believe. Right then I was
thinking my day was decidedly less than perfect. The electric motor driving the
thing that towed me endlessly around by my nipples was silent enough so that if
I so much as squeaked Ash would hear me. And the pain in the aforementioned
nipples was enough to make me more than squeak. At least I could see, however,
counting my blessings that I wasn't disoriented like my previous brush with the
torture. To offset that, however, I had disturbing sensations arising from my
loins that I tried hard to ignore, thinking of anything but sex, and in
desperation for once focussing on the pain in my breasts as a refuge from the
warm fuzzies that were occurring down below. Somehow I felt the pain was more
controllable than the pleasure, as I slowly worked myself into the kind of fugue
state that I had managed in the course of my previous visits to Sub Space.
I must have managed it this time as well, for I was miles away when the motor
stopped abruptly and I caught up with the clips on the rope and jerked myself to
a painful halt.
"Very good, Jan," Ash said, coming over and unfastening the clips. I groaned
and panted with the sudden pain, screwing my eyes shut and gritting my teeth as
I tried to blot it out until it subsided to a tolerable level. Then it was the
lead clipped to my collar again and I was following Ash to the house and into
the little enclosed lobby at the rear that led to my dungeon.
But this time we passed the door to my room, instead ascending the wooden steps
to the floor above. I was startled, and for a moment I forgot the sensations in
my crotch as I wondered what was in store for me upstairs.
In my mind's eye I had a mental picture of the layout above, not least because
of where I could see waste pipes poking through the floor above my room. I
reckoned I knew where the shower, toilet and kitchen were, and where Ash's
bedroom was from the walking about. It was a house pretty well devoid of
architectural merit - as was frequently the case with structures from the
forties and fifties. Small windows and not a great appreciation of sun or view
were the usual features, although in this case, since it had been relocated from
some other location, I could hardly apportion the blame on the original
designer.
The backdoor opened into the kitchen with a closed door to the right, which I
reckoned was the laundry. Directly opposite the backdoor was a hallway, at the
end of which I could see the front door. The hall was dark and gloomy, with
several doors opening off it, all of which were closed.
"Welcome to my abode," said Ash with a flourish. I looked about the kitchen.
To say it needed work was a euphemism. The linoleum on the floor was brittle
and scarred from many kitchen disasters, and was coming away in parts to reveal
the floorboards underneath. The cupboards were ancient and in that terribly
dated fifties style with exposed hinges and handles. To say the place also
needed a clean was similarly a dramatic understatement. If this was where my
meals had been coming from, it was a wonder I had not succumbed to some
mysterious ailment. Dishes were piled in the sink and rubbish seemed to be
everywhere. I could see why he had the windows open as well. I followed him
into the hallway.
He opened each door in turn and showed me, down the left hand side the dining
room, a study and the living room at the front of the house. Opposite this was
his bedroom, complete with unmade king sized bed. Next to it was another room,
which probably had once been a bedroom in a previous life. Now it was a
workshop, with a workbench and a heap of tools scattered about. He closed the
door as we exited into the hall again and locked it with the keys on his belt.
The last door was the bathroom, and then we were back in the kitchen.
"So, what do you think, Jan?"
"Nice, sir," I mumbled.
"But not as nice as yours was, of course," he said with a grin. "I'm going to
do it up, you see. I like it out here, but the house really does need some
upgrading - which you're paying for, of course, Jan. I have a builder coming on
Monday to look at refurbishing everything - kitchen and bathroom particularly,
but a repaint and new floor coverings as well. Exciting, yes?"
"Yes, sir," I agreed trying not to sound enthusiastic, although my heart was
leaping at the thought of other people coming to the house and the possibilities
this left for possible escape.
"But of course I wouldn't want them to see it like this, so I'm getting someone
in to do the cleaning." I should have seen it coming. Nobody would touch the
cleaning aspect except for an exorbitant amount and only providing they had good
health cover. "You've volunteered for the job."
"Thank you sir," I said meekly. It did not thrill me at all, but the break from
the tedium of being locked up down below meant I would do anything, particularly
if it meant the possibility of escape, or at least the chance to identify a
future opportunity.
"Sit down, Jan," Ash said, indicating the stained vinyl-covered tubular steel
chair next to the matching kitchen table. I perched myself gingerly on the
chair, my skin crawling at the contact with the grease and dirt, while at the
same time the steel crotch strap forced the inserts deeper inside me. I
squirmed uncomfortably and looked up to see Ash's face a hand span away from my
own.
"I will only tell you this once, Jan. You are being given this job as a reward
for your good behaviour." His voice went steely. "If you so much as even think
about trying anything silly, you will be sorrier that you can imagine. Picture
yourself suspended upside down with weights on you nipples and pussy, with those
nice toys inside you coated with Finalgon. That is after you've been scrubbed
from head to toe with it and received a thorough flogging before the second
application. How does thirty strokes with the cane sound, after all that? Is
that what you want? Do you want to suffer this for days at a time, deprived of
speech, sight and hearing, not to mention movement and probably food? Is there
anything I have left out? I'm sure I could think up something, probably
involving electricity... Am I making myself clear, Jan?" He cupped his hand
under my chin and forced me to stare into those chilling grey eyes. I was
trembling.
"Yes - s-sir."
"It would be your worst nightmare, Jan. Worse than anything that you have
experienced so far. Let me tell you it just isn't worth it. I know what you
might do, and believe me you won't find any knives or other instruments of
destruction here. They're locked away. The phone is in the workshop, so forget
triple zero. And my workshop is locked and stays that way. Everything else
gets cleaned properly. And don't count on slipping out the back door when I'm
not looking. Let me show you something else."
He opened a drawer and extracted what looked like a large builder's tape
measure. But instead of the tape being pulled out, a fine wire emerged from the
case when he pulled it.
"Stainless steel wire, Jan, only a two millimetres thick, but nothing you'll cut
without a grinder, an oxy torch or a lot of hard sawing with a hacksaw. Spring
loaded into the old tape case - seven metres of it. The end you see has this
crimped loop - here." He held it up in front of my face. "I can lock this to
your collar like so." He removed the lead and I felt the sure click of a lock
securing the fine wire to my collar. "The case itself now gets locked here," he
said, walking towards the hallway, the wire unspooling as he did so. I watched
as he squatted down and fitted a large padlock through a hole in the case then
drew it down to the floor. I followed his movement and saw a small U-bolt
screwed into the kitchen floor just inside the doorway. To this was locked
another wire which disappeared down the hallway.
"This wire is fixed to another U-bolt just inside the front door, Jan. It is
also only two millimetres thick, but probably strong enough to tow a car with,
if I wanted to. The tape case is locked to it, which at once gives you the
freedom to go up and down the hallway, while your collar wire gives you a
further seven metres in any direction - enough to go into all the rooms and do a
proper cleaning job. Pretty neat, huh? Strong, but unobtrusive. Of course I
shall remove it before the builder comes. In the meantime, you have work to do."
He showed me a box of cleaning materials under the sink and a packet of garbage
bags on the floor, before leaving me to my task my ears still ringing with the
dreadful fate that awaited me if I strayed from the path he had laid out for me.
* * *
Despite his dire warning, my mind could not help but look for anything that
might help me escape. Anything I found, however, would be unless it could get
me out of the confinement by the steel wire. Other than cutting the wire, I
would need a large screwdriver to remove what were pretty big screws securing
the U-bolt to the floor, and I wasn't even sure I had the strength for such a
task.
It took me most of that day just to get the kitchen in some form of orderly
state. I found an apron hanging behind the door - one of those pvc barbeque
ones that every home seems to attract at some stage. This one had cats all over
it, and was the first form of clothing I had worn for many weeks. I found a
pair of rubber gloves under the sink, and between these and the apron I hoped to
protect some of my body from the various cleaning agents I was obliged to use.
The hours passed quickly with work to do, but that was not to say temptation did
not come my way, despite Ash's intentions. In fact it was temptation of a
different sort from that contemplated by him. True to his word, the cutlery was
in a locked drawer, and there was precious little else I could use to do any
damage with. The temptation came from the fridge and the cupboards, which, for
all their dust and dirt, nevertheless still contained food. Despite my being
gainfully employed, it was apparent I was still only going to get my regular two
meals a day. Having to look at tubs of ice cream, blocks of cheese and bottles
of coke increased the empty feeling that seemed to grow the longer I worked. I
plucked up enough courage to drink a glass of water from the tap while I was in
the process of washing up, but even in doing that I was terrified that Ash would
see me and object to it. The thought of getting caught sneaking a biscuit or a
piece of cheese was too awful to contemplate.
Another temptation was to stop and look at the newspapers that were stacked up
in one corner. I used some of them to wrap rubbish and others I simply piled
into a garbage bag pending instructions, but all the while I was looking at
dates on the papers for the most recent I could find. I scared myself as the
numbers reached March 5th. My God, I had been captive for at least two months!
Given that I was now experiencing a weekend, and this was Monday's paper, I
figured it was now Saturday 10th March. How was this possible? I was now
determined to use my new knowledge and the apparent easing of my restrictions
into some sort of routine, to keep a record of my captivity. Exactly who would
ever get to see it I wasn't sure and that was something I didn't really want to
think about.
Ash spent most of the day either in his study or his workshop. By the time I
had cleared the rubbish from the kitchen, done a major washing up and had then
cleaned the floor, it was well into the afternoon. Ordinarily I would have been
finished in half the time, but the chains limiting my hand movements were
frustrating in the extreme. I ended up kneeling on a stool to do the washing
up, and climbing on and off one to put dishes away in some of the higher
cupboards. Cleaning tables and benches left me standing on one leg, the other
raised in ridiculous fashion as I wiped down a surface. More than once I turned
to find Ash standing in the doorway smiling at my discomfort. It was not a warm
smile. It was the smile of one who intends worse fates to lie ahead.
As a result of all this climbing on and off stools and leg-raising, I suppose it
was inevitable that my inserts would rub me up the wrong way, so to speak. They
moved about inside in a way that both frustrated and excited me, and eventually
I had to get on to my knees with a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush, to go
through the act of washing the floor, while managing to grit my teeth as an
orgasm finally burst forth. I rocked back and forwards on my scrubbing brush,
panting and squeezing my legs together, trying to remain silent and to block out
the roaring of blood in my ears. Three times it happened within the space of an
hour, and what with that, the unaccustomed activity level and the lack of food,
I felt the first faintness assault me when I stood up. I was still scared that
Ash would catch me, flushed and aroused, and I dared not think where that might
lead.
I finally finished the kitchen - as much as I could reach, anyway. I moved into
the laundry opposite and was starting in here when Ash wandered into the kitchen
and started rattling around in the cupboards. I poked my head around the door
and he beckoned to me.
"Time to earn your keep Jan. I assume you can cook? "
"Yes sir."
"Well cook something out of that. Use whatever you want if it will mean
something passable. Okay?"
"What about cooking implements, sir?"
He unlocked the drawer containing the cutlery.
"I still don't trust you, Jan. Take off that apron. No hiding places for sharp
knives. You will wash all implements and replace them in this drawer before
serving dinner, save for those knives and forks needed to eat with. You will
serve dinner to me on a tray in the living room within an hour, and you will
wait beside me while I eat. You will eat only if and when I tell you. Do you
understand?"
"Yes sir."
He left, and I marvelled at my luck. I saw it as a chance to gain favour and to
further reinforce my subservience until the right time came. I removed the apron
and busied myself with dinner. He had left out a plate of minced meat, which I
turned into a cottage pie and eventually served up with grilled cheese on top.
The hardest part was carrying the hot bowl, which I could only manage on a tray
in a half crouch, petrified that I would spill some of the hot food on my
unprotected body.
Ash was sitting on the couch, enjoying my waddle into the room as I tried not to
trip up on the thin wire attached to my collar that was spooling out after me.
Ash took the tray from me and pointed to the floor. I knelt beside him and
waited passively as he ate. I should have put some weedkiller in it, I thought
rebelliously as he turned up the cricket game that was on the television and
pointedly ignored me.
He finished the meal without a word of comment and concentrated on the game,
motioning me in front of him with a couple of snaps of his fingers, so that he
could stretch out his feet on my exposed back. Strangely enough it was this
move that in a way riled me almost more than all the indignities that he had
inflicted on me so far. At least under those circumstances I had at least been
treated as a human being - albeit a slave - but the idea of existing purely as a
piece of furniture, not even to be talked to - or at - left me fuming. But of
course there was nothing I could do, not chained and secured to the anchor wire,
and not with dire threats hanging over my head if I flouted this newfound
"freedom" from the dungeon.
The game ended, but not the way Ash obviously wanted. Australia was beaten and
that was clearly not a satisfactory outcome for Ash. He turned the TV off and
made me kneel on a cushion seat from a large armchair, placed on the floor. He
produced two padlocks from his pocket and locked my left wrist cuff to my left
ankle cuff and then did the same for the right ones. This left me with my head
hard down on the cushion and my arse in the air, and I did not like where it was
going at all. He removed the crotch strap, together with its accompanying
intruders, in a manner that was swift and clinical. It felt strange after
having contained these devices for the whole day to suddenly be emptied of them.
Ash's idea of foreplay - as so often seemed to be the case - was to give my
bottom a thorough spanking, first with his hands, then with a belt. I could not
help myself, and the tears began to flow, nor could I prevent small whimpers
escaping through my gritted teeth as I ground my face into the cushion. Several
times Ash's belt flicked between my legs and I fought to stifle the yowls from
the pain that exploded from my crotch. Ash's answer to this was to take the
belt and wrap it twice around my head, passing through my mouth, before buckling
it tightly behind my neck, leaving me drooling and slurping uncontrollably.
He was in a savage mood, and I got a thorough screwing that had a ferocity that
scared hell out of me. First I got it in front, then he finally came in a
painful arse-reaming exercise that could barely qualify as anything other than
an animalistic rutting. And all the while he said nothing, other than to grunt
as he thrust into me before climaxing in a sudden frenzy.
He withdrew and left me there, pushing me on to my side before leaving the room
and turning the lights out. I heard him go into the bathroom and the sound of a
shower. God, what I wouldn't have done for a hot shower, both after what I had
just gone through, but also because I had not had one for over two months.
I lay there trying to get myself as comfortable as I could, for perhaps two
hours while he moved about the house. He was in one of his uncommunicative
moods, eventually returning and unlocking my wrists and ankles but leaving the
belt in my mouth obviously just to spite me. The wire was unlocked from my neck
and I was given a plastic container of the remainder of the meal, which I took
downstairs with me. He pushed me into my dungeon without a word and slammed the
door, leaving me in darkness to remove the belt and eat my food, before falling
on my bed and crying myself into an exhausted sleep.
* * *
Sunday was almost a repeat of the previous day, except this time I was spared
the torment of the clothesline. I suppose I had in fact got off lightly the
previous evening, given the temper Ash was in. On this particular day, after
breakfast, I was again secured to the hallway anchor wire and made to clean all
the rooms except the workshop.
Again I had the steel crotch strap locked on, with the butt plug and dildo
securely inserted inside me. I was to later find that my restricted movements
in vacuuming, requiring me to bend constantly at the knees to give myself enough
arm movement, subtly worked the inserts around in a way that again forced me to
find a place away from Ash to reach a climax as quietly as I could. Ash's idea
of variations on a theme in this case was to chain the vacuum cleaner to the
U-lug on the strap between my legs on a metre of chain. This inevitably meant
unexpected tugs at the strap and the devices inside me, which proved most
disconcerting.
I passed the day dusting and wiping everything I could reach, while taking the
opportunity to have a good look around the house. Predictably it was about six
months since the place had last been cleaned, and I got the decided impression
that Ash was somewhat of a slob. Having dusted and vacuumed the place, I was
shown the washing machine and drier and directed to the clothesbasket, not to
mention the clothes strewn around the place in various rooms. Which was how I
ended up ironing most of Ash's wardrobe late in the evening after having again
made dinner. I could see the potential for my becoming some sort of full-time
maid here, and much as I hated the idea, it was at least preferable to the
endless incarceration downstairs, and it at least offered some hope for escape.
It was this latter idea that was foremost in my thoughts when at one stage in my
cleaning routine, in Ash's bedroom at the front of the house, I was trying to
get the vacuum cleaner into the furthest corner of the room. It was at this
point that I was at the furthest point from the anchor wire in the hall, and in
the process of cleaning the corner, my head jerked back as I reached the limit
of the spooling wire attached to my collar. I noticed that when I retreated
from the room, the wire failed to retract into the tape housing. I squatted in
the hallway and studied the small case locked to the anchor wire and saw how Ash
had fastened the neck wire. From the housing a small tongue or strip of
flexible steel, like that of the tape measure, protruded maybe a centimetre or
so. The stainless steel wire had been looped through a hole in the steel and
then crimped to itself. The steel tongue was obviously part of the retraction
spring mechanism, but somehow it had become jammed. I fiddled with it, trying
to make it retract. That was when Ash caught me.
He was furious. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded.
"The w-wire..." I stammered. "It got stuck when I reached the f-far corner in
your room... I was trying to make it go back in..."
He glared at me, suspicion in his eyes, then looked at the device attached to
the anchor wire. He made me return to the extreme point of the wire to verify
that such was the case, and eventually seemed satisfied. I was trembling with
fear and desperate to show my innocence. He fixed the retraction mechanism and
made the wire rewind, and finally appeared satisfied that I had not done
anything untoward, but just to make a point he forced me to wear small plastic
nipple clips for the rest of the afternoon. I recognised them as being weights
that were normally clipped to the edges of tablecloths for outdoor or picnic
situations. They were of white plastic with small weights in the shape of
strawberries hanging from them. Ash appeared delighted with the way they hung
from my nipples and swung about when I moved. I did not think it at all amusing
and had to put up with the dull ache in my nips for the rest of the afternoon.
But all through my trials - including a repeat screwing on the cushion in the
living room - until I was returned to my dungeon that evening, my mind was
preoccupied with that connection between the neck wire and the steel tongue
protruding from the tape case. I had seen metal measuring tapes break before,
and the tongue in that casing was no different from the tape itself. I reckoned
a decent pair of scissors might even be able to cut through it. Suddenly I was
filled with real hope - hope that there was an end to this enslavement I was
being forced into.
* * *
I found it hard to sleep that night, my mind hairing off at various tangents as
I tried to still my excitement - and my fear. Dominant in my mind was the
thought of what would happen to me if I failed in my attempt. If I escaped,
Ash's life would be in tatters when I got to the authorities. If I didn't, my
life would not be worth continuing with.
Ash was in a good mood the next morning, I guess because the builder was coming
to do a measure up and inspection. Regrettably, the presence of another person
upstairs - the first time it had happened since I had been captured - meant
trouble for me. That was how I ended up bound to the post again. The chains
had been removed from my wrists and ankles - presumably so I didn't start
clanking them against the steel post - and my hands crossed and bound in front.
A large strap joined my elbows behind the post, securing me to it very
effectively and immobilising my arms save a possible fluttering of the hands.
Further straps went around the post and my body at waist level and below my
breasts, while Ash used about a hundred metres of cord to bind my legs tightly
together before tying them to the post. Then it was discipline helmet time.
Expanding plugs went into my ears, then a firm but slightly squishy rubber ball
was forced behind my teeth before the leather hood enveloped my head and
everything went black. He did not do it up completely at the back, instead
using multiple turns of tape to meld my head firmly to the column.
"Wiggle for me, Jan," he commanded in my ear. I tried, pretty unsuccessfully.
Smack! The flogger struck my right breast. I jerked with the unexpected pain
and struggled as best I could, whimpering into the rubber ball. His hands
tightened the belts a notch, and then he was gone.
I guess I stayed there in that position for the morning. I thought I heard
multiple footsteps at some time, but my hearing was fuzzy under the tape, the
hood and the plugs. The minimalist nasal whining I was capable of would not go
far, I knew. I was sure it would be unable to be heard upstairs. If it was I
had no doubt Ash would explain it away as a dog or something, and I could be
sure of some very unpleasant consequences when the builder had left. My only
consolation was that in an effort to keep me quiet Ash had not stuffed me full
of vibrators or plugs, nor was I obliged to wear clamps on any susceptible part
of my body. It was thus a long, drawn out day, where I finally caught up with
some of my lost sleep from the night before. It was to be the beginning of a
number of such periods as the builders began their work - work which at once
gave me hope and left me in despair as I was to be secured immovably and
silently while my possible saviours began their work only metres above me.
* * *
