CAPTURE

Apart from the occasional sex-game, I have never been tied up before.

This is terrifying. My arms are pulled behind my back. Real ropes, as thick as my thumb and probably capable of holding half a ton of strain, are wound four times about my wrists, then passed three times between them - forming rudimentary handcuffs from which I have absolutely no hope of escaping. The knot is tied tightly between the tops of my wrists, well beyond the reach of my fingers. But that’s not all. After tying my wrists, they pass a second rope about my arms, just above the elbows - winding it four times, pulling it so tightly that my elbows almost touch. It sends pain through my shoulders, forcing my ribcage out, my breasts up. The knot is drawn tight. Even if I did manage to free my hands, my arms would still be pinned behind my back, rendering me helpless. Finally, a heavy cloth is placed across my eyes, tied at the back of my head, a blindfold that encloses me in complete blackness.

I sit on the wet ground, feel fingers at the laces of my combat boots, and, moments later, my feet are bared. I have never felt so terrified, so helpless, in my life.

"Let’s go."

It is a long walk, an hour at least, by my reckoning, and not easy going. My bare feet find countless twigs, thorns, roots; after the first ten minutes, I am hobbling. Worse, branches sometimes flick back, catching my shoulders or face, whipping my breasts. Unable to see where I am going, I rely on the warnings of soldiers who obviously care little for my comfort. The heat is awful, my own bare arms wet, my fatigues soaked and clinging to my skin.

Eventually, my bare soles touch the sharp stones of a gravel road. I limp, arms bound behind me, for perhaps twenty paces, before I am unceremoniously lifted into the back of an army truck. We drive for another hour, by which time I know I am well behind enemy lines.

Finally, the truck stops. I hear voices, other vehicles, and I realise I am at some kind of base. Soldiers lift me down from the truck, setting me on searing concrete. For a time, dazed, feeling intensely vulnerable, I stand. The sun scorches my dark hair.

I hear the command, though its significance doesn’t hit until a few seconds later. "Undress her." Hands, suddenly, at the belt of my combat pants.

"Hey!" Sightless in my blindfold, I try to step away, but there’s a soldier behind me, catching my bound arms. My belt-buckle is undone, and despite my protests, my pants are dragged down my legs. My knickers follow.

My face burns with humiliation. My legs, I know, are good - athletic, quite muscular. But my guess is that they’re ogling my thick dark pubic bush.

Because my arms are bound, they use a knife to cut away my tank top. There is a whistle of appreciation at the sight of my bare chest, my worked abdominals. Though my breasts are probably far too small for most, the way in which my arms and elbows are bound behind my back accentuates them, my nipples are like pencil erasers in the humid air.

"Kneel."

There seems no point resisting, so I do as I am told, though the rough concrete hurts my knees, so hot my shins and feet feel as though they’re burning. For perhaps twenty minutes, I am left, utterly naked but for a blindfold and the ropes on my arms. The sun is fierce on my bare skin, searing my breasts and belly, my thighs, my face, my shoulders.

Eventually, I become aware of people standing over me.

"And what’s your name, pretty girl?" A woman’s voice, amused.

"My name is Private Kirsten Smart." I address the blackness of my blindfold, lifting my wet face towards the scorching sun. "Please, may I have some water? And I want my clothes back."

"It’s not cold. You don’t need clothes," the woman says. "You are a prisoner, now, of the Free Nationalist Army. I won’t muck about: we need to know the positions of your various battalions, artillery, and aircraft."

"You have the wrong person, I tell her. "I don’t know that stuff."

One moment I’m kneeling, the next I’m lying on my bound arms, my head pounding, ears screeching, the whole world spinning. I had no way of anticipating the punch, and I groan in pain and misery.

"Jesus, fuck! That hurt my hand! Bitch!" the woman shouts, and kicks me in the guts, driving the wind from my lungs. "Pick her up!"

Soldiers grab my tightly-bound arms and wrench me back to my knees. I sway, my head still ringing. The woman bends over, her mouth level with my ear. She smells of perfume and shampoo. "You don’t fuck with Rachel Paglia. Ever. I’m going to give you some time to think, because you’re probably tired, confused. But soon, I’m going to want answers. And you’ll give them to me, whether you like it or not." To the soldiers: "Take her inside."

I am wrenched up. From the sensations and sounds, I am marched through a metal doorway into a bare concrete corridor, heading into the depths of a building that smells of disinfectant and ozone. It is chill in contrast to the air outside, and the hairs on my arms bristle as goosebumps turn my skin coarse.

At the end of the first corridor, another heavy door is opened by a guard, and we descend stairs, the metal icy to the soles of my feet. With my arms roped behind me, my ribcage is bare to the freezing air, and my nipples tighten and swell like bullets. I am being taken underground - I count at least three levels before we access a new corridor.

This passageway is deathly silent. My bare feet slosh in shallow puddles, the air icy this far underground. Finally we stop, I hear a door open, and I am thrust into a room. From the short echo, it’s barely three metres square, concrete, empty. I stand, naked, bound, blind. I hear my captors leaving. I call after them: "can you untie my arms? Please?"

"Cool down in here for a while, bitch," one of the guards snarls as the door swings.

"No! Please!" I rush for the door. "Even if you leave my hands tied! Please, my arms hurt so much!" My cries of desperation are lost as the door bangs shut.

I burst into tears, and sink to my knees. My arms, twisted back and roped, are tense and aching, unable to relax. I try ineffectually to move them, but such is their position that my muscles have no strength, no chance of leverage. I can flex my fingers, twist my hands and feel the hard coils of the rope, but that’s all. I guess my elbows must be perhaps three centimetres apart at most, the ropes rough against my bare shoulder blades, biting into my elbow bones.

Kneeling, still blindfolded, I weep, teeth chattering. The cold keeps my skin rough with goosebumps. My nipples are puckered and aching. Even the fine hairs on the bare nape of my neck are on end. They obviously keep it cold down here on purpose, to remind prisoners of their nakedness.

After a time, I creep, on my knees, across the concrete floor, aware that it would be too cold to lie, too awkward to sit against a wall. I try, briefly, to rub my blindfold off with a shoulder, feeling the velvet of my own skin against my cheek, but with arms so pinned behind my back, denied leverage, I am unable to dislodge the fabric. Defeated, I sit, the concrete icy to my buttocks, the soles of my feet, the air chill around my arched ribcage and lifted breasts. The only warmth is in the gentle trail of tears that oozes from beneath the cruel blindfold.