Escape challenge: the snowy ladder

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(c) 2009, by Aurélie Catena & Jennie Costa

Author's email: Aurelie(dot)Catena(at)gmail(dot)com

Introduction

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This story is the result of an escapology challenge. Jennie sent me the description of a bondage predicament (sentences written at the 2nd person) and I had to described how I would escape from it (sentences written at the 1st person). Both types of sentence are interspersed, at least at the beginning.

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It is a very cold, snowy day. Your audience will watch from inside a nice warm building. You are led outside to where a steel ladder is anchored securely into the frozen ground. The men with you begin removing your clothes. They take away your coat, sweater, shoes, pants, and bra. You are left in just panties out in the cold and standing barefoot in the snow. You feel the freezing cold on your bare skin.

Immediately, goose bumps appear on my white skin. My nipples are so hard that they are almost painful. My feet are sinking down to mid-calves in the fresh snow as I walk towards the ladder. I can feel cold snow squeezed between my toes. This is a strange sight that my naked, shivering body progressing in the deep snow amidst men wearing thick layers of clothes and warm boots.

The men place you against the ladder. The icy steel seems to bite my skin and to stick to it. My long, curly, auburn mane is hardly a protection against the cold. A blindfold is tied over your eyes and a bit gag is put in your mouth. The bit is wide; it stretches my jaws wide apart, leaving the cold air enter my gaping mouth. Clouds of vapour come out of it. Your wrists are handcuffed to the sides of the ladder and then the same is done to your ankles. A metal collar is put on your neck and then it is chained to the ladder and secured with a lock. It holds your head securely back so you must stand quite upright. All these steel restraints are icy cold against my shivering skin, and they prevent me from pushing my body off the even colder ladder.

A rope is wrapped around each of your knees and the ladder and tied tightly in place. It spreads my knees apart, removing me the comfort of holding my thighs tightly cuddled together. Another rope is put around your waist and also tied tightly to the ladder. Two pieces of barbed wire are brought out. Each piece is placed loosely around the tops of your thighs and the rungs of the ladder. It is not cutting into you but your movement could make that happen. A longer piece of barbed wire is placed at the top of your breasts and the ladder rung. Again it is loose but you could easily be stung if you struggle. I can’t see it of course, because of the blindfold but I can feel the barbs brushing against my goose bumps. In the cold air, the lightest touch seems painful.

The last part is the most painful. A long needle is pushed into the side of your nipple, one into each nipple. I scream out loud at the sudden sharp pain. I yank on my wrist handcuffs, willing to protect my chest with my arms, but they are stopped short and have to remain on the sides of my hips. I moan and try to protest, shaking my head, but I can only utter grotesque pleas and push more saliva down my chin. This is going too far now and I try to make myself understood. But my stupid grunts remain gibberish to the men handling me, or they just choose not to understand. I feel more pulling and stretching of my throbbing nipples in spite of my yelps. The needles are attached together with a rope. This pulls my nipples together, pressing my proud and firm breasts against each other. It feels as if my naturally long nipples have been stretched even longer. Then a rope is tied from the rings on the ends of the needles to the metal ladder, circling my chest like a bra strap and holding it against the ladder.

Just to add to your discomfort water is poured over your body to make you feel colder. I scream again in surprise as the cold water washes down my body, soaking my long hair, dribbling all over down to my toes.

“Can you escape or will you freeze first?” chuckles a man. I try again to protest and plead through the bit gag but I hear the men hurrying back into the warmth of the house, leaving me chained, roped and hooked to the ladder, just in front of living-room wide window.

For a moment I keep struggling and calling for help, clanging the handcuffs chains against the ladder, but then I realise this is all too true. They really intend me to escape here and now.

How foolish I have been to accept this challenge in this remote area. Of course, escapology is my job and my art. But usually I accept challenges on a stage with a wide public. On some occasions, I have agreed to perform at private parties. Those are usually better paid and milder than large events. Most peoples grow shy when they have me at hand and the bondage is loose and devoid of any danger or pain.

In this occasion, I had felt it would be different. When this Miss Janie hired me, I could feel there was something cruel in her eyes. But the pay was so high that I was lured to test it. Once in her cabin, surrounded by her guests, it was difficult for my pride to bail out. I advertised myself as able to get out of anything, and they took me by the word.

And now I am here, chained to this ladder, feeling the freezing cold slowly penetrating my skin, my flesh, to my very bones. I cannot see but I know they are all sitting in front of me in the warmth of their armchairs, sipping iced whisky and betting on my escape. They told me they were not going to rescue me until tomorrow, in 24 hours. But I, and they too, know that if I cannot free myself in the next couple of hours, I shall be dead.

The water is already freezing on my skin and in my hair, my teeth are chattering and my saliva is forming icicles under my chin. I have to act fast, before the cold render my fingers and limbs too numb to be of any use. By chance, they do not know all the tricks of my art. I do for one, and I know there is hope I can free before I freeze to death.

I reach with my fingers towards the crack between my buttocks, pulling on the handcuff chain to the maximum. Still it is out of reach. Carefully, I slide my butt along the rung it is pressed against. Immediately I grimace and yelp as I feel barbed wire clawing against the inside of my left thigh and the outside of my right hip. But I have no choice but to persevere and slide my butt further. My right hip is now resting against the side of the ladder, close to my hand. My body is strangely bent and twisted as I do my best to avoid moving my cruelly hooked chest and I cannot move my knees at all.

My fingers fumble between my buttocks. From the house, the audience cannot see what I am doing. They see me pulling down my thong a few centimetres but that is all. Unbeknown to them, I reach with my cold fingers inside my anus, relishing the warmth for a moment. I pull out a small plastic bullet I use to hide there before my challenges. I unscrew its cap and here are a few lock-picking tools. I take one, close the bullet and hide it again in the same place.

I am shivering in the cold. The snow around me is throwing an anguishing coat of silence over everything. In my private darkness, I feel like I am alone in the world. Alone and freezing to death. My toes are throbbing already and my legs are trembling uncontrollably. To keep the blood circulating, I wiggle them in the sheath of snow the former warmth produced by my feet has dug around them. I am drooling abundantly from my gaping mouth, feel my saliva freezing on my lower lip. White needles are already forming under my flaring nostrils and on the bit-gag stretching my jaws. My hair is hanging heavily, a block of sheer ice. I can barely feel the delicate snow flakes falling on my shivering skin. At least there is no wind, I say to myself in consolation.

I do not lose a second and start working on the key hole of my right handcuff. By chance, this kind of cuffs does not have a complex key system. I can usually pick them in a matter of seconds. But also, usually, my fingers are not shaking madly and the oil in the delicate mechanism is not as viscous. In the present conditions, it takes me almost a minute to pick the right handcuff. Eventually, it clicks open and I feel a gust of hope coursing through my mind. I lift my right arm. The handcuff is still dangling from my wrist as I found it easier to work on the cuff locked around the ladder.

Immediately, I pull the blindfold from my eyes. I blink in the blinding whiteness that surrounds me. There is not much more to see anyway. The snow is falling densely around me, hiding everything beyond 100 meters. In front of me, the windows of the house are tainted black and I cannot see what is happening behind them. But at least now I can see my body and restraints and everything will be easier from now.

I reach for my left handcuff and quickly pick it open. I must hurry. I can hardly feel my legs anymore, apart from long bolts of pain coursing along their frozen nerves. My nipples too are throbbing. They have turned blue and my breasts are shaking. There is thin layer of ice forming on my skin all over my body, remaining from the water that was poured over me. Whenever I move it breaks, just to reform seconds later. My eyebrows are white. A cap of snow is accumulating on the top of my head.

I explore the heavy, icy collar locked around my neck. I find its padlock behind it. I try to prick my pin into its keyhole to pick it but to my dismay I realise that the water you have poured over my head has coated it inside a layer of ice. Frantically, I try to break this cold shell open but my strong nails find no purchase on it. I must melt the ice. I lift both arms and seize the padlock inside the cup of my hands behind my nape, hoping my own warmth will be sufficient to melt the ice. As I lift my arms, so my breasts are pulled upwards and I groan in pain as my nipples are stretched downwards and the barbed wire is raking at the top of my tits. It also offers the vulnerable inside of my arms and my armpits to the bite of the cold.

My whole body is trembling by now. My skin has taken a bluish, pale colour. My stretched lips are frozen too and I can hardly move my tongue anymore. I am concentrating all the remnant of body warmth around my vital organs and in my hands, to free the collar padlock from its ice hull. I can feel the ice melting and the water dribbling down my wrists and refreezing on my forearms and shoulders. From time to time, I try again to pick the lock but it remains desperately frozen. I’m so close to freedom! And still I can feel the cold death progressing from my extremities towards my heart.

I begin to feel dizzy. I am panting short gasps of breath. Hardly any vapour is coming out of my wide-open mouth. But finally I feel the keyhole has freed. I push my pin. It enters. I force my trembling fingers to work, pushing, pulling and twisting my tools, and then the padlock clicks. With trembling hands, I open the collar, releasing my throat and neck. I let out a deep breath of relief.

With shaking arms, I begin to free my torso. I untwist the barbed wire ends, wounding the tip of my fingers on the sharp thread. Then I fumble behind my back until I find the knot holding the rope tied to the nipple needles. Working on the frozen knot is long and painful as each tug throws arrows of agony through my pierced nipples. But finally the knot comes free too. My breasts not connected to the ladder anymore, even though two strands of rope are now dangling from pressed together nipples. The pain has not subsided in them, but I have to leave that for later. For now, I am running against the time, against the cold, which is slowly bleeding me from all my energy.

The hardest is behind me though. Removing the coils of rope wrapped around my waist is comparatively easy, as is freeing my thighs from their rings of barbed wire and my knees from their embraces of rope.

Only my ankles are now holding me to the ladder. I squat down, almost sitting into the snow. I have to dig out the snow to get to my blue feet. Here again I find the keyholes frozen. By now, my hands are too cold to be of any help, and I feel so tired and cold that I could not wait as long as I did for my collar. I would probably die in the process. I yank on the chains several times, trying to break them or jar them. But the steel is too resistant for my weakening muscles. Once again I feel despair feeling my heart as snow is slowly heaping upon my humped back and head.

And then the ultimate idea comes to my mind. Yes, it can work if only I can manage to do it. I concentrate deeply, squatting in the accumulating snow. I feel it coming. I pull on my ankles cuffs, sliding them closer. And suddenly, I pull my thong aside and a stream of urine spurts from my cleft. I direct the warm, fuming, yellow liquid onto my left cuff, and then on the right one. Hastily, I pick the still warm keyholes. This only takes a few seconds this time.

And suddenly I stand upright, free from the ladder. Trembling and shaking, blue and pale, I force my way through the deep snow. My legs hardly want to move anymore. I would just squat again in a tight ball and sleep, and sleep. But a sparkle of energy allows me to walk towards the house. Walking through the deep snow is difficult and I trip a couple of times, falling in the cold blanket. But eventually I reach the door. I open it and throw myself in the intolerable warmth. I fall in a heap on the thick carpet, a pool of melted snow and ice rapidly growing under my prostrate, trembling body.