One Last Errand

‘Hi, Miss, I’d like to ship these packages. They’re all going to different addresses — I’m going ...’

‘Miss? You mean you honestly don’t recognize me?’

‘Um...” I said, struggling to place her. She looked like the kind of girl a guy wouldn’t forget. Piercing, intelligent green eyes, a pretty face with a mischievous smile, framed by a stylish cut of red hair. A couple of years younger than me, probably right out of college. I wanted to meet her penetrating gaze, but I couldn’t stop glancing down at her hands, their perfect, elongated ovals painted an insistent emerald, to match her eyes. If she noticed the attention I paid them, she didn’t give any sign of it. Instead, she kept right on talking, enjoying her advantage.

‘Well I know all about you, Mr. William Henry Eastbrook III, soon to be Esquire. You’ve just finished your third year of law school and taken the bar exam, and you’re about to backpack along the AT with some of your old college buddies, before you have to take a real job in September. These, no doubt, are supplies and gear that you’re sending on ahead to stops along your way.’

‘That’s right,’ I said, still unable to remember. ‘How do you know...

‘All about you?’ She finished my question. ‘It’s a small town, William. Your parents are very proud of you. They talk about you a lot.’ She could read the question on my face. ‘Who do you think handles their mail when they’re on one of their extended holiday? I do. Speaking of which, how are they enjoying their African safari?’

‘You’re really enjoying this,’ I said.

‘Yes, I am. I like watching guys squirm. Especially big, handsome confident guys like you.’ She smiled.

‘Okay,” I said as casually as I could. ‘I’m officially squirming.” This was the truth. I was also officially getting aroused, and was relieved that the counter between us blocked her view of the growing bulge in my shorts. She smiled impishly but said nothing.

‘You grew up here in Northbrook – went to school here?’  She said nothing, just continued to smile knowingly. ‘If you recognize me, we must have been in school together... You look younger than I am, maybe a year or two behind me in school.’

‘Is that all your expensively trained legal mind can come up with?’ she teased. 

‘Well you must have looked different then” I fumbled.

‘That’s not exactly a compliment, William’ she said, putting her hands on her hips and giving me stare of mock severity.

‘No, I mean, I’m sorry... it’s just that ... I mean you are very attractive... unforgettable, really... not that you were anything but in high school, I’m sure....’ I trailed off, embarrassed at my total lack of cool.

‘You’re cute when you’re flustered.’ She said, leaning forward and brushing her hand gently along my cheek. ‘Tell you what. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give you a hint, William, but you’ll owe me...’

‘Anything’ I said, thoughtlessly.

‘Anything? Reallly, William, don’t they teach negotiation at that fancy law school you went to? But don’t worry — all I want is for you to buy me dinner, okay?’

‘Deal,’ I said. She offered me her hand — I looked at it, probably showed more interest in her manicure than was appropriate, but she didn’t say anything. We shook hands. It took a long while for her to let go.

‘Okay, here’s your hint: the Northbrook Navigator.’

The school paper. I was editor my senior year. She must have written for the paper, then. It wasn’t a big staff....

Finally: “Lizzie Gardner!”  The girl I remembered was your standard high school geek. Loser Lizzie, the cheerleaders called her, unfairly. Very bright she was— and confident, despite the teasing. The best reporter in her class. I remembered hearing that she had gone on to edit the paper her senior year. But, back then, she hadn’t been much to look at. Mousy. Hair all over the place. Indifferent about her clothes. No makeup.

“It’s Elizabeth now, William — or should I call you Will, or Billy the Blob.” She pointed a brilliantly green-tipped finger at my mid-section. “Isn’t that what they called you in middle school, before you shaped up to play lacrosse?”

“Touché, Elizabeth ” I said, trying hard to sound suave and hoping that I hadn’t put too many pounds back on since my days as a high school athlete. “It’s clear our looks have both improved with age.“So when should I pick you up for dinner?”

“We can go right from here. We close at six on Saturdays, and it’s almost that now. Let me just take care of these, and I’ll show you around the place, and you can wait in my office until it’s time for us to go.”

“Works for me,” I said. “I do have one question, though, “ I added, uncertainly.

“Why a bright girl like me is working in a place like this?”

“Yeah”

“No real mystery. My dad got cancer my senior year of high school. I wanted to stay local for college, to be around as much as I could be. After college, I took this job — easy, close to home, gives me a chance to gossip with the neighbors — for the same reason. We thought for awhile he might beat it, but he didn’t. He died in January.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, “I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay. I mean, I’m still really sad when I think about it, but we were lucky to have the time we did, especially since I never really knew my mom. And I’ve got big plans of my own for next year — grad school.... I’m going for a PhD in Psych,” she added, replying to the unspoken question. “Abnormal Psych. Compulsive and fetishistic behavior.”

“Interesting,” I said, trying to hide my interest.

“These packages won’t mail themselves,” she added with a laugh, and began to ring up the bill. I watched as she weighed each package, figured the freight charge, and affixed the routing labels.  She put a couple of layers of clear packing tape to seal the labels to the box. Okay, I stared. I’ve always had a thing for girls with colorfully painted nails, and a fantasy about being caught and bound with tape. I imagined those hands wrapping that tape around me, trapping me, putting me at her mercy.

Of course no such thing had ever actually happened to me, but I was experienced with the fantasy. I must have been lost in my reverie, because I found Lizzie — Elizabeth, I mean — fixing me with a curious stare, saying, “Hello; earth to William. I asked you a question”

“What, I’m sorry, I was just daydreaming....”

“No kidding. Why don’t you come back here and help me with this? You seem to be unusually interested in my work.”

“Er. Well it seemed like you were using a lot of that sealing tape; that stuff must be expensive; this place’ll never make any money if you waste materials.”

If I had been paying better attention, I would have seen by the glance she shot me that my effort to hide the real nature of my interest in her work had not been successful.  “Come on,” she said, and motioned me to join her behind the counter. I did, hoping that she also did not notice the awkward bulge in my seersucker shorts.

“It’s not rocket science, you know. These paper address labels of yours might tear. We want to make sure that doesn’t happen. So we take a couple of strips of this 3 inch clear tape...” She tore off a length of the stuff from the dispenser. “.... hold it like so....” All I could think of was how much I wanted her to use it on me. She held it up for me to see. I think I stopped breathing, because when she put it down on the package, I gasped somewhat.

She smiled to herself. “Now you do the rest.” I did, awkwardly. The stuff was thinner than it looked and it was hard to keep the sides from folding over on to themselves. She had to lean over me to guide my hands. I let her direct me.

“Very good,” she teased, “three years of law school and you’re almost ready to be a shop assistant. Oh, and you owe me $121.45 for the six packages.”

“Help me carry these to the back room.... “ I picked them up and followed her, resisting the urge to complain that she now had me doing her job.

Music was playing; it was loud, but not unpleasantly so. “Put them over there, in that pile.” I did so. “Let me show you around,” she said taking my hand. She almost danced with the beat as she walked. “There’s not much to see, really.... supplies, mailboxes for people and small companies; here’s where we pack up small items people want us to send for them. My office is over there,” she waved with her emerald-tipped fingers.

“That’s about it,” she said, hesitating. “Well, there’s one more thing I could show you.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’m game for anything.”

“Anything?” she asked, archly. “You keep saying that.”

“Anything.” I answered, looking her in the eyes. She turned away first.

“Come into my parlor, then,” she said, taking me into a larger room, at the far end of the store building.

“Some parlor. It seems like some kind of loading dock, except that it’s so dark in here I can hardly see anything.” I could just make out some pallets loaded with boxes and wrapped in plastic, ready to be shipped; there was some heavy equipment around, too — maybe a forklift over in the dim corner; stacks of folded boxes, and the like.

“I don’t want to ruin the surprise,” she said. There was a tension in her voice I hadn’t heard before

“Come to think of it, why don’t you close your eyes? Go ahead, close them. Here,” she took my hand, guiding me,” why don’t you stand right here? You can brace yourself against this post. No peeking now.

Did I know, then, what she had in mind?  Certainly I didn’t know.  Maybe I suspected.... or hoped. At any rate, I was so immediately infatuated with Elizabeth that I didn’t want to leave. So I stood there. Over the music it was hard to tell, but it seemed that I heard her walk past and behind me. Was there a rustling sound? Maybe. In a moment, I felt a had brush against my bottom and felt her whisper in my ear, “Be a good boy and keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them.”

I wanted desperately to open my eyes, grab her, and kiss her; my whole body was alive with anticipation. But I also wanted to please her, by doing what she wanted. “Okay” I said, my voice shaking from the effort to control my desire. “As you wish, Elizabeth.”

I heard her walk away, and then over the music, a kind of mechanical sound I couldn’t place.

The next moment, I felt something across my arm. Startled, I panicked, and tried to move, but I couldn’t pull away from whatever it was stretching across my arms and holding me to the post behind me. If I had kept my head — or if I had even wanted to escape —  I probably could have gotten free, at least in the first half-minute or so.

But I did panic; I moved spasmodically, ineffectually.

“You can open your eyes now, Billy” she called, but my eyes were already open.

What I had heard was some kind of machine for securing boxes to pallets with wide, industrial plastic wrap. An arm hung from the ceiling and now circled around me, making one rotation about every ten seconds, moving up and down seemingly of its own volition. Within a minute a double layer of plastic held me from my ankles to my shoulders. She must have let the machine run for two or three minutes — though it felt much longer.

“Lizzie!” I shouted when the machine stopped running. “Elizabeth!”

Except that I couldn’t move, I would have jumped when at length I felt her whisper from behind into my right ear, “you did say you were ready for anything, Billy. Are you ready to be my prisoner?” She caressed my plastic-encased figure possessively wit her hands, punctuating the question with a flick of her tongue in my ear and then a sharp nibble on my ear lobe.

My heart beating uncontrollably fast, overwhelmed by the whole experience, I moaned, my voice broke; sounds came out but no sense.  I struggled against the plastic, but it held me fast, and there was no way I was going to free myself quickly from a half dozen or more layers of this industrial wrap.

“Don’t speak” she breathed, now in my left ear. Her right hand covered my mouth. I trembled beneath the wrappings.

“Listen,” she said. “I know more about you than you think. I know you felt the spark between us today. I half expected you to ravish me when I told you to just stand there and be a good boy. But you’re not that type, are you. You like the girl to make the first move. You, Billy, are what they call a submissive.”

“Not only that,” still speaking so that every word blew tantalizingly across my sensitive ears. “You’re also a fetishist. I saw the way you looked at my hands — I thought you’d like this color.” She waved her fingers playfully in front of my face. “I could hardly believe it when I saw the way you stared at that tape dispenser out front though. But those were only tests to see that you were really the same guy you were back in high school.”

“What do you mean?” I tried to ask, though her hand muffled the sound, and she moved to pinch my nose with her thumb to silence me, as she whispered, “Shhh, listen.”

“The computer in the Navigator office. Oh, you were very careful. Those stories — and pictures — what would people have thought if they knew that William Henry Easterbrook III fantasized about being tied up and taken advantage of by strong, beautiful women? You were right to encrypt them. But here’s a hint: your dog’s name and your birthday don’t make for a very secure password.” Hearing this, I stopped even pretending to struggle. She knew.

She released my mouth. I took a couple of deep breaths, as her hands moved over my body, proprietarily. She felt, through my clothes and the wrap, the firmness of my nipples, and the solidity of the hardest erection I had ever felt. She walked around now to face me. She looked every inch the goddess I had written about.

“Your porno stash introduced me to a side of myself I had never known, either. I’ve always wanted to try this. To lure a boy into my web. To take him.” She seized my bound arms in her hands and squeezed. “Play with him.” She ran her hands up my arms, and around my face and head. “Make him do what I want.” She slapped me, only hard enough for it to just sting.  She gave me that mischievous smile again.

“When I heard you’d be coming through here before your big trip, I knew I had to try — this.”

“Now what?” I asked, my voice quivering with fear, excitement, desire, anticipation.

“Now,” she said, wrapping her arm around me as she moved behind me once more to kiss my ear and whisper. “You’ve told everyone you know you’ll be backpacking for the next two months, mostly out of touch and off the grid. A quick text message from your phone to those two friends of yours saying that you’ve wimped out, and no one will miss you if you just disappear.” An edge of menace had entered her voice as she said this.

“I want you to think about that…. How helpless you are…. “  In my ear now, just the faintest breath of words. “No one would even think to look for you.”

I started to panic; I began to scream.  I struggled frantically, trying to force my fingers through the wrappings so I could pull them off me.

She must have expected it because she was prepared. Her panties — wet and fragrant with her arousal — we forced roughly into my mouth. She reached around for a roll of packing tape. She taped the underwear into my mouth, perfecting the gag, and then wound the tape around me, firmly, making a hard plastic shell over the softer plastic of the pallet wrap cocoon already binding me. 

I had managed to get my right hand free, but by this time, she had wound the tape down to my wrists, which were hanging down just below my waist. If there had been before, there was no prospect of escape, now.

While she was securing me with the tape, she said nothing. But now she stepped back to admire her handiwork. She smiled lustily, clearly pleased with herself, but then composed her face into a what was a not entirely convincing mask of unfeeling severity. After a moment, she started to walk around me, one hand running over the tape, and feeling my body — my arms, my chest, my back — through the wrappings. She even slapped me a couple of times, very hard, on my right buttock, protruding beyond the pole to which I was now inextricably fastened.

My heart pounded with fear, and at that moment I truly feared what she might do to me — I thought frantically, trying to recall anything I might have said or done to little Lizzie back in high school to make her seek revenge. But my little head was not thinking along the same lines; he was fully aroused, clearly excited, and unwilling for the moment to end.

It seemed like ages until she spoke. When she did, the mask of severity dropped, and she laughed, more like a mischievous young girl than a psychotic killer. “I’m not really the kidnapping type, you know, but it sure was fun to pretend. You certainly seemed to enjoy it,” she said, now caressing my covered manhood.

“I’m not going to keep you here against your will. Instead, I give you the choice: As I see it, you’ve got two months, with no responsibilities of any kind. Say the word, and I’ll let you go hike the AT with your friends, and you can try to forget that this ever happened. I don’t think you’ll tell anyone about my little prank, if only because it would mean that the world would have to hear what a naughty little pervert you are. I can’t imagine what might be on your computer back home, right now.”

“Or you can agree to be my prisoner and my plaything until I tire of you or you have to start work.” While she said this, she gently removed the tape from my face and her sodden panties from my mouth. To persuade me, she finished with a deep, probing, aggressive kiss on my mouth.

I didn’t hesitate: “I’m yours.” 

 

 

05.03.10