Escape Artist II – Imprisonment In Japan

Description

In the first book of this series, the famous and beautiful professional escape artist, Stella Walters, was talked into spying on a man dealing in kidnapping and selling females. Made captive by Thomas Crofton, she had to endure harsh treatment as he played with his new toy. Punishments and abuse were her lot as his personal slavegirl. But then he discovered that she had been spying on him and, in anger, sold her to a Japanese man with a reputation for sadistic treatment of his slavegirls. Boxed up and shipped off to Japan, she is alone in a world where she does not even speak the language, and in the hands of a man who takes delight in torturing beautiful women. Her assistant and friend, Tara, was also a prisoner/slavegirl in that far-off land, but of a different owner. Like Stella, she is subjected to harsh and degrading treatment in the hands of her Goshujin-sama, her Master.

Is this to be her fate? To be enslaved and punished endlessly?

Published: 9 / 2010         No. words: 39,800

On the gentle breeze came the soft sounds of a kagurabue.  The bamboo flute told that a Shinto temple was not far off, for it is used in the mi-kagura, or ritual music of such temples.

That same late spring zephyr also bore the muffled sounds of pain through the pines of a private estate just outside of Takamatou on Hakkaido, the northernmost island of Japan.  This private estate was both fenced and large enough so that most of the muted noise made by the suffering woman remained trapped within it, just as the woman was trapped within that large house.

Had she not been gagged, the woman hanging by her ankles would surely have been pleading or cursing in English, for she was not Japanese as were the other women kept prisoners on that estate.  She had been born in far off America and only recently transported in a totally helpless state like a piece of cargo across the ocean to the Land of the Rising Sun.

The girl’s slender body hung by bound ankles from the beam of a Japanese style house with lots of paper sliding doors and very little furniture.  Hemp rope had been used to bind her arms behind her back, wrists together and parallel in the Japanese style, and a lot of rope binding her upper arms and around her chest.  She wore only a tight pair of black silk panties, nothing else.  Forced into her mouth was a large rubber ball strapped in place tightly.  The ball had two purposes.  First it silenced her, at least as far as talking went.  Secondly it was a form of punishment.  The rubber ball forced her jaw wide open and was wedged in place.  At first, it had been merely uncomfortable but as time passed the muscles of her jaw began to ache.  More time passed, and the ache grew into a pain then a torment.  Soon large tears were running up her face to disappear into her long red hair that hung down all the way to the floor.

The ropes were uncomfortable and hanging by one’s ankles was no fun, but the worst of the punishment was that gag.  Pain radiated up her jaw into her head.  She had shaken her head at the beginning to try to dislodge the gag, even though from bitter experience she knew that would not be possible.  It had been early in the day when Goshujin-sama had dragged her from her cage-like cell and hung her by the feet in the empty room.  Goshujin-sama was not his real name but what Tara had been taught to call him.  It meant “Master” in Japanese.  She was not sure of his real name.  He called her tonko but she had come to realize over the month she had been in his house, that it was not a name but a title.  It meant “slave,” or more specifically a “love slave”.

One of the sliding panels was open to a garden, one of several around the house.  If she twisted her head a bit, she could see the pine trees and the small waterfall leading to the koi pond.  Through that opening came a soft breeze, just cool enough to raise goose bumps on her bare skin.

Goshujin-sama had not returned, and the poor American girl had to wonder if she were going to hang upside down all day.  Considering some of the cruel torments he had inflicted upon her, it was very possible that was, indeed, his plan.  No one else came by.  She could not even hear the sounds of anyone, but that was no surprise.  This house, built in the old style yet with modern materials and conveniences, was huge.  Only the distant, very faint sound of flute music came to her to relieve her suffering.

As usual, she had struggled against the ropes as soon as she was left alone. Also as usual, she had not been able to loosen a single winding of the coarse rope.  In her prior life, Tara had been the assistant and close friend of Stella Walters, the foremost female Escape Artist in the world.  Stella had become involved in a plan by Federal authorities to bring down a man trafficking in human beings.  Thomas Crofton arranged for attractive females to be kidnapped then shipped to buyers in other countries.  Stella was bait in an attempt to gather evidence enough to convict the wily criminal, but the plan backfired and she was taken prisoner and made to suffer at the hands of that sadistic man. In a foolhardy attempt to rescue her, Tara was also captured.  A few days later, she was packaged up and shipped off on a long voyage, at the end of which she found that she had been sold to a Japanese millionaire who enjoyed keeping a few females around as slaves.

Over that next month, Tara was taught that her owner enjoyed tightly binding and tormenting his slavegirls.  Punishments were readily dispensed for minor infractions of some set of rules Tara did not really understand, or for no reason at all.  He simply liked to torture helpless females.

One such undeserved punishment was this hanging by her ankles.  Her ass bore fading whipmarks to attest to other punishments, and her breasts were sore from the needles he enjoyed sticking into them.  Inserting the sharp needles into the soft flesh of her breasts did little damage but was very painful.  Besides, she had always been afraid of needles, hating when she had to have an injection for any reason. Now she was forced to endure the anguish of having dozens of pins stuck into her.  The first time he had pushed a needle completely through her nipple, she had screamed loudly and jerked around within her bonds.  She still screamed as each needle entered her flesh. Goshujin-sama delighted in binding her tightly to a post with her breasts sticking out, then turning them into pincushions.

By the shadows of the morning sun, Tara could tell that she had been hanging at least two hours, maybe more.  Her struggles had come to an end; her cries ceased, save for a soft moaning she could not help.  All she could do was hang and wait.

While she did, her thoughts went, as they often did, to her best friend, and, if truth be known, her lover, Stella.  The last she knew of Stella, she was a captive of that horrible Thomas Crofton.  The FBI plot to get evidence on him had failed; Stella and she were prisoners, and she had no idea where Stella was.  It was enough to bring tears to her eyes beyond those caused by the terrible ache in her jaw.  Was Stella experiencing the same kind of torture?  Or was Crofton just keeping her a prisoner to play with now and then?  Or maybe Stella had escaped?!  It was a good idea that her friend might be walking around a free woman.  And that maybe Crofton was behind bars.  But, even if that were so, what about her?  Tara was in a distant country and a prisoner in a system that made hard time at Alcatraz seem like a holiday.