Ropes And Ice

The house had no alarm system and the back door was pitifully easy to jimmy with a screwdriver. His entry and path up the stairs to Nancy Otani’s bedroom was covered by the darkness of the hours just before dawn. For a minute he stood over her bed, looking down in the dim light at the young woman sleeping in pink PJ’s and her long black hair spread out on the white pillow. When he placed the damp cloth over her mouth she struggled some, but his weight held her down until the fumes overtook her and she slumped back to the bed.

Working with no rush, he turned her over and bound her wrists behind her back, palm to palm. Then he bound her elbows together. The year he had spent working as a bouncer in a brothel in Tanis came in handy. There, some of the girls had not been volunteers to a life of sex. Those had been brought in tied and kept tied for a week to help break their spirits. Often after that they were tied in terribly uncomfortable positions as punishment for failing to please a client. And there were the clients who liked their girls cruelly bound and even gagged before they would have sex with them. Jerry Delacruz had learned of these things. Including how they prepared a girl for transportation. The elbows were always tied together. The pain of corded elbows made the girls more tractable and less likely to fight.

Next he bound her ankles together, leaving some rope sticking out after cinching down the rest. That rope went up and over the wrists then back to the ankles. He pulled until her legs folded behind her, then tied the end to the rope around her elbows. It was a good, solid hogtie that would make movement nearly impossible for the girl. He had seen rebellious girls kept in tight hogties for as long as a full day as a punishment. It always wore them down until they were willing to do anything so long as it meant the ropes would come off. And he remembered how they cried when the ropes were peeled from their skin. He missed those good old days in the brothel.

A wad of cloth was shoved into her mouth then tape wrapped around and around her head to hold it in. Still she showed no signs of awakening. But she was breathing and he figured she was okay. Standing beside the bed, he made sure that he had not forgotten anything. Like the bottle or evil smelling cloth wad. Finally, he picked up the teenager and hoisted her onto his shoulder. He was surprised at how light she was, surely not even a hundred pounds. He carried her downstairs and out to the van parked in the alley behind the house. Less than fifteen minutes had passed from start to finish.