Seeds of Fear

if she were kneading bread dough on a kitchen countertop. Alex is forced to watch all this from the edge of the bed. She has forbidden him to touch her until she gives explicit orders. The prolonged wait is meant to torture her as much as him.

She removes the confining material from around the bottoms of her breasts, drops the red half-bra to the floor next to the see-through blouse. She watches Alex's eyes widen in surprise and fascination as she slips her fingers through the golden rings dangling from her pierced nipples and yanks. An unsuppressible groan escapes her lips as exquisite thrills rip through traumatized nerve endings in both nipples, adding fuel to an already fierce fire blazing between her legs.

Bunching the short leather skirt up around her waist, Cindy slowly opens her thighs and allows a solitary fingertip to explore her moist crease from one end to the other. She licks her lips and imagines her finger has now become a tongue.

Despite strict orders not to move a muscle or she'll stop the show, she sees Alex can barely control himself. His hand goes to his lap and grips his erection like a vise. She can tell he is right on the edge.

She walks quickly to the bed, her fingers opening herself wide.

'Fuck my brains out,' she orders, lowering herself atop his hard-on.

Alex awakens to bright morning sunlight spearing his eyes, temporarily blinding him. He also has to pee something fierce. Without realizing that he's not at home in his own room, he tries to roll out of bed and instantly discovers he can move no more than an inch or two in either direction. Then he remembers: Both hands and both ankles are firmly cuffed with police-style steel handcuffs; the handcuffs chained to iron eyelets anchored to ceiling beams above the bed.

He dimly recalls allowing Cindy, at some low point during their nightlong lovefest, to shackle and chain him like a criminal. Though it did seem a bit kinky at the time, he didn't voice an objection because beautiful Cindy had him so turned on, he would have agreed to almost anything.

Then she proceeded to test his sexual stamina until he fell asleep with the cuffs still fastened to his hands and feet.

Now, as he looks around for Cindy to free him, Cindy is nowhere to be seen.

Alex struggles with his bonds for what seems like hours, rattling the chains, rubbing his wrists raw, but neither set of cuffs wants to budge. He begins to panic. He shouts for help until he's hoarse. No help comes. His bladder lets go and he wets the bed.

Finally, when he's given up hope anyone will hear him, the door opens and an older woman — old enough, by the looks of her, to be his own mother or grandmother — enters the bedroom carrying a bundle of clean sheets. She walks to the windows and closes the blinds.

At first, as his eyes try to adjust to the changing light, Alex is absolutely certain this woman bears no resemblance to Cindy. This woman's hair is short and gray. Cindy's hair is long and blond. This woman appears old, tired, worn-out. Cindy is young and vibrant. Supersexy. Cindy, he's sure, would never dress in a frumpy pale green housedress that obscures her figure from neck to knees. Nor would she house her feet in brown, well-worn penny loafers a size too big. Nor wear ornate eyeglasses and no makeup.

'Where's Cindy?' Alex demands, thinking he's addressing a maid or cleaning woman. 'Did she send you in here with the key to unlock these damn things?'

'Cindy. went. away,' the woman replies, each word deliberately drawn out as if she has to think twice about what a word means before voicing its sound. 'My. name's. Marsha. I'm Cindy's. mother. And. no. she didn't give me any key.'

'You can't be Cindy's mother,' Alex objects. 'Cindy told me both her parents were dead.'

'But I am her. mother. and I'm certainly. not dead,' the woman insists, her voice beginning to sound more and more like Cindy's. 'What's the. matter? Don't I look like Cindy's. mother?'

Despite her aged appearance and weird speech patterns, Alex now thinks he can recognize a certain familiarity in this woman's demeanor. Merely a family resemblance? Or is it possible he may be talking to Cindy in disguise?

'No,' he decides. 'You look more like Cindy in a cheap, gray wig than you look like Cindy's mother.' He rattles his chains. 'C'mon, Cindy, stop playing games. Get me out of these things.'

'Oh, no. I couldn't… do that,' says the woman, 'even if I. wanted to. Cindy has the only key.'

'Can the crap, Cindy,' Alex shouts, angry at feeling toyed with. 'Unlock these damn cuffs right now! I want to take a shower and go home.'

'I can tell by your. lack of clothes, young man,' the woman says sternly, glancing disapprovingly at Alex's nakedness, then quickly averting her eyes, 'that you and my daughter have been very, very. wicked. I'll just have to. punish her for that. when she returns. I can't have Cindy bringing strange. men into my house and doing heaven knows what. with them without. punishing her. Can I? I always punish Cindy when she's been wicked.'

'You're. ' Crazy, Alex starts to say, then quickly bites his tongue before the word can slip out. What if she really is crazy? Do crazy people turn violent, he wonders, when you tell them you think they're crazy? Alex is afraid to find out.

'What would be a suitable punishment for. my daughter. this time?' the woman asks herself aloud, momentarily ignoring Alex. 'Should I beat her again? Lock her in a dark closet and feed her nothing but. prunes? Or should I make her lick the bathroom spotless. with her tongue? I've tried all those things, you know, and. none of them works. What can I do to make. Cindy obey me? What? What?'

Alex says nothing.

'Maybe I should punish you, 'the woman suggests, returning her full attention to Alex. 'Cindy seems to like you. Maybe if I were to punish you, it might hurt her worse than if I inflicted the same punishment on her directly. What do you think?'

'This isn't funny anymore, Cindy,' Alex says, traces of fear edging into his voice. 'Please. Just unlock these cuffs and let me go home. Play your mind games on someone else.'

'I assure you, young man, this is no game,' the woman says, laying the clean sheets at the foot of the bed and stepping to the doorway. 'When I get back, I'll show you just how real all this can be.'

'Oh, no,' Sandra says when she opens the door to her bedroom and discovers a naked man chained to her bed. 'Not again.'

'Cindy?' the man asks hopefully. 'Thank goodness, you're back, Cindy! Get me out of these cuffs before I go crazy!'

'I'm Sandy, not Cindy,' Sandra quickly corrects the man, switching on overhead lights, casting out encroaching early evening shadows so the naked man can clearly see her raven-colored hair and baby blue eyes. 'Cindy was my younger sister. Who the hell are you, mister? And what, pray tell, are you doing chained to my bed without any clothes on?'

'Alex,' the man answers, hope draining from his voice when he sees that Sandy isn't Cindy. 'I'm sorry. I thought you were Cindy. You look a lot like Cindy, except for the hair and clothes. And I thought this was Cindy's bed.'

'It was Cindy's bed. Before Cindy died in it.'

'Cindy died? In this bed?'

'Four years ago. I was away at college at the time, but when I came home for spring break, I found my father chained to the bed, Cindy tied up next to him, and my mother on the floor at the foot of the bed. All dead. According to the autopsy, Cindy and my father both died of starvation and dehydration after weeks without food or water. My mother died from a self-inflicted overdose of sleeping pills.'

'Jesus,' Alex says.

'I don't cry for them anymore,' Sandy says. 'I don't have time to cry, what with running my father's businesses and maintaining the house.'

'I don't suppose you do,' Alex says sympathetically. 'And I really don't want to impose on your precious time at all, but do you suppose you might take just a little time to look for the key to these cuffs? I'd really appreciate it.'

'I don't know where to start looking,' Sandra says, wondering how this man got chained to her bed in the