The Cell
Part one
She stood in the cell and wondered how long it was since she'd been abandoned.
She gazed up at the leather cuffs, fastened to a ring set in the wall eight inches above her head. They were pulling at her wrists through her latex gloves, giving a sense of wearing a wristwatch. In the cool, barren silence of the cell she’d already lost her sense of time.
Back in the living room, which doubled as the punishment area, she had been all too keen to be put in here. She had stripped quickly to her rubber bra, pants and gloves. She rushed zipping her boots up, and was already wearing the wrist cuffs, fastened too closely to pull out of. She had even led the way to the cell door before being admitted and manacled to the wall.
Putting her arms out to reach the ring had lifted her shoulders, pulling her bra straps up and her breasts inward. Making her posture more upright by pulling in her bottom changed the tension in her rubber knickers. The latex had stretched and rippled in both garments, caressing all her best bits simultaneously. But now it had all settled snugly into place, and she had cooled, being mostly bare.
She shivered and surveyed her arms and chest. Goose pimples - what would this be like in the winter? She was glad to have put on the long over-the-elbow gloves. Although the rubber was thin and didn't retain any heat, it was keeping her forearms from direct contact with the white painted surface of the bricks.
She looked down through her elbows to below her knees, where the unfastened tops of the boot zips gaped. At least she hadn't brought her long boots to make the same mistake with. To have them sagging and falling down instead of closely sheathing her thighs would be tantamount to torture, on top of the ordeal of confinement.
She turned her head to the right and dropped it on to her left arm in order to enviously study the 'bed' at the back of the cell. This was a half-metre wooden shelf, about a metre from the floor, across the width of the alcove that had been turned into the cell. A pair of rings had been fitted at each end, but no chains had been added yet. It was furnished with a single blanket: not comfortable, but warmer than standing completely exposed.
Standing . . . for how long? Ever since the padlock had snapped shut on the wrist cuffs, and the cell door locked. When was that? Fifteen, twenty minutes ago? Longer? Probably – and how much longer would she be left like this? And how much longer could she bear it?
She hadn't heard any sounds since the door down the corridor had closed. Not one footstep. Had she been left unattended, helpless and alone? She had an impulse to call for, not exactly help, but just the comfort of being sure that someone was there.
"I'm being silly", she thought, "this is all part of the process." And besides, what if no-one was?
She turned her head onto the right arm and looked at the front of the cell for a while. The open side of the alcove had been barred right across; a door in the middle and half a dozen bars each side. The fixed bars went from floor to ceiling, but the door was almost a foot lower.
The door was a series of bars in an elongated D-shaped steel hoop, stood on its flat side. The top was slightly arched, giving a wider gap at each side. There were two narrow cross-pieces, each a quarter of the way from the top and bottom, and a wider central bar with the lock mounted on it.