PickUp

Chapter One-1

Chapter One

Set-up

The town seemed too small to support two florists and tree nurseries, but the Garden of Weedin Florist & Nursery was an apparently thriving business, as was its only competitor, Ellen’s Flowers & Landscaping. Local retailers who sold flowers, plants and evergreens; gardeners and others from distant parts of the country traveled considerable distances and went to one or the other business for everything from a wedding bouquet to small evergreens for landscaping.

Both enterprises had been there seemingly forever, but before taking their present form, the properties were part of a single, sweeping, eight thousand acre estate that encompassed forests, lakes, ponds, mountain caves, game lands, a tree farm and several cottages and out buildings. Eventually, when the original lord of the manor died, the greedy surviving relatives elected to subdivide the lands and split them into two nearly equal plots, a north section and a south section, and sold them with the strict qualification that the plots could not be further divided for one hundred years. The town fathers, equally prone to seeking the maximum return, decided that since there were now two taxable entities, they would roughly double the tax assessment and thus gain sorely needed revenue to help provide future pension income for themselves. So, although the lands were sold for a fraction of their worth, the taxes and upkeep alone meant that only a very few well to do buyers bid in the eventual auction.

Both new owners were very attractive, thirty something, single women and those qualities were just about the only similarities they shared. But less apparent was their common interest in the esoteric and erotic pursuits that they chose not to list on their CVs. While inspecting the properties, the real estate brokers handling the sales noted that both women displayed a rather odd fixation with the cellars in the houses and barns, as well as a remarkable fascination with the multiple caves in the nearby hills.

Speculation in the local pubs held that the reason one prospective buyer sought bids on adding electric power to a group of deep caves and the other woman was concerned about the bearing strength of the floors and ceilings in the main house had something to do with the occult.

“Isn’t it a bit odd,” Doctor Frances LaMont, the only local physician, was saying one night in The Raven, a popular hang-out for many of the town’s people and best known for its requisite double measures of any bottled spirit it served. “They both seem to want their privacy, but are attractive enough to bring the flies to the bait, so to speak.”

“Ay, that’s for sure,” answered Claus, the pub owner and barman. “If I had my choice though, it would be the Southern lands owner, Miss Ellen. What a piece of ass that is.”

“Well, I am sure there are a lot of things we don’t yet know about either of them,” remarked LaMont. “As bits of tail go, I’d not be too choosey about which one I’d wish to examine or prang, in a non-professional way, of course,” he added with a laugh. “There’s always a secret or two that surface only when you’ve got them on their back.”

“True enough,” said Claus, refilling their glasses.

What wasn’t generally known was that in the pub’s attic, the owner kept Dora, his young wife, chained and silent year after year. Townspeople thought she had died years before, but in fact, Claus, the owner, arranged her fake death and put her away in the air conditioned attic for their mutual enjoyment. Gagged, hooded and nearly immobilized by her iron shackles and manacles, the wife waited for closing time when Claus would come slowly up the creaking staircase, a covered tray of food and drink carefully balanced as he unlocked the triple doors.

Upon his arrival, he waved the laden tray under her hood-enclosed nose and asked “before or after?” a question she would sometimes answer with one or two quiet groans from behind the soaked gags, hood and heavy steel brank. One sound meant “eat before” and two meant “eat after”. It was usually the former and Claus would then remove the hood and the gag, allow her to use the exotically designed marble bathroom, clean herself up and sit while she ate her meal and drank her wine or beer. They would chat about the day’s events and Claus would, as always, remind her that she could leave any time simply by activating any one of the multiple emergency alert devices he had carefully designed and maintained. By the time they finished, it was early morning. She again used the toilet, brushed her hair and put on a lace bra and panties with four suspenders attached, slipped into a fresh pair of dark, lace-topped hose that reached nearly to the tops of her fine thighs and slowly, while Claus watched with perpetual fascination, snapped the garters to the tops of the sheer hose. She then stepped into the area where the peaked roof was high enough to allow them both to stand upright and still reach upwards without touching the insulated, vaulted ceiling. Claus had already selected a pair of her tallest stiletto heels and slipped them onto her small feet, locking the ankle bands so that they were snug, but not too tight.

Her wrists were then again locked into padded cuffs, her gag reinserted and her ankles tied and pulled outward to the sides of the room. Claus adjusted the hanging chains so that she was standing on her toes.

“Ready now?” he asked.

Dora nodded. The brank making a slightly metallic sound as the pad lock of the head enclosure rattled against the chromed steel. Claus stood back a bit, smiled and swung the cane or whip or cat of his choice. Dora lurched, her knees bent as much as the ankle ropes allowed, feet left the carpeted floor and she let out a long sigh from behind the gag.

Usually she received a dozen strokes. At midpoint, Claus halted his work, pulled down the sweat-soaked panties and f****d her front or back, sometimes both. He did so slowly, with grace and skill, making sure that his wife enjoyed each deep thrust, each twist of her swollen n*****s, each pinch and squeeze of her ripe, burning buttocks. He usually did her streaming cunt first, but on holidays and other occasions when he felt like it, he screwed her ass initially, taking his time and hanging on to her full and pendulous breasts while he rammed his stiff member as deep as it would go, often telling her that he would f**k her ass until his d**k came out her nose. She would sweat and groan with pleasure, trembling and squeezing his deep-drilling prick until he and she both came.

Then Claus would revert to the beating device of choice and complete the dozen. The evening, or more rightfully, the morning, ended with a more conventional cunt drilling, again slow and easy so that both parties were assured that the other was enjoying it the most. Then he’d place her back in her usual posture, kneeling with wrists and elbows chained behind with a short chain up to her steel collar, ankles closely locked together and knees bent in a semi-hog-tie, but with enough slack to allow her to move around on the deeply carpeted floor. Unless he felt otherwise inclined, he’d leave her ungagged so that if, in semi conscious sleep, he’d want her to suck his c**k, it was an easy accommodation. If he was in some way feeling less affable, he’d gag her with one of the larger p***s gags, pull a lycra hood over her head so that the nose holes were aligned with her nostrils and then cap it with the unpleasant, chromed steel brank that forced the gag deeper into her stretched mouth and locked around her already collared throat. Claus would take his blanket and curl up next to her and they’d sleep until midday when he’d go downstairs and reopen the pub.

“Indeed, everyone’s got a few secrets,” echoed the doctor’s nearest companion, Marv Martin, who was already on his third single malt scotch and was thus no longer feeling the constant pain in his aching back and arms. “I heard she wants a paved path run out there to the Heaven’s Entry Caves. That’s a damned long run and would cost her plenty, if she buys the place.”

“Wants to turn it into a wine cellar, I’m told,” said LaMont. “Imagine having to run from the main house to the caves for your next bottle of claret,” he laughed.

“And the cellars in the houses are not exactly tiny, you know,” piped up Bart Mannors, a local contractor who had already submitted his bids for renovation of the two houses in hope that one buyer or the other would bring him some much needed work.

“Ay, and they’ve both got the money, I hear,” said Martin as he ordered yet another round of drinks. “Solid references.”

“And some solid young things hovering about as well,” LaMont added. “The tall one had three gorgeous assistants in tow when she last came up here. Two honey blonds with big t**s and lovely asses and a redhead that would blow your brains out if you gave her a chance. Smartly dressed, too,” he said.

“Well, I guess we’ll know soon enough,” Mannors said, finishing his drink just as last call was announced. The bell above the bar rang three times and the trio packed up their things and headed out the door, each wondering what the future would hold if these two wealthy women actually bought the lands. Claus locked the doors, turned down the lights, picked up a tray he had in the warming oven, put two bottles of ale in his trouser pockets and headed for the second floor and then to the attic.

The properties themselves presented many challenges. At almost the center of the northern section, the original manor house, in great disrepair when the lands were eventually sold for owed taxes and then subdivided, was gutted and reduced to a stone shell before renovation. The barn was flattened and replaced by a smaller, less impressive structure that was built over the original ancient cellars. The first gentile owners had built a root cellar under the main greenhouse. Over the years, this below ground area was divided by brick walls to support the ground level structure and broken up into smaller rooms used primarily for germinating seedlings. When the new owner took over, one of these damp, dark, musty areas had been quietly converted into what was laughably referred to as a bio-training room. It was now in fact one of several punishment chambers, created for the exclusive use of Denise Millagrew, the wealthy young florist who bought the huge northern property. At this time, three antique metal cages hung from the overhead beams in the small room. Each device was slightly different, ranging from a full blown cage with multiple horizontal bands of wrought iron to a simple framework that held its victim by rounded steel cuffs that encircled the ankles, lower and upper thighs, waist, chest, above and below the breasts, each wrist and upper arm. The latter cage had a heavy steel collar and a band that went from the shoulder supports over the head and provided a point of suspension for the entire frame.

The third cage was nothing more than an enlarged bird cage with many bars spaced close together and a flat metal floor. Although this may sound like the least inhibiting of the three, it was profoundly effective in its confinement because the enclosed victim could not stand up straight, lie down, sit or kneel. Designed to hold a single, partially standing human occupant and constructed during the Middle Ages from heavy wrought iron by a now long gone village blacksmith, the cages were initially intended to house offending peasants who annoyed the manor owners. They also functioned as an unpleasant containment for servants who perhaps failed to perform their duties in a satisfactory manner.

Only two of the cages were now occupied. In the one nearest the ancient wooden door, Nancy Grove stood shivering. She was naked, blindfolded and gagged with a metal band that passed between her teeth and held a pear-shaped leather mass deep inside her mouth. Her arms were drawn up over her head, pulled through two circular openings in the top of the cage and locked in steel manacles fastened to the same overhead beam that the cage hung from. To further enhance her discomfort and restraint, a second set of manacles locked around her upper arms, just above the elbow. This set of cuffs brought her arms nearly parallel and discouraged any movement from shoulder to wrist.