John chuck- led.John chuck- led. "Remember what I said I'd do tonight? Here are my branding tools, all nice and clean. I ordered them weeks ago, waiting for this moment." Now that was an interesting revelation; my revenge for his apparent thoughtlessness had nothing to do with the situation. It struck me as quite likely that if I hadn't escaped from the motel, all this might have happened last night. As if he were reading my mind, John said, "Yup -- last night was to be the lead-in, if you hadn't dawdled. You thought you were playing bondage games with me, but it was never really a game to either of us, was it?" With that, he slapped my buttocks, hard. "Of course, I could never have afforded a place like this before today anyway; it was thoughtful of you to provide it for me. I hope you like it a lot; I don't think you're ever going to leave. While you're here, you life will be like this." With that, he started to hit me, hard. I stifled a scream; I was supposed to be gagged. Roger stayed hidden; he was going to come out on my signal only. For now, we had to elicit as many incrim- inating comments as possible from John, which meant that I had to take as many blows as I could stand. And I had to judge the psychological moment just right; expelling the gag with a scream after a blow seemed more plausible if I were silent despite having been ungagged for some time. Why not put the gag back in? Well, apart from the dangers I described earlier, I need to be free to give our release word. And we were certain that the hood was going to come off before the attempted branding; John would certainly want to tease me with the sight of the hot iron. If we were wrong about that, I was going to suffer a lot of pain before I got out of this. Worse yet, John might consider the hot iron a weapon to use against Roger; in a fight like that, anything could happen. I was bracing myself to scream when John stopped the beating. "Time for a different game," he said. He untied the ropes hold- ing me in place, and pushed me to the floor. My arms and legs were still chained; he further secured my by tying my handcuffs to my waist. Finally, he tied another rope to my leg chains and dragged me, feet first, towards the barn. |