by Van © 2003

Chapter 4

To see the actresses the author would cast in ACADEMIC DREAMS: THE MOTION
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DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Darkness—Light—More darkness...  Things happened—Things happened around her—Things happened to her...  Sally was unable to move—Then her rope bonds were gone and she found them replaced with leather straps—Then she was wet and cold—She was dry and hot—All was darkness again—Then bright light was shining in her eyes and cool water splashing her face—Then darkness...  Whether it was mental exhaustion or mind-numbing terror (or a gift from Nuit), Sally drifted in an unfocused state, vaguely aware of what had happened to her (of her capture by Minerva and Tabitha, of Cassie and Bibi's captures as well, of her continuing captivity), but she was in a curious limbo, a sort of detached disinterested trance.

And then the trance began to fade.  Sally's mind cleared... and she became fully aware of her current predicament.  She was lying on her back on a soft surface.  It was a poster bed in a semi-darkened room.  The curtains were pulled and a glowing vertical bar where the two halves of the heavy drapes met was the only natural light.  Scented candles burned on the night stands on either side of the bed.  Their perfume was heavy and exotic.  Overhead was a large mirror, attached to the underside of the solid roof for the bed's canopy.  

Sally regarded her reflection.  She was naked and her skin had been oiled.  It glistened in the flickering candle light.  Her bonds had been changed yet again.  Her arms and legs were flung wide and she was tied in a loose but inescapable spread-eagle.  A wide rectangle of translucent medical tape was smoothly plastered over her lips.  The captive turned her head to examine the bonds on her right wrist; but the motion was slow and languid.  Her head felt heavy, her neck muscles incredibly weak.   They... they've done something to me, she realized, given me something.  Her wrist was bound with narrow bands of silk.  Peacock blue, blood red, and metallic gold, the ribbons had been wrapped around her wrist with exquisite care, interwoven in a broad band that encircled her wrist.  They then met and intertwined into a tight, neat, rope-like braid that trailed away to loop around the right post of the headboard then drop down out of sight.  The braid linking her wrist to the post had a few inches of slack, but the hitched and knotted loops around the post were neat and business-like, with no terminal knot and free end for her to attack... even if she could have reached that far... which she couldn't.

Sally tugged on the elaborate bond... or rather, she willed her arm to test the plaited ribbons' strength.  The problem was she had no strength of her own.  Her fingers moved slowly and her biceps and triceps bunched... but she found she could barely move the arm itself, much less use the leaden limb to accomplish any meaningful task.  Her left arm... her legs... her entire body was weak as a newborn kitten's, weak to the point that her bonds were superfluous.

The bedroom door opened and Minerva Ross entered.   The Professor was naked, save for a thin narrow loincloth of soft linen gauze.  To Sally's dark adapted eyes her captor's pale athletic body seemed to glow like polished ivory in the candlelight.  Minerva's eyes were heavily rimmed with kohl, her lips painted the dull red of dried blood.  Her black hair was lightly oiled and neat rows of gold beads dangled around the fringe of her pageboy cut, pinging and clattering together just above her white shoulders as she walked.  She was very picture of a casually dressed Egyptian lady... albeit an unusually pale, exquisitely beautiful and evil Egyptian lady.

Minerva smiled and reached down to gently stroke the side of Sally's tape-gagged face; then slid her hand down Sally's throat to the valley between her breasts.  The gloating villainess extended her index finger, and slid the nail down Sally's abdomen, circled her navel, passed through her pubic bush, and nudged the upper tip of the slowly squirming prisoner's sex.  Her smile broadened, and she slid the finger between the pink, glistening folds of Sally's labia.  The captive shuddered in disgust and shame.

"It would appear that you have been having pleasant dreams, Sweet Sally," Minerva cooed.  "You're very wet.  Some of that is the drugs I've pumped into your system... but I think you're naturally ruttish."  Minerva slowly slid her finger in and out of Sally's sex, the back of the strong white digit rubbing against the squirming coed's clitoris.  "There... your little friend is responding nicely.  Slaves aren't allowed to know pleasure without their mistress' leave, even in their dreams... but I won't punish you."  The slow, rhythmic massage continued.  "Tell me Sally, is being my slave what is making you excited?"  She locked eyes with her terrified captive as she continued her cunning manipulation.  "Do you think I'm beautiful?  Do you thrill at the very thought of the things I might do to you?  Could you serve me, Sally?  Could you love me, Sally?"

Sally tried not to respond to Minerva's caress, but her languorous body was betraying her.  She slowly rolled her hips and shuddered as her captor's stimulation of her most private parts continued.  Her mind, however, was not responding to Minerva's seduction.   Could I love you, you evil Bitch?  Never!

Minerva's smile turned even more cruel as her caress of Sally's sex deepened and slowed in rhythm.  "There," she said after several long seconds, "just enough to prime the pump."  She pulled her finger free and inserted it into her mouth, gave it a long, deep suck, and slowly pulled it out.  She then licked her lips and grinned down at her captive.  "You have a pleasant flavor, Sally.  Pity I don't have time to have Tabby milk you a few dozen times.  A few drams of your musk would add a nice tang to a vinaigrette... or would make a pleasing grace note for a new perfume."

Her infuriating, gloating, evil (beautiful) smile still curling her lips, Minerva reached towards the headboard and began untying the braided ribbons binding Sally's left wrist.  She then moved around the bed and released Sally's left leg... right leg... and right arm.  The woven bands around her wrists and ankles remained intact, but the long braided ends of the ribbons lay loose and free; but not for long.  Minerva used them to bind Sally's wrists behind her back, crossed and pressed between her shoulder blades, and held there by plaited silk bonds yoking her shoulders and pinning her arms to her sides.  The ankle bonds were hitched together, then criss-crossed around her legs, through her thighs, back to the front around her waist, and knotted to the lowest band pinning her arms.  In her drugged state, Sally was unable to mount anything like a meaningful resistance to this process.

"There," Minerva gloated, giving the final knot a tug and Sally's left nipple a playful tweak, "all nice and snug and secure."  She sat on the bed and pulled Sally's upper body across her lap.  Smiling sweetly, she locked eyes with her captive, softly caressed the squirming prisoners right breast with one hand, and her labia with the other.  She leaned close and kissed Sally 's tape-gagged lips.  "Let's see now," she purred, continuing her teasing massage of her helpless student, "I suppose it would be polite to bring you up to date.  Three days have passed since you and Cassie disappeared.  Cassie's car is parked at a trailhead in the mountains.  Whenever your fellow students stop partying long enough to report you missing, the search will start from there.  Bibi's car is parked in one of the commercial lots downtown, in the shopping district.  There is nothing suspicious for the police to find at your dorm room, Bibi's office, at Bibi's quaint little bungalow near campus... no clues, no leads... you three have simply... vanished."  Sally pulled weakly on her bonds, trying to ignore her captor's cunning caress of her breasts and sex; trying not to surrender to the overwhelming despair and fear.  "You've been given drugs to make you easy to handle," Minerva continued, "and also, a nice enema to flush your system.  No solid food, of course, as you're fasting.  Part of the preparations, of course."

Sally was hungry... very hungry... hungry and light headed.   Or is it the drugs?  ...and preparations for what?

"All in all, you've been getting a very easy ride, Pretty One," Minerva said.  "Cassie and Bibi, on the other hand, are well into 'Hell Week,' their introductions to their new lives."  She picked Sally up in her arms and walked towards the door.  "I'll take you to see them... and to say good-bye.  It's the least I can do."

Sally mewed through her gag...  (Her voice was weak, but had returned.)  ...and she pulled on her bonds.   'Hell Week?'  'Good-bye?'

Sally was carried down a hallway and towards an elevator.  Next to the elevator door was a rather unusual wheelchair.  Its frame was polished wood and it had a heavily padded canvas seat and back.  It also had an array of broad, thick, and very business-like leather straps, all of which closed with double tongued roller buckles.

"I borrowed this thing from the Museum sub-basement," Minerva explained as she set Sally in the chair and began buckling the straps.  "Obviously it was used to transport seriously deranged and dangerous mental patients.  Tabitha spent many hours sanding, polishing, and refinishing the wood, sewing new cushion covers, refurbishing the straps.  She did an excellent job, I'm sure you agree.  I rewarded her by strapping her into it and locking her in one of the dungeon cells for two days and two nights."  Straps tightened across Sally's breasts and arms, then her waist, thighs, knees, and ankles.  "The only real test of anything is an actual operational test."  A particularly broad strap went around Sally's throat, pinning her head back against the chair's padded headrest, and as a final touch, a narrow strap was buckled across her forehead.  "There, nice and secure."  

Minerva took a step back.  "Silly me.  I left my keys in my bedroom."  She leaned forward and kissed Sally's tape-gagged mouth.  "Be a dear and wait here while I go get them, would you?"

Sally watched Minerva glide away down the hallway, the only sound of her passage the clacking of the beads adorning her raven hair.  The Professor's strong, athletic, pale body was undeniably erotic.   Why does she have to be so evil?  Sally struggled in her plaited ribbon bonds and squirmed under the tight straps dimpling her glistening flesh... but even if she hadn't been weakened by drugs, she knew herself to be completely helpless... as always seemed to be the case in her new existence as Minerva's slave.   Please help me, goddess, she prayed, please!

Minerva returned.  This time the view was of her front, of course.  Sally watched her captor's large, firm breasts, bobbing slightly as she walked; her pale, sculpted abdomen; her smooth, strong, white shoulders; the feral smile curling her full lips.  Twin thrills of horror and arousal coursed through the captive's bound and helpless body.   Goddess help me!

A thin steel hoop dangled from Minerva's right wrist.  A wide array of keys were attached, some modern and some antique.  They added a metallic tinkling to the dull clattering of the beads.  "Such a good little slave," the gloating Professor murmured, kissing Sally's gagged lips yet again, "sitting in her pretty chair just like she was told."  She pushed the button that summoned the elevator.  The car arrived and Minerva wheeled Sally inside.  The door closed, the car lurched, and they began to descend.  

"This estate has an interesting history," Minerva began to lecture.  "There was an older mansion that burned two generations ago.  Rather than rebuild on the same foundation they decided to fill everything with topsoil and plant one of those 'Scenic Ruin Gardens' the Romantics were so fond of.  The present mansion... this mansion... was built on new foundations about 50 yards distant."

The elevator door opened and Minerva wheeled Sally through a dark basement cluttered with old furniture, trunks, crates, and various objects shrouded with gray dust cloths.  "What no one realized," the Minerva's lecture continued, "was that the old mansion's basement, sub-basement, wine cellars, and storerooms were largely intact."  They came to a small room in the back of the basement.  It was bare save a wide, heavy, oak armoire set against the far wall.  Minerva wheeled Sally into the room, closed the door behind them, and did something in the shadows Sally couldn't see.  There was a quiet click... and the armoire rolled aside to reveal a long, dark, stone-walled corridor.  Minerva wheeled Sally through the opening.  From the rumbling noise behind Sally surmised the hidden door was closing.  "A nice secure secret passage, a little renovation and modernization, and the result is a very useful complex of subterranean chambers... and no one knows any of it is here... no one but my slaves, of course."  

Dimly lit by a series of industrial style fixtures in the ceiling, the narrow corridor seemed to go on forever.  "I was so relieved when I was granted tenure," Minerva continued.  "Can you imagine finding another place like this if I'd had to move to a position at a different University?"

They came to a door of heavy iron bars.  Minerva used a large skeleton key to turn the lock.  She wheeled Sally through and locked the door behind them.  They continued down the corridor, passing door after door; some wood and some steel; all solid and secure, with heavy hinges.  Some had modern deadbolt locks, and some had heavy iron bolts and antique locks.

They halted before one of the antique wooden doors, Minerva selected a key, turned the door's lock, pulled back the bolt, and relocked it in the open position; then put her hand on a heavy thumb latch.  "Our first stop," she announced, and opened the door.

Bibi Knudsen was in the chamber beyond, and she was not happy.  In fact, she was in a great deal of pain.  Still naked (of course), she was seated astride an iron-framed, wedge-shaped box.  Her weight was on her crotch, which rested on the slightly rounded, triangular, iron ridge of the wedge.  The blonde Swede's hands were behind her back, and encased in tight leather mittens.  Further, her wrists and forearms were strapped together by a sheath-like cuff of thick, stiff leather closed by three roller buckles.  The cuff was clipped to a heavy chain which stretched up to a pulley in the ceiling, then down to a heavy windlass at the far end of the room.  She was en strappado, her arms raised to the point that she had no choice but to bend forward at the waist.  Her legs were spread and her knees bent.  Her ankles were locked in heavy shackles which were attached by long chains to a heavy eyebolt set in the frame's ridge well behind Bibi's naked rump.

Minerva wheeled Sally into the room and closed the door behind them.  The stone-walled, vaulted chamber was hot, the air humid and close, and Bibi's tan, tractioned body glistened with sweat.  Minerva smiled sweetly at Bibi, who lifted her gagged head to gaze first at her tormentor, then her fellow captive, then back to Minerva.  The helpless blonde's mouth was stuffed with a large ball of what appeared to be hard black rubber.  Thin straps buckled at the nape of her neck and under her chin kept it there, although from its size Sally surmised Bibi might not have been able to expel the glistening sphere even if the straps had been absent.

"And how is our drooling equestrian, this fine morning?" Minerva asked.  Bibi's only answer was to direct her tired, hopeless, agonized gaze back to Sally, then let her head drop.  "Not in a talkative mood, I guess," Minerva sighed, then ran her hand over the side of Bibi's perch near one of her knees.  Sally could see that the box's sides were composed of closely spaced, horizontal rows of hardwood dowels which spun freely on circular metal mounts bolted to the frame.  "This is a variation of 'The Horse,' of course," Minerva explained.  "As you can see, the polished and waxed dowels prevent the victim from gaining any purchase on the sides with her legs or thighs... so all of her weight rests on the ridge."  She ran her pale hand along the rounded triangular iron bar in question, a few inches in front of Bibi's distended sex.

"She's only been up there a few hours," Minerva continued, running her left hand up Bibi's right thigh and flank to cup the straining prisoner's right breast.  "The pain is considerable... from the very first instant, when your weight first settles on the hard iron."  She gently squeezed Bibi's breast, then began teasing the nipple with her fingers and nails.  "One would think that after a while... especially after a few hours... the pain would subside, or at least settle into a dull ache... but it doesn't."  She gave the breast a tight squeeze and the nipple what had to be a very painful pinch.  "You see?" she asked Sally.  "No reaction.  In a few more hours she'll be screaming into her gag, screaming until she's... pardon the pun... hoarse.  If I left her up there even longer... her mind would snap... but we can't have that, now can we?"  Minerva resumed teasing Bibi's nipple, then clutched a handful of the blonde's short hair and lifted her head.  Torturer and victim locked eyes.  "No..." Minerva purred.  "Torturing Bibi Knudsen's lovely body is pleasure... but torturing her body and mind is exquisite delight.  There will be no escape, Dr. Knudsen, not for body or mind.  I have far too much experience with this game to allow either."

Minerva walked back to Sally and stepped behind the wheelchair.  "She'll come down off the horse just before sunset.  To her infinite surprise she'll find she has been neither crippled nor maimed for life.  She'll be fed a gourmet meal..."  (Sally's stomach growled at the mention of food.)  "...or a bowl of tasteless mush, depending on my mood.  Then she'll be suitably restrained and will have the privilege of bringing me to orgasm with her tongue.  I have several gags designed for just such a purpose.  They lock the jaws open but allow the tongue to waggle.  If she does a good job, she'll share my bed.  A bad job will mean sleeping on the cold hard floor.  If she refuses to even try... well... best not to even think about what would happen to her then.  In any case, tomorrow will be another day... and another device to keep the good Doctor entertained."  Bibi lifted her gagged head to stare at her torturer with tired eyes.  "Rack, wheel, stocks, various small cages and wooden boxes for confined contortion... my dungeons are very well equipped, and there are an infinite variety of 'interesting' ways to bind a human body with rope, leather, and chains."

Sally and Bibi locked eyes.  The horror of their situation passed between them.  She's so beautiful, Sally mused, even suffering on Minerva's 'horse.'  So beautiful...  Nuit, please help us!

"Let's leave Dr. Knudsen to her meditations, shall we?" Minerva purred, then opened the door, spun Sally around, and wheeled her through.  She then closed the door, unlocked the bolt, slammed it home, and locked it again.  "And now we visit Cassie."

Minerva's subterranean domain was a veritable labyrinth.  Sally was wheeled past door after door, all solid and locked.  They made several turns, and Sally glimpsed even more doors and passages, stretching into the dimly lit distance.  Finally, they stopped at a wooden portal similar to the door that had barred entrance to Bibi's torture chamber.  Minerva selected a key, turned the lock, threw the bolt, and as before, locked it in the open position.  She then put her hand on the door's thumb latch, turned to Sally, and smiled evilly.

Sally squirmed weakly in her bonds.  Cassie!  What is she doing to you?

The answer was immediate.  The door opened, and Sally beheld her friend and roommate.  Cassie was sprawled on her back, semi-reclined on a complex framework of heavy timbers.  Her arms were outstretched, her torso and arms forming a "T" and held in in that pose by heavy wooden stocks clamped and padlocked over her wrists.  Her fingers and hands were enshrouded in tight leather mittens (like Bibi's).  Her legs were raised, obscenely splayed, and her ankles locked in individual stocks mounted atop two widely separated vertical posts.  Tight leather straps dimpled the skin above her knees, around her upper thighs, her waist, above and below her breasts, and around her upper arms.  Her lips were covered with a broad leather strap and something large was in her mouth, distending her jaws.  Between her legs...

Sally shuddered in horror and moaned through her gag.   Oh my God!

Between Cassie's legs was a machine.  It was mostly brass, and its assembly of gears, cams, flywheels, pistons, mountings, and fittings were all ornately etched and cast in a vaguely Oriental style.  It was roughly the size and shape of a large bread box, and from one end a large piston extended from the spinning, turning, churning device—and into Cassie's sex!—and it was driving in and out, in and out, in and out...  There was no polite way to describe the mechanical monster.  It was a fucking machine —and it was fucking poor Cassie!

Minerva wheeled Sally into the chamber, closed the door behind them, and stepped to Cassie's side.  She lifted the redhead's chin and stared into her desperate green eyes.  "Yes... you're coming along nicely, Slave-Cassie.  'Bucephalus' has just about ridden all of the defiance out of you... hasn't he?"  

Cassie turned her tired head to Sally and mewed through her gag.

Sally continued to stare in horror.  Her friend and roommate's pale freckled skin was gleaming with sweat, her lithe well-toned body hanging limp in her inescapable bonds, her short auburn hair a tousled damp mop.  The piston between her legs slid slowly in and out of her distended sex, dripping a clear oily fluid.  The thick brass rod twisted and shuddered as it moved, revealing smooth curving ridges and rounded bumps as it emerged from and re-entered its victim.   Oh Cassie!

"I found 'Bucephalus'... that's the machine's name, of course... in a very interesting little shop in Istanbul," Minerva explained.  "The proprietor claimed it was used in the harem of Abdül-Hamîd II, but I think it's a modern copy... or some European degenerate's fantasy.  In any case, I bought it and had it modernized... replaced the motor, had a control servo added so I could turn it on and off via computer... that sort of thing."  Minerva gently stroked Cassie's hair, straightening the sweat dampened locks, using her fingers to smooth the curls plastered to the suffering captive's freckled brow.  "Computer control was necessary, of course," Minerva continued, "because continuous unsupervised use of the machine for many hours would be... damaging... even with the lubrication provided by the weep holes in the phallus."  She pointed towards Cassie's sex.  "Notice how the oil drips into the sump under her sex?  The entire device, bondage frame and all, is carefully engineered.  The angle of the occupant's vagina, the angle of the drip pan... everything is carefully arranged."

Suddenly something clicked... the machine slowly ground to a halt... and the phallic piston froze in place, still inside Cassie.  Cassie sighed and allowed her gagged head to loll to the side.  Oil continued to drip from her sex.

"There, you see?" Minerva said with a smile.  "Rest period.  It wouldn't do to abrade Slave-Cassie's delicate twat, would it?  I know she seems rather... relaxed at the moment, but I assure you Bucephalus provides quite an entertaining ride... even after several hours.  Tell us, slave, how many orgasm's since Tabitha introduced you to our Turkish friend?  ...hmm?"

Cassie ignored her torturer's rhetorical question and lifted her tired head towards Sally.  The roommates gazed into each other's eyes in silent communion.  

Sally felt her eyes welling.  Oh, Cassie!

"Well... say good-bye, Sally," Minerva said, and spun Sally's wheelchair to face the door.  "We need to let Slave-Cassie rest.  Bucephalus will be taking her for another ride all too soon."

Sally squirmed weakly in her bonds and mewed through her gag.   Cassie!  I... I love you, Cassie!

The door was opened, Sally was wheeled out into the hall, and Cassie was left to await the next preprogrammed awakening of the mechanical horror raping her captive body.

Sally was wheeled down the passageway, they made a right turn... then a left... a right... and they stopped before another locked door.  Instead of unlocking the door as Sally expected, Minerva stepped behind the wheelchair and out of Sally's direct field of vision.  Seconds passed, then her captor's strong pale hands appeared before her, reaching around her head from either side.

"Time for more medicine, Slave-Sally," Minerva whispered in Sally's right ear, then clamped Sally's nostrils tightly closed with her left hand!

Inescapably bound, strapped in the wheelchair, her head pinned and her mouth taped, Sally squirmed and struggled.  Seconds passed.  She could hear Minerva breathing, taking long deep lungfuls of air and letting them out.  Sally needed air.  She needed air badly!  Minerva continued pinching her nostrils, continued denying her that air.  "Poor Sally," Minerva cooed... and released her hold!

Sally expelled the stale air burning her lungs, but as she drew fresh air into her lungs, Minerva thrust something into her left nostril. Sally's mind EXPLODED!  Random colors flashed before her unfocused eyes.  A tuneless noise buzzed in her ears.  She blinked her eyes and slowly her senses returned to normal.  She realized Minerva had used a rubber bulb to pump something into her lungs.  She felt energized... her mind clear... but strangely disinterested in what was happening around her.  I... she drugged me... no... drugged me some more ... more than before.

At some point Minerva had unlocked the door and wheeled Sally into a brightly lit chamber...  Sally knew it had happened, 'cause here she was... and Tabitha's here too.  The short brunette was dressed like her Mistress... if "dressed" is the appropriate way to describe a tiny loincloth of coarse linen... and nothing else.

Sally was out of the wheelchair and lying on her back on a hard stone slab.  It was waist high for Tabitha, who was busy untying Sally's legs and ankles.  The grinning TA's eyes were kohled, like Minerva's, but her short hair was simply oiled and combed back... no beads... no pretty beads.  Suddenly, Sally felt very tired.  I... I think I'll take a nap, she decided, and closed her eyes.

Sally opened her eyes.  She was staring up at a vaulted stone ceiling.  Something had happened.  Something had been done to her.  There was a firm uniform pressure over every inch of her tingling body.  Her arms were at her sides; her palms pressed against her outer thighs; her legs were together... but she couldn't feel her hands touching her thighs; or her arms rubbing against her sides; or her inner thighs, knees, calves, and ankles rubbing together.  She tried to more, and encountered immediate resistance.  Still groggy, Sally mewed in complaint, but something soft and firm had been packed in her mouth, and something was sealing her lips.

Tabitha's cruel, smiling face loomed before her.  The evil pixie's hair was still oiled and combed, her eyes still heavily kohled.  Her upper body straighted and lifted as she looked to Sally's left, giving the dazed captive an excellent view of her pale breasts and the silver posts piercing her nipples.  "I think she's awake, Mistress," she announced with a coy, gloating smile.

Sally turned her head to the left a few inches, with great difficulty, and Minerva's pale, beautiful, cruel face came into view.

"Get the mirror," Minerva said, and Tabitha scurried away.  "Did you enjoy your nap?" Minerva asked, a chilling smile curling her full red lips.  

Sally mewed through whatever was gagging her and squirmed in her... in her... Oh my God!  Sally's blood ran cold.  She's mummified me!  Tabitha returned with a bronze mirror, either a reproduction of an ancient Egyptian mirror, or a genuine priceless artifact.  She held the mirror before Sally's face and Sally beheld her own frightened blue eyes staring through an inch and a half wide slit in tight wrappings of some sort of white gauze-like cloth.  Over the wrappings was a form-fitting net, a narrow diamond lattice of thin white cords.  Tabitha slowly tilted the mirror and Sally could see that she was totally wrapped from head to toe, in bandages and the overlying net.  Only her eyes and a tent-like slit for her nostrils broke the clean tight surface.

"It's important that you understand what has been done to you," Minerva explained.  "After you were untied, Tabitha oiled your skin again, then... starting at your toes..."  Minerva stepped to the foot of the slab and ran her hand over the captive's encased feet.  "...she wrapped each of your digits and limbs in thin gauze, using loose cotton to pad between fingers and toes.  We used more gauze to wrap your legs together and your arms to your sides."

Sally found she could feel only a slight increase in the uniform pressure of the bandages as Minerva's hand continued traveling up her legs.

"It's not a matter of simple overlapping layers at that stage," Minerva continued.  "Multiple layers go around ankles, knees, thighs, hands, wrists, elbows, arms, and shoulders; criss-crossing and very carefully arranged, so that no amount of struggling will cause the bandages to bunch... or for you to be able to actually escape, of course."

Sally squirmed and mewed, knowing it was hopeless.

"The next layer is the most intricate and time consuming."  Minerva paused, her palm flat on Sally's abdomen.  "We use a basket-weave pattern to cover you from toes to crown, plaiting and pulling uniform tension on the individual strips as we go.  The final ends are tucked back into the pattern and stitched, for added security."

Sally lifted her legs and tried to bend her knees, lifting her wrapped head as well.  Minerva's hand was still on her stomach.

"Yessss, struggle, Sweet Sally," Minerva cooed.

Sally rolled and writhed, trying to free her hands, trying to twist her shoulders free, trying to separate her legs.  Hopeless...  Pointless...  She flopped back onto her back, panting through her nostrils.

"We seem to have done our job well," Minerva said with a gloating smirk.  "Come here, Tiny-Tabby," she cooed, and leaned over the slab.  Giggling with girlish delight Tabitha leaned forward from her side and kissed her Mistress.  Sally stared up at her captors, watching their lips and cheeks move as they wrapped tongues.  Minerva broke the kiss and leaned back again.  "Now," she continued her lecture, "the final layer is a body sock of cotton netting, pulled taut over your body from the top down and knotted at the base with a reef knot.  Tabitha used a pair of safety scissors to open that neat slit over your eyes, carefully knotting and trimming the cords of the net so they won't unravel."

Minerva leaped onto the slab and straddled Sally's mummified form, standing erect, pale, graceful, nude but for her linen loincloth, her head almost brushing the rough stones of the ceiling.  "Oh yes... the details," she purred, and knelt down, still straddling her victim, and leaned close, her hands to either side of Sally's shoulders, her face inches from Sally's tightly wrapped face.

Sally writhed weakly in her multiple layers of cotton bandage and cord net.

Minerva's beads clattered and her smile widened to an evil grin.  "Before your mummification, you were given one last enema, then a slurry of very carefully chosen herbs and certain animal products and distillations was pumped into your stomach.  Your anus and urethra have been sealed with ivory plugs and beeswax.  Your slave-twat was packed as well, although the herb mixture used was very different from what's in your stomach.  A plug and more wax sealed up that hole as well."  She leaned down and kissed Sally, over the region of her stuffed mouth and sealed lips.  "Wondering what the point of all this is... other than the entertainment of your mistress?"

Minerva, leaned back and settled a portion of her weight on Sally's abdomen.  "A certain forbidden codicil to the Book of the Dead came into my possession a few years ago.  It's not only written in an obscure Demotic dialect, but is encrypted.  It has taken me quite a long time to unravel its secrets.  Among other things, it describes a way to make sacrifice to Nuit, and to use that sacrifice to gain access to the Dream World.  Unfortunately, gifting the goddess in that way condemns the many parts of the sacrifice's soul to eternal servitude and torment... but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, as they say."  She cupped Sally's compressed and swaddled breasts.  "You'll be my offering to the goddess, Sally, your body and soul acting as my conduit to Dream Power... trapped between worlds... very much alive... helpless and trapped... for year after dark endless year... in your tomb."

Twin thrills of terror and despair coursed down Sally's spine.   My tomb?

Minerva gazed into Sally's eyes.  "How delicious," she whispered, "well worth all this effort... even if the experiment is a failure."  Minerva climbed off the slab and picked up Sally's mummified form, cradling her in her strong pale arms and against her abdomen and breasts.  "Well... no point in delay."

As Minerva turned Sally caught a glimpse of a small rectangular opening in the back wall of the chamber.  One of the stones of the wall had been removed, and next to the tiny opening the missing stone was wrapped in a sling of chains and suspended from a steel engine stand. Sally mewed and squirmed, but could do nothing to prevent Minerva from thrusting her feet into the opening and then sliding her entire body inside.  Sally twisted her mummified body and struggled for all she was worth.  She was in a tiny space, as long as her body, but with only inches to spare between her helpless form and the dressed stone of the walls and ceiling.  She strained to turn her head and managed to crane her neck and gaze out the opening at her captor.

Minerva smiled... then raised her hands and closed her eyes.  "Oh goddess of the sky, ancient mother of gods, accept this, my sacrifice..."

As Minerva's voice droned, Sally struggled and strained against the bandages binding her limbs.  Tabitha maneuvered the engine stand and the end of the block of stone came into view... and filled Sally's vision, eclipsing Minerva and the rest of the chamber... eclipsing everything... looming closer and larger.  The light faded, reduced to a rectangle of light, a shrinking rectangle... and Minerva's voice faded... and the stone came closer and closer... the darkness grew... and then darkness was all there was.  Sally screamed , and her gagged voice echoed from the stone walls of her tomb.