Riley grunted into the makeshift gag as she tried once again to free her hands tied behind her. Sitting on the floor in the living room, arms tied behind her and ankles tied in front of her, she had been struggling to free herself for over an hour now. When that didn't work she went about asking, then sternly demanding, and then threatening, and then begging the children to release her. The children she was babysitting; sweet innocent Blakley, well she looked innocent for an eight year old, and her younger by two years brother, Jasper, had played this game before with her.
The game. Cops and robbers, hostage, pirates, whatever it was, had started in some incarnation pretty much from the beginning from when she was hired to sit for them a few months ago, when apparently their last sitter for Mr. Kane had up and quit suddenly.
She had humored them, and pretty much played the damsel in distress until it was time to put them to bed. She quickly broke out of their sloppy children's knots and would scoop them up playfully and chase them off to bed, tucking them in, despite their pleas to stay up late and watch more television. Apparently there was a tv show they liked to watch that Mr. Kane had exposed them to against his better judgement and now regretted it.
Riley somehow figured the show was the motivation for the tie-up games.
-
Riley had quickly bonded with the children, she had to since Mr. Kane worked a double shift a few times a week. He was still young and a widower. She didn't quite know the story, but from the children, she had pieced together that their mother had died in a car accident when they were very young, leaving Mr. Kane to raise them on his own.
Riley had graduated from High School, just barely, and really was just drifting in life; not too interested in college, and really wasn't too keen on entering the regular workforce. Working retail seemed a little too mainstream for her.
At nineteen, Riley had developed a bit of an alternative sense, sporting an ever changing colored swath of hair, an eyebrow piercing, and she was proud of the one tattoo that she had saved up for herself.
Her parents, never really seemed to notice her, or put much energy into what she did or didn't do, but the tattoo triggered a family discussion where her parents brought up the bothersome discussion of what she was doing with her life and why she had so much time on her hands that she could afford to go get tattoos with spending money, yet still stayed at home, still slept in, and still didn't have a job or school aspirations.
This babysitting job happened just at the right time for her, and for once, Riley actually felt a little passionate about something.
--
She heard the television switch channels; she was turned facing the opposite direction, and realized that the children had switched on the forbidden show Mr. Kane had warned her about.
"Mmmmmmpppphhh!" she cried out into the knotted cotton shirt that was her gag for the evening. This was not what she had intended for tonight. With as much strength as she could muster she tried to pull her wrists free of the ropes cutting into her skin.
--
"What I need is a responsible babysitter that can keep my kids engaged in the evenings when I work the two to three nights a week," Mr. Kane had said during the interview.
He was young. Younger than she had realized. Not really handsome, more tired and weary. She imagined that the years of long hours and taking care of the children by himself probably added to his worn down look. Tall and thin he measured her, trying to see if she would be a good fit to watch over his life, his babies.
After the interview and the reference checks she had the job.
Things had gone well for the first week until Blakley suggested the game. That first time it was pirates, and she played a captured princess, while Blakley was Blackbeard the pirate and Jasper played Finn the hero to rescue her.
Jasper untied her thus rescuing her and ending the game. She had felt the knots, the rope was slack, she easily could have stepped out of them.
The games continued. She of course did other things with the children, fed them, made sure they had bathed, and checked that they did their homework. The plots got more elaborate. There was the time they played cops and robbers; she had to play hostage, while Blakley played the cop that time. Jasper wanted to shoot everyone with his toy pistol. Riley pleaded playfully for him not to shoot her, that she would be ever so grateful. She batted her eyelashes and played up the helpless damsel, which distracted Jasper so much that Blakley made a play for his gun and they spent the next few minutes wrestling while she watched.
This time as the game ended Riley went to slip out of her bounds and found that the knots had tightened up and she wasn't able to extract herself. Frowning she worked her wrist a little more, shifting her shoulders to try different angles to try to slip out of the wrist tie. When that didn't work, she turned to the kids and asked them to release her.
That's when she saw their smiles. Their wicked little smiles. She had been setup!
Now she was trapped, arms behind her, tied at the wrists, wrapped around the support pole in the middle of the playroom in the converted den. The kids had wrapped a long laundry line around the rest of her body securing her to the pole standing up from her chest down to her ankles. She was effectively one with the pole now.
Standing there staring at them, she tried a different tact.
"Guys, I'm getting very sore here. Can't you please let me loose? It's starting to hurt me."
The children giggled and started to run around her and the pole. Riley followed them with her eyes and soon felt a little dizzy.
"Guys?", she said. "C'mon! I mean it, I'm getting angry here!"
They continued to laugh as she started to squirm and yank at her bonds.
Muttering to herself she tried to methodically work through a process to escape the laundry line, first inhaling as big a breath as possible and then exhaling and wriggling the slack lines around her slightly chubby body. This felt like it worked but at that rate she was going she would need a week to achieve any result that would matter. And this wouldn't even address the biggest issue: her wrists. The little buggers, funny how they were angels just a little while ago, had certainly learned quickly how to immobilize her wrists.
Riley sensed a quietness in the room. She had been too engaged in breaking free for the last few minutes and now looked up to try to see what she had sensed.
Blakely and Jasper were staring at her.
"Guys?"
It was at that moment that all three of them sensed the monumental power shift. She was no longer in charge. She knew it and with a growing sense of dread she realized that now they too knew it as well.
With as much bravado as she could muster she looked them both square in the eye and tried to keep the panic out of her voice.
"Guys, I need you to untie me RIGHT NOW!"
That got no response.
"I'm serious! I'm not playing anymore!"
Still nothing. They just watched her with a bemused look on their faces.
The ropes bit into her skin and she was getting a little tired of standing up with her back so rigidly straight strapped to the pole.
Grasping at straws, she pulled out the big guns.
"Listen to me, if you don't come over right now and untie me, I'm going to have to tell your father!"
Jasper, the younger of the two gasped and started to take a step forward.
