Taleena was fast asleep. She had been in class at college all day and then worked in the supermarket until closing time at eleven. It had been a busy Friday evening and she was very tired by the time she arrived at home. As soon as she saw her bed, she took off her jeans, her t-shirt, her bra and her socks, leaving only her panty. She was asleep almost at once. It had been a long day for the pretty five-foot-seven 21-year old. A long day, indeed.
Although she wasn't one to toss and turn in bed all night, she normally did change her position from time to time. Taleena liked to sleep on her side, turned half-way onto her stomach, facing to the right. After a few hours, she would turn into a similar position on the other side, facing to the left. She rarely slept on her back, a position she didn't find at all comfortable, for more than a minute or two. It was no surprise, then, that she tried to turn onto her right sideas soon as she sensed that she was sleeping on her back. The funny thing, though, was that she couldn't do it.
She tried to turn, but something wasn't right - something was holding her. Taleena's eyes flashed open and she was instantly awake. She immediately realized that she was no longer in her bed, or even her bedroom. She tried to move but even that was impossible. She looked up at her arms and saw that there were straps holding her wrists and upper arms. Then, she lifted her head and saw similar straps holding her legs widely apart, securing them at the ankles and thighs. She was naked and helpless.
As she looked about the room, she noticed various cabinets, tables, trolleys, control panels, computer terminals and lights. All of the fixtures in the room were either stainless steel or baby blue, reminding her very much of the operating room in a hospital, bright and spotlessly clean.
She could see herself and the device on which she was confined in the gleaming stainless steel doors of the cabinets along the wall to her left. It was a large table made of light blue metal with a soft padded baby-blue leatherette top perhaps three inches thick. It was clearly designed to helplessly secure a woman in the most compromising position imaginable, spread eagled with her arms high above her head and her legs held widely apart. She had no idea how she had come to this place, remembering only that she had dropped into her bed and gone to sleep almost immediately. She started to get scared, very scared.
Some time after she had awakened, probably twenty minutes or so of futile struggling and squirming against her bonds, a man entered the room. She recognized him immediately. He was a regular customer at the supermarket in which she worked several evenings each week. She always thought it was nice that he would come to her till. A handsome, articulate, educated and kind older gentleman, he always complemented her on her eyes or the unique little blonde streak in her otherwise auburn-brown hair. She had a blonde streak in her long har just in front of her ears which almost framed her face.
"What the hell is this," she started, "how did I get here?"
"All in due time, little one," he answered, softly and kindly, as he picked up a large, stiff feather from one of the little wheeled tables along the wall and approached her.
"Let me go, please," she pleaded, trying desperately to move against the restraints that held her arms and legs.
"You know, I have loved you since the moment I first saw you," he told her, "I was deeply affected by the very unique beauty that I saw in you, not only your physical beauty but also the inner beauty that I saw in your eyes."
As he spoke, he started to stroke the big feather across her stomach and along her sides, working the entire front of her torso from below her breasts to the creases where it met her thighs and her sides from below her armpits to her hips, carefully avoiding her breast, her armpits and her genitals. He was stroking her soft and flawless skin more to intimidate her than to tickle her, demonstrating to her subconscious mind that she was very, very vulnerable and he was totally in control of her.
"No," she pleaded, "please don't. That tickles!"
"I knew then that I wanted you for myself. Of course, I also realized that a beautiful young college girl would not be likely to have a great deal of interest in a man of my age. College girls normally want to go with the boys they associate with in their schools, and, therefore, I could only proceed with my desires by taking you rather than asking you. I hope you understand."
Taleena squirmed and fidgeted on the x-shaped table holding her as the man drew the terrible stiff feather across the soft skin of her stomach and sides, slowly and purposefully, in long, agonizing strokes as he spoke. She tried everything she could think of to ease the intensity of the sensations - she stiffened her body, bit into her lip, squeezed her eyes, clenched her fists and flexed her toes. Nothing seemed to help. She felt her nipples start to swell and harden, her sexual arousal begin deep inside of her belly. Unknown to her, that was the sign he was looking for - waiting for. Unknown to her, it had already been forty minutes of the incessant stroking at this point.
"In China, one of history's most terrible tortures was the ling-che, the death of a thousand cuts," he told her, as he turned his attention to her breasts, "which would begin with one hundred cuts of a very sharp knife across each of a woman's breasts, each cut a little longer and a little deeper than the one before, building up into a level of pain in which each cut would continue to contribute to the pain that she would feel, starting at the top of each breast by making fifty cuts in the top half of each breast, then another fifty cuts starting at the bottom, slowly working toward the nipple but never touching it. Can you imagine, Taleena, how that would feel?"
As he spoke, agonizingly taunting her with his detailed description, he began to draw the edge of the large, stiff feather across the top help of her right breast, mimicking the movements of the knife he was describing. The anguish and the agony building in Taleena's mind and body built with each successive stroke as she squirmed and mewled and pleaded. Slowly, ever so slowly, he drew the feather across the top half of her right breast fifty times, then the top of her left breast fifty times, then the lower half of her right breast fifty times, and finally the lower half of her left breast fifty times, coming painfully close to her nipples but never actually touching them.
"It took many hours to complete the thousand cuts, using a razor-sharp knife, and the pain was indescribably, sometimes lasting the entire night before the woman would die from shock and loss of blood."
Taleena's nipples had become painfully engorged with blood, so big and hard she thought they were going to burst, and she had become sexually aroused beyond imagining. She felt herself become very, very wet inside as she imagined each stroke of the knife with each stoke of the feather. Even so, the strokes, countless to her, continued to drive her further and further into both agony and ecstasy at the same time.
