Copyright Oggbashan September 2016
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons. This is a Halloween fantasy with femdom.
Ruritania is the fictional country of Anthony Hope's novels The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau. I have used the name Ruritania for this story but any resemblance between my 21st Century Ruritania and Anthony Hope's is accidental. I have used only the name instead of inventing an Eastern European state.
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It was a last minute decision. It seemed such a good idea back in England. We wanted a venue for a Halloween Party and a genuine castle seemed the ideal location. All we had to do was get there. The cost of accommodation and food would be provided by my father. Normally the castle would be full for Halloween but there had been a group cancellation because of unrest in that country. The staff and everything had been arranged for the group. We could take over what had been already planned if we could get flights there in the next 48 hours.
My grandfather Alfred had owned the castle in what had been an East European Communist state. I'll call it Ruritania, not its name.
Madeleine and I had been having a mild disagreement about our wedding. We wanted a quiet simple affair but we were under pressure, not from our parents but from the wider family, for a big event. I was inclined to humour the relations. The cost wasn't a problem because both sets of parents could afford to pay. Madeleine just didn't want the hassle of organising a big event. She and I are rather quiet people who prefer the company of a few friends instead of attending large events. We thought a week away, particularly away from the relations, would give us time to sort out what WE wanted.
There was another problem. There was some unrest in Ruritania. I did some research on the internet. There was a movement for a revolution to overthrow the current democratic government. The movement's leaders were using the Big Lie technique making statements about what the government was and had been doing that were obviously untrue. Some of the more outrageous claims had been mentioned on Snopes. From the UK the revolutionary movement seemed ridiculous and obviously intended to enrich the leaders and foreign investors who were barred from owning too many assets in Ruritania. As the castle was in a remote area and easily defended against a rioting mob I thought we would be very safe.
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Back in the 1960s Ruritania's communist government didn't have enough money to preserve or restore ancient monuments. Such money as they had for heritage they used in their cities and towns. My grandfather owned a toy factory in the English Midlands and frequently visited the Nuremberg Toy Fair to exhibit his company's products and to see what others were selling.
There was a small exhibit of handmade wooden toys from Ruritania. Alfred liked the quirkiness and the quality of the workmanship. He bought a few samples back to England but it was too expensive to replicate them in his factory. Over the next few years he visited Ruritania and bought the toys in quantity selling them through his marketing outlets. Eventually he invested in Ruritania, building a factory and employing locals. By the 1960s he was well respected in Ruritania and had contacts in the government.
When they decided to ask foreign investors to take over some of their heritage places, Alfred was one of the first they approached. Their idea was that the foreigner would be offered a building at a nominal sum but they would have to conserve and restore it using local labour. Alfred was using local labour extensively and because he paid in hard currency he could pick and choose the best workmen.
His first purchase was the castle. It was in a remote area guarding a mountain pass. The castle was fairly small and in a reasonable condition. The only problem was that it was too far from any major roads. Materials for repair would have to be found locally, but those materials were the ones that had been used when the castle was originally built. He paid the local equivalent of one US dollar for the castle and its estate but spent fifty thousand US dollars on it over the next decade.
When finished in the late 1970s the exterior had been restored to the state it had been in the 14th Century. The main rooms were equally antique but the kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms were modern. He had repaired and widened the road from the nearest town to the castle so that trucks could bring in bathroom fittings. They had to be manhandled across the drawbridge and through the defended gateway because no vehicle could enter the castle. The storerooms and dungeons underground housed a collection of genuine and newly manufactured instruments of torture as a museum display.
Alfred's castle became a showpiece for other foreigners to demonstrate what could be done with Ruritania's neglected heritage. He had to create a car and coach park in the outer bailey to accommodate visitors from Western Europe and beyond.
The staff were all locals from the mountain villages, a few living at the castle but most coming in to produce banquets and when there were foreign guests.
Eventually Ruritania overthrew its Communist government and started on the way to becoming a genuinely democratic state. My grandfather handed over responsibility for Ruritania to my father John. Alfred was unpopular there because of his work with the former regime. John wasn't compromised by past associations.
Eventually John had taken over the whole family toy business, the factories in England and Ruritania, and the restored castle. At first he used the castle for conferences, product launches and family holidays. He improved the road access and added a helicopter landing pad in the outer bailey.
Part of the castle became a small gothic-themed hotel but with very modern facilities. The main rooms were still as Alfred had left them but discreetly improved with electric lighting and Wi-Fi. The castle was well used in the summer months and for winter sports. The staff organised events for Valentine's Day, Halloween, Christmas and New Year to extend the season. They did weddings as well but they weren't as popular as the seasonal events. The castle wasn't large enough for a big wedding party.
The staff organised a discreet sideline in sex parties. People who liked BDSM found a genuine castle with real dungeons and real torture equipment to be a wonderful venue for a weekend or even longer of playing around. It was used by many people making erotic bondage videos for the internet. All the bedrooms had unusual accessories such as anchorage points built into every bed and a wardrobe of fetish equipment.
We were six of us going to the castle. I'm Stephen Owen. The others were my fiancée Madeleine, her younger sister Angela, Madeleine's best friend and intended matron of honour Helen, Gary, who is Angela's boyfriend and James, Helen's husband. For James and Helen it was almost like a delayed honeymoon. They had married in August but been back at work the Monday after their Saturday wedding.
Before booking we had to decide what we wanted. Because it was the start of Helen's honeymoon we let her have the last word. She chose mild femdom BDSM. The castle's staff could provide specialist BDSM scenarios to fit with the guests' requests. Mild femdom BDSM was one of the easier versions. I and Gary hoped we would see more of our girlfriends in action. We knew that Helen already practised mild BDSM with her husband James.
