It was eight o'clock in the evening and pitch black outside. Charity was at home and wide awake and she was completely certain what she had just heard - chains dragging across a polished surface.
"Fuck!" Charity whispered to herself.
The sound came from down in the cellar.
"Stupid fucking bitch," she whispered to herself as she quickly crept into her bedroom and eased the claw hammer off the lower shelf of the bedside table. "This is where the heroine does something stupid in the movies." She slid open the drawer and pulled out a key ring.
She moved quickly and silently back to the cellar door and slowly turned the door knob. The door was heavy but the hinges were well-lubricated. As she slowly pushed it open, it made no sound. Down below it was pitch dark. There were no windows down there.
There were also very few places to hide... The most defensible position was on the stairs. The lightswitch was in the hallway outside the cellar. She flipped it on and listened...
Nothing...
She started to creep down the stairs. "Here's where the cellar door slams shut and locks," Charity thought. "What the fuck are you doing?" She crouched down and looked around the room. Nothing in the gibbet cage. No one behind the St. Andrew's cross. The lid to the oaken chest was standing open, so hiding inside would be difficult. Charity looked towards the rack, someone could hide on the far side.
"Strange," she thought. Blue was pretty anal about how the equipment was configured between play sessions. It seemed that the wrist chains on the rack were payed out a little more than they should be. Generally, Blue would have left them fully retracted and the wheel locked.
Charity glanced up to the cellar door - still wide open... She looked down in her left hand. She had the key to get out of the cellar if the door was closed.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked herself as she moved further down the stairs with the hammer raised. She took one more look at the oaken chest - still empty - then tip toed towards the rack. The bed of the rack was angled at about 30 degrees. Someone could crouch in the shadows on the far side. Charity gripped the hammer with both hands. She quickly lunged the final step to provide a view into the area.
Nothing! Charity let out a heavy sigh.
Clump!
Charity looked up towards the ceiling. "Fuck!"
She turned and ran on her toes to the stairs. The cellar door was still open. She went up, two steps at a time, through the cellar door, into the hallway. "Fuck!"
Someone was standing in her hall - their back to her. Charity raised the hammer and let out a scream. The person turned.
"Holy fuck, Charity!" Faith cried. "It's me!"
"Oh, thank the Goddess!" Charity said, dropping the hammer on the floor and hugging her sister.
"You frightened me. I think I might have peed myself a little," Faith laughed, stroking Charity's hair.
"I thought I heard someone in the cellar," Charity said. "Maybe it was you that I heard. You should have told me that you were coming."
"What?" Faith asked. "You invited me over."
"I did? When?"
"Your text message? An hour ago?" Faith pulled out her phone. "This message?"
Charity looked at the message, apparently from herself to Faith. "Can you come over, Sissy? Will you swaddle me? Just like we used to do?"
"I didn't..." Charity started to say, but then thought better of it. She didn't send this text. But, there were not many people who knew that Charity sometimes called her sister "Sissy". And, as far as she knew, no one knew about Faith "swaddling" her. Indeed, public knowledge of their activity would be highly embarrassing...
A little family history... Charity's parents had tried to get pregnant for many years. Eventually they gave up. Faith entered their lives as a 13 year old foster child. Miraculously, a year later, Charity's mother became pregnant with Charity. It wasn't long after Charity was born that her mother passed away. She had no memories of her mother at all. She only remembered Faith.
Growing up, when Charity was feeling particularly anxious, Faith would wrap her tightly in sheets or blankets - "Swaddled. Just like when you were a baby," she would say. Initially, it was probably a selfish act - Faith was likely angry that she had to babysit an annoying, screaming brat. However, the wrappings really worked! They were like a huge hug that made Charity feel safe and loved. They always calmed her down.
When Charity was in her late teens after a particularly harrowing bullying event in high school involving a straight girl Charity was crushing on, Faith reintroduced the idea of "swaddling", although several rolls of ace bandages were used in place of bedsheets. Charity loved the feeling so much that she would continue to ask Faith to "swaddle" her occasionally. Over time, she found that the more restrictive the wrapping, the better. For the McKenzie sisters, "swaddling" had become a euphemism for some technically stringent, highly restrictive, hardcore, yet platonic, mummification.
"I didn't..." Charity started again.
When she saw the text that she had apparently sent Faith, she was particularly perplexed. If she didn't send the text, then the kidnapper - Keyholder - must have sent it. How would they know about "swaddling"? Did Charity ever tell Blue about it? Maybe in a moment of ecstasy? Had the kidnapper's extracted the information from Blue? And, if so, how? Did they torture her?
"Of course, you sent the text, Charity," Faith said with a concerned look on her face. "Are you sure that you are doing ok?"
"No," Charity said quickly. "I mean, I didn't know that you would be over so soon..."
"Oh! Do you still want to do it?"
"Yeah! Yeah!" Charity said turning to close the cellar door and switch off the light. "I could use a good swaddling."
About an hour later, Charity was standing in the middle of her and Blue's king size bed wearing only her chastity belt. Faith sat at the end of the bed with a large duffle bag of equipment, pulling out rolls of bandages. She stopped for a moment and looked up at Charity's belt.
"That is a beautiful belt... It's so sleek," Faith said. She reached up and touched the center of the faceplate shielding Charity's sex. "So smooth." She rapped a knuckle on the metal - knocking the plate twice.
Charity gasped suddenly and her right knee started to buckle a little.