Rita's Bet

Here is a little story for your enjoyment. The story is presented in three chapters, and all have been submitted.

Obviously it's not the third part of

Emily & Ellen

. I'm still working on that.

E & E 3

is a long tale (similar in length to the first two parts) and may take some time yet to complete.

However, hopefully you will find this little tale interesting. It is a bit different from my previous stories in that there is no actual sex in the story. I hope that won't disappoint. But I have formed some ideas to submit an additional version of this story, but one in which the plot goes in the direction of reluctant sex.

This is usually where I encourage my readers to post their comments and observations about the present story. I've discovered through experience that making a general and open invitation of that nature is not the best way to handle the matter. I very much and very genuinely enjoy comments related to the literary elements of my stories.

BUT, really, if you are a budding junior attorney and just have to post to let everyone know about the dire legal ramifications of the actions in the story, or the potential divorces and child custody battles that will arise from the tale's plot line -- well, I'm really not interested in reading about that (and I'd surmise that very few others are either). This is an erotic literature site: just enjoy the story (or don't, and click on some other story and bother some other author with your pseudo-legal babblings).

AND if you just have to post a comment that is really nothing more than you venting your anger at women in general, who in your estimation are all skanks and whores because they might occasionally have less than entirely morally upright sex, and you just have to lash out at women (even, and most pathetically, fictional women) because somewhere in your past some woman done ya wrong, well I'm not at all interested in reading your rant in that regard.

AND there is a permanent marker mentioned in this story. If you feel moved to post to give me the unabridged history of permanent markers and their antecedents: sorry, not interested in that either.

ALSO, if you're posting with the hope of influencing the story line, there is no need to do that either. My stories are in final form when I submit them and before you see the first chapter.

OH, YEAH. And I really don't need any opinions on whether or not anyone feels I've submitted this story in the wrong category.

HOWEVER, ALL THAT ASIDE: if you have comments or observations on the literary aspects of the story (characters, plot, plot progression, settings, writing, imagery, etc.) those are very welcome and eagerly read and responded to.

I finally found the button to turn off anonymous comments to my stories, and that's bound to block at least 90% of the most lame-brained comments.

Anyway, thank you for your interest and please enjoy the story.

bb

Rita's Bet -- Chapter Two

The front door opened, and I jumped a little. I had been that lost in my recollection.

"Well, Rita," Rhi's mother said, "right on time. Please do come in," she added as she stood back to allow me entrance. I knew Mrs. Paulson very well and, in spite of not having been in her presence for a long while, could tell that something seemed not quite right about her demeanor. I could hear, was it condescension in her voice? Did I detect an almost mocking tone I had never heard from her before? Ridiculous. I dismissed my feeling as just the product of interacting with someone I had not talked with in over a year.

I was stepping through Rhi's front door now, rather than vice versa, because the scarlet and blue of my school, East, had gone down to defeat three days previous on Thanksgiving at the hands of the gold and white of Rhi's school, West. The score had been 32 to 27. It meant West had won the intra-district bragging rights for the next year. And it meant our bet had been resolved: I was stepping into Rhi's house now to pay off my lost bet to her, rather than the other way around.

I supposed Rhi might enjoy this. Certainly she would enjoy the experience more than she would have had West gone down to turkey day defeat; certainly more than I was about to enjoy the result of our bet. But was I getting the impression right that her mother was going to enjoy this every bit as much as Rhi?

With nothing else to do I stepped through the doorway feeling as if I were shrinking by the second.

Again that possibly derisive tone of voice as Mrs. Paulson said, "You know where the rec room is, don't you, Dear?"

"Yes I do," I said, the first words I had spoken since arriving. Mrs. Paulson smiled sweetly (and sarcastically?) at me and held out her hand in the right direction. I made my way through the kitchen to stairs at one end of the house leading downward. The Paulson's had finished the entire basement some years ago as a recreation room and entertainment center.

Immediately on opening the door I could hear a substantial babble, and as I descended the stairs the magnitude of my audience was revealed to me. The room was not exactly packed, but it was filled with many dozens of kids, seemingly about equally divided between boys and girls. At least I knew now that I had been right about the meaning of all the cars parked along Rhiannon's street. Some kids I knew from Rhi's side of the county highway: kids who had gone off to the new high school with her three years previous. But many I had never seen before. Many of the kids, probably most, were certainly seniors like Rhiannon and me. But others seemed younger, some even appearing, as freshmen and even sophomores sometime can, to be of junior high age.

As I descended the stairs all this came into my view and I also came into the view of Rhiannon, standing at the far end of the room laughing and talking with a girl I'd never seen before. Rhi's eyes settled on me and she smiled broadly and in the same sarcastic way I thought her mother had. What had I gotten myself into?

"Well, well," Rhi said in a loud voice to be heard above the gathered spectators, "it seems the guest of honor has arrived." This announcement was met with deafening cheers and whistles, and with every kid turning his or her head to catch their first sight of the loser of the bet, of the victim.

I didn't stop or even pause, just continued my progress to the bottom of the stairs and then began to slither my way through the assembled throng toward the other end of the room and Rhiannon. Midway through the room my progress was interrupted. Two girls I had to move between stopped me, grabbing my arms on either side. With their loose hands they pulled my top slightly down and outward to flatten out the front.

My boobs pushed against the fabric of my varsity letter sweater with the big E on it. There was really no avoiding those two mounds beneath my top since the E on my sweater could refer with equal validity either to East high school or my bra cup size. One of the girls read the writing on the front of my sweater. "East High School. Varsity Cheerleader. Co-Captain." She paused for just a beat then added, "Impressive!"

The other girl said in an overly loud voice, speaking to me but wanting to be generally heard, "Dumb move, betting against us, Bitch. I've really been looking forward to watching this." I just kept my head down, my cheeks and ears taking on a bit of mortified heat, and kept my mouth shut. I couldn't imagine any words that would be of any help, and I was a little surprised and alarmed by the vitriol with which the girl had spoken those words.

They let go of my arms, one giving me a little push on my way, the other flipping my skirt up in back, both of them laughing.

As I reached the front of the long room I saw the rest of Rhiannon's cheerleading crewmates standing with her in uniform. Rhi's uniform sweater boasted a large W for West high school and contained the same information about her status as co-captain of her squad. The only essential difference between our respective sweaters was the scarlet on blue of mine and the white on gold of hers. I also noticed against the wall to my far right Rhi's dad and her 16 year old brother and 15, 13, and 12 year old sisters. She had invited her family too?

Just before I stepped out into the small clear space at the front of the room a leg shot out and I fell forward. The action was so unexpected that I almost didn't get my arms out in front of me to break my fall. I lay there for a brief moment, but should have gotten up immediately. I felt my skirt lifted in back as a hand grasped the back of my uniform panties and the thong underneath and pulled me up by them. The fabric wedged into my ass crack and vulva and I quickly used my hands and knees to scramble to my feet.

The hand was still grasping the back of my underwear when another hand grabbed the back of my hair and roughly pulled my head back and my face up. Whether the two hands were attached to the same person I didn't know. A mouth close to my ear said with a female voice, "Good lookin' butt honey. I thought I'd grab a handful of this while I still could." She gave my head a painful, hard shake by the handful of hair she was tightly grasping.

I took a deep breath in response to the pain from my scalp, but the discomfort was immediately gone as she pushed me toward Peggy, leaving just a throb.

As I took the last few steps toward Rhi she smiled widely and wickedly. "Your throne awaits, Your Worship," she said.

Just to one side of Rhi was an ordinary wooden dining chair without arms. With no choice but to obey I stepped in front of the chair, turned, and resigned, settled my bottom onto it, smoothing my uniform skirt underneath.

Unknown to me four members of Rhi's cheer squad had approached, two from either side. Without warning I felt my wrists grasped and held tight against the outer back of the chair near my hips. Simultaneously my ankles were grabbed and held as tightly against the bottom of the front chair legs. Other member had then come up from behind and my ankles and wrists were quickly secured with rope in their positions, inescapably tight.

I was so shocked that it could not think to form words. Meanwhile more lengths of rope were looped around my limbs to secure my arms above the elbows to the chair back and my legs below my knees to the upper chair legs. And ropes immediately circled my waist and my chest just above and below my breasts, and were pulled tight and tied off. The sum of all this activity was that in seconds I was left utterly immobile except for my head and neck. I could not even move my shoulders to any significant degree.

Finally words came to my lips and I stammered out, "Rhi! What the? You don't have to do this. You know I'll pay off my bet!"

As I said these words Rhiannon came around to my front and put her face at the level of mine. "Rita," she said, "just shut the fuck up." With that her hands came up. She applied a piece of duct tape across my mouth that stretched from one corner of my jaw to the other. She completed the action by pressing it tight.

My eyes, I knew, were wide with panic at this unexpected turn, and Rhi looked over my stricken expression and laughed. She slapped at my cheek on one side with the palm of one hand several times, not too hard, but plenty hard enough to produce a sting. "I'm going to enjoy this so, so much Rita," Rhiannon said, her voice now dripping with the condescension and distain, the mocking and scorn I had thought I'd only imagined in her mother's voice just minutes previous.

You see it in movies all the time. The victim is tied and gagged and yet still goes through the absurd and futile labor of trying to form intelligible words. I would laugh and shake my head every time I saw a character do that. But that was exactly what I was doing now. Only the loud laughter and pointing fingers of those immediately in front of me made me catch myself, will myself to stop looking more ridiculous than I already did, and settle down to await however the payoff of my lost bet would play out. It was my only option.

Rhiannon was now behind me.

"Are you ready for the main event?" Rhiannon asked the crowd in a loud voice. There was not a dissenter in the room, and they all gleefully shouted back their eager agreement. I looked toward Rhi's father and brother and sisters, now to my left, and found them shouting for the show to begin as enthusiastically as all the others.

"Down here is the challenger: Rita Selwyn!" Rhiannon announced in a loud voice. "And up here," she continued, "is the all-time heavyweight champion: electric clippers!"

The room exploded in laughter. At Rhiannon's last word a deep and ominous vibrating buzz began, my audience quieting in anticipation. Although I had expected the sound I still stiffened in response. Then the sound and vibrating sensation were at my hairline somewhat left of center.

I felt and heard the buzz and vibration deepen as the blades began to cut through my thick hair. The sensation slowly proceeded to the back of the top of my head and then was lifted away. Something floated downward before my face. I looked down to see an extraordinarily large length of my mid-back length hair sitting in the lap of my uniform skirt.

I began to shake my head in despair. I, of course, had known that this would be the result of losing my bet to Rhiannon. I knew the beautiful long hair I was so proud of, that I shook with abandon and pride before the packed stands and cheering fans at every football game, was to come off. But this was not remotely how I had expected my debt to be collected: tied immovably tight to a chair, gagged, the object of leering and jeering entertainment for a large roomful of taunting and heckling onlookers.

Immediately the buzzing clippers were at my hairline again, this time dead center, and they made the same deliberate passage across my scalp. A moment later another large hank of hair dropped into my lap. My vision blurred with tears as I looked down at the gorgeous blonde locks of which I was so proud.

The clippers were again making a pass across my head, now right of center. They moved slowly, occasionally backtracking. I knew Rhi was slowly, deliberating shearing off these channels of hair as close to my scalp as the clippers would allow. That pass ended and more hair fell into my lap as I fought to control my tears, to keep them in my eyes.

Rhiannon made a dozen or more additional swipes, taking in portions of my scalp farther to either side, and re-clipping already covered areas. After a swipe into a virgin area another large clump of long hair would add to the already amazingly large pile in my lap.

Without any warning one of Rhiannon's teammates was moving in front of me with a mirror that must have been secreted to one side of the room, or which I simply hadn't noticed. It was a framed wall mirror I had often seen in a hallway upstairs, perhaps a foot and a half wide and four feet long. The girl positioned it several feet in front of me, and held it tilted back slightly with the long dimension vertical, and I could not keep my eyes from the glass, as morbid as that sounds.

I saw myself sitting perfect-posture straight in that chair, back arched, held in that impeccable bearing by tightly secured coils of rope. My cheer uniform was neat as a pin, flawless except for where the sweater was bunched and pressed by the ropes. Those tight bindings immediately above and below my boobs made them jut out lewdly, and I flushed in shame. The rest of the image was as much a shock: a large tangle of blonde hair in my lap. The sight of my head caused in me a jolt of misery and adrenaline. The top of my head was cut down to tiny stubble, while the rest of my long locks radiated down from the stark clearing atop my head. I looked, to be bluntly and brutally honest, like a clown: exactly like a clown with a smooth, tonsured head top surrounded by a fringe of orange or red hair, sticking straight out.

But my bald patch was surrounded by long blonde locks, reaching down in back and spilling over my shoulders on the sides. Then my tears and uncontrollable sobs came hot and wet, spilling down my cheeks. I hated myself for a moment for losing control like that because the entire assembly roared their amusement and mocking at my burbling misery. But I couldn't help it.

I saw Rhiannon in the mirror, behind me, laughing and waving the clippers in one hand and a large mass of my newly separated hair in the other. The hair left her hand to drift down in front of my face. Then she had the clippers at the right side of my head, taking slow passes lower and lower and then around my ear. In a few moments she was at my left side doing the same.

My eyes found the mirror and the humiliating image it reflected. The top and sides of my head were now nothing but stubble, and there was a fan of hair visible at the back of my head. Wanting not to see this shaming view I cast my eyes to the left only to have my gaze fall on Rhiannon's family. Her mother had come down and had joined the festivities. She was now standing tight against Rhi's father, her arms around his waist as they both bellowed in hilarity. Her siblings were in hysterics, her two youngest sisters pointing at me as they laughed.

I felt crimson to the crown of my almost naked head, and began to feel a bit lightheaded.

Then the clippers were at the back of my neck. I stiffened and moved my head back in response. But the palm of Rhiannon's hand was immediately flat on my scalp, her fingers digging into the stubbly skin, rudely pushing my head forward. I looked straight down as I was obliged to do and saw the immense pile of my hair in my lap. I had a fleeting wish that my hands could be in the middle of it, could caress my now separated locks. It wasn't until I saw tears falling into that mass of blonde strands that I realized I was still bawling, had been weeping steadily and loudly since I had first glimpsed my buffoonish image.

Rhiannon took the clippers again and again up the back of my neck and head, moving first to one side and then to the other. More hair piled into my lap until finally the clipper's buzz was silenced.