After a moment, she heard the second click of the outside door being shut, as well, and then, all sounds from outside the room disappeared. If she could scream, she doubted anyone would hear her.
She couldn't think rationally. Struggling against the handcuffs from which she hung, she screamed anyway, spittle flying out around the ball gagging her until she became out of breath and her arms began to feel as if though she were pulling them out of socket.
Disbelief held her in its thrall for a very long time. She didn't know what she expected to happen that would release her from this situation, but she hoped it would come soon. Having to wait was easy at this point, but once the notion sank in that she would have to find her own way out, she tried to calm herself so that she could pay attention.
He said two hours. How long have I been hanging here already?
she wondered.
For the moment she ignored everything but the manacles she wore. They were modern day, with the same structure as police handcuffs, but they had been made to appear old and their cuffs were wide. There was little leeway in them, and she could not imagine every getting her hand through them like this.
I have to hang here and wait
, she thought somewhat deliriously, the disbelief coming back in a great wave of confusion that swept her into its panic again. In jerked, desperate motions, she tried to kick her way up the wall, using whatever she could for traction. This proved just as futile, however, and once she was out of breath she calmed again.
Resigned to her fate for the moment and with nothing else to do, she began to inspect the room around her, hoping to find some way of escape or to obtain help. What she saw, however, made her want to begin struggling against her bondage again.
Yes, this was a sex shop, and yes, she would have expected to see sex toys in its backroom, as well, but nothing in this room would have fit out on the sales floor of this shop, and some of it was obviously handmade, tailored to work together for one clear purpose.
For a long while she studied her surroundings, not able to keep herself from inspecting every piece of equipment there and unable to stop herself from imagining it being used on her. The room was not very big, but each device was arranged much like exercise equipment in a small home gym -- that is, a piece in every corner with just enough room to walk around, and a small circle of open area in the middle. Across the way from where she hung by her hands, what appeared to be a cheap, backless metal park bench was bolted to the floor, with two steel rods jutting out from its end, and attached to those, loops of chain. In front of it stood a machine that looked to her like nothing more than some kind of motor with a third long rod attached and aimed at the park bench. The engineered monstrosity looked like something out of one of the fuck machine porn clips her ex-boyfriend had made her watch on his laptop.
Beside that was another toy she had seen in porn but never in real life. A sex swing, made from leather belts that looked like the kind of straps someone with a straightjacket might be wearing, hung from the ceiling by a variety of hooks. Someone could be positioned in any number of ways with this homemade contraption, suspended in air for whatever purpose her captor cared. Unlike the padded and cushy swings the pornstars used, this setup looked more like it was made to be as uncomfortable as possible.
Opposite the swing was a simple enough object, except she could imagine how it might be used: it was a steel table the radius of a human torso, round and smooth, on a single sturdy steel rod that was cemented into the floor. She could tell by how it was slightly off kilter that it more than likely spun around. On the surface were several welded loops of steel, obviously meant for threading through a chain or belt to keep one of his sex toys right where he wanted her.
The place where she hung was the last area of the room with anything in it. Just above where her hands hung slightly blue and angry from their manacles, was a chain connected to a rope that ran through a pulley system, just as she had suspected when first she'd been placed here. The whole contraption was connected to the ceiling by means of a track system that moved only backwards and forwards, close to and away from the wall, meaning that if she had the ability, she could likely walk herself into the middle of the room. She'd tried, but there had been no give, and she'd given up.
To each of her sides, just out of reach of her feet, something she knew since she'd tried earlier to use them to relieve the pressure in her wrists by trying to stand on one, were two long shelving units that were made from unfinished boards and concrete blocks. From her vantage point, she could just see a few of the toys lying on the boards, and of those, many were like the ones she'd seen in the shop. Paddles with sharp looking studs, long leather strands from a whip, more ball gags and feathers and vibrators and dildos and clamps than any one person could use. None of them looked particularly clean, either, because they all looked like they'd been tried out on someone.
That left only the open center of the room. It was this area that scared her most, vacant though it seemed. On the floor, there was a metal grate of sorts, one that lifted from the cement. She could tell by the shadows that there was something under there. The smell of the room was mostly that of the materials from which it was made -- moldy cement, plywood, and leather -- but the smell coming from the grate was pungent and earthy, vaguely like stagnant water and mud. Without looking down into it, she wouldn't know for sure, but she guessed that someone or something had been kept down there. For all she knew, someone could be down there right now.
