The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Lara Abington sat on the hard wooden stool, trying in vain to ignore the severe tightness of the crotch strap that kept the straitjacket locked onto her toned body.

Her feet were bare, and she saw the nude polish on her shapely toes had chipped slightly since her last visit to the salon. It was the kind of thing that irked her, even in these absurd circumstances. Her legs were mostly bare too—except for a pair of thin cotton short shorts that were similar to the ones she was wearing when she was captured, but more flimsy, like pajama bottoms. It was good the shorts were made of soft cotton, because they were digging quite obscenely into her virgin pussy at the moment. They were helped along by the fact that her crotch strap which was made of some kind of satin material, slippery to the point of being almost friction-less. It contoured her sex and her ass perfectly, banishing any hope of escape from the 19 year old teenager’s mind. She was sure this was all some kind of psychological operation against her—bothersome, but tolerable in the very short term. She didn’t plan on being here long.

Her legs were mostly bare, but not entirely.

Thick leather cuffs were securely fastened around her slender ankles, with chains linking them each other and to a metal eye that was fastened into the floor. These things were a consequence of her first violent outburst—the staff of this mental hospital were obsessed with control. Lara understood that their goal was probably to trample her spirit and mold her into a meek, compliant girl. It offended her to her core.

This created a sense of urgency for the young Tomb Liberator. In the short-term, she could resist their invasive therapy, but over a longer period of time...

Her doctor, a middle-aged Taiwanese woman, gave her a measured smile. She had on eyeglasses with gold trim, and a white lab coat. She was quite pretty, and had the self-confidence that comes with extraordinary wealth. Lara had seen this among her own rich friends, and it always rubbed her the wrong way.

“Are you feeling more calm today?” the woman asked.

“Yes, doctor,” Lara answered.

Lara wanted to say something more assertive, or to demand to speak with her solicitor but she was on thin ice already. This woman, Dr. Yeung, was one of the people she had assaulted on her previous escape attempt. She didn’t make it far, and ended up sedated in a padded room for an obnoxiously long time, eating tasteless gruel and nearly going mad at the lack of sensory stimulation. Nothing that was happening here was legal, but that wasn’t the sort of thing she could debate with her kidnappers.

Now Lara knew that she could be put right back in that room, so she figured it was best to go along with the doctor’s plans at least for the time being. She imagined how her friends from finishing school would react if they saw her now—haughty Lara Abington, the free spirit, sitting meekly on a little wooden stool, waiting patiently to be addressed before she spoke! It made her blush, and she shifted her feet a little nervously.

The metal eye that was supposed to secure her legs to the floor wobbled a little.

“Good!” the doctor said, scribbling something on her notepad.

“I was hoping we could discuss today, your attempted robbery from Mrs. Liao’s estate. Would you like to explain what you were thinking?”

Lara had to be careful here.

After her father’s untimely death, she was quickly drawn into a contentious and nasty battle with her Uncle Errol over her rightful inheritance. “Uncle” Errol—he was a real piece of work! The man said he was a long lost cousin to her late father, but Lara seriously doubted the legitimacy of his claim.

First of all, he looked and behaved nothing like her father. Errol was short and overweight, with low-class manners and abhorrent personal habits such as gambling and coarse language. He would show up to her estate as though he owned the place, smoking cigars as he impugned Lara’s athletic and academic hobbies. When she politely asked him not to smoke cigars indoors, he went so far as to imply that once he was her guardian, she would learn her proper place!

As though she needed a guardian—some wild hair he had about Lara needing to be 21 to get her full inheritance. She had originally planned on simply bribing him to go away, but before it came to that point, he made some remark about how ladies shouldn’t be traveling unnecessarily and should focus solely on the domestic sphere. That was when Lara lost her patience, and told him he was no longer welcome in her estate, and they would only talk through lawyers.

Here was the problem: Lara had something of a double life. She was the Lara Swift, the Tomb Liberator, a sort of Robin Hood archeologist who pulled daring heists that benefited the common people of the world.

At least, she would have been, except on her very first sortie at Mrs. Liao’s estate she had been discovered, arrested, and was now incarcerated in this weird mental institution. She had no way of knowing how this would affect her legal proceedings (she had been held incommunicado the whole time), but she had an awful suspicion that a judge might see it as evidence of her own instability. The thought of Errol being awarded her inheritance was her deepest fear, which was what provoked her first escape attempt a few days ago.

“Ah, I am not quite ready to discuss that,” Lara answered in her posh accent. “Or maybe I could, if I had my solicitor present?”

Dr. Yeung frowned, but she didn’t appear to notice the subtle way Lara was testing the tensile strength of the metal eyelet by her feet. The window in the office was open, and they were only on the second floor.

“I’m afraid not,” was the doctor’s terse reply, “and if you remain so recalcitrant, it might be necessary to transfer you to a more long-term facility.”

Did they seriously think she was so stupid to just play along with their little games? Lara glared at the woman, narrowing her grey almond-shaped eyes in a way she knew to be very threatening.

“I am the heiress of the Abington estate, and I will not be treated this way. I realize your plan is to torture me until I confess, and I can only pity how unimaginative and dated it all is. Honestly, your best option is to release me now. As soon as my lawyers find out about this, I will personally see this place investigated in a most thorough way.”

That made her feel like her old self! But why wasn’t the doctor shaken? Usually, when Lara took that aristocratic tone, people couldn’t comply fast enough. But now, it was Lara who felt rattled—the doctor stood up from behind her desk and walked over to her.

“Poor little birdie,” Dr. Yeung said, reaching out to stroke Lara’s cheek. There was no comfort in the gesture.

“You think your trust fund can protect you from anything, don’t you? Because ‘the sun never sets on the British Empire?’ A long time ago, that was true. But the dragon eats the lion, girl.”

The Asian woman leaned down to finish her condescending little speech, and that was all Lara needed. In a flash, she sprang up from her seat, driving the top of her head into the unfortunate woman’s nose.

“Aagh!!”

The doctor cried out in pain as she staggered backwards, clutching her nose in both hands. As Lara had suspected, she clearly wasn’t used to being hit, and that gave her the all the time she needed. The window was so close, and she could be there before anyone could stop her. Lara was nearly six feet tall, with legs like tree trunks and the grace of an acrobat—success was right within her grasp!

“Code six!” the doctor yelled out, her voice distorted by her clogged nasal passage. “Code six!”

With small but rapid steps, Lara was where she needed to be, looking down at the worst possible view.

There was no shrubbery, not even an automobile to aim for that could break her fall. Just hard concrete, and more than a hundred yards to a heavy iron fence that was barred shut. The fall alone might break her legs, or worse. She racked her mind for an alternative—every second counted. Then she saw the phone on the doctor’s desk.

“YOU STUPID BITCH!” the doctor cried out. “WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!”

Adrenaline coursed through the young woman’s veins as she awkwardly pushed the phone from its receiver using just her pretty, upturned nose. All her attention was on the phone’s number pad as she desperately mashed 9-9-9 and prayed that it would ring through in time. Was that even the correct emergency number in this country?

She only dimly noticed the sound of the door opening, and the hushed expulsion of hot gas that came from a tranquilizer dart gun. It was aimed with deadly precision at her swan like neck, which was totally exposed due to the nature of her stooped-over position. She was so amped up that she barely felt its sting, and as soon as she heard the phone was ringing, she backed away and prepared to cry out for help as soon as there was a response.

Or at least, this was her plan.

What really happened was the venom took immediate effect, dulling her movements and causing her to stumble embarrassingly to the carpeted floor by the foot of the doctor’s chair. She struggled pointlessly, giving the staff a lewd show of rubbing her crotch strap against her sex. Soon, the muscle relaxant gave way to a true tranquilizer, and she felt sleep take hold of her.

The last thing she saw before she passed out was the look of unadulterated rage on Dr. Yeung’s face, a sight made all the more disturbing by the blood that was flowing from her ruined nose.

Lara was jostled awake by the sensation of a car hitting a large speed bump.

Her vision was groggy, but she could tell right away that she was in some kind of prisoner transport van. Two male guards were seated opposite of her, each one brandishing a vicious-looking stun wand.

Not that they would have needed them.

She was practically pinioned to the wall behind her by several leather straps that crossed her body. She still had a straitjacket on, but someone must have tightened it considerably—it felt like a second skin at this point. At first, she thought she had a dry mouth from the tranquilizer dart, but she tried to move her tongue to find out that her mouth was literally stuffed with cotton! She couldn’t even make her teeth touch, there was so much of it.

The guards noticed she was awake.

“You should not have attacked Dr. Yeung, little girl,” the guy on the right warned. He was tan-skinned with dark hair, and had some kind of South American accent. Colombian?

“That woman has serious connections. Like, she’s had people killed for doing less than that... She almost did you right there! I’ve never seen her so mad.”

They were clearly trying to scare her, but Lara wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Instead, she just glared at them.

“The place she’s going, she’s gonna wish she was dead,” the other guard said—a guy with blonde hair and pale skin. They both looked like stereotypical bad guys, and they talked like them too!

Lara just rolled her eyes, enjoying the look of irritation that it provoked from the blond guy. It always made her smile, undercutting some man’s enjoyment like that.

“He’s being serious,” said the Colombian guard.

“The place you’re going, it’s worse than hell. I’d rather go to La Sabaneta for ten years than spend six months in the Black Hole.”

Now she knew they were bluffing! Sabaneta was known as one of the worst prisons on earth. It was literally controlled by inmates with guns, and most people didn’t have access to clean water. Still, something about their earnestness made her nervous—especially combined with the shameless looks they would direct down towards her lap. She managed to look down, only to see that someone had removed her short shorts, and she now had only a pair of sheer white micro panties on!

She was helpless to do anything about it, and was utterly humiliated to be giving these men an unfettered view of her private garden. She was the Lady of Abington—they had better not get any ideas! But even if they did, what could she do to stop them? The crotch strap only gave her a parody of privacy—they could easily slide it to the side and... No!

It was at this moment Lara realized the gravity of the situation, and for the first time in her life she felt an existential fear. For so long she had been the alpha bitch, the athletic star, the posh girl who nobody would mess with. Now what was she?

The Colombian guard answered his cell phone, but the person on the other end did all the talking.

“Sedate her.”

The blond guy took out a syringe that must have contained a pre measured amount of sedative, and carefully sought out a vein in Lara’s neck. Everything went black again.

She woke up an unknown amount of time later, in an unfamiliar place.

Well, it was a little familiar but that was cold comfort. She was in another padded room, except this time everything was done in a muted pink color. It was slightly unsettling to look at, like a sort of background that always called attention to itself and soaked up just a little too much of a viewer’s attention. Everything was covered in soft frills, like she would expect to find on a luxurious bathrobe. The place seemed to absorb all sound too—Lara thought she could hear her own heart beating and her internal organs working away. It was weird.

The straitjacket was still on, along with her micro panties and that ever-present crotch strap. The chains and cuffs on her ankles were the same, but there was something new wrapped around her head. Something cold: a mask that covered her entire face from her well-defined chin to her regal forehead. She stood up, and discovered there was a full-length mirror in the room where she could check her reflection.

It was a geisha mask! Lara raised an incredulous eyebrow at the thing’s intricacy (she couldn’t see this movement reflected whatsoever)—it had beautifully contoured makeup and hand-sculpted features. Her own fierce grey eyes peeked out from the appropriate holes, and although they were livid, the mask had a permanent wistful smile. It was secured to her head by many straps, and she didn’t doubt that it was inescapable right now.

Hours passed, and boredom quickly set in. There were many little cameras in the room, just outside of her reach and configured in such a way that she could never quite have any privacy even though she was completely alone. Eventually, the oppressive silence was disturbed by a digital buzzing sound. Was she going to have a visitor? Although she was nervous, she was grateful for any break in this monotony and she stood to meet whoever it was that came in.

There was a sound of motion from somewhere behind the wall, and the nearly inaudible sound of many hooks or clasps being undone. Lara guessed that there was a sliding panel somewhere beneath all the padding, and the hooks were a locking mechanism to keep the padded wall in place. In fact, the padding only parted for a moment: long enough for a woman to slip into the room, while giving Lara no chance to see what was outside.

“Would you kneel for me please, with your butt resting on your heels? This is just a safety measure. Apparently you have been very violent.”

With some misgivings, Lara folded her long legs beneath her to assume this decidedly submissive posture, but she was still enormously happy for any human contact.

The nurse was an attractive young woman, with short-cropped blonde hair, elfin facial features, and perfectly white teeth. What really stuck out was her outfit, though. It was a far cry from scrubs, although Lara could barely make out the influence. The nurse had on a skintight vest in a sterile white color, with a pink hexagonal pattern that gave it a futuristic look. It seemed to be made of shiny latex. It had many pockets, and looked very durable, maybe even bulletproof.

Her legs were clad in white stockings printed with the same pink hexagonal pattern with garter straps holding them up. A white pleated short skirt completed the look, so pristine it could have been the first time anyone wore it.

Her shoes were trendy but functional; the outfit conveyed comfort and authority all at the same time, and there was not a speck of dirt or a sign of wear to be seen on any part of it.

There was the sound of an unseen person securing the padding again, and a metallic door sliding back into place. The nurse smiled, and took confident steps towards her patient. She carried with her some kind of smart tablet in the same white color as her outfit and Lara felt like she was holding it in such a way that the camera was pointed at her.

“Hi, I am Nurse Cerys,” the girl said in a chipper tone. She immediately set the tablet down and reached behind Lara’s face to undo the clasps that locked the geisha mask on her.

“Please don’t say anything to me unless I ask. There are microphones in the room, and if you speak out of turn we both get punished. You’ll be punished worse, so don’t think you have a bargaining chip somewhere. A lot of girls think that at first. Why don’t I get that cotton out of your mouth?”

Lara nodded, unbelievably happy that someone was finally doing something nice for her. Even if it was just a slight easement of her suffering, it was huge.

The nurse reached her tapered fingers into Lara’s mouth, pulling out each of the large cotton balls that had tormented her for far too long. Then, in an act of true mercy, she pulled out a white vial of water and sprayed Lara’s mouth several times with the wonderful stuff. Lara held her mouth open moronically, accepting each little spurt of the stuff as though it were the greatest gift she had ever received. When some of it almost dripped down her full lips, but she darted her tongue out to gather it up and swallow it. It was amazing the impact this had on her; Lara finally felt human again.

The nurse stopped after just a few sprays, which Lara found unbelievably cruel. She could probably drink a gallon of water right now, and yet this woman only gave her a few spritzes! It was expensive stuff, too—mineral water, the sort of thing she would spray on her face as part of her beauty routine. The blonde put the spray bottle into one of the pockets on her rather tight top, and stood up again. Lara tried to stand too, but the nurse told her to stay as she was.

“Okay, so for your intake, you need to decide which marking you’ll receive. I will show you the pictures and you let me know which one works best.”

Lara felt nervous at the mention of a ‘marking’, but the nurse kept her bright attitude as she unlocked her tablet with a two-step method, inputting in a long numerical password then pressing her thumb against its scanner. After fiddling with some buttons, she pulled up some images for Lara to examine. Nurse Cerys had to hold the device, of course, and as she swiped through the images Lara saw that her fingernails had a bold white varnish on. There was the subtlest line of pink polish along the sidewalls of her nails all the way down to her cuticle in a sort of reverse French manicure.

Nurse Cerys looked to be in her mid 20s, with Nordic features and a pale complexion that pointed to a life spent studying indoors. Despite that, her body had clear muscular definition—she would not be an easy fight even if Lara were unbound.

Lara looked down at the photos with a growing sense of dread. Each showed a young woman, but was mostly they featured the tattoos on the different parts of their bodies. The first reminded Lara of an F hole on a violin, but it was embellished with intricate tribal patterns and had an unmistakably feminine curve. It was quite large, running all the way from the woman’s left scapula down to her lower vertebrae. The next tattoo was a feather, flowing and flirty, done in the Rorshach style so it looked like freshly blotted ink. It rested on the young woman’s breast in such a way that invited a person’s gaze, and maybe more, to dwell there. Lara was shocked to see that the woman’s nipple was bare too, and the feather seemed to rest its needle point on her areola!

The final tattoo was the most egregious, though, and Lara gasped as she beheld it.

It seemed to mimic the appearance of the top part of a stocking—the part that would wrap around a woman’s upper thigh. It was awesome in its complexity: something like a geometric cardioid blended with lace patterns, it looked like the sort of design that she would find in a highly advanced calculus textbook. It also had many little threads hung down from its main band, and from those threads dangled everyday objects such as keys, diamonds, and fleurs de lis.

“I don’t understand,” Lara said, although she had a terrible suspicion that she knew exactly what the nurse was asking.

“You need to decide which of these tattoos you want,” Nurse Cerys said, as though she were talking to a foolish child.

“I don’t want any of them!” Lara snapped.

She wasn’t about to get inked up like some common strumpet—tattoos were quite unpopular among her group of friends. Not that she particularly cared what they would think, but it was sending the wrong message to the world! She couldn’t hope to hide any of them, either: each one would be visible if she wore a bikini, most workout clothes, or even a low-cut dress!

“You have to decide,” Nurse Cerys urged, “otherwise, you will get all three.”

“I refuse,” was Lara’s only answer. “How dare you make this request? Don’t you see how twisted this place is, nurse? Please—”

“Stop!” the nurse commanded.

“Listen, I’ve been here a while. Your best bet is to just pick a tattoo and go along with what they say. Please. Why don’t you get the violin one? It would look good on you, you’re tall!”

Lara fixed her gaze on the blonde girl, amazed at her own naivete for thinking this woman was her ally. She had been brought up to listen to her medical professionals, but this was no ordinary place. In fact, this pretty blonde girl was probably just trying to lull her into a sense of security by acting like a ‘good cop’ right out of some movie! No, she would refuse, and see what happened then.

“I will not,” Lara said, asserting her rightful heritage as the Lady of Abington.

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” the blonde nurse replied. There was genuine sadness in her voice, but it didn’t stop her from pulling out another damn syringe.

What could Lara do? There wasn’t much of a fight—Nurse Cerys’s small size belied her strength and agility. There was the pinprick in her neck again, and a numbing sensation that spread out along her body.

“You bitch!” Lara shouted, “You cannot! You will not get away with this! My solicitor knew my whereabouts, and he will certainly find the path that brought me here. And when he does, I will remember this. You... American whore!”

Nurse Cerys never changed her expression, looking down at Lara with her big blue eyes full of pity. She paged someone using the tablet, and soon two other nurses came in wearing similar uniforms. They had a cart with them, containing two portable tattoo machines. At this point, Lara’s tongue was too heavy to form words, but she still squealed as they lifted her onto the bed.

“So, which one did she pick?” one nurse asked—a Taiwanese girl.

“All three.”

“Wow! A triple winner! So she will get her outside time pretty soon, huh?” the other one jumped in. From their attitude towards the woman, it seemed clear that Nurse Cerys was the ranking employee here.

“No. A triple loser.”

The other two nurses winced involuntarily, which worsened Lara’s already strained mental condition. Although she was paralyzed by whatever curare the bitch had stuck her with, she could still feel every part of her body.

“Please give her a defiant marking in the usual place. And use the... Amative ink.”

“Yes ma’am!” the Taiwanese nurse responded, and Lara almost thought she looked happy to follow the order! Who were these awful people?!

The pain was excruciating.

Out of necessity they removed her straitjacket, but she wasn’t even able to enjoy her freedom because of her unresponsive body. Lara had never received a tattoo before, but it was worse than she had imagined. Again and again she felt her tender flesh punctured by the vibrating needles, leaving their foul ink in a place she could never hope to remove it. The searing pain gave way to a certain numbness, but only for so long. Then it was back again in full force, and she could do nothing to stop it.

The nurses spoke as they worked.

“Are you going to put your initials in your work again?” the Taiwanese girl asked the other nurse, whom Lara assumed to be Indian. She had very dark skin, and black hair.

“Of course!” was the Indian nurse’s answer. “Come on, that’s the best part of getting a triple loser. I hate it when I do such an amazing job and I am not permitted to give myself the proper credit.”

They fell into a silence as they continued defacing Lara’s beautiful body. She cursed them with every word she knew, and mentally began searching for the best tattoo removal clinic in all of the UK.

Soon, the Indian girl’s eyes lit up as something dawned on her.

“They say she attacked Dr. Yeung—”

“Oh my gosh! Seriously? Who’s that stupid?”

The Indian nurse continued, clearly annoyed to be interrupted.

“Anyway, I was thinking that maybe we could be a little more... luxuriant with her body art.”

“What do you mean?” The Taiwanese girl asked, a deviant smile showing up on her face.

“Why just put our initials on? Why not do our full names?”

The Taiwanese girl made a tepid argument against it, but Lara could see the gears turning in her mind. This was obviously something they had both wanted to do for quite some time, and now they had their chance! Why did it have to be on HER though?

They agreed to a compromise: they would only put their family names on her, to avoid detracting from the artwork overmuch.

Here’s where Lara’s thinking got a little ugly. She was a member of the British nobility. Her ancestors were the captains who made first contact with these nurses’ home countries and brought them aboard the empire. She was completely aware of the horrors committed beneath the Union Jack, but she was still proud of her heritage. Now, she was about to have two foreign names forever engraved into her English body just to temporarily satisfy the egos of two strange women. She was furious right now, and understandably so. But there was a new emotion bubbling to the surface, something foreign to the aristocratic young woman.

Lara Abington was beginning to feel defeated.

The nurses had placed her on a special chair they had brought in, and manipulated her body several times to do their job better. After quite some time, they finished that day’s progress on the three tattoos Lara had originally refused: the outline of a feather was on her right breast, the elaborate stocking pattern had crawled to life on her left thigh, and although she couldn’t see it, she knew the F hole was spread from her scapula down to her lower lower back. They finished one tattoo that day, though: the ‘defiant marking.’

It was a spindly length of interconnected lines on her left ring finger, eerily reminiscent of a wedding band but more like a dark parody of one. It was sizable enough to be seen in casual conversation—and how in the world would Lara explain such a strange thing?

It was necessary for them to put Lara in a new position, so she would not interrupt her tattoo’s healing. This, they accomplished by putting her on yet another chair. It had a sort of bicycle seat with an unusually tall and narrow back and a very heavy base. They placed her body in such a way that none of her fresh ink was touching anything, and then cuffed her ankles to its base. Then they put a leather collar around her neck, and secured it to the back of the chair by a short length of chain. Finally, her hands were cuffed behind her back and then attached to the same back.

The dull ache of her tattoos grew, and soon she could twitch her muscles ever so slightly. She wondered what the hell Nurse Cerys meant by ‘amative ink’—didn’t amative have something to do with sexuality? There was nothing sexy about this, at least not for poor Lara...

After a few hours, Nurse Cerys returned to Lara’s cell, carrying a tray of food and what looked like a bedpan.

“Food” was a generous term for what the blonde woman had for Lara. It was little more than a pink gruel, which Nurse Cerys insisted on feeding to Lara as though she were an infant! Lara was so hungry that she accepted this indignity, and her only protest was that she gave the hated nurse the snake eyes the entire time.

“How long am I going to be here?” Lara asked. Although she was still seething from the fact that they had practically branded her, she was more focused on her eventual release. She could tolerate whatever petty torments they came up with. She was a strong girl.

“That’s not for me to decide. Open,” Nurse Cerys answered, spooning the first dollop into the Tomb Liberator’s pretty mouth.

Lara could tell the gruel was nutritious, but it was also one of the worst things she had ever eaten. It had almost no flavor and a repulsive thick, gloppy texture that required her to use her tongue and her jaw to properly eat it. It was like they were throwing it in her face that this stuff was terrible, by making her do so much work to even eat it. And the temperature! Tepid, like it had been sitting out too long, or else she were eating someone’s leftovers.

She had trained herself to eat rattlesnake meat, and live on dried seaweed in a survival situation, but this stuff was something else. Lara was grimacing by the end of the first spoonful, and there was quite a bit of the stuff left to go. There were no seasonings on the tray, no spices, and the only thing to look at was the bedpan which was disconcertingly close to her food bowl.

“After each spoonful, you will need to open your mouth wide and show me that you swallowed it. And say, ‘thank you, nurse.’”

A biting remark came to the tip of Lara’s tongue, then died there somewhere among the flavorless mush. She had seen what happened when she fought back already.

Beside herself with indignation, Lara swallowed, then opened her mouth wide as though she were some kind of hussy. After the blonde nurse had confirmed that she had indeed gulped down all the awful pink porridge, Lara spoke.

“Thank you, nurse.”

Nurse Cerys smiled, and rewarded Lara with another helping of the stuff. Somehow, its taste only bothered Lara more, the more she had of it. Nonetheless, they repeated this process until the entire bowl was empty, even if the so-called meal did very little to sate Lara’s appetite.

Next was the plastic bedpan, which Nurse Cerys placed between Lara’s privates and the seat of her chair. The girl was absolutely mortified, but had no choice but to urinate beneath a nurse’s watchful eye. She kept telling herself that this was a medical procedure, but couldn’t convince herself of that when everything else had been so strange. She was a smart girl, and she rightfully suspected that this was a needless practice, only designed to further violate her sense of privacy and demonstrate that even her essential bodily functions were under another person’s control right now.

Nurse Cerys cut off Lara’s sheer white micro panties—she had no other way of removing them through all the girl’s restraints, and waited. Soon Lara relaxed her bladder enough to begin peeing into the plastic basin—the sound of her water dominating that little cell and twisting the knife of humiliation a little bit more.

Her urine was dark brown and had a considerable aroma—something that made her blush even deeper. The lurid scene took a devastating toll on her: the Lady of Abington all tatted up, restrained and urinating on command like some deviant! She was one of those sorts who generally used private bathrooms with gold fixtures marble floors. She might have become comfortable roughing it on archaeological expeditions, but nothing prepared her for this.

If someone had heard her unmentionable noises before today, it would only be a well-trained bathroom attendant who would smile, pretend that she heard nothing, and perhaps offer to rub some scented lotion onto her dainty hands before she left. Nurse Cerys was the antipodal opposite: watching her with far too much interest, as though she could learn Lara’s medical history by how many drops of urine fell from her perfectly-shaped labia!

She thanked the heavens that she didn’t need to do anything else right now—but wouldn’t that come eventually? There was no toilet in the room.

But there were cameras.

Lara was consumed with this notion: if the tabloids got a photo of her right now, she would NEVER live it down! Was that their plan all along? Simple blackmail? All these unconfirmed suspicions harried her young mind. That, combined with the fact that she didn’t even know her location really toyed with her sense of reality. She didn’t even anyone to speak with—Nurse Cerys had made that abundantly clear. When Lara had finished, the blonde woman dabbed her dry using some tissues, and left her alone.

Hours passed.

Lara was getting extremely uncomfortable in her seated position—her vertebrae were aching because there was no way for her to relax. It also felt very odd to be have her exposed flesh against a seat. The boredom was a worse torment, though. There was literally nothing to look at—even that mirror was currently out of view—and nothing to do except remain exactly as they wanted her to be.

To pass the time, she daydreamed.

She went over the highlights of her life: playing soccer at her boarding school, the research that lead to her paper being published in several academic journals in spite of her young age. Then, to counteract the effects of solitary confinement, she pictured her previous social interactions.

To her disappointment, not many of them were good. Lara was extremely wealthy; and so she grew up in a community that was cloistered and rarefied. Most everyone she associated with was an heiress, a plutocrat’s daughter, or else they were part of the waitstaff. She had seen first-hand the way excessive money distorted peoples’ thinking, especially towards those with less.

She thought back to the bathroom attendant, a poor Creole woman who was supposedly doing work-study to go to University. It was the only path to higher education for most of the world in today’s economy, and extreme competition for limited slots had a predictable affect on the labor expected of those ‘beneficiaries.’ Lara didn’t accept the hand massage, but her friend Robin Woodward did.

Lara recalled the striking imagery of the poor Creole woman’s dark, callused hands caressing Robin’s perfectly manicured porcelain digits. Robin insisted that they both wait in the bathroom while she got her hand massage; she was always trying to boss Lara around and dictate her actions. She probably had some jealousy about how Lara’s nobility was the old sort, the type couldn’t be purchased at any cost, while Robin’s family had bought their title more recently than the girl would ever admit.

Robin spoke with the bathroom attendant.

“This hand massage is delightful. What is your name, sweetie?”

“Cassandra, ma’am.”

“And what made you want to be a bathroom attendant? Do you massage feet as well?”

Cassandra was obviously uncomfortable at the familiarity, but she didn’t want to offend a girl whose comportment made it clear that she was a member of the ruling class.

“I’m doing this as part of a work-study program at the University of London. No, I’ve never done a foot massage before—I haven’t really been asked for that here.”

“You are working as a bathroom attendant for work-study?” Lara cut in, “How could that possibly help you in your career? Why would the school allow this?”

Cassandra nodded, and seemed like she was about to tell the real story about the college’s ugly side, and maybe she would have if Lara were in here alone. But with Robin present, Cassandra erred on the side of caution.

“It’s part of the ‘whole economy’ approach,” the Creole girl replied by rote memorization, “it helps us understand all the different facets of a business so we can find places to cut down on labor costs.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Lara persisted, “people go to college to avoid this sort of job. No offense.”

Cassandra recognized a kindred spirit; Lara could tell the girl had spent a lot of time thinking about these exact things. But Robin cut them both off.

“Calm down, Lariska,” the girl said in her cut-glass tone; Lara noticed it was the same tone she used when addressing a poorly-behaved servant.

‘Lariska’ was a mean nickname that the other girls used for Lara whenever she started talking about issues of social justice; it was the Russian nickname for Lara. They were implying that she was some kind of Marxist, and even though Marx was German this was an effective way of shutting her down in a clique where his ideas were social suicide.

Robin continued.

“Cassandra is good at her job, this is the best hand massage I’ve gotten in months! A little more pressure though, please.”

Cassandra smiled at the backhanded compliment, and rubbed Robin’s hand with renewed vigor.

“There’s a hidden benefit to this, too. Like she said, it shows her the ‘whole economy’; maybe Cassandra will decide that she is better suited for this sort work rather than working at some corporate facts-and-figures rat wheel. What are you studying?”

“Art history,” was Cassandra’s terse response.

Okay, even Lara had to admit that probably wasn’t the most lucrative degree. But it was still important! Art historians provided a narrative context to her archeological work—it was tragic that there was so little economic incentive to pursue this field.

“Perfect! You could be an erudite attendant, making smart comments about Vermeer and Caravaggio and turning the womens’ bathroom into an intellectual haven. And giving massages all the while? I might like to hire you myself... if you do my feet too.”

Cassandra involuntarily glanced down at Robin’s feet, encased in £3000 platform sandals with a peep toe.

“And the student debt is an asset for your employer! You will be educated, able to follow complex directions, and the need to repay it will guarantee a high standard of service!”

Now Cassandra was getting angry, although she did a good job of hiding it. Lara noticed, but Robin didn’t observe it or perhaps didn’t care. Robin’s way of talking really was offensive, and deliberately so. The wealthy girl was always having this ‘debate’ with Lara, although it never amounted to much more than making derisive comments about the working poor, often in their presence.

She said worse things in private.

“If it is such a great program, why don’t you volunteer to participate?” Lara asked Robin.

“Why don’t you?” Robin fired back, smiling as she entertained the idea, “what better way for Lariska Swift to get a taste of the working class than by being a bathroom attendant? Maybe we could make a wager of it. We would need a way of making sure you can’t wiggle out of it, though. I do quite like the idea of having a noble lady standing at attention for me...”

“You’re mad,” Lara said.

She didn’t want Robin to explore this odd fantasy very much further—she was already getting too into it for comfort. Cassandra looked like she wanted to be anywhere else right now, and sighed audibly when Robin signaled the end of the massage.

Before they left, Robin flagged down the manager, a balding man in his late 50’s wearing an inexpensive navy blue suit.

“I had a few ideas to improve the experience at the lady’s bathroom,” Robin began.

“Of course, miss! We love to hear how to make things better!”

Robin began talking, and the ideas just kept coming.

First, she pointed out the tip jar. She argued that there’s no law regulating tips, and that the owner could re-work the program to get better performance from Cassandra. Patrons would give all the bathroom tips to the manager, then he would give a percentage of them to Cassandra based on her feedback for the day’s work. People would fill out a survey ranking her on different metrics using a five-star scale, and any score less than five would result in a reduction in her tips. If someone didn’t fill out a survey, that would be an automatic zero since they were obviously unimpressed with her work. Cassandra would be forbidden from begging for a higher score or even mentioning the program, of course, to avoid pestering women.

What better way to keep her jumping through hoops and bending over backwards to make people happy?

The manager smiled as he heard this; the customers were good tippers and he could probably use it as a way to pad the restaurant’s earnings at Cassandra’s expense. Even if it were a bad idea, he recognized Robin Woodward, and he would probably do it just to keep her as a customer. She was a taste-maker, and a single post on her social media page could attract hundreds of customers.

“I just think, she could definitely be doing a better job. I complained that my feet hurt twice and did she offer to massage them for me? No! They’re even clean, I had a long bath just this morning.”

Lara rolled her eyes. She wanted to argue against Robin, but it would just put the manager in an uncomfortable position and he would obey the blonde brat anyway. She made a mental note to donate some money to Cassandra anonymously, to at least give her the option to get out. Somehow, she doubted the Creole girl’s contract allowed her such freedoms.

“We will do our best to implement these ideas, ma’am. And thank you for sharing them! I will talk about this with the owner of the restaurant. If he likes it, I’m sure we could give you both a free lunch, in gratitude.”

Robin smiled, and soon the girls left together. Lara thought: of course the free lunch went to the girl who was worth millions, while the laborer lost her hard-earned tips.

Lara wondered why she remained friends with the girl; it was sort of like sharing a sleeping bag with a venomous snake. Sure, Robin might be nice enough presently, but was she ever that far from sinking her fangs into Lara just for fun? In fact, the snake might be better because at least it couldn’t make long-term plans against her!

At the end of this reminiscing, Lara realized something terrifying.

She hadn’t told anyone where she was going! She told her friends a vague story about an expedition that might take several months, and she had dismissed nearly all of the house staff before her departure. The only hope she had was in her solicitor, Edwin Montgomery, with whom she had left a sealed envelope to be opened if she didn’t return in two months’ time. Lara groaned; she had at least two month in this hell, and who knows how much time after that until he marshaled enough resources to find her?

The days stretched ahead of her; pink and tasteless and deprived of any sensation except for what this horrible institution wanted her to feel. She tried to be optimistic: at least there was a light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how distant. And although she kept daydreaming, they increasingly seemed like pointless distractions from her present situation. What did it matter the wind in her hair as she rode a motorcycle, if she was now a prisoner strapped to a motionless bicycle seat in a padded room?

Lara bowed her head as much she could in spite of her tight leather collar, and felt the beginnings of despair creep on. It was shapeless at first, an unwanted safety net that froze her in place and prevented her from moving anywhere productive. Its weave was impossibly strong, made of the same frilly pink material that brushed against her soft, pampered feet. And it seemed to be shrinking against her.

In four months’ time, she was due before a judge in a decisive meeting concerning her inheritance dispute with Uncle Errol. Would she make it out in time?