Part Of The Company

“But you can’t just shut us down!”

Patricia Lakemont glanced around her and shrugged. “Oh? And why is that?”

“Because,” Geoffrey Sutton replied slowly, “Sutton Cord & Cable has been here for nearly a hundred and fifty years now. Our cables have been used on nearly every bridge in the area.”

“Bridges,” Patricia pointed out, “that are steadily being replaced by newer models that don’t require cables.”

“Still,” Geoffrey argued, “that’s no reason to shut us down. We can retool for other work. Besides, we’re one of the largest employers in this town. Some very good workers will lose their only livelihood if you close this plant.”

Patricia shrugged again. “Unemployment is a government problem, not mine. My problem is that I am now majority stockholder of a company that is no longer financially viable. My only chance to turn a profit from this place is to shut it down and sell off all the equipment.”

“Like you did with Whitecliffe Cable last month?” Geoffrey inquired tersely. “Or Hamilton the month before? Why are you getting rid of all the companies that do this kind of work?”

“Because they’re anachronisms,” Patricia replied shortly. “I’d even be willing to bet some of your precious equipment was in use at the turn of the century. The twentieth,” she added pointedly, “not this century.”

Geoffrey nodded. “Yes,” he admitted, “we do have equipment here that old. But it still works just fine. We can braid a cable that will hold anything.”

“In that case,” Patricia retorted, “braid something to keep your employees heads above the water, fiscally. Tomorrow is Friday, your final day. At the end of the final shift tomorrow, this plant is officially closed. I’ve scheduled the auction for all of these antiques of yours for two weeks from Monday. The wrecking crew starts the next day. Enjoy your final day here.”

Smirking, Patricia turned away, moving toward the door. Before she could take more than a couple steps, she felt a cloth pressed over her face. Her gasp of shock brought with it a strange smell. Long before she could identify the scent, her world went dark.

Patricia woke to the realization that she couldn’t move. Her arms were stretched over her head, her wrists bound together. Her ankles, too, were bound. Her bindings had been attached to something in such a way as to leave her suspended in mid-air, her body stretched out nearly to its limit. Several strips of tape covered her mouth, the only covering on her otherwise naked body. Grunting with sudden fear, she struggled against her bonds, but they held her so tightly stretched, her most violent struggles served only to make her body sway slightly. Within moments, her body went limp, exhausted by her useless struggles.

“Good,” she heard, “you’re awake. That means we can begin.”

Slowly, Patricia forced her head up, allowing her to see down the length of her body. Geoffrey Sutton stood near her waist, smiling. Surrounding her thighs, blocking her view of her lower body, was a strange contraption the likes of which she had never seen.

“Before you shut us down,” Geoffrey told her, “I decided it might be a good idea for you to see exactly what it is we do here. This,” he went on, patting the thing at her thighs, “is our oldest piece of equipment. It made the cables for the Sutton Memorial Bridge, which, as you know, opened in 1905. Which makes it over a century old, but it still works just fine, as you are about to see.”

Geoffrey smiled. “Since you can’t see the whole device, let me tell you how it works. This part you see is actually a very complex part of the mechanism. See these spools? There are three sets of three spools each, spaced equally around this donut. Once the ends of each spool are attached, and the machine started, each set of spools spins around a common center, braiding their three separate strands into one thicker strand. At the same time, the donut also rotates, braiding those three strands around a central core cable. The whole assembly moves on tracks above and below, to ensure a nice, tight, even braid. Let me demonstrate. Oh, and just for you, we’re using light, silky strands. Softer, more comfortable, I think.”

With deft movements, Geoffrey gathered the strands from one trio of spools, taping the ends to her right thigh. He ducked beneath her line of sight, and Patricia felt more strands being taped to her ass. The final set was taped to her left thigh.

“Of course,” she heard, “the tension is set a bit light until the strands start braiding correctly. After all, we do need viable ends for splicing purposes.”

Geoffrey stepped out of Patricia’s line of sight. With a soft wheeze, the spools she could see began to rotate slowly, forming braids from the separate strands. The braid slowly grew, extending from Patricia’s thighs toward the spools. Just before the braid reached those spools, the whole device began to rotate. Slowly, Patricia’s thighs began to vanish beneath a layer of tightly packed cord.

Desperately, she began once more to fight her bonds, but it was no use. Slowly, the device began to move down her legs, the braids wrapping tightly around her, fusing her legs into a single column. The tension was enough to twist her body slightly to one side as the braided cable was drawn tightly around her.

Unable to fight, she could only watch as her lower body vanished beneath the tightly woven cords. When the device reached her ankles, Geoffrey stepped away from her. Suddenly, Patricia felt the pull on her body increase. Passing her ankles, the cords were now tight enough to force her feet into the en pointe position. She grunted into her gag as her feet were welded solidly together by the tightness of the cords.

Finally, the machine stopped. “Now,” she heard Geoffrey say, “a steel ring to hold the ends in place. Of course, the machine does this too, so as to keep everything nice and tight. There, all done.”

Raising her head as best she could, Patricia stared down the length of her imprisoned legs. Geoffrey untied the rope holding her ankles, lowering her to rest on a soft surface that she suddenly realized someone else must have just placed beneath her. Next, her hands were released from over her head, though they remained bound together. Seizing what she knew could be her only chance, Patricia struggled fiercely, but Geoffrey, along with another young man, had no trouble reversing her position, drawing the binding ropes tight until she once more hung stretched in the air.

The machine started again, this time moving along her stretched arms without doing any braiding. The donut passed along her body until it reached her thighs, where it halted. She caught a glimpse of Geoffrey as he moved down toward her now invisible legs.

“The splice,” she heard him say, almost as if giving a lecture, “is perhaps the most vital point of the whole job. It has to be done just right, or it could weaken the whole thing. Not to mention being plainly visible. We pride ourselves on the smoothness and integrity of our splices. When we’re done, it will take a very close examination to see where they even are.”

Patricia felt the tape being pulled from her right thigh. Suddenly, she realized they were splicing those ends back into the machine. They weren’t done yet! She tried to struggle, but could only hang helplessly as the other pieces of tape were removed, their ends splices, also, back into the machine.

“Almost ready,” she heard. “But first, a couple steps that don’t usually go into a job like this.”

Feeling something touch her waist, Patricia lifted her head once more, watching as a man fed the end of a thin tube under the donut. Next, she felt the end scratching along her thighs, feeding into the tiny space where her otherwise mashed together thighs curved away from each other. A similar feeling told her another tube was being fed through the identical space at the backs of her thighs. Soon, she could feel the length of the tubes stretching clear to her feet.

“The feet,” she head, “is, of course, the trickiest part. But, of course, we have over a hundred years’ experience at this kind of thing. Now, all we need to do is attach the upper ends, and we’re ready to continue.”

Patricia gasped as she felt something round, hard, and slightly cold and slimy feeling, being slipped inside her. She felt tape being pressed to her, wrapping around the tube, and silently cursed herself for the vanity that made her keep her pussy cleanly shaven. That thought vanished as the second tube slipped into place, causing her whole body to spasm.

Catheters, she thought, watching as the machine wheezed once more to life. They put catheters in me. Suddenly, an already bad situation got much worse. How long, she wondered, do they plan to keep me like this?

Once more, the machine wheezed into life. This time, all she could see was the back side of the donut, seemingly covered in slowly turning gears. What she couldn’t see, however, she felt. Slowly, the braiding crept up over her crotch, covering the tubes and squeezing the globes of her ass in their tight grip. Once clear of her hips, the braiding pinched her already narrow waist even more, until Patricia found it harder to draw a deep breath. Suddenly, with the bottom of the donut just below her chin, the braiding nearly to her breasts, the machine stopped again.

“Final touches,” she heard, watching helplessly as two figures appeared by her head. Gentle fingers inserted tubes into each nostril, drawing the tubes down and looping them around her ears before feeding them the length of her arms. Patricia felt a stab to her left arm, and somehow knew that an IV tube now also ran between her arms.

“This part, I’m sure you’ll like, or, at least, appreciate.” Smiling, Geoffrey held up what looked like a curved piece of plastic with a smaller half circle attached to each end. “Normally,” he said, “we don’t use sleeves in our work, but we do have to think of the safety of our product, right?” With that, he placed the plastic atop her body. The curved section rested across her throat, while the half circles went partially around each upper arm. She could feel a matching back piece secured somehow to the front section. A hand held up two soft plastic cups before placing them over her eyes. Now plunged into darkness, she felt the machine begin again.

With terrible slowness, her breasts were covered, then her shoulders. As the braiding climbed up her neck, she realized the plastic served to protect her throat from the tightness of the braiding. Higher, slowly covering her head even as her arms were pressed even more tightly to each side, squashing her ears and muffling any sound. As the braiding traveled along her arms, Patricia felt the fingers of her left hand forced into a fist. Her right hand was wrapped over the left, with tape holding them in this double-fist position. All too soon, her hands, also, were covered, and she felt the tension that held her stretched suddenly loosen.

Fitfully, she tried struggling, managing only to writhe in place. She felt herself lifted and carried, then placed on some hard surface. Something pulled at her arms, lifting her into an upright position.

“Great fundraiser, Geoffrey.”

Geoffrey Sutton smiled. “Thanks, Ed. I just hope it does the job. With the company going into receivership since Patricia Lakemont vanished, this is my family’s best chance to buy it back.”

Behind Geoffrey, a large sign proclaimed, “Sutton Cord & Cable. We can braid anything.” Beneath the sign, a long, strangely curved section of a soft-looking braided cable dangled, the curves subtly suggesting the shape of a woman standing on her toes, arms stretched over her head. As the two watched, the cable writhed and undulated slowly.

“How do you get it to do that?”

Geoffrey smiled, pointing toward the rest of the sign. “It’s not just the braid,” she words read, “it’s what’s inside that counts.”

“Mechanicals, right?” Ed grinned. “Too bad Patricia isn’t here to see this. Maybe she’d change her mind about this place.”

Geoffrey returned the grin. “Well,” he replied, “she may be gone, but I’m sure that, wherever she is, she’s thinking of us. In a way, she‘ll always be part of the company. Luckily for us, not the part that makes decisions.”

With a laugh, the two turned away. Behind them, the strangely shaped cable continued its slow, almost sensual swaying.

You can also leave feedback & comments for this story on the Plaza Forum

30.12.13