This story is dedicated to the people who asked me to continue last year’s “Curious Case of the Haunted Costume” – without them I probably wouldn’t have written this. You can probably enjoy this just fine without reading last year’s story, but I’m sure Gromet will put a helpful link right here so you can read the old one first if you want.

Jessica looked at Mandy and sighed.

“It’s just not the same this year. That thing with Annie really put a damper on Halloween,” Jessica said.

“Yeah. Since she had her … incident … she’s barely spoken to me, and she’s been a bitch to you and everyone else in the office,” Mandy said.

“Probably why they promoted her. It would have made sense if it was because they promoted her, but that’s not the order it happened. Am I right?”

“You are so right Jess, and Halloween is never going to be as much fun without her.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said a menacing voice behind them. They had been caught gossiping in the lunch-room by Aneka, the exact same upwardly-mobile ex-friend who was now their supervisor and terror of the entire office.

“Sorry Aneka, I just meant to say that I miss you… We miss you,” said Jessica, her awkward, fumbling response so uncharacteristic of her usual bright and cheeky personality.

“I was promoted through hard work and absolute dedication, and don’t you forget it. You two slackers get away with murder as it is. Out of consideration for our history I have overlooked your shabby work-ethic for months now, and it’s beginning to reflect badly on me. You have no consideration for others whatsoever,” Aneka said, her tones clipped and angry.

“But Annie…”

“That’s Miss Aneka to you Mandy,” she said, and when Mandy had no response she continued. “It can’t keep going on this way. Management have noticed you two. If you get any more attention I won’t be able to save you from formal warnings. If I see you talking to each other… in fact if I discover that either of you are doing anything other than working, I will push it upstairs right away, for your own good.”

Jessica and Mandy stared at her in surprise. It was so unfair. Aneka had only ever spoken to them to give instruction since the day of her promotion. Playing favourites? It didn’t make sense. She’d been hardest on them since she took charge.

“Get back to work right now, and let’s see some improvements in the quality of your work,” Aneka snapped at them.

Jessica and Mandy hardly dared exchange glances before scurrying off to their desks. They couldn’t even begin to discuss what had happened until they left work. No chat programs were allowed on the work computers, and the email was monitored by the nosy creeps in the IT department, always snooping for a hint of something to pass to the bosses.

They even had to sneak the few quick checks on their phone emails. On one occasion Jessica had been told off in front of the whole office for spending time playing with her phone instead of working. It had been humiliating and she’d felt as if she was being treated like a naughty school girl.

Jessica wouldn’t have cared, but the recession wasn’t getting any better and work was only getting harder to find. If she was sacked her chance of getting a better job was zero, and her chance of getting a good reference from Aneka to go elsewhere wasn’t exactly promising to start with.

If only things hadn’t gone so wrong the year before...

It began when Aneka bought a risqué rubber cat-woman outfit off the internet to use as a Halloween costume. Jessica and Mandy had goaded her into trying it on in her office. They’d got a bit over-excited and Aneka had ended up secured in a rather strict arm-binder. Leaving her helpless, they’d gone out of the office to get a few more trimmings for her costume and when they got back they found that somehow everything had got locked onto Aneka, along with some very invasive additions; strict bondage complete with dildo panties, blindfold and gag.

When they’d found her, Aneka was in a hysterical panic, and when Jessica pulled out the gag, she had claimed that some unseen assailant had forced her into the bondage panties, locked her in the outfit, along with the belt, and molested her in other unspecified ways.

Though her story had been compelling, Jessica had to wonder if Aneka had put the restraints on herself and only later regretted it. It seemed to Jessica that it was possible that Aneka, embarrassed, had made up an excuse to cover up a self-bondage experiment gone wrong.

Aneka had been hostile ever since, particularly to Jessica and Mandy. Clearly, she resented them as the witnesses to her humiliation. It seemed quite possible that she wanted both of them sacked with prejudice so that there would be nobody to whisper to others about her proclivities – but Jessica had never spoken a word to anyone except Mandy, who already knew. As for Mandy, Jessica was sure she had never mentioned it either.

They’d kept her secret and she had rewarded them with abuse. They would never have considered telling anyone. Over the last year Aneka had earned such a reputation for straight-laced behaviour that now, nobody would ever believe such a story.

Aneka had become the prize example of a bullying, fun-hating, career driven bitch. She never had a kind word for her co-workers, and shut-down anything that might look like people were enjoying it. She worked outrageous hours and forced others to do the same for no overtime. Management loved the new Aneka, but she hadn’t always been like that.

Jessica remembered that before last Halloween Aneka had been completely different: a loyal friend, a little naïve and introspective, but open to new things and always ready for fun. The three of them had spent many nights out together, drinking, dancing, and looking for the ideal man.

Sometimes they had even played kinky games with each other, but never seriously – it was always in jest. While the men had sometimes turned into brief flings, none of them had found Mister Right, though they often talked about their dreams in that direction.

Since the incident, there was little sign that Aneka had any interest in anything besides work. Her new taste for severe grey suits and no-makeup style certainly wasn’t attracting more admirers than her old casual look. She used to dress a little fussy and prissy before, but now her outfits were stark, monochrome affairs, dull even by male standards.

As for herself, Jessica was beginning to doubt that she had any hope of romance left in her future. Her last boyfriend had been a resounding disaster. When she blocked him on FriendFace he had called her a dyke slut and even accused her of having an affair with Mandy for all the internet to see.

Sure, in days past she might have joked about such a thing, but it had never crossed her mind that anyone could believe it was actually possible. Mandy was her best and closest friend, and even if they had shared any sexual attraction – and Jessica reminded herself that they didn’t – she didn’t want to lose her the way she’d lost all her boyfriends.

Given past events with Aneka, Jessica was very surprised to get an email from her about half an hour after the ultimatum in the lunch-room. Stranger still, it was to her personal email account that only a few people knew about, and came up on her phone. It wasn’t from anyone in her phone’s contact list, and Aneka was still in her contacts, but it had to be from her. Obviously, Aneka had made a new email to obscure her identity.

Jessica studied the mail with puzzlement. She wasn’t sure how to take it.

“Sorry for being so nasty earlier, but people were listening. I know things haven’t been right between us since last Halloween, and I want to fix that.

I’d like to go out with you and Mandy tonight, and have the Halloween night-out that we missed last year, just like old times. Everything has to be above-board at work, but outside we can still be together.

I kept that outfit from last year. If you go down to the store room and look behind the big stack of old CRT monitors, you’ll find it there. It’s still in the box it was delivered. I know you were fascinated by it. Consider it a present to make up for past bad behaviour.

You used to think that rubber outfit of mine was pretty hot so I want you to enjoy it. I can’t wait to see you wearing every bit of it that you can. I know how excited you got over that belt. I’ll meet you in the storeroom at 6:00 on the dot.

I know I’ve acted badly over the last year, so if you aren’t there I’ll understand that you don’t want to have anything more to do with me. It would make perfect sense for you feel that way, but instead I hope you’ll forgive me.

I really hope that we can still be as close as we were before, or closer, it’s completely your choice,” the email read.

Jessica was sure that only Aneka or Mandy knew enough to have written the letter, and it sure wasn’t Mandy’s work. Maybe Aneka had shared those experiences with somebody else, but that seemed unlikely.

Jessica couldn’t just take it at face value though. Aneka might be reaching out to her, but more likely it was a set-up for revenge. Jessica could just imagine herself dressed up in that rubber outfit, waiting in the storeroom with Mandy, only to have Aneka burst in with the CEO’s creepy PA and accuse them of getting up to sex games on company premises. She would be humiliated then sacked on the spot amidst such rumours that she’d never get another job, and Mandy would be in the same boat.

It wasn’t long before she got an email from Mandy on her phone. It included a copy of fairly similar message to the one she’d received along with three question marks. Clearly, Mandy didn’t know what to make of it either.

Jessica’s common sense told her it was a trap, but she wanted to believe that Aneka was still the person she used to know. She couldn’t give up on that old Aneka and leave her to complete her transformation into the cold, isolated, heartless drone that she was so obviously becoming.

Jessica sent a reply to Mandy:

“I’m going, decide for yourself what to do.”

The thought of putting herself into Aneka’s hands was frightening, but strangely thrilling. There was the possibility that something awful would happen, and the hope that it wouldn’t. What if it did? How would she behave then? Would she curse Aneka and the other creeps who made every work-day so miserable and storm out in a huff? Would she break down in tears? She liked to hope that she could leave with a certain shred of dignity, a laugh of contempt and a confident stride out of the building.

To have so much resting on an unknown, to gamble for such high-stakes, was more exciting than Jessica had anticipated. She was physically shaking at the thrill of it, and there was something else too. There was a sexual frission she wanted to pretend wasn’t there, but how could she ignore it when it was giving her that squishy wet feeling in her panties?

Jessica had to struggle to concentrate through the rest of the afternoon. It took all her willpower not to glance repeatedly across the room towards Mandy, or over towards the closed blinds of Aneka’s office.

* * * * *

At 5:30 on the dot Jessica logged out of her computer, grabbed her things and scurried into the lift and down to the basement where the storeroom was. The dozen floors in between were occupied by other businesses, but the storeroom was used only by the company Jessica worked for because they owned the building and occupied the upper three floors.

The storeroom was accessed with a dual security system: key card and a combination lock. There was a physical lock, but Jessica had no idea who had a key to it, if one even existed.

Jessica noted sadly that Mandy had not come with her. Was she on her own in this? Mandy didn’t even have as much at risk: she wasn’t the one who had to put on the rubber outfit.

Jessica tried not to worry. Mandy had probably decided to get changed into her costume in the ladies’ room upstairs where there were mirrors, washbasins and decent lighting.

The basement storeroom was dry, dusty, lit by a few bare bulbs and lined with shelves like a library that turned it into a dark and shadowy maze. It covered most of the lower-basement floor. The upper basement was devoted to a car-park for executives.

Jessica had to visit the storeroom no more than once a month or so, whenever the box of closed files grew too full and she had to roll it down on a trolley so that she could archive away its contents in the wall of big cabinets at the back of the room.

There was an open area in the middle, stacked with old computer screens on top of, and underneath, a collection of tables that had been pushed together. The only people who came down here were archivists like Jessica and the IT department, pushing obsolete computer junk out of the way. Nothing that was stored down here ever came back out.

The storeroom was deathly quiet; there was no doubt that she was alone. A waft of cold-air came from nowhere and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. It was Halloween after all, but it wasn’t as if the storeroom was haunted. Jessica knew that she was being irrational; it was probably just the draught from the air-conditioning system. There was nothing to be afraid of.

She looked around the central area, trying to find Aneka’s box. At first she couldn’t locate it, and then she found it, not quite as Aneka had described, but underneath the tables in the middle, pushed in amongst the old computer monitors.

The box with the rubber outfit in it was thick with dust as if it had sat in the storeroom the whole year. She pulled it out from under the table and cleaned it off. The special air-conditioning of the storage room kept it too dry even for spiders.

She opened up the box and the smell of talc and rubber was as fresh as ever. It took her right back to that night last year when Aneka had first opened it, nervously probing inside after Jessica’s had teasingly pressured her by trying to explore it herself.

Now, at last, Jessica would get that chance. She wasn’t sure she wanted it now. Sure, she had dabbled in rubber, bondage, self-bondage, and kinky sex-games, but she’d never really gone all the way with those things. Even so, her fantasies had unnerved some of her boyfriends.

They may have found her unconcealed curiosity about such pursuits endearing when they thought it was only an attention-seeking flirtatious front, but they were soon turned off when they found out that she was genuinely interested in such things.

The two that were actually up for it had both turned out to be brutish, selfish, and sadistic. It seemed impossible to find a man who could be both romantic and dominant; a man insightful enough to give her what she needed and not what she asked for. Jessica had begun to believe that no such man existed. If that was true, what lay ahead for her?

She remembered that she didn’t have much time to get ready and broke from her day-dreaming with a start. She couldn’t shake the feeling that somebody was watching her despite the desiccated silence of the store room.

Delving into the box she identified that all the items she remembered were in there, along with a large bottle of water-based dressing lube. As if to mock her the first thing she grasped was the heavy rubber arm-binder with its tight pouch for the wearer’s hands.

Aneka had been wearing the arm-binder the night they found her. How could she have put on the blindfold, panties and belt with it on? It seemed impossible. The only conclusion was that somebody else had put them on Aneka – somebody with a duplicate key and intimate knowledge of the office layout – somebody who might have further plans along those lines.

Jessica swallowed, working up her determination. She laid the items out in the order they would need to go on: first the dildo pants with their inflatable invaders front and back; the rubber ankle socks; then the full-body cat-suit that would leave only her head, hands and feet exposed; then the glossy black thigh-high vinyl boots with three inch spike heels and laces all the way up the sides; the rubber chastity belt; and then the vinyl corset with metal D-rings.

At least there were no locks in the box, but with the corset laced over the top, it would still be impossible to reach the fastenings to remove the belt.

The opera gloves with the white kitty claws and the full face hood with the cat-ears and whiskers would be last. She needed a mirror to put the hood on straight and she didn’t have one with her. As for the arm-binder and the big yellow ball gag…  There was no way she’d wear those, even to fix things with Aneka.

As Jessica shrugged off her tight hipster jeans and soft black halter-top sweater she started to feel out of place and exposed in the store room. What if somebody walked in? Probably somebody would, and not by chance.  Odds were that Aneka wouldn’t come alone. The suggestion – almost a demand – that she wear the rubber costume was too suspicious, though perhaps Aneka simply wanted to get some fair turn and turn-about for the way that Jessica had teased her a year earlier. It was this possibility that had brought Jessica to the storeroom.

The only way she could banish her lingering guilt over Aneka’s misfortune was to give her a chance to turn the tables. There was a niggling idea at the back of her mind that by sharing Aneka’s experience to some degree she could reconnect with her. It seemed silly when she considered it logically but she owed it to Aneka to understand how she had felt – to put herself in her shoes – in fact she already had an inkling what it had been like for her, and it wasn’t so good.

Last year, Jessica had been far too enthusiastic about everything when Aneka had been pulling the items out of the box. It had all seemed so much harmless fun then, but afterwards everything changed. It had been so unexpected.

Jessica wondered that if she’d shown a bit more empathy last year then Aneka’s trauma might have been avoided. It had seemed fun and adventurous to trick her into the arm-binder, and she’d thought her friend was secretly enjoying it, but that didn’t seem so believable now she could picture herself in the same situation.

Aneka must have been terrified, even before they’d left her alone in the office to dwell upon joking threats that she would be dragged about town on a leash in humiliating bondage. Even on Halloween party night that was too much for a joke. What had she been thinking?

Jessica took a deep breath and wriggled out of her panties. That hurdle over, she reached behind her and unclasped her bra. Her large firm breasts bounced free of restraint, Jessica couldn’t resist pausing to cup them and fondle her nipples, sending sparks of excitement shooting through her.

Feeling incongruously naked in the unwelcoming storeroom, she wasted no time reaching for the first rubber item: the inflatable dildo panties.

Jessica bit her lip when she realised that a copious crust of Aneka’s year-old juices was dried all over the inside of the panties and the two dildos.

The look on Aneka’s face when she’d first pulled the panties out of the box had been unforgettable. Jessica had teased her with the possibility of putting them on her, but had never followed through with it. Yet Aneka clearly had worn them – the evidence was there to see – and the smell … though the musky aroma had faded with age it was still unmistakeable.

Jessica had nothing she could use to clean them. She would just have to put them on as they were. The idea of Aneka’s crusty gunk going inside her was sickening, debasing and arousing all at the same time. Nobody would ever know, would they?

A few pumps of the bulbs firmed up the front and rear invaders to the point where they ought to be firm enough to force them inside her. The front slid in easily enough as Jessica was kind of wet, but the back didn’t want to go in. She tried to relax, but getting a semi-hard rubber dildo in her ass was much harder than Jessica had ever imagined.

Forgetting about the lube, she resorted to reaching down and sliding her fingers inside herself, covering them in her slippery juices. She smothered her lubricant over her tightly resisting asshole and the rear dildo. Actually, it was more of a butt-plug than a dildo now that it was inflated.

With suitable lubrication and further inflation of the butt-plug so it was firmer, she got it in, though not without some pain. Its shape was narrow at the base, sharply broadening after a couple of inches; once it was in far enough it sucked itself firmly into position, her sphincter tightening on the narrow part so that the much wider body would be troublesome to remove without deflating the dildo.

She settled the pants around her hips, feeling their tight, remorseless grip, squeezing the two slippery members up inside her or pulling them out as she moved. Walking in the pants was going to be far more stimulating than she’d first anticipated. The dildos wouldn’t stay still, and every motion made them shift in or out of her.

Little rubber fingers teased and massaged her clit, ceaselessly tantalising her but offering no real possibility of release. She could have sworn there wasn’t anything like that when she had inspected them earlier. She must have missed them when she was focussed on Aneka’s dried traces, which were now very much inside her, mixed with her own juices. She had wanted to share something with her, but not like this.

Jessica had to hurry after that. Getting the panties on had taken much longer than she had expected. She remembered the lube and squeezed a generous helping all over her belly and then her legs, spreading it over every part of her skin. It was cold and incredibly slippery, but the slick feeling was nice, especially when she did her breasts. She would have taken a lot more time over that if she had it to spare.

She was relieved how easy it was to pull on the rubber ankle-socks, and then slide the suit up over the soft white flesh of her thighs. It hugged her in a tight but yielding embrace, the lube making it seal onto her flesh with a wet sucking sound.

Jessica had worn rubber before, but not a full suit, and nothing so well made as this one. It was better than she’d expected. Fortuitously she had waxed only a couple of days ago and her body was almost devoid of any trace of hair to snag in the suit.

She hastily wriggled her arms into the sleeves and settled the ample weight of her breasts into the tailored cups at the front. With the zip done up, the cups were generously shaped such that they did nothing to minimize her substantial assets, though she could now feel more tiny rubber fingers on her erect nipples. She hadn’t noticed those before either, but she hadn’t really been looking.

The slightly squeezing of her breasts and the nipple stimulation was turning her insides to jelly and she could feel her wetness running down the inside of the already sweaty suit legs. The moisture kept the lubricant from drying and sticking to her but the storeroom was swelteringly hot, and she was beginning to feel dehydrated and headachey.

The boots were the next logical choice. Would she even have time to get them on? They weren’t completely unlaced and she was able to push her feet down inside them without undoing all the laces. However, she pulled the laces a bit too tight, and they seemed unwilling to loosen. She didn’t have time to sort them out; maybe later…

The glossy black vinyl of the boots reached up to just short of her crotch and was restrictive and stiff. It was alright if she kept her legs straight, but it pinched if she tried to bend her knees more than a few degrees and bending her ankles was all but impossible.

Walking in the spike heels and stiff boots required constant attention, but no more than many of the other treacherous heels that Jessica possessed. Compared to some of her platforms she felt positively safe and stable.

Jessica had a pair of bondage ballet pumps at home, but she’d had only limited success at learning to walk in them. It wasn’t that she couldn’t balance but that they hurt too much to tolerate standing for long. It was probably a result of their shoddy manufacture and the stiff, sharp-edged materials they were made from. They didn’t hug or conform to her foot anywhere and instead crushed, dug in and pinched.

Jessica had often fantasized about buying a pair of full-length ballet boots, but good ones were expensive, and she’d learned already that cheap ones were a waste of money. These vinyl boots had small heels compared to a ballet boot, but the full length laces made them particularly unyielding along the length of her legs. She hadn’t appreciated how clumsy they’d make her feel.

The thru-crotch zip of the suit was open around her lower parts, but only because the tubes from the inflators on the panties were dangling out of her. The inflator bulbs continually bumped against the inside of her thighs, reminding her of them, as if she could ever forget. It felt really strange to have something so heavy dangling out of her private parts.

The sweat was beading on Jessica’s forehead and upper lip, and she could taste it running down into her mouth in tiny salty rivulets.

She contemplated the chastity belt; Aneka’s instructions had subtly implied that this was needed, and it wouldn’t really make things much worse, as the dildo panties didn’t allow her any access anyway.

Even though Jessica did her best to minimize the significance of the chastity belt in her mind, it was still a tricky hurdle, both mentally and technically. It wasn’t obvious how to get the inflators to work with it. There were openings in the belt for the tubes, but they were too small to get the pump bulbs through.

After a few moments of investigation Jessica worked out that the inflator tubes could be detached from the panties. There was obviously some kind of valve that stopped the dildos deflating and she couldn’t tell how to make them go down, but she could remove the distracting dangling tubes and the inflator bulbs.

The process of investigating the belt had made her re-evaluate how sturdy it was. She had though it was mainly soft rubber, but it wasn’t: the straps were reinforced with tough metal wires and the part that went over her sex was a solid plate merely covered in rubber. The holes where the inflator tubes could be re-inserted were even threaded, as if something could be screwed in there. She hadn’t remembered it being so substantial, but it had been a year. She had probably forgotten.

She buckled the belt around her middle. That wasn’t so bad. It was quite broad, and fortunately it was shaped to the curve of her hips, where it sat very snugly. The metal boning would have made it very uncomfortable if it hasn’t been such a good fit.

Pulling the T-piece up between her legs felt a bit more final. However much she tried to downplay the truth of it, she worried how this thing would secure the suit and the panties in place. She wouldn’t even be able to get at the suit zip. If it got locked on by someone with a cruel sense of humour it couldn’t be removed with just a pair of scissors. It would need serious tools that were far beyond anything she possessed, let alone had with her. She was certain that it wasn’t going to be locked, but still...

She nervously reminded herself that there weren’t even any locks in the box. The original locks had all been ruined when the locksmith had cut them off Aneka with an electric grinder. Aneka had been weeping throughout the entire process and Jessica had been holding her hand. Aneka’s rubber clad fingers had dug into her with a desperate grip of fear as the high speed cutting disc had screamed and blown streams of bright hot sparks close to her most sensitive parts.

On top of what had happened to her, the fear of the grinder blade had been just too much. But why had Aneka drawn away after that? Jessica had tried to be her friend afterwards, but the next morning Aneka had stopped talking to her, stopped answering her calls and wouldn’t come to the door. There had to be some reason but what could it have been? Did she really hold her to blame?

She’d been down this trail of thought over and over throughout the last year, with the only conclusion being that, yes, Aneka did hold her responsible.

Returning to the present, Jessica buckled the T-piece of the belt in place. It actually helped reduce the stimulation from the panties, as the dildos were held more firmly inside her and less inclined to suck in and out as she moved. On the down side it made it painful to press her legs together, and made the gap between her legs at the top of her thighs so wide than even Jessica’s diminished modesty was offended.

The vinyl corset came next. As Jessica recalled from a year ago, it had only ten eyelets on each side and a single lace at the back. Jessica didn’t have time to thread that lace with her hands behind her back. When she’d put the corset on Aneka she hadn’t unfastened the busk. At the time she hadn’t even realised there was a busk, but now she could see it, formed from two metal plates that clipped together easily but were a devil to get apart. Hidden behind a clever concealing flap it was hard to spot unless you were looking for it.

After a struggle, Jessica unclipped the busk and wrapped the corset around her, trying it for size. It actually felt pretty loose and she easily closed the busk, working from top to bottom.

Now that it had hold of her, Jessica could feel the corset wasn’t the cheap sex toy it looked like at first glance. Underneath the glistening vinyl exterior was a good solid garment made of heavy fabric and boned with the usual flexible steel springs. Jessica knew the real thing from a toy, and though the lacing left something to be desired, this was no toy.

The long-line cut of the corset plunged down deep over her belly, preventing access to the buckles of the chastity belt. There was no way at all that the strong stainless steel busk would allow the front of the corset to be lifted up, even an inch. It came up close under her breasts, lifting and defining them, and there was a subtle shelf under each breast that lifted and thrust them forward even further.

A full over-bust corset would have felt more protective – less exposing – but this corset didn’t feel like armour, instead it put her on display. With her boobs sticking out so wantonly, like an invitation to passers-by to grab them, she felt more exposed than if she were simply naked.

Even though it had felt quite a loose fit when she first put it on, she must have been sucking in more than she realised. It felt tighter already, cupping her ribcage very snugly and pressing up under her boobs in a way that wouldn’t let it ride up much further at all. Any attempt to inch it upwards was quite uncomfortable. She tugged it down instead and it settled comfortably into place.

‘Comfortably’ was a relative term of course. Though the corset was not painful, it was quite stiff and unyielding. It kept her spine in an absolutely rigid position and she had no flexibility to reach forwards, twist or lean to either side.

Even standing up, the corset wouldn’t allow her to breathe deeply with her diaphragm, but that was no problem, as her heaving chest expanded to compensate, making her boobs move up and down in a rather suggestive manner.

The only way she could sit down was to spread her legs in a rather crude manner, and if she did sit down, even like that, the deep front would certainly dig into the tops of her thighs. Jessica quickly learned that this pressed it uncomfortably upwards, compressing her rib-cage as the narrowest part of the corset’s waist was forced up, resulting in an extreme restriction on her breathing.

Though Jessica had to admit that the incredible curving shape it gave to her figure was worth it, she would need to avoid sitting down in case her impaired breathing resulted in the stereotypical fainting fit that tightly laced ladies were allegedly prone to. Having worn corsets before with no such problems, Jessica had suspected such events were more likely caused by thyroid problems, but now she was not so sure.

Jessica checked her phone, which was lying on the table. She was out of time and she still didn’t have the gloves on. If the punctilious Aneka had said “on the dot” it hinted at negative consequences for tardiness. Anxiously, she rushed to complete her dressing.

Jessica was relieved that the first of the gloves pulled on more easily than she’d expected, sliding effortlessly over the rubber of the suit sleeve. The second glove was harder. The rubber in the hands was quite stiff and thick. She had little sensation and couldn’t grip well. Even bending her fingers was awkward and the little white rubber ‘cat claws’ kept getting in the way when she tried to grasp anything.

She was still pulling the upper part of the glove’s sleeve into place when she heard the sound of the storeroom door opening. Of course, she couldn’t see the door from where she was. Suddenly she noticed, that located in the centre of the room, people could approach her from any direction and she wouldn’t be able to see them coming. She was in a very exposed position and it was too late to move.

She strained her ears, trying to tell if there was more than one set of footsteps. It sounded like there was only one, but she couldn’t be certain. There was a distinctive click of heels, but if someone else had been moving on soft soles she wouldn’t know anything before they were almost on top of her.

She was suddenly dazzled by the blue flash of a camera. Lights swam before her eyes and then another flash dazzled her again. In the dimness of the storeroom she couldn’t see a thing after that bright light. Another flash went off before she could even think to speak.

“A-Aneka?” She asked haltingly?

“Hello Jess. I thought it would be really cute to have something to remember our night out by. I hope you don’t mind? You looked so hot, I couldn’t resist,” Aneka answered.

She turned the phone screen towards Jessica, showing her the final photo, but Jessica was still too dazzled to see much more than floating blue blobs of afterimage.

At least it was just Aneka … by herself … as far as Jessica could tell.

“Are you really ready to make up? You know I never intended anything bad to happen to you. You do know that don’t you? You know?” Jessica said.

“Something bad? Did something bad happen to me? Don’t be silly Jess, we were all just having fun, weren’t we? Just playing around?”

Jessica couldn’t decide what Aneka meant. The tone of her voice was perfectly modulated and gave nothing away. She could detect neither sarcastic anger, not forgiveness. Jessica felt her head spin. Aneka had taken pictures of her in the rubber outfit. If those went up on the internet she would be ruined. Aneka wouldn’t have started like that unless she had unwholesome intentions, would she?

Jessica couldn’t get control of her fear, and she was suddenly a bundle of nerves. The tension had been building in her for half an hour. Her hands were numb, she couldn’t pull on the glove. She couldn’t think straight. She needed to stop and think through what Aneka was doing but her mind just wouldn’t work.

“I didn’t put those other things on you. I don’t know how they got there. I don’t know. I just don’t know,” Jessica said. The floating blue circles were still there when Jessica closed her eyes.

“No, you just made me helpless with the arm-binder and left me there alone. Alone on Halloween in that rubber outfit. Seriously, what could go wrong? A ghost?” Aneka laughed.

“Obviously, there’s no such thing,” Jessica agreed, perhaps too eagerly.

“I don’t know for sure what will happen tonight but I really do want to reconnect. It’s been so hard to be alone Jess. So hard. You wouldn’t understand. But I was afraid. I didn’t know how to explain any of it. Maybe later you’ll see for yourself. It’s the only way… I think.”

“It was just a joke Annie. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just wanted you to let yourself feel something. To help you get past some inhibitions. I…” Jessica was starting to sob and the words wouldn’t come out clearly any longer.

Aneka put her phone down on the table and stepped forward, silencing Jessica with an embrace. Jessica was stunned to feel Aneka’s arms gently wrapped around her, holding her close.

After a few moments Jessica relaxed a little. Aneka was hugging her. That was good wasn’t it? She wasn’t angry after all? And her body, it felt so warm, so soft, pressed against the rubber and the firm unyielding shape of the corset.

Her eyes still closed, Jessica felt Aneka’s mouth hot and wet against hers, lips pressed on lips; a soft feminine cheek touched her own. It seemed perfectly natural to let Aneka’s tongue slide into her mouth, duelling playfully with hers.

The moment was shattered by Mandy’s voice.

“What the heck? You two should get a room.”

Jessica didn’t notice as Mandy slipped Aneka’s phone off the table. She hardly dared open her eyes, and when she did her mind was full of confusion and excuses, and then her attention was drawn to Mandy’s costume.

Though Jessica had known loosely what she was going to do, she hadn’t anticipated how well she would pull it off. Mandy always produced the best costumes, she should have expected that this year would be no exception.

She was dressed as a fairy, as some might say a fairy godmother, but fairy slut was what sprung into Jessica’s mind. Mandy had gone with a hot pink theme, and Jessica was not the only one wearing latex.

Mandy was dressed in a second skin of polished hot-pink rubber, so thin and stretchy that it would have left absolutely nothing to the imagination without the addition of some strategically placed sparkles, and a short frothy tulle skirt that blended seamlessly into a pale pink rubber corset-bodice with built-in demi-cups.

Four diaphanous wings extended behind her, and her extreme pink up-do, with more sparkles, looked like a huge budding flower. A pair of pink, heart-shaped sunglasses were pushed up on her forehead and she had a fairy wand in one hand and the other was behind her back, quickly secreting Aneka’s phone into the top of her bodice.

“Mandy? I didn’t think you were coming,” Jessica said. The words sounded stupid to her as soon as they were out of her mouth.

“Oh ye of little faith. It isn’t easy getting results like this you know,” Mandy said, gesturing to herself with an exaggerated motion. “I was right behind Aneka so I knew I was on time, but it looks like you two are fine by yourselves.”

Mandy looked incredible. Jessica didn’t know where to look – her gaze was all over the place – but her attention kept coming back to those incredibly brief demi-cups.

“It’s not what you think,” Jessica said, but her face was flushed, glistening with sweat, and the scent of her arousal was obvious to everyone in the room.

Aneka said nothing but gave a smirk and the kind of sniff that was as good as saying ‘it is exactly what you think’.

“I came down here to save you from Aneka. We both know that she has no intention of treating us like friends, or even human beings, but you’re so blinded with guilt that you’re ready to let her wreck your life just to even things out. Look, something bad happened, but Jessica, it wasn’t your fault. Letting evil Annie bully you into humiliating yourself won’t make things any better. It will make them worse,” Mandy said, her voice suddenly quite serious.

“But…” Jessica mumbled. She’d know exactly what she was going to say and then the sensation of the little rubber fingers on her nipples had blown it right out of her head.

Aneka stepped forward, almost putting herself between Mandy and Jessica.

“Even after what you just said Mandy, I really do want to make up.”

“Pull the other one,” Mandy said laughingly.

“Is that jealousy? You don’t feel left out do you?” Aneka said.

“Are you delusional as well as bitchy? Whatever you two have got going on… I don’t swing that way. I should have seen there was something going on between you two, way back. Talk about hidden in plain sight. Now I get what this whole thing has been about from the start. Finally, it makes perfect sense that you were both so worked up about it.”

“Mandy…” Jessica said, trying to deny it. She knew it was wrong. She knew it wasn’t true, but whatever she said now would just make it seem like it was.

“So you can count me out of your revenge party Aneka, and as of now, I really am out of it.”

“It doesn’t have to be goodbye you know?” Aneka said.

Jessica looked from one to the other, confused. The damn dildo pants just wouldn’t let her get her thoughts in order.

“Jess, I quit after Annie’s little hissy-fit earlier, and they don’t want me to work my notice. Tomorrow is my last day. I won’t be back next week. I’ve got a job doing make-up and costumes on a movie. A good one. And I figure even if the money is worse at least I’ll enjoy myself and put my talent to some use instead of wasting my life sending out invoices and taking shit.”

“Oh,” said Jessica. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Mandy said. “Now Annie, are you going to do the decent thing and leave Jess to get changed back into her clothes? She really would have gone through with this bee-ess, just to prove how much you mean to her. That has to count for something, right?”

Aneka narrowed her eyes at Mandy for an instant, and then relaxed.

“Good choice of costume Mandy. It’s really worked out for you. You’re right of course. I need to leave, but so does Jessica. I can’t go on working with her, always wondering if everyone is laughing at me behind my back.”

“I… My job?” Jessica said. She could hardly keep her mind on the conversation, even though she knew it had turned to serious matters.

“If you put your notice in, I promise you a great reference. Not just from me, I’ll get the boss to write one. You could get a better job. It’s time you moved on anyway.”

“I don’t understand you Annie. Haven’t for a year now,” Mandy said.

Aneka looked around, as if trying to remember something she’d forgotten, then strode out of the room. After a few seconds Jessica heard the door clicking shut behind her.

Mandy pulled Aneka’s phone out of her bodice and thumbed the screen.

“Good old Annie still has the same passcode…”

Jessica put a rubber-gloved hand down to her crotch and gripped herself. She could hardly feel a thing. There was no way, no way at all, that she could get herself off wearing the heavy belt, but she could take it off now. She really could, if only she could remember how. She felt dizzy and there were white spots before her eyes even though she wasn’t dazzled any longer.

Mandy dropped the phone back on the table.

“There you go, naughty photos deleted. You’re off the hook. No need to thank me. You look kinda beat. Get changed. I told Edith I’d meet her at Slaughterhouse in fifteen, so I better get a wiggle on. Give me a call if you feel well enough to meet up later.”

Jessica couldn’t speak. She was trying to breathe. Yes, that was what she’d forgotten to do: breathe. Somehow the corset had got awfully tight and try as she might she could hardly get any air in. Mandy turned away and walked out, apparently oblivious to the quiet, slow-motion collapse that took place behind her.

* * * * *

Jessica’s vision returned, still blurry. She couldn’t remember where she was, and then it all came rushing back to her: the storeroom, Aneka, Mandy… Aneka’s phone.

She went to get up to check the phone but her hand pulled up short and she couldn’t use it to help her rise. She lay back down and took some time to get her wind. There was an awful pressure in her insides like she desperately needed to poo but couldn’t. Her bum-hole was burning like it was on fire. There was something on her face, tightly gripping her head. Her neck ached and she felt overall weird and disoriented.

Gradually, her vision cleared and her thoughts gained some semblance of order. She was lying on her back, still in the suit, completely encased in rubber. She was hot and sweaty from her head to her toes.

 Her wrists were wrapped with heavy rubber cuffs that were locked in place with substantial padlocks – the heavy brass kind with shiny chrome-steel shackle, not little toy ones – heavy and nearly two inches across. The same two locks also passed through the D-rings on the corset, restraining her wrists at her sides and making it impossible for her to move her hands more than a few inches from her waist.

Jessica managed to struggle to her feet without the help of her hands. It was no easy feat with the stiff boots. Aneka’s phone was gone, as was hers, but her purse remained.

Knowing it was futile, she searched around looking for some keys, even looking in the box that still held the black rubber arm-binder. The hood was gone. Of course it was, she was wearing it. It was covering her face. She should have realised earlier but her thoughts felt sluggish: the dildos were starting to make her aroused again instead of just sore and it was hard to concentrate on anything but that.

She remembered the hood from when Aneka had worn it. It had moulded cat ears sticking up, white painted on whiskers and a cute little nose button. There was room for hair to spill out of a hole at the back and she imagined that her hair had been threaded through it and was sticking out in a pony-tail, though she couldn’t feel it, probably because of all the rubber she was wearing. All she could feel was the pain in her ass and the hungry lustful frustration down in her belly that grew worse with every move.

There were no keys of course, but on top of the box was a hand-written note.

“If you want your keys, you know where I live,” it said.

There was no signature, but Jessica knew the handwriting. Aneka must have come back for her phone and found her unconscious on the floor. Now Jessica was really feeling the weight of poetic justice. She had tricked and bound Aneka last year, and now it was her turn to suffer a similar fate.

She had no intention of taking Aneka up on her offer. She didn’t need the padlock keys to get free. She had her purse. She would go straight to the locksmith’s and then home. A repeat of Aneka’s night last year in that respect too. Oh. The dildos inside her still seemed to be growing. It had to be an illusion.

The dildos jammed themselves into her train of thought, and for a while she could think of nothing else but those inflatable intruders. There was no trace of the squeeze bulbs or their tubes, but she could feel that somebody had used them enthusiastically.

She had pumped the dildos to the bare minimum needed to get them in, and that’d been more than enough, but now they felt as if they were pumped up as far as they’d go. They took up so much room inside her that they’d forced her belly outwards against the confines of the corset and put pressure on her breathing from below. It brought a new meaning to the phrase ‘uncomfortable bloating’.

She looked around for her clothes. They had vanished apart from her coat which was where she’d left it under the table. She could at least cover herself with that if she could get it over her shoulders somehow, even if she couldn’t put her arms through the sleeves.

She checked her purse and almost burst into tears. Her house keys, her cards and money were gone. Only her travel card remained, all by itself and in the wrong compartment.

If you want your keys… Aneka hadn’t meant the keys to the padlocks. Jessica had no credit-card to pay the locksmith, and there was nobody else able to let her into her well secured flat with its no-duplicate keys. She had no choice but to take up Aneka’s invitation.

* * * * *

Jessica couldn’t believe that she was riding on a train in nothing but her coat and her pornographic Halloween costume. With her hands locked to her waist she needed both of them to keep the long black coat wrapped around her. She could reach far enough to do up one button but that wasn’t enough to stop the coat sliding from her shoulders.

She had to tough it through the embarrassment. She was utterly humiliated and felt lower than the low but she couldn’t give up now. What was her alternative?

Women were giving her disapproving stares, despite the fact it was Halloween and she obviously had a costume on, and the looks from men were worse. Everyone seemed to suspect her secret. Perhaps it was the way she kept squirming, or the way her breath came in quick little pants. It couldn’t be the way her chest was heaving, at least that was hidden under the coat.

As she had feared, sitting down required her to spread her legs and forced the corset up uncomfortably, forcing her breasts out and making her fight for every breath. She feared another fainting fit but so far she’d been ok. When she blacked out earlier she’d probably been hyperventilating from the stress of the encounter with Aneka… That and the stimulation from the panties, which still kept her constantly on a frustrated, sopping wet edge.

The little nubs teasing her nipples were the worst now she was sitting down. Walking the short distance to the station had been murder on her over-stuffed lower regions. It would be more tolerable if she could stand up on the train, but she daren’t try it without her hands free to steady herself.  Her weight, jamming the plug in her ass hard into her wasn’t so bad compared to walking.

The train stopped. People were getting on. It was just one more stop to her destination. Once off the train she would still have to walk to Aneka’s flat. Normally it would take five minutes but she suspected that with the suit and the boots hindering her at every step it might take three times that.

She smelled her problem before she saw it. It was the stink of stale beer, sour sweat, and something else she suspected was a mixture of cum and urine: an ammonia reek that made her eyes water.

Jessica had been intent on the sensations wracking her body. The smell made her glance up from her introspection, searching for the source of the funk. She looked straight into the man’s face, immediately making eye contact. He had sat down right in front of her and she hadn’t even noticed.

The seat to her side, nearer the aisle was empty and she shifted over to get away from him. With a grin he quickly swapped to the warm seat she’d just vacated, putting himself right next to her, his legs pressed against hers.

“Mmmm, thanks for warming it up,” he said.

Aneka pretended to be fascinated by something in the opposite direction but she’d already seen that he was rough, with short-shaved hair, wearing a white t-shirt covered in food stains, paint-spattered, faded jeans with the knees out and a pair of beat-up old work-boots.

 “Are you OK lady?” He said.

She knew he was going to be persistent. He was looking at the way she was holding her coat shut from inside. Staring at her hands, or perhaps her breasts, he adjusted his baseball cap, which advertised a cheap brand of rum.

His eyes were partially hidden behind a pair of incongruously expensive-looking wrap-around sunglasses but at this distance she could see through the dark lenses to the darting eyes beneath; eyes that seemed to look straight through to her secrets with every furtive movement.

“Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey! Look at me. Look. At. Me. Hey, lady!” He said, his increasingly threatening words escalating in volume.

Jessica was terribly afraid that if she didn’t do what he asked he would hurt her, and she was completely helpless and unable to defend herself.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“Sorry? ‘Course you are. You should be, things you’ve done.”

“What?”

“C’mon. What’s wrong? Talk to me. I’m just trying to be your friend here. You look like you need a friend. Some help…”

“I’m fine. Really,” Jessica said, but she didn’t sound too convincing.

She wasn’t fine. She wasn’t fine at all. She was terrified and the damn suit wouldn’t let her think, lousy corset wouldn’t let her breathe. She felt so full down there. If she could only cum it would be alright. If she could cum she’d be able to think straight and the insistent buzzing noise in her head would stop.

“Hey,” he said again.

He put his hand on her thigh, squeezing it, feeling the rubber through the vinyl boots. Jessica nearly gagged at the smell of him and glanced down at his wiry, muscly arm with its pale blue prison tattoos and grey, sticking-out veins. Jessica shivered involuntarily. With his weight on her thigh, she couldn’t even stand up to get away.

“Please, would you let go of my leg?” She said.

“Sure,” he said, and there was an unsettling confidence in his voice, like he’d figured out all the angles and how to make them work for him.

He moved his hand from her leg to her breast. Where his skin touched the rubber the contact felt hot, overheated but pleasantly tingling.

Jessica didn’t say anything. She simply whimpered, her breath coming in short hot pants. Part of her wanted him to go away, but another part of her relished the heat of his touch and wanted more, it wanted him to squeeze her nipple between his knuckles.

He did exactly that, and for a while at least he limited himself to rolling and squeezing at her nipple. Jessica had to bite down on her lip to keep from crying out in pleasure and distress.

When he changed up to kneading and crushing her breast in his big, powerful hand, she wondered if she was finally going to cum. It hurt, yes it hurt, but it went right to that itch she couldn’t scratch. She could feel her excitement rising up inside her, one wave following another. If only he’d use both hands, one on each boob she’d be able to finish it.

Time seemed to be frozen, the moment extended forever. Jessica was seriously considering asking him to grab her other breast. She couldn’t reach them herself or she would have done.

Then she felt the train slowing down. This was her stop.

She jumped to her feet, wrenching her breast from his grip and almost falling over. The man jumped back, then eased back in his seat, suddenly nonchalant as if nothing had happened.

“Nice meetin’ yer lady. Until next time eh?”

Jessica dare not answer, stumbling awkwardly towards the door, lurching back and forth as the train came to a halt, unable to steady herself with her hands.

“Hey, don’t ignore me. Stuck-up bitch!” He yelled angrily as she threw herself out of the opening door.

* * * * *

With the heels, and the boots, and the corset, the walk to Aneka’s flat was exhausting and Jessica was out of breath, hot, and awash in her own fluids by the time she got there. Her head was pounding with a headache that seemed to be developing into a migraine.

Her thoughts were so jumbled she couldn’t even remember if she’d been afraid walking the streets alone in the dark. She’d hardly seen anyone out on the empty suburban streets. There was nothing but parked cars and the occasional sound of a party coming from a house with all the windows lit up; bright, safe worlds from which she was excluded.

Jessica’s feet were soaking wet prunes in the rubber socks and vinyl boots, and when she arrived at the door to Aneka’s apartment building her feet were raw agony, probably a mess of blisters. It felt like every part of her was aching, stiff or sore from her gritty eyeballs down. She liked her rubber fetish in small exciting doses and this had become more than she could bear.

Aneka’s intercom button was too high to reach with her hands and too deeply recessed to use her chin. She had to press it somehow and though it revolted her, she resorted to using her tongue to press it in. She had to put the weight of her head behind it. She could taste something horrible bitter and oily, and the back of her mouth ached, but she got the button down and held it, drooling onto the intercom panel.

“Who is it?” Said the crackling voice.

“It’s Jess. Let me in Annie. Please. You win. I’ve had a terrible night. You don’t know how awful it’s been.”

Aneka didn’t answer, and Jessica fought back tears, but finally there was a buzz followed by a sharp, echoing click. Jessica pawed desperately at the doorhandle, losing her coat in the process, but dragging the door open just in time. It closed behind her, her coat trapped in it, snagged on something sharp. Stumbling with her stiff legs, the coat around her feet, she felt as if she might fall flat on her face, no way to save herself. Then she heard a rip as her heel tore free. The coat was ruined but at least she remained upright.

Abandoning the torn remains of her coat, she hurried up two flights of stairs, filled with a new burst of energy. Finally, on the second floor – the top floor – her spike heels clicked on the concrete beneath the thin commercial carpeting. She walked past three other flats and found herself at the end of the hallway, in front of an old familiar door and the pounding in her head seemed to get louder.

So many times she’d come to this door for Aneka and it had opened with a smiling welcome. It looked like those days were long gone. She hadn’t been here in over a year, but nothing much had changed. Nothing obvious, though perhaps it all looked a little bit more worn out and run-down. It wasn’t like the place had gone down-hill; just that it had aged another year. Was that how the world saw her too? Nothing more than a stupid bimbo another year older, a few more wrinkles, and nothing to show for it?

Jessica gave a quiet moan. Those thoughts weren’t even hers. Where were they coming from? All she could think of was getting some release from this damn frustrating suit with its awful belt and its horrible corset and its disgusting sticky hood that was making her eyes burn as some caustic chemical leached out of it into her sweat and tears.

Something moved inside her and she almost buckled at the knees. She probably would have fallen if it weren’t for the stiffness of the boots holding her up.

Her head span. The waves inside her were more than she could handle but she still couldn’t cum. She’d almost forgotten where she was when the door opened.

Aneka was standing there in a black silk dressing-gown with a fancy red dragon pattern. It was tightly belted at the waist, used as a bath-robe. Her feet and legs were bare. She smelled of shampoo and perfumed bath oils. The clean, just washed smell reminded Jessica how filthy she was inside the suit.

“Come on in,” Aneka said. Jessica had no alternative but to comply.

Aneka closed the door behind her, then locked it and put the chain on. Jessica wanted to say something about that, but the hunger in her crotch wouldn’t let her.

“So, you say I don’t know how awful it’s been? How could you forget that I do? You have no idea. You’re only beginning. Just wait and see where it goes afterwards,” she said.

“Please. I’m sorry Annie. Don’t do any more to me. I can’t take it. I know you only wanted me to know how you felt. Please just get this thing off me.”

“I might do that for you, if I could. But I need you to do something for me.”

“Whatever you want. Anything. I’ll do anything,” Jessica said.

“Yeah… Come in here,” Aneka said.

Jessica followed her from the cramped hallway into the main living-area. It wasn’t a big place, but the main open-plan living-space and kitchen were quite roomy. There was a bedroom, a large bathroom with laundry and a big storage closet that had been full of horse-riding gear and sports equipment when Jessica last visited. If you stood in the right spot you could see into every room in the place.

“Sit down and take the weight off. I remember those boots aren’t gentle on your feet, even though the heels don’t look so bad at first,” Aneka said, gesturing to the stylish leather sofa that had not been present last time Jessica had visited.

“I know. I really am sorry, and not just because I’ve had a taste of what you went through. I didn’t have to put the suit on in the first place, but I did it for you. Are we even now?”

“It’s not about revenge Jess. It was never about that… After all, I ordered that suit and I put it on of my own accord. You were hardly involved at all if I look at it rationally.” Aneka’s face seemed caught on the edge of an emotion. Jessica couldn’t tell if she was about to burst into tears, or scream at her, or perhaps it was nothing at all – just a crick in her jaw or something in her eye.

“I never wanted to involve you in this but that’s why I had to. It sounds nonsense but you’ll understand one day. It wears you down Jess. It wears you down and if finds the thing that breaks you and makes you do it every time.”

“What? Sorry. Could you undo these padlocks? And my keys…”

Aneka gave an unexpected smile. “I guess I don’t want you to rush off, but it’s not like that’s going to happen.” She dropped a shiny new padlock-key into Jessica’s hand. “Here, the key.”

With some considerable effort Jessica was able to get herself unlocked and her hands free. She put her hands to her face and felt the cat-face of the hood. She tugged at it experimentally but it wouldn’t move.

Her pins-and-needles-numb fingers slid down the hood to find a heavy leather collar tight about her neck, covering any access to the junction of the suit and the hood. She hadn’t even realised she was wearing a collar until now, even though it was at least two inches deep. There was a heavy metal D-ring at the front. Everyone on the train would have seen it. No wonder they had stared. Jessica wanted to crawl under the sofa in shame.

Aneka said nothing, but got up and went over to the stone counter where a bottle of red wine stood open with a pair of glasses. She filled the two large glasses to the brim, emptying the bottle almost to the cloudy dregs and sat back down on the sofa holding a glass in each hand.

She offered a glass to Jessica who was fumbling to undo the stiff buckle at the back of her neck by feel, with no success.

Jessica took the offered glass, out of politeness, even though she would prefer to work on the collar.

“I really need some water. I’m so dehydrated from the storeroom and now… This suit is so hot.”

“Isn’t it though? Especially down there,” Aneka said putting her hand suggestively on the heavy rubber and metal chastity belt that covered Jessica’s aching crotch.

Jessica couldn’t feel Aneka’s touch at all, even though she arched back against the hand instinctively before she could stop herself. It was all she could do not to spill wine everywhere. So what if she had, it wasn’t like she could get any wetter.

Still embarrassed, and her mind still whirling from the temptations of being in the suit. The suit that would never, ever, let her forget her sexual urgency, Jessica gulped down a big mouthful of wine.

“Oh god. You must think I’m such a slut, but it’s this suit. It really gets to you.”

“That’s right,” Aneka said.

“Do you think maybe you could undo the collar for me?”

“If this was some kinky bondage story, you’d realise about now that there’s a drug in that wine and the next thing you know…” Aneka said, ignoring Jessica’s request.

Jessica gave a weak laugh. “Yeah. I used to joke about catching you like that all the time.” Her mind wasn’t really on conversation. She was wondering if maybe she could change out of the suit, rub herself crazy in Aneka’s shower and then borrow some ordinary clothes to go home in.

“It’s just wine,” Aneka said. “It has alcohol in it, but no magic knock-out drops.”

Aneka took a large drink of her wine, then paused, only to start drinking again and empty the glass. Without thinking about it Jessica took another drink herself. It was good wine, and the heat of it was already seeping through her body, easing the tension and cramps that she had built up from wearing the tight constricting outfit. It was even taking the edge off her headache.

Aneka put her glass down on the floor, and as she turned back to face Jessica, she moved in close. Her hand touched Jessica’s face, gently turning it, and then her lips were on Jessica’s, burning with passion.

The kiss wasn’t like the one from the storeroom. There was nothing delicate about it, instead it was hot, lustful and demanding. Jessica could feel that Aneka was as desperate to taste her mouth as Jessica was to cum.

Jessica wanted to break away from the kiss, she knew she ought to – knew that she had to or else things were going to get out of hand – but she could let it go on just a little longer before she had to act. And then before she realized, it was too late. She was light-headed and dizzy, too weak to even move. Aneka’s hand was on her breast sending electricity through her nipples on a wire straight to her soaking wet pussy. She could no more resist her than she could deny her need to cum.

When Aneka grabbed the other breast and began to knead it, crushing the fibrous firmness inside it and delivering equal parts pain and pleasure, Jessica knew that she was lost. Fantasies drifted through her head of Aneka keeping her as a slave, bound to the bed and punished with sex, or waiting on her mistress hand and foot, broken and servile. They were just silly thoughts. She’d played with them before, knowing such games might be fun for a week or two but would soon become boring, even for Aneka.

The next thing Jessica knew, Aneka was straddling her, her robe open to reveal her nakedness beneath, blushing and full of heat. Hands deftly manoeuvred Jessica onto her back on the sofa. Aneka had her pinned down, kneeling on top of her, leaving a sticky glistening trail on the front of the vinyl corset as she slowly slid forward, putting more and more weight on Jessica’s belly and chest.

Aneka supported herself with her hands on Jessica’s breasts playing with them in a way that was at once cruel and wonderful, one moment pinching, twisting and tugging on a nipple, another kneading and squeezing. The suit was so tight, and her breasts, trapped within the rubber, were so flushed with blood and awash with sensitivity that it felt to Jessica that all the attention had made them swell up two sizes.

Between the pressure on her chest and the even greater weight on her abdomen, Jessica had to fight for every breath. The corset seemed to be tightening somehow, cutting off what little air remained, keeping her weak, helpless and dizzy. Was it real, or was she simply unwilling to resist. Jessica doubted herself at every turn. What was Aneka doing to her?

Then Aneka slid forward, putting her full weight on her chest. Stopping there, she shrugged off the robe completely and arched her head back, squirming and twisting on Jessica’s chest, rubbing her dripping pussy all over Jessica’s breasts. The musky odour was overwhelming.

Jessica thought she was going to black out from shortness of breath. The corset held her body like a vice with an impossibly even pressure, tightening down on her relentlessly, squeezing her from her hips up to enclose her waist and her entire ribcage in an unyielding beautiful hourglass.

Aneka slid forward again, pinning Jessica’s arms beneath her. The incredible hot moistness of Aneka’s pussy engulfed Jessica’s face, and she felt that she surely would suffocate now.

“Lick me. Suck me. Make me cum. Make me cum Jess. Make me fucking cum. I’ve waited a year for this,” Aneka growled. Tears were streaming down her face but Jessica couldn’t see them. “Oh, you better make me cum. You’ll get your reward don’t worry. You’ll cum too… Like never before. I know you want it.”

Jessica felt like she was vanishing into darkness. Before she could slip into oblivion, Aneka lifted herself up. Jessica panted desperately for much needed air.

A sharp pain in Jessica’s bottom shocked her out of the half-conscious, oxygen deprived, daydream state and into full and complete gasping alertness.

“Did you feel it then? Did it hurt? You better follow the script or it will get worse. Put that tongue to work like you mean it.”

How had Aneka induced such pain? Surely it was her work: the sudden swelling pulse of the inflatable plug in her ass had stretched her sphincter almost past the point of no return. Another millimetre and she could swear she would have ripped. Her ass was still in spasm.

Encouraged by another threatening twinge of pain, Jessica pushed her tongue out and into Aneka’s waiting slit. Her nose and now her mouth were full of the essence of her. It was in her eyes, stinging. She was drowning in the stuff, and it seemed to flow, not normally but in a flood that dribbled down her face in rivulets and pooled on the black leather of the sofa beneath her head so that she was lying in it.

Jessica had never tried to please another woman before, but she knew what felt good to her, and so she was kind to the oversized polyp that passed for Aneka’s clit. The last time she’d seen such a clit was on some worn-out porn star in a fetish movie one of her nastier boyfriends had made her watch. It was so different from her own tiny little nodule, that even fully engorged was barely more than a pimple beneath the skin.

Jessica had never seen Aneka naked, never considered that she had such a … thing … nestling down there between her legs. Yes, she was kind and gentle to that engorged sex organ, sucking it gently, tonguing it teasingly, but she was not so kind to the dangling, distended lips that surrounded it, treating them roughly as Aneka had treated her breasts before.

The more Jessica brutalized those lips, the more they swelled dark with blood. She knew it must hurt, but she it had to be ecstasy too. She could tell by the way that Aneka squirmed and moaned, making no secret of her enjoyment, and her enthusiasm was infectious.

Even though Jessica knew she was plugged by twin dildos, encased in tight gripping rubber pants, themselves trapped beneath a thick, skin-tight suit, and then strapped over with a rubber covered metal plate, she could swear she felt something move inside her like she was being fucked. It wasn’t the pump and slide of the dildos she’d experienced before – that could only serve to infuriated and frustrate her – that could only take her to the edge and hold her there, desperate. No, this was a true fucking and the promise of relief.

It felt like a huge penis or dildo, hot and ribbed with deep ridges that magnified every tiny movement. Jessica knew she had to be imagining it, because nothing – nobody – could get past that chastity. It has to be Aneka’s skill with the inflators. She hadn’t seen her attach them, but that had to be it. It was the only explanation.

She certainly wasn’t going to complain about it. It was exactly what she wanted. She couldn’t see anything down there of course. Mostly she was in darkness, occasionally treated to a flash of light and a glimpse of Aneka’s pussy poised above her.

The more Jessica worked on Aneka, and the more Aneka writhed and moaned and twisted on top of her, throwing herself about, dervish wild, as if she was trying to snap her own spine, the more intense Jessica’s fucking became.

Jessica had thought she knew what it was like to be filled when she’d woken up with the inflated dildos inside her. Now she knew that she’d been wrong. Now… Now she knew what it was to be filled.

It felt as if she was being split apart; only absurd comparisons could describe the essence of it, like the cock up her ass was going to touch the back of her throat. She was feeling things in parts of her insides she hadn’t known she possessed and which certainly weren’t intended to be sexually stimulated.

There was overwhelming pleasure but there was also pain. It hurt, oh yes it hurt, but it was a good hurt and one she was more than ready for. She knew she’d pay for it later, but right now it was exactly what she needed. The tense knotted frustration that had been building in her for hours was hungry for exactly what she was getting and there was no way she could stop until it was sated.

She was being stretched and stretched, and the nubs massaging her clit were doing something more – perhaps there had been something built into the suit – a clamp maybe, something that felt like a mouth with tiny sharp teeth sucking on her clit like a vacuum sucking it into a hot, ribbed tube. Her sex and the flesh around it was being stimulated in ways and to extremities that she’d never dared believe survivable.

The jagged teeth dug in on her clit and her nipples, sending arcs of electric agony and pleasure shooting along her spine, and she was only barely aware that Aneka was having an orgasm of such ferocity on top of her that her screams would surely be heard two streets away.

Jessica could feel the pulsing waves of release flowing through Aneka but she didn’t care because it felt as if she were being mercilessly fucked and pounded by two giant dildos, one at least two inches across and the other even larger, and both ribbed – no, ridged so that they almost tore her with every thrust in – with swollen tips that were like sucking mouths, and at the same time somebody had taken the hose from a powerful vacuum-cleaner and stuck it on her clit, but the hose was eating her, voraciously devouring her.

When she finally came, Jessica washed by a wonderful cold darkness that was also unbearably hot. With each wave of relief she released a guttural shriek that tore her throat. This is what the heart of a star feels like, Jessica told herself, and then all thought ceased.

Afterwards, she lay quiet for a while, Aneka slumped on top of her, almost as exhausted. As her mind began to fill with something other than beautiful silence, Jessica knew that she was ruined for sex ever after. Nothing in her past experience could compare to what had just happened, and it was impossible that anything so intense could be repeated. It had been pure lust and desperation, and utterly empty and loveless act of self-satisfaction. But what was wrong with that? That was how people behaved after all. People were bastards.

With her afterglow fading, Jessica slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.

* * * * *

When she came to, Jessica found herself naked and alone in a room she only half recognized. She’d seen Aneka’s bedroom many times in the past, all quite innocently, but this time was different.

Aneka had done a little remodelling. The stuffed toys were gone. Her once white ceiling was covered in mirror tiles. Her little single bed had been replaced with a king-sized monstrosity that took up most of the room. It was all black cast-iron and brass trimmings, heavy and solid as a Victorian original. The posts reached up high enough to support a canopy, though there was none; there were only chrome steel chains with straps hanging from them.

A red scarf had been draped over the once prized tiffany lamp on the bedside table, and that dim light was all there was to see by. The windows were blacked out and covered in heavy red drapes so that not a single mote of sunlight could get in. Jessica had no idea if it was night or day.

The sheets were smooth black rubber, streaked with crusts of feminine secretions and black dried blood, some had obviously come from Jessica herself, while others were less easy to account for.

Jessica looked up at herself in the mirror and saw herself with fresh eyes: a skinny, dissipated slut with tits a size too big for her body, her hair shaved down to stubble. Her body was covered in red welts and marks, and there was a purple swelling between her legs where her clit ought to be and there were bloody hand-marks all over her legs.

Jessica hurt like hell, every mark on her body had a matching pain but there were hurts that didn’t show up in the mirror. The true pain inside her was more than physical. It was as if something she missed had been torn out of her, and though she had not died she wondered if there would be any point living without whatever it was that was lost.

By the state of them, Aneka must have used sharp crocodile clamps on her nipples. Not even her scum-bag boyfriends had messed her up this badly, but her hair… When had that happened? It had probably been back in the storeroom. What a bitch. The other things she could cover up, but everyone would know what had been done to her hair.

Jessica dragged herself to her feet with the help of a bed post. After a few seconds the dizziness passed, and she shuffled bow-legged to the door. There was a white towelling robe hanging on the back of it but she lacked the energy to reach for it or look for any other clothes. She let herself into the living area. She had to confront Aneka while the indignation was fresh in her mind.

The bright light of the morning sun made her screw up her eyes as it streamed between the slats of the still-closed venetian blinds. Aneka was sitting at the dining table eating a small bowl of muesli, a tiny glass of orange juice beside her. Jessica’s stomach knotted up. She didn’t want to be reminded of food.

Jessica didn’t know what to say. She wanted to explode at Aneka with furious indignation at how she’d been treated, but looking at her, she could see that Aneka had no hint of guilt or even satisfaction. She was acting as if everything was perfectly normal; as if nothing had happened. Jessica felt her resolve evaporating in the daylight.

Aneka nodded towards the door.

“I have to leave soon. It’s still a work-day you know. You can rest up here until you feel better. I’ll tell them you’re sick. You can hand in your notice on Monday.”

Jessica reached up a hand to rub her head. It felt chilly under her fingers, like somebody else’s head. Aneka had stolen her beautiful hair. Surely she should have something to say about that? Jessica couldn’t come up with the right words. With her terrible thirst and dry cracked throat she wondered if she could even speak.

 “What if I don’t want to leave?” Jessica said, surprising herself. She would be more than happy to leave, why would she even argue? All the things she ought to say, and she ended up spitting out the most useless and inappropriate thing.

“I uploaded those pictures to my private area the moment I took them, so Mandy’s little deleting spree didn’t achieve anything. If you go quietly I’ll delete them, but I will make them public if you force me to do it.”

Jessica had no reply. Remembering her terrible thirst she hobbled into the kitchen and took a glass from the shelf. Freezing water sprayed everywhere as she clumsily pushed the tap on too far.

“Shit,” she said. The icy droplets ran down her naked body, cutting tracks through the grimy coating of dried lube, talc and sweat.

Aneka returned to her muesli, completely indifferent to the naked woman in her kitchen.

Jessica chugged down water, one glass and then another. She filled the glass a third time and brought it to the table.

“What did you do to me? Are you a sadist now? Is this what you do to people all the time?” She finally managed to croak.

“I didn’t do anything. The suit was the one that messed you up. The suit you put on of your own accord.”

“That’s an absurd lie. You drugged me and then beat me with a tawse or something. I saw the blood on the bed.”

“Most of that is mine, from earlier this the week.”

“I should have you charged with assault.”

“Good luck trying that one,” Aneka said in a bored and utterly dismissive tone.

“I could –” Jessica began. Aneka cut her off, easily trampling over her complaint.

“Listen. You need to know this. Maybe there’s a chance you can avoid the worst of it…”

“Of what?”

“The suit is a curse, a demon that hates everybody and annihilates happiness. From now on you won’t be able to feel even the tiniest hint of joy or pleasure on any night but Halloween. I don’t just mean sex either, the sex thing will be the most obvious. And when you finally do feel something, a year from now, it will be cold, brutal, greedy empty lust that eats away what’s left of your ravaged soul.”

“You need help,” Jessica said weakly, but her assertion lacked confidence. Even though Aneka’s words sounded insane, something resonated with her.

“I’m trying to help you here. Don’t you see why I couldn’t tell you or Mandy what happened to me? The first night was bad enough, but it didn’t stop there. Things kept happening. There was no point whining to anyone, all that would do was get me was dismissed as an attention-seeking nut-job. That’s something you should bear in mind before you go running to the police, or trauma counselling, or whatever stupid idea is in your head right now. Once you get tainted with that, there’s no way back.”

“You witch.”

“Closer to the truth than you know. I didn’t even understand it myself at the time. It’s taken me a year to work out the little I know. You’re lucky that you have me to help you like this.”

“Lucky? I’m too tired for this shit.”

“You’ll see. It gets in your head. It got in the moment your skin touched that rubber. And where do you think it is now? I didn’t take it off you. The suit isn’t lying in a box somewhere. It’s inside you, waiting for its chance to find some new way to ruin your life.”

“You should listen to yourself.”

“It won’t stop at this. It will torture you, twenty-four-seven, for the rest of the year, maybe beyond… I don’t know about that yet…” She said, pausing. Jessica simply shook her head in denial but she continued anyway.

“On Halloween it will come out, and if you want to cum… I can promise that you will want to cum, you will want to more than a junkie wants a fix. If you want to cum you will find a victim to put that suit on of their own free will and they’ll be sucked into the curse too. And then, what if you can’t find a victim? What then? But there’s a lot of time before that happens and the things it will make you do before that… After that… Screwing someone over won’t seem so bad, unless it’s your best friend of course.”

Jessica looked down, there was blood on the seat. She knew she should react somehow, but she lacked the energy. Besides, what was the point of panicking?

“I need to get to a doctor. Scratch that. I need a hospital.”

“No you don’t. You’ll heal up fine. It will heal injuries that you’ll wish were fatal while you endure agony so extreme that afterwards everything else feels like nothing. It likes you to feel pain. Maybe it feeds on it. Pain is one thing that takes the edge off the real hurt inside, one of the things it will let you have, but it won’t let you die and it sure won’t let you kill yourself. On the plus-side, when you stop being so afraid of the pain it loses interest in that kind of torture but you can’t win because it changes up. When it can’t get to you with physical things it finds other ways to make you… Then you wish that it was just hurting your body.”

“You’re full of crap. Look at me. I’ll never be able to wear a swimsuit again. I’ll get blood poisoning or something or bleed to death.”

“You won’t. It’s nothing. By tomorrow the open wounds will have closed. They’re hardly more than scratches anyway. In a week, most of the pain will be gone. Here…”

She stood up and grabbed a steak-knife from the block on the counter. Jessica cowered as she strode towards her with it, disbelieving, yet terrified that Aneka meant to attack her, but at the last moment she spun the knife around and offered Jessica the handle.

She spread her hand flat on the table, clearly offering Jessica the chance to nail her hand to the wood with the sharp-pointed, serrated steak-knife.

“Come on, try it on me. I’m not afraid of the pain any more,” Aneka said.

“You expect me to believe that you can heal that? No way. I’m not going to stab you. I know it’s just bullshit. It’s probably some con-trick so you can say I attacked you.”

“Oh come on… Have it your way then,” she said, exasperated.

“I don’t like this whole knife thing. I don’t want to talk about it,” Jessica said. The whole situation was terrifying enough without bringing knives into it. Just the idea of the sharp edge made her nauseous.

With a shrug, Aneka sat down again. For a minute there was silence and she looked past her empty muesli bowl as if lost in thought. Jessica relaxed and the knife slipped out of her hand and landed on the table with a clatter.

Startled, Aneka looked up and stared right into Jessica’s eyes. Jessica could see the pain there, like the mixture of terror and a broken heart. She wasn’t sure it was real but it was enough to make her less certain about what was happening. What if Aneka were telling the truth, at least in part? Or what if she had genuinely become schizophrenic and really believed the crazy things she was saying?

“The scars fade eventually but it takes time, and some things never seem to go back right. Do you remember I had my left-hand strapped up for a few weeks? My fingers were broken. It still hurts to move them. I don’t think that will ever heal completely. By and by it methodically ruins all the parts of yourself that you like. It knows exactly how to pick your identity apart until there’s nothing left of who you used to be. I speak from experience, you’ve seen what it did to my pussy.”

“You’re just being nasty now Annie. I know… I know your nub is kinda… Well, it’s not that bad. Is that what you were trying to do to me? Make us more alike?”

“Right. I’m a freak, and now so are you,” Aneka said, tears suddenly breaking loose and streaming down her face, dripping into her empty muesli bowl. Her words had a kind of hysterical laughing quality to them. “I did it to you, with the suit, but that’s how it is. It makes you do the things you most hate to do. All the time.”

“You’re scaring me again,” Jessica said. She looked around nervously for something to wear, suddenly aware of how naked she was. She had to get out of the flat before Aneka did something to hurt her again.

Aneka, eyes staring mad and demonic, lunged across the table towards Jessica and hissed her words into Jessica’s face, a snarling tirade of self-hate and desperation:

“What I’ve done this year, to myself and others... It finds ways to break you down. It’s always there, telling you things, whispering what to do. What you are… How low you’ve fallen… How much further you can go. How everyone is shit. It’s taken me a year to learn how to take back control. Or maybe I haven’t. Maybe it just lets me think that, so it will be worse when I do something bad again. That’s the worst part. I’ll never know if I’m free of it for sure. I’ll never know if the sick things I do are my own or if I’m nothing but a helpless puppet dancing for its entertainment.”

“Uh huh,” Jessica said, unable to think of any remotely appropriate apply to such craziness. “I should go. Where are my clothes? The bedroom?”

“Don’t ignore my warning. It took me a year. A lot of research just to figure out it was the suit and not something that came from me. It’s amazing the focus you have when all that sexual energy just builds up and builds up into a kind of angry desperation. You’ll see…”

Jessica stood up, about to edge away.

“I guess you won’t listen. Go if you want. Your clothes are in the dryer.”

“It can’t make us do things. It doesn’t exist. The only voices in my head are mine,” Jessica said, but it didn’t sound like she believed it.

“Oh, it can make you do whatever it likes. Don’t try and fight it. Whatever you do, never set some boundary that you will never cross. I promised myself I’d never drag you anywhere near this, and see where we are now?”

“No Annie. I won’t let this…”

Aneka jumped up, and Jessica was sure she would be attacked. She grabbed up the steak knife as if to defend herself.

“Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. It can hear your thoughts and it has plans. Sometimes it tells me what it’s going to do to both of us... Don’t you understand? You’re just a mask the suit is wearing now, and it will do whatever it can to hurt you and make you take the blame,” Aneka screamed, her words only half intelligible.

Jessica couldn’t bear it any longer. Terrified by the lunatic in front of her, she lost all grip on the rage and frustration at how Aneka had treated her all year; how she had pretended to have feelings for her; how she’d beaten and mutilated her while she was unconscious; and now, how she’d told her an endless stream of ridiculous filthy self-excusing lies; it was all too much. It welled up so suddenly and with so little warning that Jessica had no way to control it.

For an instant, she was filled with pure rage. Lurching against the table, she swung awkwardly down with the steak knife, jamming it deep into Aneka’s neck with all her strength.

After a few seconds the knife started to slip from Jessica’s fingers and she snatched her hand away as if it burned her. She covered her face with her hands, trying to hide from what she’d done, and impotently watched through the gaps in her fingers as her lover died, murdered, as they say, in the heat of passion.

It was only a moment, but it seemed to go on forever. Finally, Aneka gave a horrible moan and fell forward onto the table. Her face smashed into the cereal bowl, sending it shattering on the floor, and then she slipped from the chair and crumpled onto the floor amidst the shards of broken bowl, with a puddle of dark blood spreading rapidly around her.

Jessica glanced around her as if expecting accusing witnesses. The room was covered in a fine spray of blood, except for where she’d stopped the droplets with her own body, making a kind of anti-shadow on the cream-painted wall behind her.

Soaked in her victim’s blood, Jessica gave a single broken, guilty shriek of helpless denial. In the space that followed her scream she could have sworn she heard somebody … or something … laughing.

* * * END * * *