Joan Walters crept silently through the darkened house.  An experienced thief, she'd had no trouble bypassing the building's security system.  Once inside, she crept through several rooms, each well stocked with valuable items, yet she touched none of them.  Tonight's job wasn't for profit.  Instead, it was for information.

During the past few months, several people known to her had vanished.  Normally, given her line of work, there was nothing odd about the occasional disappearance.  What made this different was, not only the frequency, but the fact that only attractive women seemed to be going missing.  This fact alone was enough to pique her curiosity, not to mention her sense of self preservation.  And when her sometime partner had joined the missing, she decided she had to solve this mystery.

After some dedicated hacking by a male friend, she learned that, while many of the women shared associates, only one was common to them all.  This one person had begun to appear shortly before the disappearances.  More than enough, in Joan's mind, to warrant some investigation.  A little more hacking to find an address, and here she was, sneaking through a darkened house looking for answers.

Carefully, yet quickly, she made her way through the house, until all that remained was a set of stairs leading to what she presumed was a basement.  Silently, she glided down, finding herself in a small room with only one other doorway.  Lacking options, she slipped through the door, her small penlight showing only what lay right in front of her.

After only a couple of steps, she heard a hum behind her, followed by a soft click.  Immediately, light sprang up to reveal a fairly large, luxuriously furnished circular room.  It was not the furnishings that caught her eyes, however.  Rather, it was the walls.

The entire room had been carefully painted to give the impression of standing in the center of a busy dungeon.  On every hand was the image of women bound in a startling variety of positions.  No other people were shown, though.  Only tightly bound women populated this strange panorama.  Puzzled, she moved toward one wall for a closer look.  What she saw made her gasp with surprise.

There, faithfully depicted down to the smallest detail, she saw Serena James, an accomplished safecracker.  Serena knelt in the foreground of the image, chains from cuffs encircling her knees securing her to the floor.  Her arms were behind her, but from the tension evident in her muscles, Joan knew those arms were somehow bound.  Her wide eyes stared out of the image from above a panel covering her mouth.

Stunned, Joan moved along the wall, easily identifying others she knew.  Here, the extortionist Barbara Wilkes stood against the painted wall, arms spread above her head, feet spread wide, all held in place by steel shackles attached to the painted stones.  There, kidnap artist Winona Adams stood in a decorated sarcophagus, only her eyes, breasts and crotch showing through the cloth that mummified her.  Only the tattoo on her right breast told Joan who stood in those bindings.

In all, there were nearly twenty women depicted, representing practically every type of shady or illegal business.  Some, Joan knew personally, but all were familiar to her, if only by reputation.  Each was bound in a different way, each with her naked charms readily visible.  And each, she saw on closer examination, had something that appeared to be the end of a dildo or vibrator standing out just barely from between her thighs.

Suddenly, she found herself looking once more at Serena.  Puzzled, she turned back, only to realize that, somehow, the door had vanished.  Only the painted scenes of bondage surrounded her.  Joan began moving along the wall, searching for a crack, tapping for a hollow sound.  Anything to let her know she'd found a way out.

As she searched, Joan became aware of a sound.  At first, she couldn't tell what it was.  Slowly, straining her ears, she began to recognize the sound of moaning, as if several muffled voices joined together in a chorus of need.  Puzzled, she continued to look for a way out.

Gradually, her search centered on one section of wall.  Here, prominent by the fact that it was unoccupied, stood an x-cross.  For long moments, Joan stared into the image, her mind seeming to sink into the painted scene, so that she barely noticed when her hands began to move, stripping off her clothing and letting it fall to the floor.

Naked, she now turned to face away from the wall.  As if in a daze, her arms raised until she held them spread wide over her head.  Her feet moved apart.  Silently, she stood, as if offering herself to the room.

As she stood, it seemed to Joan's strangely dazed mind that the room receded, as if she had, impossibly, moved through the wall.  She felt polished wood press against her back, followed by the feel of leather straps encircling her wrists and ankles.  Her mouth, which had fallen slightly open, became filled with a solid, rubbery object, straps encircling her head.  Finally, she felt something within her, filling her completely.  With this sensation, her mind cleared.

Suddenly panicked, she tried to fight her bonds, only to realize she couldn't move.  It wasn't the cuffs that held her, however.  It was as if her whole body were frozen in place.  She could see, she could feel, but motion of any kind was impossible.

As she struggled to understand what was happening to her, the wall opposite her suddenly slid open, revealing the doorway.  Through this strode a tall man in dark clothing.  His eyes were on her as he strode across the room to stand in front of her, close, yet strangely distant.

"Excellent," she heard him say in a soft, melodious voice.  "I have been waiting for you, my dear.  Now my collection is complete."

Nodding, the man circled the room, pausing to gaze at each of the women.  Finally, he left, the door sliding shut behind him.  Within the room, twenty painted women stared out from the walls, each trapped for all time in her total helplessness.  The soft, nearly inaudible moaning continued, now joined by a final voice, from the naked woman on the cross.