Halloween, my least favorite time of the year, but not always. As recently as last year it had been a time of costumes, parties and laughter, and tricks and treats as well. That was until I saw my fiancée making out in the corner with some trampy costumed woman at the party we were attending. I was horribly embarrassed, most especially since I had friends there to witness my humiliation, he drooling all over her like a dog devouring a bone. That wasn't the only strike against that man either, just the last one...

This Halloween I was alone by my own choice, giving out candy at my door to the costumed little ones first, and then the older ones later on at night. I had bought too much candy expecting more kids, but a great many were lazy these days and probably didn't like to do anything for their treats. It was the same when I opened the door after they knocked, most would just stand and stare at me expecting to get my treats without uttering a word. The ones that did offer the traditional greeting and thanked me always got a second treat, perhaps I doing my small part for my neighbors with that one simple act.

The older teens stopped coming after dark, and I felt lonely and sleepy, reflecting on some of the more creative costumes that I had seen though. I then vaguely remember turning off the porch lamp, telling the trick or treaters that I was done for the night by implication. I laid down on the couch and don't remember much else until the rap of knuckles on my door woke me from my slumber, the TV long since off by it's own design to save energy.

I got up in a daze to answer the door on reflex, but before I got there the knuckles rapped on my door again. "I'm coming" I called out, but didn't see the humor in my words, I hadn't said that out loud in well over a year.

I opened the door more out of irritation than charity, but once I did I stood face to chest with a massive man in an off white hooded robe, or a normal sized man in a massive costume standing in elevator shoes and wearing fake muscles. This time however it was I that was tongue tied.

"...Trick or treat?" I eventually managed to enunciate clearly enough for this massive man to understand as I looked up to where his face should have been, if he weren't cloaked as he was.

The man pulled his hood back before he answered with his large hands, he was blond and blue with a face like a statue, handsome without a doubt, but it was his piercing eyes that drew me in.

"Tricks and treats can take many forms, as you well know Kris, but I was sent here to educate you. There can of course be time for such things later if your willing, but first we have work to do" the man told me with his peculiar accent.

The man's stature, his eyes, and finally his accent, he was a man from my past, but it was impossible that he be here in front of me on my porch on Halloween.

...It was our high school senior trip, and we went to Germany, a magnificent place with people who could speak my own language better than most high school graduates, and I at the time in my fourth year of their language and almost conversational. I had no inherent language skill to speak of, but I stuck out four years of German just to take the promised trip before graduation. Eighteen years old and visiting another country was wonderful, the mindful chaperons a pain though, but one couldn't blame them for taking their duties seriously either.

I had signed up for a medieval museum tour, having always been fascinated with the dark ages and dungeons. Like most I had foolishly romanticized the time, but there was something deep inside me about the concept of a dungeon where people did things to you against your will as a normal part of their professions. Chained and helpless was a favorite fantasy of mine and at the time, ( it still is today), but I wondered back then if something was wrong with me.

The tall man before me was a tour guide at that museum, ( he in all reality just a few years older than I at the time and likely a university man doing his internship), but he still took me around the ropes when I had asked to touch the exhibits after the others had moved on despite the sign telling me it was strictly verboten. It was a kind bending of the rules for one like myself that had genuine interest in such things, but even back then I knew the power behind a smile and sweet words. We had made brief eye contact with a mutual smile between us, after he looked left and right to see if we were being watched, telling me I could be getting this nice man in trouble for humoring me so.

I then ran my hands along the sawhorse looking device's massive smooth beams and gently handled the ancient manacles, strategically located to hold some unlucky soul sprawled across it's top helplessly exposed from behind. I suspected how such smoothing wear might occur, the various victims sanding it smooth with their bare flesh as their were either punished, or more likely interrogated prior to being punished in a far more graphic and public venue. As horrible as such treatment likely was back in the day I found myself excited, to be stripped and then helplessly under the control of some dungeon master while sprawled across such a device, (or for that matter any of the others), made my teenage imagination run wild. Being a teenager however, I was at the same time not practiced at hiding such thoughts, my body turning on like a switch with that first touch...

In that one instant when our eyes met I swore he could see what I was thinking, but I had since just chalked up the experience to a perceptive and handsome German tour guide who had probably seen the same look of poorly suppressed lust on many girls faces. That man did star in several of my fantasies after that, I binding myself with belts and scarves when alone, struggling and at his mercy while he had his way with me...

************************

"Is this a dream?" I then asked my hansom guest, he and I no longer standing at my door though, but in my living room as if we moved in the blink of an eye.

"It could be, that depends on you, but just as there are all kinds of tricks and treats, there are all kinds of dreams as well."

"What must I do then handsome stranger from my dreams, for these tricks and treats of yours?" I asked with obvious sultry overtones. If I were to be having one of "those" dreams, it might as well be wild I thought.

"I am Lars by the way, you must forgive my manners as this is a busy time of year for me, and we are short handed. As to the tricks and treats you desire, you must first forgive, then become empathetic, and finally submit, it is no more difficult than that."

"That's easy, I forgive you Lars, but I don't know for what."

"Not me! Come I will show you, but first you must be properly dressed for such an experience."

"I saw this movie several times, it was just on the TV..."

"Dickens? Not even close Kris" the Lars of my dreams threatened, he cutting me off in mid sentence. He then snapped his big fingers in a cool and showy manner as if a magician performing a trick, and I then felt the chill of the room on my naked skin as I became aware of my nudity.

"Pretty good trick, isn't it?" Lars asked rhetorically, as if looking for approval. "I've been practicing that one, and I rather prefer this timeless look over those awful things you were wearing, for purely personal reasons." The last comment delivered with his charming smile, but I was having none of it.

Even though it was a dream I covered myself strategically with my arms and bent slightly at the waist on reflex, mortified at my sudden exposure in the chilly last day of October air. I had initially expected the Lars of my dreams to strip me more erotically before having his way with me, this dream of mine however like no other.

"That was rude Lars" I chided my handsome host.

"No, that was pure fun. This next part will be rude, but necessary."

Lars once again snapped his fingers and my body jerked upright, my hands no longer covering my charms but held close together at my belly. There were heavy manacles about my wrists with a heavy and oily chain running up between my breasts, and I couldn't lower them without pulling at my neck. I then looked down and saw identical manacles around my ankles, and a short chain connecting them. There appeared to be a third chain, heavy and oily as well, and it went from the center of my hobble chain to the cuffs about my wrists, it brushing my womanhood and preventing me from raising or lowering my arms in modesty.

"Why don't you hobble over and look at yourself in the mirror and see if you ever saw THAT on TV before?" Lars offered in challenge.

"Hobble over" was right, any more than a short step caused my ankles to pull on each other, not to mention the sheer weight of the iron hanging on my naked body. Once before the mirror I realized the picture I presented to my dream Lars, the mystery of my not being able to lower my arms solved as well. A thick iron collar surrounded my neck, it was loose, but not so loose that it would slip over my head in more of a one size fits most kind of way.

"How does that feel?" Lars asked.

"I'm conflicted, they look sexy on me, but their weight is almost unbearable. And no Lars you were right, I have never seen this on TV before."

"I rather thought not Kris, time to go now" Lars commanded.

"Where? Out, like this? I don't think so."

Lars didn't listen, he instead grabbing the chain that ran from my collar to my hobble, we in an instant popping into my last Halloween party where things went so badly for me. I recognized the people there as I tried and failed to hide my naked and bound body, but Lars laughed and told me they couldn't see us. True to his word not a soul looked toward either of us, Halloween or not our appearance sure to draw some stares, the experience for me like being in a play as an extra. I had however seen this play already.

"This is cruel Lars, I didn't want to see this the first time, let alone a second."

"You will be silent and watch so you can learn something from the experience, unless you like the weight of those chains so much that you want to wear them for the rest of your life. I could snap my fingers you know, placing you and your chains wrapped around one of those columns over there, and then snap them again and leave you visible to your friends like that while they tried to free you. Then again they might just elect to leave you on display like that in the spirit of the season, although in reality they would have little choice. Trust me on this if nothing else, only one other has the key to those chains, and I guarantee you they won't be able to free you."

"YOU WOULDN'T DARE!"

Lars then snapped his fingers after smiling at me in a most mischievous way, and I found myself kneeling with my back to the base of one of the structural columns he had just indicated, my chains now wrapped about it's girth behind me, proving if nothing else that he would in fact "Dare" if properly provoked. My arms were pulled back tautly, and my knees apart far more than modestly to encompass the column behind me, the entire position I was forced to endure as immodest as any I had ever taken.

"Don't go away" Lars told me in an impossibly cheery way. "I have others to attend to and will be back as soon as possible."

Before I could say a word he was gone, he snapping his fingers as I cringed thinking of his earlier threat. After several seconds however nobody still noticed their newest provocative party decoration, that particular snap of his fingers instead likely how he popped about in my dreams.

I watched the party from my unique position, even watched myself flirt about with several of the guys, and their girlfriends expressions when they saw me. I didn't even realize I had done so, but looking at my girlfriends expressions I was left to wonder if they would have even bothered to try to free me if they had the need.

Then the event that I dreaded started to unfold, the trampy woman walking my way, I wondering now as well as then what she was supposed to be dressed as. It was a costume party, and she looked like nothing but a tramp, or possibly something one pays good money for in the bad part of town. I didn't know her, and apparently neither did any of the others, my friends telling me such right after, but I not believing them at the time.

The closer she got the stranger this party crasher looked, something just wasn't right, although I couldn't put my finger on it. She was looking for something though, not a party goer looking for fun, but a woman on a mission. She was nearly on top of me and my column by then, she not looking at the naked and chained kneeling woman at her feet though, my position ironic seeing what she was moments away from stealing from me. I was less than she at that instant, I wondering if it was this message that this strange dream was trying to deliver to me.

She then leaned back as if to sit up against that column of mine and I closed my eyes, her trampy and tight dress close enough to touch my face, although it didn't. I wasn't really there, in the flesh at any rate, for that matter this event had already happened so she wasn't really there either, this more like a TV rerun. She leaned back just a little more to adjust her balance, rubbing my proverbial face in it as it were, I suspecting where that thing would end up by the end of this party after I left in a fit. I then opened my eyes out of curiosity and got the shock of my life, the tramps uniqueness silently explained...

******************

...Lars popped back in and released me before I had to watch my former fiancee and the tramp slobber all over each other, I at least now knowing "she" had the best costume at the party that night.

"There were a lot of firsts that night" Lars told me with raised eyebrow, "and they do seem to be happy with each other" he offered in consolation.

I pretended I didn't hear him. "Where did you go, and why did you leave me here alone?" I asked.

"I have many responsibilities this time of year, and especially on this night, and you weren't really alone in the strictest definition of the word. You wouldn't believe the dire straights I potentially left one poor girl in just to come back here to release you when I did. Did you learn anything by the way?"

"You know I did Lars."

"Indeed I do, now ponder that while at our next stop."

An abrupt tug of my chain and we were at the next stop, or so I thought...

...We had popped in near a fairytale village just into the wood line on a hill, I suspecting instantly by Lars' hushed tone that this wasn't part of the plan, but an emergency detour. The place was storybook beautiful, except for what I could see down in the town square. The entire town looked like it had turned out for an event, they gathered about a small platform and looking up at it expectantly.

Two thick posts adorned the platform, and pulled taunt between them by her wrists and ankles was a woman as nude as I, her full bush and ample endowment on display for all to see without the slightest modesty offered. It was a barbaric display, but I was again conflicted, just like with my cuffs and chains that suddenly didn't seem quite so heavy as they did earlier...

"One of my charges has gotten into a little trouble, we must stay here together until I can build the power to conceal you. Only then you can hide safely in the forest while I rescue her."

"Her?" I asked as I looked down to the spectacle below.

"Yes."

"GO NOW, I will hide and wait here."

"You won't be safe, they can see and hear you, and they have a rather nasty view of local justice" Lars confirmed, as if I couldn't have figured that last part out for myself.

"Your wasting time Lars!"

"Very well" and with that Lars snapped his fingers and popped out of sight.

The woman however remained on display, and as I heard the townsfolk cheer I shifted my attention from one to the other trying to figure out what was going on. The woman began struggling, almost frantically trying to escape the inescapable, she obviously seeing or hearing the same thing that the crowd just did. Her gyrations looked to be riling up the men in the crowd as they shifted about, the dress wearing ladies off in their own little groups with their hands over their mouths, but still watching the spectacle of her struggling display just as intently as I.

A large man then made his way through the crowd, they parting before him and reassembling in his wake, he easily half a head taller than any of the other men down there. He wore a black hood, it contrasting with his pale skin, I then realizing that the displayed woman was quite tan, setting her apart from the others that I could see.

It seemed obvious that the man's appearance was significant to the people below, and I wondered what was taking Lars so long. I had a foreboding feeling about the scene before me, but my thoughts were on that woman, and what it must feel like to be displayed as she while waiting for what I suspected was to come if Lars didn't rescue her in time.

How long had she been stretched out on display like that, ten minutes, or all morning long? Despite all rational logic I found her fate horribly erotic. If this was one of my own erotic dreams though, (although an impossibly odd one), why then was I watching HER struggle?

The masked man ascended the stairs to the platform as the townsfolk went wild, this apparently signifying the start of the show they had come to see, reminding me of a rock band picking up their instruments at a sold out stadium. Once the man was up on the stage with the woman he held his muscular arms high, and clenched in his left fist was a long multi tailed whip, answering my question definitively as to what was about to come next without Lars' intervention.

The man held his arms aloft until the crowd became silent, his booming voice reaching my ears easily, I translating in my mind as well as I could, the dialect strange to my ears though:

"This creature before us has bewitched the men of the village with the wanton and willful display of her sinful body. She will now receive the full measure of her punishment, her body to be left on display until sunset."

The woman then scanned the crowd as if looking for a single sympathetic soul before the whip struck, I realizing we were not all that far apart from each other in the grand scheme of things, and I not noticed in my own nakedness and chains only because everybody was looking in her direction instead. What had felt like a comfortable distance from that mob of people when we had first popped in now seemed uncomfortably close, and I wondered if this was another dream message like the last one had to offer.

...Could they not forgive her for the crime of being desirable?

...Could I not forgive my former fiancee for much the same, although in a way I never suspected?

...If this was the message of the first dream, what then was the second?

The woman then looked over the crowd's heads and made eye contact with me, she having a rather beautiful face to go with her other obvious gifts, in my time a stunning woman no matter how she dressed. Her ribs were there to count, but some men even like that. Her tan and flawless skin was pulled taunt over her skeleton however by her enforced position, concaving under her ribs and revealing the leg tendons running toward her womanhood, I unabashedly looking just as the men likely were earlier. Her long hair was pulled back and tied with a cord as well, likely not a fashion statement, but to provide an unobstructed target while further displaying charms that the town's men apparently lusted for.

We made eye contact once again after I looked her over critically, her hair very close to those pleading eyes, I a jumble of emotions. I once again was conflicted as well, just like when first put in chains by Lars, and I realized that conflict in this dream lead to choices.

"Please help me."

She mouthed it to me silently, and for whatever reason I decided to, although there was a dark part of me that wanted to watch the show just as much as the townsfolk did, and likely for the same self serving and lusty reasons. Her predicament turned me on, in concept at least, although I wasn't entirely sure that I wanted to participate in her place now either. I had never had a dream where I had to translate another's words, and I feared that the normal rules of such things could be skewed in this strange dream place Lars had abandoned me in.

As if in slow motion some of the heads in the crowd turned toward my position, they naturally following the stare and direction of the mouthed plea from their strung up captive. I had a choice, and therefore conflict. Do I run for the cover of the trees and hide while I still could, forced to listen to that begging woman's screams as the whip left it's mark on her perfect body, or do I just stand there frozen in fear and let them see me?

I instead chose a third option, really a combination of the two.

"STOP!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, every head turning to look at me instead, I just as naked as she and not very far away.

The woman was then gone with a pop, her chains falling free and crashing into the beams nosily as the spectators looked about to see what magic had caused her to up and vanish behind their backs. I knew it was Lars, he apparently building enough strength to rescue her from her fate before the first stroke and taking advantage of my convenient distraction.

I laughed at the turmoil I had just caused, some of the men were looking toward me, others toward the empty platform where their play toy had been a moment before, but my mirth was short lived.

"SEIZE THE WITCH!"

The man with the whip barked his command as he pointed in my direction with it. I ran into the woods on reflex, my chains no longer on me and impeding my escape, but the cuffs and collar still in place. This was a foreign place to me, but still I ran deeper into the woods, the townsfolk intentions quite clear.

It was however their home and not mine, they woodsmen and hunters, and I offering a single set of female barefoot tracks which they had to follow. With dozens of them searching for me it was a forgone conclusion who would prevail, my only hope that Lars would find me first.

I eventually heard them crashing through the woods behind me, the bastards mounted and this now an even more unfair chase, I feeling like a fox at a fox hunt, less the dogs. They were clever little barbarians though, the mounted men driving me mercilessly toward an ambush where a valley choked down to a single pass.

I ran smack into a heavy net pulled into place at the last second by a dozen men, they containing me under it and pinning me down while one of them forced a massive leather bit into my mouth to gag me.

"There will be no more spells from you witch. You may have helped your friend escape, but now we have you instead, and you can be sure we will post guards about the town so none of your friends can help YOU escape her fate, and then your own."

I struggled fruitlessly as they held and bound my arms behind my back, they taking advantage of the cuffs still locked about my wrists, and for good measure they bound my arms in two more places forcing my elbows to touch with their own cuffs and chains as my breasts were mashed into the dirt. Neither hurt though in this beyond strange dream place.

I was picked up by several hands and held firm while my legs were untangled from their net, their hands roaming about much more than necessary as they examined my hairless body in detail. I had not the physique of their former captive, but I was the proverbial bird in the hand, the other long gone and I not able to reveal her location no matter the method they may wish to employ to loosen my tongue.

...I then became aware of Lars sitting in a tree and watching, the others oblivious to both his presence and his words thought.

"You can leave any time you like you know, all you have to do is ask" he offered with a smile and a raised eyebrow as he tapped his lips mocking me for what was stuffed between mine. "They can't hurt you by the way, entertain you yes, but hurt you no. I am quite busy, and all kidding aside you can nod your head to leave right now, or shake your head to stick around until I can make it back here again. I can check on you in a few hours, or even in a year if you like, it's all up to you."

I tried to answer Lars with words, there being too many options for either a nod or a shake other than if I wanted out right now. The men were watching me though and already looking in the direction I was and suspecting I was up to something. My words came out as gibberish past the massive gag tied in place though, and the men thinking I were attempting some kind of witches' spell pulled a sack over my head to prevent me from succeeding, which they did in a way.

"Have fun Kris, I have people waiting" Lars called out. I then heard the telltale snap of his fingers and knew I was alone.

to be continued...

30.10.15