Escape Attempt #11 (M/M)

[bigsmile21]

Summary: Keith is itching for a new escape challenge, while James watches remotely.


He heard a a lock click shut, and Keith could barely move. He was blindfolded and wearing a laced-up leather hood. He was in a tight hogtie position with leather restraints locked on each wrist and ankle. His wrists had been locked together, his ankles in similar fashion, and a chain ran from wrists to ankles multiple times leaving only a foot of distance between them. James told him that along the chain were 3 padlocks, and scattered around the room were 3 keys: each released padlock would free up more links of the chain until Keith could stretch his legs out completely.

He heard another lock click shut, and Keith could feel more tension. An iron ball had been locked to the main chain, which would burden his movements around the room. James told him that the 3 keys worked universally but were single-use: each key would open any lock along the chain but would remain inside the lock until rotated a special way like a combination lock. Keith would have to choose between freeing up more space in the chain but having to drag the heavy iron ball, or unlocking the iron ball but losing the chance at more flexibility.

He heard keys being tossed around the room, some clinking against the far walls. 5, 8, 10 extra clinks? He lost count, but there were way more than 3 keys. Keith groaned through his tape gag. James let out a small laugh and told him there would be some dummy keys as an added challenge. And that the keys to his wrist or ankle restraints would be outside the room. The door would be unlocked, but Keith would have to unlock at least 2 of the locks in the main chain to get enough movement to reach the handle. There was no furniture around the room, so Keith would only find keys as he felt around the carpet.

He felt touch along his body as James checked everything one last time. The leather restraints were secured. The hood was laced tight. The padlocks along the chain were shut. Keith was wearing gym shorts and a tank top, so he got goosebumps when James's cold hands grazed his arms. It was going to be a difficult escape challenge, but that excited him: Keith was always itching for ways to escape, and James a way to make it challenging but not impossible. James was often surprised by how Keith would escape, sometimes by thinking outside the box and other times by things not being as secured as he thought.

James stood and began working on the last element of the setup. He told Keith he suspended 2 water balloons from the ceiling fan, which was turned off, and that 1 balloon had an extra working key. The strings holding the balloons was pre-cut, and held together y small chunks of ice. If Keith waited long enough, the ice would melt and the balloons would drop. The ice was small enough that if the ice slipped from the string before melting that it wouldn't hurt Keith if he was under it, though he would get wet. But James would have the A/C on cool to help draw out the melting.

Keith heard James walk away and open the door. James said that he would be just outside, and that Keith had as much time as he needed to escape. James would be monitoring on his phone, using their usual camera up in the corner of the room to check-in without entering the room to interrupt Keith's experience. If or when Keith wanted to give up, he only had to lie on his back and shake his head back and forth until James came to release him. There would be no audio on the camera feed, so Keith could grunt and huff as much as the tape gag permitted. And with that, Keith heard James walk out of the room and close the door, followed by soft footsteps down the hallway.

Keith quickly went to work. The chain and hogtie position left little wiggle room. He was still on his stomach, and tried swaying back and forth to land on his side. The iron ball was on the floor on his right side, and there was barely enough chain to lean left. He shimmied until his right side was on the floor. The chain rattled in the metal loops of the leather wrist and ankle restraints, but no extra space had freed up in the padlocked links. He started shrugging across the floor. He didn't have a sense of direction, and the keys were scattered all around the room anyway.

Quickly he built up a sweat. The tight bondage, the friction from the carpet, and having to drag the iron ball all added to an intense experience. After a few minutes he still hadn't felt anything but carpet. An anxious thought popped into his head: what if James had picked up keys on his way out of the room? No, Keith had heard keys drop all around the room and he was pretty sure that James had walked straight to the door on his way out of the room. Pretty sure, at least. Keith considered moving back. Maybe he had missed some keys. No, this was a challenge and he had to stay focused. Getting scared or distracted wouldn't help.

More time passed and James slowly continued shrugging across the carpet. He then felt something pass under his skin. He stopped. He tried to double back, inching his hips back a bit, then his shoulders, and then patting his hands along the carpet as far as he could reach. He still had limited mobility, so he had to lean more on his back to get his hands close to the floor. He was beginning to think that he made it up, that it was just a bump in the carpet, that he was wasting his time in this spot. Then, he felt it: a small metal key. His heart raced. He fumbled with it in his fingers.

He decided to unlock a padlock along the chain. He would put up with the iron ball for a while longer. What he needed was more movement. With a little more space between his wrists and ankles he could move his hips more and get around the room quicker. His fingers reached up the chain and he found the closest padlock. He had to arch his back further in order for his fingers to get the key to the lock. He slipped the key into the padlock, or at least tried to. For a full minute he tried to get the key into the lock, turning it back and forth to align it. It was no good. This must have been a dummy key.

He let out a deep sigh, letting his head drop to the floor. He was going through a swarm of emotions: frustration, exhaustion, anxiousness. Keith tried the key one more time, hoping that it really was just a misalignment on his part. But the key still didn't fit. He had to keep moving. He started shrugging, and after a few movements realized he was still gripping the key. He paused. Even though it was a dummy he didn't want to drop it. He couldn't see and had limited sense of direction, so he risked finding the key again and wasting more time and effort on a failed release. He tried to reach the pocket of his gym shorts, thinking he could store the key, but the hogtie was still too tight for him to reach it. For now, he'd have to keep the dummy key in his hand.

Twice more Keith found dummy keys, having to relive the thrills and downfalls of finding then realizing that these keys were useless. He needed two hands to try to unlock the first padlock: one to pull the chain close enough within reach, the other to try getting the key into the lock. Going forward, he would try putting the keys on the floor beneath him, to give himself more grip and focus on the new key. But after finding that third dummy key he was beginning to lose heart. He still had not touched a wall, and for all he knew he wasn't even crawling in a straight direction. It would get easier if he could unlock at least one padlock, but that meant finding a working key.


-----


James watched Keith struggle for the first ten minutes, looking at the camera feed on his phone. He wanted to make sure nothing went wrong, for Keith's safety or the setup. They had done one escape challenge each month this year. James loved to plan out new scenarios. Occasionally something was off in the setup, like a loose restraint or a release method that was too simple, which ruined the challenge. Each month James got better at restraining Keith. And Keith, he was like a puzzle-solving octopus, managing to slip out of almost anything. Well, there was that one time James had locked Keith in a sleepsack, with the key tied to a string around Keith's toes: even if Keith managed to get the key to his hands, which were down their own sleeves, the lock was the outside the sleepsack. Keith had wiggled in frustration for over four hours before giving up.

James set the phone down and went about doing his chores: cleaning around the house, yardwork before the winter frost arrived, and food to prep for tonight. Keith always worked up an appetite during escapes, and James loved to treat him to a big meal after a successful escape. Could Keith escape today? Sure. But not after going through at 15 dummy keys, maybe repeating a few, and James made sure the working keys were spread far around the room. Finding those would take a few hours. Maybe Keith would wait for the balloons to drop. James did say one had a spare key. He forgot to mention that the other was filled with itching powder. He imagined how it would play out: Keith laying under the dripping ice, exhausted, shoulders rubbed with a mild carpet burn, him not wanting to lose track of where the balloons were. Each droplet cooling down the sweat he'd worked up. Then, a snap, a splash, and while he reached blindly for a key, a growing sensation of itchiness. An itchiness spreading all over. Needing to scratch against the carpet but the mix of water and itching powder coating more of his body as he lay there, the strict bondage not giving any freedom to scratch his chest, his back, or his bare feet. He smiled, and set focused again on the chores.

James came inside from two hours of yardwork, sweaty and coated in dirt up to his elbows from cleaning out gutters. He washed his hands and checked his phone. And there was Keith, still bound right where he left him wait, no he wasn't? The room was empty. He refreshed the video feed and still the room was empty. He heard a short whistle, and looked up to see a water balloon flying towards him. It splashed across his chest, icy cold. He heard a laugh and saw Keith, holding another loaded water balloon. James held up his phone, and slowly set it down. Keith politely waited. As soon as James set down his phone, Keith hurled the water balloon but missed as James rolled across the floor. James quickly stood and wrapped Keith in a sweaty and dirty bear hug, lifting him up and down playfully until Keith said he relented, no more water balloons. James let go, and the two sat down to talk about what went right, what was too easy, and ideas for next month's challenge.

[slackywacky]

Nice, wouldn't mind doing those escape attempts. Thanks for posting.

[Red86]

Sounds like a fun escape challenge minus the itching powder. You may regret it if you pull that stunt with me

Not sure how he managed to do it in under 2 hours though. Regardless, it was a very good story!!