A New Hobby (F/ff) (Part 2 now posted)

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Weird Aunt Ettie
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A New Hobby (F/ff) (Part 2 now posted)

Post by Weird Aunt Ettie »

I've been lurking here for ages, so I thought it was time I paid my dues and posted something. So here it is...

Ettie

A New Hobby

So, coronavirus and Britain is in near lockdown. It’s not so bad for my family. I’m a single mum living with my two teenage daughters and our dog in a small house on the edge of a seaside village in the north-east of England. We have a small garden and just across the road is the beach.

By the second week of the schools being closed we’d settled into a sort of routine. The girls are at a high school in a neighbouring town about 16 miles away, so we’re used to getting up early for the school bus, which takes almost an hour to get there. Now we’re all up and breakfasted before 8 o’clock (although sometimes still in pyjamas) and ready to start work. The girls are 13 and 15, so fairly well disciplined at settling down to the on-line schoolwork provided for them. I normally work from home two days a week anyway, so expanding that to five wasn’t much of a change, except for a welcome relief from commuting.

By 1 o’clock, the girls have generally blitzed their work and I’m ready for a break. I organise some lunch for the three of us while the girls take the dog for a walk on the beach, which is generally deserted apart from occasional other dog walkers. (Keeping the required 2 metres away from other people really isn’t difficult under those circumstances.)

It’s after lunch that things get more challenging as time begins to hang heavy on the girls’ hands. I still have work to do, although I’m usually done by 3:30, so I need a bit of peace and quiet. The girls are quite good at respecting that but the noise levels sometimes begin to rise. One day, they were particularly loud as I was trying to focus on a video conference call with my work colleagues. I emerged after my virtual meeting to investigate what sounded like a minor riot. The girls were actually peaceably playing a video game but so engrossed in the excitement that they were shouting at each other as they played. That’s when I inadvertently triggered a whole new chain of events.

As I came into the sitting room, it dawned on them how noisy they’d been. Alice (the 15 year old) paused the game and they both looked at me somewhat sheepishly.

“Sorry, Mum,” said Liz (the 13 year old).

“I should hope so,” I replied. “Do I have to keep you two tied up and gagged to get some peace around here?”

My smile should have indicated that I was joking so I wasn’t expecting the response I got. The girls exchanged what I can only call a significant glance and there was a noticeable silence while some sort of sisterly telepathy went on before Alice spoke.

“We-e-ell,” she began tentatively, “we were thinking of talking to you about something along those lines...”

Liz, always more direct, cut in. “There’s these videos on YouTube,” she began.

I tensed; there are quite a lot of things on YouTube that I would really prefer my daughters not to be looking at.

Liz saw my reaction and hurriedly added. “No, don’t worry. Just lately, lots of Indian women have been putting up videos of them being tied up and then escaping.”

Alice picked up the story. “Usually they get tied up using those long scarf things that Indian and Pakistani women wear.”

“Dupattas,” I said helpfully.

“Yeah, those. and they always get loose in just a minute or two.”

“They call them ‘hogtie challenge’,” Liz explained.

“They get hogtied?” I asked, still trying to gauge how serious this was.

“Isn’t hogtied just very tied up?” Alice asked.

“Hogtied is when someone is lying on their tummy with their hands and feet tied together behind their back,” I said, now worried that this conversation was heading down a rabbit hole I didn’t want to explore.

“It would be easier if we just showed you,” Liz said, getting to her feet.

I followed the girls into the room they used as a combined study, art studio and general hobbies room. Liz sat down at the desk and started YouTube on the laptop they shared. A few keystrokes later and I was watching an Indian woman being tied up by another woman using brightly coloured long cotton scarves. She started off sitting on a rug, sideways on to the camera, with her knees slightly raised. Her legs were tied at the ankles and above the knees. There was nothing complicated in the bindings, just wrapping and knotting. Her wrists were tied behind her back. The way they were tied wasn’t clear from the video but I suspected it was equally unsophisticated. Another dupatta was tied around her upper arms and chest then she was gagged with a scarf over her mouth and blindfolded with one over her eyes. Some very low-key struggling followed with the woman’s hands coming free in less than two minutes, just as Alice had said. She then removed her gag and blindfold and methodically united herself. After a final smile to the camera and a comment in Hindi, the video ended.

“Are they all like this?” I asked.

“Pretty much,” Alice confirmed. “The way they get tied up varies a bit and I’ve seen ones where they get tied to chairs and some where they’re actually hogtied like you described.”

“And they all escape as easily as that?”

“Sometimes even quicker.”

“And why exactly were you going to talk to me about this?” I asked, dragging the subject back to its starting point.

“We thought it looked fun to try,” Alice explained.

“But it really isn’t worth bothering if you can escape in two minutes,” Liz cut in, sounding a bit frustrated.

“We thought it wouldn’t be hard to tie each other up but make it harder to escape,” Alice continued, in slightly more measured tones.

“What did you use?” I asked.

Liz replied by disappearing from the room and returning with a blue and green striped woollen scarf. “We don’t have anything like those...”

“Dupattas,” I prompted.

“...so we just used ordinary scarves.”

“Alice, let’s show her,” Liz said.

Her older sister turned around and held her hands out behind her with her wrists crossed. Liz looped the scarf around Alice’s wrists twice then tied a simple overhand knot. She pulled the ends of the scarf hard, tugging them several times to pull it tight, then tied a second overhand to create a snug reef knot.

Alice bent her elbows and twisted her hands around to find some slack. It was obvious that the girls had done this a few times for Alice to have developed such an assured technique. Sure enough, after only two or three minutes, she was able to pull one hand loose.

“A woolly scarf is really too thick and too stretchy,” I pointed out. “You can pull it really tight and there’s still enough stretch to be able to pull your hands free.”

The girls both looked a little crestfallen at that.

“Bandannas would work better,” I went on, “and we’ve got plenty of those.”

There’s actually a good reason we’re ridiculously well stocked with bandannas. It’s all down to living next to the beach. Our beach is very fine white sand, so on a windy day at low tide, the sand at the top of the beach dries out and gets blown around. It’s not quite a full-blown sandstorm but very unpleasant when you’re facing into it. As it happened, one day like that, we found that our local sells-everything shop had six-packs of coloured bandannas on sale (one each or red, blue, green, yellow, purple, black and white, printed in traditional Paisley pattern). They weren’t top quality but they were acceptable, so we bought one pack each. We also have inexpensive bubble goggles for the same reason.

“Can you show us, mum?” Liz asked.

“What makes you think I would be able to do that?”

“Well, you knew a bandanna would work better,” Alice pointed out reasonably.

“And you’re really good at knots,” Liz added.

That was perfectly true. In my teens I was a Sea Scout and I still know lots of useful knots.

By unspoken consent, we had all drifted to the bedroom the girls shared. I detected just a hint of a challenge to prove I knew my stuff, so I didn’t prevaricate. “Liz, hold your hands out in front of you. Alice, bandanna, please.”

Alice handed me a blue bandanna. I laid it out flat on the bed, folded it into a triangle then into a narrow band. I adjusted Liz’s hands so they were palm to palm then draped the bandanna over her wrists. I pulled the ends tight below her outstretched wrists, twisted them around each other and then brought them up between her arms and double-knotted the ends to form a snug cinch.

“OK,” I instructed. “Let’s see you get out of that.”

Liz struggled with the binding for nearly five minutes before admitting defeat.

“You might be able to get the knot with your teeth,” I pointed out.

Liz looked sceptical but tried anyway. It took several failed attempts, but eventually she managed to get the first half-hitch undone. With a little bit of wriggling of her hands to persuade it to come loose, she managed to untie the second one and held up the bandanna with a smug grin.

“You wouldn’t be able to do that if your hands were behind your back,” Alice observed.

“It would be fun to try though,” Liz replied. “Could you tie us both up, please, mum?”

Liz glanced at her sister to see if she agreed. Alice replied with a thumbs-up.

“Be careful what you wish for,” I advised with mock severity. “Best take a trip to the bathroom; it might be a while before you get the chance again.”

The girls headed off in different directions, one to the family bathroom, the other to the small washroom at the back door. While they were gone, I raided their wardrobe for more bandannas.

Liz was back first. “Are you going to be warm enough?” I asked. “You can get surprisingly chilly sitting around tied up and not moving.”

Liz was wearing a pair of jeans worn through at the knees. Through the holes, you could see the red woolly tights she had on underneath. She was also still wearing the thick grey hiking socks she had put on with her boots when she went out to walk the dog. Her top half was clad only in a long-sleeved cotton tee shirt. She added a thick grey sweater for extra warmth.

Alice was back shortly afterwards. “You look as though you’ll be warm enough like that,” I commented, observing the huge baggy cream coloured sweater she was wearing (actually one of mine that she intercepted when I was going to throw it out). Below that, she had a pair of black leggings and grey socks like her sister’s.

“Right,” I announced, “I’ve got the bandannas already folded.”

“Three each?” Alice queried.

“Wrists, ankles and gag,” I said. “You’re not properly tied up unless you’re gagged. So, who goes first?”

“Meeee!” Liz exclaimed bouncing in front of me and presenting her hands behind her back.

I applied exactly the same cinched tie to Liz’s wrists as I had earlier except that this time they were behind her back. I got her to sit on the edge of her bed and then did the same thing to her ankles. Lastly, I guided the third bandanna between her teeth and knotted the ends behind her head.

“Your turn,” I said to Alice and applied the same restraints to my older daughter.

I checked over my work one last time to be sure that all the bindings were secure but not too tight.

The girls were both sitting on the edges of their beds as I finished. They looked at each other then at me as I was about to leave the room, obviously expecting me to say something.

“Maybe I should have explained the game,” I said. “All you have to do is to escape. If you’re not free in two hours, I’ll come back and untie you.”

I paused in the doorway. “You may find the gags make it a bit harder to untie the knots with your teeth.” I glanced at the clock to note the time. “Have fun,” I added with an appropriately villainous cackle.

I still had work I could usefully do in the peace and quiet so I settled down at my desk with the dog curled up at my feet and began typing on my computer.

After reading a lengthy report and sending a long succession of emails, I was alerted by a polite knock on my office door. (The door generally stands open, but I encourage the girls to knock to get my attention.)

I glanced at the time on my computer screen then swivelled round on my chair. The girls were standing in the doorway, slightly dishevelled but grinning broadly.

“An hour and a quarter, that’s really good!” I said, genuinely impressed. “I thought I’d got you good and proper.”

“It took us a while to work out how to escape,” Alice said. “We spent ages back-to-back trying to untie each others hands with our fingers but we just couldn’t get it to work.”

“Then I remembered why you’d gagged us,” Liz chipped in, excited as usual. “We could still talk in a sort of mumble so I got Alice to sit still while I tried to untie her gag.”

“It didn’t work, so I had a go at Liz’s gag and I got it off.”

“Then I used my teeth on Alice’s hands. It’s really hard to get your teeth in the right place when it’s someone else’s hands and they can’t see what you’re doing. Anyway I got her hands undone eventually.”

“It only took about five minutes after that to get everything else off,” Alice said, concluding the account.

“Really good work,” I said, still very impressed. “No strains or injuries?”

“No,” Alice confirmed, “but I do feel really well exercised.”

“Can we do this again another day?” Liz asked.

“Escapology could be our new hobby during lockdown,” Alice suggested.

“Yes and you ought to make it harder next time so we get better,” Liz added.

“Sounds like an easy way to keep you two amused,” I replied with a laugh.

The girls left me to finish up my work but I was wondering what their next challenge should be.
Last edited by Weird Aunt Ettie 3 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
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Xtc
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Post by Xtc »

Welcome aboard. I'm glad you posted this. As I've said before, we need more innocent-type stories.
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but little Speedos always rule.
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Post by Dpsiic »

Lovely story I hope there are more
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Post by Alisonlovesropes »

I really liked this story, just hope next time they can be tied up barefoot, or maybe mum is TIED up, and ticking features as a forfeit
Sometimes gagged, sometimes blindfold. Always barefoot.
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Post by Beaumains »

Awesome story! Perfectly narrated and it feels realistic.

I hope you have a sequel in mind as the narrator seems knowledgeable. The lockdown can tighten the bond for this family signifacantly.
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Weird Aunt Ettie
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Post by Weird Aunt Ettie »

Thank you all for the kind comments. I left the end fairly open ended precisely so it could be sequelled or extended. I was a little unsure how my fairly low-key narrative style would go down with readers - it takes a good 2/3 of the story to get to any actual tying.

I'll start think about where the story goes from here.

Ettie x
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Post by Tieup1 »

I really enjoyed reading this, it was a good fun story, and was well written. :)
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Post by Bandit666 »

Thank you for making your first post and showing how a nice simple story can be so enjoyable, keep up the good work and enjoy all you write :)
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Post by Caesar73 »

A real good entry, you wrote here! I could imagine that the sisters hone their skills by tying up her mother :)
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Post by CapturedCarol »

There are so any possibilities here. Mum seems to know quite a lot about tying up. There must be some rope around the house. Hmmmm. Mum could give her daughter's instructions as they practice on her. Johnny the possibilities.
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Post by Nainur »

Pretty Story.
The wonders (and horrors) of the world-wide-web.
I actually believe I have seen some of those Videos, and indeed the tieing is low-quality, but still...
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Post by RopemanSteve »

Really love this story, hope to see rope used later on, though :D
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Post by Bigballgag1 »

Good story! Enjoyable and well written. Hope there is future tales from this instance? :)
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Post by TightsBound »

Very good story! Using fun likable characters in a fun and innocent, even lighthearted setting is something we all need right now. And leaving it open ended hopefully means we’ll see more of these characters soon!
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Post by Sportsfan »

Nainur wrote: 3 years ago Pretty Story.
The wonders (and horrors) of the world-wide-web.
I actually believe I have seen some of those Videos, and indeed the tieing is low-quality, but still...
Yeah, I have my worries about those videos. There's so many, from dozens of channels, but all originating from pretty much the same area of the world. You have to think something is going on behind the scenes. Hopefully nothing nefarious.
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Post by Barefoot99 »

nice story
Barefoot and cuffed. That's the only way to go.
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Post by Weird Aunt Ettie »

A New Hobby

Part 2: Learning the Ropes

by Weird Aunt Ettie

While we had adapted surprisingly well to our new routine under lockdown, it still had an other-worldly feel to it. Although I seemed to be as productive as ever working from home, there was still time for contemplative moments staring out of the window cradling a cup of coffee in my hands. The view from my office window is well worth spending time over. Our house is a bungalow dating from the 1920s with a T shaped plan. My office is at one end with a view approximately north to the beach and sand dunes. Being north facing it never gets direct sun (and can be a bit chilly) but the upside is that on sunny days the view is bathed in sunshine.

I pondered my daughters’ recent exploit as amateur escapologists and wondered if it was just a passing fancy or if there would be more requests for me to tie them up. So far they hadn’t questioned just why I knew how to go about tying up two teenage girls. They already knew that I was quite handy with knots and I had attributed that (with close to 100% honesty) to my teenage years in the Sea Scouts. What they didn’t know was that my sister and I were enthusiastic players of tying-up games at their age, sometimes aided and abetted by my mother. I could envisage two outcomes from telling them. They might be grossed out by the concept of their mother, aunt and grandmother trussing each other up and never mention it again, or they might see me as a fount of all knowledge and demand to be taught everything I knew about the subject.

I was still idly pondering this when there was a knock on my office door. (The door was open, but I encourage politeness.) I swivelled round in my chair, my eyes adjusting from the bright scene outside to the comparative gloom of the room and hallway beyond. I sat open-mouthed in astonishment for a moment then burst out laughing. Both the girls were standing there with their wrists tied together in front of them with rope and with big silly grins on their faces.

“Show me,” I invited as I parked my empty coffee cup on my desk.

They walked across to me and held their bound wrists out for me to inspect. I immediately recognised the rope as being the girls’ skipping ropes. These aren’t fancy shop-bought ones, but simply lengths of 6mm cotton sash cord with a couple of centimetres of heat-shrink tubing on each end to stop them fraying. They had taken the bindings I had shown them using bandannas as their starting point and applied the same principle very effectively. The rope had been wrapped about four times around the wrists then twisted around to form a cinch, also of about four turns, between the wrists. The ends were secured with a neat reef knot.

“Very impressive,” I said. “Both being tied up isn’t easy to do.”

“It took a few tries,” Alice (my 15 year old daughter) said.

I examined the ropework closely. Liz (the 13 year old) had a slightly looser and less tidy binding.

“So, let me guess,” I said, addressing Alice. “Liz tied your hands first, then you tied hers, with yours already tied?”

Alice nodded. “That’s why it took a few tries.”

“That’s really hard to do,” I acknowledged. I looked at the rope on Liz’s wrists again. “You know, I think you could get out of that.”

My younger daughters eyes widened. “How?”

“Well, Alice did her best, but I think there’s a bit of slack in there.”

Liz nodded.

“So,” I continued, “what you do is wriggle your hands around to get the rope really tight on one wrist, so all the slack is on the other one. You’ll have to experiment a bit to get it to work. Once you’ve done that, you’ve got a good chance of working one hand free.”

Liz started twisting her hands first one way then another trying to achieve what I described, a look of intense concentration on her face and the tip of her tongue protruding from her mouth. Alice and I watched with interest.

“I think it’s working,” Liz said, an edge of excitement in her voice.

As we watched, a few more twists and tugs get her left hand free. “Ow,” she commented, inspecting her wrist.

“Got to watch out for grazing your skin,” I pointed out, a little late to be helpful.

“Now she tells me.”

“So, how much of your schoolwork time did that take up?” I asked, aware that I too needed to get back to work.

“Well, we had our Zoom chat with our guidance teacher, and that took half an hour,” Alice said defensively.

“And you’ve been doing this since?”

The two slightly sheepish grins were all the answer I needed.

“OK, I need to get back to work too,” I told them. “And full marks all round for Zoom dress code.”

I glanced down at my own outfit as I said that. The girls were supposed to be in uniform for their sessions with the guidance teacher, in which they would join anything up to half a dozen other students for an informal chat to see how everyone was getting on. They had capitalised on the fact that they would only be seen from the chest up. Both had their bottle green school sweatshirts on, but below the waist, Alice was wearing pale blue pyjama trousers with yellow stars tucked into pink slouch socks and Liz had on a pair of sweater leggings in a black and white snowflake pattern and grey socks. I was just as guilty; for my team meeting with work colleagues I had put on a golden yellow roll-necked sweater but the girls could see that I was also wearing a leopard-print onesie, and had just unzipped it, slid my arms out and pushed it down to my waist and out of camera view.

The girls went back to their work room (and hopefully Liz would untie her sister). I wriggled back into the top half of my onesie again as, despite the sunshine, it wasn’t terribly warm in my office.

Later on, I was doing a quick inventory of the fridge and store cupboard when Alice came into the kitchen from the scullery. The room we call the scullery is actually a sizeable utility room between the kitchen and the back door of the house. In addition to the usual washing machine, tumble drier and sink, there is a small washroom and toilet and the space where outdoor clothes and footwear is stored. Because of that, it’s also the main route into and out of the house.

“We’re off out to take Marmalade for a walk. Need anything from the Co-Op while we’re out?”

I should explain that Marmalade is our pet labradoodle (labrador retriever and poodle cross). He came from the Guide Dog Association, having not quite made the grade as a guide dog, and was named Marmaduke when we got him, but that somehow morphed into Marmalade.

“Bread and milk are a bit short,” I replied, still focussed on the cupboard contents. “I’m just about to use the last of the bell peppers, and maybe you should get some butter,” I added turning to face Alice then bursting out laughing.

Essentially, there was nothing to see of my older daughter. She was wearing a bright pink and turquoise patterned parka with a fake-fur-trimmed hood, which was pulled up. All I could see inside the hood was the edge of a red knit hat, a pair of tinted bubble goggles and a red bandanna over her mouth and nose. Alice was also wearing dark blue windproof overtrousers tucked into grey socks folded down over her walking boots. A pair of blue mittens completed the cover-up.

“Not taking any chances out there?” I asked.

“The outside temperature’s only 4, and the wind looks fit to blow your lugs off,” she pointed out. (4°C is about 39°F.)

I had registered earlier that it was cold and windy but not realised just how cold and windy. ‘Fit to blow your lugs off,’ literally ‘blow your ears off,’ is the local vernacular for ‘very windy indeed.’ We all owned bandannas and goggles for precisely the reason that a walk along a sandy beach in a high wind can be very unpleasant, so, on reflection, Alice was probably dressed very sensibly. The flying sand never seemed to bother Marmalade, although he would need a good brushing afterwards.

“This hair has to go!” Liz grumbled as she joined us in the kitchen. She was equally as well bundled up as her sister, in a sunshine yellow snowsuit (inherited from Alice). Her head was currently still bare as she tried to corral her long plait into a grey slouch hat. Neither of the rest of us had this problem. I wear my hair in a short pixie cut and Alice has a geometric bob, shorter at the back than at the sides. (As all three of us have narrow faces with pointy chins and prominent cheekbones, I think the shorter style suits us well, elfin if you like.)

I came to Liz’s assistance by loosely coiling the errant braid and tucking it into the hat, which I pulled down to her eyebrows.

“Thanks, Mum,” Liz said as she secured the whole structure with the elastic of her goggles and the velcro of a black fleece face mask over her mouth and nose.

Alice shouldered a small rucksack to carry the provisions I had asked for while Liz took Marmalade’s lead. Just as they reached the door to the scullery, Liz turned. “Mum do we have any rope in the house, apart from the skipping ropes?”

“There’s some spare clothesline in the garage,” I replied, then sensing the reason behind the question, I added, “But you really wouldn’t want to use that for tying each other up. It’s really just plastic tube with a nylon core. It’s much too stiff and it doesn’t knot easily.”

“We might visit the hardware shop in that case,” Alice said as they let themselves out of the house.

I turned my attention to preparing lunch for the three of us (rigatoni pasta with a garlicky tomato sauce), still contemplating my girls’ sudden fascination with escapology.

I had almost finished cooking when I heard the thump of the back door closing. As I put the finishing touches to lunch, I heard the whine of a vacuum cleaner and knew that meant that Marmalade had been brushed and the resulting minor sand dune was being cleaned up. I glanced round over my shoulder and saw through the glazed door to the scullery, that the girls were already out of their outdoor clothes. As I started plating up the food, they came into the kitchen. Liz was still wearing the black and white knit leggings I had seen earlier but now teamed with a black roll-neck sweater. She had kept on her grey boot socks. I was glad to see that Alice was no longer wearing pyjama trousers but had grey leggings on as the base layer for her outdoor clothes. On her top half, she was wearing a thick plum-coloured cardigan of mine that she had recently started borrowing. For reasons I don’t quite understand, she wears it backwards. I can kind of understand it if the cardigan has a deep V-neck, giving an unexpected dramatic plunge at the back, but this one doesn’t and Alice wears it buttoned to the nape of her neck. It also has pockets, which look a little odd at the back.

The girls quickly unpacked their rucksack and put away the food they had bought. I also noticed a sizeable coil of white rope, secured with a strip of tape, being taken out of the rucksack.

“Ready to eat?” I asked, gesturing towards the three plates I had just filled.

There was a chorus of “Yes please!” so I set Alice to sorting out cutlery and setting the table while Liz refilled Marmalade’s water bowl.

We sat at the big dining table in our spacious kitchen. After a few minutes eating in silence, I addressed the elephant in the room. “So, rope?”

After a glance at her sister, Liz began, “It was brilliant fun being tied up with the skipping ropes this morning, but if we’re going to be tied up properly, with our legs done up too, we need more rope.”

Alice picked up the story., “We did tell you we’d visit the hardware shop if it was open.”

I nodded to show I remembered that and that I was aware that hardware shops were classified as essential businesses to stay open during lockdown.

“Anyway,” Alice continued, “we remembered that the skipping ropes were 6mm cotton sash cord, because you told us, so we asked if they had any in stock.”

Liz chipped in again, in that seamless way sisters often manage, “We weren’t really sure how much to get and we didn’t want to ask how much we need to tie someone up, so we just thought of a number.”

“What number did you think of?” I asked.

“25 metres?” Alice replied, her voice rising to make it a question.

I paused in astonishment , then said, “That should be enough to immobilise you both quite effectively. How much did that cost?”

“12 pounds 50,” Alice replied, adding, “We can afford that.”

“Will you tie us up with it this afternoon?” Liz asked excitedly.

“Any schoolwork left?” I asked.

“I’m done,” Liz said.

“Just some reading for me,” Alice said, “About half an hour.”

“It’s about half past 1 now,” I said, glancing at the clock. “I’ve got another Zoom meeting at 3, so if you can both be ready for 2, I’ll tie you up. Don’t expect it to be an easy escape, though.”
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Post by Weird Aunt Ettie »

Part 2 continued

The girls helped me clear the table and then load the dishwasher. I went looking for them just before 2 o’clock and found them in their bedroom. They had their skipping ropes and the new rope laid out on the floor and had selected a bandanna each as gags.

“We’re not sure what lengths of rope we need,” Alice said, “so we haven’t cut anything yet.”

I realised that I was being put on the spot as tying-up expert and didn’t want to reveal just how much I knew. I decided that going through the logic of working it out from first principles would be the best camouflage. “Well, we already know from what you two did this morning that a skipping rope is just slightly too long to do wrists tidily, so let’s measure them qnd work from that.”

Liz produced an extending metal tape measure from their craft cupboard and we measured the skipping ropes. They weren’t exactly the same but were both close to 2 and a half metres.

Both girls looked at me expectantly.

“Well, I’m going to tie your wrists and ankles and then do your legs just below your knees and again just above, so let’s say 2-metre lengths for wrists and ankles and 2-and-a-half for legs. That’s for both of you, so four 2-metre lengths and just two 2-and-a-half metre, because we’ve still got the skipping ropes.

Liz frowned as she did a quick mental calculation. “What about the rest of the rope?”

“I’ll chop it in half and use it to tie your arms to your sides.”

The girls seemed satisfied with this logic so we got down on the floor and set to work to measure and cut. We discovered that even quite heavy craft scissors couldn’t cope with the thickness of the rope, so we used a Stanley utility knife instead. I made a mental note to keep a pair of garden secateurs handy in case an emergency rescue was ever needed. I found the ends of the long length left over and held them together then slid the paired rope through my hand to find the centre where I cut it. The sums suggested that these two lengths should be 6 metres each, but I didn’t measure to check.

“The ends will fray fairly quickly, so I’ll order up some heat-shrink tubing to put on the ends,” I promised. “Now, have you both been to the toilet recently.”

“Yes, Mum,” they chorused.

“So, who’s first?”

“Meeee!” Liz exclaimed before her sister could even draw breath.

“OK, I’ll do your wrists first,” I said. “Alice, you should watch what I’m doing because it’s going to be a bit different to what you did to each other this morning.”

I glanced at the time. Measuring and cutting rope had taken a while and it was now almost half past 2.

We were all still sitting on the floor so Liz turned herself around to face away from me and put her hands together behind her back. Alice scooted around to get a good view.

I repositioned Liz’s hands so her wrists were crossed then wrapped the rope around them running horizontally, making four snug turns, I twisted the ends of the rope around each other and made another four turns running vertically which tightened the binding as I did so. I finished off with a single turn going between Liz’s wrists to make the whole thing even more snug and finished off with a reef knot, which I carefully positioned so it was on the side of the binding towards her back.

I checked that the tightness of the rope with my fingers. “It’s important to make sure it’s not too tight. If it is, it will get sore really quickly and can do serious damage to your hands,” I explained in my best ‘now-listen-to-this’ voice.

The girls nodded solemnly.

“OK, Alice next.”

Alice positioned herself and crossed her wrists behind her back while Liz shuffled into a position where she could see. I repeated the binding on Alice and watched as she twisted her hands to explore the limits of her freedom. “This is going to be really difficult,” she said.

“I told you it wouldn’t be easy,” I reminded her.

“Or even possible at all,” Liz observed, apparently quite contentedly.

I decided to concentrate on tying Liz up rather than swapping back and forward between them. I positioned her feet so her ankles were crossed and pulled her socks up a little more neatly over her leggings. “Wrinkly bits can get really irritating if you can’t get reach them to sort them out,” I told her. I wrapped the rope around Liz’s ankles then cinched it between them so that she couldn’t uncross her ankles easily. The two knee bindings, one below and one above the joint were simple wrap-and-cinch arrangements.

“Now sit with your back straight and your legs flat on the floor,” I instructed. I wrapped one of the long lengths around Liz’s arms and chest pulling her arms snugly against her body. I manages eight turns of rope and distributed it so it spiraled up and down her body from waist almost to shoulders and back again then knotted the two ends together. I wasn’t sure if the girls knew the trick of untying a reef knot by forcing the knot to capsize so I used a fisherman’s knot for extra security.

Liz was clearly having trouble balancing, so I slid her bodily across the floor to end up leaning against the side of her bed.

Alice’s binding followed exactly the same pattern and both girls were thoroughly trussed up in less than 20 minutes.

“Now, how’s that?” I asked. “If anything is too tight or hurting, now is the time to say.”

The girls looked at each other and then at me. “I think it’s OK,” Liz said.

Alice nodded agreement and then asked, “How long have we got to escape?”

“I’ll come and rescue you if you’re not out in 2 hours,” I replied. “If you can’t escape in that time, you’re probably never going to escape.”

I picked up one of the bandannas, folded it into a strip and then tied a knot in the middle and squatted down nest to Liz to gag her.

“It’s got a knot in it,” Liz pointed out, stating the obvious.

“It makes a much better gag that way,” I told her, easing the knot into her mouth. I tied the ends behind her head and used a surgeon’s knot, just to make it harder to untie.

Alice took her gag without comment and I left them too it. I picked up an electronic timer from the kitchen and set it for 2 hours.

I just had a few minutes spare to prepare for the afternoon’s meeting. It was with with the immediate colleagues in my team and required no formality, so I had no problem appearing on other people’s screens in a leopard-print onesie. I decided to enhance the effect by adding a hairband with plush leopard ears on it, knowing that others might well appear equally ridiculously dressed.

The meeting lasted just under an hour. I was tempted to look in on the girls to see how they were getting on but decided to stick to giving them the full 2 hours I had promised. I made myself another mug of tea and returned to my desk to send some emails.

I had not been back at my desk for very long before I heard a polite knock at my office door. I swung round on my chair to see my two girls completely free. Liz looked as though she had been working hard with a flushed face and stray hair stuck to her forehead.

I stopped the timer. It had 43 minutes left of the 2 hours. “Almost exactly the same as last time,” I said.

“But much, much harder,” Liz commented firmly.

“Liz did most of the hard work,” Alice pointed out.

“Joint effort,” Liz said.

“So how did you do it?” I asked, genuinely intrigued. “I really wasn’t sure you’d be able to get out of that.”

“Gags with knots made it really hard to talk to each other,” Liz said.

“An even harder to understand,” Alice added. “We both worked out we couldn’t do anything while our arms were tied so we tried to untie each other but with our wrists crossed, we could only get one hand to each other’s knots and we were having to squirm around on the floor to reach anything anyway. Neither of us could shift those knots when they were under tension.”

I nodded sympathetically. “I used fisherman’s knots. They’re meant for joining fishing line, so they’re very good in tension.”

Liz picked up the story. “I tried pulling Alice’s ropes up so they came up past her shoulders but they wouldn’t move over that thick cardigan she’s wearing.”

“So I tried the same on Liz,” Alice continued, “and as soon as I’d got a couple of strands of rope up over a shoulder, the whole thing was slack enough to work it up over her shoulders and off.”

“And all this with you still all tied up,” I said, impressed.

Liz again. “I thought I’d be able to get my hands where Alice could untie the knot on my wrist rope but I couldn’t get it so she could de anything. I wondered if I could get my hands in front of me. I’m sure I’ve seen that done on TV. I rolled over so I was kneeling and tried to force my hands down over my bottom.”

“I helped by kneeling beside her and a bit sideways so I could get my fingers onto her wrist rope and use my weight to help,” Alice said.

“I got my hands down over my bottom eventually but then I was completely stuck. With my ankles crossed, I couldn’t bend my legs enough to get my hands under my feet. I also couldn’t get my hands back up over my bottom to where they were before,” Liz explained.

“We had quite a long mumbly talk about what do do next,” Alice said. “We agreed we needed my teeth on the job so Liz would have to get my gag off. Liz couldn’t do much apart from just lying on her side, so I had to manoeuvre myself so the back of my head was where she could get her fingers onto the knot on my gag.”

“Untying that knot took ages,” Liz said. “I know that if you pull one end of a reef knot over so that it’s pointing the wrong way, the knot sort of falls apart. But that didn’t work with this.”

Aha! I thought. They do know about capsizing a knot, they just don’t know the term for it. “I used a surgeon’s knot for exactly that reason,” I explained.

“Sneaky,” Liz commented. “I had to untie it properly and do it working one-handed.”

Alice continued, “Where Liz’s hands were, I still couldn’t get my teeth to the knot on her wrist rope, so I had to go for the knots on her leg ropes. It took a lot of wriggling around to get in position, and Liz couldn’t move much, but all those knots were on the front of her legs, so it wasn’t as difficult as it might have been.”

“Once Alice had freed my legs, I could get my hands under them one at a time, but it was much more of a struggle than I expected.”

“It was fairly easy to get Liz’s hands undone once she could move because I could get at the knot with my teeth then, even though I was still completely tied up.”

“And it was quite easy to untie Alice one I was free,” Liz said. “And here we are.”

I gave the girls a little round of applause. “Two-nil to you two, so far. I’m really impressed with that performance. What are you going to do next?”

“A nice long shower for me,” Liz said.

“Me too,” her sister added.

I turned back to my desk to finish off the small amount of work I had left to do and it was a full half hour before the girls reappeared, looking much fresher and warmly dressed in onesies.
wolfman
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Post by wolfman »

Thank you for a really cute and well written story. I really enjoyed that.
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slackywacky
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Post by slackywacky »

Great story, easy to read, fun to read. Hope there is more coming, lock down is not over yet...
Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment.
Slackywacky, also @DeviantArt

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Canuck100
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Post by Canuck100 »

Glad to see this awesome story continuing.
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Dpsiic
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Post by Dpsiic »

A lovely story, I am looking forward to more. I am sure you will tie the girls so they can't escape soon. Will they learn your little secret?
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Nainur
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Post by Nainur »

Excellent.
Carefully phrased, esp. the escapes step-by-step ...
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OldTUGger
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Post by OldTUGger »

These are very, very nicely done. Well paced, with believable dialogue spoken by equally believable characters. Perfect grammar, spelling and punctuation, too. Impressive!
Links to all of my stories can be found here in the Story Catalog: https://www.tugstories.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=6023
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Weird Aunt Ettie
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Post by Weird Aunt Ettie »

Thank you, OldTUGger, I personally value the story telling and the craft of writing as much as the actual TUG interest, so I really appreciate being appreciated for it.

Ettie x
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