The Case of the Mad Scientist

Chapter 3: Hanging Death Trap

Chapter 3: Hanging Death Trap

The gorgeous young women in the skin-tight one-piece simmering red costume was standing on the platform twenty feet above the stage and even more above the crowd who had come to that glittering pleasure dome in Las Vegas to watch her once more defy death. Stella Walters smiled at the crowd as she stood there, one arm held high in a dramatic pose. She held the pose for a few more seconds, and then turned to her assistant.

Tara was also up on the platform, holding a cloth sack, also showing off her firm young body in a similar tight fitting bit of electric blue lycra. She put the sack on the platform and then pulled a coil of rope out of it. Stella turned her back and placed her arms behind her. As Tara looped the rope around her elbows and pulled them tightly together, the crowd was treated to a wonderful display of large and firm breasts straining at the thin cloth barely covering them. She bound the wrists after solidly connecting the elbows.

To an observer, even one on the platform with them, had there been such, would have had no complaint about the method of binding. Tara was wrapping the ropes tightly, cinching them down and double and triple knotting them. No normal woman could have worked her arms free from that bondage.

Lowering herself to a kneeling position, Stella allowed her assistant to aid her in lying flat on her stomach. Tara then proceeded to fetch another length of white nylon rope and bind Stella’s ankles together. On either side of the stage were large screens on which were projected close up images of the binding going on high above the people. On screens twenty feet in height, they could see each turn of the rope, each winding of a cinch rope and each knot as it was placed carefully on the premier escape artist’s limbs. Many of the females in the audience gazed in rapture at the binding of this women, most of them imagining what it would be like were it their arms and legs being tied.

At a signal from Tara, an overhead hoist began lowering a rope. As the end of it came into view, it appeared to the audience that there was another woman there, bound and tied to the end of the rope. This woman was hogtied in the same manner as Stella, but wore a black suit that covered her from head to toe, including a hood that completely covered the head. Against that black, the white ropes stood out vividly. As that apparently helpless woman came near the top of the platform, those watching the screen could see that a second rope was coming down from the hogtied figure. As that rope neared, Tara took it in her hands and, as it lowered more, threaded it between Stella’s forearms and legs. The black clad figure stopped at the level of Tara’s head. The rope Tara was using to connect Stella’s hands and feet was tied to a metal ring, which, in turn, was tied around the waist of the figure.

As Tara brought the end of the rope back up and was tying it to the ring, the announcer was telling the audience that the figure in black was just a dummy and was placed there so they could see what would happen to Stella’s body if she did not escape from the “Hanging Hogtie Death Trap.”

When Tara had the rope tied off to her satisfaction, the dummy began to rise; the rope from her waist ring pulled taut as it did, and Stella’s feet came up and approached her hands. The tightening rope was forcing her into a hogtie very much the same as the dummy’s. Up and up the two hogtied and hanging figures went, until Stella was totally suspended a couple feet above the platform. At that time, the announcer called the audience’s attention to a black package that was taped to the rope just above the dummy. This, he explained, was a small explosive charge, but one big enough to sever the rope quickly and totally. There was a fuse hanging down from that package. Stella’s assistant would light that fuse, he continued, giving Stella approximately four minutes to escape before the fuse reached the charge and the rope severed.

The overhead hoist began to move sideways, bringing Stella away from the platform. When she was about six feet from the edge, it stopped. Tara was holding the end of the fuse in her hand, waiting for the next part of the act.

The announcer then told them what would happen should the escape artist fail to free herself in time. As he did, a short screen at the edge of the stage dropped, revealing a bed of metal spikes directly under Stella. Each was about two feet long and sharpened to a wicked point. Fifteen of them pointed upward in a grid of death.

For a few long moments the scene was frozen. Tara was holding the fuse and looking worried. Stella was, as the audience could see on the close up screens, under considerable strain from hanging in a hogtie. The camera panned over her body, catching not only the tightness of the ropes holding her prisoner but also every line and curve of her body as it hung there.

There was a short drum roll, and the announcer said, “You may light the fuse!”

Tara flicked her Bic and put the flame to the end of the fuse. It began to sputter and spark. She dropped it and the smoking, sparking end fell down to only a foot above Stella’s bound ankles.

Stella began wiggling and struggling. Her fingers frantically felt around the rope binding her wrists, as if seeking a knot she could untie. As she struggled and pulled and strained against the ropes, she was putting on a fine show for the audience. The burning end of the fuse slowly crept upward. Stella strained against the ropes, anxiety obvious on her beautiful face. A couple times she shook her body, making her long blonde hair dance around under her. It was a wonderful show, and more a few males in the audience felt a hardening of their manhood at the sight of this lovely creature so very helpless and endangered.

No normal woman could never hope to escape from those tight ropes. Even Stella, with all her skills and superbly conditioned body should not have been able to free any part of herself. Yet, as the sparking end of the fuse climbed closer to that black taped package, she was straining her arms, pushing one down while pulling the other upward. The ropes seemed to be loosening, almost magically. She continued to work them and they became looser. But her progress was slow - slower than the relentless shortening of the fuse.

As the fuse passed by the black dummy, Stella was jerking her arms back and forth, working them against each other and the ropes. With one hand she was holding on to the rope from her wrists up to the ring, trying to ease the pressure it was applying to the wrist bondage. The other hand was working at the wrist ropes, pulling at them.

The fuse was only two feet below the package and climbing. Some of the audience could see that one of the strands of rope had been worked down over her hand. She wasted no time in moving that slack up into the other windings.

The fuse was only a foot below the explosives. The ropes were off her wrists and she was still holding on to the rope up to the ring. If she were to let go of it, she would have swung down and been hanging upside down by her ankles. She did not want that. She worked her free arm back and forth rapidly, and suddenly the ropes above her elbows were sliding down. She shook her arm free of them.

The fuse was only a few inches from the package. Stella twisted around, pivoting by the hand that was holding the rope, and brought her other hand up to grab it. Property © of NôvelDrama.Org.

The fuse was almost touching the explosives. Taking the rope in both hands, Stella rapidly pulled herself upward to get enough slack in the rope still around her ankle bondage so she could begin pumping her legs. She and the dummy began swinging.

The burning touched the package. At the same instant, Stella made one last, big pump with her legs as she swung towards the platform.

There was a loud bang; fire flared from the black package and the rope was immediately cut in two. At the same instant, Stella let go of the rope and reached out with her hands for the edge of the platform. Behind her, the dummy began falling. Stella’s hands caught the edge. As the dummy crashed onto the spikes below, she was hanging by her hands from the platform. It was clear what would have happened to her had she not worked her way free: the dummy was skewered by the long spikes.

With an effort, and aided by Tara, Stella pulled herself onto the platform. She sat there, gasping for a few seconds while the audience applauded. Then she reached down and untied the ropes from her ankles. Standing up, she struck her victory pose, one arm lifted up and one knee bent slightly forward. As the cameras panned over her body, the audience could see the red pressure marks on her arms and ankles, and they knew that she had fought a real battle against the ropes.

As they climbed down from the platform, Tara’s hands were shaking.

“You nearly didn’t make it this time,” she hissed at Stella. “Why do you insist on such dangerous stunts?”

“Because the people want to see the real thing,” she told Tara as she waved and smiled at the audience. “They want to be sure that it is real and not all an illusion.”

“But it is an illusion, a trick,” Tara said as they turned to leave the stage. “We use those special ropes that give like elastic. On other tricks there are false bottoms and secret catches and such. But why do you insist on making it so close to being real? You damned near didn’t make it out of those ropes in time.”

Stella stopped behind the main curtain and turned to her assistant and close friend. “Maybe I like the challenge of seeing how close I can come to failure. How close I can tease death and win.”

“One of these days you will lose that challenge.”

“Maybe. But until then, I’m the best female escape artist in the world,” she said brightly.

“Female, hell. You are the best, period!”