As if a curtain were slowly being drawn across a stage, Susan's awareness of the world returned -- and then passed in an instant into an overwhelming self-consciousness, as the air drained out of her in a rush. I'm here, I'm doing it again!! she screamed silently. Every minute, every second of her experience the previous weekend, every pinnacle of sexual fulfillment, every tremor of pure terror, all passed through her conscious mind in an instantaneous flash. All of it was reflected in her current state of being, with her fear of what lay ahead alternating with intense sexual need from one moment to the next, flashing like a strobe light gone mad.

Another part of her evaluated her body's environment, and experienced it all at once, sending another thrill of excitement through her, leaving her trembling. She was outdoors, and naked -- she could easily tell both facts from the light breeze passing softly over her bare skin while it rustled the leaves around her. She was bound, blindfolded, her remaining ball gag filling her mouth. She was sitting upright on the ground, judging from the grittiness of the surface against her butt. Her back was straight, and she could feel what was probably a tree pressed against it, her hands bound together behind it. She twisted her right hand around and brushed her fingers over the surface -- yes, obviously a tree.

Her position might have been comfortable, except for the way her legs were spread apart, each straight along the ground, in a wide V that was nearly painful, and surely would be if she were here very long. Instinctively she tried to close them and draw her feet towards her butt, but found that her ankles were each tied to something out there ahead of her. Rotating both ankles back and forth, she could tell that her new ankle cuffs, the ones that had excited her so much, were locked around them -- she knew it was the new ones because there was no jingle of a padlock as she moved them. No clinking of chains, either: it must be rope securing the cuffs this time. Yes, she thought, as she rubbed the side of her heel against the rope's smooth surface. Definitely rope.

There were also ropes that went over the shoulder and under the armpit on both sides, holding her upper body tight against the tree, and farther down, one more set of ropes that she was, at present, by far the most conscious of: making a tight circle around her waist to hold her lower back against the tree, then running from front to back between her legs, through her labia and buttocks. The feel of it, tautly rubbing against the most erogenous part of her body, was making the most significant contribution to her state of growing arousal, the excitement she had always felt throughout her life when she so much as imagined being tied naked and helpless, which reached, as she had discovered, a level far beyond any she had known when it was no longer imagined but real.

Hyper-awareness of her body, her surroundings, her captivity, burst through her mind like a river overflowing its banks, too full to be contained. She was here, she was helplessly tied, she was naked outside where the world could see her! Blindfolded, unable to tell whether anyone was already watching. Gagged, unable to tell such a person to go away, to explain, to scream at them to stop looking. Unable to hide her nudity, her breasts uncovered, her legs spread obscenely wide. Even the rope through her crotch, which might have hid her most private place, only playfully revealed it -- she could feel the nether lips embracing the rope on either side, swelling around it, surely shining with the fluids of her arousal.

Every part of her body began wriggling, her arms and legs jerking against their restraints, her hips twitching insistently. Every movement affected the rope between her legs, pulling it tight again and again through her crotch, slipping liquidly through that place that was the center of all her attention. She barely noticed the back of her head banging against the tree, as her excitement overwhelmed any rational appraisal of what her body was actually doing...

Nnnnnnnnghh!! The orgasm shot through her, as strong as any from last weekend, stronger, bigger, more huge than any words could ever say! It shook every part of her, all thought eradicated by raw sensation, and she tried to hold onto it, make it last forever, grasping at it tightly so she could never let go of it.

Yet it slipped away, the tide withdrawing from the shore, leaving her limp, exhausted.

The word orgasm is so hopelessly inadequate, she told herself. I've had orgasms before last weekend, but they weren't really even in the same category of experience. The sexual explosions of real bondage went so far beyond those Susan had ever experienced with fantasies of bondage that she understood, now, that those earlier climaxes had only been hints of the excitement life could potentially hold.

For a time Susan sat still, her heart still pounding but slowing, her breathing deep and shaky as she began to catch up on her aerobic needs.

I promise, she said to herself, I will never stop doing this. She remembered her resolution, at various times last weekend, never to do anything like this again. But that was just when I was really scared, she told herself. When I think of the heights I can reach, the orgasms I know I can never have any other way... I promise I will remember those, when I get terrified.

I can't do this every weekend, obviously, she thought. But I don't have to. Just to know that a repeat of this feeling is somewhere in the future, something to look ahead to and not only behind. That's enough.

She wondered at the intensity level of the blast she'd just experienced. This one, tonight, had seemed even stronger than the ones last weekend. Maybe, she thought, it's that I'm blindfolded. That's new. Being prevented from seeing as well as from moving. That probably was it.

Her breath restored, her heart slowing to near-normal, she sat and felt the tickling streams of sweat flowing down her on all sides. She hadn't known what temperature to expect tonight. She had carefully avoided checking or listening to any weather forecasts -- part of the thrill of outdoor bondage was the inability to avoid any discomforts of her environment, and she didn't want to know ahead of time what they would be. It was a warm, muggy night, as would be expected at this time of year. She was glad of that. She hadn't enjoyed all the shivering last weekend. This week there had been rain Monday night and through a lot of Tuesday, and some showers Wednesday morning, but after that the heat of approaching summer had restored itself. It had been mostly sunny, with just a few scattered clouds, Thursday and today. That was normal.

She was thirsty, which didn't surprise her. She understood it to be one of the basic ingredients of a hangover similar to the one last weekend. Her head ached, though it didn't seem as bad as last week. None of that really seemed to matter. The bliss of sexual release made it all unimportant.

She suddenly realized she must have made a lot of noise during her climax, and probably before it. She thought she might have screamed. She wasn't sure.

The thought filled her with horror. With no idea where she was, she had no way to know whether anyone and heard her. No, no, please no! she thought desperately. If someone heard me they'll be here any moment!

She sat absolutely still, holding her breath, her heart pounding once again, listening for any sound that would indicate an approaching person. Or even a watching person.

She did hear traffic sounds, which were neither surprising nor threatening.

She tensed and nearly cried out as she heard the sound of a car going by, much nearer than she expected, seemingly within a hundred feet or so. The pitch of the engine dropped as it went past, and soon another came from the opposite direction. She realized she was much closer to the street in front of her building, Stockhouse Boulevard, than she had been last weekend. Or it could be some other street. There had probably been cars going by earlier during her... excitement, but she'd been too preoccupied to notice the sounds.

But as she listened for several minutes, there were no sounds at all of anyone approaching her on foot, or standing nearby. Eventually she took a deep breath, satisfied that no one had heard whatever sounds she might have made while transported by ecstasy.

I have to trust Suzy, Susan told herself, to put me somewhere out of sight. Getting home unseen was going to be a challenge, but Susan thought she was probably safe for now.

Her sexual tension gone for the time being, Susan began thinking, for the very first time since awakening, of how to free herself. Until her climax, getting out of her restraints had been the farthest thing possible from her desire.

As the hope flitted through her mind that one of her water bottles was nearby, she began to experiment with her bondage to determine how to deal with it.

She frowned. Being blindfolded was exciting, but it did complicate her escape. Mostly rope was involved, but she did have those wide metal bands around her wrists, the new ones, as her fingers told her. They would open with a key, but she had no idea where the key might be, and she couldn't look around to find one. She quickly, though carefully, ran her fingers over the dirt surrounding her hands. No keys there. The cuffs were tied to each other, no more than an inch apart, using rope through their D-rings. With her fingers Susan could feel the thick knot holding the rings together behind her, behind the tree. She must have to untie the knot. That would be tricky, without being able to see it, but she should be able to do it by feel.

She knew getting rid of the blindfold was out of the question, until her hands were free. She'd loved the design of it: it consisted of two thick circular leather pads, each a couple of inches across, with a leather band passing through adjustment sleeves on the back side of each pad. The distance between the pads could be adjusted to fit any face, and when the leather band was buckled in place, behind her head, the pads fit so snugly against Susan's eyes she couldn't even open her eyelids. When she had tried the blindfold out at home, she could see absolutely nothing but blackness even in a fully lighted room, and even using her hands she couldn't budge the band around her head, other than by unbuckling it. And of course, her hands weren't available for the purpose now.

Susan continued feeling the knot between her cuffs with her fingers, trying to find the loose ends, to determine how to untie it.

The rope must be circling the tree trunk as well, she decided, holding the cuffs against the back side of it. She'd been trying to push her hands back farther from the tree to give her fingers more room to explore the knot, but it wasn't possible. She did find two strands emerging from the knot in either direction held taut against the trunk, confirming it was indeed tied around the trunk.

But where were the loose ends?

After a moment she wriggled in frustration. She couldn't find any strands of rope coming out of the knot other than those two that circled the trunk. The question of where the loose ends were became more pressing. She felt around the knot more carefully, determined not to miss anything.

She tried harder to pull her hands away from the tree. The ends, she thought, must be tucked down between the knot and the tree, and it was hard to insert her fingers into that small space.

After carefully feeling along every strand in the knot, she finally realized, in horror, that there simply weren't any ends of the rope coming out of the knot except the ones that circled the tree. Those ends, she understood now, must be secured with a knot on the opposite side of the tree, between her back and the tree.

A slight whimper escaped Susan's throat before she reminded herself to remain quiet. She twisted to reach, with her right hand, as far around the trunk as she could. The trunk was, she estimated, six or seven inches thick. She couldn't even reach a quarter of the way around it. She couldn't reach the knot she needed to untie.

This is impossible! she shouted silently. Suzy couldn't have tied it like this! As much as Susan thought of Suzy as a separate entity, it was still true that Suzy was inside Susan's body, using it. How, Susan demanded, did Suzy do this??

Susan's conscious mind was suddenly flooded with memories. Memories of the lost time between dinner and awakening here, tied up outdoors. The memories didn't play out in sequence, as if in a movie, but were more like a library, with books on shelves she could access at her choosing.

These were Suzy's memories, Susan realized. Things Suzy had done while in control of Susan's body.

Susan now remembered -- or Suzy remembered on her behalf -- closing her apartment door, and testing the knob to make sure the door was locked. She'd been carrying the leather briefcase her mother had bought her for college, which Susan had stashed away in the closet in her apartment, with no current use for it. Another memory had Suzy arriving at the site she had picked out for Susan's bondage. The ropes that had been missing since Wednesday in Susan's equipment drawer were on the ground near a tree of about the thickness of the one Susan was tied to now, as well as a loose mound of trail mix and a half-dozen water bottles, one of the two six-packs. It was twilight, very dim in the wooded area, but with enough light to do what needed to be done.

The briefcase had contained only several keys Susan recognized: keys to various padlocks, and the ankle and wrist cuffs, as well as her apartment key. Susan remembered now that, on arriving at the tree, she had opened the case, taken all the keys and put them in a handkerchief she'd brought, then wadded it up, tied its corners, and shoved it into a pocket of her jeans. After that she had removed all her clothes, folded them up, and slipped them into the briefcase, then closed the case. Susan remembered, or Suzy remembered for her, being tipsy, and giggling through all of this, and reminding herself to be quiet.

Somehow the memory of exactly where any of this had taken place was gone. Susan couldn't recall walking from her apartment to the tree where she was tied. Where the tree was, in relationship to anything else -- that was a blank. The degree of control Suzy had in selecting which memories to parcel out to Susan's conscious mind was surprising.

For the time being, the most relevant of the memories told Susan how Suzy had managed to bind her here, how she had made use of the available bondage equipment. The empty, unlocked wrist cuffs had already, in preparation earlier, been tied together at their D-rings by a knot in the middle of the longest rope Susan had, and the two ends of that rope had been pulled in either direction around the tree trunk, and knotted on the side of the tree opposite the cuffs, tightly holding the joined cuffs against the tree at ground level. There were still two long ends of rope left over coming out of that knot.

Next Suzy had locked on the ankle cuffs, had sat on the ground against the tree and spread her legs as wide apart as she could along the ground, then stood up, awkwardly, without moving her feet from their widespread stance. She'd then taken two ropes, and threaded each through the D-ring on one of the ankle cuffs. Reaching forward, she looped each of the ropes around the base of the trunk of a tree ahead of her, in each case with her ankle on a line between that tree and the original one, took out all slack, and then, for good measure, had pushed the loose ends through the D-ring once more, and looped the ends around the tree once more before knotting it at the tree.

With her feet now secured, Suzy sat back down on the ground, with her butt -- Susan's butt -- back against the original tree, her legs now held taut in that wide V which, at the present time, was really starting to ache.

Then she had secured her shoulders against the tree: taking two more ropes, she draped each over one of her shoulders, a short length of it in front and a lot behind. With the rope over her right shoulder, she took the end that was behind her shoulder and ran it behind her neck, around the tree, then behind her neck again, under her left armpit, took out all the slack she could, and tied it to the short piece hanging over her left shoulder. She'd done the same with the rope hanging behind her left shoulder: behind her neck, around the tree, behind her neck again, under right armpit, take out all slack, tie to front part of rope hanging over right shoulder. These ropes now held her upper back, shoulders, and shoulder blades firmly against the tree.

The blindfold and the gag came next. Susan, within the memory restored to her by Suzy, could recall not only Suzy's actions but also her feeling of growing excitement.

Almost done, now, and in the memory, Susan experienced Suzy's feeling of satisfaction at a job done well and nearly completed. And the dizziness from the tequila.

Suzy had taken the long loose ends up the rope at the base of the tree trunk, in the small of her back, and looped them each in a full circle in opposite directions around her waist, tying each end tightly behind her back to the rope already circling the tree. Then she'd pulled the two ends underneath her, between her butt cheeks and labia, up to the rope around her waist and knotted it there -- again, tight.

And then, at last, Suzy had reached back behind her, her arms around the tree trunk, putting her wrists -- Susan's wrists -- into the cuffs, closing them to lock with a sharp click. Susan remembered the thrill of excitement shooting through her at that final sound that locked away her freedom of movement.

And then, grinning and again giggling, Susan remembered Suzy thinking, "Have fun with this, Susan." Then she'd leaned her head back against the tree and allowed the alcohol haze to envelop her in sleep.

Susan shook her head, whimpering once more and not able to stop herself now. Suzy put me in a tie I can't get out of!! she told herself, her heart pounding harder than ever. Every single knot I have to untie is out of reach! The knot for the rope holding my hands behind the tree is in front of my stomach! I couldn't even get close to reaching it when I thought it was between the tree and my back!

Think! she ordered herself, Think! There has to be a way! Suzy left my clothes safely packed away, and keys for the cuffs, in the briefcase! That means Suzy was expecting me to get out of this!

Susan stretched her fingers out as far as she could, and rolled her feet on her heels left and right. Wherever the briefcase was, it was clearly outside the range of her very, very limited reach. But it was there, somewhere. Suzy had left Susan with a way to take off the cuffs, get dressed, and get back into her apartment, once she escaped from the tree. Why bother with all that if no escape was possible?

Getting her legs free seemed hopeless, but Susan tried anyway, though her taut, stretched-out muscles screamed at her to stop. There was no possible way, of course, to pull either foot out of its locked cuff, designed as it was for a snug fit. Breaking either of the ropes that secured each cuff to its respective tree beyond it was impossible as well. The rope was a quarter-inch thick, smooth and silky to the touch, and very strong -- it had held the weight of Susan's body when tied to a ceiling fixture, even when she jumped off the floor and let it jerk her weight to a stop, dangling over the floor. She couldn't muster anywhere near that force now just by flexing her thigh and calf muscles, especially not with her legs split so far apart -- and it wasn't just a single rope she needed to break now: Susan reminded herself that, as the memory from Suzy had shown her, all the tension she could muster would be distributed among six different strands, not just a single one.

Breaking the ropes that held her shoulders against the tree seemed impossible as well. The knots, Susan knew, were far out of reach. She tried wriggling and twisting her shoulders to see if she could get either rope to fall off the shoulder and down her arm, to give her at least a little more freedom of movement, in case it might help her deal with her hands, but the way the ropes were tied, every movement of her upper body tended to slide the rope closer to her neck rather than the end of her shoulder -- any movement of her upper body within the ropes left her farther from escaping them. Very clever of Suzy, Susan thought in frustration. Another possible way out eliminated.

Susan was almost unbearably thirsty now, her leg muscles throbbed, especially along her inner thighs, and her jaw ached from being held open so long.

The idea of freeing her hands from the cuffs was as hopeless as freeing her feet. She couldn't possibly pull her hands out of the snug-fitting metal bands. And breaking the rope holding the cuffs against the tree was out of the question -- she couldn't get any leverage, from the position she was in, to put any significant tension in the rope.

She could rub the knot between her hands against the tree! That should work. She could wear it down until it broke.

She twisted her hands around to bring the knot up against the bark, and grunted in frustration. She could manage it, but the rope was holding the wrist cuffs so close together that she couldn't press the knot against the rough surface without her hands also rubbing against it. If she tried wearing down the knot, she would rip all the skin off the heels of her palms long before she made any useful progress.

Feeling desperate, Susan patted the ground around her hands once more -- there had to be a key to one of the wrist cuff locks! Suzy, Susan told herself, didn't necessarily leave all the keys in the briefcase! Maybe she'd put them in, and isn't letting me remember her taking one or more out later! There's got to be a key here, it's the only possible way out! Susan tried, knowing it wouldn't work, to dislodge the blindfold by rubbing the back of her head against the tree -- if she could just see the ground around her, the key might be in sight. Perhaps some earlier movement -- she had no idea what she might have done during her orgasmic thrashing -- had accidentally pushed the key away, but it still might be in reach. Or there might be a stick nearby she could use to pull the key towards her, if only she could see it!

She was making no progress whatever with the blindfold, but couldn't give up -- it was her last hope.

She froze suddenly, unable to breathe. There had been a sound not far away. A familiar sound. The sound of a door opening. Footsteps on concrete, muffled. The door whispering shut. Footsteps continuing. Moving away from her, she thought. It was all happening within a hundred feet or so, maybe less.

She knew the sound of that door. It was the back door of her apartment building.

Taking in breath in tiny sips, her entire body trembling in fear, Susan continued listening, trying to assure herself the footsteps weren't coming closer. They stopped, and Susan heard the sound of a car door opening, then closing. An engine started.

Susan knew exactly where she was, now. She was in the woods adjacent to her building, facing towards it -- the sound of the door had been straight ahead of her. She turned her head slightly to the right, seeing the parking lot in her mind, her eyes blind to it, and listened as the car drove away towards the street exit.

I can't be seen, Susan told herself, but only because it's nighttime. She was fairly sure, at least, that it was still dark. Daytime would be warmer than this, with birds chirping. At night, no one would be able to spot her in the unlit woods, under the canopy of trees. But in daytime, she would be easy to see. The trees here weren't densely packed enough to hide her.

Susan felt panic beginning to rise within her. A conviction that no escape was possible grew and began to overwhelm her. I have to get free, she screamed within her head, I have to get loose, I have to get out of this before the sun comes up! People will see me! People I live with will see me!

More afraid than she had ever been in her life, Susan groaned when her bladder let go. She tried desperately to hold it. She had accustomed herself to the idea of peeing outdoors, because it was an inescapable part of the whole package of outdoor bondage. But she hated, hated having to sit in a puddle of her own piss afterward.

Wrinkling her nose at the smell, she desperately tried to force the panic away. It didn't help that she had already exhausted every possibility she could think of for freeing herself.

She felt, unexpectedly, some degree of calm descending on her, and was startled to realize it was somehow being imposed on her in spite of herself. Suzy, she thought. Suzy is telling me to relax.

A new memory suddenly appeared on the mental library shelf, something Suzy had edited out of the recollection earlier, had not allowed Susan to remember until now.

Near the very end of the elaborate job of binding Susan to the tree, at the point where Suzy had locked her wrists into the cuffs, she had done something else just before that. She had reached to her right, picked a piece of string off the ground, and tied the end of it around her right wrist -- Susan's right wrist. Or actually a couple of inches up the forearm from the wrist. She'd then draped the string over a nail hammered into the tree about a foot directly above where Susan's wrist was now. Then she had locked her wrists into the cuffs.

The string, Suzy's memory told Susan now, went up from her wrist, hung over the nail, and then led to a pile, about ten feet to Susan's right, where the rest of the string was coiled loosely, unrolled from the original spool, all 400 feet of it, the string Susan had bought earlier this week. The other end of that 400 feet of string was tied to the ring at the end of the handle of Dad's old Boy Scout knife, from the home-assembled tool kit Dad had insisted Susan take with her when she left home. All Susan had to do now was reel in the string, get the knife, and cut the rope.

Suzy had hidden the means of escape cleverly, not only from Susan's conscious memory but also from premature physical discovery. With the string running directly upwards from her wrist, hung over the nail in the tree, it had never been likely that the fingers of either of Susan's hands would brush against it and bring it to her attention: it was effectively out of her way, an unnoticeable secret she wore on her wrist, tied so lightly she couldn't feel it.

A feeling of warmth flooded through Susan. Thank you, Suzy! You did leave me a way out!

The warmth evolved into a stronger feeling, as Susan thought of the amount of work she still had ahead of her. That extreme awareness of her body in bondage, helpless to move, completely naked and exposed... with the added boost of the awareness of how much time and effort would be required to free herself. Susan had barely had time to register the renewed tingling between her legs before it red-lined, more intense than before, more intense than ever!

All through her body her muscles jerked spastically against their restraints, as she tried to close her legs and free them, her arms flexing again and again to try to pull her hands free, her waist muscles straining with the effort to bend her upper body forward against the ropes holding her shoulders against the tree, none of it productive except in allowing her to ascend higher on the slopes of sexual excitement.

She reached the summit and leapt off the cliff into the abliss of orgasm. Waves of heat washed through her, each splashing against more waves in a seemingly endless series.

And receding at last, leaving Susan wrung out, exhausted, tears of joy running from her eyes, mixing with the renewed sweat rolling down every part of her body.

She was that much more thirsty now. And muscle groups from every part of her body were protesting with aches, especially her legs.

But it's worth it, she told herself. I'd take any of this pain as long as I can have... that. What I just had.

But I still have to get loose, she reminded herself. And I have to do it before sunrise. How long will it take, an hour? Two, maybe?

She gasped at the sudden thought that she might not have that much time. She had no way to know what time it was, other than the birds being silent and the long time between cars passing by on Stockhouse Boulevard -- that street just about fifty feet to my left, she thought with a shudder, her new estimate of the distance resulting from having a much better idea of her location. Like the residents of her building, none of the people in the passing cars could see her, for as long as the darkness lasted. How long was that?

She couldn't even make a guess, within a time frame that went from about eleven p.m., the earliest she thought it could possibly be, to about five a.m. She had no way to know how much time had passed in a tequila stupor. Whoever had driven off from the parking lot just now may have been making a late trip for needed groceries -- as Mr. Melman had last weekend, nearly catching Susan in the hallway before she managed to get into her apartment. Or -- she shuddered once more, violently -- maybe it was someone leaving for work in a job that started at, say, six. And there might be a lot more of those over the next hour or so before daybreak.

Her bladder control weakened again, though there wasn't much left to come dribbling out of her.

Start, she ordered herself. Now!

She twisted her right hand around, feeling for the string with her fingers. Twisting her hand inward, she couldn't come far enough around to raise her fingers much higher than her wrist. Twisting it outward, straining, she just managed to graze the string -- there it is, it's there! -- with the backs of her fingers, but couldn't manage, despite increasing desperation, to get any of her fingers bent far enough back to wrap around it.

Before renewed panic set in, she thought: Other hand, other hand! Twisting her left hand inward and upward, she carefully reached up with her fingers... there!

The string went limp immediately, having apparently dropped off the nail from which it had hung, and draped itself over the back of her right hand. Now she was able to grasp it with her right.

Just start reeling it in, she told herself, ordering herself not to think about how long it was going to take.

She fell into a rhythm of pulling the string in with alternate hands, periodically pausing to brush the growing pile of string out of the way, off to her left. There never was any way of determining how much progress she had made. She just kept going.

To her left, traffic on the street seemed steady, and still rare. There were no more arrivals or departures in the parking lot.

A sudden vicious cramp seized her left calf muscle. There was nothing she could do except try to stretch it out to the extent she could, bending her foot back at the ankle as hard as she could, trying not to moan in pain. She really needed to reach forward and pull the top of her foot back with her hand. Or with the other foot. Impossible, of course.

Slowly, the pain subsided. As dehydrated as she was, she knew there would be more of that sort of thing to come. She resumed reeling in the string.

It felt as though she had spent her entire life doing nothing but this: pulling an unseen string from her right to her left, behind her back, pulling, pulling, brushing it aside, pulling again.

She froze. The back door had opened again. She sat perfectly still, not breathing. Moments later another car started, drove off.

The first car hadn't returned. That wasn't a shopping trip, she concluded. People were starting their workday. It couldn't be for the night shift. Those people must already be at work. These would be people in daytime jobs -- since it was Saturday, there would be fewer of them than on Monday through Friday, but plenty of people had to work Saturdays. It was going to get busy here soon.

Two cars passed by on her left, both heading towards town. Another indication that dawn might be near. Whimpering in renewed fear, Susan continued pulling on the string.

At last: resistance! She had pulled the entire four hundred feet of string past her, except for the last ten feet that went straight from where she sat to the knife.

She continued pulling in the string. There was inconsistent tension in the string as it brought the knife, bumping and scraping over the uneven ground, closer. About five feet more, she guessed.

And then it was stuck.

No, she thought, no, please!!

There probably isn't anything there for it to get immovably caught against, she told herself hopefully. It's probably just hung up behind a rock projecting up from the ground. The knife should be able to get past it if I pull harder.

But if I pull too hard, she worried, the string could break.

She twisted her hand farther outward to try to pull from a higher elevation, hoping she could lift the knife over the rock that way. It didn't work. Probably still too far away.

She pulled on the string in brief jerks, each just barely harder than the last, hoping to find the absolute minimum amount of extra force she could use to free the knife before she exceeded the strength of the string.

She breathed out a huge sigh of relief. That last one had worked. The knife was moving again.

About a minute later she held the knife in her hand. If she could have opened her eyes, she would have closed them now. It's almost over, she told herself.

Some distance behind her, a bird began tweeting. And yet again, pee dribbled from Susan's bladder.

It's not necessarily dawn yet, she told herself. Some of the birds start before light.

She opened the knife as carefully as she could with trembling fingers. She didn't want to cut herself. Though I'm almost loose, she thought. I could free myself, run in and wash the blood off, put a Band-Aid...

She got the knife open painlessly. So far so good, she thought. Now, Susan thought, I just need to cut the rope holding my cuffs.

She worked to maneuver the knife around, then hesitated. With a finger, she felt at the knot of rope joining the D-rings of her wrist cuffs together. Too close together. She could saw away at the rope, but the tiniest slip, as she worked the knife blindly and awkwardly behind her back, would send the blade slicing through her skin. The cuffs themselves protected her wrists immediately adjacent to the knot, but not for a great enough distance on either side. And of all places to cut herself: not just cutting the skin, not just cutting the wrist, but the inside of the wrist. Where all those important blood vessels run.

The cramp in her calf chose that moment to return.

Susan bit down hard on the gag, concentrating all her effort on stifling the automatic scream of pain. She did what she could to stretch out the muscle once more.

She felt a flash of pain through the thigh muscle of her right leg, as if that was about to cramp. It subsided, but the calf muscle stayed knotted a few minutes longer before finally relaxing.

I have to do it, now, she told herself. I just have to be careful. And if I die, at least everything will stop hurting.

She continued telling herself Do it, do it! yet was unable to persuade herself to risk her own life. Her heart rate built, and her hand shook, the unwelcome result of adrenaline released by fear. The shaking made using the knife even more dangerous.

A thought suddenly sprang into her mind. She had a feeling this was her own, not Suzy's.

I don't need to cut the knot, she realized. I just have to cut the rope next to the tree. That will give the rope a free end, and then I can untie the knot.

With her left hand, she felt along the rope next to the knot where it began its circle around the tree. It was so tight around the tree that she could barely budge it a fraction of an inch away from the bark. She pulled hard outward with both hands, and maintained her hold as she slipped the blade in between the rope and the bark, the sharp side facing the rope. She started sawing up and down, willing the fibers to part.

Nothing seemed to be happening. It certainly wasn't like the movies, where a quick flick of a knife seemed to break the thickest rope in an instant. Of course, she told herself, that's fake. Those ropes are pre-cut.

After several minutes, she felt at the portion of the rope she'd been sawing on with her finger. It was frayed, a little. Progress. She resumed.

Several more minutes of sawing, and the rope suddenly broke.

She threw the knife down and scrabbled at the knot between the cuffs with her fingers, trying to loosen it. Once again, being unable to see it, and having to work behind her back, were significant handicaps. She could feel the various cords tangled around each other with her finger, but couldn't sense which strand to pull on to make it all come free.

There! One of the strands had slipped a fraction of an inch against the others. She pulled on it once again, and it slid through. The rest was easy.

Susan stood shakily, moving her jaw to ease the pain, rubbing her eyes, rubbing her aching calf muscle.

Freeing her hands had allowed her to shrug out of the shoulder ropes. The rest she had untied rather than cut, that being faster, and she wanted to save the rope anyway. She'd nearly screamed once more in pain as she stood, her feet still spread, and fallen forward to get to the ropes securing her ankle cuffs to the trees.

Free, at last, except for the ankle cuffs and wrist cuffs -- locked, impossible to remove without a key. Aside from the cuffs she was still naked. She looked around for the briefcase. It was nowhere in sight.

Suzy had hidden the briefcase. Doing so, and where she had done it, wasn't one of the memories Suzy was allowing Susan. Susan thought back through the memory of Suzy putting the keys into her pants pocket, and putting all her clothes, Susan's clothes, the keys inside them, into the briefcase. Susan closed her eyes tight, willing herself to remember what Suzy had done with the briefcase next. I did it, whatever it is, Susan told herself. The memory has to be in my head somewhere!

The memory eluded her desperate grasp.

It was still dark, but there was purple, with a hint of orange, in the eastern sky. Dawn was coming on, Susan saw, exactly as she'd feared, relieved that at least she had freed herself before the light came. The light at present was not sufficient, by itself, to help Susan see her surroundings, but illumination from distant streetlights, and from the building, did the job.

Aside from the standard forest vegetation, and a lot of discarded ropes, a ball gag, and a blindfold, there were the half-dozen water bottles and pile of trail mix that Suzy's memory told Susan she'd left here. One of the water bottles was empty, as of two minutes ago. Susan widened the area of her visual search. Still no sign of the briefcase.

More birds were joining the chorus of singing around her.

Susan brushed through the pile of nuts with her fingers, just in case any of the keys she needed might be here, despite the memory of them being in the briefcase. There were no keys. Nor were there any elsewhere in sight.

Susan pressed her lips together. She was free to go anywhere, except home. She had no way into her apartment. And she wasn't about to go to the office and ask for help. Not in her current state of undress.

Suzy was continuing to withhold the memory from Susan of where the briefcase might be. Susan stood with her hands on her hips, biting her lip, unsure what to do.

She suddenly realized she only had minutes left to make an important decision.

There was only a limited area where the briefcase could be. Since all of Susan's clothes were in the briefcase, it had to be someplace Suzy could have got to while naked, in late afternoon twilight -- one of the few memories Susan did have of what Suzy had done told her Suzy had tied Susan to the tree as the last of the light was fading, and she had to have disposed of the briefcase before that.

There was a ravine that ran behind the apartment building's parking lot, angling towards Stockhouse, which it reached and went underneath about a hundred feet beyond where Susan stood. Where the ravine passed the near back corner of the parking lot, the area was understandably well-lit. Suzy couldn't have passed that point, considering how visible she would be and how busy that area tended to be at that time of day. And she couldn't have crossed Stockhouse, nude, at that time of day, with all the traffic passing by. The apartment building and its parking lot, the street, and the ravine, from its near-brush with the parking lot to the point where the street bridged it, created a relatively small triangle of land that Susan was standing in, and the briefcase had to be somewhere in it.

The trouble was, that didn't mean it would be easy to find. The fact that the briefcase wasn't in plain sight almost surely meant Suzy had made an effort to hide it, and the strip of land was much too full of good hiding places. There were hundreds of trees, and it would be easy to wedge the briefcase in among the branches so that the foliage would hide it; worse, there had to be a thousand bushes of various sizes, many of them big enough that a briefcase could be shoved inside one so that it would be invisible from more than a few feet away. If Suzy would give Susan the memory of exactly what she'd done with the case, Susan would know where to look, but the memory was still not forthcoming.

And the sky was brightening in the east by the minute. More light should mean the briefcase would be easier to look for -- but Susan herself, searching through the area, would be very visible herself. The triangle simply wasn't big enough, heavily treed enough, and far enough from a building that would be far busier in daylight than it was now, for Susan to be able to make any such search without exposing herself. And Susan didn't feel confident in her ability to hide out in the triangle all through the day, waiting for nightfall to begin her search, a task much more difficult at night. She could see places that were safe from observation from the building, but could be seen from the street, and vice versa. The idea of attempting to conceal herself for hours, in this small area, with so many people so close by both around the building and riding by in cars, tied her stomach in knots.

Susan summed it up: She couldn't find the briefcase until Suzy told her where it was, because looking for it blindly would leave her impossibly exposed; and she couldn't simply stay here through the day, trying to hide from observation from so many directions. Her only other options were to climb down into the ravine, which presented a physical danger of falling and breaking an arm, at the least, or else she could cross Stockhouse, moving into that undeveloped area across from her apartment where she could conceal herself far from any possibility of being seen, for any length of time. That last was the only choice that offered any safety at all.

If she was going to do that, it had to be now. She didn't even have time to decide whether there were other options she might have overlooked. Susan looked to the east again. Yes, definitely lighter. She would be clearly visible from the building, parking lot, and street if she stayed any longer.

She knelt to scoop up a double handful of trail mix, and caught and squeezed the necks of two water bottles between her forearms, the most she could carry that way. She walked cautiously and carefully to the street. There were no headlights in sight. There was a point, before the street crossed the ravine, that was far enough from streetlights that it offered -- barely -- enough darkness for her to cross safely. She watched, from the edge of the woods fronting the street, several minutes, trying to talk herself into emerging into the open and crossing that river of asphalt. At last, taking a deep breath, she came out into the street.

Walking as fast as she could with the necessities she was carrying, she crossed, successfully hanging onto the water bottles and nearly all of the nuts, not believing what she was doing. It felt simultaneously unreal and far too real. She was fully conscious of the fact she was leaving behind her one real place of safety, her apartment, her home -- not only going away from it, but putting a barrier between it and herself, in the form of Stockhouse Boulevard, that would be impassable all through the daylight hours whose beginning was just minutes away. She knew she was going to have to spend the entirety of Saturday's daytime hiding out naked in the forest, hoping Suzy, at some point, would tell her how to get home.

Safely across the street, she retreated into the woods.