Suzy and Quinn walked into the woods, hand in hand. Quinn carried the digital music player and its remote in her free hand, and her fingers were hooked through the handle of a bag containing some snacks for herself, while Suzy carried a bag containing several short ropes, some lengths of string, blindfold, and gag, as well as a hammer and several wooden stakes. Quinn had parked on the shoulder of a little-used two-lane road several miles out of town, and they had walked about fifteen minutes from there. They were far from anyplace they were likely to run across another person.

Quinn asked, "Kitty tonight?"

Suzy shook her head. "Let's pick up sandwiches from Nate's. I want to spend the evening planning for Rebecca tomorrow."

Quinn nodded. "Sorry, I should have realized. I want to start planning more for sessions myself. I've always kind of gone spontaneous, on instinct, but I saw what planning ahead did for you with Jill."

Suzy's first session with a client of her own would be tomorrow evening. Quinn had revised the ads on the Web to say that "Mistress Quinn and Mistress Suzerain" would provide services to female submissives requiring domination, bondage and/or discipline. Yesterday the printed business cards had arrived, listing both their names. They had agreed that once Suzy had a few clients, they would alternate taking on any new clients after that unless the client requested one of them specifically.

Suzy had already met Rebecca, an office manager for a small company, for her initial interview. Suzy had worn what she and Quinn had come to call her "biker gang outcast" outfit and hairstyle. Quinn similarly usually wore her own session costume for in-person interviews, and Suzy saw how that made sense: if the client was made uncomfortable by the outfit to the point that she had a harder time becoming sexually aroused, the time to find out was before any sessions began.

Rebecca wanted to be a personal slave. She had watched a soft-core porn movie on that theme with her boyfriend, and had unexpectedly found herself fascinated by the plight of a girl taken captive and enslaved by a desert potentate. She'd begun fantasizing about it. She'd vaguely thought for some time about making it happen for real, but her boyfriend wasn't up to the task, and she didn't want to get mixed up with any other men. When she'd seen the ad online for Mistresses Quinn and Suzerain, she'd decided that the idea of roleplay in which her owner was female felt more acceptable.

Suzy, seeking Rebecca's boundaries during the interview, had come up against only one hard limitation in what Rebecca was willing to be ordered to do: she drew the line at hurting another person. She had read stories about slaves being forced to fight each other. Suzy had assured her no one would be participating in the session other than herself and Rebecca.

As for punishment, Rebecca didn't feel drawn to suffering real pain, but when Suzy had showed her the riding crop, and demonstrated how it felt to be slapped on the butt with it, Rebecca had nodded, with an embarrassed smile. She didn't want to be struck anywhere that would leave marks visible the next day, but said buttocks and, after some thought about it, breasts, would be okay. Not the vagina. She was willing to be slapped on the face, breasts, or butt with open palm, as long as it wouldn't leave bruises or draw blood -- obviously a split lip wouldn't be acceptable, and certainly not a black eye. It was more a matter of giving her a feeling of humiliation than pain. Suzy had said neither she nor Quinn would ever consider targeting the eyes in any case, and made a mental note to dial back the force of any slaps.

It was not the possibility of pain that Rebecca was interested in, and the idea of ropes, chains, and handcuffs did nothing for her. Within her fantasy, it was the feeling of helplessness and the potential for extreme humiliation that made her quiver. She volunteered to Suzy, blushing, that she was getting wet right at that moment, thinking about it. She wanted to lose herself in the feeling of being owned, of her personal choices being taken away, of the shame of being powerless. She would endure any verbal abuse, and subject to the irrelevant limitation of not hurting anyone, was willing to be ordered to do anything. Painless erotic touching of any kind, given or received, was okay. Suzy pressed her on what she remembered of the movie -- exactly what was happening at the time she found herself getting aroused?

Gradually Suzy began outlining segments of the session in her head, built around Rebecca's reactions to the movie and what conclusions Suzy could draw from them. Tonight Suzy wanted to review her thoughts and possibly write down a plan. She would start, she thought, by having Rebecca enter the dungeon alone, strip naked and don a slave collar Suzy would provide for her, and stand at attention, her hands grasped behind her, to await Suzy's entrance. Suzy, on entering with her riding crop, would address Rebecca as her "new slave," tell her that she was not allowed to speak except to answer questions, and the only permitted responses were "Yes, Mistress Suzerain" and "No, Mistress Suzerain." Any failures to follow that rule or to obey an order would result in gradually increasing punishments. Suzy would then give Rebecca's body a very close, embarrassingly intimate hands-on inspection, to assess the value of Mistress Suzerain's new "property." Beyond that, Suzy had several tentative ideas. Quinn had some cube-shaped blocks Suzy could scatter on the floor, ordering Rebecca to stack them in a single column, to assess Rebecca's "manual dexterity and work ethic," which Mistress Suzerain considered very important in a slave -- a near impossible task, because the cubes were designed slightly unevenly and any stack would fall over before it was finished. Verbal abuse over Rebecca's "incompetence" would follow, and severe punishments would be threatened. Suzy suspected, based on things Rebecca had said about her fantasy, that as Rebecca mentally entered into the world Suzy would create for her, and she realized that the task with the blocks was far harder than it looked, and that punishment was inevitable, the unfairness and hopelessness of her servitude would become real to her, and Rebecca would be getting very wet.

Suzy hoped the session would end with an orgasm for Rebecca, which Rebecca might be ordered to bring about on her own, by masturbating in front of Suzy. Judging from what Rebecca had told her, by that point it probably wouldn't take much. Suzy would talk it over tonight with Quinn to flesh out her ideas, drawing on Quinn's experience.

But this afternoon was set aside for Susan.

They had been exploring Susan's sexual response for weeks, setting up bondage situations for her on alternate Saturday afternoons. Following the first experiment, which had been meant only to make sure Susan could give control back to Suzy at will, they had soon after let Susan awaken in a tight hogtie, in the woods, naked, blindfolded and gagged, with no idea where she was, how she had come to be there, or how close to any observers she might be -- that is, Quinn had tied Suzy that way, and Suzy had then allowed Susan to surface. Susan, left alone over the course of several hours, had become both more terrified and more sexually aroused, but because Quinn had left the crotch rope out of the arrangement, Susan had no way to bring herself all the way to climax -- until Quinn had revealed her presence, terrifying Susan that much more until she identified herself. Quinn reminded Susan to let Suzy come up as she drifted towards sleep, and then used her fingers to bring Susan to the long awaited and much needed orgasm.

Suzy had excitedly told Quinn two things before Quinn could finish untying her: that Susan's orgasm had been as intense as any she'd ever experienced, and that, afterward, Susan had known how to let herself go so that Suzy could return, having learned the mental relaxation that allowed it to happen, and Suzy had felt no resistance within Susan towards giving Suzy back her body. Suzy could feel within Susan, not expressed as a thought but as a very clear emotion, that Susan was happy and satisfied with a life in which she went from one bondage scene to the next, each ending with an explosion of her entire being followed by a drift downward toward nothingness, never having to deal with the realities of day to day life she had always found unbearable.

Two weeks later, Susan had returned to consciousness -- though for her only an instant had gone by -- tied naked, gagged, and blindfolded to the St. Andrews cross in Quinn's dungeon. She had never seen it, but she knew what it was -- she had run across such crosses during her online bondage searches, and since then they had often been an element of her fantasies, in the days before the fantasies became real.

Her arms and legs were stretched outward and apart, though not completely taut, conforming to the X-shape of the cross, held by ropes that connected her leather cuffs to the pegs in the arms of the cross. Unknown to her, she was actually standing on boxes in front of the lower arms of the cross, to raise her up just the distance needed so that one more well-placed peg could be inserted into one of the available holes in the cross -- this one situated high up between her legs, pressing up into her crotch.

After a few minutes, in which she tugged at her bonds to determine exactly how she was restrained, and the usual rush of tingling excitement began within her, encouraged by the peg between her legs, she was slightly startled when Quinn spoke, though she'd known to expect Quinn's voice.

"I'm glad you're back, Susan. I'm going to leave you here for a while. An hour. When I come back, I'm going to whip you five times on each breast and five between the legs. Unless you can get out of this, or else if Suzy is back. She knows how to signal me that it's her." Susan jumped at the feeling of Quinn's fingers between her legs. "I think I got this up too high. Let me set it lower."

Quinn pulled out the peg that Susan's crotch was rubbing against. Susan whimpered an objection -- she badly wanted the peg where it was, it felt so nice there -- and reinserted it farther down. Susan, letting herself down lower as her arms were stretched to the maximum, found she could barely brush against the peg now.

Quinn and Suzy had spent half an hour trying to measure everything just right -- where her hands and feet were when tied, how tall the boxes needed to be for Suzy to stand on so that the peg could be placed between her legs, making sure she could still reach it after it was lowered -- with Suzy tied to the cross but not yet gagged, so she could exchange information with Quinn about adjustments that needed to be made. Once Suzy decided everything was just right, Quinn had silenced her with the harness gag and buckled on the blindfold, and Suzy had allowed Susan to come up.

Less expected to Susan than Quinn's voice, as she stood tied to the cross, was feeling Quinn's lips briefly on her cheek. Then she heard Quinn walking away.

Adrenaline rushed through Susan as she mmmmmmed to call Quinn back. She hadn't sensed any obvious way of freeing herself yet. All she knew was that somehow she had to get loose within the next hour, or face a very painful whipping. She tugged hard, pulling against the ropes holding her arms stretched upward, and tried in increasing desperation to try to raise her feet and somehow get them free. I'm stuck here! she thought. I'm going to get whipped!

No! She remembered Quinn had said there was another way out. Somehow she hadn't focused on the second option, turning her body back over to Suzy. She had been thinking that Quinn was simply telling her "Of course I wouldn't whip Suzy." But that had to be Susan's escape hatch.

Susan tried to relax and let herself drift downward. She gradually became more tense as she realized nothing was happening. Come on, she shouted at herself angrily, I've done this before!

It sank into her that letting Suzy come up required a relaxed state of mind, and she couldn't possibly achieve it without releasing her sexual tension first. Telling herself to relax, at this point, was almost laughable. She was in bondage, she was excited, she was tingling everywhere, her need for release was growing by the second, and the rational part of her mind couldn't come close to subduing that need.

I have to get myself to orgasm first, she told herself. It's not going to work without that.

She bent her legs and let her arms stretch to their limits, trying to reach the peg underneath her crotch so she could rub her sex against it. There, she thought, there it is. I can touch it, but it's not pressing up into me hard enough, and not quite in the right place.

Whimpering in frustration, she turned to the option of escape again. She tried to free her hands and feet once more. She rotated her hands at the wrists, to see whether her fingers might locate a string tied to her wrist, that might have a knife at its other end she could reel in to cut the rope.

Whimpering again, her fear growing, desperately needing either escape or sexual release, she returned her attention to the peg.

She tried to let her hips down still farther. With her arms holding nearly all her weight, she could hardly breathe -- hanging from the arms puts such stress on the diaphragm that it can't function properly -- but now she could feel the peg digging up into her crotch. Still not quite the right place. She rotated her hips... there! Right there!

She straightened her legs, standing on them once more to relieve her arms, and took several deep breaths. Then she let herself down again, holding her breath so that the difficulty in drawing air into her lungs wouldn't panic her, and began rubbing herself on the peg again. Almost there, almost...

Squealing in frustration, she had to stop. She needed to breathe again.

She stood still several minutes, waiting for her breath to catch up, then, determined to make it work this time, she tried again.

Almost there, she thought again. Almost... coming... coming... THERE!! YES!!!!!

Her entire body spasmed, waving like a windblown flag hanging from a pole, as the orgasm ripped through her body. After what seemed a long, long, yet not long enough time, the wind at last died down.

She reminded herself to let her mind sink downward and found that she was already doing it -- turning her body over to Suzy was still something new, yet in these circumstances it was already becoming a habit. That's good, she decided, in her last conscious thought on the way down.

Suzy barely had time to fit her consciousness back into her body, like fingers into a glove, before she fainted from oxygen debt.

She became aware that Quinn was lifting her upward, arms tight around her waist. She heard Quinn saying, "Time's up, Susan." Suzy quickly pointed her right index finger and waved it in the air.

She heard Quinn sigh in profound relief. "I'm so glad it's you, babe! I hope it never comes to having to whip Susan. But she's a resourceful girl. I'm pretty sure she'll always find a way." Quinn was unbuckling the gag harness as she spoke. As soon as she had it off, she kissed Suzy passionately.

Suzy grinned. "That was SO good! And Susan really wants to turn it over to me, now, when these things end. She wants this to keep happening."

"That's great!" Quinn kissed Suzy again, and started untying the ropes.

That was two weeks ago. Now it was noon on Saturday -- Susan Time again.

Quinn swept her arm to indicate the small clearing they had encountered. "How about here?"

Suzy smiled. "Looks very nice." She pointed. "Under that tree. The sun's going that way," she gestured, "So I'll stay in the shade."

Quinn nodded. She and Suzy carried their bags to the chosen spot. Suzy dumped the contents of her bag, and she and Quinn began pounding stakes into the ground.

Susan returned from the depths. She still felt the aftereffects of that orgasm on the cross. She wasn't startled to find herself suddenly elsewhere. She was used to it now.

She was lying on her back on grassy soil. At least, that was what it felt like. Naked, as always. Blindfolded, with the soft bit of the gag harness in her mouth.

Her arms and legs were stretched out in an X, wider than on the cross. Trying to close her legs, she found, with no surprise, that she couldn't. Nor could she move her arms. She seemed to have the leather cuffs on her wrists and ankles, and they were tied to something.

There was no crotch rope, nor anything, such as the peg between her legs on the cross, to rub against. It was slightly annoying -- just finding herself tied was, as always, arousing, and she'd like to be able to take care of her quickly-growing need. But she understood that Quinn would be along shortly. She might already be standing there, waiting for the movements Susan was now making, and about to speak up any second now.

There were no man-made sounds that she could hear. There was only the rustling of leaves in the slight breeze, the chirping of a few birds, and some scampering noises that she took to be squirrels.

The instant tension that had run through her on finding herself outside gradually dissipated. Her best guess was that she was likely in or near the place where her very first bondage adventure had taken place -- no, she decided. Farther into the woods. That time, she'd been able to make out distant traffic sounds, from Stockhouse Boulevard. Here, there were none. She tentatively decided she might be relatively safe.

The tingling, in reaction to being in bondage, continued. There was nothing she could do about either problem -- being tied or being aroused -- so she tried to push the sexual excitement aside, with some slight success.

Still no Quinn. It was okay. Susan was sure she would speak eventually. Obviously only Quinn could have tied her like this, so she had to be around.

In Quinn's absence, Susan had time to think. For really the first time, she realized, since the Big Change in her life. She'd been alone for a while that first time in the woods after the Change, before Quinn made her presence known, but Susan had been too confused, and too scared, with no idea where she was or what was happening, to be able to think calmly.

It was nice that, since the Change, she didn't wake up hung over anymore. At the moment she actually felt very good.

It was strange to have no sense at all of how much time had gone by. She was used to the blackouts after drinking, but those had only been a couple of hours at most, each time. Susan had a feeling, now, that the lost time, passing unnoticed between what she perceived as sudden jumps from one bondage situation to another, might be several days at a time. Suzy had clearly taken over full-time control of the body, because Susan was noticing things that had changed, things that would require some time. Obviously, for one thing, Suzy had cut her hair very short. She hadn't shaved her head -- Susan could feel some cushion of hair on the back of her head where it was touching the ground -- but there wasn't much. It was an odd feeling.

Suzy obviously had shaved elsewhere, though. Susan had noticed it most clearly on the cross, while rubbing her sex against the peg. There was no hair down there anymore. Susan found that she liked the feeling of bare skin in that area. It seemed to make the rubbing sensation more intense.

There was another strange sensation in, of all places, her nostril. Susan wondered if Suzy had possibly put some jewelry there. She'd probably be able to see it now, if she wasn't blindfolded.

The biggest change was hard to describe, but clearly would have taken much more time. Her body felt different, as if it was somehow... more fit. More powerful. It occurred to Susan that when she'd been on the cross, and she'd been hanging from her arms trying to get low enough to rub against the peg, it felt as though supporting her weight that way was almost effortless. Susan didn't think she should have been able to do it as easily as she did, with no ache in her arms from strain. Of course, there was no avoiding the strain on her diaphragm, making it very hard to breathe, but there was no mistaking the feeling that she could have done dozens of pullups without getting tired.

Susan realized that she didn't care that Suzy had taken over their shared body, and obviously had taken over their shared life as well. Quinn had said Suzy had taken on the library job. Suzy must be spending the resulting income on all the necessities as well. All of the things Susan had found herself required to do -- working among people, shopping in stores -- which had brought her into contact with people, sometimes in crowds... Susan had always found those things barely tolerable, and had to force herself to do them. Now she didn't need to. Susan didn't feel anything had been taken from her except onerous and uncomfortable tasks she didn't want.

She didn't need to do a number of other things as well. She never felt hungry anymore, though the total time she had spent in a succession of bondage situations was definitely more than enough to work up an appetite. And she always felt fully alert, other than when her post-orgasm haze overtook her. Susan thought she should have needed a full night's sleep by now, but somehow she didn't.

Susan sighed in contentment. All I have to do, she told herself, is what I've always dreamed of doing. Be tied up. Be restrained. Feel the excitement inside build while devices hold me at all my extremities.

The breeze wafting across her bare skin was soft and warm. Though she didn't need sleep, she felt herself drawn to it anyway.

Quinn, sitting on a blanket, finished up a sandwich and checked on Susan through binoculars. As she watched, Susan remained completely motionless. Quinn could see no muscles flexing anywhere. If Susan were awake, she would constantly be testing her bonds, or twitching from the mental effort to stop herself from doing so. Suzy had predicted correctly: Susan had clearly fallen asleep.

Quinn picked up the remote and thumbed a button. The digital music player, about five feet in front of Susan's splayed legs, began broadcasting a recording Suzy had made last weekend at the park, near the end of the day. For about two hours, Susan would be hearing the sounds with which she was familiar from her time hiding out within earshot of the tennis courts. The sounds would gradually die down as park visitors departed for home, before the battery ran down.

Quinn took one more look at Susan, then stood and began walking towards her, as quietly as she could. It's just amazing, she thought. That's my wife lying there, the love of my life, the woman I make love with every night -- except it's not her. It's a different person in the same body. One whom Suzy and I both love.

The most amazing thing of all, Quinn told herself, is that as bizarre as it is, I'm used to it now.

Susan, awakening, stiffened. She clearly wasn't alone. There were people all around her!

Have they seen me?? Are they looking at me?? These were the questions that had to be answered. Susan was fully aware of how she would look, displaying her body, and all of its most private parts, more obscenely than she ever had before.

They're not looking, she told herself after a moment, in tentative relief, knowing that things would sound really different if she had been spotted by anyone. She could hear the casual sounds of tennis, of joggers passing by, sometimes in pairs engaged in casual, if slightly breathless, conversation. All of the sounds suggested no one was seeing anything noteworthy or unusual. There was none of the astonishment and shock that seeing Susan would inspire.

I know exactly where I am, she told herself. I spent an entire day hiding out once, right here. There have to be bushes hiding me, maybe those same ones I used as a shelter before.

Though her stomach was tight, she could just manage to start breathing again. But she was fully aware that whatever safe place she was hidden in offered no permanent guarantee. She could still be found at any moment... footsteps! She heard soft steps padding towards her, only a few feet away.

Her entire body convulsed when a whispered voice, just inches from her ear whispered, "Susan, it's Quinn."

Once again, Susan had to wait for her body to unfreeze to the extent of allowing her to breathe. She gave a tiny nod in acknowledgment.

Quinn nodded to herself. Suzy had been right again. Quinn had said that if Susan fell asleep, then when she awoke she wouldn't be Susan anymore. Suzy wasn't positive, but she had a feeling that Susan's release of her body to Suzy, something she did at a barely conscious level as she was fading out, was now a habit associated with post-orgasm sleepiness in particular, and that if she simply fell into a snooze because her environment was so pleasant and relaxing, that would be different.

Sure enough, when Quinn addressed Susan, there was no Suzy-signal in response. She was still Susan, and Quinn could continue with the plan.

Susan listened as the whispered voice went on, "Nobody can see you here. I'm going to tie some strings to your fingers and toes, and then untie the ropes. You'll be physically able to move, but don't. All of the strings are connected to a switch that will power on a speaker that will put out a really loud sound, like a burglar alarm siren. Everybody will run over here to see what's going on."

Susan managed to hold back the whimper that tried to escape her throat. No, she thought, trying to signal Quinn telepathically, please just use your fingers on me and let me get out of this. You know I don't want to be seen like this!

Telepathy, she found as usual, didn't work worth a damn. She could feel Quinn tying the strings, picking out a finger on each hand and a toe on each foot, then untying the ropes holding her. Quinn then unfastened the gag harness, replacing it with what felt like headphones, though her ears weren't covered by them. She heard, in horror, Quinn telling her, "Now there's a microphone in front of your mouth that will pick up any sounds you make and amplify them, so work hard not to make any. I'm going to leave for a while. Don't make a sound, don't make a move."

Susan tried again, desperately, to broadcast her thoughts: Please, no, don't leave me here! She could feel her heart pounding, her breath tightening, her whole body shaking.

Another telepathy fail. She could hear Quinn's soft footsteps retreating.

Quinn resumed her position watching from a distance. She could see, even without the binoculars, that the tension in Susan's body was making Suzy's newly-improved musculature stand out clearly defined. She shook her head in awe, marveling again at Susan's ability to do something almost not humanly possible: to remain motionless and silent in the face of overwhelming fear.

It had been Quinn's idea, to which Suzy immediately agreed, that the best way to give Susan's sexual response yet another boost would be to put her closer to the situation in which she had been created to begin with -- Susan should be aware that she could move, and could make sounds, but must not do so, and additionally the threat should be the same as it had been then: that she might be discovered. That first time when Quinn had persuaded Susan to hand over her body voluntarily to Suzy, Susan had also been in fear of moving, but the fear had been based on anticipated pain rather than discovery. Now she was in a situation with closer resemblance to the original trauma. Being outdoors, instead of shut away in a wardrobe, was different, and should keep her grounded, not allowing a repeat of the psychotic break.

Susan's fear mounted to a peak each time joggers passed by, seemingly within twenty or thirty feet of where she lay. The sounds of tennis were farther away, but the ponking sound of racquet against ball, and of courtside conversations punctuated by shouts from players, never stopped. There was no time during which Susan felt safe. The worst was when the joggers were talking to each other. The sounds seemed so close. Susan shivered whenever they passed by, her heart thundering.

Yet somehow she felt a buildup of... something. An excitement, suffused with a kind of joy, an exultation. It was something new, yet somehow not. There was a sense that she had known the feeling before. There was no word for it. "Glow" came closest. It was warm. It was bright, though not with visible light. She tried the adjective "sexual" in front of "glow," and knew that wasn't right. The Glow filled her entire body uniformly, not emanating from between her legs. She gave up trying to identify it or isolate the cause of it. She just wanted it to continue. The fear of her surroundings remained, at a level as intense as it had ever been, and her conscious mind remained desperately focused on remaining still and quiet, to do everything in her power to avoid being seen. But the fear and the focus together were somehow blanketed and surrounded by that... Glow.

Suddenly Susan had an even stranger feeling, a dislocation in her sense of where her body was and what it was doing. She knew she was still splayed nude in a wide X on her back, outdoors, on the edge of the park -- she knew, with absolute certainty, that she was outside, not just from the sounds but from the feel of the air, the touch of the breeze across her bare skin. Yet she was also curled up in a small enclosed place, the air musty, hearing different sounds, terrifying sounds, muffled by the walls of her enclosure. And that same fear, and that same focus on lying still and quiet at an intensity that felt almost infinite, yet with all of it wrapped and insulated within a feeling for which "glow" was the nearest word -- all of that was present here too. She didn't think it could be a memory. It didn't connect with anything she could ever recall happening in her life.

She tried to focus on the Glow and ignore the fear, but they were too tightly connected. It was the fear that fueled the Glow. She had been right, she saw now, on that night she'd met Quinn, in recognizing the power of the fear, right to conclude that she needed it. She had seen that need without knowing why, but now it seemed so simple. It was all a unit, the Glow and the fear, it was a single thing.

It wasn't an ordinary fear. It wasn't the fear of failing a test at school, it wasn't the fear of a moving car that passes too near when you're crossing the street. It was the fear of ultimate vulnerability, of being exposed to a danger that you can do nothing to evade, except by not moving, by not making a sound. And that was somehow, in a mystifying but certain way, the kind of fear connected with the Glow.

After a time, the surroundings began to seem quieter. Was the day ending, with people going home? Or was it just wishful thinking?

Okay, yes, it was quieter. Susan couldn't hear picnickers in the distance. The latest group of tennis players, laughing as they departed, hadn't been replaced with another. Joggers were coming along farther apart in time. Now several minutes had gone by with no sounds from the park at all.

Yet the need to stay quiet and motionless still ruled. And not only because remaining so would protect her from what she feared. Her silence and stillness would allow the Glow to continue filling her being.

Once Quinn and Suzy had worked out the details, Quinn had pointed out that they would need to leave the blindfold, because without it, Susan would be able to tell, even with closed eyes, that it wasn't the right time of day for what was supposedly happening -- the park becoming quieter as visitors left for home. It was midafternoon, now, not nighttime.

When the digital music player had been quiet several minutes, now playing back the sounds of a time when the park had become nearly deserted, Quinn thumbed the button on the remote to stop playback. The batteries should be just about drained now, but it didn't matter. The device had finished serving its purpose.

Quinn put down her soda can, rose to her feet, and started walking towards Susan.

Susan heard the footsteps. They were coming from behind her, so she didn't panic. She knew it must be Quinn.

With Quinn's return, the dislocation was gone, nearly forgotten. Susan was in one place, not two. The fear began fading, slowly. But so did the Glow. Susan tried desperately to hold onto the Glow, but it was slipping away.

From the sound as Quinn arrived, Susan believed Quinn must have knelt beside her. Susan thought she might be allowed to move now, but it was still possible someone might be within earshot of the noises that would be broadcast if she did move.

She heard Quinn's whisper. "It's me, Susan. You did really well. Now I still don't want you to move, or make a sound. I've got my paddle with me. Any sound or movement will get you five on each breast. Wiggle your right thumb, if you understand. Only your thumb."

No, thought Susan, please don't paddle me! I'll be good, I promise!

The fear intensified again, seeming to reach a level even higher than before. The Glow returned, but it hovered on the periphery, not surrounding her.

She made a tiny wiggle with her thumb.

"Now you'll feel my fingers between your legs. Keep remembering, no sounds, no moves."

YES! thought Susan. I promise I'll be good!

She held her body rigid, and succeeded, by focus of will, in preventing even the startle reflex when Quinn touched her lightly. She suppressed a sigh as Quinn began stroking.

The Glow shifted, changing its nature. NOW it was between her legs, and no longer unidentifiable. Now there was no question it was sexual.

Quinn, working her fingers on Susan, marveled again. She could see Susan's jaw grow taut, her stomach ripple with tension, every muscle in her body flexing. Yet no movements from where she lay, despite nothing preventing them, no sounds from her throat, despite nothing stopping them. Nobody could do this but her, Quinn thought in admiration. Not even Suzy. They'd tried it once. Nobody but Susan.

The flexing of Susan's muscles became more rhythmic, moving in waves outward from her midsection, rippling down her legs and up her chest. I think she's in orgasm now, thought Quinn, amazed. She continued stroking.

Moments later, Susan relaxed. Everywhere.

And then took a deep breath, and shook her head, not in negation but in seeming astonishment. She seemed to Quinn to be unable to speak for a moment. Then she burst out, "I'm back, honey. And I've got the last pieces of the puzzle!" It was Suzy.

"What? What do you mean?"

"Get me loose first. Please." She wriggled her right index finger. The string around it was tied to the nearby stake, with some slack, so that Susan would have felt some appropriate resistance if she had moved more than a minimal amount.

Quinn slid the string off Suzy's finger, leaned across her and slipped the similar string off her left index. Suzy sat upright and unbuckled the blindfold while Quinn dealt with the strings around her toes.

Suzy, sitting on the ground, pulled Quinn towards her and kissed her, then sat back, her eyes shining, and wrapped her arms around her shins. "Remember how we never figured out how bondage translated into sex for Susan? I get it now! Oh! And she remembered the wardrobe! And I remember it now too!"

Quinn's jaw dropped, and she pulled it back up. "Slow down a little, babe. Start from... Well, the beginning, or whatever works. Get me caught up."

Suzy nodded. "Okay. I don't mean I remember everything. And I don't really remember being me in the wardrobe, exactly. I could only pick up on Susan's memories, so I still don't remember the split happening or anything before that. But I remember being there with her. Behind her.

"She was totally petrified with fear, of course. And I mean, really kind of literally. Petrified, like turned to stone. But with the fear, there was like a... satisfaction. A feeling of accomplishment. It grew as time went by. Because she was succeeding in doing the one thing she was made to do! It was... self-realization! That was it. Her entire reason for being was to keep still and quiet so she, so I, wouldn't be found. To save me. To save us both. And she was doing it, doing what I made her to do. As long as she kept doing it, she got more and more... like, excited. I mean, anybody who's ever had a sense of purpose, and if they manage to carry out that purpose, they get excited about that. Susan had an absolutely, no-questions-asked sense of purpose, and she felt satisfaction, excitement, about succeeding. She's calling it the 'Glow' now. She didn't have a word for it then."

"This... Glow. You're saying it's not sexual, right?"

"Right, nothing like that. It's like we were saying when we were talking about her fixation on bondage being related to her need to lie still in the wardrobe. We couldn't figure out any reason it would be connected to any type of sexual response. But this 'Glow' isn't sexual! Just a pure, I'm-succeeding-in-what-I-was-made-for kind of thing."

"Somehow it changed later?"

"Years later. I've got some ideas on why. But back to the wardrobe... She was rescued, of course, but by then she was diagnosed as catatonic. And it's so ironic! Catatonia happens for a lot of different reasons, associated with a lot of different types of psychotic breaks. But with Susan, it wasn't that, really, it was just her keeping up with what she was supposed to be doing: lying still and silent! It didn't matter that she was out of danger, in a hospital, with Mom trying to talk to her, and so on. She still felt that Glow, and she wanted to hold onto it!

"And that's another puzzle piece! Remember we couldn't understand why Susan gets off on thinking how hard it will be to get loose? How much work it's going to be? It's because she doesn't want it to end, and that's a holdover from the original event! The feeling she had that first time, the Glow, she wanted it to last forever, and it's totally natural that she would want that.

"She experiences something like the Glow, just a shadow of it, as long as she's in bondage. But over the years, she substituted sexual arousal for the general excitement, and as long as she's in bondage the arousal is always there, so she wants to know that the bondage can continue a long time so she can hold onto the feeling.

"You know how my mom told you I was, or Susan was, in that catatonic state for two days? I remember it now, and I know we didn't sleep that whole time! Susan wasn't exactly aware of the world around her, so I wasn't either. The Glow was that powerful, it was everything to her. But finally it faded. I think it finally sank in to her conscious awareness that she was in an open, safe place, that Mom was there, that she didn't need to be motionless, and quiet, and invisible anymore -- well, obviously she wasn't invisible -- and she lost her grasp on the Glow. She started crying, and moving, doing those things she'd been trying to hard not to do, and because of that, the Glow couldn't come back. She'd lost... well, everything. Years later she found bondage, as a way of recovering just a little of it."

Quinn's eyes went wide. "I get it now. We've all got a built-in system for sexual response, that we're not aware of until we start to mature. When that system kicked in for Susan, it was the closest thing to that feeling she'd had and lost years ago. So it was assigned the job of replacing that feeling. Anything that was associated with the original experience -- being afraid to move, being afraid to make a sound, because something terrible would happen if she did, set off an intense sexual thing. And like we were saying, the idea of bondage, once she learned about it -- probably from some character getting tied up on TV -- that got connected with the whole thing too, so that brought out the sexual response. Bondage kept her motionless, and being motionless became sexual because the sexual response system was substituting for the Glow she was trying to get back! The more she could get in a situation that resembled the original trauma -- bondage so she couldn't move, a gag so she couldn't speak, blindfold to be 'invisible,' that all helped, but add on a reason to fear the consequences of moving or making noise, and that really topped it off. Being nude adds to the fear that much more -- of course she wasn't naked for the original trauma, just like she wasn't tied up either, but just like bondage, nudity was a crutch. Bondage helped her stay immobile, and being nude helped her be more afraid."

"Exactly! And look: That night in the woods, when you untied her, and then said you'd paddle her if she moved, that orgasm was way more intense than any she'd had before, because the situation you put her in came closer to what she'd been through in the original trauma, where she didn't have bondage to help her: she had to will herself not to move, rather than being physically prevented from moving. And I didn't notice it consciously at the time, because she didn't, but a little of that original excitement, the kind that wasn't sexual and was somehow way more intense than sexual -- the Glow -- she felt some of it then, that night. I remember it now. That's why the orgasm was so big.

"Today, it was even bigger. It was like those cartoons where the weather is so hot the thermometer blows up. And it was because the situation came even closer to the wardrobe. Not only was she afraid to move even though she could, but the thing she was afraid of was discovery, not pain. Being that much more like the original trauma made the Glow stronger, so much that she couldn't miss being aware of it. She could tell it wasn't sexual, that it was something beyond that. And then she remembered the wardrobe! It reminded her that strongly. Though she couldn't tell what it was she was remembering. Remembering didn't help her, because she didn't know that's what she was doing, but it helps us! Honey, I know what we need to do for her now!

"When we were talking about what to do today, we said it needed to be outside. We knew we were going to be bringing her closer than ever to the experience of the wardrobe, and we were afraid to get too close, because she would totally freak, so we decided we had to avoid closing her in. We were wrong! What we need to do is reproduce the wardrobe exactly. It's how we can bring the Glow all the way back! And that's what she wants! It's what she's always wanted!"

Suzy's eyes were glowing. "And we need to do it so that she never loses it! As long as I'm alive, anyway."

Quinn nodded, understanding what Suzy was saying, but then gave Suzy a hold-on-a-minute look. "Are you sure that's what she wants? Is it enough of a life for her? Nothing but that?"

Suzy took both of Quinn's hands. "She had a life for seventeen years, and the only time she wasn't miserable was with bondage." Her eyes filled with tears. "Honey, I just experienced it. It was through the curtain, but I know what she had, I know what she lost, and I know how devastating it was to lose it."

Quinn nodded. "Let's go home and figure out how to set it up."