The cave was always there. Well, maybe it wasn’t always there, but I grew up next to it and for me, it was always there. Every summer tourists would drive past our farm and go to “The Greatest Natural Wonder Under the Earth.”
I think my desire to be tied up was also always there, even though as a child, it was not sexual. As a young girl, whenever the neighbor kids and I would get together to play something, I always suggested something that involved getting captured and tied up. I usually “lost.” One day when I was about ten, my little brother finally told me, “We don’t want you on our side. You like getting caught.”
Since I was the oldest child, I had to watch my three younger brothers while my parents worked around the farm. Dad bought one of the neighboring farms and some company bought the other so it was now just us in the area. My brothers and I still played capture games a lot, but with no neighbors left, it was three against one. I would hide in the barn or in the cornfields and they would try to catch me. Somehow, they always did.
After that, my mother decided that the boys were old enough to take care of themselves and it was time for me to find a job off the farm. The obvious choice was the cave. I got a job in the gift shop during the summer for the next two years, and then when I turned eighteen I became a full-time cave guide.
Taking someone on a tour through the cave is interesting the first twenty times or so, but after a few hundred times it gets really boring. I had done the tour so many times that I had the speech fully memorized. I could still sound enthusiastic and interested, but in fact, I was speaking mechanically and daydreaming all the while I was speaking. There was one point in the tour where I showed the tourists, “what the cave was like before we developed it.” At that point we would turn off the lights for a few moments and everything would be pure darkness.
In that darkness, I would imagine myself tied up and helpless there in the cave. I didn’t realize how much I was enjoying this moment of fantasy until the owner of the cave took me aside one day and told me that I was leaving the lights off too long and it was causing complaints.
One of the things which the tourists are never told is that there are several “escape routes” out of the cave in case something goes wrong. That could be anything from a tunnel collapse to an earthquake or a sudden flood. The tourists might see the steel gratings across some of the “unimproved areas” but if asked, we were told to say that they were just small, uninteresting tunnels.
Most of them were, but several were actually escape routes. We each had a key that would open any of the escape grates in case of trouble. One day while giving a tour, I faintly heard a tractor working in the field above us. It may sound crazy, but I could recognize the sound of my dad’s tractor, and it was definitely him.
As soon as I heard that tractor, an idea began to form in my mind. That night, I asked dad where he had been working that day. When he asked why, I told him that I had heard his tractor in the cave. He laughed and said, “I must have been next to the sinkhole.” There was a rather large sinkhole in one of our fields that was fenced off and had signs warning people to stay out. I had looked through the fence when playing in that field and I always thought it looked like someone had carved a trail up the side of the slanting hole. Dad continued, “The cave pays me to keep the brush clear in that sinkhole. I think it is one of the escape routes for the cave.”
My mind was overwhelmed with images and plans. Dad asked me if I was alright and I replied that I was just trying to imagine where I was under the farm during the tour. Actually, I was imagining how I could get into the cave through the sinkhole. That would allow me to fulfill at least one of my dark fantasies.
I knew that I had to plan this carefully. First I had to see what it was like to enter the cave through the sinkhole. I searched through my dad’s desk and found a key labeled “protector fence.” I knew that had to be for the padlock on the fence around the sinkhole. It was identical to my key to open the escape grates, so I put it back in dad’s desk.
I could hardly wait for my next day off. When it finally came, I walked out to the field and went into the sinkhole. The padlock was a little rusty and took a little time to open, but it eventually popped open and allowed me to open the small gate. The trail down was steep, but not especially difficult. At the bottom was a small cave-like opening that slanted down into the darkness. I had planned for this and brought two flashlights. One thing that working in the cave had taught me was to not rely on a flashlight without a backup.
It took me only a few minutes to reach the steel grating at the entrance to the cave. It looked like the door to an old-fashioned jail cell. Everything was dark on the other side, which meant that there were no tours in that section of the cave. I tried my key and the padlock on the door opened easily and surprisingly quietly. Evidently these escape doors had to be maintained regularly by the cave.
I stepped through the door and found myself standing on a small shelf. I had to be careful because my flashlight didn’t carry very far into the darkness, but then I saw familiar features and recognized exactly where I was. I was about fifty feet above the tour path on a small ledge that effectively hid the entrance and the steel doorway.
Suddenly, the lights snapped on and I heard the familiar spiel of a cave guide. I stepped back against the grating and waited silently for the tour to pass through. When I heard the familiar words about showing the cave before we developed it, I reached back above my head and held onto the grating. Everything went dark and suddenly I was shaking and very wet between my legs.
The darkness was way too short, however, and soon the lights returned. I remained in place until the tour passed from this area and the guide switched on the lights to the next area and flipped off the lights where I was.
I remained in place for a few more moments, but the intense feelings were gone. I wanted those feelings back, but realized that when the guide spoke, I had imagined myself tied to the grating. The feeling of helplessness was the source of the feelings. I wanted to be captured against this steel grate in the darkness. There was no game that would result in that, and I couldn’t just ask my brothers to do it, so I needed to figure out a way to tie myself to the grating for a long period of time.
I started roaming self-bondage sites on the internet and reading self-bondage stories. I experimented with several different release mechanisms and methods of tying. Since I wanted to use rope, not chain, I decided that the release mechanism made from PVC pipe would work best. Basically all you had to do was to attach a loop link to the endcap on one end of a short piece of PVC pipe. Then you put a long eyebolt through the endcap meant a smaller piece of PVC pipe that will meet, but not actually go over your pipe.
On the other end– the end that is going to be inside the pipe– you bolt a washer or series of washers that just fit into the large piece of pipe. Fill with water, set upright, and freeze and voila, the washers are stuck in the pipe until the ice melts. I tested my releases several times by freezing them and then hanging them in the loft of the barn with a small weight tied to them. They released every time. I had my release mechanism.
Actually tying myself to the grating would be no problem. Since there would be a minimal weight on the ropes, a protected slip knot type of capture with a slip knot holding the ropes to the gratings would suffice. It was just a matter properly setting up the ropes, putting my wrists and ankles through the loops and pulling until things tightened.
If it was too tight, I could squirm a little to loosen it, but with the protector knot holding it in place I couldn’t make it loose enough to get free. And since only one of my hands had to be free for me to actually free myself from the ropes, I had a safety in the double release mechanisms.
The only question now was whether I did this when the cave was closed or on one my days off while there were tour groups passing under me. As I thought about it, the wetness between my legs gave me the answer. It would definitely have to be on my day off.
As I waited for the day to arrive, my tours became harder and harder. Each time I took a group through the side grotto and switched off the lights, I would see myself tied and helpless above the trail. More than once one of the tourists asked me if I was alright as the lights came back on.
Then the day finally arrived. I told mom that I was going to go hiking all day. I often did go hiking in the woods on the back of the farm, so my backpack looked perfectly normal. I had all my ropes in my backpack, cut and prepared. I retrieved my frozen release mechanisms from the freezer in the barn. I also had two flashlights, my key to the escape grate, and a copy I had made of my dad’s key because it didn’t have the cave name and “DO NOT COPY” imprinted on it. When you go into a cave, take two of everything in case something goes wrong. With two of everything from release mechanisms to keys, I was all set.