John Friday - Tormented widow in bondage

Wayde told the female trio to hold out their wrists. He took two pairs of handcuffs from a pouch-on his leather duty belt. "The uniform is a fake, but these are the real thing.”

Rita, stood between her two teenaged daughters, Vicki on her left, Reggie on her right. He handcuffed Rita's left wrist to Vicki's right, then her right wrist to Reggie's left, joining them like links-of a human chain.

The elevator door opened and they found a car waiting. Old Dad Watson sat hunched behind the wheel and flashed all three a toothless grin. Wayde tumbled the chain-linked trio into the rear seat of the sedan.

Rita sat in the middle, cuffed between her beautiful daughters. "Where are you taking us?” "A place you should remember well," Dad told her. "The corner of Third and Front Street.”

Rita moaned and felt a chill despite her warm wrapping of luxurious mink. "Not back to that motorcycle gang!" She despaired at the thought of her daughters in the clutches of that bunch.

"No, to the building across the street where Wallford Electronics made its start. It was abandoned years ago when you moved the company to that new industrial park. That makes the old place perfect for our purposes.” "Is Doc there?" Rita asked tensely.

"Where else? He's been refitting his research lab and refining his most recent inventions.”

Rita shuddered and felt a tight knot in her throat, almost as though that terrible necklace had clenched around her lovely long neck again. She knew that whatever Doc Watson had in mind now must be worse.

The waterfront slum area looked even more menacing after dark. Rita saw men with hard faces and haunted eyes leering from shadowed doorways. Rats scurried across Front Street, their noses twitching and long thin tails dragging. Two of the filthy gray forms attacked and killed an alley cat, ripping the poor beast apart with their yellowed buck teeth. Rita watched blood and bits of black fur fly.

Dad Watson said wryly, "Ain't no kind of pussy that's safe around here.”

He stopped the car in a dark alley behind the old building. More vicious large rats darted out of the way with beady yellow eyes glaring back.

"Don't try to run," the old man said quite unnecessarily. "All cuffed together like that, you wouldn't make it to the alley's mouth.”

Wayde took Reggie's free hand and led the cuffed trio of terrified women down a damp and worn flight of concrete stairs to a basement door. The air in that narrow stairwell smelled of mold and rotting things.

Honey Watson stood waiting at the far end of a dark hallway inside the door. The willowy blonde tensed and grinned coldly when she heard the heavy lock click and the hinges squeal. Clad from head to toe in a clinging black leotard, she'd have been invisible in the dark except the front of her clinging outfit was painted with the skull and bleached bones of a realistic skeleton.

Grinning behind the slack jaw stenciled on her hood with luminous paint, she turned to face the wall until the three women handcuffed together had been ushered inside. The back of her form-fitting black suit was unadorned. She melted into shadows and seemed to disappear.

They turned coming through the steel door so that red-haired Vicki was leading the way. Rita walked in the middle between her two girls with one cuffed wrist pulled forward, the other yanked back. Reggie was behind her* almost too frightened to move.

Honey waited, counting the clicks of their high-heeled shoes. When the trio was only ten feet away, she turned suddenly. Vicki was first to see the glowing skeleton appear out of nowhere. She shrilled a scream of horror and lurched back, crashing into her mother who then stumbled into Reggie following so reluctantly at the end of the line.

Honey laughed and the sound was made hollow by a special microphone taped to her throat. A broad metal encircled the skeleton's neck. A heavy chain ran from that to a ring high on the wall. That seemed to be all that was holding the hideous specter upright.

The haunting laugh echoed and they heard the clatter of dry bones as skeletal hands reached out to greet them. The bony wrists were shackled and joined by a foot-long length of chain.

Rita caught her breath first and regained her balance. Vicki was still trembling and Reggie was crying her heart out, afraid to open her eyes.

"Relax," the woman said. "It's nothing more sinister than a Halloween prank. Vicki, you had a little costume like that when you were a kid.” "But I wasn't chained to a wall!" the redhead cried in near hysteria.

"It's just that cruel man doing all he can to keep us on edge," Rita said. "I know you can hear me, Doc… and you'll have to do better than that.”

Dad and Wayde pushed the nervous trio around a corner and through another steel door. That creaked open automatically as they approached and slammed shut behind them with a loud clanking sound. The room they'd entered was pitch black inside when the door slammed shut.with such finality. Dad Watson lit a candle that cast a feeble glow and led the women to a wall made of damp rough stone.

There was just enough flickering light to see a stout chain and dangling steel collar like that worn by the skeleton. Vicki cringed and sobbed, bowing her head and wailing in despair, Dad Watson pressed her back to the wall and locked the cold metal collar around her neck.

Wayde eased Reggie to the wall and locked an identical collar around her neck. "Sorry," he whispered softly. "But my father insists. Don't worry… I won't let anyone really hurt you.”

That gave her some hope, but Rita overheard his kind words and knew by now how Watson's mind worked. He might well just be building the frightened blonde up for a terrible letdown.

Rita stood handcuffed between her two daughters collared to the wall. Wayde unlocked the handcuffs and freed her chafed wrists. The tawny-haired woman stood cowering. Dad Watson slipped off her black mink and gave it to the glowing skeleton that had crept silently into the room behind them.

Most of the bony figure vanished when wrapped in inky black fur, but Rita could see the skull form something like a smile when skeletal hands stroked downy soft mink about where a woman's tits would be.

The specter of death clad in her glorious coat sent chills down Rita's spine even though she kept trying to tell herself it was just another cruel attempt to torture her mind.

Dad Watson laughed and locked a broad metal collar around Rita's long neck. She jerked a hand up and felt for the expected chain like those that bound her daughters to the stone wall. There was no chain. Rita felt little relief.

Wayde locked another wide metal band around her waist. It fit her like an iron garter belt. Curious chills coursed through her veins. There was no chain attached to that either.

Dad Watson dropped to his knees and circled her ankles with a pair of locking steel hands. Still no sign of a chain. Then the smirking skull framed by a raised collar of sleek black fur came forward with bony hands outstretched. They locked a steel bracelet around each wrist, then took Rita’s trembling hands and led her into total darkness.

Rita's worst fears were of the unexpected. What could Doc Watson be up to now? Was the hideous skeleton garishly clad in her beautiful black mink? And wherever he was, why lock her into heavy metal bands of restraint when there was no chain?

The hollow and deeply distorted laugh of the skull figure filled the room, echoing off unseen walls of solid stone. Bony hands with arms made invisible by sleeves of black mink pushed Rita backwards onto a table with a cold slick top. Also black in the inky darkness, Rita couldn't see it, but she felt that the table was large.

Seemingly detached hands of clattering bone spread her arms and legs toward the four corners, but there was nothing she could see or feel to hold her in that spread-eagled position. Just before stepping way, a glowing skeletal hand swept aside her tawny hair to pluck out the earpiece Rita had worn since her torment had begun.