Hands Off

I

I had imagined it a million times. Doing it for real was... different.

The two girls already waiting in the holding area stared defiantly at me, keeping their silence, when I stepped into the bare concrete cell. There was no sisterly solidarity here. We would be competitors, contestants in a cruel game. Only one of us could win. They were both stark naked like myself, both had their hands shackled behind their backs with stout leather cuffs like myself, rendering us largely helpless and ensuring an upright posture with breasts pointing up and out. One was a blonde with an angelic face and perfect figure, the other one a brunette with narrow-set eyes and pale skin, her breasts wide apart on a firm body. Both wore, also like myself, their crotch shaved completely smooth, their labia fully exposed.

The atmosphere of the place was different from what I had expected, too. "You can wait here, Courtney", the black-haired assistant in the skimpy black leather outfit and high-heeled sandals who had processed me said, not unkindly. "We'll let each one of you know when we're ready for you." She was wearing black leather gloves, probably for hygiene reasons when handling the contestants, and her hands had felt strangely cold and stiff when she examined and shackled me after I had undressed. The place was very professional, businesslike, friendly in an unpersonal way. I had expected a run-down gym in a back alley, sleazy guys in shabby biker jackets. Or something like that. What I found was a clean, modern warehouse with office space at the front behind an almost deserted parking lot. Potted plants, grey carpeting, desks with laptops, a generic name on the frosted-glass lobby door. EXPERT ENTERTAINMENT, INC., it said. Could have been anything.

The barred door of the holding area, prison-cell style, clanged shut behind me now. We were standing there, three naked girls, shackled, silently regarding each other, calculating each other's chances in the Hands Off contest. We all knew what was at stake. The winner would get one million dollars. The losers... well, the name of the game said it all.

The concrete floor felt cold under my bare soles. The hum of an AC unit, one of the other girls coughed a little, sniffed. Then, complete silence again. Outside, it was a sunny Southern California day, palms swaying in a pleasantly cool breeze from the Pacific. I could have been at the beach now. What was I doing here?

I had first heard about the Hands Off Show on an old-fashioned Internet forum for people with special proclivities. As a member, I could access certain posts in the forum's private section. At first it was a rumour. The stories were wild. You had to be a young woman, reasonably pretty and intelligent. You had to do some weird tasks in a game show setting, not too difficult, but completely naked, with your hands cuffed behind your back. You could win a million bucks in cash, but it was totally illegal und shrouded in secrecy because of what happened to the losers. For me, it sounded too good to be true. Then someone posted an email address. That had led to a phone number.

The muffled boom of a large steel door somewhere. Steps, growing louder. I snapped out of my thoughts. There was a knot in my stomach, a sour taste in my throat. Clack clack clack, a pair of high heels approaching. Then the assistant in her skimpy black outfit was back, her keys rattling as she opened the door.

"OK, Ashley, Amanda, Courtney", the assistant said. "We'll be starting the livestream shortly. If any of you is having a bad case of second thoughts - now's the time. Anyone want to leave now? We'll unshackle you, you'll get your clothes back, you can just walk out of here. We'll understand that." She smiled. "It's a nice day, you might want to go to the beach. I also know a good icecream parlour a few blocks from here. But", serious again, "this will be your last chance to back out. When the first contestant has entered the game, it's too late for all three of you." She looked hard at each of us in turn. "So, what do you say? Are you still in? Ashley?"

The blonde - of course she was the one called Ashley, there must be a million blonde 21-year-olds called Ashley in California - assumed a fighting stance, legs apart, buttocks clenched, chin up, her firm breasts jiggling a little. "I'm in, Miss."

"Amanda?"

"Yup, still in", the brunette casually said, pursing her lips with a short nod.

The woman in black turned towards me. "Courtney?"

I nodded. "Yes. Yes, I'm... I'm in." I realized I was sounding rather pathetic. Ashley's face expressed undisguised contempt. Amanda shook out her shoulders and started to hop on her toeballs like a boxer warming up for the fight, nipples dancing.

"Great. Remember, your dream is waiting for you, down this rather commonplace hallway." The assistant was smiling again. "The contest will take half an hour for each of you. Yo'll be running separately, one after the other. That's so you won't know how your competitors are doing and can concentrate on your own performance, and our viewers can fully enjoy each girl without having to divide their attention. And we'll start with - ", she took a deep breath, "Courtney!" She turned to me. "Come with me, please? I'll give you a hand so you won't slip. The floor's a little treachery."

I gasped. My turn already! As she led me firmly along the dark hallway toward the large grey fireproof door, her strangely stiff gloved hand on my upper arm, my naked soles slapping on the tiled floor, I heard Ashley say behind us, "They are taking the weakest one first, to keep up the suspense."

II

The host of the Hands Off Show was wearing a suit and looked rather like the host of a late-night show. The whole setup was like that of a late-night show, too, a little stage with a desk and an upholstered chair beside it and a backdrop of a lighted cityscape behind fake windows, all in warm colours, slightly art-déco. There was no band, though, instead I saw a sort of concourse with several stations. I was too excited to make out what they were there for.

But at the far wall of the studio there was a tall machine, bathed in its own spotlight, and that machine I took in at a glance and quite clearly. It had a large, heavy, glinting blade, hoisted up high in the air, running in two vertical rails at the sides. Underneath it I saw a board, also vertical, with two round cutouts in it, like one of those fake pillories at a Renaissance Fair, only it was made of polished steel instead of wood, and there was a polished steel bucket standing beneath those two cutouts. There was a medical cart, stainless steel of course, with gleaming instruments and a stack of white and pink bandages, and there was a nurse in white waiting, middle-aged, her face expressionless, her hands gloved in latex.

There was no audience, of course, or rather: The audience wasn't here. I saw several remote-controlled cameras on tripods, others on the walls and under the high, girdered ceiling, red lights blinking. The audience would have been a sight to see, obscenely rich and famous people according to what I'd read in the devotee forum, who paid a fortune to watch three girls struggling to complete silly tasks, naked with hands cuffed behind their backs. Well, why not. But they'd also watch what would happen to two of these girls at the end of each show, and exactly because of that none of the audience would be seen here.

I imagined them sitting in designer chairs in front of their giant plasma screens now, with a real view of Manhattan, Caracas, Monaco, Moscow, or Abu Dhabi as a backdrop behind their floor-length windows, or, I don't know, in sloppy T-shirts behind dingy laptops (the very wealthy are often quite careless in their lifestyle, or so one hears), waiting for the show to begin and the naked shackled girls to struggle. I was determined to give them my best.

"And here's Courtney!", the host exclaimed with a beaming smile into the cameras, meeting me halfway, as I was walking in, with the assistant behind me. "Our first contestant for today! Welcome, Courtney! I'm Pete. Forgive me if I don't shake hands."

I laughed at the joke, as I was expected to, and found myself in the guest chair beside the host's desk, sitting up very straight because of the cuffs that forced my arms behind my back, breasts up and out, legs together and tilted sideways like a good girl, shaking back my hair nervously. It's a nuisance, my hair, quite thick and unruly, though it looks pretty, a nice reddish brown, falling halfway down my back. How am I going to comb it after I lose?, I thought, but Pete was already continuing in his script, while the assistant expertly stuck a little clip-on microphone on my collarbone with a piece of adhesive tape - being naked, I couldn't very well actually clip it on.

"So, Courtney. Tell us a little about yourself. Where're you from?"

"I was born here, in L.A. Down in San Pedro", I ventured, timidly at first.

Louder, the assistant mouthed, pointing to the microphone.

I coughed. "Lived here all my life", I added. It came out much clearer, I even remembered to smile.

"A native! That's something. In L.A., the people you meet always seem to have moved here just last week. And all your life, you say - how long would that be?"

"I'm twenty-two now."

"Awww, I wish I was that young again. I envy you. And what do you do?"

"I'm a student. UCLA College. Majoring in history. I'll graduate in the fall."

"OK, and if you win the million, what will you do with it? Here it is, by the way - ten thousand portraits of Ben Franklin." He put his hand on a leather briefcase which had appeared on the desk. There was a burly security-guard type in black, too, whom I hadn't even seen enter, I was so focused on not looking at the machine with the blade.

"Uhm, first I'll pay back my student loans. I'd need decades for that otherwise. That's mainly why I applied here." It was a good story. I almost believed it myself.

"I see. Actually, I hear this quite often from our contestants. Really a pity - we're a country with the world's greatest universities, but the students come out of them laden with debt for life. Well, Courtney, if you're ready and with a little bit of luck, you now get a chance to remedy that unfortunate situation in under half an hour and have a little bit of fun and excitement besides."

"I can't wait", I said, and this time my grin wasn't fake.

"Should your luck fail you, however, you are prepared to donate both your hands for medical charity, right here in our studio?"

I swallowed drily. "I am."

"That's the spirit. They'd give some poor war victim in an undisclosed Third-World country a new grip on life - you can be proud of that." I wondered for whose benefit he was bringing up that ridiculous lie - our audience certainly knew I would 'donate' my hands for their viewing pleasure and nothing else -, as he rose from behind the desk, buttoning his jacket, the assistant plucking the micro off my skin from behind. "So, come along to the first task, please. It's not really difficult, but you will have to do it hands-off, and there are three more waiting for you. In order to win, you have to complete all four tasks correctly and within half an hour", Pete recited. "Should two or all three of the contestants succeed in this, the fastest one wins. You can use any body part and any, uhm, orifice", he grinned at the nearest camera, "to complete your tasks, except your hands. You can use any given body part or orifice just once, though. So, say, you carry something in your mouth for one task, you can't use your mouth to pull a lever at the next task. Just an example."

"I understand." I shook out my shoulders, hopping on my toeballs like I had seen Amanda do, my boobs picking up the movements.

"Great. Your first task is to get this hard-boiled egg", he pointed at a white chicken egg sitting on top of a post before me, "unto this cushion, without cracking it. Hands-off."

It wasn't really difficult to see - the post was just crotch-high, the white "cushion" (it looked like a piece of upholstery from a stylish fauteuil, thick and square) a few feet further on was obviously for squatting on. I was meant to take the egg into my pussy and then eject it on the upholstery. I obliged.

Low, dramatic music was piped in, an invisible clock was ticking loudly, while for the viewing pleasure of my worldwide audience I planted myself, legs spread, over the post, bent my knees and let the egg slide in between my labia and into my vagina. There was a camera specifically trained at my crotch, delivering a close-up of my pussy in action. I was glad I had shaved the stubble in the morning. I unbent my knees, keeping my legs spread so as not to crush the egg, took three awkward steps forward, knelt down on the cushion - and laid an egg. Literally. I must say it did look and feel rather arousing even to me as it popped out of my labia and onto the white woollen fabric.

"Woo! Phantastic! At the first try!"

The assistant picked up the egg with a black-gloved hand, inspected it, nodded.

"And not a crack! Task one completed in just two minutes! Courtney, you're doing great!"

"Thank you!" I rose slowly, struggling for my balance, the assistant lightly holding my upper arm. Just two minutes? This was too easy.

"The next station is a bit more arduous, I'm afraid, though." Pete led me to a waist-high table upon which I saw a stack of paper. The top sheet had a large number written on it. "54", it said. "This is a stack of 99 sheets of paper", Pete explained. "They are in a random sequence. Please arrange them from 1 to 99, with 1 at the top and 99 at the bottom. Hands-off, of course. We'll check the sequence afterward. Ready? And - go!"

The ticking sound started again. I stood a moment, looking at the stack. Pete was right, this one was trickier. I had no chance shuffling these papers with my nose or something on this small table, but suddenly I saw how. I needed more space. I bent forward, grinned at the host, put my boobs on the stack and pulled it to the ground. There was a heavy slapping sound as the stack hit the floor, some sheets flying and sliding around the table before settling on the tiles.

Pete laughed, somewhat taken by surprise. "OK, you used your breasts, both of them. They'll be out from now on, pretty as they are."

"Right." I started spreading the papers with my bare feet. Surely there were some foot fans in the audience. I even had put a little silver toe ring on. Also, I realized, I was practicing - chances were two to one I would have to do a lot of things with my feet in the future.

"OK, feet are out, too. You better save some body parts up for task three and four!"

I didn't really listen. I was busy. I methodically put the sheets of paper side by side in several rows, until I could see all of them at once. Then it was easy. I picked out number 99, dragged number 98 onto it, taking it between the big and second toe, then number 97... Three remote-controlled cameras were trained on me as I was writhing and dancing about, displaying my feet, shaking my butt and my boobs, flipping my hair, spreading my legs when crouching.

"Aaand - done! Courtney, you're really a sight to see!", Pete enthused. Then he changed to a more ominous tone. "That took quite a while, though. You've only got ten minutes left for the last two tasks."

"Then let's get it over with!" I did a few more jumps on my toeballs, making my boobs dance and my hair fly, giving the jerks who watched me some additional eye-candy. I felt exhilarated. Behind me, I glimpsed another assistant collecting the stack of papers from the floor, presumably to check the sequence of the numbers.

"My my, you're really a good sport, Courtney. But how will you solve this one?" He led me to a large basin, perhaps four by seven feet, which was sunk into the floor and filled with water almost flush with the tiles. Directly above it a heavy hempen rope stretched lengthwise across it, anchored with steel clamps at both ends. The water gave off dramatic, dazzling reflections from the bright soundstage lights, blinding my eyes, but it didn't seem very deep. There was no danger of drowning if I fell in.

"OK, your task is to convey yourself over the water without getting wet. You could walk along the rope, which isn't that easy when you can't spread your arms to keep your balance, but since you already used your feet, what are you going to do?" The clock started ticking again, the suspense music had become louder. The black-gloved assistant made a concerned face.

"Over the water?" I put on a show of concentrated thinking. "Without using my feet." I held them both into the nearest camera, spreading my toes, turning them to and fro. "So, I can't walk on the rope..."

"Exactly."

"Do I have to use the rope?"

"Hm - probably not. Does she have to use the rope?", Pete loudly asked the ceiling.

After a few seconds he seemed to hear something in his earbud, nodding. "OK. OK, thanks. - You do not have to use the rope. Do you intend to jump this distance? Seven feet? With arms shackled behind your back? Good luck, but..."

I went to the long side of the basin, took a few steps back, ran forward, and jumped over the water, landing easily on the far side, crouching down to give everybody a good view of my private parts. "Four feet", I corrected. "No problem. No one said I had to cross the water lengthwise."

"Haha." Pete looked doubtful, but the voice in his earbud was on my side. "Aaand I just hear that's indeed OK. We'll have to write out the rules more clearly, but this time jumping crosswise instead of lengthwise counts as completed. Very clever, Courtney." He did sound a little resentful. "And here's your last task, with just... eight minutes to go."

I scarcely heard him. From where I stood I had a good view of the blade machine with its two wristholes, just a few feet away now. The nurse returned my wide-eyed gaze impassively.

III

The last task was similar to the first one, only this time I was to convey a liquid from one container to another. A rather suspicious-looking liquid. "This isn't piss, or is it?", I asked doubtfully, squinting at the thick yellow-greenish stuff in a cylindrical glass tank sitting on a waist-high trestle.

"Naw, it's just olive oil", Pete laughed. "But it's half a gallon, more than you'd think if you have to transport it with your body. Press this button, and it will squirt from this spigot. Your goal is to fill it into the second container over there. All of it. Hands-off."

Under the glass tank there was a kind of tap and a big red push button. The second glass tank sat on the floor, four or five feet away. I could crouch and use my mouth, but half a gallon of mouthfuls - how often would I have to run to and fro? In eight minutes? Hopeless. I still had another "orifice" left unused, though. A somewhat more capacious one. And the "spigot" was just at the right height for it, probably not by accident, and it was rather long and stood straight out, with a rubberized tip. Again, once I saw it, it seemed obvious. I pushed my butt against the trestle, until I felt the rubber tip poking against my anus, then sliding in. "Like that?"

"Perfect! Go go go! The clock is ticking!" Pete was happy again. I was really a good show.

The oil was surprisingly cold, it was quite a shock to feel it gushing into my rectum and further up into my colon. I tried to relax, not to cramp up, breathing deeply, spreading my legs for a firmer stance to keep the button pressed.

It took me just two assfuls to transport the whole of the oil into the second container, and I managed to hold it in long enough each time. Barely. As anyone who has ever had an oil enema knows, the ejection process was explosive and spectacular to watch each time. I actually spattered one of the cameras quite badly.

"Keep going, keep going!" Pete was dancing up and down now. "I hear you're getting tons of likes on our website!" Everybody in the studio was cheering.

And I made it in time. Just barely, but I made it.

"Congrats, Courtney! You did it your own way, and you did it!", Pete was exclaiming, actually hugging me, when suddenly the shadowy assistant figure who had collected the stack of papers from the second task appeared by our side. I smiled at him. He was a young man in jeans and a white T-shirt, and he was quite nervous. I already knew what he would say. "I'm sorry, Pete. There is - there was - two of the numbers are mixed up." Everybody went dead quiet. "The sequence of the sheets as collected is 71, 73, 72, 74. It's - our lawyer was present, he'll confirm this. You put 73 before 72, Courtney. I'm so sorry." His voice was choked. I tried to see his face, but he turned away and ran out of the door.

I looked at the machine. The blade was glinting. The wristholes were waiting. For me.

IV

Ashley won easily. She was strong and determined, she sorted the papers with her mouth, using up a lot of time, but not too much, walked the rope over the water, and had the same idea as I had to take the olive oil as an enema. Amanda made it to the third task, but lost her balance on the rope and stepped into the water. It was only six inches deep.

I was kept in the holding area, still naked and hands cuffed behind my back, the door locked, until they were both finished and Ashley had departed, carrying the briefcase with ten thousand little portraits of Ben Franklin. The assistant with the black gloves brought me a cup of coffee, let me sip it through the bars while holding it in her curiously immobile hands. "That was quite a show you did, Courtney", she said, smiling sadly.

"The show is yet to come." I managed to smile back. "Thanks for the coffee."

Then the security guard marched Amanda back, holding her by both arms from behind. Amanda was shaking visibly, eyes wide, wouldn't talk. In the holding cell, she retreated against the back wall as if to protect her cuffed hands. She would be next on the machine after I was done.

A few minutes later the assistant in the skimpy black outfit was back. The security guard was with her now, and I knew they were coming for me. "I won't run away or make a fuss", I reassured them.

"I didn't think so", she said, looking hard at me. "It's a mandatory precaution", the guard rumbled.

"Let's get it over with." They didn't have to lead me. I actually walked faster than them through the hallway this time.

The nurse had got busy when I returned to the studio, ripping open bandage packages, laying out some sort of thin red rubber hose - tourniquets? -, spraying and polishing the wristholes, probably desinfecting them, then reaching upwards, spraying and wiping the blade. Proper hygiene is important. The cameras were all focused on the machine now, one of them picking up my face as I approached.

"And now for the culminating moment of today's Hands Off Show! You will now witness, live and in colour, how the hands of two pretty young women...", Pete was shouting somewhere behind me as I sat down on a stool behind the machine and the assistant unlocked my wrist cuffs and bent my arms forward. I pushed them through the wristholes before the nurse could instruct me to. My hands appeared on the other side of the upright steel plank. The nurse started swabbing them with disinfectant. It felt cool on the skin. I wiggled my fingers a little. For the last time, I realized. When she moved to close some sort of clamp around my wrists to immobilize them, I looked up. "Uhm..."

"Yes?"

"Can I have half-length sleeves? They are the height of fashion now", I smiled.

She hesitated only a fraction of a second. "Sure. Push your arms further through, then. Like that?"

"Like that." Now half my forearms were on the other side of the wristholes.

In the background, Pete was droning on. "You will be able to savour the fall of the blade in slow-motion replay, plus close-up imagery of the fresh, bleeding..." His voice seemed to fade.

The nurse shut down the clamps. An iron grip closed around my lower arms. I tried to withdraw them as a test, but they were stuck securely. "Good", I said, my voice a little raspy.

"Now for the tourniquets", she said, brandishing the red rubber hose thingies. "This will hurt, and your hands will go numb. And you won't bleed to death."

I clenched my teeth as she drew the rubber hoses around my arms just above the elbows, tightening them mercilessly and with all her strength.

"Do you want a blindfold?" She held up a black silk scarf.

I shook my head. "I need to see." Also, there was a camera trained full on my face, and I wouldn't spare the audience the look on my face when... it happened. They would have to look me in the eyes while they did this to me.

She nodded, put the scarf away.

The security guard had taken up station with the bucket, holding the lid, ready to drop it closed. I noticed he had squeezed his eyes shut. The assistant in black was hugging me from behind in a half-crouch, obviously to catch my fall should I lose consciousness. I could smell her perfume and her sweat under the hot studio lights. Then, finally, the preparations seemed to be done.

"Ready?" The nurse gripped a lever on the side of the blade rails.

I nodded silently. The blade fell with a great clang, the whole contraption shook. My hands and half of my forearms vanished. It didn't even hurt at first.

I remember I saw the security guard hastily clapping the lid on the bucket, going white in the face - it was actually a shade of green - and turning away and bending over. "Pull yourself together", I heard myself say, quite loudly. "If there's any puking to do, I'll do it." And then the world kind of greyed out.

V

I'm typing this with a juggler's mouthstick clenched in my teeth - the only "medical aid" I'm allowed. My two arm stumps with their half-length forearms are laid out neatly on both sides of the laptop my new Master lets me use. I'm very proud of them, never covering them up. They healed well, and I do think they look aesthetically pleasing. Every time I look at them they remind me of my utter helplessness. I won't get hand prostheses, and I wouldn't want any. I'm kept naked at all times, often chained up. At the moment, I'm chained to the bed by my usual ten-foot day chain leading to my collar. I'm learning to do some things with my bare feet and my mouth, but mostly I'm helpless. I'm fed my meals with a spoon, I get my hair combed, my body cleansed and massaged, my crotch and armpits shaved, even my butt wiped. My new Master has a nurse just for me. She's not a servant, more like a governess. I have to do what she says. She takes good care of me, though, like you would of an expensive pet. And that's what I am now, a beloved, expensive pet for my Master.

I did it all on purpose, of course. I misplaced sheet number 73 in the second task to make sure I lost while still being a good sport and giving my best. I was so thankful they took me on as a contestant. Before I applied I had phantasized about appearing in the Hands Off Show a million times. When I actually did it, it was totally different from the phantasies, but it was still what I had wanted all along.

The assistant in black paid me a visit in the discrete private hospital up in the hills above the city where the producers of the show had me brought after the initial wound care and where I had a pleasant room for myself, a nice view into a secluded desert-style garden with adobe walls, and an enormous bouquet of flowers on the nightstand beside me. Her outfit was even skimpier this time - she had on a black, rather transparent tank top showing a lot of sideboob, no bra underneath, a pair of jeans cut off so high they looked like a bikini bottom, and wore no shoes at all, had obviously been barefoot the whole day, her feet quite dusty -, but she was still wearing her black leather gloves. She took them off for me, though, and underneath them her hands were made of plastic. "I was one of the first contestants in the show", she told me. "I didn't lose on purpose, though. Or only half on purpose. You've got the chances stacked against you, anyway."

"Two to one", I nodded.

"So, if you apply, you know this is the probable outcome." She slipped off the plastic hand prostheses, held out her stumps. "Don't they look neat? I love them."

"They do. Please leave them bare for me?"

"Sure." She smiled. "Wanna see up close?"

"Yes, please", I whispered.

She sat down on my bed and held them directly before my face, turning them, rubbing them gently against each other. They were almost smooth, evenly rounded off, a barely perceptible scar like a smile on each of the ends. "May I... touch?", I ventured.

"How?" She gave a low laugh. My forearms were still in their bulky pressure bandages. The surgeons had taken away another inch or so of the bones to close the soft tissue and the skin over their ends. They said my new stumps were healing nicely, the drainage tubes had already come out, but I couldn't use them yet.

"I still got my lips."

"Sure", she said after a moment's hesitation. "I'm not really into girls, but... sure, go ahead."

And I proceeded to kiss her on both of her arm stumps, repeatedly and slowly, feeling and caressing her soft warm skin. It was an oddly intimate act, neither of us said a word while I took my time. "Thank you", I breathed when I was finished, then, looking up, cleared my throat, asking, "So, Pete kept you as an assistant?"

"Yeah, this business of chopping off girls' hands... I found it kinda captivating, and he hoped I could relate to the contestants, ease their apprehension, and so on. Because of my experience."

"And you knew I was there to get myself a pair of these." I nodded towards her stumps.

"I kinda sensed it", she said. "That's why I advised Pete to call you up first."

"You knew I couldn't wait to do it."

"I wasn't sure if you'd keep up your resolve long enough if you'd had to wait. You might have folded and won."

"Horrible."

"Mhm. What you gonna do now?"

"This hospital is rather expensive, I hear. So, to pay my medical expenses... I also hear I'd fetch quite a price as a helpless pet and sex toy on the black market."

She raised her eyebrows. "You want that?"

"I do. In fact, I already accepted. My new Master's been here."

"That's who the shrubbery's from?", she snorted, pointing one of her stumps at the giant bouquet on my bedside stand.

"Yeah", I grinned. "He's very courteous and romantic, but strict. I asked him if he'd keep me naked and chained like you see on those websites. He said 'How else?'."

"And without artificial hands."

"Mhm. Just my bare stumps, always. I specifically asked for that. So, when these come off", I lifted my shortened arms, brandishing the massive bandages, "I'll be delivered to him."

"So you won in the end, Courtney." The assistant smiled. Only when she was gone I realized she never told me her name.

***