Authors: Jennifer Jane Pope
I had chosen the red corset particularly because the laces were at the front and the fastenings at the rear and it fitted loosely enough to begin with for me to swivel the thing around and tackle the steel hooks and eyes in front, easing them back around to my spine when I had finished with them. I wriggled my hips, adjusting the 'sit' of the thing and positioning the half cups beneath my boobs and then, still holding it in place with my left hand, reached for the dangling laces with my right.
There were actually two sets of laces. One started from the top, lacing downwards, the other from the bottom, lacing upwards, the ends of both sets meeting somewhere halfway. I gathered the ends carefully and gave them an experimental tug. Immediately the corset began to close around me and, after two or three more tugs, I found I could let go with my left hand and nothing tried to slip down.
'Excellent,' I said to myself. 'Could have been made for me.' Except it looked like the original owner had probably been a fair bit slimmer around the middle, for there was still quite a large gap between the two halves at the front. Unless...
No, surely not? Of course not. There was no way I could lace the thing that tightly, not without risking terminal asphyxiation, anyway. However, I was game to go as far as was comfortable - relatively speaking, that is - so I renewed my assault on the laces, this time with both hands.
The lacing frame was a quite simple construction, but it had been designed and built for strength and durability and the small wheels on its base made transporting it from room to room a simple matter, even for a slightly built female and Polly was certainly not that.
As she pushed it into the bedroom, Angelina saw that it comprised a plain base, constructed from several lengths of planking braced together, from which, at either end, rose a tubular metal pole some seven or eight feet in height. Closer inspection showed that these poles were, in fact, each comprised of two sections, the upper of which telescoped into the lower, with corresponding holes in each, together with a locking pin, enabling the overall height of the horizontal bar which hung between the two uprights to be adjusted up and down.
A few inches in from either end of this horizontal bar, which was perhaps five feet in length, dangled a leather cuff, both now hanging open and waiting, Angelina realised, for her wrists. Gamely, she managed to swing her legs out of bed and stood up, facing her would-be tormentors with as much dignity as she could muster.
'That... that beastly medieval torture instrument will not be necessary,' she said stiffly. 'You may do with me as you will and I shall not struggle. As you say, I am but a slip of a girl, so to do so would be totally futile, I can see.' Meg paused, regarded Angelina steadily and for a few seconds it appeared that she might accede to this request, but then a look of sheer darkness clouded across her eyes and the smile that spread upon her face was sheer malice.
'I think not, milady airs-and-graces,' she hissed. 'Whilst it would give me great delight to give you a sound hiding anyway, I think you will make a pretty sight squirming on this frame, so up you shall go and no further arguments. Now, will you remove that shift, or shall we tear it from you afterwards?'
Angelina felt her stomach knotting into a tight fist, but she retained sufficient resolve not to grant the insolent maid yet another victory.
'I am perfectly capable of removing my own garments,' she replied testily. She opened her mouth again, instinctively meaning to ask both maids to turn their backs, but just in the nick of time she realised that this would be a sign of weakness and just what the spiteful Meg, in particular, would be expecting. Instead, keeping her gaze all the while on the older maid, Angelina drew the shift off her shoulders and allowed it to slip down her body, stepping delicately out of its folds and confronting the women proudly, aware that already her nipples had hardened themselves into two small cones and had deepened in colour, so that they stood out starkly against the pale alabaster of her firm breasts.
'See, Polly?' Meg said gleefully. 'Two unripe little apples. Her teats are nigh on as big as the rest of her titties. Why, if it weren't for that little cunny I see winking at us, I'd swear she was a boy in skirts.' Despite herself, Angelina felt her cheeks beginning to burn, but she refused so much as to blink and stepped slowly forward. At the side of the frame she paused and then, without further hesitation, stepped up onto the timber staging and held her arms out straight before her.
'Come, then,' she said quietly to the two maids, who had momentarily, it seemed, been transfixed by her unexpected show of calm acceptance. 'String me up on your devilish contraption and do your worst with me.'
As I said before, I was pretty good at English and history, but the sciences, including physics, had never been my strong suit, so my knowledge of leverage and gears was - and still is - pretty basic. It therefore came as a bit of a surprise to me just what sort of results could be achieved from a traditional corset, where the arrangement of laces transfers even a fairly modest effort into quite a breathtaking force - quite literally.
Bit by bit the two halves of the amazing garment began to close in on each other and I quickly mastered the technique, going back over the two end sections to produce extra slack in the laces and then working my way back towards the centre each time, so that I quickly had quite a lot of excess lace ends dangling from my hands. Then, eventually, there was only the narrowest strip of satin-clad me visible between the two sections.
By this time I was starting to feel more than a bit breathless and, as I paused to consider, I realised that I was also becoming just a little light-headed and my heart was pounding furiously, in an effort to replace the oxygen that obviously wasn't getting through to those parts of me that needed it.
I took a deep breath, or at least, I tried to. It was absolutely impossible, the vicious boning trying to crush my ribs for my efforts. I let out a little grunt and tried again, this time concentrating on my upper lungs, the way I'd read that ladies in the past had managed to breathe whilst constrained so mercilessly. It had sounded so simple, when printed on the page, but this was no historical novel and it took me several minutes to get the hang of it, while all the time I leaned against the wall for support.
At last, however, my pulse settled down to a mild canter and my head cleared again and yes, at that point I should have tied the laces off and considered it a good first try. In fact, if I'd had any sense I'd have loosened the damned corset, or maybe even removed it altogether. However, a combination of misplaced bravado and my innate hatred of being beaten by anything, let alone a mere piece of bloody clothing, led me into realms that would have been better avoided, at least for a while.
I stared down at myself; fascinated by the changes the corset had already wrought to me. I'd always been proud of my figure: slim without being skinny, my height giving me a certain advantage over shorter people, male and female alike, with only my slightly rounded bottom giving me any cause for complaint. What I now saw, however, was something that looked quite different.
My boobs - not large by any standards, but certainly large enough to content those boyfriends I'd let close enough to them - had now been lifted much higher and the half cups at the top of the corset seemed to be presenting them for display, or offering them for - well, I needn't draw you a picture here, I'm sure.
'Blimey!' I gasped, nearly sending myself cross-eyed with the effort of focusing. 'Nell bloody Gwynne!' I started laughing and immediately wished I hadn't, for the whalebone stays immediately reminded me that such a foundation was no laughing matter. I regained my composure and looked further down.
Was that
my
waist? Ye gods and little swimming things, where had it gone? That wasn't a waist; it was some sort of pipe stem, surely? And where had those hips sprung from? My bum might have been a bit prominent, but I'd never had hips that generous, surely?
Of course, it was all a bit of an optical illusion, I quickly realised. Compressing my waist had simply made the rest of me look larger in proportion and I didn't even dare try to look at the rear view just yet! I could imagine my poor bottom must now look huge, but then I also knew that men throughout all the ages have been attracted to prominent female buttocks just as frequently as they've been aroused by a prominent bosom. Well, I reflected, with my usual ability to seize upon the gruesome obvious, in this thing I was up to satisfying both fetishes.
And then, me being me, I just couldn't resist it, could I? I just had to see if I could lace the damned thing all the way and make those two halves meet at the front, the way they were originally intended to. Why? Why did I do it? Don't ask me, but all I can say is that I've never been able to resist a challenge and I can't see that ever changing. Not now.
So I grabbed hold of the laces again and once more renewed my efforts...
3
.
No sooner were Angelina's wrists buckled into the hanging straps than the two maids began to raise the crossbar, replacing the locking pins in the telescoping uprights only when her toes were left barely touching the wooden planking beneath her. The strain on her shoulders was even worse than it had been when they strapped her to the disused wine rack in the cellars, but Angelina was determined not to let them see her discomfort.
However, by the time Meg had wrapped the gleaming black corset about her - her tender flesh was not this time to be afforded the protection offered by a chemise, it appeared - and begun the process of tight lacing, the pain was becoming quite acute and Angelina was forced to bite into her lip to prevent herself from crying out.
Remorselessly, the powerful maid continued with her work, while Polly came around to take up a position in front of Angelina and grasp her about the waist, countering the force being exerted at her back and enabling Meg to haul on the laces with renewed vigour.
'We'll at least make you look like a woman, missy!' she rasped through clenched teeth. 'Master had this corset specially made in London for you and I know he's been dying to see you in it. I hope you remember to thank him properly when you see him again.' She laughed harshly, and Polly snickered.
'You should see her titties now, Meg!' she exclaimed. 'My, but they're looking like a proper pair of dumplings! I almost feel jealous, I do.'
Angelina stared down at Polly's own generous cleavage and wondered whether it had taken a corset to produce that deep valley and the swelling mounds that threatened to spill over her bodice. Then she peered down at herself and was quite astonished at the transformation. Polly had exaggerated, that was plain to see, but her bosom was certainly being pushed upwards and outwards in a way it had never been before.
'We'll have a little rest now,' Meg announced. Angelina felt her knot the laces in the small of her back and heard the creaking of timber as the maid stepped down off the raised platform. 'Go fetch the smelling salts from the yellow room and look in the closet there, too. You'll find a bottle of something tucked behind the boots and shoes and a couple of glasses on the dresser. Bring those, too. All this effort is making me feel quite thirsty.'
As Polly scuttled off to do her bidding, Meg walked slowly around to stand before the hapless Angelina, who saw that she was indeed quite red in the face from her exertions.
'There's a good two inches still to go, in case you're wondering,' Meg sneered with evident relish. Angelina felt her heart sink even further than it had fallen already. Two more inches! It was not possible. She craned her neck and stared down at her waist, or at what appeared to be left of it, for it was already narrower than it had ever been, even in her tightest corset.
'You will kill me,' she hissed. 'If you make this thing any tighter, I will surely die from lack of air.'
Meg simply grinned. 'Oh, don't you go worrying your silly head about such things,' she laughed. 'No one here intends you to die. We'll manage the two inches, I promise you, and you'll still get air enough, though not enough to try running again, that's for sure.' She stepped back a pace and tilted her head slightly to one side, as if she were appreciating a work of art.
'And I reckon,' she continued, after a few seconds of this, 'that once you've worn this corset awhile, we can get you into an even tighter one. Eventually, I reckon we could get your waist down to a twelve inch, like the French ladies used to do before the peasants started cutting their heads off a few years back.'
She stepped forward again and, before Angelina had time to react, thrust her right hand between her thighs, probing for the warm opening. Angelina let out a sharp cry of protest.
'Stop that,' she shrilled. 'What manner of woman are you? Have you no sense of decency?' Meg kept her hand there, pressing, cupping, but her fingers making no attempt to force an entry.
'Oh, don't you worry your silly little head, missy,' she crooned. 'I'll not damage your precious maidenhead. That's the master's privilege, that is, though I'll be there to watch him break you in, you can be sure of that. Afterwards, though, well that's a different matter, ain't it?'
'You vile creature,' Angelina wailed. 'Truly you are an abomination.'
'Aye, maybe I am at that,' Meg agreed, casually shrugging. 'But then I'm not the one dangling helpless here, am I? And I'm not the one stupid enough to call names to someone who's in a position to do something about it.'