MAKING THE JUMP
Bob Ingersoll
“So, what is your secret fantasy?”
Xavier St. John knew where he wanted to go and how to get there. As always, he had carefully manipulated the conversation so its progression from what seemed a tentative hello to his real goal seemed natural. So that the question seemed casual, not prying. As usual, the woman he asked—? renda, this one’s name was Brenda, wasn’t it?—hesitated. He was, after all, someone she met in a bar only that night, not someone to share her secret with. But the question made her think about the fantasy and that was all St. John needed.
He never took no for an answer. Instead, he reached into her mind and, as her thoughts came to her …
An enemy agent tries to get information from her. An escaped prisoner takes her hostage. A masked intruder seizes her from her bubble bath. She is taken, stripped, then bound and gagged. Helpless. Unable to fight back so whatever follows, she is not responsible—cannot feel guilt.
… they also came to him.
St. John felt her thoughts. Then felt her drive them from her mind as quickly as they came. But not quickly enough. He knew. Her deepest, most-suppressed, most-secret fantasy—the one she wanted more than anything; the one she barely admitted even to herself. And now he knew it.
It was what St. John was after and, having found it, he made a subtle, unseen, unfelt push with his mind, nudging her to let it out.
“Bondage,” she said.
“What?”
“I want to be tied up and gagged.”
St. John smiled as she blurted the words out, as if she had to get them out now, before she changed her mind. Then he quickly replaced the smile with another expression, one he had practiced many times before. He blushed.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” She turned and started to get up from the bar stool. St. John reached out, took her arm, and gently turned her back to face him. The redness still covered his face.
“No, you didn’t embarrass me, I embarrassed myself. It’s just that I’ve … Well, I’ve always wanted to try bondage, too. I’ve just been too ashamed to admit it.”
St. John looked at her and again pulled her thoughts into him. This was the crucial moment. He went in deeper, walking along her thoughts …
He must be weird.
… giving little pushes as he did …
But look at him. His face. It’s so red. He’s so embarrassed.
… making her see things the way he wanted her to see them…
He must be like me. Curious about something new, something a little dangerous. Curious, but uncomfortable, even ashamed to admit it.
His mind reached into hers and he Nudged her thoughts, made her notice he was not looking at her but beside her. Then he Nudged again, until she put one finger on his cheek and turned his head so that he looked directly at her and, in the anxious expression on his face, she found the courage to say:
“We could stop at the store to pick up a few things and then go back to my place.”
She lay before him on the bed of her sparse apartment completely naked, white hemp rope tying her wrists and ankles to the bed frame and biting ever so slightly into her soft flesh, her panties balled up in her mouth while a wide piece of adhesive tape sealed her lips shut.
St. John looked down at the woman. She was not unattractive, but not what anyone would call beautiful. She was thirty-two and slightly overweight, fleshy. Her breasts were a little too large for her frame and had succumbed to the pull of gravity. Her mousy brown hair hung straight and limp. She was the type of woman St. John always sought out in the bars, shy and reserved with little, if any, experience in sex but with a repressed desire that burned within, a secret that screamed to be set free. St. John noticed her eyes dancing over the gag; ready; open, even excited.
He stood motionless, rolling his eyes up in his head until nothing but white criss-crossed by bright red veins showed in his sockets. He reached out toward Brenda with his mind as he had before. Then with more than his mind. He entered her with his consciousness, his self. He made the Jump.
His mind entered her mind, tracing her neurons, bridging her synapses, surfing her personal Internet until it burrowed through the neurons and devoured the synapses. Until her thoughts were his thoughts, her memories his memories, what she felt he felt. Until her self was his self.
She lay spread-eagled, naked, bound, and gagged, the fantasy finally hers.
She tried to move. The ropes held her down. She tried to talk. The gag sealed her mouth.
She was excited. She writhed on the bed, pulling on the ropes until she could feel them rub against her. She moaned in ecstasy but the gag swallowed her sounds. He could not hear her or know what she wanted. She looked at him over the gag, pleading at him with her eyes, “Now. Now. Please now!”
Even as he made the Jump and was her, St. John was also himself. He felt her wriggle against the ropes and also watched the naked woman squirm on the bed before him, her every excitement visible in the drops of sweat that formed on her soft, white flesh. He enjoyed watching her pull against the ropes, almost as if struggling to get out. It made her more than a passably attractive female he had found in a bar that night, more than some disillusioned lady-in-waiting watching the more attractive, self-assured players leave with someone on their arms, while she hoped someone would glance her way. It made her fetching.
To St. John, that was the beauty of Jumping, merging. Being two people. He was her, experiencing these pleasures of the flesh for the first time. But he was still him, aware of his own sensations and gratifications. He could—how did the commercial put it?—double his pleasure.
She was ready. Then St. John rolled his eyes back again and Jumped.
She watched him approach. She closed her fists so hard she felt her nails burrow into her palms. She wanted him on her—in her—as she had never wanted anyone—anything—in her life.
He lay next to her, at first not touching her. Then he extended his index finger and placed it on the rope binding her left wrist. He moved the lone finger slowly down her arm following its contours, ran it along her collarbone, then traced the curves of her right side, down the outside of her right leg and up the inside.
She closed her eyes. She could see nothing. Her only sensations were the feel of the ropes, the gag, and him.
He moved his finger over the thatch of her pubic hair and across her stomach until it reached her breasts. Slowly he drew it around the circle of her left breast. Then he cupped her left breast and stroked it gently.
She moaned in delight, screaming, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” over and over, although what escaped the gag were unintelligible mewlings. He kissed her breasts even as he moved his hand down to stroke her vagina. His mouth darted over her breasts while his soft lips kissed them and his tongue lapped at her nipples.
Her nipples hardened beneath his tongue, even as she felt herself moisten. She wanted to tell him now, but could not. She cursed the gag that earlier she had desired so much. But again, as if he knew, he moved on top of her and carefully put his penis in her.
With strong, rhythmic motions, he moved his penis up and down, in and out, even as he still kissed her breasts. She felt the thrusts, felt the kisses.
It was the moment she most desired.
Then she convulsed, shaking wildly, spasmodically, as wave after wave of pure sensual pleasure pounded her. Still convulsing, she felt the hot jet of him shoot into her.
After the last surge of combined orgasm rushed over him, St. John pulled out of the woman. Twice. He had expected it to be good—whenever he found a truly repressed lady and got her to release her fantasies, it always was. But he hadn’t expected it to be this good. She had years of desires and longings—of needs—so long and so deeply buried that they exploded out of their prison. What she felt—the mounting excitement and pure sensual pleasure—he felt. It washed over him as completely as it did her, combining with his own excitement and pleasure, each building on the other, doubling it, redoubling it, and more. He had timed his orgasm to coincide with hers and when they came, it was with an erotic ferocity that seemed capable of ripping him in two.
It was the best ever, which made St. John smile. It meant what would come next would be all the more satisfying. Especially because, as he pulled out of the Jump, he caught in her mind a newly forming hope that she had finally found the special someone for her.
St. John walked to the bathroom to clean himself off. He could hear her muffled protests coming from the bedroom, “Umiemee,” a sound he had heard often enough to know it meant “Untie me.” He ignored it and turned on the shower. Her noises got louder, as she tried to be heard above the running water, but he simply entered the shower, so that he could not hear her at all. That was what he wanted now, a brief respite from her as the needles of hot water removed what was left of her from his body before it crusted over.
He continued to ignore her noises, when he got out of the shower, dried himself off, and came back into the bedroom to dress himself, even though those sounds came with greater insistence than before. He could tell from the sudden strength with which she pulled against the ropes and the intensity with which her noises tried to escape the gag, that she was starting to wonder what he was up to. Good. The longer that wonder lasted, the more it built—preying on her, raising her doubts and fears—the better what would follow would be.
St. John walked casually over to the woman. She raised her head up and stared at him, her eyes narrowing into angry slits. “Umiemeusumich!” St. John shook his head, a slight smile turning up the corners of his otherwise expressionless mouth. He reached down and twisted her right breast hard. She screamed in pain behind the gag.
“Untie you? But we’re so far from finished, cunt. I mean, what have you always wanted, what have you fantasized about? Being helpless. Not just being tied up but being helpless, completely unable to keep things from happening to you? This little game wasn’t enough to give you the real sensation of helplessness. No, you’ll need quite a bit more to happen, before you feel true helplessness.”
St. John didn’t even need to make the Jump to know her terror. Her eyes—open so wide that white surrounded them on all sides—told him. He stared at those eyes, taking in everything they told him, as he approached her; still looking at them as she shook her head from side to side and screamed futilely behind the gag.
He sat on top of her and pulled the roll of tape out of his pocket. He pressed the free end of the roll to her right cheek and wrapped the tape around her head and neck several times, so that her entire head, from the nose to the chin, was covered.
He used the rope they’d purchased that evening and retied her slowly—arms behind her back and tied at the wrists and elbows, legs lashed together at the ankles and knees. He took his time, making sure each rope was pulled tight and knotted frequently, immobilizing her completely. He especially delighted in the ropes he tied around her arms and torso, which pinned her arms to her sides and squeezed her tits between them. They had to hurt.
When he finished, she started to thrash against the ropes, struggling to get free. But St. John knew he had tied the bitch too securely. She screamed, but the gag swallowed her cries into pitiful kitten mewlings that were barely audible.
He allowed her to struggle briefly, letting her get a feeling of how helpless she was. Then he took a bottle of chloroform from his pocket and soaked a cloth with it. He walked toward her even as she tried to crawl away from him, looking like a large white worm inching along the ground. He grabbed her, pulling her head up by her hair, and clamped the rag over her nose. She struggled, but couldn’t escape. Didn’t matter. Struggling made her breathe more deeply, letting the chloroform take effect even faster.
The chloroform wasn’t necessary, but it made things easier. When she was out, he’d get one of the wheeled trash bins and take her down to his car in the garage. If anyone saw him, a simple Jump/Nudge would make them think they were looking at the building’s super taking out the garbage. But the illusion would sell better if the garbage wasn’t moaning and kicking.
And while she was unconscious, there were a few other preparations…
He’d learned something about the bitch while he was in her mind and he wanted to use it to the best of his abilities. He wanted to stop at some stores for a few special purchases paid for with the cash—always cash, no paper trail—he’d gotten her to withdraw from her ATM. It wouldn’t be enough. Not for all the purchases he needed to make or the secluded cabin he wanted to rent. But the streets were full of people he could Nudge into doing a favor for him, then forget. And they all had ATM cards.
As the woman’s eyes started to take on the glaze he knew meant she was about to lose consciousness, he said, “I gave you the fantasy, bitch. Now it’s time for the reality.”
She wakened and did not know where she was. It was dark and smelled vaguely of mold.
She wanted to move but could not. She could lift her head but could move nothing else. She looked down at herself. She was still naked and tied up. She lay on her back, her wrists bound behind her so that she was on top of them. There was a board beneath her. Ropes were wrapped around her and threaded through holes in the board, binding her tightly to it at her ankles, knees, waist, hips, and torso. She could not move. There was so much rope binding her, she did not believe she could ever get free.
She felt the pressure of the panties inside her mouth as they held her tongue down. She felt the tape wrapped around her head and neck. She screamed for help, but could barely hear the sound that emerged from her mouth.
She was completely a prisoner.
She knew that he was there somewhere. She moved her head around until she saw him.
He was on the other side of the room, sitting in a chair and watching her—looking at her. He did not speak. He only watched and smiled.
The smile terrified her. It was nothing like the innocent, blushing face he had last night. It was too broad, too satisfied. It was evil.
She panicked. She thrashed against the ropes, hoping that they would loosen. She screamed and shook her head from side to side, praying that would dislodge the gag.
The ropes stayed taut, the gag held firm. There was no escaping them. And she knew: now he would do things to her.
He came out of the Jump and walked over to her, standing over her, smiling down with the same smile he had felt her call “evil.”
“Does it feel like you imagined it, bitch? Being tied up and helpless? I went to a lot of trouble for you. Made that board special myself. Drilled the holes and everything, just to give you what you always wanted.
“So, do you feel truly helpless yet?
“You may think you do. But no. I have something else for you, something that will make you understand exactly what truly helpless is.”
He went back to the chair and grasped a plastic trash bag lying on the floor behind it. Something inside it moved. He ripped the bag open even as he made the Jump into her one last time.
“I learned about more than just the bondage,” he said, shaking the bag so its contents spilled to the floor. “I learned about everything!”
Then he was in her again, feeling what she felt even as she recognized what crawled out of the bag.
Spiders!
Dozens of large, black, hairy spiders—huge and ugly—crawled onto the floor. As they started skittering toward her, she knew he did know about everything.
Everything!
Even the arachnophobia.
The spiders moved. Crept toward her. She wanted to stop them, wanted to get up and run. She couldn’t. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t scream for help. Couldn’t do anything except watch as the spiders moved slowly, but definitely, toward her.
They came. Closer. Ever closer. Spiders. Never stopping. Inescapable. And ever, ever closer.
Three feet. Two feet. One. She wanted to close her eyes. To look away, but could not. She saw him behind the spiders. She looked at him, hoping maybe he would stop them. He stood over her stroking his penis.
She watched.
They came.
First one, then another and another touched her. Then almost all of them were on her, crawling over her. Dozens of spiders, huge, black, hairy, all over her, covering her, and she could do nothing about it.
She broke, sobbed uncontrollably, hysterically behind the gag. She knew she never, ever ever wanted to be tied up again. Never wanted to pretend or fantasize. Never even wanted to think of it. Not. Ever. Again.
He watched her and felt the terror and helplessness building up inside her as the tarantulas skittered over her naked, bound body. He watched and he masturbated. Hard, rhythmic but careful strokes. Making sure that he held off the orgasm until one final, special moment. Then, when she broke, when her bondage dreams—her secretmost fantasy—was taken from her forever, he allowed himself to climax onto her face.
The second orgasm, the moment he most desired, was every bit as satisfying as the first had been. More. Bringing these stupid cows to their first real climax, as they finally satisfied their dreams, was good. Bringing himself to climax as he ripped the fantasies away from the women and left a hole in them they could never fill was better.
It was the moment he lived for.
He turned and walked away, pausing only at the door to say, “I’ll be going now, bitch. The cabin’s rented for a week, so you won’t be bothered. Don’t worry, you should be able to wriggle free. Eventually. Maybe a day or two. Till then, have fun. And try not to move too much. If you upset your friends they might bite. Again.”
Before he left, he looked at her one last time. He didn’t need to make the Jump to know what she was thinking, he had seen her expression many times on many others and recognized it: a tortured look that screamed, “Why?”
“Because I can.”
He shut the cabin door, leaving her bound and gagged within and screaming as the spiders explored her body. Judging from how she looked, he figured it would take all of the two days, probably more, before she managed to free herself from the ropes. An anonymous call to the police on the third day would be best. He didn’t want her dying, after all. What was the point of taking something wonderful from her if she went and died? No, she had to live knowing that she could never get back what she had lost.
By the third day, her panic would have dulled most of her memories of him. And if any stayed, he had, as he always did, taken one last precaution; the same one he had used earlier that night; on those bar patrons not so busy with their own hunting that they noticed him, on the bartender, and the store clerks. He had given them and the woman one final Nudge that left two “memories;” his name was Ray Chong and he was Asian.
He walked toward his car, taking care not to whistle or make any noise, so that he could listen to her muffled screams as he walked away. He did so slowly, until he couldn’t hear them anymore.
During the next months, St. John looked for another like her, another Brenda. Yes, her name was Brenda, he remembered now. One should always remember the best. He had been to many bars scouting, had many encounters, made many Jumps.
Some were easy and obvious, such as forcing one bitch to drink her “Golden Shower.” Others were physical, such as the “Poconos honeymoon” Jacuzzi that produced third-degree burns. And what he did to the cunt who wanted him to dress up like a woman, too, was truly creative. But none were as satisfying as Brenda had been.
No one else suppressed her fantasy as thoroughly as Brenda had, so that when it was finally released, it shot forth like a Saturn rocket. No other surrendered her fantasy as hard or was as devastated, as emptied, by its loss as Brenda had been. With no one else had he shared the extremes of ecstasy and agony that he got from Brenda. That was what he wanted now—the only thing he wanted now—another Brenda.
He moved beyond bars, hoping Laundromats or the public library might give him the more repressed quarry he sought. Both had proved to be infertile hunting grounds. Now he just wandered, going anywhere that the type of woman he was looking for might be, without any confidence that he’d find one.
He was in a Denny’s, and St. John almost didn’t give her a second glance, when she came in. She was built. There was no other word for it, an hourglass figure on which the sands of time had not yet begun its work. Someone with a body like hers could not possibly offer St. John the repression he craved.
Still, there was something about her, something that drew St. John’s attention back to her. He didn’t know what it was at first, but after some study, he realized she did nothing to complement herself, to play off her obvious assets. Her hair hung down limp, without style. She wore a loose-fitting print dress. She had no makeup on her face. Just a plain and unadorned look.
St. John smiled thinking about her potential. A woman who was looking for a one-nighter and who had a body like hers would wear tighter clothes, a Wonder bra, and makeup that heightened her features. She did not. She may have had the body of a Miss America, but she dressed and acted like a woman who was hopelessly trapped in the confessionals. Properly handled maybe she could be every bit as satisfying as Brenda.
The first step was to establish eye contact, so that he could make the Jump. He sat at the counter two stools away and ordered a hamburger. When it came, he casually asked her for the catsup. She reached over with the bottle and, as she looked at him, he Jumped.
He didn’t stay long. Her fantasy was easy to find. It was not suppressed at all but there, plain and evident and on every level of her mind. Her fantasy was a fifties sitcom; all that she wanted out of life was a husband, two children, and a life no more complicated than that of Donna Reed or June Cleaver.
Finding sexual urges was another matter. She seemed to have none, or had them so deeply buried inside that they would never be released for anyone but her husband, as if she would ever have one. But that wouldn’t be a problem for St. John. Another Jump coupled with a gentle Nudge and St. John would have her believing he was her husband. Then another Nudge or two until she realized that she wanted a nooner. That’s all it would take. He never took no for an answer.
The prospect had St. John excited. To awaken the sexuality of this woman, for whom a man and woman could only be in the bedroom together if they were on separate beds, both were fully clothed and with one foot on the floor at all times, was a challenge. The promise of something unimaginable. To shatter the fantasies of this woman, destroy her dream of perfect marital bliss, was as exciting. He didn’t know what he would do to her yet—that would come with time and a little probing—but the devastation she’d feel would be even more complete than Brenda’s. As would the orgasm he’d enjoy while doing it to her. Today he would be a little hard on the beaver.
Tingling, almost salivating at the prospect, St. John made the Jump.
She looked up from her sandwich and saw her husband. She smiled at him thinking again how lucky she was to find the perfect husband in these troubled times. For some reason she thought of their bedroom, of going there with her husband. But that was impossible. Now, in the middle of the day? It just wasn’t done. She put it out of her mind.
St. John frowned. For a moment he had her mind where he wanted, in the bedroom they shared with their twin beds only three feet apart. But she rejected the idea so quickly those beds might as well have been on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon. He went in deeper into her mind, looking, probing, and found nothing.
The woman did not have a repressed sex drive, she had none. Absolutely no sexual appetites to awaken at all. Nothing to stimulate or excite or reshape in his desired image. Nothing.
St. John realized it was hopeless, he would never be able to do anything with this woman. He came out of the Jump.
And found himself still inside her mind. He tried to Jump out again and failed. He tried again and failed again. And again. And again. And again, again, again, again, again, again …
Somehow she held him, so that he could not leave. He tried. He ran down her neurons frantically, pounded on her synapses hoping to smash them open, to shatter them. If he shattered her at the same time, he didn’t care. He had to get out now.
He couldn’t. Instead he felt her self swarming over his self, burrowing through his neurons, devouring his synapses; making his thoughts her thoughts.
Then her thoughts became his thoughts.
Bastard! Did you think you were the only one? That there weren’t more who could do what you do? No others who could, what do you call it, Jump? Only do it better.
I’ve been looking for you for months, you son of a bitch! Ever since my sister killed herself because of the way you left her. Oh, you tried to cover your tracks, but you left traces that people like us could find. It wasn’t hard to track you down. All it really required was patience.
Been waiting to find you, so that I could Nudge you and draw you to me. You didn’t even think it strange that you gave a second glance to a woman who doesn’t fit your normal victim profile? But, no, I suppose you wouldn’t, you’re so secure that you’re in charge.
Now the waiting is over. This is the moment that I do to you what you’ve done to others. You see, I Jumped you. I know your secret fear. I made it my fantasy. And your nightmare.
Your prison!
He tried again to pull himself out of her but found, instead, that his only thoughts were the ones she pushed into him.
He didn’t finish his hamburger; his appetite was gone. His wife, with her perm and print cocktail dress and costume pearls, smiled at him and said that it was just as well. It would leave more room for the meat loaf she was making that night. She promised it would be the perfect meat loaf.
Much like their life. The perfect life. Perfect husband. Perfect children. Perfect house. It could not get any better.
He put his arm around her to kiss her and ignite her passion. She removed it gently, reminding him that what he wanted was out of the question. They already had their children. Sex was just not something they did anymore.
Not ever.
She smiled. She was still in the Jump. She could feel him inside her, trapped in the fantasy she’d put him in. She could feel him pounding on the walls of that fantasy but unable to get out of it. He was where she wanted him to be, locked in the nightmare. She didn’t need him in her any longer. It was time to throw him out.
She felt what he felt as she pushed him through her, then out of her. She was with him, as he felt both himself and her fantasy being expelled, sloughed away the way a snake discarded its unwanted dead skin. She went with him as he found himself returning to his own mind. Back in his head, but still in the bedroom. Then, as he watched, steel bars—eight inches thick and part of the walls—covered the door and windows.
He was back in his head but, somehow, trapped in her fantasy.
She felt him begging her to let him out. He wouldn’t do it anymore. He’d go back and help all the people whose lives he had ruined. He’d do whatever she wanted. Only please let him out.
She left her one-word answer behind, making sure first that it would echo off the walls of his prison and bounce back to him again and again and again. “No. No. No. No. No …” Forever.
He screamed.
And she smiled.
It was the moment she most desired.
She locked him and her fantasy deep inside him; then she came out of the Jump leaving him trapped inside himself. She walked casually out of the restaurant, leaving him behind, stopping at the door only briefly to look back and make sure her one-word answer to his pleas for release still echoed in him. It did. That he was still screaming simply made things even better.
He didn’t stop screaming. Not even as she walked out the door and the others in the restaurant rushed to him to see what was wrong. He was still screaming when the paramedics came. He did not respond to any external stimuli. Not even after the ER doctors failed in their every attempt to stop him. Not even after the psychiatrists wrapped him in the straitjacket and locked the door to the padded cell behind them.
He screamed. And screamed. And screamed. But he didn’t hear himself screaming. He heard only the one lone thought she had left inside him to echo there forever. And he knew, with the last little crumb that remained of his sanity, he knew one thing. One horrible thing.
He would always take no for an answer.