by Alpesco
Six foot two inch Karen Sandwood is simply too powerful for her two captives.
This was our third night trapped on the isolated mountain homestead of Karen Sandwood. We were getting used to the routine by now. During the day we worked under the direction of the six foot two inch, blonde. We weeded the twenty eight year-old's crops, fed her livestock, chopped firewood and carried it to the store. What Sandwood made us do was probably against the law. But here, far from civilisation, State law had little authority. Here, as we had found out, Karen Sandwood had all the authority. Her words did have the force of law, since she was the one who made all the rules and she had the power to enforce them.
Vince and I had been on vacation when we'd run into Sandwood. She'd looked a pleasant young woman, if very tall, and she was looking for a ride. But when we'd refused to help her, she'd proved amazingly strong - easily powerful enough to overcome the two of us. She had hijacked our car and used it to bring us to this isolated farmstead high in the mountains. We didn't know exactly where we were. All we knew was that we must be somewhere near the Canadian border. What we hadn't forseen about the six foot two inch tall blonde was her astonishing strength. We never imagined when we picked her up that she would have been able to defeat both of us and beat us badly. But now we both bore the bruises inflicted by her raw-boned fists. We were virtual prisoners in this isolated mountain retreat. Sandwood had odd ideas about surviving alone in these mountains while the rest of civilisation broke down across the world. We could do little to alter Karen Sandwood's views. The trouble was that her views were now having a crushing effect on us.
She had gone off into the woods at the end of the afternoon, leaving the two of us to finish weeding the vegetable plots. Since Sandwood had not reappeared, we went inside the cabin. There was a living area at one end and a kitchen at the other. At the far end of the lounge area Karen's computer blinked. It ran on a couple of heavy auto batteries, which were topped up by a solar panel on the roof.
"She's got the whole web via satellite," Vince, my five foot ten inch tall male companion, said in surprise. "We could use this to get in contact the police."
"She told us not to touch her computer," I said.
"So? Is she justified in abducting us and keeping us here?"
"No."
"Then we have no obligation to obey her rules." Vince sat down at the terminal and began to type. The e-mail program came up, and he started to input a message to the State Police while I kept watch.
"Have you sent it?" I asked after a few minutes.
"Yes!" Vince said. "It's gone."
"Good. Turn it off quickly, and delete the message! She's coming back!"
Vince deleted the message, sitting down beside me on the couch just as Sandwood entered the room in her trademark jeans and sleeveless shirt. Her athletic legs and long, slim body widened into broad shoulders and long, extraordinarily powerful arms. I had a growing respect for the immense power of Sandwood's long arms now. They were heavily muscled, and looked big even for Karen's six feet two inch frame. It was their power that was such a dominating force here.
She looked at us both with suspicion. "I didn't give you permission to come in here on your own," she said. "Have you been doing anything you oughtn't to have?"
"No." Vince said. "We finished the weeding and came straight in here."
Karen walked across to the computer, and tapped a few characters into the keyboard. A moment later she turned, moved across and sat down on the sofa between us. Then she just flexed her mammoth arms. She knew that the mere display of her six foot eight inch wingspan was really intimidating. Sandwood's arms were big, even for someone as tall as she was. Her upper arm looked as broad as Vince's head, the huge bicep swollen like a melon, yet rock solid. I gasped at Sandwood's awesome muscularity. Her shoulder muscles were even larger, like rounded boulders. She rested her right arm across Vince's body where it lay running from his shoulder to his knee. It looked like a symbol of ownership.
"Why did you lie to me?" she said.
"I didn't lie," he said.
Sandwood's right arm tensed, the heavy muscles hardening as she used it to pin Vince in place.
He tried to get up, but discovered that he couldn't move. Karen's big arm held him down effortlessly.
"There are codes on my computer that prevent anyone else from misusing it," she said. "I've also programmed it to record everything typed into it by people I haven't authorized. So your little message to the State Police hasn't gone anywhere! It just stopped right there in the memory as proof of your deceitfulness!"
Vince tried to struggle free, but he still couldn't do anything against Sandwood's single, but very powerful, right arm. The big muscles flickered and rippled as they held him down. The amazon survivalist seemed to love demonstrating just how strong she was. "It looks like I'm going to have to withdraw some of your priveleges," she said.
"No!" Vince said angrily. "I'm not going to take this shit any more!"
"Oh?" Sandwood stood up. Her long powerful arms hanging heavily at her side as her narrow waist rose out of her jeans to a rippling lower torso.
"Stand up." she said. Vince hesitantly obeyed, standing in front of her. At five feet ten, Vince was tall compared to most people, including me, but this twenty-eight year-old young woman was four inches taller than my thirty seven year-old boyfriend, and she looked strong and athletic.
She drew up her shirt to expose her stomach. Her abdominals were a densely rippling wall of muscle.
"Had enough, have you? Then hit me," she ordered, "Right here. Go ahead."
"I... I don't want to fight you..." Vince looked concerned, glancing at Karen's long, solidly muscled arms. And I could hear the apprehension in his voice. He'd already felt the punitive power of Karen's arms more than once, and he carried the marks to show for it.
"Don't worry," Sandwood said, raising her arms to stretch them out at her sides, hands open. "These shots are free. I won't hit you back. Just hit me right there in the stomach - as hard as you can. That's an order."
He drew back his fist, and launched it forward, hard into the center of her exposed stomach. It hit with a solid crump, but stopped dead against her rippling wall of muscle! Karen didn't even seem to register the strike.
"Was that it?" she said. "Try again."
Annoyed, Vince hit again, this time twisting his body into the punch. To my surprise the result was exactly the same. The blow smacked into the six foot two inch woman's midriff, but again Sandwood didn't move an inch, nor did she react in any way. His fist was just brought to an abrupt halt once more.
"Try harder!". She knotted her stomach muscles, making them contract and thicken until they looked like a wall of cobblestones.
He slammed in a third punch, even harder.
"Owww!" He cried as his bare fist just rebounded right off her torso, as if he'd tried to punch a truck tire.
"Try harder! Really hard!" she ordered, raising her long arms even higher, and flexing them. I could see that she was enjoying this little demonstration of her strength. Her tall, powerful body seemed to be almost invulnerable to the big man's blows.
Crump. Kruummpp! His fists drove in to her exposed stomach twice more. But I could see that he was starting to tire. He was breathing hard and was sweating markedly as his movements slowed. "I can't go on!" he pleaded. "It's hurting my wrist!"
"Again!" He hit once more, but the blow was a lot weaker. He gave a moan of pain and cradled his wrist in his left hand.
"Please!" he said. "I can't hit any more!"
"Okay," Sandwood lowered her powerful arms to examine her stomach. The pale skin was unmarked. "That was a pretty puny effort. Now." She sat down on an upright wooden chair. "Come over here and sit down on my lap."
"What?"
"You heard me. Do as I say."
He looked at her for a second, then obeyed. We both knew by now that it was extremely unwise to disobey the tall amazon blonde when she gave a direct order. She was capable of handing out harsh punishment, and especially here, in her mountain kingdom, she seemed to think she had the right to issue commands and give them the force of law. In Sandwood's tipsy-topsy world it was we who were at fault for not doing everything she told us to - not her, for keeping us here in the first place. Looking uncomfortable, Vince obeyed her, sitting down where she indicated across her lap, his legs dangling down on the left side of hers, her right arm supporting his back.
"Now." She looked at me. "Sit on his lap, facing him."
"Are you sure?"
"Do what I tell you."
I obeyed, sitting on Vince's lap, facing him, positioning my legs astride his body. At once Sandwood burrowed her right arm beneath Vince's legs, her other arm remaining wrapped firmly around his back. I still had no idea what she intended until I saw her big arm muscles swell and harden, and at once I felt both of us begin to rise!
I could barely believe what was happening. This tall young woman was trying to lift us both up off her lap together!
And to my shock, she was doing it! I felt us both rising! Vince's body, beneath me, bore my weight as our bodies began to move slowly upward. Both of us continued to rise as Karen straightened her long legs beneath us, forcing herself erect. Before I could take in what had happened, I was looking down from some seven feet above the floor as the powerful twenty eight year-old woman stood tall with both me and Vince supported in her arms! I gasped, fearing we would fall, or that she'd be forced to drop us. But she stood perfectly straight, cradling us both.
I looked across at Vince's startled face, then to Karen's She didn't look to be straining at all. In fact she looked astonishingly confident, standing there carrying Vince's 185 pounds and my 130. That was 315 pounds! And her powerful arms felt rock-solid beneath us. I could feel Sandwood's big bicep pressing into my side. It was as hard as granite, bruising my ribs as it bore into them. There was no sign whatsoever of her weakening.
After standing motionless for nearly a minute, she started to move forward, carrying both of us across the room toward the door.
"You're so strong!" I gasped, unable to hide how impressed I was.
"This is no trouble," she said smoothly. "I've carried two men your boyfriend's size before this. They didn't want to leave a bar I worked for. I made sure they both left, and didn't come back. And at a fair, for a bet, two years ago, I picked up a whole family - a man, his wife and their nine year-old kid! None of them believed I could do it. I guess they underestimated my strength a whole lot. I won a thousand dollars and got my picture in the local newspaper."
She stepped out onto the porch with us both in her arms. It was after dark, but the night was clear, and there was bright moonlight.
"You've proved your point," Vince said uncomfortably. "You can put us down now."
Sandwood ignored him, continuing to hold us both in her strong arms as she walked down the three steps to the ground. I could hear the wood creaking beneath her feet as they tranferred our combined weight, which must have approached five hundred pounds, on to each step. She began to walk across the clearing. "Don't move," she ordered as Vince started to squirm.
She stopped about fifty yards from the house. I felt her breathe slowly in and out as she held us for moment in silence. A faint breeze rustled through the trees. Her arms were still rock steady beneath us, and she was showing no sign of tiredness or distress. Then, incredibly, her arms began to rise, lifting us both even higher, until both our bodies were level with her face. We lay perfectly still, appalled by the sheer strength she was exerting.
"I've decided on your punishment for lying to me," she said. "Until I decide otherwise, the two of you are barred from the house. You're both going to be staying right here." We cried out as she suddenly took the support of her arms away, and let us both drop to the ground!
"Ouuggghhh!" we both cried out in unison, groaning as our bodies slammed heavily into the muddy ground and all the air was driven out of us. Sandwood had subtly adjusted the angle of her arms as she'd dropped us, ensuring that I landed beside Vince rather than on top of him. She'd protected Vince that way, but guaranteed that both of us fell on to our sides, sprawled in the mud.
"Don't move, either of you!" She ordered as she stood above us.
We remained still, lying in the mud as she stretched her massive arms and flexed them once more. The moonight highlighted the large pale muscles as it glinted off the broad mounds of her biceps and deltoids.
Turning. she bent and opened the heavy double doors of an underground storm shelter.
"Now get in the shelter," she ordered. "You'll be spending your nights in there until I feel you can be trusted again."
"It looks dark and cold," I said. "Do we have to?"
"You do what I say," Karen said. "And you do it now." The command in her voice brooked no opposition. Feeling weak and cowardly, we both got to our feet and obeyed her, stumbling down the steps into the darkness.
Sandwood slammed and bolted the double doors behind us, leaving us both in the dingy underground store chamber. There was a small battery lamp that let us see the basic furnishings. We tried to clean ourselves up as much as we could, and then lay down for the night on the hard, musty bunks.
We were awakened by a rattling of the twin timber doors above us as they were swung open to admit the daylight.
"Come outside," Sandwood ordered.
"What time is it?" I asked.
"About eight o'clock," Karen stood away from the stair to let us climb back into the open clearing. The day was cool and clear, unlike the dank cellar below. The sun lit up the mountains.
"What right have you to treat us like this?" I demanded as we emerged, blinking into the night.
"The right that you are both deceitful liars, who've tried to betray me," she said. "Here you answer to me. If you disobey me, your conditions will get worse. If you obey, are loyal, and work well, then things will improve for you."
As usual our captor was wearing tight jeans. Today she also wore a small red top that clung to her powerful upper body but left her shoulders arms and narrow waist bare.
"It's good to be up here on these mornings," she said, pointing to a bench near the main building. "Over there's some cold oatmeal for your breakfasts."
As we walked to the makeshift table, she strode across to a tall tree on the edge of the clearing. Reaching her long arms up to an overhanging branch, she jumped, clamped her hands around the branch and hung from it. The branch lowered a little under her hundred and eighty pound weight. She let go with her left arm, holding on only with the right. She concentrated, and the big muscles swelled and rippled along her right arm and across her back as she began to draw herself up in a series of slow, controlled one arm chins.
"Wow!" I marvelled. Sandwood weighed at least 180 pounds, virtually the same as my five foot ten inch tall companion, Vince. The difference was that Karen's 180 pounds were nearly all solid, rock-hard muscle. I watched as she did twenty pull-ups with her right arm, all to a dead hang position. Then she transferred her weight to her left arm and did another twenty. She did all of the pull-ups in strict form, and without showing any sign of strain. In fact the broad branch from which she was hanging was showing more sign of ill-effect. It was swaying and creaking more and more as Sandwood powered her bodyweight up and down. After doing twenty with her left arm, she changed hands again and put in twenty more with her right. I was mesmerised watching her, fearing that the tree branch would break.
At last she stopped, her big arms massive and pumped. Still hanging from the branch, she curled her legs up to clamp them around the tree trunk. Then she released her grip with her arms so that her whole weight was being supported by her legs around the trunk. With her arms folded behind her head to give it support, she began to lower her body to below parallel, then she raised it slowly back up to vertical once more. She repeated this movement again and again, in a series of smooth sit-ups. She performed 50 before I lost count.
She dropped to her feet, her abdominals burning red, and her powerful leg muscles rippling beneath her jeans. The coarse blue material was stretched tight by the flaring thigh muscles beneath. I felt a strange thrill run through me. It looked like nothing could resist legs that strong. She stood, performing another huge double bicep flex, with her back toward us. Her pumped arm and shoulder muscles looked starker and more defined than ever.
"She's so strong!" I marvelled. "What can anyone do against her?"
Vince snorted.
"And she can move so fast!" I whispered, looking at the big dark bruise that still dominated Vince's face, where Sandwood's heavy fist had struck him a punishing blow after an earlier attempt to escape. "We can't even out run her."
I knew that the bruise still hurt Vince, as did the new scar that ran back from the left side of his forehead where her blow had caused a deep, three inch long cut to open up. I touched the bruise I bore on my left cheek from the searing slap that very same hand had administered to my face three days before. It was beginning to heal now, but it was still very tender, and sent sharp lances of pain through me when I smiled too hard or grimaced. Sandwood, on the other hand, was still totally unmarked. She had been able to hurt us badly without taking any significant damage in return. At the moment, she was simply too powerful to be opposed.
"Right. Let's get down to some work." she said.
I watched as she bent and picked up a 18 foot long log that had been laid at the edge of the clearing. It was over a foot in diameter, and must have weighed at least 200 pounds. But she hoisted it up over one shoulder and carried it up to the camp, making it look like a roll of polystyrene. It didn't sound like polystyrene though, when she dropped it to the ground ten feet away from us. It landed with a heavy crash, gouging itself three inches into the ground. She turned back into the woods. There was a crashing in the undergrowth and she reappeared with another identical tree balanced across her right shoulder. She walked up to the cabin with it, and let it crash to the ground next to the other. She nodded to some saws and axes near the house. "You can chop these logs up into one foot lengths for the woodpile," she said.
As we began to do as she ordered, Sandwood was bustling about at the rear of the cabin. Then she strode off into the woods.
It was an hour and a half later before we saw her again. There was a rustling through the trees. I looked up to see the tall figure of Sandwood. She walked into the clearing with a massive burden draped across her shoulders. I gasped. It was a full grown stag! Sandwood was big, but the dead creature she was carrying seemed to dwarf her. The massive body lay curved across her shoulders, the broad back rising two feet above the top of her head. The animal's long legs hung down either side of her chest, almost to her knees, held in place by her densely muscular arms. The large head hung down her right side, a four foot spread of antlers rustling through the vegetation. The enormous creature must have weighed twice her 180 pound bodyweight, but Sandwood was standing as straight as a flagstaff beneath the weight as she strode toward the center of the clearing.
"Stand back!" she said as she bent her body to the left, allowing her burden to fall from her shouders, hitting the ground with an earth-shaking crump. "That felt good," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "I've carried this animal over a mile to get it back here from where I killed it - and most of that has been uphill."
"You carried that a mile!" I gasped.
"Easy." Karen said. "It's a good thing I've got plenty of stamina."
"How did you kill that?" Vince was wide-eyed.
Karen stretched, nodding to an arrow embedded deep in the creature's side. "I shot it from seventy yards," she said, slipping a wood and steel bow from her back, to set it, and the rest of the arrows on a table. "I crept up on it downwind, and sent an arrow right into its mid chest. Hit it right and you get a very fast kill. I am top predator on this mountain and I need a lot of protein to maintain my muscle. This guy will keep me going for a few days. I could have killed a couple more before the others managed to make it out of range, but I've got nowhere to store that much fresh meat."
"Just one shot?" I asked.
"It's a powerful bow, and I'm a very good shot." She drew the bow, her strong arms pulling the bow into a deep D. At that moment four geese emerged, fifty feet above the trees. "I'll take two," she said. She drew and shot twice in just under three seconds.
I thought the geese would be too high for her to hit them, but the first arrow hit the central bird of the flight with such force that it pierced right through, and kept on going. The goose fell from the sky. The second arrow took its target a few yards farther on. It's left wing exploded in a cloud of red spray where it joined the body. Both bodies landed in the clearing. The two other geese shrieked in alarm, flapping their wings wildly in panic as they fought to change direction. The two survivors split, up, honking, going their two separate ways toward the forest. Karen watched them, her bow nocked. She could easily have shot all four, but stuck to her decision to take just two of them.
"I don't like to kill too many," she said. "I need to live in balance with nature. So I have to make sure that, as top predator, I leave enough wildlife to breed the following year. I have to maintain the balance." She ordered us to bring the birds and fetch the arrows. We obeyed. Looking for the second arrow, we approached the edge of the woods.
"Stop!" Sandwood's strong voice echoed out across the clearing. A second later an arrow smashed into the fence post between us. We cried out in alarm as the metal-shod arrow crashed into the post with shocking power, sending sharp splinters of wood flying in all directions. The arrow drove inches deep into the soft wood, creating a split nine inches long in the top section of the post. "That shot wasn't an accident." Sandwood wasn't shouting, but her voice seemed to dominate the whole clearing.
"Stay completely still." She ordered as she drew her bow again. "This bow is extremely powerful." A heartbeat later a second massive arrow whistled toward us. I cried out in fear as it smashed into the post a foot beneath the first arrow, creating another shower of splinters. The whole post shook with the brutal force of the impact, wood tearing and cracking as the top eighteen inches of the fence post were ripped apart to fall to the ground. "These arrows can penetrate a quarter inch of steel," Karen said, placing the bow on the table.
"Shit!" Vince gasped. "With that bow she doesn't even have to run! She could kill us both before we got five steps."
We picked up the arrows immediately and returned to the cabin. The more we found out about Karen the more absolute her control seemed to grow.
Sandwood had hauled the dead stag onto a heavy plastic sheet. She got a large knife to start the dismemberment. It took her about three minutes to remove the head, hooves and hide. Then she ordered us to take out the innards.
It was a smelly unpleasant job, which took us about fifteen minutes as we washed out the body cavity.
"Okay," Sandwood said. "I'll do the rest." She bent and her hands gripped either side of the exposed chest cavity. With a jerk, her big arms moved in opposite directions, simply ripping the huge torso apart. There was a cracking and splitting of bones and ligaments as the ribs were wrenched back, opening the chest cavity and splitting the body wide open. Again I felt this huge thrill within me at the immensity of Karen's strength. There didn't seem to be anything this young woman couldn't do. She made Vince seem like a weakling. She turned the carcase over, transforming her right hand into a solid, angular fist. Holding the carcase in place with her left hand, she sent a series of three brutal punches into the base of the spine with her right. The first blow drove deep, with a dull, heavy thud. The second produced an ominous cracking sound from deep within the body. With her third blow there came a single deep and heavy crack as the backbone tore apart. Again Sandwood didn't seem to be overreaching herself. There seemed to be enough power in that heavily-muscled arm of hers to deliver such brutal punches as often as she chose.
Sandwood knelt beside the carcase, gripping the front and rear halves tightly in each hand. Then with a huge wrench of her powerful shoulders, she bent the weakened carcase back against the lie of the backbone. There was a cracking and tearing of bone and a rippping and snapping of ligaments as her big arms snapped the three hundred pound body completely in half!
All that was left was for her to do was to take each of the halves of the butchered stag in her hands and apply still more force. What was left of the body couldn't resist Sandwood's powerful arms. Each half of the carcase bent, cracked and then was ripped in half, right down the middle.
Within two
minutes, Sandwood had transformed the body of the fallen stag
into four roughly equal-sized haunches of meat. She stood, flexed
her arms once more, and told us to put three of the pieces in the
freezer. "I eat a lot of protein," she said, stretching. "I need it to build top-grade muscle, and to keep my strength at peak."
Karen cooked Venison stew that night. "My body needs a lot of fuel," she said as she ate nearly s much of the meat as Vince and I combined. "I burn it up quick, and I need it to grow and maintain my muscle. You'd be surprised at the amount of protein I get through."
When Karen let us out of the storm shelter the next day, we were put straight to work chopping more wood. It was tiring work, and we were glad when Sandwood approached, saying she had some news for us.
"I've had a message that there's a group of rangers coming up here this afternoon. They only come up this way about once a year. It just happens it's today. They should be here inside an hour. While they're here I don't want you to make a sound, so I'm going to put you in this store room." She led us to a storeroom built into the main cabin, but accessed from an outside door.
She opened the door to reveal a small, windowless room, the walls cluttered with shelves holding tools, electrical equipment and batteries. "You're to stay in here and be quiet until I let you out again when the rangers have gone. The walls are eight inches thick. So even if you made a noise, no-one would hear you. Now will you do that, or will I have to tie you up, gag you both and put you in the storm cellar?"
"We'll stay here!" Vince said at once.
"Good." Karen said. "Don't let me down." She stepped out of the room, then shut and bolted the door.
"What should we do?" I asked. "There's going to be rangers here soon, and she's locked us in."
"This is our chance to get out of here!" Vince hissed. "She thinks these walls are too thick for anyone to hear us through. But I'm sure if we're loud enough, we'll be noticed. We'll wait here quietly till the rangers are in camp, then we bang and shout as loud as we can. Once the rangers know we're here, we're home free."
We waited in silence in the semi-dark, trying to hear the sounds from outside. About fifteen minutes later there was the unmistakable sound of a vehicle drawing up somewhere outside. We heard nothing more for a while, then the main door into the cabin slammed shut. There was silence again, then I began to hear the faint sound of male voices coming through the thick log wall. There seemed to be several of them.
"They're here!" I hissed. "Do you hear them?"
"Yes!" Vince said. "Start shouting and banging on the wall. We've got to get their attention!"
We both started to hammer on the timber wall as hard as we could. "Help! Help us!" we yelled. " We're being held prisoner!"
The sound of talking from the main cabin continued. We banged louder.
"They've got to hear this!" Vince hammered on the wall again. The sound of voices from the main cabin abruptly stopped.
"They've heard us!" Vince said, shouting out. "They're coming."
We heard footsteps approaching the outer door. The bolts were drawn and the heavy timber door swung open. An angry Sandwood stood there.
"Help!" we shouted, as both of us rushed her, and forced our way past. We raced toward the main cabin, desperate to get there before Karen caught up to us. It crossed my mind that Sandwood had allowed us to get past her very easily. I knew how strong she was. If she'd really wanted to, she could probably have kept us both in that storeroom, or at least done us a lot of damage with those heavy fists of hers. But maybe she didn't dare use force to restrain us with the rangers here...
We burst into the main room expecting to see two or three uniformed rangers... But the room was empty!
I looked around in panic. Where were the rangers we'd heard arrive? We'd heard them talking! Sandwood strode in behind us, shutting the door behind her. She walked to a portable radio and switched it on. The male voices I'd heard returned. Three men were discussing a football match!
"I decided to give you a test," Sandwood said, "..to see if I could rely on you or not. You failed the test."
"But you said..." I blurted. "The rangers.."
"You two are just so predictable and dumb. The rangers are coming tomorrow."
"You bitch!" Vince seized an upright chair and swung it at our captor.
Sandwood's big left arm swept out and caught the leading leg, stopping the chair dead. Vince gave a cry of pain as she twisted it out of his hands with just her one arm, and hurled it across the room with such force that it smashed to pieces against the wall.
CRACKK! Vince flew backward as her right hand crashed into the side of his head. He howled in pain as the awesome force of the blow hurled him into the wall four feet away. KROOM. KRRUMMMP. Karen's arms delivered two more massive blows, which tore into Vince's body. He doubled over, and roared in pain.
"Stop!" I grabbed Karen's left arm as it prepared to drive in again. But it was like trying to stop a steam piston. Her arm just carried me forward with it as it drove into Vince.
I saw a blur. Then my head seemed to explode as her right fist drove into it. I crashed into a wall, sobbing. The pain was incredible. I couldn't get my bearings.
I'd tried to help Vince, but it was hopeless! I was bruised and giddy, my head spinning from that one crushing blow. Vince was staggering backward, a mass of cuts and bruises as he tried vainly to fight back against the angry twenty-eight year-old. I stumbled forward, trying to stop Karen, but just got hit again - this time in the side.
I cried out in pain as the air was knocked out of me. My ribs were ablaze with pain. It hurt to breathe! Stopping Karen was lying trying to halt a train.
Karen was giving us both a whipping. The two of us together were no match for her. Even when we chanced to hit her, we seemed to do no damage to her solid muscular frame. My fist rebounded off her shoulder as if it were a truck tire. She had such physical superiority that neither of us could do her a tenth of the damage that she was doing to us. The outcome was unavoidable. I fell to the ground as her big arms dealt out still more punishment. Vince was crying now, but I could see that Sandwood wasn't even bothering to apply all her power. This was a punishment beating. "Please. Please! We're sorry!" I heard Vince begging the six foot two young woman to stop.
Vince fell to his knees, curling up to try to protect his body from Karen's fists.
"Get up!" Karen ordered.
"Please don't hit me anymore!" he begged.
"We're sorry!"I clung to Sandwood's muscular leg. "We won't betray you again!"
"Why should I believe that?" The look on Sandwood's face was thunderous. One long arm reached down and hauled Vince to his feet. The other drew back ominously, fist clenched.
"Please. Please!" Vince begged. "Don't!"
Sandwood looked at him with contempt, then released him to slump to the floor. "You act worse than animals. I'm going to treat you worse than animals!"
We both lay sobbing on the cabin floor as Sandwood walked outside, her long, muscular body still barely marked. Sandwood was just too powerful for us to oppose. She came back in holding two iron rods each an inch in diameter and about 30 inches long. She put one on the table, advancing on the prone Vince with the other held in her hands.
"Now keep perfectly still, or you'll get hurt."
She stood in front of us with her long hands gripping each end of the iron rod. Suddenly the big muscles flared and hardened along her arms as they began to apply pressure on the bar. I watched, fascinated, as the iron bar began to bend, unable to withstand the intense pressure. Within seconds her powerful arms had bowed it into a broad C-shape. There was a confident look on her face now, as the dense muscles of her arms swelled and hardened. The iron bar began to creak, patches of rust flaking off its surface, as it was bent remorselessly into a horseshoe shape. Karen's arms were so strong! Not even the iron could resist them! She released one end of the twisted bar, and hooked it around Vince's neck.
"Stay perfectly still," her soft voice ordered. "Don't move a muscle." Vince looked worried, but he didn't dare do anything contrary to what Sandwood instructed. Her hands clamped on to both ends of the bar again - and then they began to twist, forcing the two ends of the iron bar toward each other in front of him. Switching hands, she gave a grimace as the long triceps flared along the back of her arms - and with a metallic groan, the bar started to bend again, the ends crossing inches in front of his throat, forming a circle of iron around his neck.
And she still wasn't finished. She applied more pressure, forcing the steel noose tighter and tighter, crossing under his chin so that he was held firm. Another flare of her big arm muscles, and the metal noose tightened even further. She gave a smirk of triumph as she inserted a finger between the twisted bar and his neck, finding barely a half-inch of wiggle room.
Now she stood, picked up the other bar, and came over to me. She ordered me to stand. I stood and remained perfectly still while she prepared that. Her huge arm muscles swelled and thickened as they bent the inch thick steel and twisted the second bar around my neck. Within moments I too was imprisoned in an iron collar.
Neither of us had our arms or legs tied or restrained in any way, but we made no attempt to escape or object to what she was doing. Sandwood's fists had hurt us both badly, and we were too afraid of receiving more to want to do or say anything at all that might annoy or irritate her. Our only thought at that moment was to give her no possible provocation whatsoever. Her strength seemed overwhelming. Karen went out of the cabin and returned with some lengths of inch-thick chain. "You don't speak," she ordered as she passed the chains through our makeshift collars. "You don't make a single sound until I give you permission to speak. Nod that you understand me." We both nodded.
She led us out of the cabin and away from camp. We followed a path out of the clearing which ran for nearly a mile before coming down to a small mountain lake we hadn't even known was there. The lake was barely two hundred feet across and at its near end there was a low cave set into a rocky outcrop. Sandwood ordered us in. It was barely high enough to stand upright, but we had no choice but to do as she said.
She ordered us to sit next to two metal hoops that had been fixed into the rock. She attached our chains to the loops, twisting them in place with a wrench she carried with her. Then she tugged at them to see if they held firmly.
"Look," Vince mumbled, his face swollen and puffy. "Please don't do this. We're sorry."
"Fine," she said. "I'm glad if you're really sorry. But you still stay here until the rangers have gone. Shout as much as you like. No one will hear you."
She turned and left. We were alone in the small cave with our feet in three inches of water. We tugged at our bonds, but neither the chain, nor the hooks nor the collars round our necks would budge by a fraction of an inch. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't unbend the iron collars, which remained firmly twisted in place.
Darkness fell as we sat in the damp, freezing cave. The temperature dropped steadily, but no one came, though we tried crying out. Eventually we gave up. Hours passed slowly as we stayed there all night, shivering, The water was icy cold, our rocky seats stone hard.
Sandwood returned first thing in the morning. Both of us were were grey and tired after a sleepless night. Dried blood matted Vince's face and hair, and his bruises had turned an ominous black.
"I just came to check up on you," Sandwood said. "The rangers will be here soon."
"Please let us go!" Vince begged.
She shook her head. "You've more than earned this. I told you, if you act worse than animals - that's how I'll treat you."
"Please can we have some food, something to drink." I begged.
"No." she turned and left.
We tried crying out, but our shouts were weak and drowned by the breeze and the nearby stream. I kept feeling colder and colder, and weaker and weaker. "We're going to pass out and die." I said, shivering.
Vince said nothing. He looked too weak to speak.
It seemed hours later when Sandwood finally returned. I'd never been so glad to see anyone. "The rangers are gone," she said.
Vince was blue with cold and only semi-conscious. I felt half dead.
"I guess I better let you come out now." Sandwood bent down and pried open the shackles holding our chains in place. I was shocked how easily she seemed to bend the iron. We were almost too weak even to stand. And it was all we could do to stagger out of the tiny cave. Vince fell to his knees at the lakeside. I was shivering uncontrollably. We were both far too weak to walk more than a couple of steps.
Bending, Karen clamped her left arm round my thighs and hefted me across one shoulder. Turning, she took Vince over the other. Then she straightened, lifting us both out of the icy water with ease. I felt the powerful muscles bunching across her shoulders as her arms tightened their grip around our waists. She was still full of strength, standing, tall and straight beneath our double burden. She drew a breath, then began to walk up from the lake, back to the clearing, and then up toward the house. Both of us hung like rag dolls across her powerful shoulders, too cold and weak to move, or offer any resistance to whatever she decided to do with us.
Sandwood carried both of us the mile uphill back to the clearing without stopping. She walked briskly, and covered the distance in just over ten minutes. She strode up the steps on to the porch with us still swinging from her shoulders. The cabin door opened. The warmth from inside was heavenly as Karen strode in. She put us both down on the long sofa. We lay where she dropped us, shivering, cut, bruised, and paralyzed with cold.
Minutes later I felt some medicine being poured into my mouth. "I'm going to give you some shots," our captor said. "You're in a bad way. That beating I handed you has taken its toll. It's left you both dangerously weak. Combine that with a night in the cold, and if I'd left you out there an hour longer, you'd probably both be dead. Don't worry. I'm going to keep you alive, but dont make me have to punish you like that again."
I felt three sharp pricks as the shots went into my arm and butt. I didn't know what Karen was giving us, but I couldn't do anything about it. I felt the drugs working, making me sleepy and deadening the pain. She stripped us to our underclothes, then she lifted us like dolls in her powerful arms, carrying us to our bunks. The two of us were now even weaker than before, too weak to resist someone with even half Sandwood's dominating physical power. But somehow, now that she was caring for us, her enormous strength was almost comforting.
"See what happens when you try to oppose me," she said, flexing her right arm to display a huge boulder of rock-hard muscle. "It only ends up far worse for you. I have all the power here. If I say something happens, it happens. If I say it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. No exceptions. No changes. No excuses. You better get used to accepting that..."