Let's Go Play at the Adams'

almost understood what she had intended-and she had frightened them, the most

unforgivable thing of all. They reacted like a person who has bumped into a piece of

furniture and then turns and kicks the offending chair or table to teach it.

Half lifting, half dragging her, they got Barbara into the hallway and pulled her to her feet.

Although she offered--could offer-no resistance, she held herself stiffly and, glancing over

her shoulder, made clear enough sounds of pain. They were not inclined to listen, however,

even Cindy. Ever since the other night when she had ungagged Barbara only to have her

start screaming, she had distrusted her. The scuffle this morning, the fact that Barbara had

hurt Dianne, only deepened this. When the others began to carry Barbara downstairs, she

wished that she was big enough to help; she'd bump her into something and show her.

"Watch it now-You still got her?" John and Dianne carried her by the upper arms, one to

each side.

"Yeah. Watch it, Paul! Yeah, we're OK." Breathing hard and moving awkwardly, Bobby and

Paul backed down the stairs, their hands locked beneath her knees.

"Not so fast-"

"I can't hold on-" "Just don't let go here."

"There's not enough room for me to turn." "Get out of the way, Cindy!"

Bumping and staggering, they slowly descended the stairs to the basement where they put

Barbara down on the last step while Bobby opened ·the door of the recreation room and

turned on the bare bulb over the work bench. Barbara leaned over and tried to rest her

head against John's leg, but he pushed her away.

"OK, let's go." Moving more easily with level

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footing, they carried her into the shop and put her down-hard--on the concrete floor. There

was timeout for a puff.

"What're we going to do now?" Although he was outwardly quiet, Paul appeared nearly

spastic with restrained excitement. His eyes darted back and forth with guilty, squirming

pleasure.

They considered.

It was stuffy in the basement: the air conditioning did not reach here. John pulled the tail of

his T-shirt up and wiped his eyes. Bobby looked uncomfortable. They all watched Dianne.

Tilting her head back and looking at the exposed pipes and joists and the heavy "ship's"

ringbolts in the finished beams, Dianne said, "Let's hang her up."

"Yeah, that's tough!" Paul did what is known as a

jump for joy (rarely seen). "By her thumbs!"

"Ah, you can't do that," John said. "Why?"

"That's only like you read-"

"You'd pull her thumbs out of the sockets," Bobby said learnedly.

Barbara struggled to sit up, making noises through her nose.

"Just by the arms," Dianne said. "That hurts enough."

"Boy!"

The complicated maneuver meant another fight, however. They had to move her again-

under the heavy, iron rings-and knowing what was coming, Barbara kicked out and sent

the two smaller boys falling. Eventually it took even Cindy to help move her the eight or

ten feet required.

"She's too tall," John said. "What do you mean?"

"By the time you get her reaching all the way over her head, she could touch the pipe.

Anyway it might not take her weight."

They hadn't thought about this, but it was clearly so.

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"I know!"-Paul's moment had come (it was clear). "Leave her hands behind her like they are

and

pull them up!"

·

"It'll work," Dianne said slowly.

This was something that Freedom Five had not tried upon itself. It would be interesting.

Barbara's wrists and elbows (still tied together) were released from her body and rebound

behind her. John ran a rope from her wrists up over the pipe and down again. He pulled and

wrenched her arms up backward and her body down forward. Convinced that she must

stand or have her shoulders twisted around and out of their sockets, Barbara allowed

herself to be brought to her feet, and John pulled some more. It was no effort at all. To

avoid pain, her heels cleared the cement, and she went up on tiptoe: the tendons behind

her knees were sharply shadowed, and the muscles in her calves stood out. Her breasts

hung, and her head (now) hidden by tousled hair pitched forward. John tied the rope off to

a supporting column, and Freedom Five took a second breather.

In the some minutes of wrestling, Barbara's nakedness had lost all its novelty for Bobby

and Cindy and much of its excitement for the others. Up to this instant, the morning had

proved the prisoner to be a burden, a danger, an opponent, a spur to guilt and anxiety, but

never the object of erotic attention. Now, however, forced, twisted, bound, and motionless

except for a slight shifting of weight to somehow ease the agony, she became to them-still

again-altogether astonishing.

"We did it." Paul could not believe it. "We really did."

Cindy looked at him and understood what he meant. Indeed, she felt that everybody did. It

was the game for real. The game played so many times in imagination and so, innocence,

had come true. What Paul had said went for them all, and there was a sense of deep