The first part of the story is largely background which is important in the understanding of the rest of the story. The author has, in consideration for the reader, submitted the multiple-part story in its entirity.

Michael Matthew Buckley had been tying himself up for a long long time. When he was young he saw movies and television shows depicting people captured and tied up. It was especially interesting to him when a boy or young man was tied up shirtless. He'd even seen it in adventure cartoons. He liked particularly Jonny Quest, one of his uncle's favorite shows. His uncle Gus, a great fan of some types of nostalgia, had purchased lots of old TV shows, including those from the 60's, including the Jonny Quest shows, and lots of old adventure movies and westerns. Michael stayed a whole summer with Uncle Gus when he was about nine or ten and watched lots of tapes.

Now, thirteen, he had his own collection of stuff to play his games. Only a few times did anyone ever want to play tie-ups with him, so he had to find time, and a place, to play alone. During the warm-weather months it was easy. But it was a big secret from his own parents, who of course, would object. He would have been very embarassed to be found tying up another kid or to be found tied up, even for pretend.

When he was probably seven, he tried to get his mom to tie him up. She wound a rope around his chest and of course that wasn't very good. An older neighbor boy tied him up once when he was eight, Michael fortunately having swim trunks on to play in the wading pool in the back yard, shirtless, which he seemed to like more. It made him more of a prisoner, more helpless, ready to be tortured, or something. When he was ten or eleven, he played make-believe with a couple of his friends, pretending to be adventurers or starship personnel, and sometimes he could get someone to be captured, or capture him, as part of the game. Once he actually played a tie up game with his cousin Crystal, who was visiting with her parents, and they tied each other up in the woods, using trees and clotheslines, and it was really exciting for him, especially when she put her hands on his body.

In his fantasies, he wore less and less and even made himself a collection of speedo swim trunks, a pair of blue bikini underwear that a relative bought for him one Christmas, and a pair of cutoffs that were really cut off short. And he could not remember when he started masturbating to it, laying shirtless on his bed when he was alone, holding his hands behind him and rubbing his bare torso on the matress, humping himself to dry orgasms. He got caught once when he was in third grade, making him about eight, he remembered, his mother chiding him for humping the bed, not knowing what he was doing other than masturbating.

Now, at thirteen, he had what he thought was a good tie-up body. Slim waist, chest muscles just beginning to develop, flat tummy, and smooth body. He couldn't see someone with a hairy chest being tied up, not that he had to worry about it. He didn't realize it, but he also had a cute butt for a boy. He wished he had more muscles, like superheros in the comic books.

He had a lot of games he played, but usually he tied himself up first and then decided the fantasy. Sometimes it involved a girl running her hands over him. And he knew that the less he wore, the more helpless he'd be. He had a set of 3 x 5 cards with codes written on them to help him makeup his mind, if he could be alone long enough to play, picking a card at random for each element in his make-believe.

It was hard for him to tie himself up. Once he remembered putting a slip-knot in a rope, putting it on his wrists behind him with the end in his father's vice, and pulling it tight by stepping away. Of course he could get out easy. He learned to tie a rope or cloth in a small circle, put both wrists thru, and then rotate one wrist to wind them around until it was tight and he couldn't pull free. This was a favorite for several years. Once he used masking tape, not strong tape but with enough winds he could make it hard to pull out. He always kept his pocket knife, open, for his escape. And masking tape was inexpensive. He could put the roll on a string or on a stick and wind it around his wrists and then manage to tear it off and, whoopee, his hands were tied behind him.

He was also disappointed when, perhaps at age eleven or twelve, he discovered that his arms were too short to get his hands in front of him by laying down, raising his legs, and slipping his wrists over his butt. A couple of his friends could do it but he could not.

And of course he could never make a gag work. Duct tape was expensive and sticky and he just never figured out how to make a good gag. They looked good on TV but not realistic, he thought. He never really gave much thought to gags because he liked having conversations with his imaginary villans. Usually a cleve gag would suffice, and he'd just pretend he couldn't talk, whenever he wanted one. Blindfolds were cool, too.

Then he found an internet site which described two women who would tie themselves up. He didn't understand much of it, being only eleven at the time, but he was fascinated by one technique: freezing the handcuff key in water with a string in it and having to wait til the ice melted in order to free himself.

He saved up and managed to buy a pair of handcuffs mail order. He couldn't use the internet (no credit card) and couldn't write a check (no checking account) but he could and did buy a money order. It cost him more, adding a whole dollar to the price but it still came out to just over twenty dollars. There were cuffs that cost a lot more, and a few that cost less, but he opted for the medium-priced set. And he had the presence of mind to spend a couple of extra bucks for a pair of extra keys. It took longer but the day arrived. After school just after his 12th birthday, he got them in the mail.

Fortunately his mom didn't get the mail that day, as she somtimes did, usually relying on Michael to do it. But he'd had an explanation ready.

He practiced with them after school, before his parents got home. He learned about double-locking them (difficult to do behind your back) and worked the mechanism over and over, learning which way to turn the key to unlock them and such. Eventually he put them on behind him and was surprised how hard it was to get the key in the hole that way. Practice makes perfect. He barely got them off in time once, when his dad came home early from work and seemed to go straight to his room. Shirtless, Michael just said he was changing clothes to go out bicycle riding and nothing more was said.

The handcuffs were the prized piece in his growing collection, which he kept in an old school lunchbox tucked in the back of his drawer. He put his miniature car collection over the top of it over some cloths, so that if his snoopy mom found it she'd probably just put it back.

Parents were such a pain. They seemed to spend a great deal of time and effort figuring out when kids were going to do something, anything, and putting a shoe in the mechanism.

But occasionally his dad would be at work, mom out shopping and not make him go along to stand bored in the ladies' underwear section, and he would have time to play. He was careful. Mom could stay shopping for hours and hours when he was with her, but alone she was much more efficient, going out and buying and returning in not much more time that it would take to make the round trip.

He'd get his cards out, figure out if he was going to be in his underwear, swim trunks, speedo trunks, or naked or whatever, and how he'd be tied, depending on the draw of the card. He had four keys and had two of them hidden in his room, one well and one reasonably available. He always kept the other two, one on his keychain with his house key, the other on a string or ribbon or strip of cloth, in the box with his other stuff, right where he was playing.

He usually played in his room, sometimes in the basement where there was an empty area behind his dad's workshop. His favorite place was in the attic. He wasn't exactly forbidden to go up there, even though his dad had nailed boards down to make a good floor, but his parents seemed to object whenever he went up there for any reason, insisting he play in a less private area.

You can't have any privacy with parents around. Even if the door is shut, mom would knock and then barge right on in. Why knock if you're not gonna wait for an answer?

* * * * *

Then one day he found it. The perfect spot. A house on the same block was vacant, for sale. It had been for sale for a long time, maybe a year, with someone coming around to cut the grass once in awhile or clean it up or whatever. He was following the path in the woods behind his house and realized that the trees pretty much hid the toolshed behind that house. He could go into the woods "to play" or whatever, walk down the path, take a shortcut, and be right at the toolshed. The door was to one side. He could slip in or out and not be seen from the house. It was perfect.

The shed, really like a shack, was reasonably well made, with a wooden floor. He was nervous at first, just standing in there. After a couple of trips he took off his shirt and shoes, took his loop of rope, wound it around his wrists behind him, and lay on the floor. It was great, except the floor was dirty. So next time he took a whisk broom from his dad's work area and swept it out real good. He knocked down all the nasty cobwebs. And then when his mother complained about the rugs in the bathroom being stained and rotten and bought new ones, he swiped the old ones from the trash. Along with a little kitchen throw-rug he swiped (his mom had a dozen or so of them she kept in front of the kitchen sink), he had a small area of the shack's floor covered. The floor, at about eight by eight feet, made a good play area.

There were nails in the walls and a shelf to one side. The small window, just a pane in a glass nailed in, was so high he couldn't see out of it unless he stretched. And he couldn't see in from the lower level of the ground outside. It was on the opposite side of the shack from the door. He got an old pillow-case for a curtain and thumbtacked it in. The white cloth let in quite a bit of light but he felt safer with it. You couldn't see in from the outside. He'd spent only a few trips to make the shack perfect. And he kept an eye on the house, each day to and from school, or when riding his bike, looking for potential buyers.

Then the day came. He got out his lunchbox, while his dad was at work and his mother visiting a friend, and walked out back, into the woods, and to the shack. He slipped inside and waited.

He took off his shirt, shoes, and socks. He was wearing his swimming trunks under his pants. They were old ones, a bit small but stretchy, but covered more than his undies or the speedo. He hung the key on a nail, hanging low almost to the floor, and put the other key in his pants pocket, laying atop his shoes, in easy reach.

He never liked anything complicated. Just make the victim helpless, that was his motto. He tied his ankles together with rope. He tied the handcuffs to the rope. It was chilly in the shack, it being only April. He lay down, bent his knees, and handcuffed his hands behind him.

And he rolled around on the little rugs, sometimes going onto the floor, squirming around and pretending to be captured. He didn't spend much time the first time, retrieving the key and managing (with one moment of doubt) to unlock the cuffs. He got dressed, went home and, as his mom wasn't home yet, went to his room to masturbate.

Sometime later his dad was hanging a porch swing and had some of the chains left over. One was probably three feet long, the other perhaps eighteen inches. His imagination went wild as he requested, and got, the scraps of chain. They were twisted-link, smooth, strong, and had enough space in the links to put something in to fasten them. Snap hooks from the hardware store, the less expensive nickel-plated ones rather than the brass ones, a handful for a few bucks of his grass-cutting money, and he was in business. He even found some little bitty locks that would fit, packaged two to a package, any of the four keys fitting either of the locks. His collection had to be moved to a more sturdy container.

One set of keys (a handcuff key and a padlock key) on his ring with his house key. One set, on ribbons or cloth strips, in his box. The other two hidden in his room, to replace a lost key if necessary. He always carried one set with him. When playing, he'd always have two sets.

And it was exciting to be in the shack where he wasn't in the confines of his house. Actually, he eventually felt safer there because his mom or dad wouldn't be barging in. Once he even played naked. Another time he put the key in a little plastic laundry detergent lid with a string, not tied to the key, hanging out, and the next day made his trip to the shack. Of course he had his key in his pocket too, but he wanted to see how long it took for the ice to melt. He made sure there were no cracks in the floor where the key would fall and on his first attempt, the key fell into the little pile of water after about 30 or 40 minutes (some of the ice melted on his way over) and with some rolling around he easily retrieved it and freed himself, wearing only his blue bikini undies. He was very satisfied.

* * * * *

Halfway through June the day came. Mom was going to paint two of the upstairs rooms. Dad was at work. There was no school. She would be busy for a long time. It was a nice warm, but not sunny, day. Michael was going downtown, he said, to look in the record store. He hadn't bought any music for a long time and had earned some money cutting Mrs Dickens' grass.

He went out the front door, walked around the house to the back, and slipped over the fence and into the woods and out of sight. The room his mom was painting was in the front of the house. He had the ice cube in his hand, the string hanging out, the key on a six-inch red piece of cloth frozen inside. He must remember to tie the string, not the cloth, to the nail in the shack. The cloth would help him get the key. He retrieved his "kit", now in a metal fishing tackle box, trying not to rattle the chains and handcuffs inside. Not that anyone wanted to hear him, but he was being sneaky.

In the shack, he waited a few minutes. He looked out the crack in the door and shut it, hooking the little screen-door hook he'd screwed into the wood last week to keep the door from coming open. It wasn't strong, but if someone turned the door handle (which worked) and it didn't come open, they'd figure it was locked and go away. But no one ever came up here. Ever.

It was about ten in the morning. Still slightly chilly. He liked it. The attic was too hot and sticky, by comparison, for much fun. He sat and waited a minute. Then he got busy.

He hung the key, this time frozen in a dismantled deodorant tube, which he guessed would melt in an hour, by its string on the nail just over the floor tile he'd put there the last time. It was a standard 12 inch by 12 inch tile and of course the key might bounce, but it hadn't yet. If it did, so what? That part of the floor was solid with no gaps and no gaps between the floor and the wall. Usually the melted, dripped water on the tile would prevent the key from bouncing at all.

He undressed completely. His circumsized pecker, about half hard already, raising up as he pulled off his undies. He folded his clothes and put them atop his shoes on the shelf at the back of the shack, next to the window.

He rubbed his chest. It felt good. He sat on the rug. Some hesitation. But the ice was melting. Not much, but the container had already slipped off. He put it with his clothes. He got out such supplies he was going to use and put his tackle box on the shelf. The keys to his little padlocks were there. One of them was hanging from a low nail on a long blue ribbon, next to the floor. He made up his mind that this time he'd go ahead and undo his hands first, but next time he'd fix it so his hands, locked behind his back, would not be the first thing free. Tying, or chaining, the hands was the key to helplessness. If the hands aren't tied, either overhead or behind the back, most of the other restraints would be ineffective for the purpose. He didn't exactly use those terms, but that was the idea. If you could only tie one thing, it would be the hands. Unless you wanted a prisoner to work or something or just wanted to chain his neck. Yeah, maybe he'd figure a way to chain his neck, too.

The next few minutes were well planned. A quick check: clothes on the shelf, box on the shelf, key ready to fall, padlock key placed, and he took only about two or three minutes to render himself naked and helpless, the prisoner of torturers who might bring girls in to laugh at him.

He took a long chain, wrapped it around one ankle, and locked it with a padlock. The other end of the chain went around the other ankle with the other padlock. He had about 13 or 14 inches between his ankles. Another chain, the short one, looped around the handcuff chain and the middle of the ankle chain, about six inches between the ankle chain and the handcuff chain. Careful not to let the handcuffs slip out of that loop, he took a cloth and tied it around his eyes, untied it, and re-tied it better. He could not see.

The moment of truth: laying on his belly on the rugs, he bent his knees, found the handcuffs, put one on one wrist. He hesitated and then slipped and locked on the other cuff. He was naked and helpless until the ice melted.

Even if he could reach the snaphooks, he would still be helpless. Although a slender lad, Michael could not get his hands in front of him. The ankle chains were locked on and he thought he MIGHT be able to unlock them, perhaps if he could get to a kneeling position. But the floppy locks on the chain links would be difficult to get to, to hold, and to get a key inserted. He would have to try that sometime. Of course, even if he could get to his feet, he could not reach the tackle box on the shelf or his pants on the shelf, in the pocket of which was the other handcuff key and padlock key, with his house key.

He rolled around. He struggled. He even got to his back, ankles under him, wrists under him, careful not to lay directly on a handcuff lest it squeeze too tightly as he hadn't double-locked them.

"Ugh, ugh, gotta get free," he mumbled quietly. No one could hear him, but of course, he was used to being quiet when playing these games. His pecker was hard. He rubbed it on the rug, masturbating himself to a very intense but dry orgasm, then relaxed, breathing hard. His erection subsided. He rolled off of and then onto the little rugs, enjoying the feel of the cold and reasonably clean wooden floor against his bare skin.

Then he stopped all movement. He listened. Had he heard something? He could not hear it now. He decided to get the blindfold off early. He rubbed and rubbed on the carpet, almost not succeeding, but finally slipped it off his eyes and over his head onto the floor just as some muffled voices drifted through the shack walls.

He got a strange feeling all over. Fear. Fear of embarassment more than anything. Of being found tied up. Worse, he was naked! Either was bad but, together it would be ten times as bad. He looked up at the ice; it was only about half melted. Then the doorknob turned.

He remained silent. Surely no one had seen him come up here. If they had, they would have investigated before now. He scooted as quietly as he could toward the tile where water was dripping on the floor as the ice melted. Then he remembered the padlock key, the little key that would at least unlock his ankles. He scooted, the chains making a clinking noise. Voices again. The doorknob turned and the door tugged against the little screen-door hook. He straightened his knees as far as he could to take up the slack in the chain. He scooted more, toward the padlock key which WAS within reach. Then he remembered at least he could undo a snaphook if he could reach it. He looked over his shoulder and bent his knees, trying to reach the clip that held his handcuff chain, via a short chain, to the chain between his ankles.

There was a pull, the flimsy door hook pulled out of the wood, and the door opened.