By John Strickland

an excerpt

Zac sat down on the wooden steps leading up to our deck. I sat down next to him, my leather pants creaking.

“Come sit down, Keagan!” Zac said.

Keagan plonked down a step lower. The sun glinted off the buckles down the back of his jacket and gleamed off his PVC-covered thighs.

Zac and I were both studying Keagan’s straitjacket. It was the real thing, – a Posey asylum jacket with a red trim to the top of the jacket.

That meant it was a “small”. It wasn’t that small, though, – Posey jackets are cut large, – but it fitted Keagan absolutely perfectly. It had roller buckles, which were usually easier to get undone than the newer slider buckles, but every strap was held tightly in place by a metal clip with teeth that bit into the webbing. Great idea! Hadn’t seen those before.

“Need a photo!” I said, and rushed in to get the camera.

I took several pictures – Zac and Keagan sitting there next to each other, the setting sun lighting them up from an angle. Two great-looking guys, one a kinky skater boy in PVC pants, the other a naïve teenager in a straitjacket.

The jacket held Keagan’s arms firmly around him. The closed sleeves passed through a front loop and two at the sides. Keagan’s arms were strapped tight, but not painfully tight. Keagan would be snug and comfortable, – a good thing, because I could tell the boy was never going to be able to get out of the jacket on his own. The two law officers had done a very good job of work.

“How long have you been in that jacket?” I asked.

“They strapped me in it just before we set off here,” answered Keagan.

“And you just let them put you in it?” asked Zac:

“Sure! I first put on these awesome plastic jeans and then they buckled the jacket on me. That was real cool!” said Keagan, with a beaming smile. “Then they led me out to the car like a real prisoner. A guy walking by really stared. That was so cool!”

“Those ‘plastic’ jeans are heavy industrial PVC – or vinyl if you like! “Plastic” sounds cheap and tacky, and they are everything but that!” I said.

“Whatever! They’re really cool! I’m gonna get some!”

“Have you tried getting out of that jacket, yet?” I asked.

“No, not yet! Waiting for a few tips from you two. Where do I start?”

Keagan enthusiastically looked down at his strapped arms in their canvas sleeves.

“This is such a cool jacket!” he said, shrugging his shoulders and jerking his elbows away from his body best he could. “Feels awesome!”

“Sure suits you!” said Zac. “Maybe you should stay in it!”

“Naa, – I’m gonna get OUT!” said Keagan, his eyes sparkling.

“OK,” said Zac. “The idea is first of all to get some slack into your sleeves. You do that by pulling and wrenching around a bit. You’ll find the jacket’ll tighten around your body even more, but you’ll find your arms will get a bit looser. Then you slowly work your arms up your body and then over your head. When your arms are free, it’s just a matter of getting a couple of buckles undone and pulling the jacket up over your head. This jacket has got a wide neck opening and no collar, so it’s as easy as pie.”

“Yeah, sure!” I thought. “You forgot to mention the side loops, the front loop, and the crocodile clips holding the straps shut!”

Keagan looked confident.

“It takes a while at first, but each time you try, you get better and better and soon you’ll do it in under a minute,” said Zac. “Wanna get going?”

“Sure thing!” said Keagan. “The Great Keagan!” he said.

“Let’s go inside,” I said. “It’s getting cold out here.

I grabbed one of Keagan’s backstraps and pulled him to his feet. We went into the cabin.

“It’s warm in here!” said Zaccy, pulling his hoody off, over his head. His T-shirt rode up with the sweatshirt and revealed his smooth, brown skin. I gave him a hug.

“Ahhgg!” he exclaimed. “Your leather’s freezing!” But he still hugged me to him, putting his hand on my butt.

“My favourite werewolf!” he said.

I squeezed him to me hard and gave him a long kiss.

Strapped-up Keagan watched all this with a smile on his face.

“Are you guys in love?” he asked quite naturally.

“Yeah!” said Zac. “I guess we are!” he said.

Well anyway, I got the camera running in movie mode and Keagan started his “escape”. Smiling, he tugged and pulled hard in the imprisoning canvas sleeves. He shook his whole body from side to side in an effort to gain a bit of slack. He wrenched his arms as far away from his body as the straitjacket would allow. The canvas made a swishing noise as he wrestled in the jacket. I moved around him with the camera, getting him from all angles. The setting sun was streaming through the overhead window, lighting the scene dramatically.

Zac was encouraging him and spurring him on.

Still grinning his white smile, Keagan paused for a moment. He was breathing heavily. He blew his hair up from his brow and started wrenching around again, trying to pull his arms upwards, as Zac had told him to do, but the three loops his arms were threaded through prohibited any movement, either up or down.

Keagan paused again.

“Wow! Not easy!” he breathed, still with a smile on his face.

“Get down on the floor,” I said. “You can get some leverage on your elbow like that.”

Keagan went around the sofa to the open wooden floor. He got down kneeling onto the floor and dropped heavily the rest of the way without his arms to stop him.

He lay stretched out on his back laughing, his hair over one eye, which he blew out of the way with pursed lips. The sun shone off Zac’s PVC pants that Keagan was wearing. He was breathing heavily.

“This jacket’s so COOL!” he said, rolling over onto his belly. He braced his elbow against the floor and tried to wrench his encased right hand up over his left elbow. No success. He was strapped well, and the loops allowed no leeway.

Then he started to struggle without any method. He jerked, wrenched, pulled, tugged, strained and fought in his canvas restraint. The straitjacketed guy rolled, wriggled, twisted, wrestled and writhed for nearly five minutes before he lay on his back again, gasping and panting, his chest heaving.

I was getting this all on film. From every angle, close up and long shot. White canvas, black shiny PVC.

Keagan smiled at Zac.

“Can’t seem to get my arms upwards,” he said. “There’s something holding them in place!”

He tugged again.

“Then you have to try to work the sleeve buckle around to the front to get it open there,” said Zac, knowing damned well that the sleeves were strapped together too tightly for the buckle to be brought anywhere near the front.

I had the camera focused on Keagan’s sweaty, smiling face.

The battle started again. Keagan was wrenching in the sleeves, trying to move the strap round to the front. With difficulty he got into a kneeling position and braced his elbow on the rigid arm of the sofa. He forced his left elbow across his body so far I thought his shoulder would pop out. He managed to get his right sleeve around a bit, but the sleeve buckle was still very much behind his back.

It was very clear that Keagan was not going to get out, no matter how long he struggled.

He gave up.

“Oh shit!” he breathed, smiling. “Why is this so difficult?” he said.

“It took me ages the first time I got out of a straitjacket!” said Zac. “The most important thing is not to accept defeat! You fight and fight and sooner or later you get out!” Zac lied.

“I never thought a straitjacket would be so hard to get out of!” said Keagan.

“O’course it is!” said Zac. I turned the camera on Zac in his shiny baggy pants and his floppy, Just call me awesome! T-shirt.

“It’s designed to hold maniacs and lunatics and insane, violent prisoners for long periods.” Zac explained. “At least here you can push the straps up against the furniture and things. Usually if you’re in one of those jackets you’re locked away in a padded cell with soft floor, soft walls and nowhere to brace yourself on.”

“A padded cell?” said Keagan. “Cool!”

He wrenched in the sleeves of his jacket.

“You guys gonna let me out?” He asked.

“You gotta get out yourself, dude! No decent escape artist ever admits defeat” said Zac.

“But…”

“Come on, buddy, we’ll get you cooled down and dried off and then we’ll feed ya something to eat and then you’ll be fit to try again later.”

“Sounds cool!” Keagan said.

I stopped the camera running.

“I got such a hard-on!” Keagan almost whispered.

“Yeah, that happens.” I said. “It’s the strap between your legs pushing on your prick,” I said, as if that was the only reason.

“I guess so,” said Keagan.

“Cool!” he said.

 

-end of excerpt-

 

You can read even MORE excerpts of this story at the Houdini Connections website … or, you can write to the author directly at strapped.jacket@gmx.de and ask for the whole thing. Be sure to tell him (politely!) that you got hard reading it on Metalbond and you want more.

 

Metal would like to thank is buddy Mark for his assistance in preparing this excerpt for posting here.