Break The Routine

March 4, 2008 – 5:10 pm

As I stepped out of the doors onto the concrete patio
behind my house, I looked up at the clear blue sky and
smiled. It was a wonderful clear day, with temperatures
in the high seventies and a slight breeze that felt good
on my skin. There wasn’t even any rain forecast, and that
had given me an idea for something new for her to do.

I’d noticed that she had been restless of late, her daily
routine keeping her occupied as it should, yet not quite
as satisfied as before. I knew how important it was to
have the occasional break. Variety is the spice of life
and all that. So I tried to find something different for
her to do every once and a while.

Usually it was a trip out of the house, a rare treat
after she had come to live with me full-time. She hadn’t
realized at first just what I had meant about her being
here full time, I demand so much from her. Yet she
adjusted and was happy. But this day she would only go as
far as the back patio, and her task would be completely
new to her.

I picked up a plastic box I’d bought the day before and
moved towards an area of the patio I had cleared earlier
that day. I loved the feel of the warm concrete under by
bare feet, smooth and clean now because she spent
yesterday polishing it. The concrete was ready for what I
hoped would be an interesting afternoon.

I put the box down in the middle of the cleared area and
opened it before turning to the patio doors and calling
her. I waited patiently for her to appear, knowing that
she could not move fast. I watched as she gingerly made
her way over the doorsill before moving with a little
more confidence across the patio towards me.

She was a beautiful sight, nude, her head down low, her
long hair tied up in a ponytail for the moment. In
contrast, her ass was her highest point, a truth more
often than not in this house. Her smooth skin was marred
only by the way it changed color from a light tan to a
pinkish red, evidence of her latest spanking. Like this
she crawled slowly towards me, her hips moving from side
to side, her firm breasts visible and occasionally
brushing the ground as she moved.

Just a few chains kept her in this position. One around
her waist, which I never removed, had been worn by her
for a year now. It was connected to both of her ankles by
two more separate chains that weren’t long enough for her
to stretch her legs out. Her wrists were connected to her
collar in a similar way, with two separate chains only
six inches long. Like this, all she could do was crawl,
her head forced near the ground due to the shortness of
her wrist chains. She could move about in other ways too,
but she knew this was the preferred mode of movement I
wanted her to use.

She stopped obediently in front of me and looked up at
me, a curious smile on her lips. She knew this was a
break in her routine and I knew she was happy about it.
Rarely had these breaks turned into something bad for
her, something that I put down to good planning on my
part. Real life wasn’t like a story, not everything
worked every time, so I was careful when thinking of new
things for us to try. I had no worries about today
though, what she would be straining today was not her
body.

Normally I would take a long chain from the corner of the
patio and lock it to her collar, but decided not to
today. The other end was locked to a ring I’d embedded in
the concrete when I had laid the pad a year and a half
ago. I knew she wasn’t going anywhere trussed and
unclothed as she was, but just for aesthetic reasons I
liked to keep her chained to things anyway. As I let my
eyes roam her delightful looking bondage I said with a
smile, “You look good!”

She smiled back and winked. “Thank you, Sir. I can say
the same about you!” Her eyes looked at my own bobbing
nudity.

I chuckled. My yard was completely screened from prying
eyes during the spring and summer by thick foliage and
well built fences. There was no place in the yard you
could go and be seen by any of our neighbors, so I rarely
saw the need to wear clothes around the house. She never
wore any except for those rare occasions when she was
seeing someone from outside our circle of friends. I
think it had been at least a month since she’d last put
on anything.

I grinned and bobbed a bit more just to entertain her,
and then moved to the box. “Stay there; kneel,” I ordered
and she gladly got up from all fours to sit back on her
feet, her knees spread slightly, her hands now hanging
just above her breasts, her forearms covering them. She
looked like a begging puppy in that position, I had to
smile until I noticed her mistake.

I looked at her and frowned, and with a start she lifted
her elbows out away from her sides, uncovering her
breasts. She was good at remembering the positions I was
training her in, but still she forgot the little things
from time to time. I wasn’t worried; there was no hurry
to have her become perfect. So I smiled and nodded before
taking something out of the plastic box.

She looked at what I held with a puzzled expression, as
well she should. “Chalk, Sir?” she asked.

I smiled and bent over, holding the thick blue chalk in
my hand. I started to draw a line, walking backwards as I
did so, turning four times until I had drawn a fairly
even square about ten feet on each side. Then I returned
the chalk to the box.

“Ready?” I asked her.

“For what?” she asked, looking up at me with a slightly
worried expression.

“Art. I have here a box full of sidewalk chalk, lots of
different colors to choose from. Your task for today is
to fill this square with Art.”

“Art…” she said with a chuckle, “You know I can’t draw,
don’t you?”

“Oh, everyone can draw with sidewalk chalk. I’m not
asking for Picasso here, but I want a good effort from
you. Make me happy and I’ll treat you later,” I said,
watching her smile at the word `treat’. “But I’ll also be
equally unhappy if you waste your time out here. Then you
get to treat me!”

Her smile faded a little and I could see that she just
realized that this wasn’t just a casual way for her to
spend some time. She knew I expected something from her
today, something that was representative of her training.
I sometimes set her tasks to teach her something or
reinforce past lessons, and while this one wasn’t as
critical as I figured she thought it was, I hoped that
she would learn something about herself.

As for her treating me, well, that usually meant a
session without a safe word. It’s not that I would do
anything horrible to her, our tastes were too similar for
me to treat her like that. But the fact that she had lost
that final bit of control over her life put an edge on
our play that always made it more fun for me than for
her. It was a useful way of punishing her or at the very
least, giving her incentive to push herself just a little
bit further.

I walked out of the square and gestured at the box of
chalk. “It’s all yours,” I said, “You have the afternoon
but don’t feel rushed. I’ll do supper tonight and if you
aren’t done by the time we eat then you can work on it
some more after that. I’m more in favor of quality than
quantity, but having the square full by the time dusk
comes would be in your favor.”

With that, I turned and left her alone to ponder her
task, wondering what she would do with it.

As I said before, not every plan was a winner. One time I
drove her twenty miles to a friend’s farm where I had
planned on her hauling hay bales naked and chained. Ten
minutes into the task she stepped on a rake hidden in the
loose hay and cut up her foot. Another time we went to
visit this supposed private lake only to be nearly
arrested for indecent exposure.

Then there was the time I didn’t pay enough attention to
the state of her health and she ended up almost choking
in a coughing fit while wearing a full helmet. Little
things like that make me more cautious now, and anyone
reading this should do likewise.

Once I was in the house I turned to watch her for a while
through the glass wall. The glass was tinted so she
couldn’t see me inside, and I could sit only ten feet
from her and monitor what she was doing. What she was
doing was just staring at the square. She had a red piece
of chalk in one hand and I could see the puzzlement on
her face. What she had said about not being artistic was
true, but then I meant what I said about it not mattering
too much. Hell, even four year olds can draw with
sidewalk chalk, which was where I got the idea
incidentally, from watching the kids a few houses down.

What mattered more with this task was how she attacked
the problem rather than the end result. She had a choice
of either blowing it off and doing some so-so work or
actually making a real effort. I was betting on the
effort, for she was that kind of a woman. If she hadn’t
been, I wouldn’t have been in love with her.

Sure enough after a while, she bent low and made her
first mark.

It must have been awkward drawing like that, in the
chains that bound her and restricted her movements so
much. But that was a part of the challenge, an important
part. It hadn’t taken her long to learn that her
restraints were not just the tools of occasional play,
but a fact of her continuing life with me. She existed,
therefore, she was restrained.

Granted, most of the time what she wore was hardly
restricting, after all she was human and had to live. But
pretty much from the time she moved in with me she was
never completely free of something. Complete free range
of movement was no longer something she took for granted
as she was either being locked to herself or to something
else all the time. So she was used to doing things this
way now.

Watching her work I marveled at how she got around,
shuffling on her hands and knees, bent low because of the
short chains on her wrists. Quite often she would have to
spread her knees wide in order to work and I would catch
a glimpse of the silver ring in her clitoris hood. At
other times she would attempt to sit on her side, but it
was too restrictive for drawing so she only did so when
taking a break. She would even roll over and lie on her
back, her knees forced up in the air, her arms pulled to
the sides of her chest.

She presented quite a picture that way, one that tempted
my bobbing nudity, but I didn’t want to interrupt her
that way. Then there were her bathroom breaks, which
automatically had her crawling to a particular flowerbed.
That had been hard to train into her at first, but with
patience was finally accomplished.

From time to time I came out and gave her water to drink,
for the sun was quite strong, and each time I looked at
the work she’d done without commenting, relying on my
poker face not to give anything away, and she would kneel
and look up at me nervously, probably wondering if I was
satisfied with her progress. I wanted her to keep
wondering, so without a word I would leave her alone
again.

But it was hard to stay silent after I had seen what she
was doing.

I’d expected her to fill the space with random designs or
little drawings of simple things, but she was actually
working on something big, something that snaked from one
corner to the opposite. It was rough, badly drawn in
places, and smudged from where she had crawled over it,
but it was recognizable as a large dragon and I was
amazed. She had more talent than either of us had given
her credit for, and I was happy to see her put in such
effort.

Speaking of effort, it was one for me to tear myself away
from watching her in order to cook supper. I was tempted
to order out and thought, ‘why not?’ I called for pizza
from our regular place, asking for our regular delivery
guy. Then I went back to the window to watch her some
more.

She looked so beautiful, hunched over, her pony tail
coming slowly apart, her body covered in sweat that made
her skin look like it was glowing. All over her there
were also smudges of color from the chalk, on her hips
and legs, especially her knees, and on her forearms and
hands.

I was surprised to see chalk on her face until I saw her
brushing a fly from her cheek. But I wasn’t surprised to
see her nipples a multicolored mess for to bend down as
low as she had to it was inevitable that she would brush
her breasts against the concrete at some point. In fact,
that was one of the reasons I’d put her hands in such
chains in the first place. She turned and I had to smile,
for there were smudge marks on her butt as well. I
wondered how they got there.

Entranced, I watched her until the doorbell rang and then
I went to greet our favorite pizza guy, inviting him in
to see the show. Now, you might think it strange that I
would do that, but we had a sort of an arrangement. This
was the lucky guy who’d delivered the first pizza to us
after she had moved in. I had made her accept the
delivery and pay for it naked as a punishment,
embarrassing the hell out of her, but I wasn’t quite
done.

As the guy was leaving with a big grin on his face, I
intercepted him at his car and had a quick talk with him.
I asked him if he’d had fun, he did. I then asked for and
got his name. Then I told him that if he kept quiet about
what he saw when he delivered here, that we would ask for
him exclusively and he would get to see a lot more; but
make a noise and I would be very unhappy.

Now people always seemed to understand what I meant by my
being unhappy, and few ever wanted to test that state of
mind. This guy wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t stupid, he
knew he was on to a good thing, especially when I tipped
him a twenty each time he came. So from that point on he
did all our deliveries and got to see my love in all her
loveliness, which always embarrassed the hell out of her.

From time to time, when she was indisposed, I’d have to
answer the door myself after pulling on a pair of shorts,
and if prudent I’d ask the guy in to see what she was
doing. Of course, she wouldn’t know he was there and as
far as I know she never would know. But I knew it was an
extra special treat for this kid and he always went away
smiling.

Now I don’t know if he confessed what he was seeing to a
few of his buddies or not, I know that I would have a
hard time keeping a secret like this. But after a year
there had been no problems, so I wasn’t worried.

This night, we stood on the other side of the tinted
window from her and talked casually about how she looked,
something we had started to do only recently. He was
polite about it, never resorting to crude language or
descriptions, and I could tell he was aroused as well he
should have been. And he had a big grin when I finally
got him out of the house again.

I was smiling myself while I put food on some plates and
carried them outside, and when she saw it was pizza she
turned a bright red.

“Did he?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Did he what?” I replied, taking a bite from a slice of
heaven.

She hesitated, and then shook her head, “Nothing.”

I knew she was mortified at the thought of maybe being
seen. I chuckled, inside that is.

I fed her by hand as was my custom and afterwards I set
her back to work. Her drawing was coming along really
well, with the dragon fleshed out, green scales and all.
It was still rather crude but the attempt showed care and
a plan. There was still a lot of space to fill though. I
also wondered why she had picked a dragon to draw, but as
before I said nothing about it except “Get back to work!”

She bowed and said, “Yes, Oh Master of the Pizza,” before
turning away with a smile.

I chuckled and headed back inside.

I deliberately left her alone this time, going into my
den to do some work. What I really ended up doing was
playing some computer games, anything to take my mind off
of what was happening outside. I was therefore quite
surprised when a few hours later I heard her crawling
into the room.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Done Sir. Do you want to come see?” she asked.

I blinked, “Really? You’re done?”

She gave me a look, one that women do so well and I knew
not to doubt her ever again. So with a smile I found my
keys and unlocked the chains that kept her legs from
straightening, and turned them into a hobble chain
instead.

She stretched in relief before standing with my help, and
she shuffled along behind me back out to the patio.

She hadn’t quite filled the square, but it was good
enough, and it looked great, considering how she wasn’t
really an artist. A large dragon snaked from one corner,
diagonally across the square to the other corner. While
in the two empty corners two smaller dragons lay curled
up. Empty space was filled with drawings of flowers and
what looked like birds although the jury is still out on
that one. And there were even small houses dotted around.
It was a fantastic effort, I couldn’t have asked for more
from her. I was very proud. But I still didn’t let it
show, and I knew she was worried about that.

I turned and took her by the arm, walking her over until
she stood right in the middle of her drawing. She was
filthy, covered in chalk and sweat and a little mud from
the flowerbed; a multicolored mess yet lovely all the
same. She looked wonderful standing on her dragons. I
didn’t take my eyes off her as I reached for the hose I
had set up earlier.

“You need a bath,” I said as I turned it on.

I washed her down with the hose, spraying her bare body
as she stood there shivering. The water cascaded down her
elegant body before pooling at her feet and running to
the edge of the patio in a rainbow-like swirl. In a
couple of minutes she was clean and I put the hose away
before gathering a towel to dry her. As I dried her I
held her close, standing with her on the remains of her
drawing, loving her.

For some reason she was crying, and the closeness I felt
for her almost made me cry too. But I still had one thing
left to ask her.

“What did you learn today?” I asked softly, holding her
tenderly.

She looked up at me, eyes red, hands still chained to her
collar, before stepping back and looking down at what
remained of her hours of work.

She sniffed and said, “What did I learn? I learned that
sometimes you can be a real shit!” And then she hobbled
into the house, leaving me alone in the setting sun.

Like I said, sometimes things don’t work out the way you
plan.

Be prepared.