Erika caught her leg on a length of chain. The loud sound of metal scraping on moldering concrete reverberated across the long hall. It was joined shortly thereafter by Erika’s cursing. She utilized every expletive in English before moving to portmanteau of curse words. She spent a few moments reflexively rubbing grime from her clothes before she was able to concentrate on extricating her ankle from the chain.

    All the noise of the chain was overwhelmed by a sound that she knew by heart. The quiet pat-pat of leather-padded feet on the old hallways stood out. Erika invented a new curse word as she uncoiled the chain from her ankle. The quiet footsteps were slow and measured and seemed to be precisely three-fourths of a second long. She panted in uneven intervals and landed each foot on the concrete with arbitrary gait.

    Erika’s pursuer was orderly. It didn’t surprise her. It was as an orderly. It was a title pinned to its chest. It was a creature of canvas and leather and metal and it was quite horrifying, though she couldn’t explain why. Maybe because she could never get a good glimpse of it, or maybe it was the tight hood and massive leather padding over its eyes and mouth that obscured any identity. Whatever it - or she - was, it incited within Erika a very primal fear. It was a blinding fear, one that had given her  three options - fight, freeze, or flee, or. She had gone with the latter and scarcely had time to look back.

    She rounded a corner, past a strangely familiar medical theater and into a lab. Beakers of liquids, rusted metal cans, and boxes of moldering asylum paperwork lined the walls. Erika dashed through the door, giving herself that brief moment to look back.

    The mistake was immediately apparent. She didn’t see the orderly behind her, but nor did she see the massive metal shelf on the ground. For a second time she tripped. She felt her auburn hair fly against her face as her glasses flew into the darkness. She felt nothing for a brief time before feeling the intense weight of the shelf against her form. Erika was trapped beneath a pile of rusting storage, old boxes, and forgotten supplies. Her canvas suit offered a modicum of protection for the broken linoleum and concrete of the floor, but being crushed was not a pleasant sensation.

    Erika was treated to an anguishing twenty seconds. She felt her body helpless to move as the figure entered the room. She would never ascribe it human features save its shape. The handler had a comparable female figure; wide hips, powerful legs, an average waist and bust and slender arms. Of course, there wasn’t a shred of skin visible - only an endless layer of canvas. Institutional beige canvas was criss-crossed with an endless network of leather straps and pads and small brass rivets and rings. A leather posture collar kept it upright, leather mittens around its ‘hands’ removed any tactile ability (arising in her mind very briefly the question of how it opened doors). Thick leather pads around its mouth ran into the posture collar. A massive, padded leather blindfold covered the area where its eyes would be, and two more padded leather coverings closed up where it would normally hear. Were a person inside it, it would’ve been deprived of any sensation save touch and direction. All this she took in as the creature slowly moved closer and closer towards her form. She had time to savor its eyeless gaze as it knelt down above her. The darkness of sleep enveloped her as it placed its mittened hand over her eyes.

    She felt the warden remove its grasp. It was oddly gentle - like a spouse covering one’s eyes at a surprise party. Erika wasn’t terribly surprised. One of the strange images that had run through her head was sitting before her. Smooth brass rivets rubbed against her flesh in tender areas. Her lips were parted by a padded bit, but the entire lower half of her face was covered by rigid brown leather. Sound was reduced to a muffle, blocking all save the grunts she made. The only difference between Erika and the handler that had chased her down was her eyes.

    She was sitting in a massive metal chair, and was now dressed in the same uniform of the handler. The room was shadowed and tall. She couldn’t see the ceiling or source of the single light that shone directly onto her. Across from her sat a mirror - so tall that she couldn’t see the top as she moved her eyes up. She was strapped in tightly to the metal frame, with dark iron bands keeping her locked at her ankles, waist, and stomach. Unlike the handler, which had been able to reach out and touch her, Erika found her arms locked to her stomach. The entire outfit resembled a straitjacket, so it didn’t surprise her that it provided rings and buckles and straps to make keeping any wearer snugly bound and completely anonymous.

    Except, again, for her eyes. Erika could see, even if the posture collar and gag kept her from turning her head.  She did try, of course; pressing her lips into the padded leather, kissing at it and tugging her head to try and escape its grasp. It was quite firm, though it made some of the loose D-rings jingle. She bucked against the chair. It squeaked with a wrenching sound that only old metal on ancient tile could make. It echoed through the room. She bucked again, pressing her bound body against the restraints. Her groin feet and torso all thrashed in turn as she tried to loosen the screws or weaken the chair. After a few seconds of such struggling, she stopped and heard the gentle patter of canvas-wrapped feet behind her.

    The handler was back.

    She stopped bucking again. Merely seeing it move was eerie. No sound, no breathing, no extraneous movement. It was a complete juxtaposition from the grunting, moaning, and flustered Erika. In the mirror, she saw it press forward with a single item presented in its mittens.

    She bit deep into the gag. The canvas creature moved its padded hands around Erika’s face. It did this from behind, never actually stepping in front of the chair and making the view in the mirror the only option. It meant that Erika had to spend every agonizing second staring at the creature and herself. The handler placed a pair of cotton balls over her eyes, followed by a supremely heavy blindfold. She knew that to any observer - even to herself- she was indistinguishable from the handler. The only difference-  the only possible difference - was that she was snugly bound, jacketed, buckled in, and restrained while the handler was relatively free.

Oblivious to the world, she stewed for a few seconds in her sensory deprivation before something touched her. A hand, mittened but gentle, moved over her head. Then another joined it. It ran down from her canvas-covered skull to her neck, then her collarbone, and to her chest. She felt hands from behind her that gently moved over her stomach. Quiet, therapeutic, and gentle; the handler’s mittened arms moved gently to massage at her bust, kneading deeply and then kneading gently.

Erika swatted in the air as she awoke. She felt her partner-in-crime’s body against hers. It wasn’t unpleasant to be spooned awake, though the thorough molestation of her chest wasn’t quite what she expected. She mumbled something.

“What’s that, now?” Robin was awake. Extremely awake. Erika said something again, trying to move her lips as little as possible as if it would preserve the dream.

“What did you say? Morph? Monster?”

“Mrrf.” Erika grunted again, and grabbed at a pillow. Robin retracted her hands from Erika’s chest.

“Erika did you say… more?”

It was useless. Erika’s eyes shot awake. The dream was gone. She snatched at her phone. It was late.

Erika sat up and Robin giggled. “So sorry if I stopped a dream.”

Erika sat at the edge of the bed and rubbed her temples. “I’ve been getting nothing but lucid dreams ever since we moved out of the dormitory. It’s probably just the new apartment, though.” She chuckled and looked at Robin. “Either that, or sharing with my roommate is giving me nightmares.”

“Nightmares?” Robin cocked her head. “Was it the one where you’re falling?”

“Nope.”

“The one with Leonard Nimoy?”

“Definitely not.”

“Were you getting chased?”

“Something like that.”

Erika sat up left the bedroom, quivering slightly. The dream faded away in pieces; first the part about being trapped, then the chase. She stared in the bathroom mirror and felt her lip twitch. There was more than the disconcerting after-effects of a strange dream. Erika felt longing.

Back in the bedroom, Robin stretched against the bed like a cat. Ever since they’d moved in together, Robin had been getting the best sleep of her life.