Cost Effective

It was a warm summer day, and Jessica had decided to go visit her boyfriend Rick for lunch. She knew he was in the construction business and was working over on Lark St. So she walked down to Lark Street and saw a construction site with workers moving all around. Not seeing Rick right away, she decided to go investigate. Unbeknownst to her, Rick was actually installing drywall in an office building down the street.

She walked into the construction site, much to the pleasure of several workers who hollered and catcalled at her attractiveness. She decided she would have to have a talk with Rick about his coworkers. Jessica was a stunning redhead with long legs and great skin. With her bright green eyes and sultry smile, she sparked the interest of nearly every male that saw her. Her breasts were not very large, but they seemed to be exactly the right size for her frame and complemented her appearance perfectly. She was wearing a bright green dress, fairly skimpy but still well within the bounds of decency, and had decided to forego panties in the hope of a quickie with Rick during the lunch break. She walked up to the edge of a big pit they appeared to be filling with concrete, and opened her mouth to call for Rick.

The call turned into a shriek as the ground crumbled out from underneath her! She plunged about eight feet to land with a splotch in the deep cement. She had landed front first, with about half her torso embedded into the concrete. She also started sinking, because this concrete was aerated to decrease its density. She wanted to scream for help but the fall and subsequent impact had knocked the wind out of her. She felt herself start to sink as the cement creeped up her dress and her legs pulled underneath. Her bright green dress had gotten splatteed with dark gray splotches from the concrete, as had her beautiful pristine skin. She began to struggle in panic as she slipped deeper and deeper.

Meanwhile, the workers who had been watching her reacted a little better. One ran to turn off the flow of cement, and another went to fetch the foreman. Yet another threw the nearest thing her could find, a nearby water hose, to her in the hope he could pull her free. She saw the hose hit near her, and grabbed it and began to pull. By this point, her entire lower body was submerged and she was feeling her torso begin to slip under. But try as she and the worker might, the grip of the cement upon her body was too tight. Her dress had piled up on top of the surface and she could feel the concrete conform to every part of her body from the chest down. She was seriously beginning to regret not wearing panties, as she felt the cement explore and touch every crevice. Her sandals had also gotten lost somewhere in the concrete and she felt the smooth cement ooze between her toes as she struggled to pull free. She wasn't looking forward to the mess this would make trying to get cleaned up. But as the worker pulled, she could barely keep her grip on the hose, since her hands had gotten covered in slick concrete and slid along the hose. Even when she got a good grip, the hose stretched more than she was pulled out.

About this time the foreman arrived. As he looked down, Jessica's head and arms were the only thing above the cement. Try as they might, the workers couldn't pull her free with just the hose, the suction from the cement conforming to her body was too strong. As her face was about to slip under, he pantomimed putting the tube to his mouth in the hope she could use it to breathe. She understood and put the hose up to her mouth, sealing her lips around it in a last moment of panic as she went under. Now her world was dark and silent, with her dress bunched up under her arms and the cement creeping into every nook and cranny of her body.

She breathed desperately through the hose as she continued to sink, knowing that the workers couldn't leave her there, wondering how long it would take to rescue her. It seemed an eternity of darkness and silence later when she was startled by hitting the bottom of the concrete. It's pressure on all sides caused difficulty in breathing, the feeling was similar to a mud bath but this was cold and she had no way out. She could feel it's cold caress over her entire body, it would have been sexy if it hadn't been so dire. Jessica was afraid the cement would harden soon, having no idea how long it would take or how long she had been under. She felt like she would go mad if she had to stay down here for too long. It couldn't have been very long, but it already seemed like forever.

Above, the foreman was on the phone with the project's accountant, explaining the situation. He decided that they would have to wait until tomorrow for the cement to harden in order to excavate, since right now the mostly liquid concrete would flow right back into any hole they dug. He was explaining the cost of digging up the cement and redoing the work. The accountant seemed less and less enthused with every word, but the foreman could see no other way. He wasn't going to get any sleep tonight, thinking of the poor innocent woman in the concrete.

Deep within her concrete prison, Jessica decided to keep twirling her pinky finger in a hope of creating a little gap of motion in the concrete. It kept getting harder and harder to move it, however. Not only was her pinky getting tired, the concrete was slowly hardening around her, crushing her in its tight grip. It seemed to her as if it was getting thicker and thicker. She wanted to scream agin but could barely get enough breath to breathe, let alone scream. With no stimulus, her mind began to wander as the panic wore off, and the tiredness that always follows periods of stress caught up with her and she fell asleep.

An unkown period later, Jessica woke up and couldn't move. She had been dreaming of walking in a park with Rick, except moving in her dream seemed exceptionally hard. She began to panic as she realized she was still in the concrete, breathing through a little hose, and unable to so much as twitch a muscle. In fact, she could barely breathe as the concrete had compressed as it hardened. She had to pee, she decided to just let it go but nothing came out, with horror she realized she was sealed shut down there, which only seemed to emphasize her need to go. The cement had glued itself to every inch of her body, creeping under her clothing (as mud will tend to do) while she slept. It felt like a cold embrace, caressing her breasts and most sensitive parts with it's intimate touch. Jessica wanted to whimper and cry, but she couldn't even get tears to flow from her eyes, they were sealed shut by cement. She couldn't as much as twitch a muscle, it was like she was sculpted into the concrete. She reflected, "When they get me out of her I'll have a great mold of myself."

She suddenly thought about her hair, completely mixed in with the cement. They would probably have to shave her to rescue her. She itched all over, like a rash. Concrete probably wasn't good for her skin. She'd have to use some skin softener whe she was freed. She wondered if the cement was actually stuck to her skin, and she would have to have her outer layer of skin peeled off to get out. Thought after thought of the consequences of her misfortune poured through her mind. She thought she should be able to hear or feel them cutting up the block of concrete to rescue her, but she couldn't. The cement was already hard, she had to pee, and she was getting very thirsty. What were they waiting for?

The foreman arrived the next morning, ready to excavate, when he saw the cement mixer already filling in the rest of the pit! "What is going on!?," he demanded of one of the workers, who sheepishly pointed at a man in a suit standing next to the accountant. The foreman went over to the man who handed him a few papers. "I am Mr. Grott, the lawyer for the firm constructing here. These are sworn affidavits from physicians certifying that any human being trapped in such a situation as you described this woman being in would only survive about an hour after the concrete hardened fully, not enough time to perform a rescue. Thus, the company has decided to forego the expense of extracting what is sure to be a corpse and to proceed with the construction as planned. If any attempt is made to dig up the foundation, I will be forced to arrest the perpetrator for destruction of property."

"That's monstrous! You're just going to leave her there to die?," cried the foreman.

"She was as good as dead the moment she fell in. You and your men did everything that could be expected in such a situation. You should be proud of your efforts to save her. Tomorrow I want you to pump concrete down the tube she's now breathing through, in order to lessen the chance of this incident leading to a structural flaw. She should be dead by then. We will mount a plaque on the interior wall commemorating this tragedy." The foreman could hardly believe his ears.

In the belly of her cement tomb, Jessica felt as if she had been trapped for eternity. She could barely remember a time when she was free to move, free to see and hear and experience. She kept dozing off and dreaming of freedom from the concrete, freedom from the everpresent crushing weight, freedom from the thirst and the hunger and the need to pee. But then she'd wake up, and be back in the concrete, back in a cold body cast from which there was no escape. Eventually she realized they weren't going to rescue her, after what seemed like years without light or stimulus. She wondered if she'd go mad before she died of thirst or her bladder burst. She would have given anything just to be able to stretch, even a little bit.

Didn't Rick know she was in here? How could he not? He would have to rescue her, wouldn't he? She still held a faint hope. Surely Rick would rescue her, and see her through the hospital stay she now realized would be inevitable. Jessica wondered how long it would take to recover from this, hopefully not too long. After an even longer while, drifting in and out of consciousness, she began to forget what it was like to ever be free of concrete. This was her life, imprisonment and pain and thirst, not some half imagined world where people walked around and ate and drank and talked. That seemed preposterous, like some half dream.

About when she felt the pain in her bladder was no longer what she could stand, when she thought the thirst was ripping her apart, her supply of air abruptly cut off! As she struggled for breath, she felt something cold and wet enter her mouth. After being thirsty for so long, she reflexively swallowed great gulps of the liquid when she realized it was gritty and tasted horrible. It was more cement! They were filling in the tube! She wanted no more but it kept filling her mouth, filling her until she felt she would burst. She had always held out hope for rescue, figuring it wasn't the decades like it seemed, but this crushed her hope and her last thought before she passed out from lack of air was "why didn't they rescue me?..."

As the foreman watched the worker pump the tube full of concrete, he realized he wouldn't be sleeping well for a long time...

 

02.01.08