Look what I made… it’ll be featured in photos for Sophie && Pudding soon! We’re voting on the subject of the October photo shoot now!
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Woodworking was fun - you made a plan, you got materials, and you made an idea come from the page to reality. There was something magical about taking a thought and turning it into an object, something you could hold in your hands, or put your books on, or sit on. Karen was new to the industry, but she had emptied her savings and bought real tools, quit her job, and was determined to follow her dream.
Custom Carpentry by Karen.
She’d done a couple of jobs, bookshelves, benches, picnic tables - her clients said her work had a soft flair that appealed especially to children. She didn’t see it, but her business was starting to take off.
When the job offer came in for on-site custom furniture, she was ready to deny it outright… until she saw the amount.
It was more than she had made on every job since she opened combined, and thensome. She had almost saved up enough for the programmable router that would let her do detail work that would be simply jaw-dropping. She had been drooling over it for quite some time… but she kept going for smaller, more reasonable tools. She could have her dream workshop with the payoff from this job.
…at an address in the middle of the mountains.
She looked the place up on Google Maps - it was an enormous, sprawling estate.
The drive there wasn’t pleasant, but she kept imagining the tools she’d be able to buy with the paycheck. Everything would be worth it.
Or so she thought.
Amanda looked too young to be a widow, but life wasn’t fair sometimes. Karen knew it was wrong to speculate, but the obvious assumption was that she had married some old man on death’s door in exchange for his money and it paid off… but she was nice enough, if a little formal. The shop she’d be working out of was exquisite - tools that were far nicer, worth far more than her own.
“Oh I’m going to be completely spoiled here!”
Amanda had giggled at that. She treated Karen to a lovely dinner provided by her live-in chef, all before discussing the furniture she wanted made.
Karen had no idea that she was building her own prison.
She didn’t think much of the odd request - an adult sized high chair, a crib, a changing table. With extra eye bolts here and there…
It wasn’t until the tray closed around her that she even suspected anything.
“There we go, sweetie. Smile for the camera. You’re mine now.”
“Wait! What?” Amanda was holding her cellphone up, the lens pointed at her. "Don’t!“ Karen threw her hands in front of her face.
“It’s okay, you just play house with me and these photos will stay between the two of us. I’ll be the mommy and you be… well, I think you can guess.”
Suddenly the crate of adult-sized, pink diapers in the garage made sense…
