'Damn!' She had looked through the window and recognised a brown UPS van parked in the road outside her house.

What a most inconvenient time to get a parcel! She laughed as she minced to the bed, where she picked up her discarded dressing gown and throwing it around her constrained body, she attempted rather unsuccessfully to hurry with the largest steps she was allowed. 'I'm coming!' She didn't hear any reply, except for a sort of inane whistle from the front door of her house. As she approached the top of the stairs, a more insistent and repetitive ring of the bell started!

Each step on the stairs was fraught with no little danger and a high level of excitement. The corset meant that her hips didn't bend at all, and instead of stepping down, she hopped almost like a slow and partly demented rabbit. The extravagantly high heels, which were wonderful to impress, for show and especially sitting down, did not help with the descent. It would have been difficult enough, when she could do it at her leisure, but she had to satisfy an impatient driver, with a possibly important delivery. On the other hand, he might have the wrong address! 'Hang on! I'm coming!' She realised why in all of those old stately and elegant houses in the South, the staircases were very wide, had a well-positioned hand-rail and were always on a gentle curve!

The bell was ringing continuously, by the time she reached and finally opened the door. 'Sorry! I was just getting up. You caught me half dressed.'

'Perhaps, It's me, who should say sorry.'

She smiled back. 'You could have left it there!' She indicated a suitable place under cover by the door.

'Sorry, but I need a signature!' The tall, perhaps thirties, black guy with a friendly smile and a slightly-embarrassed look, put the rather heavy looking parcel on the ground and thrust his computerised delivery pad in front of her. 'Can you sign here? And print your name, please!' A large finger indicated where. 'That's you isn't it? How do you pronounce that name?'

'Yes! That's me!' She signed and added a date. 'It looks heavy?'

'Sure is!' His quick nod added to the statement. 'At least for you!'

'You wouldn't mind putting it inside, would you?' She smiled to say please!

'No ma'am!' He put the pad on his belt, picked up the parcel and smiled a jokey grin in return. 'Where would you like it?'

***

As he turned from placing the parcel on a convenient sofa in her living room, he looked at her in amazement.

It was perhaps a few seconds, before she realised the cause for his stare. In her haste to cover herself up, she had tied the cord in the gown with a knot, that would have failed any test. And it just had! The gown was now trailing like a cartoon hero's cape behind her, exposing her body and its all-enclosing corset to the driver. At least she was decent, even if her mode of dress was unusual!

He did not wait for a second, as he garbled and stammered a very quick good-bye and thank you, rushed past her, ran down the drive and jumped expertly into his van. Screeching tyres and clouds of blue smoke followed him as he sped down the road.

She would have collapsed on the floor in heaps of laughter, if she hadn't known it would be very difficult, if not almost impossible to stand up!

***

Dropping to her knees in front of the sofa, she was now at the right height to examine the parcel. It was from England and a company called CTC. Cambridge Total Control! So perhaps her mysterious friend on the Internet had kept his promise! He'd certainly sent her a large parcel of various goodies.

But she needed something to open the parcel, as brown tape was everywhere around the parcel, sealing all of the flaps and openings. Obviously, a man who liked everything bound tight! Or perhaps, he wanted to keep the goods hidden from prying delivery drivers? So she staggered to her feet and tottered to the kitchen, returning with a small sharp knife, that she normally used for peeling vegetables. Five minutes later and she had a pile of torn cardboard and screwed up paper on the floor, with several beautifully-packed and numbered packages and a envelope labelled 'Read Me First' on the sofa. At least she knew where to start!

She now had a dilemma. The training corset restricted her movement so much, that she was finding all this activity difficult and surprisingly tiring. Her knees hurt, from kneeling bolt upright on the floor in the only position she could manage. And that despite the thick and so she'd thought previously, luxurious carpet. Her thighs and back were under stress too, as she strained to maintain her upright stance, against the power, restriction and weight of the corset. Perhaps, she should get dressed and change into a corset, more suited to what she was trying to do!

No! She would be slipping in her regime. She had decided she needed to wear the training corset today and wear it she would. At least until she decided to go out for that shopping! Perhaps, she should should change her schedule and go out now!

***

Her first and possibly the most difficult task, was to clear up all of the rubbish, she had rather stupidly strewn all over the floor, in her haste to find the contents.

Easy normally, but in the training corset almost impossible. As she had no bend in her body at all, she could only crawl very slowly and without the use of her hands, except as supports, where a convenient sofa or chair was available. Picking up large pieces of paper was reasonably easy, but smaller ones and those that were flat on the floor, meant she had to lean her whole body backwards and reach behind her, putting even more strain on the muscles of her legs. A simple job that should have taken a few minutes, took at least twenty minutes with extreme difficulty and in an increasing state of discomfort. She was cursing all the pieces as she placed them in the remains of the box. A task not helped by the destruction she had caused, as she had opened it! She should have thought a bit more! But as she collected all the small screwed pieces of paper, at least she had a diversion. He had obviously chosen some of them to be interesting, as they contained fashion and news pictures of ladies, some famous and some not so, in corsets. He must believe in tremendous attention to detail. Or perhaps, he had decided to have a clear out and she was a willing recipient of his rubbish!

When she had the box full and the room reasonably tidy, she decided that she would move it into the yard later, when she at last decided to get fully dressed. Not for any reasons of decency, but try as she might, she found the box impossible to pick up without bending her body or her hips. And both of course, she was forbidden to do! So, she just clumsily dragged it out of the way, by the door.

***

All of this bending was causing havoc to her body. She could either give up or change now! The first was against her sense of curiousity and the second was against more than one of the goals she had set for herself.

She smiled as she thought of a different, better and above all a much more practical solution. One that she would have no difficulty with. And one that meant she would not have to change. Her kitchen worktop was just the right height where she could work standing up. She would complete the unwrapping there! In as much comfort, as she was allowed.

It was with no degree of excitement, she picked up the letter and the parcels, and moved them in two trips to the kitchen, lining them up in numeric order from left to right.

Deliberately and very carefully, she applied the knife to the letter.

Copyright 1999 by Ewart Higgins