VanessaKrzyznova
Condemned
I was sitting in front of my desk and had my laptop open, this is where my story begins, how I got Vanessa my dreams fulfilled and became what I am today. That was my way! Annette had gone shopping. I was left alone. Usually I went along, but not on the first day in Frohnnau. I had only been there for an hour and wanted to switch off. When I came to Aunt Annie and Annette, a transformation took place with me. Within a few hours, a city child became a village child who became one with nature. This included having to be alone for a while. When I came to Frohnnau for the first time at the age of seven, I had hidden behind the house in a bush and had only come out again after an hour. I took off my city clothes, dressed like my cousin Annette, and started roaming outside with her. We played in the garden, went hiking in nature and we went to the outdoor pool. As small as Frohnnau was, it actually had an outdoor swimming pool, a simple, old thing from the time before the Second World War. Since then, I have been given time out in the Flörke house to transform myself.
I opened the folder with special pictures. He bore a meaningless name. No one who accidentally stumbled upon my computer would notice it. That was intentional. The one picture in it belonged to me alone. All other photos and paintings were camouflage -- photos of churches and chapels, altars and crucifixes. Painted images of cathedral construction sites and churches in medieval landscapes. I was interested in architecture, especially sacred architecture. No one would think anything of it when they saw this collection of pictures.
In the middle of it all was my picture. The title was "The girl in the picture on the Internet". I clicked on the image and it became screen sized. It was a black-and-white photograph of a on the cross. The picture was ancient. It was built in 1913 and recorded by an avant-garde artist from the Czech Republic. His name was František Drtikol and he had taken a lot of nude photos. I had looked at them all on the internet. For the time, they would certainly have been very avant-garde. From today's point of view, they were fuzzy and kind of funny. Most of the women in the photos looked like something out of an old funny silent movie.
My image was different. It was also quite blurry and the contrast range of black and white plates at the time had not given much. Yes, plates -- made of glass -- that's how people used to photograph back then. There was no film to put in the camera; especially not small digital cameras that can do everything.
The picture was blurry and sometimes much too dark. But it was my picture. It was meaningful. It said so much. Especially for me. It's been my favorite image since I found it on the internet. I have been loyal to him for years. For years, I kept opening the file and looking at it -- the girl in the picture on the Internet.
The picture had no title. No matter where you found it on the Internet -- it was always "untitled." Sometimes it also said "crucified girl 1913" or "crucifixion study 1913". The artist, however, had not given his work a name.
I looked at her, this young woman who hung so quietly on the beam. It was attached with ropes to the crossbeam of a primitively assembled cross; tied at the wrists. That's all you saw. The photo showed only part of the's body - from above the navel to above the crossbeam. The right hand was indistinct and not completely visible, the left hand was completely missing. The photographer had "cropped" his model, as it was called.
The girl's arms were strongly stretched. Her head had sunk to her chest. She hung naked and silent on the cross. She had no clothes. She didn't have a name. She had no identity. It was reduced to the crucifixion -- to being stretched on the beam. The pull on her arms had to be enormous. Even though her feet were tied at the bottom outside the frame, she hung mainly on her bound wrists. It had to pull hard -- especially because her arms were spread wide.
How long did the girl have had to endure to make this recording? Was there only one recording? Or had the artist taken several photos in order to choose the best one later? Photography around 1913 was a lengthy affair. The cameras were huge wooden boxes on tripods. You had to set them up, select the image section and then expose them for several seconds. That's why the people in old photos look so weird. They stare into the camera as if stuffed. They had to stay still for several seconds so that the plate could be sufficiently exposed.
The girl in the picture on the Internet had kept quiet. She couldn't have done otherwise. She was tied up. Tied with ropes. She was forced to stand still.
That's what immediately caught my eye, back when I got my first computer and went on the internet. For a day I had been busy with wild surfing. I had fed the Google search engine with all sorts of words. On the second day, I became more precise. I almost didn't dare to enter "shackles" in the search mask. I was all the more surprised when a flood of pages was shown. For days I hung around on pages that you would be redirected to if you typed certain keywords into Google like bondage, bondage, suspension, crucifixion and the like. I got to know the term BDSM and many more.
Bind. Be tied up. I was fascinated by that. For a long time. It had started at twelve or thirteen. I don't know why. I began to dream of being tied up.
There was this afternoon in the outdoor pool at the very back, where the old flagpole from the forties rose out of the meadow. There, the HJ and the BDM had organized marches. Even in the swimming pool there was paramilitary drill. The flagpole had survived the war and National Socialism. I had leaned against it with my back and Jonas had crept up from behind. He grabbed my wrists and dragged them behind the flagpole. There he crossed them and held me.
"Tied up!" he shouted. Everyone looked up and laughed.
"Tie them up properly!" shouted Manuel. New laughter.
O sweet shock. I stood very still. How I really would have liked to be captivated. In front of everyone's eyes. Hands tied behind the flagpole and feet tied to the pole. The idea alone caused wild heart palpitations. Be tied up. Not to get away on your own. Standing at the flagpole in a bikini, held in place by ropes. It drove me crazy.
Do it! Please do it!, it screamed in my head. I didn't utter a word. I giggled like the others and resisted appearances. I waited for Manuel to conjure up something from his swimming bag with which they could tie me up and run to Jonas: "Come on, man! We tie her up and then she has to stand still on the mast for half an hour. If she's well-behaved, we'll let her go. If not.... He dragged it out with relish .... "Then she has to stay at the flagpole for half an hour longer."
Oh, what a delightful idea.
Please do it!, I pleaded in my mind. Do it with me! I'm ready for it. More than ready. Please do it!
They didn't. Jonas let go of me and we went swimming. I frolicked in the water with everyone and laughed. Inwardly, however, I wept bitterly. I could have screamed in disappointment.
I looked at her -- the girl in the picture on the Internet. After hanging, crossing, crucified, I came across the photo via the keyword "crucificada". Crucificada was Spanish and meant "crucified". Google had spit out a ton of images and at the very bottom of the fourteenth or fifteenth page I opened, my image had popped up. It immediately captivated me. It had fascinated me, even if it was blurry and you couldn't see much.
She hung there so quietly, so oblivious to herself. She almost seemed to be smiling. She had to endure it. A recording took its time; several photos took even longer. How long had she hung on the beam? Five minutes? No, longer, much longer. It must have taken a quarter of an hour. Maybe even half an hour. Half an hour. Every time I thought about this period of time, a pleasant shiver ran over me. Half an hour - thirty minutes. Having to endure thirty minutes with outstretched arms. You could see the tension in her arms. At first it was easy to bear, but after five minutes it became difficult. It was not easy to bear.
At home, I had hung myself from the basement railing several times when my mother was not there, my arms spread wide. I reached so high that my feet just touched the ground and held on tight. Then I slowly started counting. I got to a hundred without any problems. Up to two hundred, too. Three hundred was already damn difficult, also because my hands couldn't find a proper grip. Longer than four or five hundred did not go.
My problem was: I was holding on. I could let go at any time if it got too bad for me. But I wanted to be captivated. Fortified. And in such a way that I couldn't get away on my own. That was the attraction of it: having to endure it!
I wanted to be naked and bare, helpless, at the mercy of others. I wanted to be forced to endure it, even if I thought I couldn't take it any longer. Oh, how I wished it would!
My favorite idea was the story with the model. I came across an advertisement to a photographer who wanted to photograph an artistic crucifixion. For a nice pocket money I had to be tied naked to a cross and the photographer took picture after shot. The artist asked from time to time: "Is it still possible, Vanessa?" and I dutifully answered "Yes". It aroused me to hang naked on the cross, with my arms outstretched, to feel the tension in my arms and shoulders and chest, but I didn't say a word about it, but pretended to be a normal model who could endure something for a fee.
I looked at her, the young woman, the girl in the picture on the Internet, hanging from the beam with her arms outstretched. It was this tension that fascinated me. I had found names for it on the Internet: suspension was the most used word. There was a word for everything, and I wasn't the only girl in the world who wished to be tied up like that. It was kind of reassuring to realize that there were many like me. There were forums where all this was discussed cheerfully and openly. But I held back. I had always been very shy. I didn't really dare to reveal my innermost feelings to a broad public.
Being stretched, suspended, that was what turned me on, totally fascinated me. I imagined the photographer slowly approaching longer times. He asked me if I could hold out longer on the beam because he wanted to hold on to the muscle tone, the tension and also the visible exhaustion of a body that hung on the cross for a long time.
"Of course," I replied coolly in the feature film in my head.
So I stayed on the cross for half an hour or more and only then did the artist photograph me. He wanted to capture the exhaustion, to capture my exhausted body in the picture, exhausted from the struggle against the ropes and the beam, the pull on arms and shoulders.
My imagination changed. Now I was the model of a painter or sculptor. They had the advantage that it took them a very long time to create their work. Every day for an hour or more I had to stand as a model, or rather: hang. I imagined that to be wonderfully difficult. A whole hour, that would certainly be excruciating. Very hard to bear. I would start wriggling on the wooden beams. I would move to avoid the horrible pull that was acting on my torso. I would support myself with my feet and push my knees through, try to stretch myself a little high. Then my calves would tire and I would have to hang myself in my arms again. It would go back and forth. The ropes would burn and hurt. All the muscles would start to hurt. The idea turned me on -- and how!
I had never understood why I liked the idea of having to endure suffering. But I didn't understand other things either. Why did I love spinach that others hated so much? I didn't understand. I liked spinach. Easy. I also liked the idea of being restrained, especially when my arms were spread wide and I had to endure the strong pull on my arms and shoulders.
I heightened the agony of the suspension in my imagination by having the artist create a work that would show the tiredness and exhaustion of the crucified, the suffering written on her face, the cruelly overstretched torso. The artist wanted to depict the suffering in a true-to-life way and for that the model had to suffer, and for real. He didn't want acting. It really had to be suffered.
The painter kindly asked me if I could try to spend two hours on the cross and feel my way to longer hanging times. Of course, as a well-behaved model, I agreed. I presented it as a sporting challenge to stay on the beam longer and longer and I could also use the additional fee, as I was paid for every quarter of an hour of model hanging.
Bit by bit, the painter increased the times I had to endure on the beam until I had to endure four hours. It got to the point where he tied me up and then left me alone to do other work. He came only after three hours and then painted for an hour how I hung on the cross, panting and groaning, writhing and finally hanging exhausted and silent on the ropes. Just like the girl in the picture on the Internet.
A delightful fantasy!
I turned my laptop a little to get a better view of the photo.
The image had been created with tools that didn't give much: cheap optics, cheap glass plate, cheap developer. That's what I imagined. But the photographer had done a fantastic job. The picture contained a lot of hidden details that you didn't notice at first glance and that still made you like the photo immediately. He had used the golden ratio -- dividing the image with lines into areas of one-third and two-thirds, and he had created triangles. All the lines in the picture led both out of the picture and in -- the girl's arms, the two beams of the cross. The girl's outstretched arms formed a triangle upwards, and also right and left downwards. Her tilted head was exactly in line with her right arm, her mouth in line with her left arm. Nothing in this photo was a coincidence. The photographer had arranged everything masterfully. Had he guided the model or simply waited for a perfect time? I would never know. I could only enjoy the beauty of the shot.
I'm looking at you, girl in the picture on the Internet. Let me be your sister. Let me be with you, crucified by your side. Or better yet, let me be you. Let me take your place and endure the torments in your place, the sweet anguish, the pain that makes me dance on the cross and then let me sink exhausted into the shackles.
Who were you, nameless girl? Were you a poor girl who let herself be photographed naked because she desperately needed money? Were you a professional model who wasn't ashamed to be photographed naked? Were you a student who earned a little extra money? Or a wild, young revolutionary, an advocate of female equality, who demanded the complete freedom of the individual? Who went naked to the cross in protest against bourgeois narrow-mindedness and bigotry?
Was it just a job for you or did you like to present yourself naked? Were you like me? Did you like being tied up? To be naked and defenseless? Helplessly at the mercy of others? To feel this helplessness and the shame of being naked and tied up and at the same time even enjoying this shame? Did you also find the shame exciting, nameless girl?
My right hand slipped between my thighs. I opened my legs a little.
Let me be you, nameless girl. Please! I want to know too. I really want to know how it feels.
"She's beautiful."
Frightened, I jumped in the air and let out a scream. Annette was standing behind me. My cousin had come back from shopping and I hadn't heard her quietly step behind me.
"My God, Annette! Do you want me to die of a heart attack?!"
Annette put her hands on my shoulders. She looked at the photo on the screen of my laptop. "She's beautiful," she repeated. There was something dreamy about her voice. "She seems so peaceful."
I opened the folder with special pictures. He bore a meaningless name. No one who accidentally stumbled upon my computer would notice it. That was intentional. The one picture in it belonged to me alone. All other photos and paintings were camouflage -- photos of churches and chapels, altars and crucifixes. Painted images of cathedral construction sites and churches in medieval landscapes. I was interested in architecture, especially sacred architecture. No one would think anything of it when they saw this collection of pictures.
In the middle of it all was my picture. The title was "The girl in the picture on the Internet". I clicked on the image and it became screen sized. It was a black-and-white photograph of a on the cross. The picture was ancient. It was built in 1913 and recorded by an avant-garde artist from the Czech Republic. His name was František Drtikol and he had taken a lot of nude photos. I had looked at them all on the internet. For the time, they would certainly have been very avant-garde. From today's point of view, they were fuzzy and kind of funny. Most of the women in the photos looked like something out of an old funny silent movie.
My image was different. It was also quite blurry and the contrast range of black and white plates at the time had not given much. Yes, plates -- made of glass -- that's how people used to photograph back then. There was no film to put in the camera; especially not small digital cameras that can do everything.
The picture was blurry and sometimes much too dark. But it was my picture. It was meaningful. It said so much. Especially for me. It's been my favorite image since I found it on the internet. I have been loyal to him for years. For years, I kept opening the file and looking at it -- the girl in the picture on the Internet.
The picture had no title. No matter where you found it on the Internet -- it was always "untitled." Sometimes it also said "crucified girl 1913" or "crucifixion study 1913". The artist, however, had not given his work a name.
I looked at her, this young woman who hung so quietly on the beam. It was attached with ropes to the crossbeam of a primitively assembled cross; tied at the wrists. That's all you saw. The photo showed only part of the's body - from above the navel to above the crossbeam. The right hand was indistinct and not completely visible, the left hand was completely missing. The photographer had "cropped" his model, as it was called.
The girl's arms were strongly stretched. Her head had sunk to her chest. She hung naked and silent on the cross. She had no clothes. She didn't have a name. She had no identity. It was reduced to the crucifixion -- to being stretched on the beam. The pull on her arms had to be enormous. Even though her feet were tied at the bottom outside the frame, she hung mainly on her bound wrists. It had to pull hard -- especially because her arms were spread wide.
How long did the girl have had to endure to make this recording? Was there only one recording? Or had the artist taken several photos in order to choose the best one later? Photography around 1913 was a lengthy affair. The cameras were huge wooden boxes on tripods. You had to set them up, select the image section and then expose them for several seconds. That's why the people in old photos look so weird. They stare into the camera as if stuffed. They had to stay still for several seconds so that the plate could be sufficiently exposed.
The girl in the picture on the Internet had kept quiet. She couldn't have done otherwise. She was tied up. Tied with ropes. She was forced to stand still.
That's what immediately caught my eye, back when I got my first computer and went on the internet. For a day I had been busy with wild surfing. I had fed the Google search engine with all sorts of words. On the second day, I became more precise. I almost didn't dare to enter "shackles" in the search mask. I was all the more surprised when a flood of pages was shown. For days I hung around on pages that you would be redirected to if you typed certain keywords into Google like bondage, bondage, suspension, crucifixion and the like. I got to know the term BDSM and many more.
Bind. Be tied up. I was fascinated by that. For a long time. It had started at twelve or thirteen. I don't know why. I began to dream of being tied up.
There was this afternoon in the outdoor pool at the very back, where the old flagpole from the forties rose out of the meadow. There, the HJ and the BDM had organized marches. Even in the swimming pool there was paramilitary drill. The flagpole had survived the war and National Socialism. I had leaned against it with my back and Jonas had crept up from behind. He grabbed my wrists and dragged them behind the flagpole. There he crossed them and held me.
"Tied up!" he shouted. Everyone looked up and laughed.
"Tie them up properly!" shouted Manuel. New laughter.
O sweet shock. I stood very still. How I really would have liked to be captivated. In front of everyone's eyes. Hands tied behind the flagpole and feet tied to the pole. The idea alone caused wild heart palpitations. Be tied up. Not to get away on your own. Standing at the flagpole in a bikini, held in place by ropes. It drove me crazy.
Do it! Please do it!, it screamed in my head. I didn't utter a word. I giggled like the others and resisted appearances. I waited for Manuel to conjure up something from his swimming bag with which they could tie me up and run to Jonas: "Come on, man! We tie her up and then she has to stand still on the mast for half an hour. If she's well-behaved, we'll let her go. If not.... He dragged it out with relish .... "Then she has to stay at the flagpole for half an hour longer."
Oh, what a delightful idea.
Please do it!, I pleaded in my mind. Do it with me! I'm ready for it. More than ready. Please do it!
They didn't. Jonas let go of me and we went swimming. I frolicked in the water with everyone and laughed. Inwardly, however, I wept bitterly. I could have screamed in disappointment.
I looked at her -- the girl in the picture on the Internet. After hanging, crossing, crucified, I came across the photo via the keyword "crucificada". Crucificada was Spanish and meant "crucified". Google had spit out a ton of images and at the very bottom of the fourteenth or fifteenth page I opened, my image had popped up. It immediately captivated me. It had fascinated me, even if it was blurry and you couldn't see much.
She hung there so quietly, so oblivious to herself. She almost seemed to be smiling. She had to endure it. A recording took its time; several photos took even longer. How long had she hung on the beam? Five minutes? No, longer, much longer. It must have taken a quarter of an hour. Maybe even half an hour. Half an hour. Every time I thought about this period of time, a pleasant shiver ran over me. Half an hour - thirty minutes. Having to endure thirty minutes with outstretched arms. You could see the tension in her arms. At first it was easy to bear, but after five minutes it became difficult. It was not easy to bear.
At home, I had hung myself from the basement railing several times when my mother was not there, my arms spread wide. I reached so high that my feet just touched the ground and held on tight. Then I slowly started counting. I got to a hundred without any problems. Up to two hundred, too. Three hundred was already damn difficult, also because my hands couldn't find a proper grip. Longer than four or five hundred did not go.
My problem was: I was holding on. I could let go at any time if it got too bad for me. But I wanted to be captivated. Fortified. And in such a way that I couldn't get away on my own. That was the attraction of it: having to endure it!
I wanted to be naked and bare, helpless, at the mercy of others. I wanted to be forced to endure it, even if I thought I couldn't take it any longer. Oh, how I wished it would!
My favorite idea was the story with the model. I came across an advertisement to a photographer who wanted to photograph an artistic crucifixion. For a nice pocket money I had to be tied naked to a cross and the photographer took picture after shot. The artist asked from time to time: "Is it still possible, Vanessa?" and I dutifully answered "Yes". It aroused me to hang naked on the cross, with my arms outstretched, to feel the tension in my arms and shoulders and chest, but I didn't say a word about it, but pretended to be a normal model who could endure something for a fee.
I looked at her, the young woman, the girl in the picture on the Internet, hanging from the beam with her arms outstretched. It was this tension that fascinated me. I had found names for it on the Internet: suspension was the most used word. There was a word for everything, and I wasn't the only girl in the world who wished to be tied up like that. It was kind of reassuring to realize that there were many like me. There were forums where all this was discussed cheerfully and openly. But I held back. I had always been very shy. I didn't really dare to reveal my innermost feelings to a broad public.
Being stretched, suspended, that was what turned me on, totally fascinated me. I imagined the photographer slowly approaching longer times. He asked me if I could hold out longer on the beam because he wanted to hold on to the muscle tone, the tension and also the visible exhaustion of a body that hung on the cross for a long time.
"Of course," I replied coolly in the feature film in my head.
So I stayed on the cross for half an hour or more and only then did the artist photograph me. He wanted to capture the exhaustion, to capture my exhausted body in the picture, exhausted from the struggle against the ropes and the beam, the pull on arms and shoulders.
My imagination changed. Now I was the model of a painter or sculptor. They had the advantage that it took them a very long time to create their work. Every day for an hour or more I had to stand as a model, or rather: hang. I imagined that to be wonderfully difficult. A whole hour, that would certainly be excruciating. Very hard to bear. I would start wriggling on the wooden beams. I would move to avoid the horrible pull that was acting on my torso. I would support myself with my feet and push my knees through, try to stretch myself a little high. Then my calves would tire and I would have to hang myself in my arms again. It would go back and forth. The ropes would burn and hurt. All the muscles would start to hurt. The idea turned me on -- and how!
I had never understood why I liked the idea of having to endure suffering. But I didn't understand other things either. Why did I love spinach that others hated so much? I didn't understand. I liked spinach. Easy. I also liked the idea of being restrained, especially when my arms were spread wide and I had to endure the strong pull on my arms and shoulders.
I heightened the agony of the suspension in my imagination by having the artist create a work that would show the tiredness and exhaustion of the crucified, the suffering written on her face, the cruelly overstretched torso. The artist wanted to depict the suffering in a true-to-life way and for that the model had to suffer, and for real. He didn't want acting. It really had to be suffered.
The painter kindly asked me if I could try to spend two hours on the cross and feel my way to longer hanging times. Of course, as a well-behaved model, I agreed. I presented it as a sporting challenge to stay on the beam longer and longer and I could also use the additional fee, as I was paid for every quarter of an hour of model hanging.
Bit by bit, the painter increased the times I had to endure on the beam until I had to endure four hours. It got to the point where he tied me up and then left me alone to do other work. He came only after three hours and then painted for an hour how I hung on the cross, panting and groaning, writhing and finally hanging exhausted and silent on the ropes. Just like the girl in the picture on the Internet.
A delightful fantasy!
I turned my laptop a little to get a better view of the photo.
The image had been created with tools that didn't give much: cheap optics, cheap glass plate, cheap developer. That's what I imagined. But the photographer had done a fantastic job. The picture contained a lot of hidden details that you didn't notice at first glance and that still made you like the photo immediately. He had used the golden ratio -- dividing the image with lines into areas of one-third and two-thirds, and he had created triangles. All the lines in the picture led both out of the picture and in -- the girl's arms, the two beams of the cross. The girl's outstretched arms formed a triangle upwards, and also right and left downwards. Her tilted head was exactly in line with her right arm, her mouth in line with her left arm. Nothing in this photo was a coincidence. The photographer had arranged everything masterfully. Had he guided the model or simply waited for a perfect time? I would never know. I could only enjoy the beauty of the shot.
I'm looking at you, girl in the picture on the Internet. Let me be your sister. Let me be with you, crucified by your side. Or better yet, let me be you. Let me take your place and endure the torments in your place, the sweet anguish, the pain that makes me dance on the cross and then let me sink exhausted into the shackles.
Who were you, nameless girl? Were you a poor girl who let herself be photographed naked because she desperately needed money? Were you a professional model who wasn't ashamed to be photographed naked? Were you a student who earned a little extra money? Or a wild, young revolutionary, an advocate of female equality, who demanded the complete freedom of the individual? Who went naked to the cross in protest against bourgeois narrow-mindedness and bigotry?
Was it just a job for you or did you like to present yourself naked? Were you like me? Did you like being tied up? To be naked and defenseless? Helplessly at the mercy of others? To feel this helplessness and the shame of being naked and tied up and at the same time even enjoying this shame? Did you also find the shame exciting, nameless girl?
My right hand slipped between my thighs. I opened my legs a little.
Let me be you, nameless girl. Please! I want to know too. I really want to know how it feels.
"She's beautiful."
Frightened, I jumped in the air and let out a scream. Annette was standing behind me. My cousin had come back from shopping and I hadn't heard her quietly step behind me.
"My God, Annette! Do you want me to die of a heart attack?!"
Annette put her hands on my shoulders. She looked at the photo on the screen of my laptop. "She's beautiful," she repeated. There was something dreamy about her voice. "She seems so peaceful."
