Chapter 1: The Posture Corrector's Hidden Function
Mina pushed open the creaking door to the workshop, the smell hitting her immediately. It was a familiar smell, the smell of men’s work. Burnt oil and hot metal, the dampness of old stone, and that tang of something she could only ever call ‘the green dust’ from the alchemy corner. She smiled, always happy to see Uncle Groat.
“Uncle Groat? It’s Mina! I’m here about the job posting!”
The workshop was a mess, but a busy mess. Steam pipes, like copper snakes, ran across the ceiling and dripped condensation into sticky puddles on the flagstones. Half a dozen contraptions sat in various states of assembly, all gears and levers and promise. A large hearth held a simmering pot of something purple that bubbled lethargically. Her eyes lingered on a clockwork doll sprawled on the main bench, its porcelain face serene and empty, its torso opened up to reveal a heartbreakingly complex universe of tiny, interlocking brass gears.
“Mina, my dear! You came!”
Uncle Groat emerged from behind a tall shelf piled with grimoires and what looked like dissected frog skeletons preserved in jars. He was wiping his hands on a rag that was more stain than cloth. He was old, older than the hills they said, with a wispy halo of white hair and eyes that were always a little too shiny. He was like all the uncles back home—kind, clever with his hands, and always with a job that needed a “helpful girl.”
“Of course I came,” she said, her voice bright. She set her market basket down. “The Guild said you needed a contractor for a product test. Five silvers is five silvers.” Her husband, Thom, had been quiet at breakfast again, worried about the harvest. The extra coin would buy a nice joint of meat, maybe even a bottle of that fig wine he liked.
“Ah, yes! The test.” Uncle Groat’s eyes darted around the room before landing on a curious apparatus hanging from a hook on a stone pillar. It was made of thick, polished leather straps and a series of small, brass-rimmed weights. “It’s a postural alignment harness. For lifting. Very important for farm wives, you know? To prevent strain.”
Mina nodded earnestly. She did a lot of lifting. Buckets, laundry baskets, sacks of flour. Her back ached sometimes. “Oh, that sounds very useful.”
“Exactly! You have the ideal… physique… for a rigorous test.” He was already unhooking the device. It jingled softly, the weights clinking together. “If you could just slip off your shawl and tunic, my dear. The straps need direct contact to… sense the musculature.”
A flicker of hesitation passed through her. Thom didn’t like her taking jobs that required disrobing. But Uncle Groat was like family. And it was for science, really. A Guild job. She pushed the quiet guilt down—it was a familiar motion, like smoothing a wrinkled sheet—and unbuttoned her homespun tunic, slipping it and her linen shawl off onto a relatively clean crate. The workshop air was cool on her shoulders and arms. She stood in her woolen skirt and simple breast band, feeling a little exposed but determined to be professional.
“Wonderful, wonderful,” Groat murmured, his voice a little husky. He moved behind her. The leather was surprisingly soft, and cool where it touched her skin. He began fastening the straps. One broad band went under her bust, another around her ribcage. His fingers, dry and calloused, fumbled slightly at the clasp between her shoulder blades.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
“A bit tight.”
“Ah, that’s the initial calibration. It needs to map your form.” He brought another set of straps around her hips, buckling them firmly at the front. The positioning was… specific. The main band sat high on her hips, just under her navel, and the side straps curved snugly around the fullest part of her rear. She felt the leather grip and hold her in a way that was not entirely unpleasant, just… definite.
“Now, the diagnostic weights.” He took the small brass disks, each no bigger than a coin, and began hanging them from little hooks on the straps. One on the hip strap, left side. Another on the right. His breathing was a little uneven. He added a third to the center of the chest band, right in her cleavage. His knuckle brushed her skin.
“There,” he said, stepping back. His eyes were very wide. “Now, just… move around a bit. Bend forward. Twist.”
Mina obliged, feeling the weights shift. They were subtle. As she bent to pretend to lift a phantom basket, the hip straps tightened, pulling the leather taut against her. A strange, warm pressure bloomed deep in her belly. When she straightened, the chest band cinched, lifting and squeezing her breasts together. A faint, traitorous tingle, a ghost of a sensation she knew too well, traced a path down her spine.
Uncle Groat was watching her, his lower lip between his teeth, one hand idly adjusting something under his work apron. “Do you feel the alignment? The supportive pressure?”
“I… I feel something,” Mina said. Her own voice sounded far away. The initial tightness was morphing. The leather seemed to be warming with her own body heat, becoming less an external restraint and more like a second skin that emphasized, that curated, her shape. The weights weren't pulling her into better posture. They were pulling the straps into her softness.
She shifted again, and a bolt of pure, unexpected sensation shot through her. It was the particular clasp between her shoulder blades. It must have been pressing on a nerve. A small gasp escaped her.
“Is it working?” Groat asked eagerly, taking a step closer. The metallic smell of the workshop was suddenly overpowered by the scent of his sweat and the faint, animal smell of the new leather.
“It’s making me feel… tingly,” Mina confessed, the innocence in the statement hanging in the air like the steam from the pipes. Her cheeks flushed. The guilt was there, a dull anchor in her chest, but the water around it was getting warmer, lapping at her. This was a job. A test. But her body, stupid and separate from her good intentions, was responding to the precise, knowledgeable pressure of the straps. It remembered things. Things from before Thom, from the haylofts and tool sheds of her hometown, from the ‘lessons’ the uncles gave eager-to-please girls.
“Tingly is good!” Uncle Groat crooned, his trembling hand reaching out to adjust a weight on her hip, his touch lingering. “That means it’s activating the latent energy pathways. A few more adjustments…”
Mina stood very still, her big green eyes fixed on the serene face of the broken clockwork doll. Her mind was a jumble of fig wine and Thom’s quiet disappointment and the five silvers in her mind’s purse. And underneath it all, a switch, oiled and well-used, began its inexorable, familiar click.
The tingling wasn’t stopping. It was spreading.
It was spreading. The tingling became a warm, liquid pull low in her abdomen, a sensation that had nothing to do with muscles and everything to do with the memory of a sun-drenched hayloft and rough, kindly hands showing her how things worked.
“The, um, the latent pathways feel very active, Uncle Groat,” she said, her voice higher than usual. She tried to focus on the doll’s face, its painted blue eyes staring emptily at the ceiling. It was easier than focusing on the slow, deliberate circles the old man’s thumb was now making on the strap over her hipbone. Was that part of the calibration?
“Just as my theorems predicted,” he breathed. He was so close now she could smell the onion on his breath. “The harmonic resonance with a subject of your… proportional generosity… is remarkable. Do you feel the alignment deepening?”
She did. A deeper, more insistent pressure was building where the central strap met her. It was a crafted, purposeful pressure. Not an accident of design. Her own body was betraying her, softening, warming, responding to the engineering as if it were a lover’s touch. The guilt was a faint, scribbled note in the margin of a much more compelling text. Thom’s face, blurred and sad, was pushed aside by the immediate, shocking need to press back against the leather.
“It’s getting… quite strong,” she managed.
“A little more, then. The final adjustment.” His voice was a dry rasp. He wasn’t looking at her face. His gaze was fixed lower, on the way the harness framed and presented her. His trembling hand left her hip and went to a small, knurled wheel on the side of the chest plate she hadn’t noticed before. “This regulates the therapeutic tension.”
He turned it.
There was a soft click, and then a precise, mechanical tightening. The shoulder straps pulled back, arching her spine just slightly. The band under her bust cinched inward and upward, lifting her flesh until it threatened to spill over the top. The groan that escaped her was one of pure, overwhelmed sensation.
“Oh!”
“There!” Groat whispered, triumphant. “Perfect postural form! Do you see? Do you feel it?”
Mina could only nod, her breath coming in short little gusts. The device was no longer a test. It was an argument her body was losing. Every slight sway, every tiny shift in balance, sent new messages through the network of straps and weights. They were messages she understood in a wordless, physical language. Her mind floated somewhere near the dripping copper pipes, detached and hazy, while the rest of her burned in the harness.
He leaned in, his wiry frame pressing against her back. One hand settled heavily on her taut stomach, splaying there. The other returned to the small of her back, guiding her into a subtle, rolling motion of her hips.
“Like this,” he instructed, his mouth near her ear. “To test the lateral support.”
She followed the guidance, a helpless pupil. The motion created a devastating friction. The clever, brutal design of the harness focused everything, channelled the sensation to one pounding, insistent point. The workshop blurred. The smell of oil and ozone and old man faded. All that existed was the exquisite, shameful precision of the machine and the fevered heat building in her core, a coil wound too tight.
Her knees buckled. A sharp, choked sound caught in her throat.
“The therapeutic reaction!” Groat panted, his hand clenching on her belly. “It’s working! Let it happen, girl. It’s for the science.”
The coil snapped.
She moaned loudly. It was a raw, unresonant sound that echoed off the stone walls and the silent brass gears, a confession that drowned out all her quiet guilt. Her body arched violently against the straps, shuddering as wave after wave of forced, mechanical pleasure crashed through her. She saw flashes of light behind her eyelids, heard her own sharp cries as if from a great distance.
When the tremors finally subsided, she was limp, held upright only by the harness itself and Uncle Groat’s frail, steadying grip. Sweat cooled on her skin. The smell of the workshop rushed back, now mingled with something saltier, more human. A profound emptiness flooded in where the tension had been.
Groat was already unbuckling the straps with efficient, practiced fingers, his excitement replaced by a businesslike calm. “Excellent data. Truly excellent. The harmonic feedback loop was even more potent than modeled.” The leather fell away, and the cool air felt like a slap. He handed her her tunic and shawl, not meeting her dazed eyes.
Mina dressed with numb, clumsy hands. The five silver coins he placed in her palm were cold and heavy.
“Thank you for your professional services, Mina,” he said, already turning back to his bench, to his dormant doll. “Do tell the Guild the prototype is a success. I’ll be in touch about the next phase of testing.”
She stumbled out into the narrow alley, the daylight brutally ordinary. The coins bit into her fist. She could still feel the ghost of the straps, the specific geography of their grip. She would buy the fig wine. She would roast the joint of meat. She would try to meet Thom’s eyes over dinner.
And underneath her skirts, her skin still hummed.
And underneath her skirts, her skin still hummed.
She took two steps towards the mouth of the alley, towards the main street and the normalcy of market day. Her legs felt unsteady, waterlogged. A sharp, hot pang between her thighs made her wince. She stopped, leaning a hand against the cool, rough stone of the workshop wall. Maybe she needed a moment. Just a moment to let the strange, shivery feeling subside.
The workshop door creaked open behind her. Uncle Groat’s head appeared, his expression a mask of concern. “Mina? Are you quite alright? You look flushed.”
“I’m… I’m fine, Uncle. Just a bit light-headed is all.” She offered a weak smile, pushing a strand of damp black hair from her forehead.
“Light-headed? That’s a known side effect! A temporary depletion of the humoral energies. Come, come back inside. You can’t go stumbling through the market in this state. I have a restorative.” His voice was all kindness, all avuncular worry. He held the door open wider, the dim, complicated smell of the workshop wafting out.
The guilt, a sleeping animal in her chest, stirred. She’d taken his coin. The least she could do was be professional about the side effects. It was her duty as a contractor. “A restorative?”
“A simple tincture. To ground you. Wouldn’t forgive myself if you fainted in the gutter.” He beckoned.
She hesitated for only a second longer before the thought of collapsing in public decided it. She followed him back in. The door shut with a soft, final thud.
“Sit here, my dear. On the stool.” He guided her to a three-legged stool near the cold hearth, the one usually piled with scrap metal. He’d cleared it. “The tincture is just here. A blend of willow bark and distilled nightshade essence. For stability.”
He bustled to his cluttered alchemy bench, his back to her. She heard the clink of glass, the glug of liquid. The workshop seemed quieter now, more intimate. The purple potion had stopped bubbling. The only sounds were his movements and her own breathing, which still felt a touch too quick.
He returned with a small, murky vial. “Here. Drink it all. It’s bitter, but swift.”
She took it, trusting. She knocked it back. It was appallingly bitter, coating her tongue with the taste of old leaves and dirt. She shuddered.
“Good girl.” He took the empty vial, his fingers brushing hers. He didn’t move away. He stood before her, looking down with that shiny, concerned gaze. “Now, the secondary effect of the humoral depletion is a localized chilling of the skin. A circulatory retreat. It can be dangerous. We need to check your temperature.”
“My… temperature?”
“At the core. Where the body’s heat is most honestly registered.” His voice was low, matter-of-fact. “A standard diagnostic practice. I’ll need to assess your abdominal skin. For safety.”
Before her mind could fully parse the request, his dry, cool hands were on the hem of her tunic. He pushed the rough fabric up, exposing her stomach, the simple waistband of her skirt. The air was chill on her skin.
“Just a moment,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. His palms, rough as parchment, flattened against her belly.
She flinched at the touch. It was so different from the harness. This was direct, unmediated. “Uncle Groat, I don’t think—”
“Ah, yes. Definitely a coldness setting in. The dermal layer is quite cool.” His hands began to move in slow, deliberate circles. The motion was clinical, at first. Then his thumbs dipped lower, tracing the inside of her hip bones. His breathing shallowed. “We must stimulate the blood flow back to the surface. A gentle massage of the major vessels.”
His touch was no longer checking for temperature. It was mapping, claiming. It slid upward, the heel of his hand pressing into the softness below her navel. One finger hooked under the waistband of her skirt.
Mina sat, paralyzed by a thicket of conflicting thoughts. This was a medical necessity. He was an expert. He was helping. But the touch… it felt like the harness had felt. Intentional. It stirred the leftover hum inside her, re-igniting the embers. She felt a betraying warmth begin to spread, chasing away the very chill he’d diagnosed.
“Is… is that helping?” she whispered, her eyes wide, fixed on a stack of cogwheels.
“Immeasurably,” he rasped. His other hand came up to her breast band. “The thoracic region will be affected too. We must be thorough.”
He didn’t remove the band. He pushed his hand underneath it, his knuckles scraping against the linen as he cupped her. His thumb found her nipple and began to rub it in tight, precise circles through the fabric. It was a shock, so blunt and sudden. A sharp, electric jolt of pleasure-pain shot through her.
She gasped. Her back arched slightly, pushing her chest into his hand.
“There, you see?” His voice was triumphant, hot against her ear. He’d leaned in so close. “The body recognizes the therapeutic touch. The nerves are waking up.”
It was true. Her body was waking up, a lazy, shameful animal responding to a familiar call. The tincture’s bitterness was a memory. The cool air was gone. There was only the heat of his greedy hands on her skin, one kneading the flesh of her breast, the other sliding relentlessly lower, past the waistband, into the dark, humming warmth between her legs.
She cried out then, a short, sharp sound.
“Ssh, ssh. It’s the treatment. Let it happen. It’s just the medicine working.” His finger found its mark, a crude, insistent pressure. Her hips jerked on the stool. Her mind fractured. One part screamed, a distant, muffled thing. The larger part was submerged in sensation, in the crude mechanics of what he was doing, in the awful, rising tide of response he was expertly pulling from her. She was a vessel being emptied and filled at once.
She let her head fall back. A single tear traced a hot path from the corner of her eye into her hairline. She didn’t stop him. She just sat there, on the three-legged stool, her tunic rucked up around her ribs, and let the old man with his trembling hands perform his brutal, invented diagnosis. Her fingers gripped the rough wood of the stool’s seat, holding on as the wave built again, higher and more terrible this time, crested not by a machine but by his relentless, exploring hand.
When it broke over her, it was silent. A violent, internal convulsion that squeezed her eyes shut and locked the air in her throat. He worked her through it, murmuring about restored circulation and balanced humors.
Finally, he stopped. His hands withdrew, slow and sticky. He pulled her tunic down, a grotesque parody of tenderness. He adjusted his own clothing, the fabric rustling.
He adjusted his own clothing, the fabric rustling. The sound was obscenely loud in the sudden quiet. Mina kept her eyes closed, listening to the frantic thump of her own heart. The emptiness was back, wider and deeper than before. It yawned inside her, a cold well.
“Feeling more stabilized?” Uncle Groat asked. His voice was back to its normal, reedy pitch. He was already at his workbench, scribbling notes on a piece of parchment with a ragged quill.
Mina nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She smoothed her tunic down properly, her movements stiff. The residual pulses of sensation still echoed in her flesh, a traitorous aftershock. She stood up, testing her legs. They held.
She walked to where her shawl lay, picked it up, and wrapped it around her shoulders. It offered no real comfort. She just needed to be doing something.
“The Guild will be pleased,” Groat muttered, not looking up. “The data on post-therapeutic somatic response is unprecedented.”
Mina’s gaze drifted to the harness, now hanging limply from the hook again. It looked innocent. Just leather and brass. She looked at the five silver coins she’d left on the crate. They gleamed dully.
She walked over and picked them up. They were warm from her earlier grip. She closed her fist around them. The transaction was complete. She should go. She should walk out, buy the fig wine, and never come back.
Her feet didn’t move.
The image of Thom’s quiet, worried face flashed again. The disappointment in his eyes when she came home with a story that never quite added up. The guilt was a physical weight, a stone in her gut. But underneath the stone, the hum was still there. A low, insistent vibration. The ‘treatment’ hadn’t cured it. It had fed it. It had shown her the hunger, and now the hunger was awake.
“Uncle Groat?” Her voice was small.
“Hmm?” He glanced up, the quill pausing.
She swallowed. The words felt thick and dangerous. “You said… the data was good. For the Guild.”
“Excellent. First-rate.”
“Is there… more data you need?” She couldn’t believe she was asking. The stone of guilt grew heavier, but the vibration grew stronger, meeting it, challenging it.
He put the quill down slowly. His shiny eyes studied her. He saw the flush still on her throat, the loose tendrils of hair at her damp temples, the way her knuckles were white around the coins. He saw the conflict, and he saw the opening.
“Well,” he said, drawing the word out. “The initial physiological mapping was a success. But for a truly robust study… one needs to test endurance. Sustainability of the corrective benefits.” He steepled his fingers. “It would require a longer session. More… comprehensive measurements.”
Mina’s heart hammered against her ribs. “Comprehensive?”
“Stress-testing the harness’s efficacy under sustained, realistic conditions.” He stood up and walked toward her, his steps soft on the stone floor. He stopped too close again. The smell of him enveloped her. “It would be more involved. Considerably more. And of course,” he added, his gaze dropping to her clenched fist, “for a contractor’s extended time and… exertion… the Guild stipend would be adjusted. Significantly.”
He pays extra.
The thought landed in her mind, clear and terrible. It wasn’t about the harness. It was never about the harness. It was about the five silvers for the market, and the promise of more for whatever he wanted next. For whatever she could barely admit she wanted someone to take from her.
“How much more?” The question fell from her lips, naked and greedy.
A slow smile spread across his wrinkled face. He didn’t answer with a number. He answered with his hands. They came up and cupped her face, his thumbs rubbing her cheeks. “Show me you’re committed to the research, girl. Then we’ll discuss the budget.”
He leaned in and kissed her. It wasn’t grandfatherly. It was deep and wet, his tongue pushing past her lips, claiming her mouth. She tasted the bitterness of the tincture, the onion, his age. Her stomach lurched, but she didn’t pull away. A part of her mind detached, floating up to the ceiling to watch the beautiful, busty housewife being kissed by the old inventor in his filthy workshop. The other part melted, liquid and compliant. Her hand opened, and the five silver coins clattered onto the floor, forgotten.
He broke the kiss, saliva threading between their mouths. “The workbench,” he breathed, his eyes burning. “Realistic conditions. Now.”
He took her arm, not gently, and led her to the heavy, scarred table. He swept aside a tray of gears with a crash. “Bend over. Hold the edges.”
She obeyed. The rough, oil-stained wood bit into her palms. She heard the rustle of his clothes again, the sound of his buckle, the drop of his trousers. Her skirt was pushed up, bunching at her waist. The cool air hit her bare skin. She was exposed, presented to the room, to the blind gaze of the clockwork doll.
He didn’t touch her with his hands this time. He used the head of his cock, blunt and insistent, to nudge against her. She was slick from his earlier ‘treatment’, from her own pathetic, ready arousal. He rubbed himself through her folds, a crude, teasing gesture.
“Please,” she heard herself whimper into the wood. The shame was a fire in her cheeks, but her hips pushed back, seeking pressure.
“Please what, my dedicated contractor?” he grunted, still rubbing, maddeningly slow.
“Please… take the measurements.”
He chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. And then he did.
He slammed into her in one brutal, deep thrust. No tenderness, no preamble. Just a hard, filling invasion that stole her breath and made her fingers claw at the bench. She cried out, a ragged gasp of shock and raw, undeniable pleasure.
“Fuck,” he hissed, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. “Oh, yes. The structural integrity is… remarkable.”
He set a punishing rhythm, each thrust jolting her forward, making the bench scrape against the floor. The sound was obscene: the slap of flesh, his ragged grunts, her own choked moans, the metallic scent of the workshop now mingled with the musk of sex. It was raw, it was mechanical, it was exactly what some deep, broken part of her had craved. This was no whispered sin in a hayloft. This was a transaction on a grease-stained table, and her body was the currency.
He fucked her like he was testing a machine to destruction. One hand fisted in her long black hair, yanking her head back. The other stayed anchored on her hip, pulling her back onto him with each drive.
“You like this, don’t you?” he panted into her ear. “You cheating little whore. Your good man thinks you’re at the market. And you’re here, getting your perfect cunt absolutely ruined for a few extra coins.”
The filth from his mouth was another violation. It lit her up inside. Tears streamed down her face, but her ass pushed back to meet him, taking him deeper. “Yes,” she sobbed, the confession ripped from her. “Yes, I like it.”
His pace became frantic, erratic. His grip on her hair tightened. “Then take the full dataset. Take it all.”
With a final, brutal series of thrusts, he shoved deep and held there. A hot, wet pulse flooded inside her. He groaned, a long, shuddering sound of release.
He stayed there for a moment, collapsed over her back, his weight pressing her into the bench. Then he pulled out, soft and wet. The sound of him fastening his trousers filled the silence.
Mina didn’t move. She stayed bent over the bench, her cheek pressed to the wood, her body throbbing and spent. The well of emptiness was now a chasm.
He walked to a small, locked strongbox on a shelf. She heard the click of a key, the chink of coins. He came back and placed a heavy stack of silver in her line of sight, on the bench next to her face. It was triple what he’d given her before.
“For your exhaustive work,” he said, his breath finally steadying. “The Guild appreciates thorough contractors.”
She pushed herself up, her body aching in new, profound ways. She didn’t look at him. She gathered the new coins, adding them to the ones she scooped from the floor. The weight in her palm was substantial. It would buy a lot of fig wine. It would buy a whole new dress. It wouldn’t fill the chasm.
She straightened her clothes, not meeting his eyes. He was already back at his parchment, making notes.
“I’ll see myself out,” she said, her voice flat.
“Of course. And Mina?” She paused at the door. He didn’t look up. “Next week. Same time. We’ll test the… vibration attachments. I’ll have the supplemental fee ready.”
She didn’t answer. She opened the door and stepped into the alley. The sunlight was harsher now, the sounds of the market cheerful and distant. She started walking, the coins a heavy secret in her pocket, the feel of him already drying on her thighs. She didn’t head for the market. She turned toward the river, where she could be alone for a while, before she had to go home and be a wife.