Dear Diary,

It looks like this is taking longer to get written down than I thought it would. I took a break from writing yesterday, and just relaxed. Well, I relaxed as much as I can these days. But I digress. I was talking about the accident at the lab.

When I awoke, I was lying on my back, Jurgen's beautiful face filling my vision. He was sobbing, calling my name over and over.

"Ack!" I said. I'm really eloquent when I wake up.

"You're alive! Thank God!" he said. "There was no way to tell, no way." he broke down again for a moment, then seemed to rally himself.

"All right. Gotta get calmed down. Gotta get you out of this. What the hell has happened to you? Jesus."

I sighed softly, in what I hoped was a reassuring way. I felt a lingering desire for the incredible feeling I had just experienced. I wanted to go back to that place of light and heat and joy. The noise got a response from Jurgen.

"Oh! What am I doing?" he said, to no one in particular. He looked into my eyes, or at least, into the lenses of my helmet. I was still wearing the suit!

"Are you all right in there? Can you breathe okay?"

I answered "Uh-huh" to each question through a tightly closed jaw. Something seemed to be wrong with my mouth.

"How do you feel?"

The something wrong was that I couldn't open my mouth, it was clamped shut. I spoke through closed teeth. I must have sounded silly.

"I'm fine. I feel. strange but, God honey, that was the greatest feeling I've experienced in my whole life."

"It was? But. you screamed."

"I usually do when I come." Always the subtle diplomat, that's me.

"Oh. Well, at least your mind seems to be okay. but jeez, something happened- look at the suit!"

I tried to sit up. That was when I realized why I felt so strange. I couldn't move. I don't mean I was paralyzed. I could feel my muscles flexing slightly within whatever was holding me firm. And each time I did I felt amazing tingles of warmth shoot through me from wherever my skin slid within the suit. It felt wonderful, but it wasn't normal, and that scared the hell out of me, so I stopped trying to move. I didn't want to stop, mind you. It felt very, very nice. Like sexual sensations. Wonderful, really. But I could tell that something was very wrong with me, and I was more than a little frightened.

I was breathing okay, but with some difficulty. I realized that I was embedded inside something rigid. I could only breathe by exhaling, forcing the air out of my lungs, since whatever had me in it's grip didn't allow my chest to expand at all.

"Um, I can't seem to move right now," I said nervously. "Why? What's wrong with the suit?"

"It's ah, well, for one thing, it's not purple any more. It's black. I thought maybe it had gotten really hot or something."

"No, at least I don't think so. I feel fine. I felt a little warm when I was. when it. well anyway, I'm not burned or anything."

"And it's a lot shinier than it was too," he added.

"Huh. Well right now, it's also rock solid, and I want out."

"Don't worry hon, we'll have you out of there in no time," my love told me. He glanced at his watch. "Shit! The others will be here any minute,they're supposed to come in early! I've got to get you out of here!"

He tugged at my arm.

"Listen hon, I can't seem to budge your suit- it's gone completely rigid."

So that was it!

"No kidding, really?" I shot back. "I can't move. Heh. This could be great fun, if I weren't so scared."

"What on earth possessed you to. never mind. We'll cover that later. Um, are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah. I feel good. Really good, actually. I mean, every time I move, I get these incredible sensations, like sex, only on my skin. whatever I move. or um, try to move."

I paused to take stock of my body, trying to move something, anything. Once again, waves of pleasure shot through me, but it was a fruitless exercise. I tried turning my head, opening my jaw. Nope. It was as if I were cast in stone.

"Okay, listen honey- I'm going to take you home, okay? We have to get you out of here before my partners show up. They would flip if they found out! Okay, here we go- Oof!"

To my amazement, he picked me up, and with some difficulty, carried me to the door. My husband is a scientist not a linebacker, and I knew he couldn't carry me very far. At the door, he had to set me down again, and turn me around, then pull me by the shoulders through the narrow doorway. I was completely helpless. He tried to pick me up again, but the heroic effort he'd made in the lab must have worn him out. He couldn't do it.

It's not that I'm heavy, mind you! I'm in great shape. But the only exercise my husband gets is popping the top on a Coke while starting into a computer screen. He had to drag me the rest of the way to the front door.

He got me to the outside door and dragged me through, when an amazing thing happened. Suddenly, I could move! I couldn't see as well, since it was dark out, but I wiggled, and he nearly dropped me in shock.

"What the hell?" he said. He set me carefully on my feet. "It softened! Thank God, it must have been a temporary effect. Do you feel okay, hon-can you walk?

I nodded. But as soon as I started to move, those same amazing, delicious sensations coursed through me, from all over my body now, as the tight suit slithered around my lubricated skin. The little dildos that I'd put back in were still rockin' and rollin' too. I moaned and came to a halt, shuddering.

"What is it? What's wrong?" my hubby asked. There was panic in his voice. He must have thought something terrible had happened to me, that I must be suffering.

I turned slowly, carefully, so I could keep my thoughts coherent.

"I'm fine. It just feels. TOO GOOD," I said slowly.

"What?! What does?"

"Everything, moving anything feels like, well, like I said, like sex! My whole skin feels like one big erogenous zone!"

He stared at me then, as he might have stared at a particularly interesting insect that had wandered onto his desk.

"Well. I'll. Be. Damned." he finally said. "But other than that, you're sure you're all right. Nothing else is wrong?"

I nodded silently, the suit silently making love to my neck and scalp as I did so.

"Right then, let's get you home." He fairly dragged me to his car, while I tottered and stumbled on my stiletto heels. Ignoring my protests and moans of excitement, except to ask once if I was still okay, he stuffed me into the passenger seat, and took off like a shot. I nearly came just climbing in.

When we got home he pulled me inside, turned on the light, and I promptly froze. That's when we figured it out; That the suit is light sensitive. In the bright light of our front hall chandelier, I was frozen solid, the suit having once again turned as solid as marble. I figured it out right away of course, it took my husband a little longer.

"What's wrong?" Jurgen asked, not realizing why I had stopped. He closed the door behind us and grabbed me by the wrist, and as soon as he did, the truth dawned on him. He turned out the light. I could move again. He turned it on, I became a statue. Or rather, the suit did, and since I was stuck inside it, I was just as immobilized. He turned the light off again. I moved my arm, letting him know I could move. I should mention that "move" is relative. The suit was as restricting as it had been when I first put it on. The heavy boning on the corset for example, made it quite impossible for me to bend at the waist.

He took my hand and guided me into the living room, sat me in a chair, turned on the light. He tapped on the suit with a pen. It made a hard click, as if I had been carved from granite.

"Damn. This is very interesting. I guess I can't go back to the lab-there's no way I can leave you alone like this," he said.

He called the lab, leaving a voice mail message that a family emergency had come up, and then started examining me in earnest.

"Well, interesting suit or not, we've got to get you out of it so we can check you out. There's no telling what changes have happened to you. I want to get you to a hospital." So saying, he turned the dimmer until the lights were softer, and we found that the suit gradually became softer as the light dimmed.

"Huh. Okay, I'll be right back." He pounded upstairs and back again, and I saw a gleam in his hand. He had the key to the little lock I'd put on the corset flap. He turned me over and fumbled behind me. I felt, rather than heard the click as the lock was removed, then I heard him swear softly.

"Well, I'll be damned," he said softly.

"What?"

His tone worried me. He turned me back over, and examined the collar of the suit. He plucked at it, tugged at it.

"Son of a bitch." he said. I hadn't heard him swear this much in one day for as long I'd known him. I was getting really worried now.

"What's wrong, dammit?" I said, alarm rising in my throat.

"It's just that. Well, dammit, your helmet seems to have melted some."

"What!" I said. I was on the verge of panic now.

"Now hold on a second," he soothed, in his best Daddy-will-fix-it voice, "don't get excited. The suit material where the neck meets the helmet appears to have ah, sort of welded together. In fact, I can't see any of the glue seams where the suit was put together, it's sort of smoothed out. Neat effect, really, but it's going to be a lot harder to get it off you. I don't think we can stretch that mouth hole around your entire body. Hmm. I'm just going to have to cut it off, I'm afraid."

"You've got to be kidding!" I yelled, "this suit cost us nearly three thousand dollars!"

"Right!" he retorted, "What's more important: your health, or a piece of fun clothing? I'll buy you another one, for God's sake!"

I fumed, but I did it silently. To be honest, I was worried too, and while I really felt fine, I wanted to be checked out by a doctor.

He came back with a pair of bandage cutters from the first aid kit. I was grateful, considering I didn't particularly want my skin sliced open. He couldn't get the blunt lower edge to penetrate. Not to be defeated, he pulled a fold of the suit away from my skin. The bandage cutters wouldn't nick it.

"Huh," he said, and left the room. He came back with the Fiskars shears from my sewing kit. They're really sharp, I've cut myself with them more than once. They didn't even mark the suit. Jurgen looked up into my eyes, which admittedly, he probably couldn't see through the dark lenses.

I stared back anyway.

"Toto," he said seriously, "I don't think this is latex any more."

"Very funny," I said, "then what is it? Come on, get me out of this!"

"I'm working on it, I'm working on it. And to be honest, I don't KNOW what it is. But I do know that no rubber I've ever seen resists a good sharp pair of scissors! Lemme try something else. Hold on a sec."

He disappeared again.

I heard him go down to his lab / workshop in the basement. When he returned, he had a pair of heavy duty metal cutting sheers in his hand. Needless to say, they didn't work. I was beginning to get the idea at that point, but it took a lot longer for the real truth to sink in.

"Okay hon, I want your permission to try a knife."

"Hey, wait a damn minute here! Lemme think," I said. Then I had an idea. "This reminds me of when we did the body cast thing, remember? So what if you."

I saw the light go on over his head, and he took off again. He returned in a few minutes with the cast saw he had bought a few years ago, when he had put me in a plaster cast.

He turned the room lights up full and the suit became rigid. He turned the saw on, and I winced at the awful whine it made. I had to remind myself that the oscillating blade wouldn't cut skin, just the hard, rigid suit material.

He pressed the blade against the whatever-it-was, and it made an awful racket. After a moment, I noticed it wasn't making any dust. He took the saw away and looked down in amazement. There wasn't any sign of his efforts except for a slightly glossier area on the already shiny material.

"Um," he said.

"No go, huh?"

"Nope. Lemme think a moment."

After a long pause, during which I mentally kicked myself a thousand times for meddling with that damned machine, he spoke again.

"Okay. What I need to do is get another sample of this material, so I can play with it, find out if there's a solvent for it, find out what will cut it, and so on."

"But I thought you said the the other researchers were going to be showing up soon," I argued.

I felt a little more calm now, since it didn't look like I was in any immediate danger. My darling was a brain- he would figure something out!

"They are. I'll have to go back tomorrow night with some latex, expose it the same way, and hopefully, I'll wind up with a material with the same properties."

"And in the meantime?" I asked, beginning to wonder how long I would have to spend in the suit.

"In the meantime, you should try to relax. You've had a long day. Why don't I put you to bed?"

.to be continued in Part 4.