Pretending Saskia - Chapter 1 and 2

Chapter 1
　
　
It all started at primary school, walking through the gates and letting go of mum's hand only to be placed next to a girl who needed a power wheelchair to get around, i knew there was something so utterly captivating and inviting about that chair from the day i saw it, i just didn't understand why at the time due to the fact i was only 5 years old, i was so glad to be her best friend and help her eat her lunch, sure she could move her arms enough to feed herself normally but i was more than happy to help whenever the need arrived. It was such a shame that the school closed down after that year though and they decided to send her off to another school different from mine, it meant that i just had to go back and play with my dolls putting them in wheelchairs made out of paper or whatever other material i could find which my parents found quite strange. That first year of primary school was 1980 and it would be another two years till i would see another person in a wheelchair but it wasn't very remarkable as it was just an old man, at that time paralyzed people never seemed to be on tv or in the newspapers to any great note and the explosion of the internet was still a very long way off.


Once i reached 9 years old i got a real nice surprise by way of mum's friend Kayla, she had dived into a pool after having a few too many glasses of red wine and broke her neck leaving her a c5 quadriplegic. One day i was lucky enough to have a good one on one chat with Kayla and i found out i had a lot to learn about paralysis as she told me about collection bags, catheter tubes and pressure sores, at the time i thought some of those things sounded a bit yukky but it didn't turn me off, now that i look back she was very open about her paralysis to me which i appreciated as i learnt more in one conversation with her than i had done my whole life to that point. To be honest before talking to Kayla i just thought people simply broke their necks and then got plonked in a wheelchair and that was that, i never gave any thought to the levels of paralysis such as a c2 or t10 etc,nor did it i even think about surgeries, bowel care or any other health complaints and complications, that wasn't really my fault though given the time i lived in and the lack of information, particularly for someone was only 9 at the time.


By age 12 i started my first day of high school, this was where my first period arrived and the throws of puberty had definitely come upon me too as i had began to develop breasts and started looking at wheelchairs in a slightly different way with it becoming a little more sexual in a sense. It was still only 1987 though and i felt as though i was getting starved of opportunities after my mum and Kayla ceased to be friends after having a fight over money, i was quite annoyed over this as i looked up to Kayla a bit and i never ended up seeing her again which was quite sad. After their spat i used to go to the library any chance i got to read any literature about paralysis that i could find hungry for even more knowledge, i was always borrowing books with pictures of paralyzed women whether it be from an sci, disease or some other way i was just so fascinated by it all, something that didn't go unnoticed by my parents.


One day after i came home from school my mother Candice sat me down and said "Saskia darling we need to talk". I kind of had an idea what she was going to bring up but i was just going to tell her that you like what you like and that can't be changed, something that didn't go down too well as after our chat i was sent to a pyschologist to apparently find out "what was wrong with me". I wasn't happy about having to go see a shrink over something that i didn't see as bad, i looked around my house and at my family and they all had an obsession of some sort be it football for my brother or whiskey for my dad, hell even mum liked cooking a little too much and would spend hours and hours on end in the kitchen which couldn't be healthy. Unfortunately this reasoning didn't carry much weight so after a few sessions i just made out like i was cured and the lure of big bad paralysis had been washed away never to rear it's head again, it hadn't gone though, not by a longshot as it just meant i had to be even sneakier in my methods to learn even more about this "beautiful art of paralysis" as i liked to call it.


The first few years of high school were tough, i confided in a friend my love of the paralyzed and she called me a freak and it's fair to say the next day we were no longer friends, what made it worse was that she told anyone who would listen, it even got to the teacher who chastised me saying that it was cruel and just plain sick to be attracted to disabilities, once again my mum eventually found out and i had to make a vow to swear off paralysis once again.


As my 16th birthday came and went i started to become a bit down and withdrawn due to having read all the decent literature at the library at least a dozen times and not having seen anyone in a wheelchair of any great note for seemingly an eternity, i so longed for something to happen, anything, and then i got an idea.. My idea was quite flawed and going to take a bit of guts and determination but after seeing someone with a broken leg in a wheelchair i decided that was what i was going to do..break my leg, i wasn't interested in the cast just the wheelchair, i knew i had to break it pretty good though otherwise i would just get crutches which i didn't want. I just wanted so badly to wheel around in one every day and i had no chance of obtaining one by any other means with my stupid mother having tipped off the hospital or any other place about me and my "problem" as she put it, plus they don't just give wheelchairs away to healthy people anyway so i would have to steal one which i had to admit tempted me but i thought that i should "earn it" so to speak.


For the next few weeks i threw myself into any sort of sport i could find, i was hopeless at all of them i had to say, i thought my best choice for an injury was soccer but after a few games i had barely even got a bruise. After another unsuccessful day of not being injured on the soccer field i finally had a stroke of luck when i went to run over to mum's car and somehow fell down a manhole that had been left open, my legs made a loud cracking sound as i hit the ground and i had to say it was far more painful than i wanted but at least i didn't have to worry about getting crutches as i broke both legs. The funny part of it all was almost that mum suspected me of falling down the manhole on purpose thinking it was some sort of elaborate ruse to get in a wheelchair, she was partly right but after many games of soccer throwing my legs around i then ended up accidentally breaking my legs, life is funny that way i said to myself. After all the initial pain of my breaks i was living it up in my wheelchair and enjoying every minute, i normally wasn't a girl that liked to be looked at but i loved the attention i got in it when i went back to school, everyone wanted to know what happened and why i was in a wheelchair and for how long. Naturally everyone signed my casts which went from my toes all the way to my hips making me unable to bend either leg, i wasn't into casts but i had to admit they did look quite cute on my legs with my toes poking out the end. Plus anything that got me into a wheelchair was ok with me.


While spending my time in the wheelchair was normally bliss there was just two times in the day or week that i used to hate though, bath and changing time. There comes a time where you don't want your mother to see you naked but with two broken legs i needed her help to get changed in and out of clothes as well as to bathe with her giving me a sponge bath when required so as to not get my casts wet, going through this teached me a valuable lesson though as it made me realise that if i ever intended to paralyze myself i had better make sure i had a better carer than my mum which was just embarrassing and plain awkward for all involved.


Soon the casts came off which i was happy about to a degree as i was sick of looking at them but that also meant my days in the wheelchair were over which upsetted me greatly, i was becoming quite accustomed to my two wheeler and all the attention it brought with it and i was sad to see it go. Obviously after two broken legs i had to attend therapy and couldn't believe how much my legs had shrunk in just 6 weeks, i had to admit that the look of them turned me on to a degree although it would probably would have been more fun just to break one leg then compare it with the good one which would have really shown the contrast. Therapy was good fun, they had me walking down between a set of parallel bars which would hold me up although my upper body strength wasn't that great so i made quite hard work of it, while i made my way down the line with my still jelly legs i imagined that this would be an exercise i would do if i was a low level paraplegic or someone just learning to walk again, when the therapist wasn't looking for a second i closed my eyes and imagined that was me, a t10 or something around that region that was walking with the aid of braces, it filled me with a warm feeling before i realised i probably wanted to have a worser case of paralysis than that, and if i injure myself my focus definitely wouldn't be on recovery. I did another 8 weeks of therapy going twice a week until i was considered healed and back to a normal able bodied girl, spending that time in the wheelchair gave me a taste of what i could expect though if i was paralyzed and now i wanted more..


　
Chapter 2
　
　
　
The end of high school came around which was followed by my 18th birthday then the first year of college, i couldn't wait to break away from my parents and somehow managed to con them into sending me to a university in the next state and more importantly away from their prying eyes, it was now 1994 and while still nowhere near what it is today the internet was slowly starting to creep into town and with it came images of previously unseen paralyzed beauties who were just waiting at the click of a button if you were fortunate enough to own a computer and be hooked up to what was called the "world wide web". Unfortunately for me living in a dormitory room i didn't have a computer but would often sneak into the campus library and get on the web always trying to get on a computer against a wall so i didn't have to worry about anyone peeking over my shoulder curious over what i was doing, i wanted to keep it a closely guarded secret with memories of the girl i thought was my friend ratting me out to the teacher in the early years of high school still fresh in my mind, not to mention my parents' misgivings about it all. I still remember the first time i went on one of the library computers, my hands were trembling as i typed in "Paralysis" and thumbnail images of man and woman would come up, i would click on the photos to make them bigger and just marvel at all the varying degrees of paralysis and all the tales which went with their story on how they became that way, there weren't really any groups of people sharing photos like there are now so it was mainly news reports or rehabilitation places which housed the odd photo, i wasn't exactly spoiled for choice though like you are these days so any picture of someone in a wheelchair was like finding gold, i could spend all day looking for pictures of these people but alas you were only allowed an hour at a time with everyone wanting to use the computers and probably look up whatever passion they were enamoured with. As i left the computer due to my time being up i got quite a shock when the man who had replaced me then got up again and came up to me asking "Are you into paralysis too"?. I just stood there with my mouth open completely gobsmacked.

　
I looked at this man and immediately said no, he just looked at me then asked "Well why have you been looking at all those pictures of paralyzed people then?"
"How on earth do you know that!" i scowled back thinking he must have been spying on me or something, then i thought how would he be able to when i had a computer up against the wall? that's impossible i said to myself.
"No need to look so confused" he said laughing. "When you go surfing the web you leave behind a web history that the next person can see if they want"
"Show me then" i said still not convinced, computers were still quite new and unknown so i had no idea on them at first really apart from the basics, this was 1994 after all. We walked over to the computer and he brought up the web history showing me the list of all the sites i had visited, i suddenly felt sick as i realised all the other times i had been on people would have seen this trail i had left. The man saw the mortified look on my face then said "Look if you don't want people to see what you were looking at then you clear the browsing history before you leave the computer, it wipes away all the websites you just visited without a trace"
I watched as he just pressed one simple button and all traces of what i looked at disappeared into what seemed thin air. "So that is all gone for good?" i asked
"It's gone from sight here but if someone really wanted to find out something they can always look through the registry but no-one ever does that so don't worry"
"Easy for you to say" i replied very concerned over this privacy issue.
"What makes you say that? I'm as fascinated by paralysis as you i think"
"Really? I don't think i have ever met anyone else who has been pro-paralysis, normally everyone just tells me how sick and wrong it is"
"I know what you mean but personally i think there is nothing more beautiful than the art of paralysis"

I couldn't believe he had used my line, surely he couldn't have seen that on my web history i thought so i felt an instant bond with this man who i later found out after coffee that his name was James. I had to say i was just so unbelievably happy to find a like mind and so turned on by all the topics we were discussing, after that day James told me he could get a hold of a wheelchair if i wanted to pretend, he didn't need to ask me twice as i gave him an emphatic yes. We arranged to meet outside my dorm building where he would pick me up while bringing over the wheelchair too, i don't know why i thought this but i had in my mind a vision of the power wheelchair the girl in primary school drove so i was a little disappointed when James came up bringing with him a standard issue hospital wheelchair, still it was a wheelchair none the less so i was happy to either wheel myself around or be wheeled by James when my arms got tired, it had a strap around near the legs which was cool so James fastened that tight and i almost felt a little paralyzed which got me quite flushed with excitement.


We took off for a spin around the block, i knew it was a bit risky with the chance someone from university could see me but that was just an added bonus i thought, as i wheeled along we passed a bunch of youths that all looked down at me in my wheelchair, i thought they looked like troublemakers but i was wrong as they all kindly moved off the footpath for me to go through which i acknowledged by giving them a smile, wheeling down the road was pleasuring me to no end and i almost forgot James was even behind me i was enjoying myself so much! As we got half way around the block we came up to a section that was uphill so i needed James' help, he took the handles of my manual wheelchair and pushed me up. "Need an electric wheelchair for this part" i gestured as it was far too hard for someone to wheel up this steep incline without a bit of help unless you had very strong arms. It was a nice sunny day and there were plenty of people out which made me happy, it's funny i was such a shy girl but when i got in that wheelchair i just changed and the exhibitionist in me came out.

We covered the block and took a break back at my room, my arms were exhausted and barely even able to lift up my bottle of water to take a drink. After my weary arms had helped my mouth out with some water James mentioned that he liked me, i had no idea what that meant as i had such limited experience with all of this, did he just like me as a person or something more? He was a very attractive man who could probably get any girl he wanted so why would he want me i thought, i knew that i wasn't ugly but i wouldn't have said i was a complete knockout, i stood 5"7 with dark blonde hair and brown eyes with a few freckles sprinkled over the bridge of my nose but my face wasn't covered in them, i had an ok build too i guess with enough breasts to work with and a nice bum i thought.


Then before i even had time to think he swiftly moved over and kissed me, fireworks went off and soon enough we found ourselves in my bed, i was still a virgin having never even kissed a guy or a girl let alone have sex with anyone but that all changed that night. Unfortunately i also knew about as much about contraception as i did sex and after what was a magical night i realised a fortnight later that i was pregnant.


After James found out he originally made out like he was going to be there for me but after he told his parents they told him to deny that he was the father and after several heated arguments with him over it all i decided i was better off without him and told him to get lost, he ended up dropping out of his course and i didn't see him for the rest of the year. While at school I tried to conceal my pregnancy from most people until i couldn't anymore and just days after my 19th birthday gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, i was told that i could continue my studies but i couldn't have a baby living with me on campus so i rented a tiny shoebox one bedroom apartment on the edge of town, i started receiving government benefits but still lived on a shoestring budget after paying for food and also child care when needed with my dreams of paralysis now taking a back seat to my little one who took up every spare minute i had free when i wasn't at university.

　
Three years later it was 1997 and i finished my university course while also bringing up my daughter who i had named Zarita after the girl i knew in primary school for that solitary year. Zarita was now 3 and after being roasted by my parents at the time for being so irresponsible in getting pregnant they had calmed down by now and came down to see her for every birthday and Christmas. In the three years since i had given birth i had sworn off dating with the experience with James keaving me with a sour taste in my mouth although i got something beautiful out of it all in Zarita. I noticed as she got older and started to be a little less needy that my urges to become paralyzed were now starting to come back stronger than ever, over the last 3 years i had been concentrating mainly on my studies and Zarita but just recently i had been working things so i could touch base again with my one true love outside of my daughter. That first time i logged on the computer again after such a long absence was like heaven, there seemed to be so many more pics up now and even some groups appeared to be forming which made me happy to no end. I was probably even ready to start dating again..