Don’t worry, it’s fictional. I’m working on a book and having a tough time figuring out how the dastardly killer restrains Our Heroine. He’s got to cuff or shackle her to something you’d find in your average hunting/fishing shack. He’s done this before, is very methodical, and wouldn’t attach her to something he thinks she might be able to move. (No heavy furniture, in other words.) Has to be something a normal sized person isn’t going to be able to shift or break without tools.
What are some good options? Plumbing? Are there regular standard toilets that have sturdy pipes connecting them to the wall? (Mine’s a flexible hose thing.) I need a bathroom or closet or other small room for story purposes. Or I guess he could just have sunk an eyebolt into a concrete floor, but I was kind of planning on there being a crawlspace.
Anyway, if you had a girl and some handcuffs and a fishing shack and you don’t feel like cutting her up into little pieces until after Jeopardy’s over, where would you attach her?
Is this a habit of his? If he’s spent time preparing for this he could have set up a metal bar bolted to (or even through) a wall. Otherwise I’d say that old iron water pipes would be the best bet. Newer plastic types wouldn’t seem sturdy enough.
An external radiator is the “classic” imprisonment point. I haven’t seen one in a house in forever, although hotel rooms seem to, and a rural shack very well may have one. The pipes under a sink can be sturdy. Around the toilet itself or the tank/toilet junction would be good, unless she is a Boondock Saint, in which case he’s screwed.
Does he plan to put one cuff on her, and one cuff on the sturdy thing, or cuff both her hands around the sturdy thing? The second would be much more secure, especially if he does it behind her back.
Hands behind her back cuffed around a sturdy point. There’s definitely plumbing but no radiators - this is South Carolina, man. Cuffing her ankles is a good idea.
Thing is, she does have to be able to escape because nobody wants to read a lighthearted mystery where the main character dies in a bathroom in the end. So it can’t be too secure.
If he plans to keep her for a long time, keeping her near the toilet makes sense. If it were me, I’d probably have a couple of lengths of fairly light chain and do all four limbs to something different. Then she can move about and tend to herself, and if any one point fails there’s still three backups. The important thing, of course, is to make sure that there’s no tools or sharp objects within reach.
I’d put her in the bathroom, stripping out the shower stall door, all the cabinet doors, the toilet seat, mirror, etc.; wrap a chain around the base of the toilet, another chain around the sink’s piping, and then screw or bolt two more chains to the floor or the wall if you have a beam finder.
Of course, if you’re hoping that your character finds a way to escape, doing it how I’d do it isn’t going to be the right choice.
Well she could always climb up and take the light bulb out of the fixture, crack it open, and pick the locks of her cuffs, or find a nail that she is able to slowly work free. Humans are pretty inventive buggers in a tight spot.
He’s planning on keeping her there for more than a day, at least. The problem is, obviously, once you come up with a reasonable way to keep her there it’s hard to come up with a reasonable way for her to escape. Slipping the cuffs is an easy answer but probably not a realistic one - I was toying with the idea of one wrist being swollen from the struggle when he puts her there and the swelling going down because she’s chained to a cold toilet for a couple days, but I don’t know if that would really work.
ETA - or the nail idea, that’s pretty good.
ETAA - my killer’s a cop, so it’s unreasonable to expect that he doesn’t know how to cuff somebody securely, by the way. He’d put them on tight.
ETAAA - even though you know that you should totally still buy my book when I finish it and get that six figure advance.
I’ve always thought that if I needed to handcuff somebody to immobilize them and I didn’t have anything handy to cuff them to, I’d cuff one wrist to the opposite ankle behind their back.
If the cabin has no interior walls, there could be a few support columns that bear the load of the roof. She could be handcuffed to one of these columns.
I’ve never seen a house or apartment in Europe that didn’t have a radiator. If this is such an important plot point, then maybe the OP should consider moving the setting of her story from South Carolina to Moldova.
