Dateline Singapore 17 March 1976

The Justice Ministry has authorized the use of corporal punishment for female smugglers and other airport offenders under 25. The new initiative is an entirely voluntary sanction and will only be used on young women summarily convicted of minor offenses.

With mounting pressure to reduce the Singapore’s female prison overcrowding problem a new youth initiative has been announced. Fahshan Singh, a spokesman for the Justice Ministry, told reporters that the crisis was entirely due to young female offenders coming back from vacation and bringing in small amounts of drugs for their personal use.

“Obviously we cannot avoid custodial sentences for some and our police intelligence suggests that the real culprits are men forcing girlfriends into bringing in contraband. Added to this is the growing trend for young sensation seekers going to the US and Europe and being corrupted,” he said.

In response, young woman under 25 will be given the option to take a well-deserved spanking instead of receiving a custodial sentence.

Reception has been mixed, with women’s rights organizations suggesting that women should not be singled out in this way. Others are saying it sends the wrong message about a modern Singapore. But supporters have pointed out that it is men who are being discriminated against and anything that reduces prison overcrowding has to be considered.

The punishment will consist of a sound spanking and controversially will be administered by hand over the knee on the bare bottom.

The policy will be rolled out for a three month trial but already the first young volunteers have experienced the long arm of the law and have taken a good spanking.

A young woman identified only as Serene was one of the first to get a sore bottom. Her only  comment was, “It hurt.”

*Please note this is a spoof.

Kate Francis had been driving for hours and the short cut was beginning to look like an extensive detour. Why was driving America always such fun in the movies, she thought as she looked down at the air-con; is that thing even working? She tapped at it angrily, taking her eyes from the road.

She looked up just in time to see the sparsely wooded yellow-grass verge coming towards her and she quickly levelled off.

A bead of sweat rolled down her lightly tanned frown-crinkled forehead into her polished brown eye and she swiped at the sting in irritation. Her once pressed white business blouse was sticking to her now, and she could feel a nasty trickle down her butt crack under her smart pants.

She shot glance at the driving mirror and saw that although her dark mascara was holding up well, her formerly neatly tied back hair was becoming frayed so that even the dark brown ends frizzed almost silver where they caught the light.

Then a scream of a horn on the bend dragged her attention back to the road and she narrowly missed an oncoming pick-up.

“Jerk-off,” she screamed at the driver as his vehicle retreated in her mirror.

She was still glowering at it as she crossed the county line and almost missed the sign that announced Cade County, established 1828.

“Where the goddam fuck is this?” she cursed and reached, half looking, for her route map.

As she did so her sunglasses, which up to then had been perched on top of her head, tumbled and she made a clumsy grab at them. This time the car was less forgiving of her inattention and she slewed at the corner and found the ditch; taking down a hazard sign in the process.

*

As far as Kate could tell she was unhurt, but the same could not be said for the car. She was still cursing her luck when a loud shrill hoot made her start. She whirled around to see a white Plymouth cruiser slow to a stop behind and the words Cade Count Sheriff’s Department embossed in Black and Gold on the hood and down the doors.

The severe looking hard-faced 30-something woman at the wheel looked pissed. But it was the small confederate flag incorporated into the police badge on the door that raised her hackles. This was the last thing she needed: a female red-neck small town cop.

At almost five-eight, the dark-blonde deputy was half a head taller than Kate. Her beige uniform with piping was immaculate, an image topped off by mirror shades and white badged-sheriff’s hat. She looked in good shape and might have been half pretty if she hadn’t been a cop.

“You alright there ma’am?” the woman drawled.

Here we go, Kate sighed, rolling her eyes up.

*

Terri Vaughn first saw the Mustang as it swerved at the bend. The reckless road position, at just on the speed limit, made her palm itch and set her teeth on edge. With kids you could never cut any slack. Fifteen years in the Cade County Sherriff’s Department had taught her that much.

Then she saw that it was a woman driver with New York plates. She looked respectable enough and had probably been on the road for hours. Well if she was just passing through then Terri didn’t need to make it her problem.

Then the driver seemed to duck down behind the wheel as if reaching for something and the car began to slide. It peeved her to think that some poor fool was about to become road kill and all she could think of was the accident reports she would have to deal with. I’m such a bitch, she berated herself. But the truth was, she hated paperwork like some folks hated cockroaches or warm beer.

But before she could even call it in or even get alongside the ditch-laden wreck, the woman driver got out and dusted herself off. Thank the heavens for passing mercies, Terri thought, she really hated paperwork.

As she pulled up she announced herself with a burst of siren and began to appraise situation. The woman looked like city folks from up north, which tallied with the plates. Her clothes were good, if a little unsuited to the Tennessee summer and she was wearing the lower half of an expensive looking pants suit with a blouse that looked like nothing in store back in town.

So long as the damn fool wasn’t drunk then this was a small write up and a ‘let’s be on your way,’ Terri hoped.

“You alright there ma’am?” she called over.

At once the woman stiffened and rolled her eyes like a teenager Terri was more used to dealing with in these situations. She looked around 30 and fairly pretty, if you got past the ‘important business’ image.

“I’m just fine and dandy,” the woman spat back, “Just look at this fucking thing.”

Terri frowned at this. The sneered sarcasm was perhaps excusable, but Terri had been brought up to believe that people, especially women, did not curse like that. Darn it, if she had spoken the f-word in front of her ex, let alone her folks, even at 30, she would have been invited to the woodshed, Cade County deputy or no.

“Maybe if you had taken a little more care at the bend then this might have been avoided,” Terri suggested.

“Maybe fuck,” the woman cursed again, “Maybe if these goddam roads and signage weren’t so far up hicksville’s ass then I would have seen the curve in the road.”

Terri’s jaw tightened. The woman was in shock, but all the same…

“I assure you ma’am, the signs meet state requirements and the road is perfectly maintained for the correct speed,” Terri said in a hard neutral voice.

“You saying I’m speeding now,” the woman spat angrily, “Oh that’s just typical of small minded America. Okay, okay, I get it, how much is this going to cost me?”

Terri froze and the native tick at her right eye, the one that she got whenever she had to supress annoyance, moved into her sinuses. Everyone knew that Terri Vaughn wasn’t above cutting through the bull when the need arose. There were ways and means for keeping the mayor’s daughters’ records clean without resorting to paperwork. But she never took a bribe, not even in kind. If anyone did make with the generous to make a problem go away, then there had to be a public benefit and all cash went to local charity.

The woman reached into the car for her purse.

“Ma’am,” Terri said icily, “I can point you at a mechanic and a decent hotel, but can I strongly suggest…”

“Oh I bet you can,” the woman sneered, “Some of your cousins no doubt. What? You get a slice of the action do you?”

*

“I’m just fine and dandy,” Kate said irritably. I am not dead, if that’s what you mean; she thought, and then muttered under her breath “Just look at this fucking thing.”

“Maybe if you had taken a little more care at the bend then this might have been avoided,” the woman said, but there was more than a supressed criticism in her tone.

“Maybe fuck,” Kate groaned, irritated at having the obvious stated. But the way she remembered it the bend had come at her from nowhere, as if someone wanted her to have a crash, so she muttered angrily, “Maybe if these goddam roads and signage weren’t so far up hicksville’s ass then I would have seen the curve in the road.”

Maybe the hick crack was too much, she immediately regretted, but for fuck’s sake, she didn’t need this.

The deputy said something officious, but Kate wasn’t really listening, but then she heard, “correct speed,” as if it had some significance.

Here we go, I might have known there would be a shake down, Kate groaned inwardly. Maybe she could smooth things over with a contribution. But she couldn’t help being annoyed.

“You saying I’m speeding now,” she snapped angrily, “Oh that’s just typical of small minded America. Okay, okay, I get it, how much is this going to cost me?”

Kate could have sworn the woman had smiled like a cat with a mouse as she suggested that she could set her up with a mechanic and a hotel. Just how long did the damn cop think she was going to stay in this dump anyway?

“Oh I bet you can,” she groaned, unaware that she spoke her next thoughts aloud.

“You know what ma’am,” the cop bristled, “Reckless driving, damage to county property, attempting to bribe an officer of the law… I am going to have to run you in until we clear this up.”

As she spoke she pulled the cuffs from her belt and turned Kate about so that she was facing the wreck of her car.

“Wh-what the fuck?” she gasped.

The handcuffs pinched a little as they clicked into place and then like a bad movie she heard her rights calmly and clearly in her ear.

*

Cade County Sheriff’s office was a small red brick building that had been built back in 1929 to replace the old one deemed too small for the needs of the 20^th century. It had a front communal area with two desks and two interior doors. One leading to the sheriff’s own office and the other to a short corridor to the rest room, off which were three large cell cages.

All the way there Kate had sworn at the stone face cop announcing that she was a freeborn American and that they had no idea who they were messing with.

None of this had made the least impact on Terri, and Kate had been thrown in cell nearest the door still wearing the cuffs and abandoned there to sit on a rough stained mattress on one of the two iron bunks.

“You can’t do this to me,” she screamed.

Terri, who had been about to walk out into the front office, paused at these words and made a slow turn before peering sternly over the rims of her mirror shades to drawl, “Oh yes I can.”

She waited a moment to let the words sink in and then she was gone leaving Kate to the afternoon heat.

*

The sun was orange red and slanting through the small cell window before Kate heard the least sound from the outer room. By then she was cursing the name of Cade County and her arms ached. Even then it was a while before the door opened and Terri returned carrying an old battered chair and unlocked the cage door.

Setting the chair down in the middle of the cell, the deputy dropped down astride facing backwards to regard Kate with a hard stare.

“You calmed down yet?” Terri asked conversationally.

Kate sucked in her cheeks and glowered back without answering.

“I see,” Terri sighed.

“You can’t keep me here,” Kate said sullenly.

“I certainly can’t,” Terri agreed, “The sheriff’s gone fishing and we only have one other deputy. We just don’t have the facilities.”

Kate was about to speak when Terri made tut-tut with her mouth and sternly wagged her finger.

“You see the thing is ma’am, my only recourse is to run you up to the county jail,” Terri explained, “It is an old-fashioned kind of place that dates back to the ‘30s when we last got any investment in law enforcement around here. The women’s wing is…” here she made a pensive hissing sound, “well frankly, it’s kind of brutal ma’am. You bad-mouth anyone half as bad as you have been shooting off at me, well then…” she paused, adding as an aside, “You ever felt a prison strap on that prissy little bee-hind of yours?”

Kate gaped. It was like Badham County, she just knew it.

“Now the only way I can get them to take you is by writing up all the charges and if I do that then all that paperwork will take quite a spell; we’re just not set up for it you see. Then it has to go to the judge. It will take at least a week to get a hearing date and make arrangements for you to see a lawyer…”

“A week,” Kate gasped in a shrill voice.

“At least ma’am, now even if I can’t make the bribery charges stick, well I reckon you’ll get 30-60 days with a fine,” Terri told the by now disconcerted Kate.

“You-you just can’t… I mean I was only…” Kate wailed.

“Well I tried to help you, tried to be reasonable, what choice did you give me?” Terri said calmly.

“I didn’t mean…”

“Besides, you got a mouth on you like a drunken sailor. If I had spoken to anyone like that, let alone the law, then I would have felt a razor strop and more across my bee-hind. Now if you were just one of the local girls then that’s how we would handle it,” Terri said with regret.

Kate licked her lips and went ashen.

“I had a job interview, just a job, you get me. I didn’t even call them. I’ll miss it now… oh shit.” Kate seemed to be talking to herself, trying to establish some normality.

“Ma’am, you have a potty mouth don’t you. If the sheriff was here it’s a cinch he would have put you across his knee by now and you would have been down at the motel feeling sorry for yourself instead of languishing here,” Terri sighed.

“I’m so sorry; please can’t you just let me go?” Kate pleaded.

“You want it handed the local way?” It was Terri’s turn to gape.

“You can’t put me in jail, you just can’t,” Kate said miserably.

Terri looked significantly about her at the cage.

Suddenly Kate stood up and angrily shouted, “Fuck you, I’m going,” before making a break for the open door.

With her hands still cuffed behind her back and Terri less than six feet away, she didn’t get far.

“You know, I tired of this 30 going on 15 attitude of yours,” the deputy drawled, “I am tired of your filthy mouth and I am tired of your snatching every olive branch I have tossed your way and breaking into little pieces. Are all of you Yankees so pig-headedly dumb?”

Kate got as far as the door to the outer office before she could get no further and kicked at it in bitter frustration.

“You know, you’re not the first kid to try that,” Terri sighed, “I remember a young lady who was busted for drink-driving. She had less of a potty mouth than you do, but twice the attitude. Old Sheriff Miller yanked down my shorts and blistered my bare bottom good for that stunt. Nothing to what my folks did, mind you…”

Kate broke off from her assault on the door and took a fresh look at her captor.

“Let me put some perspective on that for you,” Terri said wearily, “Then if you want to make out a complaints slip I’ll get you one. The judge files them under T for trash anyway, but you could always complain to the state authorities. There is always a do-gooder there happy to pander to the liberals.”

Kate was still mulling over Terri’s revelation when she was taken by the arm and led back to the cell. Then she was lost in wide-eyed confusion as the deputy sat down in the chair and tipped at the hapless traffic offender across her lap. Kate’s bottom ballooned big and full at the seat, and Terri nodded in appreciation.

“In Cade County we take these down,” Terri drawled as she efficiently worked the hook and button on Kate’s pants and eased them down her thighs.

Kate wriggled in surprise, but with her hands still cuffed she couldn’t resist. Instead she began to buck somewhat until her breath became laboured in the evening heat.

“These too,” Terri said casually as she hooked her thumb into Kate’s panties and slipped them down over her bare bottom to meet her pants around her knees.

“This… this is… oh my God,” Kate muttered frantically.

“Now ma’am I am going to give you the spanking of your life. No doubt one that you have been needing for a very long time,” Terri said sharply as she let her palm swing down like a paddle.

The crisp smack twanged back off the bare cell walls and left a clear red hand mark on Kate’s right cheek; one that was quickly matched on the left. In a very few minutes two or three dozen spanks had landed and the now mewling woman had a bottom the colour of sunset and was panting like a fat man walking up hill in summer.

Ordinarily, it would have counted as an efficient spanking; one worthy of the law. But even after five minutes Terri showed no sign of bringing it to a close and continued to spank with a will.

“Okay, yah, I get it,” Kate wailed, her voice wavering as tears mixed with her sweaty face.

In fact both women were perspiring hard in the oppressive cage, the only difference being that Terri was used to it.

“I guess you are beginning to get the idea now ma’am,” Terri drawled.

“Yes Ma’am,” Kate barked out with a snap, blinking hard.

“Do you always curse at people when they offer you help?” Terri said sharply.

“No Ma’am,” Kate gasped. But inside she knew that she probably did more often than not.

“Well I’m helping you now ain’t I?” Terri said pointedly with a volley of spanks.

“Yes Ma’am,” Kate agreed in a wail that ended in a sniff.

“Am I going to get any more trouble form you?” Terri asked, landing another swat.

“No Ma’am,” Kate answered miserably, now on the edge of open sobbing.

“Then I think you are about done for now,” Terri said, setting the girl on her feet.

The still handcuffed Kate, unable to grab her behind for a rub, danced up and down with a face inscribed with woe.

“Now you have a choice,” Terri sighed. “I can go get that complaint form for you if you want it, and write you up for the judge. Don’t worry; I’ll drop the bribery charges. You’ll only do 30 days with time served or pay the fine I expect. Or I can go and get the sheriff’s paddle from his office and we can settle this here and now.”

“But I thought…” Kate gaped, tears now escaping from her eyes.

“That was truly nothing. Just a little something from me to get your attention,” Terri said dismissively and shrugged.

“If I take the…” Kate swallowed, “The paddle, are we really done?”

Terri gave an emphatic friendly nod and almost smiled.

Five minutes later she returned with a rubberised leather paddle near three feet long with a striking head twice the size of a man’s hand. It was black with holes large enough to put a man’s thumb through. Kate counted 12.

“This is the county attitude adjuster,” Terri said proudly, “Ain’t it a doozey? Felt myself more than once.”

Kate gulped.

“You still up for it?” Terri asked.

Kate took a deep breath and answered with a tiny nod.

“Good for you,” Terri said brightly. “Turn around.”

Hesitantly Kate obeyed and felt her cuffs being released.

“Pull your pants up ma’am, I have a spare room back at my place, ‘less you want me to call the motel? Your car will be fixed in three days, I already called them, but I can get a renter by the end of tomorrow,” Terri said as she nonchalantly rested the paddle on her shoulder like a National Guardsman.

“But I thought…?”

“Nah, you learned your lesson, I guess you showed willing and now we have an understanding,” the deputy answered with a grin.

Kate let go with a heavy sigh, but strangely she felt a slight pang of disappointment.

“You want the renter ma’am?” Terri asked.

Kate shook her head. “It’ll be too late,” she shrugged.

“Sorry about that ma’am, but I got you a deal at the mechanics, he’s my cousin,” she winked. “And you’re welcome at my place until it’s fixed, with no rent. Save you some I guess.”

Kate brightened. “It’s Kate. Kind of silly you ma’am-ing me; not under the… eh, circumstances. And I’ll be happy with your offer of a room.”

“I suppose so. I am Terri by the way,” Terri chuckled. “There’s a diner down the street, I’ll join you there with your bag as soon as Billy-Joe comes in to relieve me. Shouldn’t be long now.”

Kate nodded shyly. Then at the door and finally her freedom she whispered, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome ma’am, I mean Kate.”

Kate nodded again as she unconsciously grabbed at her behind.

“Oh Kate,” Terri said, her gaze following Kate’s hands, “Remember now, no cussing, or you and me might have to have more words.”

“Yes Ma’am,” Kate gasped, but she was blushing.

No not a new feature, but I just saw this presumably perfectly innocent vanilla news picture on a non-spanking Tumblr. It was no doubt culled from a serious report about the prison system or airports and the use of body scanners.

Then beyond the obvious prominent feature of the shot I noticed the guard was wearing a certain type of glove. And people ask where I get my ideas from.

Kate Francis had just gotten off the phone from her cousin Nora. It had been tough call and her elder cuz was not happy. But at least she had finally agreed to let Kate’s apartment and oversee the new tenants; for the meantime anyway.

For Kate there was nothing much to return to Chicago for, not for now at any rate, and besides she was beginning to like Cade County. Teri Vaughn her new landlady had let out a room to her on a more or less permanent basis that was so cheap that once she took into account the difference in rent, she could almost be a lady of leisure once her Chicago apartment was let.

In any case, the job in LA had well and truly slipped through her fingers so for the time being Teri had gotten her a job as a clerk and switchboard operator in the County Sherriff’s department where Teri Vaughn worked as a deputy.

Of course there were one or two drawbacks. Before she had before there a week she had run afoul of Teri’s rather strict notions of behaviour. She had just been told that her car would be in the shop for another week and had absently let slip with an F-word.

“Oh I am sorry, I just…” Kate had apologised hastily.

She had already been warned about her smart and dirty mouth but despite her first encounter with Teri she had not believed it was of true consequence. It was just that these backwoods folks were a mite sensitive as Teri had warned.

They had both been on the porch of Teri’s small house during this exchange and Kate had felt awkward at the slip.

“You know, I don’t think you are,” Teri had sighed.

Kate had been mildly embarrassed when Teri had just got to her feet and strolled inside, but to leave her alone so suddenly was rather extreme, she had thought. But not as extreme as what followed. In a moment or two the deputy returned with a purpose and Kate immediately saw the hairbrush in her hand.

“I like you Kate, but I don’t think you were handled right growing up in the city,” Teri said casually, “You really can’t give in to that potty mouth of yours.”

“I’m sorry but…” Kate stumbled over the words as her mouth went dry; her bottom’s muscle memory way ahead of her head and what it was telling her did not yet compute.

Teri tipped the younger smaller woman easily across her lap as she sat in the swing seat and Kate found herself bottom up across her knee.

“Hey, you can’t just…” she began.

But Teri had already hauled down Kate’s sweats and panties and was lining up the flat surface of the brush.

Kate felt the sudden evening breeze where the sun hardly shone and her first thought had been that someone might be out there in the gloom watching. But it was a transitory thought as the brush landed with a sting and she yelped.

“Ow, oh come on,” Kate wailed out in pain.

But that spank was to be the first of many.

“Terri,” Kate shrieked as another spank landed.

But the deputy lay on with a will just as she had been taught, landing two dozen spanks as the city girl kicked and spluttered.

“Ooh, ouch, ah-yah, Terri, please,” Kate squealed her bare bottom now afire.

“You know I had my mouth washed out with soap for cussing like you do and not so very long ago and while you’re under my roof you’ll get the same,” Teri told her with not the least regard to her friends growing misery.

“Oh Teri,” Kate sobbed, her breathing fit for a runner at a sprint.

“Mighty hot eh?” Terri chuckled, “It is certainly mighty red.”

“Oh you bitch,” Kate gasped.

“Is that a fact,” Terri said pointedly, “I guess we have a ways to go then.”

“N-now I didn’t mean… Terri,” Kate shrieked again, “Please I’m sorry…”

The spanking lasted a good 15 minutes before Terri let up and by then Kate was hugging into her thighs rocked with tears.

“That’s a good girl,” Terri soothed, “You needed that didn’t you?”

Kate could scarce speak and could only nod as tears run down her nose and off her chin, her bottom now two hot pads of fire.

“Now to see the evening out let’s have you nose to the plank wall there so your behind can cool some in the breeze,” Teri chuckled.

“What… come on,” Kate protested, now finding the breath to complain.

“It is a matter of professional pride and tradition,” Terri said with undisguised glee, “Besides I just love seeing you city girls taken down a peg.”

“Not out here,” Kate wailed, annoyed that she had blurted out an implication that she would even consider submitting to such a thing.

“Well it’s that or another spanking, a mouth-soaping and I’ll still have your pretty nose to the wall for a spell,” Terri teased her, nodding at a waiting space.

Kate stood now, a look of horror dancing on her face. Her hands fluttered at her lowered pants threatening to pull them up, but although Terri hadn’t said so, some instinct told her that bare bottom exposure was part of the deal.

“I am so glad you are beginning to respect our traditions,” Terri giggled and then with a flash of serious intent in her eyes she made a circle with a finger and pointed at the wall again.

“Bu-but what if someone…” Kate swallowed.

“No one around that I can see, but if-n anyone happens by then they’ll get quite an eyeful,” Terri chuckled her pointing finger becoming firm.

Kate thrilled with a warm tingle at Terri’s authority and wondered at herself, but a hint of a threat by the deputy with the hairbrush sent the city girl scurrying to obey forestalling anymore consideration on that point.

“This is just so embarrassing,” she groaned.

*

Three weeks later Kate was sitting at her desk in the Sheriff’s office when Terri came in with two forlorn looking young women. It was pressing on ten at night and Kate was looking forward to knocking off, this being her one late that week, but something about the look in the deputy’s eye made her perk-up.

“Is the sheriff still in?” Terri asked.

“He headed up the street for a coke I think,” Kate answered, “But said he drop by before he called it a night.”

Kate’s eyes were firmly fixed on the two women, both of whom were around 20. Both were tall and pretty bottle blondes, but despite the cut-offs and over-indulgence in make-up, the new clerk could tell they were loaded.

“I need him to call the mayor at home,” Terri sighed.

“Hey you don’t need to do that,” one of the women snapped, “I am sure we can work something out.”

Kate frowned and looked the girls over again. The one who had spoken had face set to sneer and was dripping with entitlement. Kate knew the type from college. The other looked more inconvenienced than nervous. But they were so alike that at first glance Kate might have taken them for twins.

“You two, get out back,” Terri snapped, “You can cool your heels in the second cell while we sort this out with the sheriff.” Then as she passed Kate’s desk she dipped down and whispered, “Mayors’ daughters; caught them speeding out on highway nine with half a six-pack on the back seat.”

“So…?” Kate shrugged.

“So I need to run things by the sheriff before we handle this informally,” she hissed, “If that’s how they want it anyway.”

Kate looked at the clock and wondered if Sheriff Tate would be back before she had to go. Something at the back of her mind told her this was about to get interesting.

The Sheriff came back at a little after 10 and frowned in concern when he saw Kate still sitting there. He was a large man in his early 40s with short dark hair and sideburns that made him look a little like Burt Reynolds. The only think that spoiled the image was the slight paunch and the mermaid tattoo on his heavy right forearm.

Holding to the code of the strong and silent, he strolled into the office with his hand half hovering at his holster and cocked a quizzical eyebrow at Kate.

“Terri, I mean Deputy Vaughn is looking for you Sherriff,” Kate answered the unspoken question, “She just arrested the mayor’s daughters.”

“It figures,” Tate sighed, “Must be at least a month since I ran them in here. Takes ‘em that long to forget I guess.”

Just then the backdoor opened and Terri half-leaned into the room.

“Got Wendy and Jolene Brinkman back here Sheriff,” she began.

“So I heard,” Tate groaned, “Please tell me it is only traffic again.”

Terri snorted in amusement and nodded.

“Fetch it will you,” Tate drawled and sauntered across the room and out to the cells.

Terri smirked and shrugged in Kate’s direction before standing aside. Then once the Sheriff had gone out back she headed to his office.

“What’s going on?” Kate hissed.

“You’ll see I reckon,” Terri sighed.

Meanwhile inside Tate drew-up a chair next to the open cell and dropped into it wearily as he looked the two miscreants over and checked his watch.

“Ladies,” he said in false bonhomie, “So nice to see you again.”

“Hi Sheriff Tate,” Jolene said breezily.

Her sister, the younger by 10 months, blushed a cherry red and hunched into herself at the sight of the lawman.

“I haven’t looked at the charge sheet cos there ain’t one yet,” Tate said casually. “That is how you want to play it I guess?”

“I guess,” Jolene said with a wink.

Wendy swallowed hard and nudged her sister in the arm.

“What?” Jolene snapped angrily, “You want to go to court? You think that will sit better with Daddy when he finds out?”

Wendy blushed even more and looked at her shoes.

“Mind you,” Jolene continued pleasantly, “There is no need for Daddy to find out at all is there?”

“You know that there is,” Tate said sharply, his easy smile now vanishing as quickly as it had come.

“Oh please Mr Tate, we won’t do it again,” Wendy whined.

The Sherriff leaned back in his chair and laughed. This time in genuine humour until the younger girl was crushed and even Jolene looked uncertain.

“Okay, so you caught us only last month,” she admitted.

“Last month, the month before that and… oh yes back in May wasn’t it?” Tate said pointedly.

“I ‘spose,” Jolene shrugged. “I guess we got something coming then,” she admitted, “But… well maybe you don’t have to tell Daddy this time.”

“And then maybe I do,” Tate sighed.

“Please Mr Tate,” Wendy wailed.

“You want this on or off the books?” Tate asked. Now he was in full sheriff mode and his eyes showed some steel.

“Off, I guess,” Jolene agreed with a groan.

Wendy nodded.

Right on cue the door at the end opened and Terri came in carrying the heavy leather strap with holes. At three paces behind Kate crept in and hung back against the wall as if hoping she wouldn’t be noticed.

“I’ll just check in with the mayor and then we can…” Tate sucked in his lips and rolled his gaze between the two women, “… resolve this.”

*

When the sheriff returned Wendy was leaning against the back of the cell biting her lower lip with her arms folded. Her head was bowed and suddenly the centre of the floor was the most interesting thing in the room.

Jolene on the other hand was pacing confidently as she were waiting for a store to open.

If either girl had any doubts about the nature of the conversation with their father it was dispelled when Tate took the strap from Teri and hefted the chair he had been sitting on to take it into the cell.

The wooden legs scraped on the hard floor with an unnerving squeak and Kate jumped. Her belly had the flutters now, almost as if it were her bottom that was in jeopardy and she remembered her first encounter with Terri in this same cell.

“Quite the gentleman Sheriff,” Jolene smiled, but her voice was tight as she added, “to provide a chair for a lady to sit down.”

“You’re welcome to sit on it once we’re done,” Tate snorted, “If you still can.”

Jolene shrugged and without further preamble moved her hands to her cut-off denim shorts and shucked them down with her panties in front of everyone without a blink.

Kate sucked in her breath as the girl’s pubic triangle was revealed, completely shocked at the casualness of the affair. She was further surprised when Jolene strode forward and flopped over the back of the chair so that her bare bottom mooned the ceiling and pointed itself at the sheriff.

The curve of her bottom jutted out in profile to Kate’s position and her hair cascaded in a curtain over her head as she took hold of the chair’s sides.

Wendy looked more pensive now and had started in biting her thumb.

The strap moved in Tate’s hand before Kate even saw it. One minute he was stepping forward and the next there was a mighty swash-thwack.

Jolene’s head whipped back flaying the air with her hair, but any pretence of stoicism was surrendered to an angry shout.

This was repeated as another blow fell and then thrice more as Tate swung his arm down with an experienced force. Each time Jolene yelled and bucked until little by little her cries became moist and she gave herself over to tears.

Occasionally she twisted and turned her bottom so that Kate could see a hard swollen band of red across both cheeks extending down to her thighs, but mostly she dipped ever lower towards the seat of the chair as she literally bowed to the inevitable.

There was no definite count to the punishment, but Kate guessed around 30 swats had landed before Tate stood back to size up Jolene’s punished bottom. By then the girl was sobbing hard and her shoulders shook up and down.

“Alright, you can stand up,” the sheriff growled.

Not that Jolene moved. She continued she dangle over the back of the chair crying until Terri moved forward and helped her to her feet.

“It hurts,” Jolene sobbed, “It hurts.”

She sounded like a punished kid and without restoring her shorts to their former position she massaged at her rear end.

“Come on,” Tate said gently, beckoning to the slightly younger girl.

Wendy didn’t move.

“Come on,” Tate said again, “You can bet you’ll get worse later if I know the mayor.”

Wendy was already silently crying and sucked in air through her nose. But at the sheriff’s words she nodded and reluctantly stepped forward. She was a lot shyer than her sister at disrobing and hunched over cupping her sex before she bent over the chair. But once the paddle started its works she took the blows in silence all the way to seven or so before she emulated her sister’s distress.

Kate was agape throughout the whole episode and hugged herself as if to pin herself to the ground not quite believing what she was seeing. Inside she felt a little guilty for enjoying the scene, especially as Teri looked so dour during both punishments. But towards the end the deputy winked, reaffirming some normality.

They were so going talk about all of this over a beer later.

The rough cotton smock scratched, not that it surprised her. She was totally naked under it and even outside of a judicial institution luxury was hard to find in this far off country.

Helen was alone now. The woman from the British Consulate had left in disgust, a harassed dour woman, not yet 40, but old before her time after years of service in the far-flung corners of the world. She was one of the old school; horrified that an Englishwoman abroad should find herself ‘so misused’ as she put it.

But Helen wasn’t being misused, not exactly. She was guilty, as guilty as a tenant of hell. She had been given three options by the court. More choice than a local woman would have been given she was sure.

Firstly, she could go to a hell-hole of a prison for the next three years. Her second choice was to pay a fine equivalent to £20,000, which was equally out of the question. The third option was a flogging.

As soon as Helen had found out that the latter would be commuted to a private application within the police station she accepted it at once.

That was when her troubles had begun.

She had good reasons for privacy and had decided that however horrific a flogging would be, at least it would be discreet. And above all it would have been over and she would have been free to get on with her business.

Then the oh-so-outraged consulate woman had pulled some strings. “The sentence can be suspended,” she had said, “A simple interview to the national press to show how civilised they were and she could accept being deported.”

But the trouble was, she couldn’t accept that, or the international press coverage that went with it.

“But you don’t understand,” the consul had said, “They mean to flay your naked backside, it’s barbaric. At least let me arrange an appeal. Maybe we can prove your innocence.”

But I am not innocent, she had screamed inwardly. Now she was alone with her guilt.

*

They came for her around three o’clock.

She had spent most of the afternoon since the consul had left sitting up on the cot hugging her knees. Every once in a while she would hear were hard footsteps in the hall outside getting nearer, but then they would pass her door and fade again.

This time the sounds of feet in the hall stopped at her door.

The two women were dressed in grey uniforms with hats pulled down over their hair. Neither spoke nor barely even looked at her as they first handcuffed hands behind her back and led her out into the hall.

The slight canvas slippers on her feet were no protection against the cold stone floor and se could feel a chill all the way up her legs to her thighs to where it opened at the back. Although it seemed the least of her concerns, she wondered if the material had parted to expose her bottom and felt pools of heat on her cheeks. But she was under no illusion that her backside would be exposed soon enough in any case.

Helen was led down a dark unpainted hall that was lit only by a single filament bulb hanging from a twist of cord from somewhere above. This through the women’s faces into shadow under their caps and gave the proceedings a clinical air.

“Where are we going?” she asked, but the women did not reply.

Finally they reached two doors set at right angles at the end of the corridor. The first obviously leading to a courtyard, which Helen could see through a small window cut into it at eye level, the first true daylight she had seen in days. But the sight of it made her fear she was going outside to a public arena and she fell back dragging on the guard holding her arms.

But it was the other door that was opened and she was propelled into a large room where it was suddenly bright and she staggered in blinking hard. The room smelled of fresh paint and acrid wood as if someone had over done it with the creosote. It had the same hard floors and small high windows set eight feet from the ground. These served to illuminate the far wall and the iron-framed angled bench. But it was the figure standing next to it that held her gaze.

He was a dark-haired man with a swarthy but pleasant complexion. She noticed that he wore a dark figure-hugging western-style polo neck sweater that emphasised his tall powerful broad-shouldered stance. As she entered he looked up with a serious expression of concern and folded his arms in a way that reminded her of a teacher from school who had run out patience. His dark sympathetic eyes only supported this impression and Helen’s heart sank. Surely this was not another diplomat trying to help her, she thought.

“My name is Stefan Boyar,” he said in a stern accented baritone. “I work with the justice department and I am to be your instructor today.” His English was perfect and poised.

Helen frowned and shook her head. Instructor in what, surely he wasn’t a teacher after all? What was going on?

Behind her, the two women escorts stood back and then followed one another out as they left the room.

“For the duration of this procedure you will call me Sir, is that understood?” Stefan continued after they had gone.

Helen nodded dumbly.

“Answer me please,” he barked so that she jumped.

“Yes Sir,” Helen said quickly.

“Good,” he replied with a nod, his eyes hinting at a smile.

Before she could say more he turned to another table that had been behind him and picked up a meter length of stiff thin sticks that formed a bundle of 30 or so with a handle at one end.

“Usually we use a prison strap,” he said casually placing most of his attention on the object in his hand. “But you are a woman and a westerner…” he shrugged, “I thought that this might serve us better today.”

Helen blanched finally understanding. By westerner he implied soft.

“I see,” she said in a thick voice and straightened up.

“I see… Sir,” he snapped.

“I see Sir,” she amended.

“Good,” he smiled. “Now you are sentenced to 100 lashes; 50 today and another 50 in 28 days’ time. So we had better proceed.”

“Proceed,” she sucked in her breath and looked at the angled bench, “eh… Sir?”

“Please will you kneel on the lower portion of the bench, the pad near the floor, and bend over the higher part,” he told her, “You will find a bar to hold on to on the far side.”

“I…” Helen tugged at her smock and suddenly felt self-conscious.

“You will have the opportunity to call for a pause up to three times,” Stefan told her, ignoring her hesitancy. “Do you understand?”

Helen nodded and swallowed down a nasty taste. Then steeling herself she walked purposefully across the room and knelt as he directed. The next part was harder. She knew that without underwear her bare bottom would be obscenely elevated to his gaze all at once.

“You signed a request for no witnesses,” he said softly. “Do you wish me to bring in a woman; the English lady perhaps?”

Helen emphatically shook her head and hastened to comply with his first instruction.

The top of the bench was hard under her belly and until she was right over the lower padding hurt her knees. But as soon as she found the crossbar she was able to set herself perfectly. They must have adjusted it for her size in advance she decided. The prosaic thought distracted her from the reality of the exposure of her bare bottom to a strange man.

“Remember, you can ask me to stop three times during the procedure. Ask any more than that and it will count as a penalty. Penalties are extra stroked. Any questions?” he asked sternly.

“What else constitutes a penalty?” she managed, her voice muffled by her position bent over the bench.

“What else constitutes a penalty… Sir,” he barked, “That does for one, getting up, undue complaint, and generally any failure to cooperate. Do you understand that?”

“Yes Sir,” she nodded and strangely she felt that she should apologise.

Satisfied, he studied her firm round bottom and admired the way it curved and divided. It looked like those seen in an American magazine. Did all western girls have such bottoms, he wondered? But he had a job to do and although he was allowed to enjoy it, he shouldn’t be unjust or distracted.

“Very well,” he coughed, “we shall begin.”

Helen held her breath, blushing furiously at her obscenely displayed bottom sticking up for his inspection. She couldn’t see him now, but if she looked down under the bench she could make out a shadow moving under it like some sinister dancing ghost. She could hear him breathing and along with the faint rattle of the bundle of thin rods he held, it was the only noise in the room.

As she focused on this sound it grew louder until she was put in mind of a skipping rope. Then in one loud escalation, this whistle-crash ended suddenly in a burst of fire right across her bottom. In that instant all breath, all will and all thought were robbed from her and she was transfixed.

From above and behind Stefan saw her lurch at the first impact and she reared like a stricken pony. Then as she found her breath she let out a long sharp groan. Then as he watched her bottom flooded with pink.

The second blow got a reaction at once and Helen grunted, letting her bottom wag up and down as if trying to lose the sting.

Eight more times the rattle-crack landed with a crash and each time Helen yelled before falling back into ever more laboured breathing until she was panting like Stefan’s Alsatian, Sheba, after a summer walk. Her bottom was rose red with vivid rills in full blossom across the full extent of her rounds.

Helen was aware of none of this. She only knew the unrelenting sting. Even the sound was drowned by the blood pumping through her ears and she gripped and hauled upon the crossbar with every ounce of her will to escape the fire in her tail. But this forlorn gesture only served to elevate her bottom still more until it was a raw bubble fit to burst with pain.

Stefan admired her stoicism and adjusted his position. He would make a natural pause here to give her a chance. After all, it was only going to get worse for her. Then mindful of justice he landed another stroke down hard making her scream.

“Oh for… ahhh,” she hissed, her legs kicking at the ankles and her grip on the bar rendering knuckles white.

He aimed for the curves where she sat, bridging the faintly wrinkled gap between her thighs and bottom rounds. Here the rods chafed her hellishly and budding blisters crinkled to tiny raw welts. One or two touched her more intimately until she began to make short sharp blowing sounds like a girl skipping over hot sand without shoes.

“Please Mr…” Helen couldn’t remember his name and it was all she could do to yell out, “Sir.”

Stefan ignored such vagaries and struck her half dozen times more, taking her low and then successively higher to just under the small of her back.

“Sir, please,” she shrieked.

“You wish a pause?” he inquired, slicing the rod through the air.

She had taken 21 now, a good place for a pause. But if she were smart she would say no and take advantage of his question as an extra respite.

Helen lay bent over panting hard, conscious now of a run of moisture down the side of her nose and some snot on her lip. Her thrashed bottom had a life of its own and the pain continued to sizzle there like a fire no longer in need of kindling.

“Yes Sir, please Sir,” she gasped.

“You are doing well,” he said gently, “You are a brave woman. Tell me. Is it true what they say? Are you guilty?”

“You would beat me if I wasn’t?” she asked in a strained voice.

Stefan shrugged. It had happened and he regretted that. But sometimes foolish women were at least honest. He was bored with endless pleas of ‘I didn’t do it.’

“Well, if it makes you feel any better… I’m as guilty as hell,” Helen said sullenly.

Stefan laughed.

“I like you,” he chuckled.

He cast his gaze over her luscious curves. Even marred by dozen upon dozen fire-red raw welts, she overwhelmed him with her beauty like a force of nature. It was good to know there was some substance behind her pretty façade. It was a pity that she would never want to see him socially now, not even if she didn’t accept deportation before their next meeting.

“Hey, I like you too,” she said sarcastically, “You’re the nicest executioner-come-torturer I have ever had.”

He laughed at this, but the jibe bothered him.

“Try and take 15 more and then ask for a pause again,” he suggested earnestly. “That way you’ll still have another break with only 14 to go.”

She nodded, but sensed that break time was over and braced herself. And so it proved. But this time the sting was devil sent and she screamed in earnest. By the time he had taken her to 30 she was sobbing hard and begging for him to stop.

Although Stefan slowed the pace to eye her feather-touch raw skin closely he took her to a slow count of 36 before he verified her request. Otherwise, he reasoned she would be broken by 40 strokes and in serious danger of incurring some penalties.

For the next five minutes, three longer than the permitted break time, Helen sobbed like a woman bereft. Her bottom bucked up and down as she did so, never leaving its obscene posture in waiting submission for another round. She was a natural, he thought, some women, he had found, just needed this, even when they really didn’t want it.

“Alright, you have one more pause coming,” Stefan said gently, “I am going to give you eight more, pause, and then lay on the last six. Do you understand?”

Helen sniffed and nodded vigorously.

It was enough and he struck again, a blow that Helen announced enthusiastically before earnestly falling to boo-hooing ostentatiously.

Good to his word he guided through the last strokes until she was limp and surrendered in his care.

“The guards will come in 20 minutes. I will wait until then,” he said gently. “Your consul has a plane waiting. You will be able to sell your story to the press. Then everyone in Europe and America can gnash their teeth over my countries barbarism.”

“But I don’t want…” Helen began, misery dripping from each word, “I thought…”

“The punishment was private, but your deportation will have to be public,” he shrugged. “We can’t stop that. The airlines, the consulate…”

“What if I don’t want to be deported?” Helen asked clambering to her feet.

It was a movement she at once regretted and she clutched furiously at her throbbing bottom.

“Shit, I feel like I have been dragged for a mile on my arse by horse,” she wailed crudely.

Stefan laughed.

“I wouldn’t try sitting for a week or two,” he chuckled, “But seriously, you can refuse deportation and protect your anonymity but in 28 days…”

“I am serious, it hurts,” she sniffed back the last of her tears, “And about deportation too. I handled 50 already, so…”

Stefan grinned. He really liked this woman.

“Will you be the one… next time I mean?” she asked shyly.

“If you prefer, wild horses couldn’t stop me,” he said gently.

“Then it’s a date,” she giggled, before wincing and grabbing her bottom again, “Ooh.”

“Oh I look forward to it,” Stefan grinned more widely, this time a predatory look creeping into his eyes.

It was a look Helen didn’t miss and she blushed.

“I’ll see you in 28 days then,” she said huskily.

Taken from the New York Sun-Syracuse Herald — March 1911

Evansville, IndIndianan, March 1 — “I don’t kneed a lawyer to fight a divorce case,” said Frank Kuebler when told his wife had sued him.

Kuebler is a wealthy farmer and an educated man. His wife charged him with cruel treatment. As soon as he was informed of the suit he drove home and there faced his wife. He took her across his lap and spanked her with a slipper, according to her statements to the neighbors.

Kuebler and his wife came to her lawyer’s office here and she directed the attorney to immediately dismiss the suit for divorce.

“My wife didn’t want a divorce and I soon showed her she didn’t,” said Kuebler.

Joanna looked at her watch and then shifted impatiently in her seat. What was the big deal? She picked up the Attainder Notice again and re-read it.

The indictment read, petty fraud, tax evasion, failure to report to a hearing, failure to pay preliminary fines and assorted other picky little offences. Well the tax, late interest and all the fines had been paid now, both her manager, agent and even her damn family had insisted upon it.

No doubt they wanted to give her another financial sanction or maybe some community time, but the speculation about jail time was a joke. Joanna laughed as she remembered some of the lurid press speculation. There was no such thing as bad publicity in her game. Nevertheless these justice department people were taking their own sweet time to see her.

Joanna Gatsby gave a heavy sigh and got to her feet and went to the large picture in the waiting room. The glass plate on it gave her a reflective surface to work on her lippy; not that she needed to.

The wide-eyed ‘innocent’ that stared back at her had a practiced pout and neatly groomed piled up business-like blonde hair. The hat was a nice touch too; old-fashioned and told the world she was solid and not just another 23rd century bimbo.

It was the image that had fronted a dozen albums, three movies and a TV show on the Tri-vid; she forced a smile. What the hell, if they didn’t buy her excuses this time she would pay them off again. After all money was no object.

*

The man behind the desk wore all black. Even his hair was slicked back and shiny jet; a bureaucrat right out of central casting. The hint of grey at his temples was a nice touch though, very theatrical, he must have let it remain as a sign of authority. Maybe if this went well she would give him a date.

“Ms Gatsby,” he said officiously, “I am so glad that you deigned to attend this time.”

Joanna returned a tight smile and felt like poking her tongue out at him.

“So what’s the damage this time?” she replied in a bored voice.

“Damage?” he frowned.

“Cut to the chase, I am busy,” she yawned, “How much?”

The man regarded her with disdain and then leant in close.

“There are no outstanding fines,” he said wearily, “But you have three consecutive transgressions to your name. This time there will be… other sanctions.”

The man opened a floating console on his right and regarded the scroll of options. Not that Joanna could make them out. But for the first time she allowed herself a hint of apprehension. She thought of the serious po-faced editorials about celebrity excess and how an example was needed. She thought too of the jail option that many had thought was a forgone conclusion. Joanna decided to say nothing and sat back defiantly as if untouchable.

Finally the bureaucrat turned his attention back to the arrogant starlet and seemed to weigh something up.

“You were found guilty in absentia,” he said carefully, “You know this?”

Joanna pursed her lips and nodded.

“And you have declined an appeal and have resolved matters by pleading guilty?”

She shrugged and looked bored.

“So all that remains is the sentence,” the man said brusquely as if confident that they were making progress.

“Sentence?” Joanna asked nervously.

“Your lawyer explained?” he suddenly looked concerned.

“Y-yes,” Joanna ventured uncertainly. She had sat through a boring meeting with the lawyer and her agent and manager. “Be polite and accept the lesser option,” they had all said. That had brought her here.

“Okay then,” he sighed with relief. “Assuming you want the psychotropic-temporal option and not prison?” he waited for her to nod or agree but she stared at him blankly. So he continued, “Anyway I have to give you the prison options before you disregard them.”

Joanna gaped and was suddenly alert.

“Thirty-six months in an open prison set against 6-24 months dependent in a punitive regime; dependent on good behaviour that is,” he told. “You can apply for either and as a first-timer they would probably accede to your preference.”

Joanna blanched. Three years could kill her career but what did ‘good behaviour’ mean? A possible two years did not sound good at all.

“And the psycho what-not, what is that?” she asked with an almost eager panic.

“Yes, your preferred option your representative tells me,” the man stabbed the air, presumably set open a screen option. “It is experimental and takes between nine and 28 days,” he told her suddenly warming up to a lecture.

“Nine days,” Joanna said breezily and nodded enthusiastically.

“Well that depends on you, on your subconscious so to speak. But as you know temporal…” he launched into another boring set of words about procedures and emersion therapies that went over her head.

It wasn’t until he said “effectively it is a personal time machine” that she began listening again.

“A time machine?” she gasped.

“You must have seen the news and the hoo-ha about military training by visiting past wars and the like, well this is a peaceful application of the same technology,” he said.

“Oh yes?” Joanna thought it actually sounded fun.

“We have three options for you, it doesn’t matter what you pick, not at the moment, although opinions differ about offering choices to future candidates,” he continued.

“More options?” she said wearily. Sometimes she wondered why they didn’t just get on with it. All these choices seemed a bit mealy-mouthed for a justice department.

“Yes, you can be an inmate at a Victorian women’s prison, or at least a 23rd century idea of one, obviously we can’t actually interrupt the timeline,” he explained.

“Well obviously,” she agreed sarcastically.

He looked at her disapprovingly before continuing.

“Or there is the young ladies’ Prussian School circa 1780, quite a favourite of mine, our last young lady had an interesting side trip to 18^th century Vienna and had a bit of a grand tour…”

Joanna didn’t like the sound of either Spartan history and began to feel her heart sink.

“I can see that… well this one is our least popular strangely, but it might suit you…” he ventured.

“Yes?” Joanna leaned forward.

“You can visit the past as an exchange student in 1950s America,” he said, “Subjectively the scenario lasts at least for the duration of one summer, which is why I think it is not popular, although frankly on average they all come out the same. You see the time spent interacting is determined by the participant. But I can say that this one usually completes within two weeks real time…”

“Never mind about subjective scenarios, you are saying that this one lasts no more than two weeks?” Joanna cut him off. She wished he didn’t talk so much.

“Usually… that is… well we don’t have all the data yet, but this is the shortest real time scenario yes,” he agreed, “But there are no guarantees.”

“What if once I am in… or down whatever… what if I don’t cooperate? I mean what if I just take off and follow my own agenda?” she asked.

He frowned and looked at her hard.

“The set-up is quite robust, but if you go too far off-piste then… well you will be extracted and then I am afraid we will have to explore the prison option.

“I get it,” Joanna said quickly, “But I guess I’ll take it.”

*

For a long time Joanna was in kind of a dream. She remembered who she was and everything that had happened but somehow it wasn’t real. What was real and increasingly so was a 20-year-old New Yorker also called Joanna who was on some kind of summer exchange from college in the so-called bible belt of 1950s America.

“Is it real?” she asked no one in particular and a blurry voice answered her.

“Oh yes,” he said in a distant voice, “But don’t worry, remember you can’t be harmed or change the past.”

“But how is that possible?” she asked fuzzily.

The same voice had told her that was classified but that was a memory now and this time another answered her.

“What did you say Joanna?” The speaker was young a feminine.

Joanna blinked and worked her mouth. Her face was pressed up against glass and through blinking eyes she saw fields of wheat race by. She groaned and shook herself.

“You slept then?” the girl who had spoken was speaking again.

The inside of the bus was vivid Technicolor and smelled of bleach and lavender. The people looked like characters in a period movie only, she gasped, the details were too real.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, “This is amazing.”

Several people glared at her and the young woman sitting next to her shushed her with wide eyes. The most disapproving looks came from two middle-aged black women who immediately began talking between themselves.

“Don’t curse,” the girl next to Joanna scolded her in genuine shock. Lesley-Anne, Joanna remembered, the girl’s name was Lesley-Anne or Lanney as she was called at college.

College, she was in college with the girl and at Easter she had visited with Joanna and her folks.

“But I am Joanna Gatsby,” Joanna protested, “I didn’t go to…”

“I know that silly, mercy you have been in a deep sleep,” Lanney giggled.

“Yes,” Joanna said absently, “Yes I was, Jesus though, this is f…”

“Joanna,” Lanney exclaimed punching her arm.

Thank God I didn’t complete that sentence Joanna smirked inwardly. Then she saw the sign on the inside of the bus.

“State law requires all colored passengers to ride in the rear of the bus,” it read.

“Christ on a bicycle,” she gasped, “You are shitting me.”

There were more glares this time but not from Lanney who only blushed and looked into her lap.

“It is kind of crazy ain’t it?” she whispered, “I guess we aren’t in New York anymore.”

“Or even Kansas,” Joanna quipped.

“No silly, this is Missouri.” Lanney found her giggle again.

*

The family Joanna and Lanney were staying with weren’t related to Lanney, although she was from the state and lived in a nearby town. As the Linklater’s were good church-going people Lanney’s folks had agreed to it readily.

The Linklater’s were eager to support young people and further their education which was why they had joined the Interstate Educational Programme and were taking in students. They had a son in the army, a married daughter and one still in college like Lanney and Joanna.

Joanna knew all this as well as she knew the street in New York where she hadn’t grown up or the school she hadn’t attended and the parents she had never ever met. But under it all she was Joanna Gatsby, famous for being famous and several TV shows to her name off the back of it.

“Now girls I don’t know what you are used to in New York but here you will observe a curfew of 10 o’clock. You will be at meals on time and your rooms will be spotless,” Mrs Linklater told them pleasantly as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Joanna snorted with amusement at the quaint posturing but nodded politely and even muttered ‘yes Ma’am’ a beat after Lanney did.

“I know I don’t have to tell you not to smoke, cuss or anything like that do I?” Mrs Linklater added.

“No Ma’am,” Lanney said earnestly, but she shot a look at Joanna hoping that she wouldn’t slip up and tar them both.

“Your folks wrote to me Lanney and said I had full permission to take you in hand,” Mrs Linklater said sternly, “You know what that means?”

Lanney blushed and nodded.

“I use much the same methods I think you know, in fact your father and I had quite a talk on the telephone,” their host continued. “Yours too Joanna, your Pa said you would fit in with whatever we thought best and that it would be good for you for a change.” The woman smiled pleasantly and then added in a bemused tone, “Then he said something about Romans or Rome or…”

“When in Rome do as the Romans do,” Joanna said having no idea how she knew that, “That sounds like Dad.”

Not my Dad, Joanna bristled inwardly, but had the sense to stay quiet.

“That was it,” Mrs Linklater beamed, “What a clever man your Pa.”

*

A week had gone by and frankly Joanna was bored. I get it now, she thought, this whole time travel gig is to bore me to death. The coffee shop chatter between Frankie, Mr and Mrs Linklater’s 19-year-old daughter, and Lanney was inane. These kids don’t know anything, she groaned inwardly.

Still she had an uneasy feeling she wasn’t getting it. For one thing she had had time to think about subjective days versus actual days out there in the future. Joanna was beginning to think that although two weeks away from her precious career didn’t matter she could be stuck in this historical theme park for weeks from her perspective.

“Hey, what do you say we skip out and find us some action later,” she said suddenly to the two dumbstruck girls. “There must be a bar in this town or what about a movie house? Maybe we could hook up with some boys.”

The last thought made her grin. Of course, this place was full of young men not getting any. And she had been told point blank that she couldn’t alter the past. Sex with no consequences, what a hoot, and this was supposed to be a punishment. Hell, with what I know I could rule this planet if I had long enough.

But even as her fantasy played out in her head she was suddenly aware of the look of anguish on Lanney and Frankie’s faces.

“Are you nuts?” Frankie gasped, “My Mom would slay us.”

Joanna scoffed at this and rolled her eyes up.

“What is she going to do? Ground us?” she snorted.

The trouble was that the experience of this 1950s Joanna from New York was lacking in certain areas; mainly areas on which they were all at that moment sitting. It was an embarrassing and painful fact of life which any self-respecting unmarried woman living in Missouri was all too aware.

“I-I had better go,” Frankie muttered and without waiting she hastened off.

“I know you were only kidding Jo, but go easy on the kid will you? You know perfectly well what will happen, you heard Mrs Linklater,” Lanney chided her.

Joanna frowned; she didn’t entirely as there were subtleties that a 23^rd century girl could not quite compute even with the heads up from her counterparts acquired knowledge.

*

Much later Joanna wondered if the parameters of the scenario were pre-programmed in some way. She knew there was no script, on her first day she had written out two or three paragraphs of future history and pulled a couple of dance stunts that no one in this world would ever do. There was no metaphysical balance of nature, she knew that much. To the universe a blade of grass was as important as a war. True history was deaf, dumb and blind. If she could alter little things then she could alter big stuff, except that is it wouldn’t stick so it didn’t matter. However, had she been set-up to fail here, set-up to crash the social system and real the consequences?

The day after the coffee shop discussion Joanna came home to find Frankie standing in the hallway. She was facing the wall with her hands on her head like a toddler doing a time out.

“What the hell are you doing?” Joanna asked her new friend.

“Joanna,” Frankie gasped in horror, “Go away.”

Mrs Linklater wasn’t sure if she had heard correctly so decided to let the H-word go for now. Instead she came into the hall and motioned Joanna away.

“Frankie left her room in an awful mess for the third time this week,” she told her older charge and guest, “I have warned her. Now as soon as Mr Linklater gets home she is going to get a spanking.”

“Jesus H, are you kidding me?” Joanna blurted.

“Joanna Gatsby, I will not have that language in my house nor will you question me with such disrespect. I thought I heard you cussing just now but I… I chose not… well I never. Joanna go to your room at once,” Mrs Linklater all but roared at her.

Joanna jerked back and almost obeyed. Then her true self reasserted itself and she felt a sense of true outrage.

“What the f… now you are seriously joking. Who do you think you are anyway?” she snapped back.

“What did you say?” the older woman gasped. She was beyond shocked for a moment.

“I said…” Joanna began.

“I know what you said,” Mrs Linklater bellowed, “I heard you, but I don’t believe it. Very well, if you won’t go to your room you will go and stand in the corner next to Francine.”

Joanna opened her mouth to protest and then she remembered where she was. What would her 1950s counterpart do? As she considered Mrs Linklater seized her by the arm and projected her to the corner.

“Alright, alright,” she said angrily, “This is nuts but I get it.”

“Oh you’ll get it alright, just you wait until Mr Linklater comes home,” the indignant housewife scolded.

Facing the wall with it just an inch from her nose Joanna suddenly felt very silly and about a foot high.

“This is crazy,” she muttered.

“Don’t Joanna, you’ll only make it worse,” Frankie whispered.

It was only then that something began to gnaw at the pit of Joanna’s stomach.

*

Mr Linklater was 45 going on 60 to Joanna’s eyes. But he had this stern paternal manner that up to now she had quite liked. In some ways she wished that she had had a father like him and since coming to his home she had quietly realised what her own society was lacking. For one thing, although he was friendly he didn’t try to be a friend or indulge in undignified ingratiation with the girls. But as soon as he came home Joanna felt nervous.

As it was Linklater took one look at the girls and snorted before ignoring them.

Two minutes later Frankie and Joanna heard a rather shrill Mrs Linklater telling her rather calm husband what they had done or so they presumed. The details were lost in dark tones and muttering but after a few minutes they heard well enough.

“Francine, get in here,” Mr Linklater barked.

Joanna waited with baited breath while an unheard stern lecture was given. Then a few minutes later there was the sound of clapping. No not clapping, smacks; a dozen short sharp ones at first and then they alternatively were fast and then slow while a scolding male voice berated his daughter with deep tones and unheard words.

A little after this the spanks got louder and Frankie began mewling and giving out with little squeals and yelps. There was a solid definite thwack to the sounds and Joanna guessed that a hand had been substituted for something else.

By then of course Frankie was crying loudly and even from the hall Joanna could hear a chorus of “I am sorry daddy, I’m sorry.”

Fifteen minutes after it began Frankie was brought back and set to face the wall again. Only this time her skirt was rolled to her hips and her panties were at her knees so that her bare bottom was left red and exposed.

Joanna gulped and steeled herself for a concerted round of denials, refusals and objections.

“Miss Gatsby, please come in,” Mr Linklater said in a reasonable voice.

Joanna took a breath and obeyed.

“Now Mr…”

“Joanna,” he cut her off, “May I ask why you were so rude to my wife?”

Joanna blushed and worked her mouth to futile effect. She had been rude hadn’t she? Shit, why hadn’t she just rolled with it and kept her mouth shut?

“I… I’m sorry Mr Linklater, I… was just a little surprised at… well I am sorry.” She sounded sincere and after a fashion she was.

“And did you cuss at her and then refuse to go to your room?” he pressed her; a study in calm reason.

Joanna resorted to mouth breathing and could only nod.

“Hmmm,” the paternal man offered as he studied her over his glasses.

The latter he removed and polished for a moment as he considered something.

“Can you think of a reason why I shouldn’t deal with you just as I just dealt with Francine?” he asked matter-of-factly.

“Don’t you think I am too old for that?” Joanna squeaked. She felt like a schoolroom ninny and wondered where her scorching temper and attitude had fled to.

“No,” Mr Linklater tossed back casually, “As a matter of fact I don’t.”

“Oh,” Joanna winced and scoured her brain for something else to say.

The next series of events happened too fast for Joanna to consider. One moment she was upright and the next she was hauled across the room and down over Mr Linklater’s lap as he sat on padded couch at the end of the room. Her voluminous skirts and petticoats were tossed carelessly over her back in a trice her panties were efficiently pulled down her thighs to expose her pert neat bottom.

“Whooo-at?” she gasped in surprise. Then it got worse.

Punctuated with a solid volley of spanks to her bottom Mr Linklater growled, “I will not have disrespect in my house. You will not, I repeat not abuse my wife.”

Joanna was robbed of breath as she felt more spanks than words blasting on her bottom. But as soon as the initial shock left her she let go with a cascade of yelling until these were overtaken by her struggle to breathe.

By then her bottom was two stinging domes of fire and she kicked her feet in tight little pumping motions.

“Your behaviour is an outrage and I won’t have it,” the man scolded her as he spanked on, only pausing to take up a hairbrush that had been left on the couch by his side.

Joanna’s eyes widened as she guessed what was coming.

The next round of biting fire was beyond words or shouts and for the next 10 minutes she would have happily converted to every religion on Earth just for the chance to pray for her bottom. Now devoid of dignity she bawled like a half-pint brat until her cries might have been heard out on the street.

“Right,” Mr Linklater finally barked at her, “Go and stand next to Francine in the hall and don’t you dare move. Like her you will stay there until we have had supper and then you will go to bed without. Am I perfectly clear?”

“Yes Sir,” Joanna wailed miserably.

She knew instinctively not to cover her bottom as she danced from foot to foot. In fact at that moment there was not one solitary thing she would do without an instruction.

“Good and no rubbing mind, get those hands on your head,” he growled.

Joanna obeyed at once and in a tumble of sobbing she scampered out to the hall trying to shield her nudity half bending as her scarlet behind trailed after her.

*

For Joanna it was a wakeup call. No one had ever treated her like that and never had she been so embarrassed. Not only that but when it came to it and against all expectation she had just caved in to a scolding and gone along with it. Then to top it all she had been sent to bed without an evening meal like an errant teen. It was so early that there wasn’t even the comfort of darkness to hide her shame.

Now the night was dark and hot and somewhere a cicada gently sang in a chirruping throb. The sound matched the ache in Joanna’s bottom and she felt her face flush as she relieved the very public spanking earlier that evening.

Her mind raced even as her fingers oh so slowly explored the tender curves of her bottom. With the sheet pulled down to her thighs the relative chill of the night air cooled her prickled skin to afford some comfort, but not much. Cupping both buttocks with her hands she weighed them and marvelled at the illusion of increased size. Despite her shame there was some sensuality to the act and she blushed unseen in the darkness.

As she tossed things over in her mind she could not recapture the sense of justified outrage at either Frankie’s or her own treatment. It was almost as if she had deserved it, but that was crazy. They were crazy and come to that the whole damn… she swallowed hard. ‘It ain’t you girl it is the others’ she thought.

“You can’t just do what you want and let the whole world go hang,” her mother had once told her.

Well it was crazy, that’s what it was, just effing crazy. Then she giggled. Even alone she didn’t dare swear in her thoughts properly. Man this place was getting to her.

*

The next morning it was almost as if nothing had happened. Oh for sure Frankie couldn’t look her in the eye, but then Joanna felt the same. Only Lanney seemed to risk a curious look or two in their direction. But Mr and Mrs Linklater were all smiles and patience as if wayward young women were a fact of life.

The least said, soonest mended. Now that was something her father had always muttered after a family row. Or was that her other… she sighed and shook herself. It is not real, not really real, she told herself, but the smell of bacon gave made that a lie.

The days passed and thoughts of spanking faded like a closing wound leaving things much as they were before. Well almost. Joanna had stopped voicing rebellion and instead of coasting around town she kept a weather eye on the clock least she be late.

This is worse than prison, she thought, here I am my own jailer. It is almost as if they make me responsible for me, she railed inwardly. But she didn’t dwell on the thought, it made her too uncomfortable.

It was a week after her first spanking that things went awry again.

The girls had gone to a party. It was kind of kooky (kooky was a Lanney word) that there was no booze of any kind, but the wall-to-wall crinoline, bobby socks and pony tails made it the ultimate 1950s theme event.

Lanney had thrown herself into it with an infectious wild abandon so even when Frankie had made her excuses and gone home Joanna had just joined in with the fun. So it was that 10 o’clock came and went and then 11 before either girl noticed the time.

“We are so busted,” Lanney wailed.

“You think?” a grimaced-faced Joanna asked, “I mean we are only…”

Lanney shot her a pitying look, but then added brightly, “But maybe they went to bed already; once Frankie got in I mean. You know, we are older after all.”

Joanna shrugged. What had happened before had been a one-of. She had been taken unawares and this time she would tell them where to get off. But then maybe if the Linklater’s had gone to bed then there would be no issue. After all they were only an hour late.

Two hours after curfew two young women crept toe-before-toe up the garden path with shoes in hand. On account of the heat, the back window was ajar and it was a simple matter to reach in and unhook the backdoor too.

The screen door was a bitch, the hinges screamed like a night jar and both girls froze for a second. Then hearing no other sound they edged forward until they were both standing in the kitchen.

“Well good night,” Lanney whispered as she crept away.

“Good night,” Joanna replied.

The sudden light was blinding. Mr Linklater was just a dark outline from the hall, but even in silhouette they could see his dour demeanour.

“Good evening girls, or should I say good morning?” he growled.

“Mr Linklater we…” Lanney began, her hands nervously wringing.

But he just pointed sternly up the stairs and then folded his arms.

“I’ll speak to you both in the morning,” he said.

*

This time Joanna and Lanney faced the wall in the family room rather than the hall. They had been divested of her PJ bottoms by an uncompromising Mrs Linklater and before either girl could string a word of protest they were nose to the plaster with their bare bottoms cooling in the breeze.

“They can’t do this to us,” Joanna whispered, but not so loudly that anyone but Lanney heard.

Lanney risked a turn of her head to make a face that yelled, ‘oh yeah right.’

“Stand still,” Mrs Linklater snapped. “If either of you move, just once or give me any backtalk… I swear I’ll send you both into the yard to cut a switch just as you are.”

Lanney gulped in a way that convinced Joanna to take the threat seriously. Why am I going along with this? She berated herself, if anyone could see me now… but they could, they really could. For one thing the drapes had already been drawn back to greet the morning and the nets were French-style half-lengths. It didn’t take much to be seen from the street. Also Frankie, and when came in Mr Linklater, were well able to view their shame. Nor was it a comfort to Joanna to tell herself that it wasn’t really real. It was as real as the coffee that assailed her nose.

“You can stay there until after breakfast,” Mr Linklater said when he finally put in an appearance. “I will deal with you then.”

“Yes Sir,” Lanney agreed sullenly.

Joanna worked her mouth but no word of support or contrary would leave her lips.

*

“Is this really necessary?” Joanna asked some 20 minutes after breakfast with still no resolution. With her bare behind hanging in the breeze, so to speak, and with her face hot against the wall the submissive posture was really working on her nerves. She was utterly mortified.

“Yes,” came the terse reply from Mr Linklater.

The man nonchalantly tapped his pipe on the mantle and then carefully began thumbing tobacco into the bowl. His demeanour was Solomon-like as he weighed up the girls’ sins. Then coming to a decision he placed the bit in his mouth and paused to light his pipe.

“Now girls have you any idea how disrespectful your gallivanting to all hours was?” he asked. “Not to mention the risk it posed to both your reputations and your personal safety. My wife and I are responsible for you, what were you thinking?”

He sucked down and allowed a huge ring of blue smoke rise to the ceiling.

“And don’t get me started on the example you have set for Frankie,” he continued.

Lanney bit her lip at this point and managed to feel even more ashamed.

“Yes Sir, sorry Sir,” she groaned.

Joanna merely rolled her eyes and sighed.

“Joanna,” Mr Linklater barked.

“Yes Sir, I am sorry too,” she said huffily.

Joanna wanted to be more genuine about it, but under the circumstances her attitude was her only defence. Anything else was an admission he was right and she was wrong and she wasn’t ready.

“I think you will be,” Mr Linklater sighed. “Miss Gatsby, you first I think.”

He didn’t say anymore but put down the pipe and took Joanna’s arm. Then like before she was manoeuvred across his lap on the couch with her bare bottom uppermost.

The spanking was quick and fast to begin with and Joanna greeted the onslaught with sustained and unseemly wail.

“We haven’t even started yet,” Linklater scolded, his hand slapping down in shorter hard burst that really connected.

Then after five minutes or so he stopped and reached for something. Joanna glanced back over her shoulder, shocked at the twin red hills looming there. The hairbrush in his hand was no surprise.

“I’m sorry, I mean it, I’m sorry,” she pleaded.

The brush didn’t listen and in moments pistol like shots really shook the room. They even rivalled Joanna shrill yelling as over the next 10 minutes or so the fire redefined her bottom for her.

She didn’t hear much of Lanney’s spanking. Once returned to the wall it was all she could do not to grab her behind as she hopped and danced in time to some hearty sobbing. It was only when Lanney joined her again at the wall did Joanna become aware of the rest of the room.

“I am sorry,” she said in a miserable voice, hiccoughing out a sob.

“I know,” Mr Linklater said somewhat kindly. “Think on it for a while.”

A while turned out to be the rest of Saturday morning.

Saturday was not a good day to be in the corner at the Linklater’s. For one thing some of Frankie’s friends dropped by. The hoots of laughter and supressed giggles made Lanney start to cry again, although Joanna just glowered into the wall.

At least the fellows stayed outside, although from the masculine chuckles when the girls finally left, Joanna was in doubt that they had been fully put in the picture.

Nor did things get any better after that.

Around 11 Mrs Linklater’s friends dropped by for a coffee morning.

“Oh my, someone has been a naughty girl,” observed one of the women.

“I haven’t seen bottoms like that since my cousin and I were caught skinny dipping,” chuckled another.

“Oh I think my Marnie sported as much the weekend before last, I caught her kissing that Taylor boy you know,” said another.

This prompted a discussion on the youth of today and lax morals. This was accompanied by not a few stories of spanked teenagers and the need to give even college girls a good sound spanking now again.

“If my Marnie sees that Taylor boy again then she won’t sit down for a month,” Marnie’s mother told the group.

“My Jenny is seeing a nice college boy over at Stanford. But even she has let her grades slip and after I found out she went to a hop three nights running… well let’s just say that I know a girl who is as indisposed as these two over at her sister and brother-in-law’s place.” There was a disapproving sigh before first woman added in an amused voice, “Well I couldn’t leave her in the corner alone at home, her little cherry tail might have got lonely.”

“Doesn’t your son-in-law have the boys over for… well on Saturday’s before the game?” the skinny dipping woman said.

“Oh that is later, but I wouldn’t care if they did see her tender hiney, it will do her good, like these two here. They all get far too big for their boots,” the first woman explained.

Joanna wanted to die and Lanney was so beside herself that she had begun gently crying again.

The rest of their corner time was excruciating and by the time they were released Joanna was ready to obey any rule anyone ever made for her.

*

Both Joanna and Lanney had real issues sitting down for about a week after that and neither of them were quite comfortable at Saturday coffee mornings again. Although any embarrassment about being around Frankie’s friends soon faded as the girls learnt that most of them were spanked at one time or another and as in the Linklater’s home, that usually came with rather challenging corner time for everyone.

Other than that the matter with the missed curfew seemed resolved and neither Mr nor Mrs Linklater mentioned it again.

Of course that summer the girls were all spanked several more times for one reason or another, both severally and individually. Joanna soon found that fessing up and a level of acceptance often got her a more discreet session over Mr Linklater’s lap and after these spankings she always felt much better.

So in the end far from dragging the summer was soon over and Joanna almost forgot that there was no college waiting for her in New York.

“Why don’t you both come back later in the year?” Mrs Linklater gushed. “We can even light a fire maybe if it is cold and roast some marshmallows.”

“That won’t be all that gets roasted knowing you Ma,” Frankie giggled.

There was general laughter at this but although Joanna and Lanney were blushing wildly they both joined in.

“I would be glad to,” Joanna said, but in her heart she knew she never would.

Did these people even really exist? They certainly wouldn’t remember her after she had gone if they did. That thought weighed heavy with her all the way to the bus station and well into the journey back north. Then finally Joanna slept.

She was awoken in what looked like a hospital room.

“Was there a crash?” she asked.

Then she remembered.

“I guess I won’t be going back then,” she said ruefully on seeing the same stern bureaucrat from before. “Was I even there?”

“Oh yes,” the man smiled, “Did you learn your lesson?”

Joanna blushed and nodded. Then she grabbed his arm and asked again, “Were they okay? I mean did things work out fine for Lanney and the Linklater’s… the town?”

“As far as I know about this time line, as for the one that was created by you and your actions… well what do you think?” he asked.

“But you said… you said there would be no consequences,” she said animatedly.

“There are always consequences, I said there was no danger,” the man shrugged, “But you seem concerned, would you like to go back some time and see?”

“Could I?” Joanna asked; she was suddenly excited.

“We could call it a holiday and it would be invaluable to our research,” the man replied.

“Has anyone ever done it before?” Joanna said now rather puzzled.

“It is more common than you would think,” the man said quietly, “Some don’t even come back.”

Joanna gaped. “But you said…”

“I said ‘usually’ and that ultimately it was up to the individual. You found what you needed and completed your rehabilitation. This time anyway.”

Joanna frowned and looked away.

“If I had told you before would you have agreed to go?”

Joanna shrugged.

“Are you sorry?”

“Not about going, no,” Joanna gave him a tight smile.

The man picked up his notes and turned to go.

“You seem changed, less of a…” he shrugged and left without finishing.

“Less of a brat, yes I know,” Joanna said wistfully to the door.

It was only then that Joanna realised that she hadn’t asked how long she had been away. But, she supposed, it didn’t really matter. After all, she had all the time in the world.

Our story began here.

Before the girls returned that afternoon, Alice had been permitted to go to bed early with a ‘headache.’ This not only spared her blushes but spared her the ordeal of sitting down for supper. That is to say not sitting down and letting everyone know what had happened. Not that she had any energy or appetite to spare for something as prosaic as a meal. Instead she had limped gratefully to bed and slept the sleep of the just.

Nor did she rise for breakfast the next day, being too mortified as she was to face anyone much before noon. This normally wouldn’t have been tolerated but for once Muriel Baxter very much wanted Alice to be able to save face to preserve her authority.

Finally and just before luncheon Alice donned a loose fitting skirt and putting her best face on made her way downstairs. Even a day after her spanking and woodshed experience just walking was an ordeal. Each step flared in her bottom, which felt tighter than a jazz drum being struck three to the dozen in some relentless and reckless rhythm. Alice had to take slow careful steps with a practiced look of neutrality clinging to her face less she openly wince with each movement.

“Feeling better?” Jenny asked sympathetically on seeing the governess.

“Wh-what do you mean?” Alice said, as she startled.

“Mrs Baxter said that you had a headache?” Jenny put in uncertainly.

“Oh eh, oh yes,” Alice said quickly with a tight smile, “I-I’m feeling much better now, thank you Jenny.”

“Mrs Baxter says we might go back with her for a visit. To Sinclair Ladies’ College I mean.” Jenny still sounded uncertain.

“Yes I know,” Alice said pausing where she stood and desperately wanting to massage her bottom. “It is not exactly a school, more a house like this one but with a few more girls and some trainee governesses. But how do you feel about that?”

Jenny frowned.

“Is it because I have been bad?” she asked.

Alice laughed and shook her head. “No of course not,” she replied.

“I am not completely dumb,” Jenny said carefully, “I mean I do know that Mrs Baxter is the head honcho so to speak and I bet she is much stricter than you. I mean to say… well I know I behaved like a brat at first but isn’t Mrs Baxter’s place more like a reform school?”

“No, it isn’t like that, but you are right there will be higher standards. It is usually where the older girls go, the volunteers. Is that what is worrying you? Are you nervous that things will be stricter?” Alice was frowning now. Jenny didn’t have to go, but if she did she would effectively be a volunteer. Did that mean she could leave? Alice was suddenly nervous for the girl, she wasn’t ready to brave the world alone and if she went back to that aunt of hers she would fall into bad habits.

“No,” Jenny said slowly with some thought, “I’m not scared of worst punishments… well I am, but it is not that. I probably deserve stricter punishments. It is just… well I have a feeling that I belong for the first time and… and… no it’s not that either. I just don’t want to fail and I don’t want to fail you.”

“Oh you haven’t, really you haven’t,” Alice sighed, “If anything I have failed you.”

She remembered her own slip in standards and the previous day’s punishment. Also she didn’t want to say that Mrs Baxter wanted her to focus on Katherine and Mary. That would sound as if Jenny and Janet were less than they were.

“You haven’t failed me, or Janet, even I can see what we were like before,” Jenny gushed. “I couldn’t go back to how it was before I just couldn’t.”

“Then don’t. But all things change,” Alice said kindly as she took half a step forward, and the suppressing a wince she added, “Just think about it alright?”

“I will,” Jenny said brightly and smiled.

*

Alice was attempting to read with one leg tucked under her thigh so as to keep her bottom off the window seat. It was an uncomfortable enough posture, but not as unpleasant as allowing her behind take her full weight even with the soft padding on the bay window’s surface.

She was still wincing and squirming when she noticed Katherine approaching.

“Miss Bowman, can I have a word please?” Katherine asked politely.

Alice gave her a fixed grin and with a surreptitious stiffness adjusted her posture.

“Of course,” she said, the grin not leaving her face as she indicated the seat next to her.

Katherine sensed something was wrong but decided it was better to say nothing as she obeyed and sat in the opposite corner of the bay.

“Is there something I can do for you?” Alice asked seeing that Katherine wasn’t going to speak.

The younger woman sucked in a long slow breath and drew herself up to reply.

“I hear that Janet and Jenny are to return with Mrs Baxter,” Katherine said at last.

“That hasn’t been settled yet, but they may be,” Alice answered, “But Mrs Baxter has made the suggestion, yes.”

Katherine nodded.

“So what is troubling you about that?” Alice pressed the girl.

“Isn’t… isn’t that where Mrs Baxter trains governesses in the Sinclair Method?” Katherine was looking down into her lap.

“That’s right, it is where I was trained, but also a great many girls who are not following that path receive guidance there too,” Alice replied in a neutral voice.

“But I thought… that is… one day I thought I might too become a governess like you,” Katherine said, still not looking up.

“And so you shall and Mary too I think,” Alice said. There was a half-supressed urgency in her voice and now and a hint a puzzlement crossed her face.

Katherine looked up now, a wild expectant look dancing back and forth with her eyes.

“But…” she whispered.

“That is why Mrs Baxter wants Janet and Jenny to go with her, so I can further yours and Mary’s training somewhat. When you go to Mrs Baxter’s establishment it will be as a trainee governess I expect,” Alice told her.

“Oh,” Katherine squealed and launched herself forward to hug Alice.

Alice groaned as she was shoved back on to her bottom and had to grit her teeth.

“I won’t let you down, I am ever so grateful,” Katherine violently enthused, “I can’t tell you how… oh… oh, wait until I tell Mary.”

“Well yes, but do wait until it is settled won’t you?” Alice chuckled, “But Katherine, you do know what this means don’t you?”

Katherine nodded and smiled and then nodded some more before she giggled, “No, not really.”

“That with just Mary and you here I will have a free rein to bring you task,” Alice replied now suddenly serious.

Katherine flushed a little but the smile didn’t leave her face. “I know but… well I know… I think I do… you mean things will be stricter around here.”

Alice’s smile became a firm tight line and she nodded as if in regret.

Katherine shrugged.

“I guess I’ll cope,” she said ruefully. “But in for a penny…”

To be continued.

This may be old news to some, especially Dr Who fans, but for years there have been rumours of a lost spanking episode of Dr Who. The legend goes that a serial of four episodes entitled Prison in Space was scripted and rehearsed to be shown in or around 1967.

I had always assumed that this was a joke or at the very least a bit of fan fiction, but as diehard Whovians will know back in 2010 Big Finish productions revived this script for a BBC audio (visual?) tape production after the script was found by original Dr Who actor Frazer Hines in his garage.

The story stars Frazer and his former co-star Wendy Padbury who revive their original roles as Dr Who companions and narrate the whole thing. I have not heard it myself but one review suggests that it is heavy with BDSM imaginary and was originally intended to feature racy skimpy costumes.

However, this was not the reason it was not made. Apparently the producers felt it was too comic and bordered on farce and shelved it.

The story itself concerns a satirical story line where in the future society is ruled by women and any dissenters are sent to this prison in space. Never one to shy away from supressing tyranny the Doctor and his companions, 21^st century Zoe (Wendy Padbury) and Scottish Highlander Jamie (Frazer Hines), decide to intervene.

The Doctor and Jamie are imprisoned and Zoe is brainwashed to be a supporter of the regime. Jamie (Frazer Hines), The Doctor (Patrick Troughton), and Zoe (Wendy Padbury) from DrWho in 1967 are pictured above.

Controversially the story includes a shower scene and more to the point for readers here a ‘long spanking.’ Jamie, a character who was apparently often threatening to take a belt to young girls on the show, actually spanks Zoe to re-programme her.

I understand that the story itself is mostly if not entirely audio but there is a suggestion in the review that there are art stills (see above) to support the narrative.

You can read the review here and acquire the Dr Who box set here.

The stranger bothered her almost as much as Jason Kincaid did. He was a large man with searching dark eyes that never seemed to rest. Also there was something about the set of his jaw reminded her of her father and that determined way he had. It was a cinch that the stranger, whoever he was, was here for Kincaid. But the question was, was he another hired gun looking to cash in or had he come for a showdown?

Kathy sighed and unconsciously tugged at an unruly blonde lock. Damn, her father would have known at a glance, he could smell wrongdoing at 100 miles. That thought brought back uncomfortable memories and past confrontations.

“But Pa I am a woman grown now, I am way too old for a spanking,” she had wailed just a year before.

Her father had regarded her with sad eyes and a firm set of his jaw.

“Kathy, as long as I am your father you will never be too old for a good sound spanking,” he had replied.

It wasn’t as if he had ever cut her some slack when confronted with wrongdoing. She had tried and failed with that line since she had graduated school, but it was always worth another try. But it had ended in the traditional way.

One moment she had been backing away protesting and the next she was upended across his lap with her gingham skirts getting bunched up into the small of her back.

“Please Pa,” she had whined as he tugged at the drawstring on her bloomers.

“Hush now, what kind of spanking would it be if I didn’t bare your bottom?” His voice had been warm and firm with a slight chuckle at its edges as if he didn’t quite take her protestations of being a woman grown seriously. “And if you don’t stop wriggling I’ll send you out back to cut a switch.”

It was a threat often followed through and even almost a year after her father’s death Kathy blushed to her ears. She remembered how in former times she had been made to go into the yard with her skirts pinned to the small of her back while she trimmed a switch or two from the hickory that grew there. More than once a passer-by had seen her and laughed, Kathy could have died.

That last time she had submitted quickly as Pa had bared her bottom. She had been a kid again as he tapped her naked hiney twice as a prelude to spanking her. His hand stung worse than any hairbrush or razor strop and within a half a dozen swats across her behind she was yelling up a storm past caring who might hear her. Hear her they did of course, they always did. It was a small town and the sheriff’s house was in Main Street just down from his office. Everyone knew when Kathy Earhart was getting a spanking.

A sound spanking from Pa always took an age and she was beyond merely sorry long, long minutes before he even thought about stopping. Then with her very red and very bare bottom still on display she had to stand in the corner of the parlour with her behind directed at the front door. The man who kept the towns justice was not ashamed to let the world know he knew how to keep the peace in his own home so many a time a neighbourly busybody would call shortly after Kathy had been spanked, an especially mortifying experience when the neighbour had a son or daughter in tow.

It might have been a shame from which Kathy would never had recovered but the young folk and most especially the grown-up daughters of the town were mostly handled the same and teasing had never lasted beyond a day or two.

A tear rolled down Kathy’s face as she remembered almost fondly such rough handling and would suffer any amount of spanking if she could have had Pa back. But enough of that, she thought returning to the present. Jason Kincaid was up to something and now she had this stranger. With her father dead the job had fallen to her.

“But being sheriff ain’t no job for a woman,” the mayor had protested.

Kathy had agreed but she noticed that Jedidiah Smith, the mayor and storekeeper, was in no hurry to step up himself or find a replacement. Nor had they needed one until Jason Kincaid had come to town.

Kathy reached into the folds of her dark grey skirt for the reassuring weight of her father’s pistol. These days her attire was more sombre and rugged, a vague attempt to be taken seriously. Then pulling down the brim of her mannish hat she made her way to the saloon and the stranger.

*

Jack Stone re-crossed his boots and shifted back in the chair on the porch where he had been seen sun-up. So far there had been no sign of Jason Kincaid, or anyone much. It was almost as if the good people of Mauston knew what was coming down.

In fact the only people he had seen were the preacher, who had crossed the dirt track street to avoid him, the storekeeper that doubled for mayor who had asked him his business in town and small young woman in dark clothing and an overlarge hat who had watched him.

She might have been pretty he thought, but not a smile had touched her face since he had seen her and she had hung around outside the sheriff’s office watching him. Maybe she was after the law as well, but Jack had tried first thing and to his certain knowledge no one had come or gone from the jail since then.

The one thing that did hold his attention about the girl was that she was packing. From the way she kept checking and rechecking her piece she was none too comfortable with firearms either. If she had ill intent towards him then that made it all the more dangerous as amateurs were apt to spook easily. For the longest time he considered approaching her, but she was probably skittish enough. No if she had business with him then let her make her move first. And so it had proved. After an hour or so the girl seemed to make-up her mind about something and started in towards him.

“Hey mister, what you doing here in town?” she blurted.

Jack’s eyes narrowed at her rudeness. Didn’t she know to talk more respectful to her elders? Well he was at least a decade her senior he figured so it was just about his due by now.

“Right now I am just setting ma’am,” he replied with a tip of his hat.

“You know damn well what I mean,” Kathy countered.

Jack’s eyes narrowed and he was genuinely shocked at her cussing.

“What business of yours might that be ma’am?” Jack asked in an even tone.

Kathy reached into her pocket and pulled out her father’s badge. She felt a fraud wearing it, but it was the only authority she had.

Jack saw the badge and sat up straight. He was still studying it when Jason Kincaid chose that moment to ride in.

“Excuse me ma’am,” Jack told Kathy, but his eyes had already dismissed her as they followed the rather dour hard-looking man on the horse.

Kathy too was watching Jason and her hand tickled at the handle of her pistol under her skirts.

“You have business with Jason Kincaid?” she asked.

“You might say that ma’am,” Jack muttered.

As he spoke Jack slowly got to his feet and adjusted his own pistol belt. Then before Kathy could speak further he said, “You know where the sheriff is ma’am?”

Kathy looked up at the man who was as broad as an oak as he stood more than head and shoulders taller than her. But there was something else, where his jacket fell open he saw that he carried a badge of his own, one bearing the legend US Marshall.

“My father is dead,” she said woodenly, “I am just about the only law around here at the moment.”

Jack turned and for the first time gave Kathy an appraising look.

“No offence ma’am but… well let’s just say Jason Kincaid is no lightweight maybe you should leave him to me,” Jack said with an easy smile.

Kathy frowned, that was just about typical of the condescending attitude she had come to expect from men. It didn’t matter that she had been hoping and praying for a proper lawman to come to town or that this one hadn’t said very much except the truth.

“This is my town and you will follow my lead,” she shot back her pistol now levelled.

She wasn’t entirely sure if the pistol was for this Marshall or Jason Kincaid and the long barrel hovered uncertainly in space.

“Put that away unless you mean to use it,” Jack said sternly.

There was an edge to his voice and Kathy couldn’t again help but be reminded of her father. Before she could say another word Jack turned and heading across the street to where Kincaid was tethering his horse.

“Just one minute you,” Kathy snarled at Jack’s back, and then seeing he didn’t turn hurried after him. “Hold up.”

If Jason Kincaid hadn’t been aware of them by then he was now and before Jack and Kathy had crossed the street he was standing arms akimbo on the opposite planked sidewalk watching their approach.

“You looking for me?” Kincaid yelled over.

Jack stopped but was immediately assaulted by Kathy running into his back and then staggering backwards to fall hard on her tail.

“Ow,” she squealed, “Look out you oaf.”

Instinctively Jack half turned to offer her a hand up a short sudden movement that hung in time and space, which as soon as he made it he knew his mistake. At that same moment Kincaid saw the flash of sun on Jack’s partially exposed badge and his hand slid to his gun.

Look out, Kathy thought and tried to shout, but all that left her throat was a scream.

It was less than half a second since Kathy had crashed into Jack but Kincaid’s pistol had already cleared his holster. His first shot whistled past Jack’s head as he ducked down behind the hitching rail. It was scant cover from a six-gun but this time it served as a shot from Jack blasted a chunk out of the wood between him and the bullet.

Somehow Kathy’s own pistol was still in her hand and a stray shot discharged into the ground. Jack tried to ignore it but the distraction made his second shot miss too.

Jason Kincaid hesitated. He know had two targets and for the longest quarter of a second his barrel hovered between Jack and Kathy. For the Marshall this time it was enough. Kincaid never heard the shot that smashed into his chest, he didn’t even know he had been shot until he hit the deck and could no longer grip his pistol.

“Damn,” he said in a resigned voice, the last word he ever said.

“Are you alright ma’am?” Jack asked a rather shocked Kathy as he helped her from the ground.

“No thanks to you,” she replied huffily as she gained her feet and dusted herself off.

Jack frowned.

“No thanks… you almost got us both killed,” he growled.

“I almost… well I like that…” Kathy rounded on him, but a sudden nausea got the better of her and she averted her eyes from the prone body of the late Jason Kincaid.

“What authority do you have here exactly?” Jack barked squaring up to the now white faced girl as she rocked unsteadily in the street.

There were others now and the mayor, Jedidiah Smith, emerged brandishing a shot gun.

“Someone call Doc Hollister,” he yelled authoritatively.

“He’s beyond a doctor now,” Jack said.

Jedidiah nodded sagely and then noticed Kathy’s demeanour.

“She don’t look too good,” he murmured, “Best if you take her home, I’ll set things a right here Marshall.”

Remembering the exchange Jack swung around to confront the brat who had almost done for him and then saw for the first time the way of things. He took one step forward and swept the girl into his arms.

“Unhand me,” she muttered, but with no conviction.

*

“I guess I am not cut out for law enforcement,” Kathy said ruefully as she brought out a coffee pot and set it on the table in front of Jack.

“I guess you’re not,” he agreed, “What would your Pa have said you toting a firearm like that?”

“Not a hell of a lot,” Kathy replied archly, “But he would have done plenty.”

Jack’s jaw tightened at her swearing, the second time he had heard it from her that day.

“Does that go for the cussing too?” he said dryly.

“I guess,” Kathy sighed. “I kinda miss his firm hand these days.”

“He spanked you?”

Kathy blushed and gave Jack a small nod.

Well you go cussing around me, or go packing a gun for that matter and I’ll show you what a firm hand can be,” Jack said menacingly, “I’ll spank that bare bottom of yours until it is the colour of a polished apple.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Kathy said defiantly setting her hands on hips, adding “You damn well wouldn’t dare.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed and he slowly got to his feet.

“You know, you did nearly get us both killed and by rights I owe you something for that. On top of that we have the small problem of your foul mouth,” he growled.

“Oh no, y-you… you wouldn’t…”Kathy said backing away.

“You said it yourself, it is something you have been needing,” he sighed as he worked the buttons at his cuff and began rolling up his sleeves.

“Not from you,” Kathy blustered.

“Well in the absence of your Pa I am the law around here now,” Jack said.

From long custom and training Kathy yielded somewhat as the Marshall took her arm and pulled her too him. Her tottering heels on the rug resisted for only a moment before she was tumbled headlong across Jack’s lap as he sat back on the kitchen chair.

“Marshall… you can’t, you just can’t,” Kathy wailed. But her eyes were already saucers and her mouth formed a shocked O as one by one her skirts and petticoats were flipped up into the small of her back.

There was a long appreciative pause as Jack gazed upon the tight cotton drum of Kathy’s bottom and then he asked, “Did your Pa take these down?”

A flushed Kathy rolled her eyes back like a wild colt and tried to twist from the Marshall’s lap.

“You wouldn’t?” she wailed.

“I will if your Pa did,” Jack said sharply, “Did he?”

“No,” Kathy lied sullenly, but her voice carried no conviction.

Jack chuckled. “And what did he do when you lied?” he asked.

Kathy blushed furiously and thought of the hickory out back and the customary shameful display.

“Answer me,” Jack demanded, “and I strongly suggest you don’t tell me another lie.”

“He’d have me cut a switch,” she mumbled.

“What was that?” Jack pressed her.

Kathy clamped her mouth shut and defiantly prepared for an onslaught to her behind.

“I bet the mayor knows, or one of your neighbours?” Jack offered.

“You heard what I said,” Kathy replied somewhat sharply.

“Switched you, did he? On the bare bottom?” the Marshall asked.

“Yes,” Kathy hissed through gritted teeth.

“And when spanking you?” he pressed her.

“Yes,” she said again, this time with rather less vehemence and a whole heap more nervousness.

Jack tugged at the draw string of Kathy’s bloomers and despite a sudden animated bucking on her part her drawers soon went south.

“You can’t do this to me,” she shrieked.

But she soon found that he could as the first mighty swat landed on her bare bottom.

“Ooh,” she squealed and kicked her legs.

Outside the mayor and two or three others looked up. They were surprised to hear pistol shots coming from the Sherriff’s house, but after a moment they were grinning as they realised the true nature of the sound. In any case, by way of conformation the sharp retorts were soon followed by Kathy’s lively hollering.

“I guess the Marshall is dispensing some more justice,” the mayor chuckled.

Meanwhile inside the spanking lasted a good 10 minutes until the globes of Kathy’s bottom were bright red and mottled and earnest tears were streaming down her face. The spanks fell in rapid earnest blasts covered her thoroughly rounds like a cannonade beginning at the top of her cheeks and rapidly descending until they beat down where her bottom met her thigh tops before repeating the action.

“Are you going to be a good girl?” Jack asked her not missing a spank.

“Yes Sir,” Kathy sobbed, she took comfort now that this was how her Pa had handled things and that this was how she had always responded.

“Good girl,” Jack sighed setting the crying woman on her feet. “Now I am guessing you have somewhere to go for a spell?”

Kathy nodded miserably and looking at the floor she pointed to the corner. It was exactly where Pa always sent her.

“Off you go then and no rubbing hear, I want to see that shiny red bottom of yours as it cools off,” he said sternly.

“Yes Sir,” Kathy sniffed.

Then without a word she took careful steps to the corner and put her nose tight to the wall.

“You move before I tell you and I’ll have you cut that switch,” Jack warned.

“Yes Sir,” Kathy said hastily and hiked up her skirts in back as her Pa had always made her.

It took less than 10 minutes for the mayor to come looking for him and he didn’t even bother to feign surprise at Kathy’s predicament.

“Just like old times,” Jedidiah chuckled.

Kathy sucked down a sob and shifted in the corner as she prayed that the floor would swallow her down. For a moment her face felt hotter even than her bottom.

“I’ll meet you at the jail as soon as I am done here,” Jack said disapprovingly.

The mayor glanced at Kathy’s exposed bottom and nodded, but he left only slowly.

Jack poured another coffee while Kathy recomposed herself and then took out his watch. He guessed another 30 or 40 minutes would be enough.

“Marshall,” Kathy said shyly from the corner.

“Yes,” Jack acknowledged.

“You sticking around in town long? I mean we need… the town I mean… we need some law,” she asked tentatively.

“Aren’t you afraid I might take you in hand again?” Jack chuckled.

“I guess I’ll risk it,” Kathy said ruefully.

“So long as you know I deal out justice with an even hand,” Jack said slowly, his tongue pressing against his cheek.

“I felt that about you,” Kathy said tartly as she risked an appraising glance back at him.

Jack winked and made a gesture with his finger that told her to turn back around. “You’ll feel it even more if you don’t mind me,” he said.

“Yes Sir,” Kathy sighed.

Carolyn Brady sucked in her cheeks and let out a long slow breath. The building wasn’t exactly what she had expected but it was kind of appropriate. Her smart sunburn orange skirt suit and pillbox hat matched the auburn red of her hair, but definitely made her look out of place next to the crumby broken down premises, but it felt right somehow. Nevertheless the New York backstreet building must have been built before Teddy Roosevelt more than 50 years ago and she doubted it would be still standing in another 50.

I need to be out of my comfort zone, she thought. But still she didn’t move as part of her knew this was crazy. But her generous curves were gaining some stares from the street and she began to feel self-conscious.

“Show time,” she murmured and went in.

The interior was no better than the outside and there was a faint smell of urine from somewhere. Also the paint was peeling from the walls all the way up the stairwell to where she had an appointment.

Part of her hoped the office would be better, but another that it would be as dingy as hell. It would serve her right in a way. She was still pondering this when she rounded the corner and saw that the latter had won out.

“William Wendell Wentworth, Private Justice Adjustment Incorporated,” she read the legend on the glass plate door aloud. “This is most definitely the place.”

Carolyn felt an unfamiliar pang of nerves and had to resist the urge to flee. Instead she wrapped quietly and hoped no one would be in.

But almost at once a dark male voice from within called out “Come in please.”

*

Patty Beauchamp realised that her jaw was tense and her face had begun to ache. So with an effort she tried to relax. Not an easy thing to do when one is all but naked below the waist and standing with one’s nose in the corner like 10-year-old with a bare bottom on show.

It was still less easy when not half an hour before that rather generous bare bottom had been spanked to a cherry red until Patty had bawled like the aforesaid kid and promised her soul for a reprieve of the relentless spanking paddle of one Bill Wentworth.

Even now her hot crimson bottom cheeks gently throbbed as she began to come to terms with the all-pervasive sting and finally rein in the tears. Not that she hadn’t deserved it, but it was hard displaying too bright red swollen oval brands on one’s tail while your boss sat in your chair reviewing your work and someone could walk in at any minute.

She had no idea how much longer he would keep her there, but in any case she had been promised a serious session with the cane over at his place this Saturday just to make it stick. But that was days away and easily set aside in her job when a spanking was always days away.

The 30-year-old blonde didn’t know what was worse, the anticipation of a stranger seeing her most definitely punitive display or the fact that at any moment Bill could find something else to take her to task about and give her another spanking. The very thought made her sigh some and shift a step to shuffle the weight from one hip to the other.

Wentworth looked up at this and eyed his cool blonde secretary for a long moment as he studied for any sign of rebellion. Then he turned back to the paperwork. God he hated paperwork, he groaned inwardly, that was Patty’s job. He was so going to thrash her this weekend. She wouldn’t sit down for a week or two.

As he reached for another set of papers the chair creaked and threatened to brake. The broad-shouldered ex-marine vet was way too big for it and it looked like an adult had sat in a child’s seat.

Just then there was a knock at the door and Wentworth said, “Come in please,” without even thinking about it.

*

Carolyn stopped in her tracks at the sight of Patty in the corner, not that she hadn’t seen such a thing before; her upbringing had been Spartan and college life had been no cakewalk either.

“I guess I am in the right place then,” she said casually as she regained her composure.

She tried to look the large man behind the desk in the eye, but somehow she failed. A 50 and fit ex-ball player by the look of him, just the ticket she guessed if he was the one dolling out the spankings around here.

“Ah yes… you must be…” Wentworth fumbled for the appointments book and tried to read it upside down.

“Miss Brady, Carolyn Brady,” said a muffled Patty from the corner, despite her embarrassment her discipline didn’t break and she didn’t turn around. “Eh… 28 if I remember correctly, you know the heiress I mentioned…”

Wentworth dropped the book on the desk and sat back to appraise his new client.

“You know I don’t handle guys,” he said gruffly, “I mean… I usually get disgruntled husbands or rich parents, you don’t exactly fit either bill… who is it… a little sister maybe?”

Carolyn regarded him coolly and said in crisp Boston tones, “You don’t mind if I sit down?”

“My office… I usually conduct business in my…” Wentworth made to stand and indicated the other room.

Carolyn glanced at Patty in the corner and smirked as she sat down facing Wentworth anyway.

“Here is just fine,” she said crisply with a smirk.

“Okay doke,” Wentworth smiled as he sat back, “What can we do for you?”

Something told him that this dame was going to be interesting.

As she sat down Carolyn was highly conscious of where her bottom met the hard seat of the wooden chair. Not that she would have broken her pose for anything, for her life was about style and poise. But that was essentially the problem.

The proximity of Patty standing in the corner and her exposed sore bottom set a tone that was at once disconcerting and warmly familiar.

“I see you are well versed in your… craft,” Carolyn said carefully, her eyes flicking right to Patty.

Wentworth shrugged. “We only just got started,” he said.

“I won’t ask what she did, I rather suspect that it is unimportant and quite frankly it is none of my business,” Carolyn said tartly.

“Damn straight,” Patty muttered from the corner.

Wentworth shot her a look that would usually have crushed the girl meek, but her back was still turned so he let it pass, for now. Just then he was much more interested in the other dame.

Carolyn couldn’t fail to miss the exchange and her belly did flip-flops. She was stalling and she knew it, God this was going to be more difficult that she expected.

“You haven’t actually said what we can do for you? I mean you do know what we do?” Wentworth said pointedly.

Carolyn pursed her lips and nodded.

“I got the heads up from Ophelia Open,” she said, but for a moment her eyes couldn’t meet his and she coyly glanced away.

Wentworth let recognition flood his face and he smiled knowingly. It was so much better when a client had the gen from a confidant.

“So just who is the patient?” he asked smoothly as he reached for a cigarette.

Carolyn let her mouth drop open as if in mid word and closed it again. Still not meeting his eyes she said softly, “I rather think… that is… well… I am.”

The cigarette went limp in Wentworth’s mouth and he arched his eyebrows. Like he said, this dame was going to be interesting.

*

Carolyn had tried to explain herself three times now but each time her words stalled under the weight of a well-ingrained social veneer. One just did not say such things. But at least Wentworth had been patient and even Patty had been quite as a mouse as if she feared being sent from the room.

“You see my people were… well quite frankly they didn’t give a damn,” Carolyn continued. “I went from one privileged prep-school to another and well… I was an inconvenience. So when my parents split up it was more of a relief than anything. I mean they actually fought not to get custody.”

Carolyn giggled as if she had made a joke and rocked in her chair. Wentworth thought it was the most genuine emotion she had displayed since walking in.

“By then I was 17… well almost 18 anyway and thought I knew it all,” Carolyn continued, “In the end I went to live with a friend of a friend of my mother, the guardian of my school friend Amanda. That is when my life changed.”

Wentworth narrowed his eyes as he blew a coil of blue smoke skyward and weighed his client.

“At first I hated it, well for quite a while actually. There were so many boundaries and house rules. I mean they had a maid and yet I was expected to clean my own room.” Carolyn had a tone as if she expected this part of her tale to be doubted. “Worse still… well when I broke these rules I was… punished.”

Carolyn looked up to face what part of her hoped and another part dreaded would be a future nemesis but Wentworth returned her gaze without comment.

I had never been punished before, not that I remembered anyway, but at the Keaton’s I was not only just punished, I was spanked.” She shot a look over at Patty and a fond smile touched her face. “I remember the first time when on coming home after curfew I was confronted by an indignant Mrs Keaton brandishing a pack of cigarettes she had found in my room. I supposed they were mine, I really didn’t remember.”

“Mrs Keaton told me to go to my room and wait for her in just my nightshirt and get this, wait standing in the corner. Well I did, only not to obey her, but to pack my bags and leave. Not that I had any idea where I was going? I didn’t get my hands on the swag until I turned 21.”

Carolyn bit her lower lip and smiled wistfully as if remembering something gentle.

“I got as far as the foot of the staircase. Mrs Keaton just sighed I remember and the next thing I knew she was sitting on the third step with me over her knee and turning up my coat tails. The spanking was short sharp and embarrassing but in very short order I was eager to go back to my room and do as I was told. In my naïveté I thought that I had had my spanking and that the whole awful misunderstanding would just blow over.” Carolyn blushed.

“When she appeared in my room with that awful hairbrush I just died. Over her knee I went again and this time she… well she paddled my little bare bottom bruised until I promised to be good and for a long, long time afterwards. Not my last spanking at her hands either, it took me an awful long time to learn. Usually I resisted until I got a spanking on bare behind right out in front of anyone who happened to be there. That was always followed by some time in the corner close to wherever this indignity had occurred.” Carolyn glanced over at Patty who stood literally riveted to the spot.

“By the time I went to college getting my tail tamed was a regular event and it wasn’t all that unusual for Amanda and I to be stood side-by-side decidedly sans culottes with very sore bottom for all to see.” Carolyn winced.

“Sans what?” Wentworth cut in.

“Bare hiney front and centre,” Patty put in rather impatiently. Wentworth could hear her eyes roll even from there.

“Then there were my sorority days,” Carolyn continued. “One swallow a summer does not make, as they say, and a year at the Keaton’s was not enough to work some of the attitude out of me. That was left to my sisters at good old Lambda Kappa Mu.”

Wentworth grinned. He loved sorority stories and back in the day he had dated girls who had told him tales to make his hair stand on end.

“Go on,” he said and he took a drag on his cigarette.

“Paddled morning, noon and night, panties up, panties down, panties in a tree while some apes from the frat jeered a girl on while trying to retrieve them. Oh we had skirts on to be sure, tennis skits and I do mean short,” Carolyn blushed more than she had yet. “What can I say… there were penny races and…”

“Penny what?” Wentworth asked.

“A girl gets to push a penny or a dime with her nose on her knees with her ass in the air,” Patty explained sullenly.

The voice of experience, Wentworth thought.

“Then there were scav hunts, doctors, and guess the friend…” Carolyn listed a whole litany of hellish activities and this time Wentworth didn’t interrupt. He would get the gen from Patty later.

“My big sister used to paddle me raw if as I so much thought about a rule breach and boy if I didn’t mind my Ps and Qs… well mama spank and do mean spank. A bare bottom blistering with a drilled paddle is no fun especially when a merely muffled or less than earnest thank you gets the whole thing started again. Boy I didn’t sit down for a whole semester. And then there were other tweaks.” Carolyn rolled up her eyes.

“Tweaks,” Wentworth asked thoughtfully, he was beginning to suspect that this dame was crazy but he had to give her a chance.

Carolyn drew in a long slow breath.

“Here let me demonstrate,” she said mischievously.

As she spoke she stood up and hauled a protesting Patty out of the corner and deposited her across her lap.

“You’re a sportsman right?” she asked Wentworth.

Two minutes later she was apply deep heat to Patty’s bare bottom and was not the least bit careful where the excess went until Patty was kicking a bawling as if she was being spanked all over again.

“There were other tricks too,” Carolyn explained, “A whole hour of mustard sitters, you know a hot pack on your tail while stood in the corner to wait a paddling; this before and chilli paste after. They even had a trick with the chili dog that you do not want to know about, boy these girls played tough.”

Wentworth studied his bug-eyed secretary as she still bucked and kicked across Carolyn’s knee and snorted in amusement. He could imagine.

“Miss Brady, where is this all going?” he asked.

“I… I have no consequences in my life and I kind of miss it,” Carolyn admitted.

“So what… you want me to paddle your hind end for old time’s sake?” Wentworth asked.

“Hardly,” Carolyn spluttered, “I mean… not exactly. I couldn’t bear it really I couldn’t.”

“I bet you couldn’t,” Patty said in a surly tone from her lap.

Ignoring her Wentworth asked, “So?”

“I want… I need to know that it could happen, that if I was caught that… well my tail wasn’t safe anymore,” she whispered.

As she spoke she released Patty from her lap and let her gain her feet.

Wentworth nodded at Patty’s notebook and indicated that he wanted notes but when his secretary reached for her panties he shook his head, an order that drew a horrified gape from her.

“So you want, what, a mentor of sorts?” Wentworth frowned.

“No, that’s not it,” Carolyn sighed. “I want you to put a 28 day time limited contract on my… my you know and well, I’ll skedaddle out of town knowing you are on my… eh… tail so to speak.”

Wentworth rubbed his chin.

“If you catch me then I will accept whatever you decide and however you want to handle it over three days or for however long is left on the contract, whichever is longer. If you don’t well I…” she shrugged, “You get paid either way, but just so that you don’t take the money and dismiss me as a kook you’ll get double if you do catch me.”

*

Carolyn had been on the lam for almost two weeks now and she was a bag of nerves. A large part of her thought that Wentworth wasn’t even looking for her and she would be home free. Yet at the back of her mind she was certain that at any moment she would be bundled into the back of a car. She had never felt more alive.

So far she had been clever. She had booked in at the Royal and then slipped out the back without checking out after leaving a huge tip and asked that her room number remain a secret. With a decoy in place it had been a cinch from there to head to Grand Central and get a train to California. Only she hadn’t gone to California.

At a random point she had changed trains to Washington and had holed up in Georgetown where nobody knew her, but where she had visited on a brief exchange whilst in college. She had thought about Europe, but that seemed to her to be cheating and anyway it wouldn’t give her the same sense of consequence if she knew she had no chance of being caught.

No, in a day or two she would leave for Seattle and from their hire a car and take the coast road to LA. That should see her safe.

She had taken to staying in her room at the hotel and only venturing out at night, which so far had worked just fine. Now she had just one more stop to make and then she would go back.

The store on the corner wasn’t her usual shopping haunt, but it carried a brand of lipstick she loved and in any case they had a deli counter and she could grab a bite.

“Hey ho,” she sighed as she poured over the make-up stand.

But as she raised her head to try out a sample a man-sized shape in the mirror shape loomed behind her. Carolyn whirled around with a start to confront it.

“Hello Miss Brady, you took some finding,” Wentworth said with an easy smile.

Carolyn froze and her tummy tingled to the point of nausea. With the lipstick poised in mid-air she laughed nervously and said, “Hello Mr Wentworth, Fancy seeing you here.”

*

Carolyn had indeed been bundled into a car for the four hour drive to New York. Patty had been at the wheel and her look of smug satisfaction was like a knife in Carolyn’s ribs. The bitch had loved the fall of Carolyn Brady and how.

Now she found herself stripped to her underwear and standing in the middle of Wentworth’s office under the scrutiny of Patty and the man himself.

“Look Mr Wentworth, you have made your point, I think I got what I needed out of that little arrangement,” Carolyn said weakly, “I mean I knew you might turn up and that was the…”

“Thrill you were looking for,” Wentworth said sneeringly.

He stood now with his arms folded professionally regarding his client as she tried to wheedle out of her contract.

“No I…” was that it?

She didn’t know what she had wanted. Maybe she just wanted someone to give a damn again. Since college she had money and comfort but no rules. Instead of being content and productive she had reverted to the brat of old. But she hadn’t actually wanted to be caught had she?

“No? Well I aim to put that to the test,” Wentworth growled. “I have a small cell in the basement, for the hard cases you understand, and you are under contract for another 15 days. So this is what I propose…

Carolyn listened in horror as Wentworth explained the new contract. As far as he was concerned she was under open arrest and detailed to return for repeated appointments over the next two weeks on days and at times specified by him. If she refused, or he had to come and get her then she would spend those weeks in his cell.

To make sure of her compliance Wentworth was only letting her leave after that day if she signed a new contract stipulating that she would under a year-long mentoring course under his direction if she did skip out.

Carolyn gulped when she read it, but she was in no doubt that this man could find her again and two weeks in a cell was not an option. A building this old must have had rats in the basement at the very least.

“So what happens next?” Carolyn asked breathily.

“Next I am going to put you over my knee and give you the long hard spanking you definitely have coming,” Wentworth told her, “And then I think we will explore some of those sorority-style options you elaborated upon before… and some you didn’t… Patty has been filling me in over the last couple of weeks. It sounds like you girls knew how to have a good time back in college.”

Carolyn’s mouth hung open and she shot Patty an accusatory look.

“Look…” she said using her best assertive voice, a hard trick to pull off when one was standing around in underwear.

“No Miss Brady, you look, you hired me remember, you thought you could get your jollies by playing me for a bit of excitement. You think this is a game? I have worked for the Government and people you wouldn’t believe. Justice Adjustment is a serious business.” Wentworth was standing tall now and was the picture of indignant paternalism.

Back when she had been handled by Mrs Keaton she had quietly dreamt of a man handling her like some hero out of the movies, but Wentworth was right, this was no game.

“H-how… I mean… what…?” Carolyn spluttered.

But Wentworth made his move and decided to show her. Part of him hated these society dames and their ‘slumming it’ attitudes, but part of him felt sorry for her. She just needed a firm hand from time to time and a year with this Keaton woman just hadn’t got the job done. Not that the sorority high jinks would have done her any harm but they didn’t really cut it with him. In fact it may have made his job harder since by the sounds of it this was one tough kid used to some pretty rough handling.

Taking her arm he led her tottering towards a chair while she rapidly blinked her distress. Then once there he sat down and tipped her across his lap so that her pantie sheathed behind was upper most in his lap.

A small “oh” escaped Carolyn’s throat and she couldn’t help jiggling her behind.

Meanwhile a smirking Patty leaned back against the wall and took a long slow drag of a cigarette as she watched the show; a coil of blue smoke rolling around the room adding to the steamy effect.

Carolyn, who had never been so intimate with a man gasped audibly as Wentworth tugged at her white silk de Givenchy briefs, which stretched a little before they let go and slid down her thighs with a whisper.

Patty grinned openly as the full alabaster bottom came into view, curves that both at once managed to appear pert and chubby, a good spankable hiney, she thought.

Wentworth too was not unmoved, in fact he even felt his little friend perk up a bit at the vista, not that he would allow any distractions. When a dame needed a spanking she needed a spanking and he was the man to do it.

He let his arm rise to just above his shoulder and brought it down sharply with a satisfying smack. It must have stung Carolyn even more than she was expecting because she squealed.

“We are only just getting started Miss Brady,” Wentworth muttered.

With that he let his arm slowly fall and rise for a traditional stinging warm-up while Carolyn wriggled and gasped, her bottom quickly turning bright pink on its way to full red. Then he upped the pace and really went to town.

“Oh my,” Carolyn wailed but the rest of what she said was lost in mewling and a consternation of pain was written on her face.

“Good job boss,” Patty chuckled. She had often been on the receiving end herself but didn’t always get to watch.

“Glad… you… think… so,” Wentworth said, each word coinciding with a spank.

Carolyn had begun to grunt and groan under the assault and her ever reddening bottom was certainly testimony to the effectiveness of Wentworth’s spanking hand.

“Okay, okay I get it… I’m sorry, you can stop now,” she gasped in a by now very damp voice.

But if Wentworth heard he made no show of it, he had a spanking to hand out and it was going to take a while. In fact a good 10 minutes of relentless spanking went by before he even began to slow, each swat chipping away at Carolyn’s resolve until she final broke into sobs.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she coughed, a mess of Maybelline smearing her face.

“Now young lady,” Wentworth said sternly as he brought the spanking to a stop. “You know where you’re going next don’t you?”

A very miserable Carolyn nodded and shot a glance to where she had seen Patty standing not two weeks before.

“That’s right,” Wentworth chuckled.

As Carolyn gained her feet she looked like a girl on her way to her execution she as shielded her forward modesty with her cupped hands and stumbled to the corner.

“Oh honey it ain’t so bad,” Patty said gleefully, “Unless a client comes in that is,” she added.

Carolyn gave her a wide-eyed look of horror and gasped.

“Honey,” Patty said sharply pointing, “the corner.”

“Hey, that’s my line,” Wentworth said in faux indignation.

“Just allowing you to delegate,” Patty giggled.

“This is… it’s so…” Carolyn muttered breathlessly.

“Ain’t it just,” Patty agreed ruefully, but not feeling the least bit sympathetic.

I pulled this off an alternative travel site. Apparently a group of hippies and their ‘naked hula dancing’ in India ran afoul of the local authorities. Despite the brutality of the story the girls (and guys) involve seemed to have viewed the whole episode as an adventure. The picture above is one of the girls and here is an excerpt from the report.

“Ten cops showed up just before the magical witching hour of eternal and cosmic renewal and demanded an outrageous bribe of 30,000 Rupees. That’s almost $500! Their demand was politely declined which then was met with a very crude rebuttal and raised bamboo truncheons.

An order was barked, cops charged forth and truncheons were heartily swung. A bamboo truncheon, which feels about 42 inches in length, hurts like a sonuvabitch when struck into soft buttocks. I howled like a naughty school girl served a capital sentence. The hula hoop dancers loosed high-pitched animal shrieks of pain when the truncheons raised purple welts on their luscious bottoms. The drummers were drummed without mercy, the guitarists, too, were violently strummed.”

It goes on…

“The bamboo spanking sorely dampened our party spirits and fully routed we scampered into the night holding our sorry butts less they slip off our hips. Alas, not every child of birthday bliss escaped the clutches of corrupt authority. The drummers were hauled off to jail to be processed which meant negotiating the baksheesh — the bribe to be paid for sullying the bamboo truncheons of Indian law and order. In the morning the casualties gathered to commiserate and compare wounds…”

“There was no musical interlude at sunset that day. The drummers were still in jail. The hula hoop girls’ luscious bottoms were too sore and bruised to sway to the syrupy rhythms of tangerine sunsets.Eventually our wounds and welts receded like surly phantoms slipping and sliding into early morning dew. We resumed our carefree lives and frolicked as spring lambs would frolic upon hearing the news that the local abattoir had gone belly-up. Love and lust again, and again and again, moistened the moonlit beach sands while shards of broken hearts were taken up by the warm caresses of velvet waves and carried away by a demoralized Cupid whose silken wings are moulting causing him to plunge into the Arabian Sea like Icarus shot in the head by a cuckolded sniper.”

Some people would pay for that kind of treatment. I guess some Indian police don’t like hippies.

A little known and now forgotten event took place during the Second World War, some of the details of which were reported in a magazine published back int the 1980s. I have only a photostat of a long letter carried by the publication and many more details we forthcoming, but here is what I was able to type up and summaries.

In 1943 12 women serving in the British Women’s Auxilliary Air Force (WAAF) had to make a forced landing in the Aden Protectorate while on route to Asia. There being no accommodation on hand the group were taken to a guest house six miles outside the Crown Colony authority into Aden itself.

For reasons that are unclear the next day the WAAFs refused to board taxis sent to collect and police were called during which there was an altercation and several police constables were assaulted. Within two hours the 12 women were hauled up before a civilian judge who acquitted six of them and convicted the other six of affray.

Five of those found guilty of affray were summarily sentenced to 12 strokes of the cane each on the bare bottom downstairs at the court and then released later that day. Meanwhile, a sixth, a public school educated 19-year-old Leading Aircraft Woman known only as Shirley, faced six further charges. She seems to have been the most belligerent and as the senior officer present was assumed to be the ringleader.

Shirley was sentenced to nine months in Sana Gaol and for the duration of her punishment was to receive eights strokes of the birch on the bared bottom at five intervals for each of the five separate (making 40 in total)all at the discretion of the prison governor.

On appeal and following a campaign launched by her home town newspaper this sentence was later reduced to 12 strokes of the cane.

But as she was seen as the ringleader and as the authority of the court had seen to be challenged by outside interference this was subsequently raised 18 strokes of the cane for being the ringleader of an affray and a single birching of 24 strokes for inciting mutiny was reinstated. Although the prison sentence was quashed.

The caning was witnessed by a serving police officer in the Aden police and a 21-year-old WAAF Officer from the girls’ unit, who were ‘shocked and outraged’ at this turn of events, but both admitted later that they were also ‘rather aroused by the situation,’ and most of their outrage was over the issue that the girl had been thrashed by a male police sergeant.

The punishment as described by them: The girl was fully clothed and in uniform for her punishment but after being bent over a frame in the prison yard, she had her skirts raised and her draws taken down. The strokes themselves were laid 3/4 of an inch apart and applied at intervals of 20 or 30 seconds.

There birching was carried out on another occasion within the confines of the prison and exact details were not known to these witness.

An appeal launched in her home town did little to persuade the authorities to be merciful. In fact one of the mothers of another of the girls, 22-year-old Peggy, wondered what all the fuss was about. Their daughter’s punishment was no worse than that suffered at Batley High right up to the age of 18. Where as a senior girl she had received 12 strokes on three occasions for anti-social offences and petty theft.

Peggy said the worst part was the waiting for her turn. The strokes themselves were received at 10 to 15 second intervals and although painful causing her to she sob and scream, they were “no worse than those received at Batley High from Mrs Moore.”

During 1943 and 1944, no less than 79 other European women were  punished in this way in Aden, including eight stewardesses, three nannies, one teacher and nine nurses.

LSF have published two more of my novellas, this time in a single volume. This contains two adult reformatory style spanking stories.

In the first of these stories entitled Choices, three very different women choose to attend the alternative punishment centre at the Cornwall Institute instead of receiving prison sentences for their crimes. Here they soon find that any transgression of the rules, including poor attitude, will earn them a bare bottom spanking – sometimes by hand while over the knee but more often than not with a pliable cane or clothes brush. However, as the days go by, each of the women find they’re beginning to develop a fixation with the men who punish them.

In the second story, Cane and Consequence, an intrigued privileged new girl, Catherine, an inmate at Hardham House, makes tentative approaches towards the tearful, recently caned Melanie…

The Audi hit yet another line of cars and Kimberly slowed to a stop. Usually such delays pissed her off but today the conversation was far too interesting and the 36-year-old blonde cast a smirk at her passenger sitting alongside.

Clarice tugged furiously at a stray red hair and glowered at the new hold-up. She and Kimberly had been at school together and told each other almost everything and that was the trouble. Now she wished she hadn’t.

“Oh Jesus, not again,” she groaned at the cars ahead.

“Don’t change the subject,” Kimberly smirked.

“Look, forget I said anything, it’s not a big deal,” Clarice said sullenly and pouted.

“I think we both know it is,” Kimberly giggled, “How long have you wanted a spanking anyway?”

“I don’t want a spanking, it’s not like that,” Clarice said irritably, “You make me sound as if I’m some wide-eyed kid and haven’t… you know. It’s just that’s it’s been a while and… well you know.”

Actually Kimberly did and a smile tickled her lips as she returned some brief attention to the traffic.

“What do you mean, don’t want a spanking? I thought you did?” Kimberly said innocently.

Clarice sighed and pulled a strand of red down to her nose as she had as a child. A then let out a long slow breath.

“Before, you know, when you know you are going to get a spanking or whatever… then you’re scared and excited all at the same time. It’s good to fight it, especially when you know it won’t save you,” she said with a studied purse of her lips. “Afterwards it feels… oh I don’t know, like a cleansing or a release. The sting makes you feel alive and… well kind of sexy, you know. Its liberating, you can do anything, anything you’re told, sexually I mean and its completely free from guilt.”

“So you do like getting spanked?” Kimberly replied distractedly as she shifted to first as the cars in front began to move.

“No,” Clarice said emphatically, “No at the time I would do anything to make it stop, you know, it hurts.”

Kimberly thought about her own experience, among some of the things she hadn’t always told Clarice and smiled knowingly.

At 24 while with a group at dinner she had met a friend of a friend, a man more than 20 years older than her. He had been ruggedly handsome with thick dark hair with white at his temples. She remembered he smelled lightly of musk. His firm friendly manner had charmed her and she had spent most of the night being variously cheeky and girlish with a vague idea about provoking him.

“Are you going my way?” she had asked him at the end of the evening.

“What after the way you have been behaving all night?” he had teased.

“Maybe you could do something about that,” she had teased back.

One thing had led to another and back at her flat she had found herself with a bare bottom in his lap and getting a respectable spanking. She had delighted in the vocal protest and not a little begging, but as the spanking was rather moderate by her standards gratifyingly with no let up. Finally she had said she would do anything.

Anything had included the predictable fellatio and then something else. That night she had lost her last virginity after he had taken her to the bathroom and in the midst of a sexy shower had skewered her bottom hole after lubricating her with baby shampoo.

“We could try that again if you want,” she had later invited him huskily.

“What the spanking or the buggery?” he had challenged her.

“Both if you like,” she had giggled.

The second spanking had been rather more challenging than the first but the rewards had been sharply pleasant. Then for some reason she had bit him. Fearing she had gone too far, she quickly fetched a bath brush and told him he could make her cry if he wanted. He had.

The spanking had been the fiercest she had ever had and she had genuinely bawled for mercy long before he had let up.

“Are you going to be a good girl now?” he had demanded.

“Yes Sir,” she had sobbed.

Oh she knew what Clarice meant. It had been hell on her backside and she had suffered for over week afterwards, but clinging to a man in the immediate aftermath was a fiery cleansing joy.

She had sucked him then, this time with genuine enthusiasm while the last of her tears had dripped down her chin and off his balls. The relocation of his cock to her arse before he had come had been a surprise and had driven her wild. She hadn’t even minded when he again switched targets.

“You really are a wild one aren’t you, he had said in the small hours when they were spent?” He had been grinning.

“Care for round four?” she had smiled back handing him the brush. More than just bravado when your bottom hadn’t decided between burgundy or purple for a permanent hue.

“I could spank you sure, but maybe not much else,” he had gasped in amazement.

She had enjoyed the power of it.

“Spank me then, properly this time, and then I’ll leave it to you what you can manage. I dare you,” she had urged him.

She had been terrified and fit to burst with the thought of it, but he had obliged. But she had had too much adrenaline to surrender to tears that time. Nevertheless the final fuck had been epic.

“What are you smiling about?” Clarice asked suddenly cutting into Kimberly’s thoughts.

“I’ll tell you what, I know some people,” Kimberly said enigmatically, “Let me arrange a little bit of fun.”

*

Clarice was nervous. She hadn’t been keen on Kimberly’s idea in the first place; she was more of a relationship girl. Give her a man with a firm hand and healthy dose of feigned reluctance and she was in her element. But Kimberly liked parties and role play and… she sighed, well they were here now and she supposed it might be fun.

The building looked like a garage or warehouse, with high pebble-dashed walls and no apparent windows. There was a new Aston Martin in the lane and small red two-seater sports car to die for. The latter belonged to a cool looking woman in her 30s with Ray Bans in her hair and a sour look of aloof disdain on her face. Clarice would have loved to dismiss her as a tart, but the woman was expensively dressed and had spray-on denims to reveal legs to die for and Clarice knew it was just envy.

“Get her,” she whispered, irritated that the woman hadn’t even glance at them.

“Come on,” Kimberly said gently.

“What are they, you know, going to do?” Clarice asked in a voice of excited terror.

“Someone is going to spank your bottom,” Kimberly replied in an amused voice.

“I don’t mean that, I mean… you know, how does it all work?” Clarice was blushing.

But Kimberly only winked and smiled enigmatically.

They followed the woman from the red car into an industrial reception, but she had already disappeared. Instead they were faced with a smiley frumpy woman in her 50s who greeted them with an encouragement.

“Just tell me your numbers girls,” she said, her voice was husky and she spoke with a South London accent.

Kimberly put two pink slips of paper on the counter and smiled back warmly. Clarice knew the look that tightened at her friend’s eyes, she was nervous too.

“Clary and Kim, how nice,” the woman smiled again, “Just sign here and… take this. Then just go through to the room number on the card.”

Clarice shot a bitter glance at Kimberly, annoyed at the lame alias she had given. Very subtle, her eye roll said sarcastically. But she took the stiff lemon coloured card and examined it. It had her name and the number on one side and the words Atomic Brickbat on the other.

“What’s this mean?” she asked.

“It’s your safe word,” the woman said pointing otherwise silently down the passage to some anonymous doors.

“Mine’s the same, it’s to keep it simple,” Kimberly reassured her.

“Oh God,” Clarice groaned, “I don’t know that I’m…”

“What’s the safe word?” Kimberly said sharply.

“Atomic brickbat,” Clarice shot back without looking at the card.

“Remember that and have fun,” Kimberly said shoving Clarice ahead of her.

*

Clarice was alone and naked but for a hospital gown-like affair. The room was cold and the leather padded bench even colder. The man and the woman had been brusque to the point of rudeness and made strip without the least ceremony. The menace was exciting, she thought.

She had been told the prison rules were strict, but not what they were. It was the first she knew of the scenario, but it had been one of those discussed with Kimberly. Christ this is really going to happen.

Beyond the one door was the sound of anguish and other shouts completely compatible with the prison story and she shuddered. Too real, she thought. But she didn’t have long to dwell on it.

The door opened and the man returned and barked angrily that she should stand up.

“I hate trouble makers,” he snarled, “And didn’t I tell you to stand-up, so stand-up straight,” he yelled, even though Clarice was already standing.

He was tall and handsome, but with a theatrical sinister aspect. He wore thick black non-descript trousers and sweat top, with leather boots and a thick leather belt.

“Yes Sir,” she squeaked, genuinely too scared to say anything else.

Later she would learn that Kimberly usually gave the gaoler some attitude or even openly rebelled, but Clarice was too caught up in the moment.

“Yes Sir,” he mimicked in a stern voice, “I’ll give you yes Sir, get in here.”

Here, was a larger warmer room with another padded bench at one end, some kind of frame in the middle, and a huge rack of paddles, canes, whips and assorted birch rods.

“Look, there’s… you know, there’s been a mistake,” she gabbled, her eyes hanging wide as she backed away from him.

“Yes and you made it,” he snapped.

But he waited then, watching and listening as if considering something. Clarice was terrified.

“Right then, come here,” he said at last and hauled her over to the bench.

She wasn’t surprised when he sat down and tossed her across his lap. Nor that he completely bared her bottom.

The spanking started out soft and rapidly built up to a generous onslaught that left her panting and somewhat damp. A situation he noticed, if only by the faint smell, for he pinched her and said in chuckling voice, “You’re enjoying this, tsk tsk, I brought you here for punishment,” as he let her get up.

Clarice blushed and clamped her hands over her thinly veiled front. Then she watched in some anguish as he went to the rack to take up a short leather paddle.

“What are you going to do?” she said nervously.

The next spanking was tougher and she struggled. So much so that at one point he gruffly asked, “You remember the two words?”

“No, what…?” she panted, and then remembered the card. Not that she believed it would make a difference, he was definitely in control. “Oh yes,” she blurted, although for a second she couldn’t recall what they were.

The spanking continued with bite until little by little small tears pooled in her eyes and she made mewling sounds. However, she didn’t actually cry for real until he had finished, but by then she hoarse with yelling and gasping for breath. Her bottom was none too good either. It throbbed and burned so that she could scarce tell that the spanking had finished.

Atomic brickbat, she remembered at last, not that she had put much effort in to recall it earlier. Well it was too late now, she thought as he led her to the corner.

“You can stay there,” he ordered, “Don’t cover your bottom and face the other way, do you hear me?”

Her bottom burned with contact with the air and she was shaking with a surge of conflicted emotions. Never had it been this intense.

“Have you ever felt the strap or the cane?” he asked darkly.

“The strap Sir,” she told him. It was true; she had once been punished with a belt.

“You have another hour before the shift change,” he said with a hard authority. “You can stay there until then or we can make a start to get it over with.”

“Start what Sir,” she let panic touch her voice. What was happening now?

“Your punishment,” he said.

Her heart flipped. She had already been spanked, but… she felt faint.

“Can’t we, you know, get it over with?” she found herself saying, while in her head she repeated atomic brickbat, atomic brickbat…

The belts that secured her to the frame in the middle of the room weren’t that tight and if she had been left to her own devices she might have easily escaped. But he didn’t leave her nor give her time to test her bonds. Instead once she was bare bottom upwards on the frame he took up a thick leather strap with a split down the middle.

“I am going to give you eight,” he told her, “And then another eight. We’ll find out what you are made of.”

*

As she made her way back to the reception Clarice wondered if she was ever going to sit down again. Every step was a torment and fiery bees assailed both bottom cheeks all the way down to mid-thigh every time she took a step. Nothing had prepared her for such a harsh and genuine experience and yet she was amazed that she had barely thought about the safe word now etched on her mind.

It was a long slow walk back to the entrance and she made progress only through gritted teeth.

“You made it then?” Kimberly said in a rueful voice as Clarice emerged from the passage way.

“Yes,” she hissed with a wince, taking a moment to pause in her step.

She noticed that Kimberly looked decidedly uncomfortable and was standing with an awkward stance.

“I wasn’t sure,” she said almost regretfully, “I thought… I thought we could probably both use something to really clear the cobwebs away.”

“I usually just need… you know,” Clarice replied with a tight smile.

“I know but…” having taken a step forward she sudden widened her eyes as made to clutch her behind. “Jesus, I almost used that damn phrase twice. You?”

Clarice smiled more warmly and shook her head. “I didn’t even think of it.”

“Shit, you don’t mean…?” Kimberly was suddenly horrified.

“No, its fine, you’re right. I didn’t forget it, I just didn’t think of it… you know, I was just caught up in it all.” Clarice laughed.

Kimberly sighed and nodded. “Oh, I know. Next time we will explore a gentler scenario.”

“Hmmm,” Clarice replied.

“Oh, yeah, not your thing this,” and Kimberly pulled a face.

“No… it’s just, maybe once a month something like this is, you know, about right. I’d rather do the Mr Right thing when I… you know, find Mr Right,” she winked.

“Oh God, I’ve created a monster,” Kimberly giggled.

“Yeah, that and something else,” Clarice added pensively, “A big problem.”

“What’s that?” Kimberly asked without concern.

“I don’t think I can sit down, how are we going to get home?” Clarice winced for emphasis.

“Standing up on the bus I should think,” Kimberly giggled, “We can get the car tomorrow.”

“Or next week,” her friend said ruefully.

“Or next month…” And they giggled.

Oh God, oh God, Oh God, was the frantic thought racing through Jessica’s mind. The two bottles of perfume and one silk scarf felt like a burning ton in her pockets, what had she been thinking? Was it too late to take them back? But at that moment the door to the store’s exit opened wide and allowed the street to swallow her, oh God, she was going to be sick. Too late now, she had officially stolen them.

Got to go now, not too fast, not too slow, she urged herself, damn I must be crazy. The road to her right was a fence of moving traffic and in her mind it was a mile to the crossing up ahead. To her left was a wall of glass, damn the store was big. A row of fashion mannequins stared at her accusingly; among them was her timid reflection, all ashen faced beneath a raven straight-haired bob. She wore a bright red coat to accentuate her curves in all the right places, a gross folly, she now realised. Could I have dressed even more conspicuously, she berated herself?

Any moment the store security men or cops would pounce. Oh God…

“Would you mind coming along with us Miss?” they would say.

Oh God, she hadn’t pulled this stunt since college, she must be crazy.

It took an age to reach the corner and away at last from the store. Still no one had grabbed her. The crossing light went green and in a sudden panic she made a dash to the other side of the road. Then her cool was busted and she ran.

She had run for three streets before she finally figured that she had got away with it. Her heart was still pounding 30 minutes later when she reached home.

*

That night she dreamed. It was a queer sort of dream, too real and yet too fantastic. She found herself floating above her apartment building but even as she looked it fell away like someone had taken hold of the Earth like a ball in their hand and dropped it. But beyond, instead of space there was a landscape like a Japanese painting as done by Turner or… it was astonishing in its beauty.

Then she was on her feet standing outside an old Victorian school surrounded by the impossible beauty of the forests and mountains. That someone was ringing a bell was disconcerting, that she knew it meant that she had to go in now was unsettling.

Stranger still she was wearing a short skirt and little maroon blazer in a kind of parody of a school uniform. For some reason she remembered the shoplifting and not only that day’s. There were many other such pranks as a girl and well into young adulthood. Her tummy lurched and for a second she felt sick. Then she sighed it away and mounted the small wooden steps.

The building inside was like a museum she had once visited. It was all dark oak and old-fashioned school desks stood in rows. In each seat was a young adult dressed in a uniform like her own and each student was grinning and nudging each other as they stared after her passing.

“I am sorry I’m late,” she offered nervously, but late for what?

She hadn’t meant to say that, but…

“You will be,” someone giggled.

Jessica rounded on them in anger but another voice stopped her.

“I am really quite disappointed in you,” the masculine voice intoned.

Whirling around to face the front again she saw a man who hadn’t been there before. He was tall and had an ethereal look about him. Dressed in various shades of black he had perhaps merged with the shadows, but now that he had spoken he looked sharper than the room about them. He had an ivory pale face framed by a jet mane that smiled firmly at her, but it was his eyes that she could not meet; crystal blue gems with over large black pupils that bored into her.

Sensing no malice she wondered at her reaction, but an overwhelming sense of shame held her gaze to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, this time meaning it.

“Come here,” he ordered crooking his finger at her.

She gulped. Looking around she saw the class were now as apprehensive as she was, although some faces looked smile tinged behind forced frowns.

“Look if this is about…?” she blustered.

“Yes?” he said sharply.

She shook her head.

“Come here,” he said again more slowly, each word sharply and distinctly pronounced.

Swallowing down fear she dashed her gaze about for some ally but saw none. Looking back, the door too seemed to have merged with the wall, as if the room was now the entire world. So seeing no options she gingerly placed a foot before her as if the floor would collapse and carefully walked forward.

Certain he would be obeyed the man was no longer watching her, but instead he had placed a great book upon the desk up front and decisively turned over pages.

“What have I done?” she whispered nervously, anxious to see the pages and not knowing why.

“Let me see,” he said in smooth dark tone of doom, “Quite a bit of petty theft, shoplifting mainly. I had hoped you had grown out of that,” he added wearily, “More lying than I can keep track of. Laziness, tardiness, selfishness, the list goes on…”

“I was never caught, I mean… how did you…?” she spluttered.

“Of course you were never caught, I arranged it after all. I adjudged that a criminal record would do you more harm than getting away with it. If you hadn’t… why did you steal those things anyway, you have a good job?” he shook his head in dismay, and continued, “If you hadn’t taken up your old habits again we wouldn’t be having this conversation, although, to be fair I was beginning to despair of you. I rather think my direct intervention was inevitable sooner or later,” the man sighed.

“Who are you?” Jessica gasped.

“Oh… haven’t you guessed? I am your… hmmm, how can I put this… overseer… or godfather, if you will? Macqus Darklast, we meet at last,” he said with a curt bow.

Jessica glanced around to see if this statement gained her any sympathy, after all the man was clearly mad.

“They are other… clients of mine,” he said lightly.

Jessica saw a pretty young woman in front swallow nervously and duck her head.

“You mean you’re my guardian angel?” she almost laughed out loud but his stern gaze held her.

He chuckled silently, but his eyes narrowed with some menace.

“Hardly that,” he said with scorn.

“So what am I doing here?” she asked, although several scenarios fought for a place in her mind and none of them were entirely comfortable.

“I have decided to call you to account and begin to curb your ways,” he said with a note of exasperation.

Jessica swallowed again and shot another hopeful look back for the exit. There was none.

“You will not leave until I permit it,” Macqus intoned.

Jessica was minded of a courtroom and, for some reason, Bambi transfixed halfway across the M25.

“You can suffer a reprimand by way of a marker or we can pick a sin from the book and punish you for it,” he continued. “The deep end might be somewhat traumatic for you, but the alternative sets a precedent for…” he seemed to balance something in his mind before plumping for, “ongoing guidance by means of chastisement.”

“Punish me?” Jessica gasped, “What do you mean?”

“I propose a good sound spanking here in front of the class,” Macqus said brightly, “On the bare bottom, of course,” he added. “But as I said, we can just proceed to… hmm, the cane perhaps. We can save the birch for another time.”

“If you think…” Jessica was stunned and desperately scanned the walls for an escape.

“Come here now,” he ordered. As he spoke he drew her attention to a range of whips, paddles and canes on the desk top that she could have sworn were not there before.

“Please,” she whined, unsure what to do.

“Take your under things right down and bend over the desk,” he told her, “Make sure your bottom faces the class.”

Jessica gaped and shook her head. He could go to hell… she thought, thought but she had no courage to say it.

“I suggest you do it young lady,” Macqus said darkly.

“I won’t do it,” she said breathlessly.

Somehow he moved without haste and took Jessica by the arm. Then with hands of iron draped in silk he led her to a high-backed chair at the apex of the room and sat down. She came tumbling after and in one short motion found herself face down and helpless across his lap.

There were some titters and the atmosphere of the room tightened somehow. Jessica felt hot blood pulse in her face and began a futile struggle against the nonchalant arms that pinned her.

The ridiculously short skirt flipped into the small of back easily and with horror Jessica realised that the entire class could see her knickers.

“Get off,” she squealed.

But worse was to come. A moment later she felt a firm hand at her waist and the brief thick cotton garment was drawn slickly over her bare thighs and right down her legs. They can see my bottom, the thought rocked her, however, before she could digest the idea a stinging hand seared her bottom and she yelled.

The spanking that followed was long hard and efficient. About halfway through Macqus switched to using a slipper and this burned Jessica beyond anything she could have imagined. This is real, my God, this is real, she frantically thought as she remembered that it was all supposed to be a dream. Then she forgot again.

“I’m sorry, please Sir, I’m so sorry,” she yelled, her jaws clamped and by then her breathing much too fast.

“Are you ready to accept your punishment then?” Macqus asked.

“Oh Sir, oooh,” she wailed, “Please, oh please, I have learned now.”

The Faery Overseer shrugged and instead of the slipper took up a medium weight hand paddle and resumed the spanking. This went beyond stinging and began to really burn her bottom.

“Yaaaah,” she howled and renewed her struggled.

“Are you ready to accept your punishment?” Macqus asked her again.

What did he mean? She was being punished, she raged.

“Are you ready to accept your punishment?”

“Yes,” she yelled, knowing no other way to stop the onslaught.

As soon as she was on her feet she spied the appraising stares of the class and burst into tears. Thank God I don’t know these people; she seized on the thought for the scant comfort it gave her.

“Never mind them,” Macqus scolded her, “Come here.”

He had again returned to the book and was scanning its pages.

“Shall we start at the beginning or shall we address the small matter of yesterday’s crimes and work backwards?” he sounded business-like and distracted as he ran a finger down the columns of writing in the tome.

Yesterday, this was all about yesterday, she realised. It was hard to deny then that she deserved all of this.

“Yesterday,” she muttered aloud, unaware that she had spoken the thought.

“Very well,” Macqus announced in a firm voice, “Bend over the desk.”

To emphasise his words he took up a cane from the desk and moved into position.

Jessica gulped and stole a timid glance at the classroom audience. This wouldn’t have been so bad if only… but who was she kidding? Her bottom throbbed with fire and the prospect of more was a minor species of hell.

It took all her courage to bend as ordered and her movements were slow and stiff. A light draft contrasted with the heat of her still roasting bare bottom, mirrored as it was by that suffusing her face.

“Bottom up and out a little more,” Macqus said sternly.

Her face melted as she obeyed. “Oh God,” she moaned.

The cut was bad and seemingly endless in its burn. Worse still the initial pain seemed to breed in her tail so that she imagined a thousand little insects biting her in a line and then having babies to join the fray. She was suffering the bites of their great, great grandchildren when Macqus caned her again, this time forcing a banshee-like scream through her lips.

Three strokes in, her mind had shaken off the insect analogy and had settled on a team of great big hairy lumberjacks working on her as if her bottom was a log.

By six she had no thoughts much at all and was sobbing for England.

“Six of the best from me is worthy of 60 from another,” Macqus told her.

“Eh?” she groaned.

“You may stand up,” the stern creature told her kindly, “We are finished.”

Jessica got stiffly to her feet and gripped her thighs by proxy to a bottom rub. Although tears rolled down her face, she was not going to give the class any further satisfaction.

“You may thank me,” Macqus said as he extended his hand.

“Yes Sir, thank you Sir,” Jessica whispered and limply shook.

Then a strange thing happened. Macqus bowed to her and then to the class, before moving to the wall and pulling back a great curtain she hadn’t before seen. Beyond it was her room back at home.

“What?” Jessica muttered.

“Now I want you to go and stand in the corner with your nose pressed to the join and your hands tucked neatly into the small of your back. No rubbing mind,” he added pointing to her room.

The humiliation of placing herself in such a childish position was almost as bad as the caning she realised, but she had no fight left to resist.

“Now stay there,” Macqus told her sharply.

*

Jessica was unsure where her dream met the brand new day as it crept tentatively through half drawn curtains. It came in grey and then sepia to find her still standing in the corner. She was horrified as she came to; she had never slept walked in her life. But one small move made her bottom flare and terror gripped her as if Macqus would descend for moving unbidden.

It’s only cramp, she told herself as the last shreds of the dream were torn from her. She was cold with the morning chill and wondered at standing so all night.

“God, I’ll never, ever shoplift again,” said aloud. “What a wild dream.”

As she hobbled to the bathroom for a shower she bit down on her lip pensive, the shame of her crime suffusing strangely with the eroticism of the dream: erotic, how? The thought startled her. But all the same the warm water fell like a caress, one which she mirrored with one of her own.

“Crazy dream,” she murmured.

And so it might have been, but from the corner of her eyes she saw an outline of a man in the full-length mirror behind her and whirled with a heart-lurch to confront it. The morning shadow was just that, must have been, she embraced the relief. But this only for a moment, for in the steamy glass her exposed naked form taunted her with its curves and there across the smooth domes of her bottom were six plum coloured lines.

It had rained all day and even the grass along the side of the path looked limp as if it had been drowned. The track itself was of hoggin and that too was soggy underfoot adding to the grey damp atmosphere of the dingy disused railway siding.

To her left was a long graffiti-marred brick wall and here and there tufts of hardy dank green burst through the mortar. All along this wall there were bricked-up railway arches, although some of them had steel doors clamped over more recent added doorways. Recent being sometime in the last 50 years; yesterday to a mid-Victorian edifice in its dotage.

It was strange to find such a place left undeveloped in North London, especially when less than half a mile away was a stylish and busy shopping parade. That fashionable leafy inner suburb was much more her world.

Carrie had left the car three streets away where no one would associate it with this place. It was better that way, far better. She just wanted this business done with.

She looked down at a puddle, shocked at the stranger looking back in rippled reflection. Her once carefree young face looked drawn and the blonde pile of hair looked less than immaculate. The 36-year-old had dressed in a hurry that morning and it showed. But when Osterman called people, they usually didn’t keep him waiting. She wished that she had never become one of his clients, as he liked to call people like her, the stress was killing her. But the money was good, very good and the risks were low. After all she supplied strictly category C merchandise on a wholesale basis. She never met the dealers direct, it was a sweet deal; or at least it had been up until now.

Finally she reached the far end where a mess of runaway oaks and inner city birch trees grew; a haven for sneaky urban foxes like Osterman. Outside the last arch was a steel grey S-Type and one of Osterman’s suits leaning next to an open door leading into the last cavernous lock-up set under the old railway arch.

“Is he inside?” Carrie asked the suit.

She had seen him before, but had forgotten his name, not that they used proper names these people. One of Osterman’s associates was called Fish for Christ’s sake.

The man grunted and offered her a non-committal shrug. Maybe he thought sharing simple information would make him a grass. Carrie toughed it out with a hard look of disdain and pushed past him.

*

Osterman was sitting back in the shadows, his smile almost friendly as Carrie walked in. He was a big man who unlike his associates filled out his suit well. There were grey flecks in his hair, but otherwise he looked young; not much older than she was at a guess.

“I thought we had a deal,” he said calmly.

Carrie hated him calm, she felt sick. She thought about the recent news about a body found in the river.

“We do,” Carrie addressed him firmly as if he were a boy in the pub who had dared to make advances.

“You are still sitting on 30 kilos or else you haven’t paid me,” Osterman continued.

“So, business is slow this month. The Lemon Tree is closed for refurbishment and in case you hadn’t heard Astral Green burnt down last week,” Carrie replied in a bored voice.

Both were nightclubs that together were where the dealers sold almost half her business.

“That’s not my concern,” Osterman gaped, a rare show of emotion. “You run the franchise.”

Carrie let her mouth hang open as if she might speak and then closed it again to glare at him.

“What do you want me to do?” Carrie said at last, “I can’t just find new ground overnight, not without straying into rival territory.” She crossed her arms and rested on one hip to face him down. “I have a couple of new angles and by the time the Lemon Tree opens again I will be able to…”

Osterman leaned forward and fixed her with a deadpan stare.

“I am certain you will, but that still leaves us with the shortfall and we had a deal.” His voice was edged in unrelenting doom and Carrie shuddered.

“Deal,” she gulped, her breathing now becoming audible.

“You either meet your targets or there are consequences,” he rasped.

Carrie was losing it and what had been butterflies gently gnawing at her stomach lining had become positively vampiric. She thought about the body in the river again.

Then Osterman frowned and seemed to relax a bit.

“Hey, you’re a big girl, a deal’s a deal, but it’s not like I’m going to get my associates to work you over,” he laughed, “Anyone would think I was going to…” then he laughed as he got it. “You did didn’t you,” and still chuckling he added, “Hey I’m a business man.”

“You said consequences,” she blurted almost relieved but still not quite feeling safe.

Osterman nodded.

“Half the profits on the shortfall until we are back on schedule and… a little incentive to keep you on your toes,” he said.

*

Carrie remembered the deal they had made, but in her hasty greed she had assumed it was a euphemism. In any case she had been so cocksure of herself that she had not thought it a problem.

“You’re not kidding are you?” she said with a cotton dry mouth.

“About handing out a little spanking if you ever crossed me? Oh no, I am a literal sort of guy,” Osterman said casually.

“You handle your male clients like this?” the accusation was a bitter one.

He snorted. “No, not exactly, they tend to get a little spank at the end of a fist,” he said, “Otherwise my reputation gets a little weird.”

Carrie sucked in air through her nose as if she was considering his offer, but he hadn’t really made her one; he was calling all the shots.

“Is that why you don’t want to beat up a woman?” she asked, now stalling for time.

“You catch on fast,” he said, almost with regret, “Besides I still have to look my mother in the eye.”

“Yes Osterman you do, and what would she say about this?” Carrie’s brave was holding up but her vampiric butterflies were back and the inside of her mouth felt like sandpaper.

“Little rich girl get’s out of line and gets a spanking; oh I think she would laugh, don’t you?” Osterman chuckled.

Carrie eyed the cane he held and blanched.

“Can’t we talk about this?” she said in a voice that was increasingly leaking any confidence she had left.

“But we are talking about this?” he said. “Want to surrender all your profit for a free pass this time?”

“No,” Carrie whispered with a shake of her head.

“I never had you pegged as a welcher,” Osterman said with a shrug. “I mean you wouldn’t rather my associates handle this in the usual way?”

Carrie’s intake of breath was fast and she let it out slowly with resignation.

“Good and good, because we get to do it my way anyhow,” he said dryly.

Carrie nodded and then with all the dignity she could muster asked him, “How do you want me?”

“Just the needful,” Osterman shrugged.

Carrie glanced back in the direction from which she had come, they were alone. So kicking off her shoes she reached back and unzipped her dress and without a hint of false modesty or giving him the satisfaction of coyness, she stepped out of it.

Osterman looked embarrassed and Carrie was thrown. She didn’t know what was worse; assuming this was just business or assuming it wasn’t. He gestured to her brief underwear and made a half turn as if he were really a gentleman.

“Bastard,” she said as she firmly seized her waistband and decisively slid her knickers down to step out of them.

“You little self-righteous bitch,” he growled and turned on her.

At least he was still calm. Instead of bending her face down across the table or chair, he sat down again and hauled her over his lap. Then his hand came down with bite across her bared bottom.

“Jesus Christ,” she gasped.

But the spanking didn’t stop there. It wasn’t an elegant affair nor measured. Hands that were used to pommelling opposition were now open blades of justice and blasted down in rapid angry slaps over and over until Carrie was yelling.

“Bastard, you bastard,” she yelled, her legs kicking as she struggled.

Even then he didn’t finish, but spanked her on and on until angry grunts and gasps had become wet wailing as Carrie spluttered for breath.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she repeated over and over in a sobbing wet voice. But this heartfelt mantra did not save her either.

Maybe 10 minutes later Osterman finally dropped the sobbing woman to the floor and left her to cry.

“We had a deal,” he said in an awkward tone.

“Yes,” she panted as she brought her tears under control. “I am sorry I swore at you.”

He nodded.

“You still going to cane me?” she asked, now with a humble demeanour.

“Not this time,” he winked.

She smiled and clambered shyly to her feet.

“I’ll get things back into line by next month,” she told him, her voice slow and pained.

“You had better, or I will be the one getting you into line,” he said with a smile and a motion to the cane.

“Yes Sir,” she said ruefully as she nervously bit at her lower lip.

*

By the time Carrie emerged there were three more men in a huddle around a black Merc now parked alongside the Jaguar. But not one of them gave her glance or showed a sign that they knew she had just been spanked. Carrie liked that just fine.

Now all I need is a drink and a big bag of ice for my tail end, she thought, as she surreptitiously rubbed her bottom. But as she took slow ginger steps back up the hoggin path she felt as if a weight had been lifted. She had screwed up and paid the price. But now she knew the worst and she could handle that. Besides Osterman wasn’t such a bad stick. maybe there were other deals to be made.

Part 1 can be found here.

Megan held herself up off the saddle with her aching thighs and blushed every time she thought of the exaggerated pose of her back-thrust bottom. The curves of her behind still prickled with a pervasive aching soreness, but it only really bothered her now when she forgot herself an allowed her backside contact with the camel’s back.

Up ahead her stern tormentor looked every bit the desert warrior as he sat framed against the azure sky his head set just so and his jaw proudly jutting. But she noticed now that he had stopped on the rise and was waiting.

Her camel too had lurched to a stop and Megan winced as the saddle’s seat spanked her behind, blushing at the idea that he might have seen the hapless manoeuvre.

“Come on, nearly there,” he called over as if addressing some troops.

Megan thought of Lawrence of Arabia, heedless of the cliché image that might have embarrassed her just days before. Out here the comparison was more than apt. Then urging her mount on she gingerly picked her way up the raised ground to join him and to where she could look down on their destination.

The village was much as she had expected; pretty but unsophisticated. The houses were arranged in traditional sand-coloured cubes with small windows and scattered pell-mell like a child’s play blocks. But here and there the larger houses had domes or outer decorated walls over which palm trees hung to offer the occupants some shade.

Then as the camels topped the rise before descending she saw the villa beyond the town on the opposite ridge. It was of pink stone and bracketed with ornamental trees giving a suggestion of an Arabian palace.

“That’s our hotel,” Ahmed said casually and winked. “It has seen better days and most westerners might scoff at its four star pretensions, but it has hot running water and mint tea or coffee on tap. I have some affection for the old place.”

“It’s beautiful,” Megan agreed and grinned openly and enthusiastically as her journalistic façade was tossed to the desert wind.

*

“Megan,” Ahmed said with a pained expression touching his face, “I have been called away for a few hours…” he sounded almost apologetic.

Megan drew her mouth into a line and adopted a neutral expression.

“But…” he continued, “I suspect I might get delayed and not return until tomorrow or… perhaps the day after.”

Strangely Megan also felt some regret, but she had already discovered the bath and a day to herself with a book and her lap-top might be just what she needed.

“I could come with you,” she offered.

He rolled his eyes to disguise his pleasure at the suggestion but remembering his upcoming tasks quickly returned, “I think you would be bored. Besides you can rest up here before we go on into the deep desert and… well, I have something to show you.”

Megan smiled, her nose crinkling in expectation; more surprises, she thought. Then she shrugged and nodded.

“See you when I see you then,” she said dismissively.

He grinned and threw up his arms in an expansive gesture of ‘mine host’ and then slapped them back to his thighs ostentatiously like she had seen vendors do in the market bazaars. Then he bowed slightly and touched his forehead before adding a western wink.

“Goodbye,” he said, and then he was gone.

*

By the next morning Megan was bored. Ahmed had sent word that he had indeed been delayed and might be another day. She had been informed of this by a small dark man in a long kaftan and fez. He had smiled a lot and bowed, but only with the forced politeness of many of his type when faced with a western woman. Or perhaps any woman, she amended, for she had seen none since her arrival.

Her attempts at inquiring about local sights or activities had been met with yet another smile and after only a few minutes yet another tray with sweetmeats and coffee.

“Terrific,” she sighed and prodded at the coconut-based fare on the platter.

Turning her attention to the white marble pillars that stood like sentries around the room she imagined a harem or palatial prison and groaned. There were intricate patterns around the arches and on every wall were mosaics in purple green and blue, all mostly abstract or at most depicting palm trees and water.

Most of the hotel was like this, with swept patterned floors and exotic rugs both draped on walls and gentle on her feet in the intimate rooms.

“Done this now, have bought the t-shirt and now I am bored,” she said aloud, adding a little louder, “Bored.”

That just leaves the village, she thought and grinned. The place didn’t look bigger than a New York Street block, at least she couldn’t get lost and maybe they had a café or even a bar. Although at the back of her mind she imagined hidden souks or welcoming rooms of women ready to gossip and moan about their men. She daydreamed about getting the inside gen on the women of the East for a Pulitzer-winning story.

*

The day was hot and Megan was less than 30 paces from the entrance when she almost regretted leaving the air-conditioned hotel. On the plus side the town was bigger than she had thought and once she got to the main track she decided that there were at least eight streets winding between the sprawl of buildings.

A faded Coca-Cola sign painted into a wall suggested a shop, but a cursory inspection revealed nothing more than a lean-to with a shelf of canned goods and a few anonymous sacks. There was certainly no sign of a Coke. This was to be the only business of any kind she found and after 15 minutes she had covered half the town. In that time she had seen no one but a couple of elderly men slouching in the shade.

“I have heard of one horse towns, but no horse towns…” she muttered.

A glance up a street she had not actually walked looked unpromising and the heat was getting oppressive. Mad dogs and Englishmen… she thought, and not being English she decided that mad was as apt as any description. God she could use a bath now.

Then she heard a laugh and what sounded like a clink of glass. Thinking of the Coca-Cola sign she whirled around and listened again. There was a definite hint of a bar or café just beyond the last building on the lane and she hastened along to see.

There through a curtain of blue and grubby white nylon strips were a row of men sitting at small tables playing some sort of game. They had jugs and obvious coffee cups in front of them and somewhere just out of sight someone moved back and forth with a tray. A 10 minute respite from the sun felt about good just then and Megan stepped forward and pushed her way through the screen of hanging tapes.

“Hello?” she asked tentatively, “Coffee… eh… café or… coke?”

Every eye in the room swivelled to fix her with matching gazes of bemused horror and all talking ceased. Then before she could beat a retreat the small male enclave exploded into pandemonium. A large man in a smart white robe and headdress screamed at her as he slashed at the air in front of her with his arms. Megan suspected that it was only this verbal violence that protected her from some very real kind from the man’s patrons who had now jumped to their feet behind him. Every voice in the room babbled in a cacophony she did not understand as she faced it down with a placating smile.

“Sorry,” she said through a wince and backed away, “I’ll just… eh… go now.” She hoiked her thumb in a ‘that away’ gesture over her shoulder.

But as she turned to run she ran into the chest of the largest man she had ever seen who calmly and sternly spoke a string of dark words at her. One of which she understood: “Police.”

*

The previous day had been a whirl. She remembered the shouting men and being bundled out into the hot bright daylight and into a vehicle. Then there had been more shouting, most of it by a moustachioed man down a radio mic. Then she had been driven at high speed out into the desert and long into the afternoon until nightfall.

Now the long hot night was over and Megan awoke in a dark grey cell and her head hurt. She worked her sandpaper mouth and eyed the empty water beaker longingly. But it had been hours since a woman had come to fill it and bleary eyed she yawned.

The main light to the room was through a small high window no bigger than a paperback that shone a hot bright beam into a square on the floor at her feet. But judging from the mucky walls and myriad graffiti she was glad she couldn’t see more.

Megan’s greater concern was the noise outside. She heard traffic and every now and then someone shouting in ever desperate tones until an alien authoritative voice yelled back and silence fell. This temporary hush was the worse but it was soon filled with plaintive cries and other outside sounds.

Every now and then footsteps drew near and Megan hoped and dreaded they had come for her, whoever they were and for the first time she really missed Ahmed. At least if they came she could have water.

“Hey, I’m an American, let me out of here. I am a guest of your big honcho,” she yelled in frustration.

Her outburst was met by nothing.

*

There were three of them. They sat in a row facing her in this small dark red and grey painted room. All of them wore sunglasses, even though the room was gloomy and poorly lit. The two older men, grizzled and grey, wore traditional garb and next to them on her left sat a westernised man of around 40 wearing a bad suit. Only 10 minutes before she had still been in her cell hoping for water and no one had yet explained to her what she had done.

In broken English the younger man the suit had told her that the elder in the middle was a magistrate and the other man her prosecutor.

“What have I done?” she asked bewildered, “Are you my lawyer?”

The man frowned and looked as if he might laugh. Then he muttered dismissively, “No, no, the lawyers come later if they are needed… magistrate… he… um…” the man waved her away in irritation, “he hasn’t said if you are guilty yet.”

He broke off because the older man had started to talk with the other and the three of them leaned in a huddle.

“You,” the younger man said suddenly pointing at Megan, “You went into men’s…?” he said something she didn’t know and the man waited for an answer.

“I thought it was a bar?” she said indignantly and made to say more, like… what did they mean the lawyers come later?

The man dismissed her again and nodded as he rattled off fast words to the others.

Finally the old man held up his hand and glared at Megan as if she were something he might have stepped in. He said a few brief words and then stood up and left.

“What happened?” Megan wailed.

Ignoring her the younger man shook hands with the prosecutor and they laughed.

“Hey?” Megan yelled at them.

“You quiet now,” the English-speaker snapped, “You are guilty.”

“What?” she hissed.

“Three years in jail and 1,000 lashes or also…” he continued in his bad English with some numbers she didn’t catch but it sounded a lot, but she caught the word ‘fine,’ “Prostitution and public disrespect is illegal here.”

“What?” her mind still stuttered at the first meaningless phrase as it now baulked at the casual accusation. “Do you mean…?” she asked frantically, not sure what she was saying.

But the men weren’t listening and before she could ask more the door opened and a policeman in smart grey-white uniform and a cap came to take her away.

“Hang on,” she gasped pulling away from him, “Did you say jail, a thousand lashes, you mean…? What is going on please?”

Before she could say more the policeman put a firm guiding arm on her and said almost gently something like, “Kah shala,” and “please.”

“Listen there has been a huge mistake,” she told him, “I want the American Ambassador… I want Prince Ahmed… I want…”

“And you always get what you want,” the younger man said with scorn as he broke off from talking to the prosecutor.

Megan felt sick.

*

The room was clean and bright, almost clinically so and Megan felt numb. The strange furniture in the middle of the chamber was almost certainly a whipping bench of some kind, she thought idly but at least… she sucked back a sob. She wasn’t going to give these people the satisfaction.

On the way to this room she had been led across an open courtyard. She had been dressed only in a long white cotton hospital gown with the proverbial gap at the back. Not that there had been many to see her. But there in plain sight of a public viewing area had been a whipping frame and a long bench with canes and six foot leather whips on it. Terror had crushed her and it was almost a relief to be led into this lesser place.

Now she was afraid again. She had no sense of time and it seemed like an age since she had seen Ahmed. What had it been now, three days, four? It did not go unnoticed that when she thought of the outside she thought of him and not home, although God knew she wished she had never come to this country. Three years in jail for what? No one had told her really and next to that a spanking seemed nothing.

Only it wouldn’t be just a spanking and she remembered the whips. She thought too that if she hadn’t come here then she wouldn’t have met Ahmed. Why did that even matter? What was he to her? Look at what he had done and how he had treated her.

Megan managed a smile and thought about her spankings, she had deserved them both by his lights and she knew now that he had saved her life. If only… her smile vanished and she sighed. She was still pondering this and the fine they mentioned… (oh why she couldn’t just pay it and go?) …when the door opened.

This time the men who entered looked more official and one hell of a lot more on the ball. The first man in his expensive London suit even spoke excellent English. Although the second man in the flowing robes of traditional garb looked far more intimidating.

“Miss Kent,” the suited man said in a neutral voice. He smiled firmly and brandished some papers. “I am here to facilitate and expedite this unpleasantness.”

“I demand…” Megan began snarling retort.

But the man put up a silencing hand and shook his head.

“No demands please Miss Kent,” he said.

“I am not a prostitute,” Megan said sullenly.

“I believe you,” he agreed, “But that is not the principle charge. In any event the matter is closed. For a payment of $20,000 the prison term can be suspended, but there is still the matter of 1,000 lashes.”

Megan’s eyes were wide and she looked at the punishment bench with growing horror.

“Today you will receive up to 100 strokes and once the payment has been made you will be free to go on condition that you surrender your passport within three days. Unofficially I suggest you go home before that happens and chalk this whole episode up to experience.”

“But I couldn’t possible organise that kind of money in three weeks let alone three days,” Megan wailed.

The man shrugged. “Then you will be held here until you pay and every three to five days you will receive up to another 100 lashes. If the sum has not been paid by the time your lashes have been completed then you will be moved to a permanent facility.”

He looked the picture of regret and shrugged again. Then to Megan’s surprise he gathered his papers into one neat bundle and with a curt bow turned on his heel and departed. This left his headdress-draped colleague regarding her with cold mirror sunglasses.

“Come back,” she yelled, “I want to see the consul… I want…”

Want doesn’t get, she thought grimly, my grandmother would have said it serves me right. But Megan wasn’t given time to ponder as the other man now stepped forward and took up a rather nasty looking long thin cane. He nodded to the bench and added in a thick accent: “You will bend over and give me your bare bottom.”

Megan gulped. Then thinking of the public area outside and seeing no other choice she sucked in a breath and slowly made to obey.

The bench had soft warm leather that pressed into her tummy and as she bent fully over her gown parted as her the naked curves of her bottom jutted back. Heat suffused her face and she felt small tears pricking at her eyes. Don’t jump the gun now, she thought, he hasn’t started yet.

“Such a pretty bottom,” Ahmed said as he removed the sunglasses and tossed away his headdress.

“Ahmed,” she squealed and made to get to her feet.

“Remain as your are,” he commanded.

Megan gaped at him over her shoulder more than a little apprehensive at his harsh manner.

“Please Ahmed, this is embarrassing,” she wailed.

“Oh this is embarrassing,” he growled in a sharp voice dripping with incredulity. “Have you any idea how embarrassing it is to have one’s guest arrested for indecency and disturbing the peace? You almost caused a riot and got yourself killed.”

“I was only…” she said sheepishly, mortified at her revealing posture and blushing as much as she ever had.

“I told you to stay at the hotel. I told you not to wander off,” Ahmed snarled, his face now like a tiger who might eat her.

“Sorry I… I was bored,” she said in a lame voice.

“Are you bored now?” he sighed.

She managed a laugh and ducked her head. “No,” she said in a small rueful voice as her lips made a lemon-suck.

“I can just take you out of here on my own authority and send you home,” he said wearily, “Or…”

“Or?” she asked hopefully.

“Or on my word of honour I can take you in hand and claim responsibility for your punishment and we can continue with your tour. The fine… it is no matter and can easily be paid,” he said in a voice with a tone somewhere between disappointment and resignation.

“You mean…?” Megan said breathily on the verge of some laughter.

“I mean if you agree to surrender to my care I will spank you as many times as it takes to discharge the punishment,” he said in an amused indulgent voice.

“It figures,” Megan pouted, “But you’re saying I get off the whipping and… oh I will pay you back for the fine by the way. Once I am home it won’t be that big a deal. The magazine might even spring for it, if I ever get up the nerve to tell them that is.” She was gushing nervously. “But if… if you still want to be my guide then I’ll stay. Even if…” she swallowed hard and in a thick soft voice muttered, “another spanking.”

“Then you won’t be putting this episode in your story then?” he chuckled.

“No freaking way,” she gasped. Then with a continued blush she added, “Can I get up now?”

The exaggerated posture with her bottom sticking up was becoming uncomfortable as well as humiliating.

“Oh I don’t think so, do you?” Ahmed said sharply. “I think I know a young lady who would have benefited from a traditional English education.”

“Oh no, you don’t mean…?” Megan’s eyes were wide now.

“I mean that two dozen strokes of this nice light cane would be a good way to start your punishment,” he chuckled.

“Bastard,” she grunted at him under her breath.

“Then you agree?” he said as he weighed up the cane and moved behind her still proffered bottom.

She was about to snarl at him something like ‘what choice do I have?’ when she remembered that he had given her a choice and furthermore he had risked his precious honour to get her out of a jam.

“I suppose,” she muttered grudgingly.

“A little more grace please,” Ahmed said sharply.

Looking back of her shoulder she glared at him but she couldn’t long meet his gaze and finally with a sigh she said, “Yes Sir, I… I agree.”

*

Megan’s heart was racing. If it had been anyone else wielding the cane she would have resented it with a rage, but although she was furious with herself now, in Ahmed’s safe hands she viewed the situation as little more than an extension of her desert adventure.

Or at least that was what she had decided until the first swish cut the air and landed squarely across her bare bottom. The jolt of pain lingered there for only a moment before surging through her to burst behind her eyes.

“Ummm,” she groaned as she rode it. Thank God she was an American; her old school paddle had nothing on this little biter, she thought and went on thinking it as the nippy little sting continued to build.

The liquid fire of the stripe felt tight almost like a wire was straining across her curves, a white hot wire at that. She was still riding it with an almost indecent squirm when Ahmed caned her again.

“Emmmmmmmm,” she gasped through clenched teeth as she tensed in wonder of it.

Heedless of the obscenity of her display she shook her tail like a demented dog in a futile effort to shake out the sting. This keeps me out of jail, she thought, running the mantra over and over through her mind as if it would ease any pain.

“You have no idea how much it took to give you this chance,” Ahmed said angrily as he lined up for another shot, “My influence has its limits. I can only pray my grandfather doesn’t find out.”

Megan took none of this in and it was all she could do to latch onto the word ‘give’ like he was offering her a gift. Yeah, she thought ruefully, a gift that so definitely keeps on giving.

“Oooooh, nnnnnh,” she gasped as the cane scored her again.

This time tears boiled in her eyes and she had to claw at the leather on the bench. I could never… a thousand they said… the thought humbled her. This was no time for ingratitude; Ahmed had quite literally saved her ass.

“Sir,” she said breathily as she tried to draw air, “H-how… how many please Sir?”

“I have spoken of two dozen, you have 21 to go,” Ahmed said, he sounded concerned. “Can you manage?”

She nodded emphatically. I am an American goddammit and I pay my debts, she swore to herself. But the next stroke tested that resolve and so did the one that followed.

“Yaaaahhyieeeee,” she shrieked with a self-indulgent howl. It felt good now to finally surrender to it.

*

Megan did not register the rest of the strokes in real time. Her world was all bottom: hot, tight and swollen as it loomed behind her served on a plate for Ahmed. When he spoke it was like a song in her ear and she clung to it gratefully. Not just because when he talked he did not cane, but because his kindness was a balm; honey to pour over the bitter spice of her chastisement. Never had she felt so alive.

“Just a few more to go now,” he murmured as he lined up the cane for the final six.

Megan tensed and thrust her bottom back some more then held herself. The skin was mottled red and mauve and across the whole surface of her behind where pencil-thin ridges, which like corrugations crossed in tight neat lines from the valley of her cleft down to where her rounds curved under to meet her thighs. Each worm of engorged flesh throbbed and fizzed as they gently tormented her long after chastising impact had bitten her.

Ahmed waited, admiring the tapestry he had shaped, his honour now mixed with sympathy, a sense of justice and a familiar tight excitement in his stomach.

Megan was not sobbing out loud, not yet, but tears flowed copiously as she gently shook. Only when the cane struck did she cry out. But for a moment she was too tense and he waited. Then her posture softened and he struck.

A whine bubbled from her throat and she came close to breaking. This fresh stroke sawed into and burrowed deep. but the cut felt clean. But it still hurt so much as the next bit down.

“Four more, just four,” he said, now regretting he had announced so much. Why didn’t I tell her a dozen?

Megan nodded and pushed out her bottom. Ahmed caned.

“Aieeee,” Megan yelled, a song repeated for each of the rest.

“We’re done,” he said at last.

“Done?” she moaned, she felt bereft as if this micro life was now over.

“I gave my word on it and you took it well,” he said.

She sniffed back a tear and then broke to silent trembling. This went on for a short age before at last a howl broke from her mouth and she shuddered into open sobbing.

“Are you alright?” he said as he moved to hold her.

She nodded and forced a grin.

“Unless you count the fact that I might never sit down again,” she managed as a tear dripped over lip.

He snorted in amused support then ruffled her hair.

“Bastard,” she said affectionately.

“Do you want another two dozen?” he asked still smiling.

“Not today please Sir,” she winced ruefully.

To be continued.

Sometime ago I chanced upon a reference to a birching tower in a book. There was no more information, but the most likely explanation that it was used for storage; or so I thought. In the History of the Rod there is a mention of birching rooms in gaols and apparently women prisoners were often ‘taken to the tower for decency’s sake,’

The engraving above of is of one such 18^th century birching tower, where recalcitrant women prisoners, were birched.

In England women could also be birched up until the middle of the 19^th century for other offences in lieu of incarceration. Maybe they were taken to such a ‘tower for decency’s sake.’

It is likely to a be a British, Dutch or perhaps French institution, as in Prussia and Bavaria (Germany) and Bohemia (Czechoslovakia) they had no such scruples about birching women on the bare and in public.

Nell in Bridewell had much to say on the subject, and although it must be remembered as fiction there is truth behind the inspiration for despite the official reasons, it may have been discretion for the witnesses that were uppermost in the gaolers mind. As for a fee the well-to-do were often admitted to bear witness to such punishments.

According to this account a “special whipping bench was placed in the centre of a large underground hall and this bench was equipped with stocks at either end. One held the girl’s neck and wrists; the other set of stocks clamped her ankles.”

“The condemned girl was brought in and stretched out along the bench, and her head and feet confined in the stocks. Her skirts were raised up to her shoulders, revealing her bare buttocks. Back then women did not wear drawers or bloomers, but shielded their modesty with heavy petticoats.”

By the Victoria era rods came in three basic sizes. The Nursery Birch, which was small and light, the Governess Birch, which was longer and heavier and used on ‘great girls,’ and the judicial birch for the one procedure described above.

Even noble ladies were not immune, but if they were lucky their modesty would be preserved by being punished in their own rooms to “receive the withes across their naughty bare bottoms.”

Perhaps in grander houses they might have a birching tower like the one above.

Writing in dotage before the Second World War, one Mary Louise Hammond has this to say in her memoirs.

“At approaching 20-years-of-age I deemed myself too old to be spanked, let alone soundly birched; this operation traditionally conducted upon my bared behind. So it was I refused correction from my old governess for some forgotten trifle. However, my dear Papa was not amused at my rebellion and I was soon paid out with high drama upon my hideously and shamefully exposed hindquarters until I quite begged quarter and forgiveness.

My governess was quite satisfied with my demeanour and treatment then, but added to my shame by setting me nose to the wall in the nursery for the remainder of the afternoon. You can be quite certain I did not think of resisting and all the while my mind dwelt upon what my justly angry Papa had seen during my chastisement. As amusing as it seems now, sometimes it shames me still.”

Mr P had told me about a little bar up the coast.

“The town,” he said in his heavy Greek accent, “Well, it isn’t so friendly, but the bar…” he made a gesture with his fingers and kissed them. “Beautiful, you’ll love the food my darling girl.”

This had been a week before after an adventure on his boat. I had a standing invitation to go back, but after my last encounter the emphasis was very much on the standing. So before I went for another voyage, I decided to check out this bar and kick back for a few days.

I hired a moped and at the speed of an overcooked lawnmower I made my way along high cliff roads and beside low rock walls that surrounded the olive groves.

The bar, as I had been forewarned, stood on the edge of town overlooking the sea. Beyond the white two and three storey houses gathered like scattered boxes around a small traditional Orthodox church and were joined by narrow cobbled streets.

The bar, as promised was excellent. The beer was cold and the seafood melted in the mouth like the butter it had been marinated in. There were a few too many olives for my liking, but no one said I had to eat them and by the afternoon I was chilled and sated.

Instead of a nap I decided to take a stroll around town in the afternoon heat and maybe do some shopping. As it turned out shopping was the very worst idea I could have followed.

At first I saw nothing. No people, no shops and no other bars of any kind. The only life was a dejected stray dog and a rather severe looking priest who despite the unrelenting sun was dressed in heavy robes. He glanced disapprovingly at me and then hurried on to the church.

“Okay then,” I might have said as I cast my gaze around.

I reckoned it would take 15 minutes to zig-zag up each street and another five to walk back to the bar for another beer.

I hadn’t gone more than a street when I turned a corner and saw a shop. Not much of a shop, and completely devoid of signage, but all the same it offered some shade under the canvas canopy over the wide doors. Beyond were several shelves with a cornucopia of assorted goods.

“Hello, shop?” I called as I picked my way through the shelves

On one side was some canned food with indecipherable labels. On the other were buckets and spades and other beach goods. The only thing of interest was a wide-brimmed straw beach hat and I put it on.

I was looking around for a mirror when a rather small head-scarfed woman dressed in black emerged to glare at me.

“How much is this?” I asked pleasantly.

That’s when she started yelling. I had no idea what she said, but whatever it was, she was mad. I quickly gathered that the shop might be closed and tried to leave, forgetting of course that I still wore the hat.

In moments I was surrounded by a gang of townsfolk all pointing and yelling at me. The arrival of the largest policeman I have ever seen was initially a relief.

He was calmer but suspicious. He sounded more controlled in his anger, but I still sensed that I was in trouble. When he pointed to the hat I blushed.

“I am so sorry,” I said, reaching for my purse, “How much?” I pulled out a wad of notes and offered them up.

That is when I was arrested.

*

I suppose it is very funny really. It turns out that the shop wasn’t a shop at all, but someone’s home. And when I offered to pay, the policeman thought I was offering a bribe. Of course it wasn’t funny at the time and for a while I thought that I was in serious trouble.

Then I remembered Mr P and after some difficult exchanges I managed to get the large policeman to telephone my friend.

“It seems that you are always getting into trouble,” the police officer said when he finally got off the phone. His tone wasn’t kind and he looked at me as if my problems weren’t over.

He said that Mr Pero-something had made a couple of interesting suggestions if the officer could manage to help make all of this go away. It took me a moment to realise that he was talking about Mr P.

“Oh Good,” I said.

“I hope you think so,” the policeman sighed. “Stealing, trespassing, bribing an officer of the law, disturbing the peace…” he sighed heavily again, “I could go on.”

“Is there a fine?” I said hopefully.

The officer smiled sardonically and shrugged dismissively. “Oh your friend will take care of that,” he said, “But that doesn’t cover it all and by rights I should hold you pending transfer to Atheeny.”

I knew that he meant Athens and my heart sank.

“But…” the man pursed his lips thoughtfully, “They are old-fashioned around here… I might be able to work something out if you agree to let me handle things.”

“Oh,” I said sarcastically, “And what things do you want to handle.”

“You are very funny,” his laugh was genuine. “No, no, nothing like that. Well… your friend suggested that you would be open to an alternative arrangement?”

I sighed. I knew then that this was going to involve my bottom.

This was to prove correct, but I consoled myself with the realisation that this time my bottom was going to get me out of trouble rather than into it.

“Will it hurt?” I asked, meaning would it hurt particularly more than usual.

“Oh yes,” the man shrugged.

He was holding a heavy leather paddle that was about the size of a tennis racket, although narrow like a cricket bat. There was also a thin stiff leather stick on the desk now and I decided it looked like a riding crop.

“Please take down your shorts and anything else,” he coughed, “And bend over the back of the chair.”

I was about to ask what chair when he moved to the wall and pulled a padded wooden seat from beside a filing cabinet and placed it in the middle of the room with its back to me.

My heart was pounding and my mouth dry so I help up one finger, as if that would halt things and asked, “Are you sure there is not another way we can handle this?”

“You want to go to jail?” he said in a serious tone.

“No but I was thinking…”

“I married,” he shrugged and nodded at the chair.

“Ah,” I said and with more casual acceptance than I was feeling slipped down my shorts and being naked under them, bent over the back of the chair so that I was offering the man my bottom.

The paddle landed with a loud crack that rang back off the walls. I noticed this in a detached way before the tang of the impact reached me and began its after burn. I think I yelled.

He set a slow pace but laid on with a heavy arm so that my bottom had a hard time of it. I was put in mind of gravel burn and nettles before my mind strayed to an image of a steel-clad man with a welding torch. I know that I yelled again.

A little bit of slap to my bottom is good for me and it. So it follows that a lot of slap is very good. This is what I kept telling myself all through the spanking blast of the paddle, but my bottom wasn’t buying it and after another minute of two, nor was I.

I was crying hard when I was told it was over, but instead of standing I just flopped sobbing over the back of the chair and tried to get my long lost breath back. When I finally did, I wiped my eyes and glanced at the whip-stick thing on his desk and was suddenly curious.

“If you ever come back here I’ll make you count out 30 with those,” the policeman said with yet another casual shrug.

“Fair enough,” I said, but strangely I was still curious.

When I emerged from the small police station there was a small crowd gathered. They looked happy that I was so sorry looking and when the policeman came out behind me they offered him a ripple of applause.

I took me more than 20 minutes of slow careful steps to reach the bar on the edge of town. But there was no way I could sit on the saddle of a moped so standing at the bar I ordered another drink.

“How was the bar Miss?” the barman asked as he poured it.

“Oh, hot, very hot,” I answered ruefully.