A Spanking and Caning Story from Janus 52. More stories are available here.

The Rumour
by Michael Burntwood

MOST girls at our school like him. Some have a crush on him and there are those who never seem to cease talking about him.

Mr Brisson, our Art Master, is tall and slender and very handsome to look at. Some girls in the classes he takes prefer to rest their eyes on him during lessons instead of occupying themselves with boring schoolwork. His wavy hair is dark brown and he has a tiny moustache, which a lot of us teenaged girls dream of feeling against our skin if he once would kiss us. But then there is the rumour.

Nelly and I learned the truth about that rumour in a hard way. We did not know that it was more than a rumour. In our school a girl never complains about the way he sometimes taps her on the seat of her skirt. The girls like that little touch of his hand. Some girls blush, but they don’t move away, hoping he will do it again.

The rumour is quite exciting and tells that he once took two 17-year-old girls across his knee and spanked them, for having made obscene drawings and caused quite a commotion by showing their masterpieces to classmates. But not even the girls in his class know if he really did do that. The truth is a deeply-hidden secret between the three persons involved.

Nelly and I came to learn that Mr Brisson actually is capable of dealing with naughty girls in the way such girls deserve. Now we would truly have preferred it to be a secret from us too, if what happened was the truth behind that rumour.

I don’t think anyone could imagine my feelings while I was sitting there on that hard chair nervous and miserable, watching the sight in front of me. On the chairback behind me my skirt was hanging and if I looked down, which I mostly did, I could see my tie bulging over my breasts which felt taut and sensitive inside my white blouse. Below the hem of my blouse I saw my navy blue knickers and the bare strip of skin between them and my nylon stockings, above which tight white suspenders stretched from the stocking tops up under the legs of my faded and now somewhat outgrown knickers. My legs were trembling, so I had to hold them with my hands on my knees and I was too ashamed to look up. I felt more naked without my skirt on than I would have done in the showers and I was frightened. I wished I could close my ears in the same way as I shut my eyes, so that I wouldn’t have to hear.

In front of me was my best friend Nelly. It was her voice that I heard. Sometimes she had her face turned towards me and sometimes she was looking away. Nelly is one of the prettiest girls in the whole of our school, with long curly blonde hair and an oval face with big blue eyes. She has a cute little nose and rather small pouting lips. But this was not how I saw her now. When she turned her face in my direction it was contorted. Her cheeks were flushed and tears dropped from her eyes. Wailings, squealing sounds and cries came from her mouth.

Nelly wasn’t sitting up, as I was. She was lying down. Her shoulders and head were close to the floor and she had her hands on the parquet floorboards for support. Her long shapely legs were pendulating up and down. She was stretched out across the lap of our Art Master. Her tummy rested on his thighs.

Mr Brisson hadn’t asked her to take her skirt off, as he had me. Nelly had hers on because she was wearing her school uniform with the pleated skirt, whereas I had chosen that day to dress in an almost pencil-tight quite short skirt in the same colour, but which they didn’t like me to wear at school.

Nelly’s skirt was turned up round her waist and her navy blue knickers were not where knickers are supposed to be. They were pulled down to barely a few inches from the backs of her knees. She was wearing knee-length white socks, not stockings, so her thighs were bare except for where the knickers encircled them.

It was Mr Brisson’s flat palm which was causing her to make all that heart-thumping noise. He was spanking her naked bum with resounding slaps and his intention was to make her regret the commotion that she and I, or to be more correct, I and she had brought about during his lesson. There was double proof that he was doing well. First the blubbering cries from Nelly’s mouth and secondly the ever-growing bright red patches across my friend’s well-rounded and very cute, now wobbling and flinching girlish bottom.

I really didn’t want to watch, but I couldn’t avoid hearing the loud, sharp slapping sounds when his hand time and time again met Nelly’s bouncing bottom-cheeks. These noises and the sounds from her lips set my nerves on edge in the most alarming way.

I and my contemporaries are well aware of how a spanking makes a girl’s bottom sore, but I would gladly have changed places with Nelly if I had been allowed to because I knew I was not to be let off with a mere spanking. I had to sit there and wait for my turn. Before Mr Brisson had started to punish Nelly he had sent me to open a cupboard and take out a long ugly-looking cane, hard and shiny and frightening. That cane was lying across my thighs waiting to be made use of when Nelly no longer was an object for his attention. I had to sit there apprehensive and scared and very envious of Nelly, who was to be let off more lightly than I. Of course my best friend had cause to blubber and wince like an eel, as she did. When I at times furtively glanced at them, I could see that her appleformed very girlish compact little bottom was red like stoplights, but thinking about myself I wished for him to go on a few minutes more.

Her spanking came to an end and it was much too soon.

Whining and with her knickers below her knees now, Nelly stood up and Mr Brisson sent her to stand in the corner. She was not allowed to pull her knickers up, but he said nothing about her skirt. She didn’t have to hold it up as girls sometimes must, to be made really ashamed.

What afterwards happened to me I would rather not tell. To girls of seventeen a spanking doesn’t mean so much, it’s more embarrassing than painful. A caning on the contrary is something quite else. That was what I was going to get. I disliked having to stand up and hand that lithe instrument to him. His eyes were looking me over and it was awful, because I didn’t have my skirt on. It is truly humiliating to have to stand as I had to. I didn’t know where to put my hands. My blouse ended above my belly-button and I knew his gaze was directed below that level. Even when I closed my eyes I could feel him staring at me and it made me very nervous. It was a relief that my navy blue school knickers weren’t of the see-through kind. But I had goose-pimples on my naked skin at the tops of my thighs. It would surely have been less shameful if I hadn’t been wearing nylon stockings and a suspender belt. My cheeks were hot with blushing.

Mr Brisson stood up and grabbed my arm right below my shoulder. He led me to his chair, which he turned round. He ordered me curtly to bend over its back. I had never been told to do so before, but I was trembling with fear and knew there was no way I would dare to disobey him. The position he wanted me to take would make me arch my bottom up for him to cane. At that moment there was just one thing I longed and prayed for, and that was to find some way out – that a miracle would happen so that I wouldn’t have to feel that horrible cane across my bottom.

There was one thing I could be sure of and that was that I would not find a way out. I hated the cane at school and I hated the cane at home. The pain was terrible and the marks on my bottom stayed for many days before they started to fade.

I was on the verge of tears, but I knew I had to obey. I cast a swift glance at Nelly in the corner. She was standing there with her legs apart and her knickers round her calves, blue against her white socks. She was still rubbing her eyes with her knuckles because she wasn’t allowed to rub her smarting bottom.

My knees were weak as I bent over. With clumsy hands I clasped my fingers hard round the edge of the seat. The top of the back-rest dug into the upper fronts of my thighs and I was aware of Mr Brisson moving round behind me to stand close to my left side, cane in hand. Nelly was still whimpering faintly.

The anticipation was absolutely dreadful. I closed my eyes and my body was trembling. My knickers stretched taut across my bottom which felt so exposed and vulnerable, and I prayed that he would let me keep them on. The cane was going to hurt much more than his hand had hurt Nelly. But in despair I felt his cold fingers coming up inside my blouse at my hips and waist. He inserted them inside the elastic waistband and I fidgeted and the first tears wet my cheeks. Such things do not take long. In a few seconds only, my knickers had been pulled down to mid-thigh, baring my bottom. I sobbed in desperation and to stand properly I had to move my feet apart and backwards to keep my balance. It was now that I became aware of how uncomfortable it was to have to bend over the back of a chair like this. Its wooden top edge now pressed hurtfully into my tummy, making me stand on the balls of my feet to alleviate it. Fearing the worst and feeling very precarious, I had to listen to him.

‘I’ll give you ten, young lady,’ Mr Brisson declared sternly. His words naturally added to my despair and desperately I pleaded for leniency but to no avail. Instead I felt his left hand pushing down hard on the small of my back as his booming voice admonished me.

‘I told you, it will be ten,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll count them myself Jeanette, so you don’t have to. Just don’t fidget too much because if the cane doesn’t hit where it is supposed to teach young girls to behave, it will not count,’ he said pedantically, but I could hear the pleasure in his voice. ‘Be still and don’t clench that nice little bottom of yours.’ He paused tapping me with the cane across my buttocks. ‘You ought to know by now that it hurts less if you are relaxed.’

There was a pause again and the cane wasn’t touching my skin any more. And then he continued, ‘Now this is number one.’

WHAAACK! The swishing sound before the cane hit my flesh was too short a warning.

‘Aaaoooouuuh!’ I squealed and pressed my thighs together scissoring my calves as the pain seared through my bottom. Just as the first stroke always does, the shocking scorching sting came as a complete surprise and made me realise I had forgotten how awfully it hurts to be smacked or caned. And a caning always hurts far much more than a spanking.

‘Number two now, Jeanette.’

That same vicious whistling sound… ‘Yyyeeeooooww!’ It really did hurt down there close to my thighs, but I forced myself to stay still.

‘Number three.’

‘Oooouuuch!’ The cane struck straight across the middle of my buttocks but not so hard this time.

‘Four, Jeanette.’ I didn’t like the sound of his voice.

There was a pause of waiting first and then it fell.

‘Aaoooouuh!’ This one hit me lower down and stung wildly. My bottom jerked a lot and I started crying for real.

‘This is five.’

‘Ooouuuch!’ Higher up and it didn’t hurt so much, but I still couldn’t help yelping out. I sobbed and panted, hoping I would be able to take them all without fuss.

‘And now this is six.’

The cane really stung this time. It felt much worse. I screamed out and my cheeks were suddenly wet with tears. The pain in my bottom was maddening. My legs were quaking and the chairback felt sharp against my tummy.

Faintly through my blubbering cries I heard, ‘Seven’. And this was the stroke I had feared all along. The cane whipped across my thighs above my stocking-tops, blazing like the devil. Involuntarily I pushed the chair forward and my position was now even more awkward and uncomfortable.

‘Eight now.’

I kicked both legs upwards as the cane struck again across the tops of my thighs, singeing my skin. My legs are so much more sensitive than my bottom and I detested getting such revealing weals there.

‘Nine, Jeanette.’ His voice sounded calmer and unaffected, as if this was just a job he had to do. He was punishing a 17-year-old girl for her own good. But I cried of course and for the third time the cane bit sharply into the flesh on the back of both my thighs. The chairback cut hard into my stomach at the same time, but I didn’t care about anything except the need of a fire brigade for my burning bottom.

‘Ten, now.’

‘Ooouuuch! Ooooh! Oohhh!’ Thanks anyway, I could have said. I got it across my bottom this last time, like a crackling flame. I cried and cried. My whole bottom was so hot and sore. I knew it was over and my feet found the floor. Mr Brisson held my arm, helping me to stand up.

If he had wanted, I would have promised him anything at that moment if he could guarantee that I would never be caned again. I felt sure he had been terribly strict with me. I knew my bottom and thighs bore many angry smarting weals. Those marks on my thighs meant that I couldn’t wear shorts or a bathing-suit or even my gym outfit until they were gone. There was to be no visit to the pool for me this week and I would have to find some excuse for the gym lessons too.

Mr Brisson didn’t allow me to pull up my knickers. He sent me to join Nelly in the corner and Nelly was ordered to lift her skirt and hold it bunched up around her waist at the front. He wanted both of us to stand there with our bottoms on display for his own pleasure and our salutary humiliation.

Nelly held her skirt up with both hands, but as my skirt had been taken away I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I desperately wanted to clap them to my bottom in order to soothe the smart in my skin, but I knew Mr Brisson would be angry if I did. At first I crossed them in front to hide the patch of fluffy hair between my thighs, but as my tummy was turned away from him I had no reason to do so and I felt silly holding my hands like that. So I put my arms down by my sides and after a while I let my fingers play with the suspender straps in front of my thighs just to keep them occupied.

I was still sobbing, but Nelly had calmed down. While we were standing there I soon found to my surprise that I didn’t feel ashamed at all, as girls are supposed to do when they are sent to the corner. Instead I was thinking about our Art Master who was the only person in the room to see us. I thought he must be feeling satisfied with his efforts. He was looking at two very dejected 17-year-old schoolgirls whose sorely smarting bottoms showed unmistakable signs of a treatment of the kind which has always been prescribed for the bottoms of troublesome teenaged girls. Oh, but it hurt!

Ten or fifteen minutes later we were allowed to dress and leave. Walking home, Nelly and I didn’t talk very much. We were both certain that the rumour was true. We promised each other never to tell anyone about what had happened to us. Possibly there would be a new rumour spreading amongst the girls at our school. But we were never going to talk about the old rumour or comment upon the new one concerning Mr Brisson and ourselves. Any girl who wanted to could find out for herself about Mr Brisson’s remedy for naughty girls.

A Spanking and Caning Story from Janus 57. To read more stories click here.

Questions and more questions
by Michael Burntwood

Gymshoes pattered over the varnished wooden floor of the gym hall. The netball match had started. It would settle the question, which team was to be appointed to play in the school championship final against the winning team from the fifth form heats.

Long-legged sixth form girls were running up and down from one side to the other following the ball, eager to do their best to win the game and on Parents’ Day belong to the team which would show the younger girls that sixth form young ladies as always are the best.

One of the teams was dressed in dark blue leotards and the other wore white sleeveless vests tucked into brief running shorts of shiny red nylon. Today, however, it seemed as if there was something wrong. Miss Hampton, the gym teacher, had to blow her whistle to break the game from time to time.

Again the shrill tone from her whistle sounded within only the first minutes of the match. The game stopped and surprised girls stared at each other in bewilderment. An explanation came when Miss Hampton pointed her arm at one of the girls in a leotard.

Sighs of vexation were heard from several of the players in both teams. The player who had now once again caused Miss Hampton to stop the game was a slim-waisted blonde girl, the only one with a pageboy coiffure. She belonged to the blue team and was dressed in a leotard which seemed to have been outgrown at least a year ago. None of her chums was particularly amazed because they knew that Madelaine, for one reason or another, quite regularly became subject to their teachers’ displeasure.

‘That was the third time, Madelaine, that you deliberately aimed to hit Lorna with the ball. I can’t understand why you are more interested in attacking Sonia and Lorna than doing the best you can to help your team win. It’s unfair to them that some of you are fighting all the time. I suppose you and Lorna and Sonia for some reason are on unfriendly terms and can’t concentrate on the game. So we will have you three sit down on the bench and keep quiet. Then the rest of the girls can play this game according to the rules. To make the teams even, Carolyn can play for the whites.’

Madelaine, Lorna and Sonia looked sullenly at the teacher and glanced tight-lipped at one another. Then they very sulkily sat down as they had been ordered to, and Miss Hampton signalled for the game to recommence. Slender-built, lissom girls started to run across the floor, following the ball from one side of the hall to the other, calling out with excited voices. But it hardly came as a surprise when, only a couple of minutes later, the whistle blew again and there was a new break.

Girls in both teams now became annoyed because the signal had nothing to do with the game. There was no reason to stop the attack the white team was making towards the basket on the blue side. Though they were now sitting on the bench, the three girls were also the cause of this latest interruption. They had caught the attention of Miss Hampton as they were trying to push each other off the bench. The teacher was obviously more angry this time. In a very harsh tone she ordered the girls to stand up. Exchanging angry glances, the girls obeyed.

The scolding that Miss Hampton bestowed upon the miscreants finished unexpectedly. She sent the three 17-year-old girls to stand in the corner, and to stop them scuffling she ordered them to clasp their hands on their heads. When the girls had obeyed, Miss Hampton turned back to the teams and, clearly irritated, blew her whistle to start the game again.

The players, occupied with the game, did not care at all for the three unruly girls in the corner, even though something quite out of the ordinary had occurred. On very rare occasions it had happened that a girl had been put in the corner during a gym lesson. In the sixth form it had perhaps never happened before. But the girls chasing the ball were totally engaged in the game and going all out to win. Their young bodies in tight-fitting gym outfits flew across the floor on long teenaged legs, firm breasts bouncing and round buttocks jouncing above lithely-tapering thighs.

At times, when the game was stopped, some of the panting girls glanced at the three lanky figures in the corner. Gazing at their backsides and noticing their well-rounded bottoms, they would have welcomed with ill-concealed spitefulness the sight of reddish tramlines marking the skin on the nether halves of the three girls’ trim buttocks. Buttocks which Lorna, Sonia and Madelaine were displaying, as the leotard Madelaine had on, and the brief red shorts Sonia and Lorna wore, had ridden up because of their raised arms.

Most of the girls blamed Madelaine for what had happened. There were those, not only in Madeline’s team, who had plans to show her what they really felt about her disturbing the game. They surely would know what to do when they returned to the changing room to shower and put on their school uniforms once more. Madelaine could expect to get slaps from hard hands or wet towels on her thighs and buttocks, till she had smarting blemishes on her bottom and the backs and fronts of her long, shapely legs.

The game had not proceeded for more than another five minutes before there was a further outbreak of disorder. Madelaine pinched Sonia’s right thigh. Perhaps she did it harder than she had intended. Perhaps Sonia yelped louder than she had cause to. Miss Hampton’s whistle stopped the play. Red-faced with anger and looking extremely stern, she turned to the girls in the corner in time to see Madelaine put her left hand back on top of her head. In the harshest tone she demanded an explanation, while the other girls on the floor stared, noticing that Sonia was rubbing her thigh with one hand. Very severely, Miss Hampton held her eyes fixed on the guilty-looking schoolgirl’s down-tilted face.

‘You are really the most incorrigible girl I’ve ever had, Madelaine,’ she expostulated. ‘Now go to my room and wait for me there. You can sit on the chair by the door – and don’t you dare do anything else. I’ll deal with you after the game. And you, Sonia and Lorna, sit down where you are. I’ll have a talk with you when the others are changing.’

Even Madelaine was forced to blush as she trudged alone out of the gym hall with all the girls’ eyes upon her. She sat down moodily on the chair in the gym mistress’s small room. On the other side of the door, the game started again. She could hear the sounds from the girls. They were however unusually quiet and had good reason to be low-voiced. All were aware that they had better be on their best behaviour. Miss Hampton had already been provoked far enough and would hardly stand for any more nonsense today. None of them wanted to tempt their teacher to resort to still stricter methods in order to maintain her control.

Madelaine now felt far from happy as she sat fidgeting on the hard chair. If she could imagine anything that Miss Hampton had in store for her, she felt certain that it would not be something nice. Her lips were closed and her eyes downcast, as if she were studying her gym shoes. She held her long legs stretched out, her heels resting on the floor and her hands nervously moving up and down along her lithe, silk-skinned thighs.

It was not the first time Madelaine had been in Miss Hampton’s room. She had been there before, but never in fear of being punished. It was awful to sit there and have to think about punishments. Shivering, she remembered what other girls had said about a girl who had been taken into this room for some mischief. She recalled what she had heard about where to look. She did not want to turn her eyes in that direction but could not withstand the temptation to check if what she had been told was true.

One look, a mere glance, was enough. It was true. It was there on the second shelf from the top. She could see part of it sticking out. It was the crook-handle end of it.

Madelaine bit her lip hard and rubbed her palms against the thin fabric of her leotard where it tightened across her narrow hips. She felt certain about what was going to happen. Miss Hampton would take that cane down. Then… in that very stern voice she sometimes used, she would tell her to stretch her left hand out, palm upwards… But… what if she wasn’t going to cane her across her hand?…

Madelaine shuddered at the thought. Could there be any way for her to escape? All sorts of thoughts raced through her head.

Perhaps she could explain to Miss Hampton what had happened? Why she had been so angry with Lorna and Sonia. It would be embarrassing for her, but maybe just for once the truth would help. Seconds ticked away and became minutes.

Madelaine became more and more anxious, sitting on the chair, waiting for something she hated to think about, but which was inevitable. Unconsciously, she had put her hands in between her thighs, pressing them tight to her crotch. She trembled and felt cold, wearing only the thin, outgrown leotard. She would have liked to convince herself that she was the innocent, injured party, but she could not. It wasn’t all the two other girls’ fault.

Breathing rather fast, Madelaine straightened up. Through the door she clearly heard Miss Hampton’s whistle sounding three times. Madelaine stiffened, sitting up properly on the chair. After a while everything became silent in the gym hall. One of the teams had won the match. Madelaine did not know which one. Then she heard the girls clattering away to the changing room. Cautiously she turned her head and looked across her shoulder at the door with its framed glass pane. She felt a cold shiver run up her spine – a shiver of fear that Miss Hampton was soon going to open that door and enter the small room. Her breath came in rapid gasps and her body rigidly quivered.

But all of a sudden there was a strange sound. A noise that set all her nerves on edge. She heard repeated dull slaps, which were followed by half-suppressed yelps from a girlish voice. Madelaine held her breath and listened intently, her cheeks growing paler. That sort of slapping noise was something she recognised. It had to come from a hand landing hard on tender flesh; the yelps were how a poor girl complained about a smarting pain which increased in her flesh every time the hand bounced up from the firm bottom, where it served the purpose of teaching the young lady how to behave.

Only after at least ten smacking reports did Madelaine become absolutely sure who it was. That was Lorna’s voice she heard squealing and whining. The noise went on and on and that kind of sound did not make Madelaine feel more calm. She became acutely scared, for it was obvious that Lorna was not getting off lightly. Minutes seemed to pass before the spanking came to an end and the stomach-churning squealing turned into a blubbering wail.

Madelaine wrung her hands, feeling tears coming into her eyes and a heavy pressure inside her. In a way it was worse to have to listen than to be chastised herself. She strained her ears, hearing what must be Sonia’s voice objecting plaintively.

‘No… no-oo, Miss Hampton! I haven’t done anything! It wasn’t me! I don’t know why Madelaine pinched me. Please. Pleeeease. Don’t. Dooooon’t. No-ooo. No-oo, Miss Hampton…’

Though Madelaine was scared, she could not stop herself. On trembling legs she stood up close to the door. Stealthily she raised a corner of the brown-and-white striped curtain and looked through the glass. She saw them in there near the wall to the left. Lorna was standing away from them, holding her hands to her tear-stained face.

Madelaine inhaled sharply and stared at Lorna. She could hardly believe her eyes. Lorna was 17 years old, as they all were. Yet she stood there so shamefully bared. She had her tight red nylon shorts right down and encircling her ankles, and was displaying her flat tummy and the dark triangle of her pubic hair. The lower half of her body was entirely exposed.

But Madeline’s eyes almost at once turned away from Lorna, as she caught sight of Sonia, who was half-bent across Miss Hampton’s lap. Miss Hampton was sitting on a low vaulting-box, clearly trying to make the eagerly-resisting teenaged girl lie down across her knee. She held Sonia’s left wrist with one hand and the other was grasping the girl round her waist.

Madelaine flushed. Never could she have imagined that anything like this could happen to the girls in the sixth form. It was extraordinary. First, Miss Hampton had ordered them to stand in the corner. That was probably the first time ever that girls of their age had been sent to be shamed like that in front of the whole form. But now. This was much worse. Miss Hampton not only spanked girls who were 17 – she even pulled their shorts down and took them across her lap!

Madelaine saw how Sonia struggled in vain to be free. It did not take Miss Hampton long, for the gym mistress was strong. Madelaine almost pressed her nose to the pane of glass. Sonia was perched across Miss Hampton’s lap and lay there with her legs floundering. She tried fervently to hold on to her shorts with her right hand, but a few slaps on her thighs made her obedient and the tight-fitting shorts were tugged down. And then Sonia became still, lying with her bottom up quite bare, prepared to be spanked till it was red all over.

The sound from the hard slaps could be heard more clearly now that Madelaine had her face close to the glass, and she could see with her own eyes how the arm was raised and then brought down, the hand rising high in the air and descending with sheer force. The sight of the rippling flesh starting to develop red marks from Miss Hampton’s fingers and palm became too much for Madelaine. She closed her eyes. Panting, she slumped down on the chair in great anxiety, convinced that her own punishment was going to be no less shameful. Miss Hampton would certainly perform what she considered to be her duty and it would be on Madeline’s behind, not on her hands. It was not much of a consolation to her that Lorna and Sonia were also going to leave school today with red and tender bottoms.

Further away, Madelaine heard the school bell sounding the end of the school day. Soon her mates would pour through the school gates, giggling and chattering and having nothing at all to worry about. With a deep sigh Madelaine wondered whether her chums, or at least some of them, really believed that she was not afraid of punishments. She was. Her bravado was only an outward act. She was scared every time she had to endure some kind of chastisement, whether at school or at home. Madelaine herself did not think any girl could be particularly brave when it came to having to pay for her misdeeds. A girl’s bottom was sensitive and a cane so awfully whippy.

Half-paralysed by shame and fear, she stood up when the door was opened and then shut again. She felt too afraid and too shy to look up. She knew it could be no one other than Miss Hampton who had come in.

All her fears came true. Miss Hampton went straight to the wall with the shelves and stretched up her arm and took down the cane, before she turned to her. Madelaine did not want to look up. She glanced to the left and looked out through the window There outside, she caught sight of other girls fully-dressed, crossing the school yard in pretty navy blue uniforms, swinging their satchels, happy and carefree on their way home from school. Looking at them, she felt so ashamed and naked, standing alone in front of the gym teacher, clad only in her very tight, too-old leotard.

She heard Miss Hampton’s voice but did not distinguish the words properly. The gym mistress’s voice held no compassion for her. She was talking like teachers always did, about how schoolgirls were expected to behave. Teachers and parents always talked like that, but such words rarely inspired much interest from girls in their upper teens. She could not listen and she did not look up at Miss Hampton. Madelaine felt terrified and appallingly embarrassed, and she could not bear to look at the threatening cane Miss Hampton was bending between her hands.

The gym mistress angrily became aware of the girl’s disinterest and suddenly swished the supple cane through the air, striking the outside of Madeline’s left thigh with smarting effect. The searing, unexpected pain made Madelaine jump out of the way and let out a shrill, protesting yelp.

‘I told you to bend over the end of that couch, Madelaine,’ Miss Hampton repeated, pointing at the massage-bench alongside the wall behind the girl. It was high, covered in rather worn-looking brown artificial leather. On it was a cushion in the same material, but that looked almost new.

Tears were emerging from Madeline’s eyes, and a whimpering from her mouth. She looked down at her thigh, rubbing the sore red mark on her skin with her left hand. Then, with a deep intake of breath, she slowly and with very short steps went to stand at the foot-end of the couch.

‘Please, Miss Hampton,’ she sobbed. ‘It hurts. Please, don’t use the cane. I… I have marks already. Daddy caned me at home the day before yesterday. That was why I got so angry. Lorna and Sonia teased me when we were changing our clothes because I still had those marks.’

‘Yes, I know. They told me when I asked them why you were making such a disturbance. They have already been punished. Now it is your turn. Bend over and don’t let me have any more fuss.’

Madelaine was reluctant to obey, but hard, unrelenting hands helped her. The leather cushion was pushed beneath her tummy and when Madelaine lay forward on the bench-top, her feet did not quite reach the floor. Her long legs were dangling in the air and a strong hand held her down. Madelaine had no option but to resign herself to her fate. Miserable and unable to resist Miss Hampton’s demands, she felt her teacher’s hands at the legs of her leotard, tugging them up. Shuddering, she gripped hard on the sides of the couch.

It was awful. She knew that most of her bottom had been bared. The leotard had been pushed up so high the cloth was cutting into her crotch. Miss Hampton yanked it even further. Her bottom had now been made completely vulnerable, and all that Madelaine could do to suppress the sound of her sobs was to press her face flat against the cool leather top. Any time now she feared that the cane would fall ferociously across its target. Her bottom tensed and relaxed repeatedly, the soft flesh wincing in expectation of her first-ever caning from the gym mistress. Madelaine knew what it would be like. She was only too well acquainted with the ways in which a cane could hurt. Experience had taught her more than she ever wanted to know about such things. She hated and detested being caned.

The sensation therefore came as no surprise to her. She had waited in anguish for at least a minute for the cane to whip into her soft flesh, and sure enough it did. The pain was the same as she had felt only two days before, when Daddy had used the cane that was kept at home solely for that purpose. Miss Hampton had aimed carefully and struck straight across the bare centre parts of her buttocks. The searing pain made Madeline’s lips form a scream, but it never left her mouth. She succeeded in repressing it, but almost all the breath left her lungs and her hips heaved and wriggled.

The resilience of her bottom and the suppleness of the cane co-operated, and the teacher’s implement recoiled smoothly from the stung and quaking flesh. A stripe of white across the pale skin marked the place, well below the tugged-up legs of her leotard, where the cane had made its brief visit, and within seconds it turned pink. The first tears of pain fell from Madeline’s eyes on to the covered bench-top, yet Madelaine felt proud that she had not cried out.

The next two strokes were slightly less hard, although their cumulative pain and shock caused her hips to hump up and down energetically. But number four surprised Madelaine, as it really did hurt dreadfully. The scorching pain it caused very low down across her buttocks forced her to emit a plaintive cry and involuntarily she kicked up with both legs.

‘I see you really felt that one, Madelaine,’ said the gym mistress in a tight little voice. ‘Perhaps that was just as hard as you get from your father. The rest will hurt like that one did. You have six more to come.’

‘Oh no! No more, Miss Hampton! Pleeease! It hurts so awfully. Aaaaooouuch!’ Madelaine shrieked as the very flexible cane whipped into the apple-curved rounds of her bottom for the fifth time, indenting another set of tramlines right above the previous ones. This time the smart made Madelaine snatch her body up off the couch, her visibly inflamed bottom performing a mad dance in the air.

The gym teacher’s response was to order her to move forward on the bench so that her whole body, from head to ankles, now lay flat on its leather-covered surface, her long legs parted slightly and stretched out horizontally. Now Madelaine could not hold back her blubbering cries any longer. But as Miss Hampton made her wait in suspense for the next stroke, Madelaine tried awkwardly to induce her to let her off the rest of her punishment.

‘Please, Miss Hampton. No more now. It hurts. It really hurts. I’ve learnt my lesson – I really have. Daddy was so strict, I’m already so sore. Please, Miss Hampton, please don’t cane me any more!’ At the same time she started to struggle and attempted to turn on her side to protect her buttocks.

‘Oh no, Madelaine,’ the teacher warned her, suddenly sounding spiteful. ‘If you make a fuss I’ll give you two extra strokes.’

Madeline’s squeal this time was shriller when Miss Hampton’s cane, to emphasise her words, landed with a loud crack, etching a blazingly painful red stripe across both her thigh-backs at least an inch below the crevice where the swelling of her buttocks began. Crying from the savage smart, Madelaine clung tightly to the end of the padded bench, dutifully submitting herself to Miss Hampton’s unbearable discipline.

Now at last Madelaine realised how stupidly she had behaved. Instead of getting revenge on the two girls, she had made Miss Hampton more angry than she had imagined she could ever be. Never before had Madelaine been caned twice in one week. Once was more than enough – far more than enough. Sonia and Lorna had been lucky. They had escaped with a mere spanking. Of course a spanking was humiliating to a girl of 17, and still worse when she had been taken across the knee and had her knickers pulled down. But Madelaine would have given anything to have exchanged her punishment for the chastisement they had received.

Snivelling and sobbing, Madelaine tried to brace herself for the remaining strokes that were still due to her. She did not know how many more it was to be. She had lost count because of the pain. Had she been able to see her own bottom, she could perhaps have counted the number of strokes Miss Hampton had given her, for these marks were stronger and more livid than those left by the recent caning from her father.

The pause was over and Madelaine just had to cry out again when the cane scorched her soft flesh, almost too high up this time.

Again there seemed to be a pause, and Madelaine had a few moments’ grace. Her cheeks were wet with tears and she could not stop weeping. The lithe cane rested right across her nervously trembling bottom, aligning itself for another stroke. Madelaine did not know that Miss Hampton was studying the marks her cane had already made in her skin. She did not know anything any more, only that she had been a very naughty girl and was now paying the price for her misbehaviour. The teacher seemed to be quite satisfied with the tramlined marks her instrument had produced on Madelaine’s trim, girlish bottom with intent to make the culprit feel sore and remorseful. The girl still had to take a few more strokes, however, and she noticed a couple of areas where there were inch-wide gaps between stripes. Slowly she raised the cane again.

‘There are only three more now, Madelaine. Try to be a brave girl and your punishment will soon be over.’

The three cracking whacks fell only five to ten seconds apart and Madelaine cried out, wailing from the pain each of them caused her in that part about which parents and teachers seemed to agree that girls possessed not only to sit upon.

Whimpering and shivering, Madelaine climbed off the padded bench and stood up straight when Miss Hampton told her to. Tears were flowing down her cheeks and the red, swollen tramlines across her buttocks ached and burned like fire.

Weeping, Madelaine was allowed to leave the room and weeping, she showered when she had reached the changing room. The water helped to ease the pain, but when she towelled she felt the soreness of the long, raised stripes. As she dressed, her thoughts turned from what had happened to what she had to face when she came home. Mum had asked her to hurry, but instead she was already at least half-an-hour late. She could not leave until she felt reasonably sure that people would not notice from her face that she had been weeping.

At home Mum and Aunt Doris would be impatiently waiting for her. Aunt Doris was busy making a new dress for Madelaine, and that was why the girl was expected home straight after school. Mum had reminded her once again as she had left for school that Aunt Doris was coming to try the new dress on for size. Madelaine sighed as she thought how life for a schoolgirl sometimes seemed to be so complicated. At home she would have to undress and stand between Mum and her Aunt in nothing but her underwear. Protests would be useless. Aunt Doris could not come back another day and Madelaine could not try on the new dress when she was wearing other clothes.

No knickers in the world could conceal reddish stripes decorating a pouting girlish bottom after it had been given ten sharp whacks with a school cane and on the bare too. There was also the weal across the backs of her thighs, which was not possible to hide at all. Mum and Aunt Doris were bound to notice the marks which still were red and swollen across her buttocks. Mum would almost certainly pull her knickers down to see everything. Then, amidst all kinds of exclamations, she would probably count the stripes.

There were going to be questions and more questions. How would Madelaine be able to find answers to all of them? No, Madelaine knew there would be no end to all those questions a Mum and an Aunt could put to a poor unhappy teenaged schoolgirl, whose bottom was still fierily tender after having just been dealt with by the cane. And why, oh why, didn’t she live more than five minutes’ walk away from school?

A Caning Story from Janus 27. More stories can be read here.

New term at St Elia’s
by Johnny Chesham

PENELOPE FORSTER sat in the railway carriage looking out at the Sussex Downs with a resentful expression on her pretty, freckled face. Tomorrow was first day of term at St. Elia’s High School for Girls and any minute now she would be joined by all the other schoolgirls reminding her that her freedom was over. She had enjoyed the vac and met a super boy too, but now she was back to all the rules and discipline of a strict girls’ boarding school.

As the train drew into the junction she saw hordes of girls in the blue and white striped blazers of St. Elia’s swarming about in straw hats, navy blue gym-slips and white knee-length socks, waving hockey sticks and satchels, reminding her all too clearly of the school life she was so tired of.

In a flash she saw the answer: ‘Of course,’ she thought, ‘I’ll get myself expelled!’

Why hadn’t she thought of it before? St Elia’s was full of rules and regulations that everyone tried not to break. If she set out to break them all surely they’d pack her off in no time, back home to where that handsome young man had been so interested in her uniform and even asked her to pose in it for him!

The others piled into the carriage. Among them was Georgina Worsley, a slim, attractive young lady with long brunette curls who slept next to Penelope in blue dorm. They were best friends, both fed up with St. Elia’s and both keen on the boys from the village who always looked at them and whistled when they walked by in their short navy gymslips and white blouses. Georgina was form captain this term and wore a new metal shield on her blazer lapel.

‘Hello, Penny!’ she said. ‘I spotted you looking miserable from down the platform!’ she added with a smile.

‘Hello, Georgie!’ Penny replied laughing. ‘You’re right, I was down in the dumps, but now I think I’ve got an idea to put everything right!’

‘Oh, tell me all,’ asked Georgie intrigued.

‘Not now,’ Penny said with a glance towards a Senior Prefect in a nearby seat, ‘Wait until tonight.’

An hour later the train drew into Castleton and crowds of schoolgirls leapt onto the platform. Last term some girls from Oakwood Priory, the nearby day school, had caused a row and sure enough there were a few in their uniform of grey blazers, grey pleated skirts, berets and ankle socks. There was a sudden hush, however, when onto the platform strode Miss Faversharn, Headmistress of St. Elia’s, an attractive but severe looking woman in her forties with an air of authority which brought instant obedience. Surrounded by Prefects, she directed the girls to taxis and buses in a swift and orderly fashion, an imposing and elegant figure in tweed suit and brogues.

Penny and Georgie trudged up the drive to St. Elia’s, a rambling but impressive ivy-covered building surrounded by playing fields. The afternoon passed in busy new term formalities and both girls were glad when it was time for dorm. They took off their blazers and gymslips, put them carefully away and sat on their steel-framed beds in bras and navy blue cotton knickers.

‘Oh, I nearly forgot,’ Georgina said, ‘What’s this great idea of yours?’

‘Quite simple!’ replied her friend, pausing for effect. ‘I’m going to get myself expelled!’

‘You’re what?’ cried Georgie in amazement and listened with fascination as Penny explained her plan.

‘But what’s more,’ she concluded. ‘I’m going to need your help. Can I count on you?’

Georgie looked seriously at the pretty, blonde schoolgirl for whom she had such admiration and answered, ‘Absolutely, Penny.’

‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down!’ Penny exclaimed and threw her arms around her friend. Any minute now Matron would come round for lights out so they gave each other a quick cuddle and an affectionate good night kiss before climbing into bed.

* * *

Monday afternoon was to be devoted to hockey trials which were of great importance at St. Elia’s. Skipping games was a serious offence at any time but missing trials was unthinkable. Everyone would be involved and Penny decided this was her chance to slip away to the village. It was a glorious afternoon as she strolled over the Downs and she soon found herself in her favourite tea shop. She tucked into tea and toast with eclairs and vanilla slices and was thoroughly enjoying herself when she sensed a chilling presence enter the room.

She looked up and sure enough there was Eleanor Burns, the School Captain, and her friend Rosamund Grant.

Eleanor was a very attractive 18-year-old and much admired for her prowess at games, but was also dreaded as a strict disciplinarian with a rather cruel streak. Similarly Rosamund was a charming Prefect with a winning smile which many felt concealed a rather sadistic disposition. They wore striped blazers and ties but because of their seniority wore short, navy blue pleated skirts with black nylons and suspenders.

‘Now, Forster,’ the Captain intoned, ‘Isn’t it rather early in term to be breaking bounds?’

‘At least Georgina Worsley’s got some school spirit,’ Rosamund Grant added with a knowing sneer.

Good old Georgie, thought Penelope! Now for it, she said to herself, no good doing things by half. She looked up calmly at her superiors and said firmly: ‘Why don’t you two piss off?’

They stood there stunned with open mouths. After a second Rosamund collected herself enough to say ‘That’s enough to get you expelled.’

Thank God for that, thought Penny. But suddenly Eleanor’s eyes flashed and she said with a cruel smile, ‘No, I think we’ll deal with this young lady ourselves. Miss Faversham is extremely busy with trials and shouldn’t be disturbed.’

Oh no, thought Penny! It was a rule at St Elia’s that the School Captain could at her discretion administer corporal punishment. Penny had assumed she would be sent straight to Miss Faversham for an offence they all knew was worthy of expulsion, but Eleanor Burns had decided she would forgo that for the immense pleasure of herself giving Penelope Forster the beating of her life!

‘Report to my study in thirty minutes,’ she added crisply as the two seniors turned and walked smartly out of the tea rooms attracting appreciative glances from a parson and businessman at a nearby table.

Penny looked down at the eclairs in dismay. It had all gone wrong! She had bitten off much more than she could chew and now she would simply have to take the punishment though she shuddered at the thought.

She trudged back to St. Elia’s with her head bowed and made her way through the oak panelled corridors to the School Captain’s Study. She hesitated outside the door and trembled at the sound of a cane swishing repeatedly through the air. She winced as she heard Rosamund’s voice say ‘Try this thin one’. For a moment she thought of bunking but knew there was no escape. Biting her lip and tensing herself from head to toe she knocked on the door.

‘Enter,’ a firm, stern voice rang out.

Eleanor Burns and Rosamund Grant stood arms folded behind a polished mahogany desk, to the rear a mantelpiece on which stood a number of cups and trophies. Framed photos of hockey and netball teams lined the panelled walls. On the desk reposed a selection of straight and crook-handled canes, an old gym shoe and a wire hair brush.

‘Take your knickers off,’ the School Captain said matter-of-factly.

Penny blushed. She bent down, put her hands up her gymslip and pulled her regulation navy blue cotton knickers down to her knees, standing there in helpless humiliation with her head bowed and eyes down.

The School Captain looked at her knickers with a sneer and ordered, ‘Touch your toes!’

Penelope bent down obediently and touched her toes with her fingertips. Eleanor Burns flexed a pliant, straight cane. She walked round the desk, probed the cane under the offender’s gym-slip and disdainfully flicked it forward to reveal the firm, pink orbs of her buttocks. Rosamund Grant took off her blazer and picked up the gym shoe with a smile. Penelope held her breath, every muscle taut, for what seemed like an eternity.

Suddenly the gym shoe smacked into her left buttock with an almightly stinging THWACKKK!

She shrieked out her pain, but before the shock left her it hit again and again in rapid succesion. She winced in agony, biting her lip as the stinging rubber rained down on her reddening cheeks harder and harder. Rosamund hammered the shoe down with mighty blows, the smacks of hard rubber on tender bare buttock flesh ringing round the study mingling with Penny’s yells and moans. Her face contorted in pain as she reached a plateau of panic that she just couldn’t stand any more. As if by telepathy Rosamund Grant, by now breathing rather heavily, stood straight and stopped.

Thank God, thought Penny, slightly raising herself.

‘How dare yon move without permission!’ Eleanor almost screamed. ‘That was just the warm up!’

Penny’s spirits sank and she braced herself again in dismay. The School Captain selected a long, thin, crook-handled cane from the desk and positioned herself with legs apart and left hand on the small of Penelope’s back. Penny squeezed every muscle vice-like in an agony of anticipation. She could hear cheering from the hockey field and thought what she would give to be out there now.

Suddenly the cane slashed through the air and landed like a razor on Penny’s naked, red buttocks!

‘YEOWWW!’ she shrieked out in shock and pain. Eleanor raised her right arm high and brought the cane down with tremendous power again and again in mighty strokes. Penny’s efforts to maintain some self control and dignity suddenly collapsed and she burst into floods of tears. Deep red weals crisscrossed the firm young buttocks as Penny yelled out her anguish uncontrollably, tears now pouring down her red cheeks.

Lumpy red welts blossomed under the firm, persistant lash of the angry cane, Eleanor’s face set in determined concentration as she rained down blow after blow on the twin, quivering cheeks by now flaming red with thin bluish bruises. Penny yelled out in torment as each new cane stroke whipped into her agonised buttocks now red raw from the relentless bombardment.

Rosamund looked on at her friend’s superb performance and flushed with unashamed admiration.

The School Captain steadied herself and suddenly transferred the long, whistling strokes to Penelope’s upper legs – a new and unsuspecting target. Bright red lines immediately appeared in the firm, pink flesh below the inflamed buttocks as Penny shrieked and sobbed. Eleanor inflicted more and more flashing strokes of the merciless cane as if possessed by an inexhaustible energy. Penny’s face was now a contorted mask of pain, wailing and sobbing very loudly.

The bell for Evensong suddenly rang out but Eleanor seemed oblivious as she lashed the whipping, swiping cane into the raw bruised cheeks now all bright crimson. Rosamund Grant, looking slightly concerned, coughed quietly and the School Captain looked up flushed with blazing eyes and slowly ran her fingers down the length of the cane.

‘You are dismissed, Forster,’ she said with a slight thickness in her voice.

Penny slowly raised herself and pulled up her navy blue knickers around the flaming cheeks of her backside which were chafed unbearably by the tight elastic. She held her handkerchief to her eyes while with the other hand she tried to give some comfort to her throbbing buttocks.

Crying openly and with her eyes fixed to the ground Penny curtsied, said ‘Thank you, Miss Burns,’ and ran from the room.

Rosamund rushed up to Eleanor, planted a warm kiss on her full, sullen lips and blurted with real feeling: ‘Good show, Captain!’

* * *

Georgina gasped at the sight that greeted her on entering the dorm. Penny was lying face down on her bed with her knickers around her ankles, her hands clasped round her bright crimson buttocks as she sobbed her heart out into the pink pillowcase.

‘Darling!’ Georgie cried out in shock and rushed to her friend’s side.

Penny looked at her through tear-filled eyes and slowly described the events leading to the beating of her life. Georgina laid her hockey stick by the bed and reached into her locker.

‘Let’s try some of this,’ she said, taking out a white glass jar of cold cream. She scooped out a handful of the smooth white cream and gently laid it on Penny’s left buttock. It felt like ice on a burning desert. Lovingly she spread it carefully around the delightful curved forms, bringing some slight comfort to the ravaged flesh and hard, raised welts that had now appeared.

Penny squealed as the seared nerves protested but lay passive, gladly accepting the gentle massaging palms and the fragrant viscous cream. Ceorgie’s hands took on a life of their own as they gently moulded the perfect curves of Penny’s bottom and thighs. Poor old Penny, she thought with deep sympathy and was about to lean down and plant a gentle kiss on the scorched, tormented flesh when the door suddenly opened and Matron walked briskly into the dorm.

‘What on earth is going on here?’ she exclaimed in her Scottish brogue.

Matron was a quite attractive woman in her late thirties wearing a blue tunic with white apron and hat rather like a staff nurse in appearance. Around her waist she wore a thick blue leather belt. She was a sensible, no nonsense type of nurse with very strong views about the upbringing of teenage girls.

‘Awfully sorry, Matron,’ answered Georgina, quickly withdrawing a hand which seemed to have strayed between Penny’s thighs. ‘Penelope’s rather sore and I was just trying to soften her skin a little.’

Matron looked at them for a moment with searching eyes as if assessing the truth of the situation. Her frown of suspicion finally softened and Georgina breathed a momentary sigh of relief.

‘That’s as maybe,’ answered Matron, picking up the jar. ‘But what, may I ask, is THIS?’

Georgic shuddered. One of the strictest rules at St. Elia’s was that all cosmetic substances were expressly forbidden and Matron was notorious for her rigid enforcement of this rule. She knew she could expect no mercy. With a look of immense distaste Matron confiscated the jar and put it in her apron.

‘You will both report to Miss Faversham at 9.30 tomorrow morning,’ she ordered frostily and strode purposefully out of the dorm.

‘That’s torn it, old girl,’ said Georgie in dismay.

Still face down, Penny groaned.

‘With my luck they still won’t throw me out,’ she responded, knowing she would simply faint if even the slightest punishment were to be inflicted on her tender, ravaged rump the day after such a beating. Even sitting down would be agony all week as she well knew.

‘Chin up, old girl,’ Georgie said without much conviction.

Penny stretched out her arm and their fingers entwined tenderly. Georgie knelt down and stroked Penny’s soft blonde curls. She turned her head and their tired, worried eyes met in a gaze of affection. They leant towards each other and sealed this most wretched of days with the consolation of a loving, good night kiss…

* * *

At 9.30 precisely the two pretty schoolgirls stood side by side in full uniform outside the Headmistress’ Study. On the oak panelled door a shiny brass plate read Miss Cynthia Faversham, M.A. (Oxon.) – Headmistress. They exchanged a last look of apprehension and dread before Georgina bit her lip and knocked faintly on the oak.

No sound emerged from the study except the swish of a cane singing through the air like a rapier, then a thinner cane whistling at a slightly higher pitch.

They looked at each other in dreadful anticipation as a tremendous thwack of the cane hitting an armchair sounded through the heavy door followed by several more in quick succession. They were both afraid of Miss Faversham at the best of times and now each could feel the other’s fear as clearly as her own. Both schoolgirls were pale and trembling as Georgina tried to find courage to knock again.

But suddenly a cultured, stern voice rang out: ‘Enter!’

The two offenders slowly entered the study with heads bowed and hands clasped in front of them, trembling with fright. Much of the study was lined with books; on the mantelpiece a large silver trophy with blue and white ribbons and above it a framed portrait of Her Majesty which dominated the room with an air of regal authority.

In the centre of the study was a large mahogany desk which had been cleared but for the jar of cold cream, three crook-handled canes of varying lengths and thicknesses and a heavy two-foot ruler with an ivory edge. An armchair of well worn leather was to the left of the desk and to the right French windows looked out onto the playing fields.

Framed in the windows was the tall figure of Miss Faversham flexing a long, straight cane elegantly in front of her with an air of imperious authority. Under her black academic gown she wore an expensive tweed suit, black stockings and stilettos with rather high heels. Her brunette hair fell in neat curls under the tasseled black mortar board. The fine features had a certain aloofness and a rather cold, hard expression was natural to her beauty.

The two offenders stared shamefully down at the carpet in total submission to her supreme authority.

Miss Faversham’s eyes bored into them through her green tortoiseshell spectacles as she pursed her lips preparing to speak.

‘It has been brought to my attention that in flagrant violation of a school rule you, Worsley, have seen fit to introduce this noxious substance onto the school premises,’ she announced gravely whilst indicating the cold cream with a look of grim contempt.

Blushing with shame Georgina bowed her head further and answered in an almost inaudible voice, ‘Yes, Miss Faversham.’

‘It would appear,’ the Headmistress continued, ‘that you, Forster, were an accomplice in this serious offence.’

Penelope cast down her eyes and swallowed, ‘Yes, Miss Faversham.’

The Head’s firm gaze scanned the two offenders standing before her in abject humiliation. She had in fact noticed Worsley during the hockey trials, noting that her figure had matured considerably since last term, something not uncommon in girls of her form and that she was becoming a young lady of considerable charms. Happening to inspect the changing rooms after the game, she had seen Worsley in the shower and her impressions bad been confirmed by the lovely young body there revealed to her.

The girls looked down in the silence of immense guilt. The pause seemed endless. Penelope guessed from the Head’s statement that a sound thrashing was inescapable for both of them. Her whole backside was still an aching, red-raw inferno that made moving painful and she simply couldn’t conceive of further chastisement of its tender, ravaged surface.

Miss Faversham, however, had her own ideas.

‘It has also been brought to my attention that you, Forster, were rightly and duly punished yesterday by the School Captain. Nonetheless the offence for which you are now before me undoubtedly merits a sound beating.’

Penny’s head began to swim and she wondered if she was going to faint… the Head was perfectly correct and was entitled to thrash her again… she was shaking with nervousness and confusion… she knew she couldn’t take the pain… and Miss Faversham never altered the rules…

‘However,’ the Head began suddenly, ‘I have decided on this occasion that your punishment will be to fag for the School Captain all term. Furthermore you will be gated for the whole of this term and serve two hours extra work each evening. You are now dismissed.’

Penny couldn’t believe her ears: Miss Faversham wasn’t going to beat her! Every fibre of her body gasped with relief. With a wince she managed a curtsy, said, ‘Thank you, Miss Faversham’ without raising her eyes and walked stiffly from the study, still wondering if she was imagining it.

Georgina looked down nervously at the carpet frightened and alone before the all-powerful figure of the Headmistress. The girl wondered why Penny had been let off, it was most unlike Miss Faversham, and now what would become of her?

The Head scanned the length of the lovely young schoolgirl in striped blazer, gymslip and white socks. She was indeed delightfully pretty. Miss Faversham walked to her desk and picked up the long, heavy ruler, then seated herself in the armchair. Bells chimed in the Sussex landscape.

‘You will position yourself across my knee, Worsley,’ the Headmistress suddenly commanded.

‘Yes, Miss Faversham,’ Georgina replied quietly and walked across the study, her legs like jelly and her head bowed. She dropped obediently to her knees before the imperious figure of the Head, feeling desperately ashamed of herself. Then she leant forward across the tweed skirt with her elbows on the carpet, her face a few inches off the floor.

‘It is my intention to remove your knickers,’ the Headmistress announced with inflexible authority.

‘Yes, Miss Faversham,’ said Georgina blushing deep crimson.

The Headmistress placed her right hand on the schoolgirl’s thigh just above the knee and slowly pushed it under her navy gymslip feeling the exquisite curve of the leg. Her fingers reached the navy blue cotton knickers but seemed to fumble at the elastic and pass on up to the buttock, smoothing down the creases of the skimpy knickers and moulding the enticing form of her rump. Then an exploring left hand caressed the left thigh and also reached the ripe young cheeks, carefully smoothing down the knickers stretched taut over the soft but firm orbs.

Georgina waited in an agony of tension for the inevitable onslaught to begin. Was it taking a long time or was she just imagining it? She was too distraught to be able to tell.

The Headmistress caressed both buttocks lovingly through soft, cotton knickers… she hardly regretted the other schoolgirl’s absence… suddenly as if collecting herself she slipped her long varnished nails under the elastic at the gusset, indenting the girl’s flesh, then slowly drew the knickers down to the girl’s knees. With her left hand she softly folded the gymslip over, revealing the naked cheeks, like the ceremonial unveiling of some sublime sculpture. They were firm, white and of delightful shape, unblemished but for a few goose pimples and the reddish lines of the elastic.

Georgina gritted her teeth in an agony of anticipation and flushed hot and cold. The silence seemed absolutely endless.

Suddenly Miss Faversham raised the ruler high above her head and brought it swinging down with all her force across both buttocks with a tremendous SMACKKK!

Georgina howled out her shock and pain in a shrieking ‘YEOWWW!’

Before she could begin to absorb the stinging pain of the blow another landed on the same spot, then another and another in rapid succession. Her right leg kicked up involuntarily as the stinging ruler smacked home across her throbbing rump and a first tear rolled down her cheek. Her buttocks went pink and wriggled uncontrollably, she gasped and shrieked as the ruler rose and fell as if possessed of a life of its own. Miss Faversham’s brow knitted in concentration as she rained down one powerful blow after another across the stinging, reddening target.

Georgie’s very pretty face winced and contorted in pain, a mask of perspiration and tears. She gasped at the agonising force of the ruler smacking her tender buttock cheeks and screamed out as the edge of the merciless ruler wickedly tortured the scarlet flesh.

Sobbing piteously she held her head on the floor as she helplessly endured the shower of blows rained down on her by her relentless Mistress, inwardly begging her to stop but knowing that the slightest protest would only intensify her agony. And how long would the anguish go on? This uncertainty was almost as bad as the pain itself.

As the vicious ruler beat into her rump she vowed she would never again disobey Miss Faversham, so total was her domination.

But at last the ruler rested still on her swollen, searing buttocks. She sobbed, a completely broken spirit, her raw, chastised posterior humbly presented to her mighty Mistress and tormentor.

Miss Faversham surveyed her handiwork. The buttocks and upper thighs were thoroughly red with the odd deeper welt from the ruler’s edge and raised lumps where carefully aimed blows had been imprinted on top of each other. So far so good, she thought.

‘You will now position yourself across the desk,’ the Head commanded sternly. Georgina slowly lifted herself to her feet, now a dishevelled parody of the neat schoolgirl who had entered the study, her striped tie undone, long dark hair unkempt across her face, knickers hanging round her ankles, her face bowed in profound shame and mortification.

As if reading her thoughts the Headmistress commanded: ‘Remove your knickers completely, Worsley.’

‘Yes, Miss Faversham,’ Georgina answered weakly, kicking off her navy knickers leaving the crumpled garment rather pathetically on the carpet, her last slight hope of protection gone.

Her legs felt like jelly but she managed to walk stiffly across the study. She stood close to the edge of the desk and leant painfully forward across the top holding the further edge of the desk with her hands; a perfect target. The desk top was hard and uncomfortable beneath her aching ribs as she turned her head slightly to look imploringly at her formidable tormentor, tears trickling down her cheeks, her breath coming in whimpers.

The Headmistress flexed a long, fearful cane as if transfixed by the pliant power she held between her hands. She walked around the desk and positioned herself with legs apart, a carefully measured distance from the sobbing schoolgirl. Her left hand smoothed down the navy blue gymslip and lingered on the curve of the chastised bottom beneath. Then she folded the garment over to reveal the hot blotched buttocks and thighs separated by her shiny bush of dense, dark hair.

Miss Faversham held the cane just above the centre of those once silky smooth buttocks which she herself had transformed into flaming mounds. Georgina screwed her eyes up tight, every muscle a vice of tension awaiting the coming onslaught. The moment seemed to go on forever. She heard a church bell ringing away across the Downs. The Headmistress was poised like an Olympic jumper awaiting the perfect moment to launch herself…

Suddenly she jerked the cane high above her head and brought it down with every ounce of her weight in an almighty THWACKKK across the middle of Georgina’s rump!

The girl shrieked out in agony and shock, her legs kicking up automatically as a merciless shower of mighty whacks followed in unbelievably quick succession. Her bum wriggled frantically in a futile attempt to escape the flashing cane which scorched her buttocks with an anger rare even in Miss Faversham. Her whole rump was blazing under its furious, stinging lashes. Wincing and gritting her teeth desperately at the ever-increasing pain, her head swam and she wondered if she would faint. Her buttocks which had previously been thoroughly red blotched were now striped with almost mathematical precision by rising red ridges and crimson weals down to the tops of her thighs.

‘YEOWWWW!’ she howled over and over again, her cries echoing around the wails. Georgie wept her heart out as the Head thrashed down stroke after stroke as if possessed by some superpotent force. The deafening THWACKS mingled with her howls, shrieks and screams, her buttocks vainly squirming, legs kicking wildly after each new whipping blow…

Then as if by some divine intervention there was a firm knock at the door. Miss Faversham paused, collected herself and answered in her cultured tones:

‘I am engaged at present, who is it?’

A Scottish voice replied, ‘Begging your pardon Headmistress, Lady Fairfax has arrived and is looking over the library.’

‘Very well, Matron,’ she called out. ‘I will join her directly.’

Miss Faversham set aside her cane, calmed herself and adjusted her suit and hair. Lady Fairfax was a wealthy old girl and an important benefactor of St. Elia’s.

She turned to the pathetic figure of Georgie crying loudly across the desk too frightened to move. The Head uttered the commanding words ‘You are now dismissed, Worsley’ and strode purposefully from the room.

* * *

The next afternoon Penny found herself hard at work in the School Captain’s Study. She was thoroughly miserable, her expulsion plan just wasn’t working.

What a term she thought to herself! It was only Wednesday and already she’d been thrashed, gated, and to cap it all now she was down on her knees with a dustpan sweeping up for Eleanor Burns in the undignified role of fag – a position normally filled by much younger junior girls, and only very rarely awarded to a senior as a humiliating punishment. Added to that, because of her, poor Georgina had been severely thrashed and was even now in the dorm trying vainly to soothe her blazing bottom.

Things couldn’t get much worse!

Penny got to her feet and began dusting off the bookshelves. She stretched awkwardly to reach the top shelf, lost balance and down came half a dozen books in a heap on the floor.

‘Oh hell!’ she yelled, hoping Eleanor didn’t come in.

She began putting the books back when out of a diary dropped a pink envelope. On the front was written ‘To Darling Eleanor’. What a laugh Penny thought! Some steamy love letter from one of Eleanor’s boyfriends! Listening carefully for footsteps outside in the corridor she slipped the letter out and unfolded it. Her sly smile of amusement changed to a look of astonishment as she read on.

It was a steamy love letter all right, but it was from Rosamund Grant!

As the truth dawned on Penny other thoughts ran through her mind. She folded the letter back into the envelope and put it in her pocket, quickly finished her tasks in a preoccupied mood and made her way back to the dorm. She was walking on air. Being expelled suddenly seemed unimportant. The letter could change everything.

Georgie was lying on her bed on her tummy reading a girl’s magazine and wincing noticeably as she changed position. Penny sat on the edge of her bed in a state of some excitement.

‘Georgie, you won’t believe what I’ve found!’ she cried.

Georgina was much too keenly aware of her red raw buttocks still throbbing and immensely tender from yesterday’s thrashing to raise much enthusiasm. However, as she read the letter which Penny handed over her expression changed to one of amazement.

‘Gosh!’ she exclaimed. ‘I knew they were close friends but this is pretty strong stuff!’

‘You’re not kidding,’ Penny agreed. She took the letter and read out in a mock romantic voice: ‘I long for the touch of your ripe young breasts.’

They both burst into peals of laughter! Then Penny grew more serious.

‘The thing is, Georgie, this is our chance to settle scores with those two little tyrants, isn’t it?’

Georgie’s expression changed too. She hadn’t seen that side of it.

‘You don’t mean…’ she began.

‘I mean this letter’s going straight under Miss Faversham’s door while everyone’s at supper,’ she said clearly and with determination.

‘Crikey,’ Georgie said. This was going to make some waves!

* * *

The next morning Miss Faversham’s face bore a concerned expression as she sat behind her desk rereading the pink letter which had appeared under her door the previous evening. This was a serious matter and she had called on Matron for a discussion.

‘There’s the reputation of the School to think of, Headmistress,’ Matron reminded her.

Miss Faversham realised this. If two such senior girls were expelled the Press would get hold of it. In short there would be a dreadful scandal. On the other hand something of this sort could not possibly go unpunished…

A Caning Story from Janus 27. More stories are available here.

Angela
by Tom Horner

‘THERE ARE some young women who are just asking to have their bottoms smacked!’

Richard looked at David in surprise. He followed the direction of David’s eyes across the pub, and realised that he was staring at a small group of people standing at the bar. The group consisted of three young men and a girl. The girl was about 20, her auburn haircut in a pageboy style. She stood in the middle of the young men, talking animatedly, her chatter punctuated by flashes of her wide eyes, glimpses of a bright wide smile, and tosses of her pretty head. It was a performance that any man would have found hard to resist and the three young men in the bar were no match for this jinxy little minx. She had them transfixed, lapping up her performance like three cats round a bowl of cream. She was smartly dressed – a secretary perhaps – and when she turned her back, the tight material of her grey skirt rippled with the movement of her slim buttocks.

Richard gave an appreciative grunt. She was a delightful creature, but one that was clearly in need of a firm spanking.

‘I see what you mean,’ said Richard.

‘I rather thought you might,’ David replied, turning to him with a smile.

Richard had known David for the three years since starting to work at the same firm. David was some years older than Richard, about 50 he thought, and a good number of points further up the managerial scale, but nevertheless for some reason he seemed to have decided to take Richard under his wing. Over the past three years they had become quite close, often going to the pub together at lunchtime or after work.

Despite this friendship, Richard really knew very little about David, or his personal feelings. This sudden expression of interest in the pert young girl at the bar came as something of a surprise, although the sentiments his senior voiced were by no means alien to Richard’s own feelings. But he was even more surprised by what David said next.

‘Yes, I thought you might have the same interests as me. I got the first inkling when I saw the way your eyes follow Jean around the office – particularly when she bends down to the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet!’

David gave a chuckle as Richard stared into his drink in embarrassment, thinking of the many times when, in his imagination, David’s sophisticated secretary, Jean, had touched her toes for six of the best on her bare bottom.

‘But I only knew for certain yesterday,’ David went on, ‘when I saw the copy of that magazine in your briefcase. I used to read it myself, but since I met Angela I haven’t felt the need so much.’

‘Angela?’ Richard stammered questioningly, still scarlet with embarrassment from having been confronted with his own most intimate secret.

‘Yes, my current young woman. I’ve known her about two years now, I suppose, but she’s a headstrong little madam, and needs regular discipline of the firmest kind.’

Richard knew that David was not married, but he had never heard him mention a girlfriend before. Was he suggesting now that he had some young woman with whom he put into practice all those things which Richard had so far only read about in magazines? It seemed to be too amazing to be true. But what David said next was even more so.

‘Yes,’ he continued in that same smooth tone, ‘Angela needs to have her bottom warmed at fairly regular intervals. In fact she is due for a session tomorrow evening. Why don’t you come home with me tomorrow, and see how reality compares with your fantasies. I’m sure that you will enjoy it, and your presence will give an added piquancy to the session for Angela and me.’

This was an invitation which Richard had no hesitation in accepting. And so it was that he found himself the following evening seated in a comfortable armchair in David’s large house, sipping a drink. He was awaiting expectantly the arrival of Angela, and wondering just what she would be like. At 6.15 precisely, the door bell rang.

‘That will be her,’ said David, leaving the room.

He returned a few minutes later ushering a young woman into the room in front of him. As soon as he saw her, Richard gave a start of surprise. He knew this girl – she had been at University at the same time as him! They had never been introduced, and indeed Richard doubted whether she would remember him at all, but he had known her. Only then she had been ‘Angie’, not ‘Angela’.

She had been one of the prettiest girls in the University, and it would have been difficult not to have noticed her. Richard always counted it a good day if he managed to sit near her in one of the refectories, and watch her talking to her friends.

He remembered one particularly pleasant afternoon he had spent in the snooker room in the Students’ Union. He had gone there with a friend to play a frame, but had found the table occupied by Angie and one of her girlfriends. The fact that they were not very good meant that it lasted a considerable time. Normally this would have infuriated Richard, but the sight of Angie, repeatedly bending across the table, the faded blue denim stretching tight across her bottom, made up for the long wait. In fact it was almost with regret that Richard saw the black disappear into the pocket for the last time.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she had said, smiling sweetly as she handed him the cue.

But that had been five years ago. Now the faded blue jeans were replaced by a smart blue suit, the tight pencil skirt reaching just to her knees, the short jacket finishing at her waist. Her thick black hair had been cut from its almost waist-length, to finish now at her nape. But the face was still the same – the wide blue eyes, the tip-tilted nose, the full mouth, that he remembered.

She smiled and held out her hand as David introduced him to her. It was clear that she did not remember Richard. Perhaps he had changed more than she had done, or maybe she had simply not noticed him in those days. Whatever the reason, Richard decided that it would be better not to remind her of the time when their paths had crossed previously.

As David fetched her a drink, Angela chatted in a cheerful way about the tough day she had had at the office. Richard, looking at her, found it almost impossible to believe that this delightful young woman was the person who David had led him to believe, willingly accepted corporal punishment, and whom David had promised Richard himself would see receiving such treatment before the evening was over.

In fact, Richard did not have long to wait for proceedings to begin. After a few minutes the conversation lulled, and David looked determinedly at Angela, as she sat, curled up like a cat her legs tucked beneath her, on one of the armchairs.

‘You won’t forget why you are here this evening, will you, my dear?’ he said.

Angela’s eyelids fluttered. She looked down into her drink and murmured in a small voice:

‘No David, of course not.’

Then she glanced across in an inquiring way at Richard.

‘Oh yes,’ said David, ‘That is precisely the reason that Richard is here. He is very interested in the punishment of naughty girls.’

‘I see,’ said Angela, continuing to stare at the floor, and avoiding Richard’s eyes.

‘Well,’ continued David, standing up. ‘I think we may as well get started. So finish your drink, Angela, and fetch the cane like a good girl.’

Angela gulped down the rest of her drink and stood up, handing the glass to David. There was a large leather-topped desk at one end of the room, and Angela walked over towards it. Richard’s heart was beating at high speed as he watched her cross the room, her hips swaying under the tight skirt. Then she reached the desk, and squatting down, opened one of the drawers. From it she withdrew two items – two canes, yellowish in colour, one with a crook handle, the other straight. She turned to David, holding them up.

‘Which one do you want?’

‘Bring me the rattan, but leave the bamboo on the desk,’ David commanded.

The straight cane was laid on the leather, and she came back to David holding the crook-handled rattan. As she handed it to him she looked straight into his eyes.

‘I have been a naughty girl,’ she said. ‘I am in need of punishment. Please cane me as I deserve.’

‘Of course, my dear,’ replied David. ‘Prepare yourself.’

Angela returned to the desk, with David following her, flexing the cane. Richard could see that it was very supple and swishy. Was he really going to see it applied to Angie’s bottom? Or was this a complex illusion, perhaps even designed to make fun of him?

When Angela arrived in front of the desk she stopped and took off her jacket, laying it neatly on the desk-top. David beckoned Richard, and he moved forward to stand next to his host.

Angela still had her back to them. Her hands now fell to her waist. She unclipped the skirt, and undid the zip. Even with the zip unfastened she had to wriggle a bit to ease its tightness down her legs. As it descended her bottom was revealed to Richard’s eager gaze. It was inadequately covered by silk knickers of pale blue, which failed to conceal the enticing roundness of her buttocks. She was wearing stockings and suspenders rather than tights. At last the skirt was off and placed neatly beside the jacket. Then she bent across the surface of the desk reaching for the far side with her fingertips.

David gave a loud ‘tut’.

‘Come now, Angela,’ he said, ‘let’s not have any false modesty just because we have a guest with us. You have a delightful bottom. It is that that Richard wants to see being punished, not the expensive underwear with which you pamper yourself. Take them down please.’

Rather reluctantly Angela pushed herself upright. Her hands went to the waistband of the knickers. Then she stopped, and peeped back over her shoulder at David.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘let me keep them on. They won’t protect me at all.’

‘No,’ replied David sternly. ‘They must come down. And I don’t care much for your reluctance to obey. Let’s have no more of it, or we’ll have to let Richard see what happens to you when you have to make a trip to the room upstairs.’

‘Oh no, please,’ said Angela hurriedly. ‘I’m sorry – I’ll do what you say.’

Her thumbs slid into the waistband of her knickers and pushed them down to the floor. Stepping out of them she laid them on the desk with her skirt and jacket. Then she bent into position again. Richard now had the delightful view of Angela’s bare bottom offered up for the cane. It was as beautiful as he had imagined it would be all those years before, when he had watched it bent over the snooker table. It was so smooth and white. Richard would have loved to stretch out a hand, first to stroke, and then to smack.

But it was David who was measuring the rattan across Angela’s cheeks. He tapped it once or twice across the crown, making the flesh ripple.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘keep your legs straight, and your tummy flat on the desk, please.’

As Angela tensed her legs, and pushed herself flat against the desk, David turned to Richard.

‘That way it makes sure the target is presented at the perfect angle,’ he explained. And indeed, Richard had to admit that the minor adjustment had made Angela’s bottom even more prominent – and splendid.

‘Keep still now!’ The cane tapped once more. ‘I’m going to start!’

David raised the cane, and then swished it in across the centre of Angela’s bottom. To Richard, almost overcome with the excitement of witnessing his first real-life caning, it seemed as though time stood still as the whippy stick kissed the firm flesh with a sharp smack. It lingered for a moment, and then came away, leaving a rapidly reddening tramline as evidence of its attention, neatly drawn across the centre of Angela’s bottom. Angela’s only obvious reaction had been a sharp gasp of breath, and a slight toss of the head, but Richard could now see the muscles in her thighs tensing as the pain reached her.

David swished the cane in again with a full swing – Smack! As Angela wriggled, a little more this time, and tightened her grip on the desk, Richard had to admire David’s accuracy. The second stroke had ruled another red line exactly half an inch below the first.

The third stroke went in the opposite direction, across the top of the cleft, and this time Angela gave an almost audible crying and her bottom began to sway from side to side.

To Richard’s surprise, David paused.

‘Well, Richard,’ he said, ‘I dare say you’d like to take a more active part in the proceedings.’

Richard’s throat was dry with excitement. He could do no more than nod his head.

‘But I believe that you have never caned a naughty girl before?’

A shake of the head this time.

‘Very well. In which case I can’t allow you to use this rattan – it needs an experienced hand to use it correctly. But by all means use the bamboo on the desk there, to complete Angela’s punishment.’

Hesitantly but with the most incredible sense of anticipation, Richard picked up the straight cane. It was thinner than the rattan – but not as supple or swishy. Richard realised that this would make it easier to be accurate with it.

It was magic – he could only just come to terms with his good fortune.

‘That’s it,’ said David, ‘Get the feel of it. Try a few practice swings, and then you can give Angela the remaining six she is due.’

At this point Angela pushed herself up from the desk, and turned to David with appeal in her eyes.

‘Oh, please, David – don’t let him. It’s different taking it from you – but from a stranger…’

She stopped as she saw the look of anger in his eyes.

‘If I say so,’ David replied with controlled rage, ‘you will take it from a tramp off the street.’

He put his hands to her shoulders.

‘I’ve already warned you once this evening about disobedience. You have now earned youself a trip to the room upstairs when we have finished with you here – and the longer you take to get back across the desk, the longer the visit will be!’

Angela’s head dropped, and with a sigh she resumed her place over the desk, wriggling herself into the precise position in which David had originally placed her.

‘Now, if madam has finished her little tantrum, perhaps we can continue.’ David’s face lightened and he smiled at Richard. ‘Come here, and I’ll give you a lesson,’ he said to him.

‘Stand at this distance to her so that the cane will meet both buttocks as equally as possible. It’s inevitable that a right-hander will touch up the right cheek more than the left, but try to make it as even as you can.’ Following David’s instructions Richard placed the cane across Angela’s bottom, in between two of the red lines left by David’s strokes.

‘I should go a little lower if I were you,’ David advised. ‘Like most girls, Angela is particularly sensitive in that area, and it will reduce the risk of your crossing one of my strokes – which should be avoided unless you are intending specifically to increase the severity of the punishment.’

Richard adjusted the position of the cane, pressing it against the firm flesh of the lower half of the girl’s bottom. He thought he sensed her tremble a little. He became sharply aware of the contrast between Angela’s arched buttocks and the whippy, springy hardness of the cane.

‘Look at Richard, please, Angela!’ David ordered.

‘It is very important to be able to see the girl’s face when you are punishing her,’ he explained. ‘Helps you to judge the effect of the punishment more accurately.’

The mass of black hair on the desk moved, and Angela’s pretty features were turned towards Richard. She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, and her eyes were full of mute appeal, to which Richard was quite impervious. He was in the position ha had dreamed of so often – a cane in his hand, and a beautiful young woman bent over before him, her bare defenceless bottom correctly presented for his attention. He was determined that this was going to be a punishment session which both he and the girl would remember for a very long time. But now David was giving a few last tips.

‘Take the cane back slowly, and then whip it in with plenty of wrist. It’s a kind of flicking action you should be aiming for, so that the tip of the cane really gets moving.’

Richard matched his actions to David’s words, and the cane met Angela’s bottom with a resounding thwack! Her buttocks tensed, and she shut her eyes, but otherwise there was no reaction. Richard was pleased to see that the red line had appeared exactly on the spot he had been aiming for. David added his congratulations.

‘Yes that’s it,’ he said. ‘Now you’ve got the idea give the cane a bit more air, and give her the last five nice and slowly. Try to spread them evenly from the first one down to the tops of her thighs.’

Richard then proceeded to administer what he later liked to think of as a ‘sound beating’ – a ‘six-of-the-best’ such as a stern headmaster might have used to bring tears to the eyes of the toughest young schoolboy. But on this occasion it was not the thick hide of a delinquent adolescent on the receiving end, but the sensitive flesh of a 24-year-old woman.

Richard watched Angela’s reactions carefully as the strokes whipped in, and he had to admit that she took it well. He felt a perceptible change in his own state of consciousness at each successive application – a series of explosive heightenings of his sense of being. Only when his fourth stroke hit slightly off-target, and landed on almost exactly the same spot as the third, did his beautiful victim’s lips part in a brief squeal of pain. It was at this point too that she started to cry a little. But she made no attempt to rise from the desk, or to avoid her punishment in any way. And when the sixth swingeing stroke had left its angry red line across the white flesh at the very tops of her thighs, she just lay in place sobbing quietly.

Richard suddenly felt a little embarrassed. He had become so absorbed in caning Angela that now he had finished he felt rather awkward, standing there with the cane in his hands.

David soon came to his rescue. He took the cane from Richard, and patted him on the shoulder.

‘Well done!’ he said. ‘A splendid performance for a novice. I can see it won’t be long before you graduate to the rattan. Let me refill your glass, while Angela recovers herself a little.’

He led Richard back to the other end of the room, poured some more drinks, and then took down a book from the shelf.

‘Have a look at this,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ll find it of interest.’

As Richard browsed through the book, which turned out to be a lavishly illustrated history of corporal punishment, he noticed that David had returned to Angela. Bending half over her, he was whispering to her. His right hand rested on her punished bottom, caressed it a little, and then slid between her thighs. As he continued to whisper close to her left ear, Angela’s bottom began to writhe, sensuously at first, and then wildly and passionately as her thighs clamped tight on David’s insistent finger. At last her body went rigid, and then suddenly relaxed. It took all Richard’s self-control to stop himself reaching a climax at the same time. But he did not want that just yet, for he was not sure that the evening had yet provided all its interest. Was there not still the mysterious ‘room upstairs’ to come?

As David came back to Richard, Angela got up from the desk. Gathering up her clothes, and dabbing ineffectually at her eyes with her left hand, she half-ran from the room.

‘She’s going to have a shower,’ David explained, as Richard, with longing eyes, watched the door close behind Angela’s blazing bottom. ‘She’ll be back in a few minutes.’

In fact it was about ten minutes later that Angela reappeared, looking very different from the dishevelled and tearful girl who had fled the room. She was dressed in a white towelling wrap which finished at mid-thigh. As far as Richard could tell she was wearing nothing else. Her glorious long legs glowed pink with the effects of the shower. She took a drink from David, and then turned to Richard with mischief in her eyes.

‘You certainly know how to punish a girl, don’t you?’ she said. ‘I thought you were going to slice my poor bottom in two!’

‘Well… I… er,’ Richard stammered, feeling himself blushing.

‘Don’t be a tease, Angela,’ David broke in. ‘You’ll have him apologising to you in a minute. Give him a kiss, to show there’s no hard feelings.’

Angela placed her glass on a nearby table and put her arms round Richard’s neck. As she kissed him full on the mouth the wrap fell open. The warmth of her naked body close to him, and the scent of her expensive perfume, made Richard’s head swim. But as he brought his arms up to pull her closer to him, she slipped away. She pulled the wrap around herself again, but not before Richard had caught a tantalising glimpse of her small firm breasts and the smooth white plane of her stomach above the dark triangle between her lissom thighs.

Angela picked up her drink once more, and they fell into general conversation – rather incongruously, Richard thought, in the light of the earlier events of the evening. But the only reference to those came when Richard asked Angela if she would like to sit down, and she declined with a rueful grin, and a rub at her towelling-covered cheeks.

Richard had begun to think that perhaps the ‘room upstairs’ was just a threat, and that the evening had passed its climax, when David, glancing at his watch, suddenly changed the mood. His voice was stern and hard as he spoke.

‘It’s time, I think, my girl, to bring the pleasant part of the evening to an end – for you at least. I have not forgotten, even if you may have done, that you are due for a trip to the room upstairs. So finish your drink, and follow me, please!’

Richard’s excitement began to rise again at these words, and looking at Angela, it seemed that there was something close to fear in her eyes as she drained her glass. She started to follow David towards the door, but he turned again.

‘You may as well leave that down here,’ he said, indicating her wrap. ‘You won’t be needing it.’

The towelling slipped from her shoulders and fell in a heap on the floor. She was totally naked now, and Richard, in a certain state of shock had time to confirm his previous impression of the beauty of her young body, for she made no attempt to cover herself, letting her hands rest meekly at her sides. The pinky brown of her erect nipples contrasted delightfully with the milky whiteness of her breasts.

She turned once more to follow David, and Richard’s eyes dropped to admire the proud swell of her buttocks from the delicacy of her slim waist. Her bottom seemed suffused with a delicate pinkness, the marks of the caning fading, but still discernible.

The other two seemed to be virtually ignoring him, so Richard followed them through the door, his eyes glued to the entrancing swing of Angela’s hips.

As they mounted the stairs, Richard thought what a strange trio they must look. Two men, fully dressed in business suits, with a totally naked girl between them. He certainly felt that he was in the best position, for the movements of Angela’s hips and legs and buttocks as she climbed the stairs were raising him to new levels of excitement and anticipation. He could sense too that Angela herself was all atremble with nervous expectation.

The room into which David led them on the first floor had once been one of the back bedrooms of the house. It was large, but very sparsely (and strangely!) furnished. As David closed and locked the door behind him, the first thing that Richard noticed was the piece of furniture which occupied the centre of the room. It was something he had never seen in the flesh before, but recognised at once from the pictures he had seen in books about historical public schools. There was no doubt from its strange two-stepped shape that this was a birching-block!

But this was not the hard wooden structure of the public school. It was covered in dark blue velvet, and it looked as though the top was padded. There was something almost sensuous, and quite definitely erotic, about this item of equipment.

Any doubts which Richard may have had about the use to which the block was to be put were dispelled when David went to the large oak cupboard, which was the only other item of furniture in the room, and produced a birch. It was about two foot six inches in length and consisted of five switched taped together.

At the sight of this fearsome instrument Angela shuddered. David broke the silence, but what he said did little to relieve the tension in the room.

‘I made this one specially for this occasion,’ he said, giving it a few hissing practice swings. ‘I am sure you will find it very effective, my dear. Now onto the block with you, please, so that we can get started.’

Richard felt sure that Angela must in some ways have been relieved to let her knees, which were now visibly shaking, sink into the soft velvet. She leant across the top of the block, then stretched right over it as instructed. David criticised her posture until he was satisfied that it was just perfect.

Angela’s stomach was now pressed tightly against the velvet, and her buttocks were raised but relaxed, curved beautifully in all their defenceless naked glory.

David commented upon the merits of this mode of presentation of her posteriors and then said, ‘Feel her and see.’

Richard came forward at David’s invitation and reached out a hand to Angela’s left buttock. The warm flesh was beautifully soft to the touch, despite the slight ridges left by the caning. His fingers slipped into the deep divide between the buttocks, and Angela flinched slightly, but made no other protest. There was no doubt that with her knees very slightly apart, and her bottom cocked up over the block, Angela was perfectly positioned to receive an extended punishment.

Meanwhile David, standing in front of Angela, had removed his jacket, and was now undoing his cuff-links and rolling up the sleeve of his shirt. The birch he had placed on the floor, under Angela’s nose, so to speak, as if giving her the opportunity to examine in close-up the implement which would soon whipping across her unprotected flesh.

‘You may have noticed,’ David said, ‘that Angela obtained a certain amount of satisfaction from the attention we gave her earlier. Things are very different here. As she well knows, a session in this room is for punishment, and punishment alone. It would be quite contrary to my intentions if the birching which she is about to receive became in any way a source of pleasure to her.

‘That would mean that the lesson of contrition and penitence which she is supposed to be learning would be lost. For that reason, if no other, the punishments which she receives on such occasions are always severe. This evening, for example, I have decided to give her twenty strokes of the birch.’

Angela had obviously been waiting with extreme nervousness for sentence to be pronounced, and she reacted with a low moan. This did not escape David’s attention.

‘There had better not be any complaints from you, my girl,’ he said, ‘or I shall double the number of strokes this instant. And do try to take your medicine with some degree of fortitude. As usual, any undue reaction to a stroke, vocal or physical, will lead to that stroke being repeated. Now let’s begin, shall we?’

Richard stepped clear as David came round behind the block. The birch was laid against Angela’s pouting cheeks, and tapped, once, twice, three times, before David drew it back, and then brought it down with a hiss and a smack, in a full-blooded stroke across their centre.

It was only as the rod spread itself across the broad swell of Angela’s bottom, that Richard realised that to be on the receiving end of a birch such as that which David was wielding, must be a bit like being beaten with five thin canes at once. But Angela made no audible complaint, though the toss of her head, and the whitening of her knuckles, showed that she had felt it.

‘One,’ David announced, as a broad scarlet band appeared across Angela’s bottom. ‘Only nineteen to go, my dear!’

Richard watched with fascination as the birching of the proud young beauty continued. David obviously intended to take things slowly, and his delivery of the first five strokes had no particular rhythm to it. Angela took them all as well as she had the first, and the room remained silent apart from the hiss and thwack of the birch, and David’s deliberate count after each stroke.

After the sixth, however, she cried out, earning herself a repeat. And thereafter, every few strokes, as the birch explored every inch of her soft curves, leaving its scarlet visiting card at each point of call, she could not control herself, and yet another stroke was added to the total.

She stuck for a long time on eleven, and it was then that Richard noticed that her eyes were riveted on David, as if willing him to utter the next number. David gave no sign of noticing this silent pleading. Eventually she managed to bite her lip, and hold herself sufficiently steady on the block to satisfy him, and he said ‘twelve’. The relief, combined with the pain, finally made Angela’s tears overflow.

Richard was not sure how many strokes in all Angela took that evening before ‘twenty’ was reached. By the end he was totally drained with the nervous excitement of watching this beautiful woman being punished almost beyond the limits of endurance. In the whole of his life he had never encountered anything a fraction as erotic as the flagellation of Angela’s naked buttocks with the mercilessly vicious birch.

But the strange thing which he noticed towards the end, was a change which came over Angela as the birch hissed and smacked relentlessly against her increasingly sensitive flesh.

Her eyes remained fixed on David, and were still full of tears, but the fear was gone now, to be replaced by a shining brightness. It was as though she had transcended the pain to reach a new plane of enlightenment. It was clear that she was suffering intensely: the clenching of the muscles in her back and arms and the involuntary twitching of her buttocks proved that. And yet the look which her eyes gave David was not one of hate but, it seemed, of love!

It was clear to Richard that he had much still to learn about the subtle relationship between pain and pleasure. He dearly hoped that his teachers might continue to be his stern friend, now wielding the birch yet again, and the beautiful girl whose body lay defenceless and squirming with pain over the block.

A Caning and Tawsing Story from Janus 44. More stories can be found here.

The Voice at the End of the Line
by Julie Holmes

The telephone rings. I cross the room and lift the receiver, reciting the number automatically, annoyed at being disturbed, not even suspecting what’s about to happen.

‘It’s time for us to have a chat,’ a disembodied male voice rumbles. ‘We need to discuss some misdemeanours that have come to my attention.’

‘I don’t understand – who are you? What do you want? I think you’ve got the wrong number.’ I can hear my voice rising – a mixture of fear and confusion – and struggle to remain in control. ‘I’m replacing the receiver now,’ I tell him.

‘No you’re not: you’re going to listen to me and do as I say.’ For some reason I feel compelled to listen rather than follow my instinct to end the call and disconnect the phone. There’s something vaguely familiar about the voice; something about the tone. But it’s huskier and more impersonal than anyone’s I can think of. I think of old films with clandestine calls being made with handkerchiefs held over the mouth-piece. If I weren’t so shocked, I’d find the image amusing.

‘What do you want?’ I ask again.

‘To talk, to settle accounts. To make you realise the truth about yourself.’

‘I don’t understand. Who are you?’

‘You ask too many questions,’ the Voice replies. ‘Your task is to listen, to answer truthfully when I ask you questions and to do exactly as you are told. Do yon understand now?’

I’m so shocked and scared I don’t realise I’ve been asked a question, so don’t respond. ‘Do yon understand now?’ he repeats, louder this time, quite threatening.

‘I think so,’ I manage to mumble.

‘Good. But speak up. Right, you know why I’m calling, don’t you?’

‘No. No, I don’t. Who are you?’ As soon as I say it I realise I’ve asked another question and for no obvious reason my hands tremble and I gasp and start to stutter an apology.

‘Quiet!’ he raps. ‘Tell me what you are wearing.’

‘My housecoat,’ I reply.

‘Just your housecoat? Anything underneath? Any shoes or slippers? Tell me everything you are wearing,’ the Voice persists.

‘I’m wearing my housecoat. It’s long, dark blue, some sort of velvety material. It has long sleeves with buttoned cuffs and a high mandarin collar, only the top couple of buttons are undone. The buttons go right to the hem, but I’ve only fastened them to my knees. Underneath I’m wearing a navy blue low-cut bra; it’s front-fastening. I also have very small matching panties and I’m wearing flesh-coloured tights.’ It seems silly, but it’s almost a relief to have managed such a fully detailed answer. I stand straight and prepare for the dialogue to continue.

‘Any jewellery? Any shoes? Are you wearing make-up? How are you wearing your hair?’ He’s impatient. I feel like a dunce in the classroom who’s failed to give an obvious response to a simple question.

‘I’m not wearing any footwear. My hair’s tied back with a rubber band; I was putting on my make-up when you called. I still have to put on my blusher and lipstick. I’ve got a choker around my neck – it’s about an inch wide, navy velvet – I wear a lot of navy blue – with a Victorian brooch at my throat. I’m wearing a gold watch.’ I pause, realising that I’ve told him all this to cover up my nervousness. ‘And a couple of rings.’

‘What sort of rings?’

‘A dress ring – sapphire – on my right hand. And a gold band on my left.’

‘Your left hand? A wedding ring?’ His tone is harsh. I take a deep breath.

‘Yes. A wedding ring. I’m married.’

‘Why are you half-naked at seven o’clock in the evening? Why are you putting on so much make-up?’

‘I’m going out. For a meal. With somebody.’ Why am I answering him and why do I let myself feel so afraid?

‘Are you going out for a meal with your husband?’ he enquires and from the sound of his voice I can tell he knows I’m not.

‘No,’ I tell him. A pause. ‘I’m going out with a colleague from work.’ A longer, more eloquent pause. ‘A male colleague.’ Then in a rush: ‘My husband’s working late and, anyway, he doesn’t mind. He knows.’

‘Does he? Did you tell him?’

‘No. He just knows. It’s okay. Anyway, it’s none of your business. What do you want?’ I’m almost screaming, from fear and indignation.

‘SHUT UP!’ he yells. I feel my body tremble, feel tears of fear creep into my eyes. I breathe deeply and listen for his next question.

‘Which room are you in?’

‘The living room.’

‘Close the curtains. Take the mirror off the wall and prop it on the sofa so it rests on the arm furthest from the telephone. Do it now, then pick up the receiver again.’

‘How do you know the layout of my flat? Who are you?’ I am so scared now: is he a friend, a neighbour, a burglar?

‘Just do it,’ says the Voice, deep and threatening. If only I could identify that elusive voice: I’m certain now that it must be a fairly intimate acquaintance. I try to imagine the voice in a different situation, but still I cannot quite place it. It sounds as though he’s speaking through a mouthful of cotton wool. I do as he has told me and say so when I retrieve the telephone receiver.

‘Now,’ he continues, ‘hold the phone in your left hand, unbutton your housecoat from your knees to your waist with your right hand. Have you done that?’ I tell him I have. ‘Good. Now keep listening to me while you remove your tights with just your right hand. Put your hand inside the waistband and pull them down slowly. Very slowly. Keep your hand flat against your belly as you do it. Feel your flesh, the way a lover would. Come on now, don’t linger too long. You’re not supposed to enjoy it that much! Get those tights right down; down your thighs, over your knees – feel them baggy at your ankles; take them off over your feet. Ready?’

‘No. I can’t manage one-handed. I can’t get them over my bottom,’ I moan.

‘DO IT!’ he yells. They come off but get ripped by my nails in the process. ‘Just do as I tell you, when I tell you,’ the low tones rasp. ‘Take the elastic band out of your hair and shake it loose over your shoulders. Just with your right hand, of course.’

The band’s tight and some of my hair is tangled in it but eventually I manage to do as he says. Tears slip silently down my cheeks: at the same time as I try to work out who this man is and how he manages to exert such influence on me. I worry about the effect crying will have on my make-up, so carefully applied only a few minutes ago. What is happening to my world? ‘I’m ready,’ I tell him submissively.

‘Good. Stand with your feet apart, about shoulder-width. Now tell me about your date tonight.’

‘It’s not a date. I’m just having dinner with a colleague. There’s some business we need to discuss, there wasn’t time at work.’ It sounds feeble even to me, although when I said it on the phone to Paul, my husband, this afternoon it sounded perfectly plausible. Paul certainly accepted my tale although, to be honest, I made a point of calling when I knew he’d be busy and wouldn’t want to talk. In any case, he’s out most evenings himself. That’s partly the trouble: if he were at home more I wouldn’t be looking around for distractions like Donald. I’m not sure I even like Donald all that much. My mind wanders but is brought to heel again by the Voice.

‘Don’t bother lying to me. I know about Donald Danvers and the quick business talks over drinks and meals. They take place at his home where very little is eaten and I suspect not much talking is done, although probably drinks are consumed and as for business – well we don’t want to get vulgar, do we?’ There’s an evil, malicious tone to his voice now.

‘Look, you’ve obviously been spying on me. I don’t know who you are or why you’re so interested in me but just leave me alone. Hang up and stay out of my life!’ I shout.

‘Take your knickers off.’

‘What? Didn’t you hear what I said?’

‘Shut up and get those knickers down now,’ he says coldly. ‘Just the one hand remember.’ I hate him; I loathe myself, but I find myself obeying his orders. I feel almost like an automaton, under his remote control.

‘Now take your breasts out of your bra, but don’t undo it. Lift the left one out first, then the right. Take your time. You can enjoy it if you want to,’ he adds, almost friendly. He doesn’t know me that well, then: I hate wearing a bra with no panties. I don’t know why but it makes me feel uncomfortable, even if I’m on my own. I always put my briefs on first and take them off last when getting dressed or undressed. I know I’m blushing as I carry out his commands. The cups of my bra dig uncomfortably into the underside of my breasts which are fully exposed and pushed unnaturally high, like some fantasy illustration in a men s magazine.

‘Now spread those legs wide. Wider than your shoulders. It’s a good job you’ve got central heating, isn’t it? I’d hate to think of you standing in a draught.’ Central heating or no, I shiver and my skin prickles with goose-pimples. My nipples harden. ‘Tell me about Donald,’ he says.

My throat is dry and once again I’m close to tears. It takes a great effort to find my voice and keep it steady.

‘My husband’s gone off me. He comes home late. He ignores me. We don’t…’ I try again. ‘We don’t have sex very often. I met Don at work. We get on okay. It’s something to do. That’s all.’

‘What would Donald say if he saw you now, posing almost naked for a stranger? What would your husband say?’ Ridiculously, he sounds genuinely interested.

‘I don’t know how Don would react. I don’t know him very well really. Paul would probably be angry,’ I tell him.

‘Only probably? Aren’t you certain? Tell me exactly what you think he would do,’ the Voice persists.

‘He’d be angry with me, that’s all.’ I hate discussing my husband like this more than anything else this monster has made me do so far. I don’t have time to analyse what my feelings are – guilt, embarrassment, anger, shame? – but I’m in terror of what is to come. How much longer can this go on? What more can he do to me? I don’t understand what kind of satisfaction he gets from this situation. I want to scream, to refuse to go along with him any longer, but am unable to resist the urgings of the Voice.

‘Tell me what he’d do exactly. Would he hit you for instance?’

‘Oh no. He’d never do anything like that. He’d just be annoyed that I’d gone along with you. He’d want to know who you were. I suppose he’d assume that I knew you and had chosen to have an erotic telephone conversation with you.’ As soon as I say it, I realise my error.

‘So you find our conversation erotic, do you?’ I can hear the contempt in his voice and I shiver.

‘That’s not what I meant. I only meant that Paul might interpret it that way. Wrongly, of course.’

‘I don’t think he’d be wrong: I think you are enjoying our talk. If not, you’d have hung up by now. You are enjoying it aren’t you? Standing there naked except for your choker and the bra pushing your tits out. Are your legs wide apart? Open them wider.’ He pauses. ‘Are you enjoying our conversation, Julia Holmes?’

The use of my name is a shock. Although he obviously knows a lot about me and has been to my home at some time, somehow, as long as he didn’t call me by name, I could distance myself from him. I mumble that I’m not enjoying it at all, but as I say it I wonder if that’s entirely true.

‘I’m growing tired of this conversation. I disagree with you. I do excite you. All men do. You’re just naturally promiscuous, Julia, and Paul knows it. You are a wanton, easy slut and need to be brought into line. Do you understand?’ His tone has become sharper, authoritative, like a Victorian master addressing an erring scullery maid.

‘No I don’t understand!’ I bluster.

‘Stop lying! I don’t like women who lie. And, as I said, I’m getting bored with this conversation. Let’s get down to business. You’ve been behaving like a whore ever since you got married, and probably before, but I won’t concern myself with that. How many men have you slept with since marrying Paul?’

I’m beyond lying or arguing. ‘Five,’ I reply. ‘Or six. I’m not certain. Six I think. Yes, six.’

‘Six! And you think Paul doesn’t know?’ He sounds incredulous.

‘I’m sure I’ve been discreet. Anyway, he wouldn’t mind.’

‘Wouldn’t he? Well, I mind! It’s obscene the way modern women flout their wedding vows. They mock the institution of marriage itself. Just because you go to work, it doesn’t mean you can forget your station in life. You’re a woman and your function is to serve and respect men in general and support and obey your husband in particular. You seem not to understand this, Julia, so I’m going to help you learn. Go and put some shoes on. The high-heeled navy blue mules, since it’s your favourite colour. Go and fetch them, then tell me when you’ve got them on. Put them on in the bedroom and walk across the living room to the telephone with them on. Quickly!’

I don’t argue. Absurd though the idea is, I’m half-convinced he can see into my flat. I put the receiver down next to the telephone on the coffee table and run to the bedroom. I scrabble around in the wardrobe, but can’t find the shoes he’s described. Finally I locate them under the bed, put them on and walk back to the telephone. I feel ridiculous. I’ll never wear these mules again.

‘I’m wearing them,’ I tell my caller. ‘What now?’

‘Getting impatient? Calm yourself. Pick up the telephone and put it in the corner of the sofa at the opposite end to the mirror, between the arm and the back. Have you done that?’ I tell him when I have.

‘Good. Now continue to hold the receiver to your left ear and tell me what you can see in the mirror. Go on.’ I comply.

‘The mirror’s not very big. I can’t see my face or below my pelvis. The arm of the sofa would block the sight of my legs anyway. I can see the choker, with the brooch glinting; my hair’s falling over my shoulders, covering my bra straps. I can’t really see my bra because I’ve pulled my breasts out of the cups as you told me. It makes my breasts look bigger than they really are and pushes them up high. My nipples are quite pale so they don’t really show in the mirror, apart from the tips because they’re a bit darker and slightly hard. It’s a bit cold without my clothes on. My tummy’s rounder than is considered fashionable but it’s not flabby. My pubic hair is a sort of light brown.’

‘Look over your shoulder. Tell me what you see now.’

‘I see my hair hanging below my shoulders. I see my bra crossing my back. I see my hips and my bottom. There’s a slight line across my bottom showing where my panties were. It’s quite firm and high and my thighs are in good shape. I belong to a health club, so I’m quite fit and I have an all-year, all-over suntan.’ I realise I’m starting to sound quite boastful and wonder if that’s wise.

‘Bend over the arm of the sofa: be careful not to disconnect us. You can rest your elbows on the seat. I want you to look in the mirror. Put your feet close to the sofa so that your arse is high and you can see it in the mirror. And spread your feet wide.’ It’s amazing how quickly even the most bizarre situation comes to seem normal. I no longer find it strange or repellent to obey the Voice.

‘Now I’m going to go through with you the punishment your terrible behaviour warrants. Even if Paul chooses to ignore your infidelity and disrespect, someone has to bring you to heel. You make your husband a laughing stock and act like a bitch in heat. It’s time you learnt some humility and self-control. Spread your legs wider. Let your arms and belly take the weight. I want those legs really stretched and that bum wide open and displayed. That’s good. How many of your lovers have seen you like this? You’re really quite an exhibitionist aren’t you? I’m sure you’re enjoying our talk more than you’ll admit.’ I groan; I’ll admit nothing to this pervert.

‘You are an immoral slut and are about to be suitably chastised. Stay still. I’m taking off my belt. It’s wide; thick leather made supple by age. It’s got a very heavy buckle. Take your punishment well and I won’t use the buckle end on you. I’m stroking the backs of your legs one at a time, from your knees upwards. Feel it? Feel it stroking you? Are you afraid of what it’s going to do? Tell me what you feel.’ It’s true, I can feel the aged leather moving up my thighs. I shiver with anticipation and tell him so.

‘Good. You are right to be worried. My belt is going to warm up that backside of yours. I think six strokes, one for each of your lovers. Here comes the first; I’m lifting my arm high, the belt’s rising high; now it’s coming down, fast and hard. It strikes right across the centre of your cheeks. You flinch but you can take it, can’t you? Hm, there’s a nice pink band where it landed. Does it sting? Can you take the rest?’

‘I can take it,’ I mumble. I’m surprised to realise that I really felt the lash of the imaginary belt and my buttocks have tensed in anticipation of the five still to come.

‘The next one’s going to be high up. Keep looking in the mirror: watch yourself finally being treated the way you deserve. I’m raising the belt. Here it comes, on the top of your bum cheeks before they divide. That one will bruise. Was that you gasping? Good. That shows the punishment’s having the right effect. Number three’s going to be low down. The top of your thighs where the crease of your bottom crosses. Keep those legs long, straight and wide apart.’

We live through the third spectral stroke together. My breathing is getting heavy; my face is flushed. The choker is digging into my neck but I can’t get into a more comfortable position.

‘The next two are going to criss-cross your backside. They’re coming close together, top right to bottom left, then top left to bottom right. Here’s the first. Now the next. Just one more to go. Nice and simple, I think. Straight across the middle of your bottom, just above the first. Now!’

I’m shaking and sweating and there are tears making my mascara run. I feel exhausted. ‘What now?’ I moan.

‘Now? Now we move on. Have you ever been caned?’

‘Caned! No, of course not.’ Once again, I’m caught completely by surprise.

‘Well you’re going to be now. Stay in position. Be sure to keep the telephone receiver pressed to your ear. I want you to hear me clearly. I think another six, don’t you? And each one will land on one of the stripes made by the belt. Get ready. Here comes the first.’

I hear a swish, what I imagine a cane would sound like slicing through the air. He must have a cane that he’s flexing near the telephone. That first ghostly swipe cuts into my bottom as he said it would, highlighting that original track from the belt. Imaginary though it is, I can feel the difference between the two disciplinary implements: the belt gave a hot, even band; painful, but not unendurable. The cane is sharper, thinner. It stings and makes me dread the five to come.

‘Here’s number two. It’s going to be high, remember.’ I hear the sound of the rod ripping the air and shriek as my mind feels it land not far below the base of my spine. A violent flame of pain scorches the top of my arse. The realism is phenomenal.

I stand upright and start to massage the area with my free hand. ‘I hope you haven’t moved,’ I hear the Voice warn and lower myself over the sofa once more, replacing my arm on the seat. Sticking my bottom out to the very best of my ability.

‘Okay. Here’s the low one now. Keep those legs perfectly nice and straight.’ My teeth clench as I feel the bamboo inflame the delicate skin, crazing me intimately. ‘Look in the mirror. Tell me what you see now. In detail.’ I look and feel mortified at the sight, gasping from the shockwaves of the cane.

‘My hair’s all messed up. My eye make-up’s smudged. My bottom’s raised high and I see a broad pink band with a bruise starting and in the middle of this band there’s a thin raised weal. It hurts like bloody hell! I can just see the start of the two belt marks that I know cross over my bottom. My chin’s resting on my right forearm and my left hand holds the phone to my ear.’

‘You’re very articulate, Julia. I bet you were glad to have a rest weren’t you? Well, you’ve three more stripes to come yet. Here comes the top right to bottom – pardon the pun – left.’ I hear the whine and experience the sting, but before I can react its corresponding blow strikes in the opposite direction. Fighting the impulse to scream I console myself with the knowledge that I have only a single stroke left to come.

‘Just one more to go,’ the Voice echoes my thoughts. ‘I’ll count to ten to give you time to think about your punishment and why you deserve it.’ He counts slowly. I listen to the ascending numbers, brushing tears from my face with the back of my hand. As the Voice says ‘ten’ I hear the cane’s journey upward, then down and sob uncontrollably as my tense cheeks flinch under the hallucinatory whipping stroke.

‘I think you’re learning your lesson quite well,’ the Voice coaxes. ‘Now show me you understand why it had to happen. Tell me what you’ve done that’s so bad.’

I struggle to regain control of myself. ‘I’ve slept with other men since I got married; I’ve not respected my husband,’ I recite.

‘And what do you deserve?’ he asks.

‘I deserve to be punished physically and to be humiliated. I need to learn that my husband is in control and my life must fit into his and he deserves my respect simply because he is a man and especially because we are married.’ One part of my mind finds this liturgy totally natural, while the other is surprised that I can even think these words, let alone say them to a stranger. I know that the second, sceptical view is societal brainwashing, the falseness-at-large that wars inside me with my contrite self-knowledge.

‘Describe the punishment you deserve and have just undergone,’ he persists.

‘I deserve to be made to strip and display myself as I have been told to do,’ I say in sincere humility, my better self winning at last. ‘I deserve to be strapped and caned on my bare bottom, six strokes of each, so that I am forced to reconsider my behaviour.’

‘You know,’ he says, ominously chatty, ‘you really are a quick learner. That makes me a bit suspicious that your contrition may not be genuine. I think the lesson needs to be reinforced.’

‘Just by chance,’ he chuckles evilly, ‘I have a tawse here. Do you know what a tawse is? It’s an instrument used in Scotland to punish errant schoolboys. It’s a leather strap about two feet long, a couple of inches wide and almost half-an-inch thick. It’s cut down the middle from one end to more than halfway along so that each stroke has the effect of two. I think you need a good all-over bum-warming from my tawse, just to finish off. I can’t decide how many strokes you deserve, so I’ll keep laying them on and you count them and we’ll see how far we get.’

‘Here we go.’

Again, I can hear the sound of the strap being raised and then come crashing down through the air, so I assume he really does have one. Two strokes have gone by before I realise I’ve not been counting aloud. ‘Two!’ I shout.

‘Too late,’ he says. ‘We’ll have to start again.’ Now I count each one as my mind and body tell me it’s landed. My legs ache from their strained position in the high heels and my back aches from being stretched over the sofa arm. The bra cuts painfully into the soft underside of my breasts and my eyes and throat burn with crying. The cheeks of my bottom twitch every time an imagined whack lands; I’m certain it’s all swollen and bruised. I’m crying so hard I can barely make my voice work, but my counting keeps pace with the strokes of the tawse.

‘Eight… Nine… Ten…’

‘Ten! There, I think that should be enough this time. Now, listen very carefully. I’m going to leave you for a while, but don’t hang up. Keep that position and watch yourself in the mirror. Don’t get up or rub your bottom. Just stay exactly as you are until I tell you to move. And think about what a good husband you have and how you can atone for your past behaviour. Contemplate long and hard, Julia.’

I hear a sound which I presume to be his receiver being placed on a table. I gaze at the mirror and barely recognize my reflection. Where is the confident, rising young career-woman now? Have I really treated Paul so badly? Why did I go along with that stranger on the phone instead of simply cutting him off? In fact, why am I still co-operating with him?

Too late I hear the main door to the flat open. There are footsteps in the hallway, and then the living room door opens slowly. Still I maintain my position. In the mirror I see my husband standing behind me, a long thin cane and a heavy tawse in one hand. With the other he is removing his old leather belt.

‘I think six strokes,’ he says in the voice I couldn’t quite place on the telephone. ‘One for each of your lovers.’