A Caning Story from Janus 120. More stories are available here.

Guns and Beaters
by John Undermeyer

Sunday August 5th

To Inglewood for the summer, where grouse shooting will soon begin. Uncle Silas is here from London, where he’s left his mistress AND his good humour! Spinster Edith, his sister, still frightens me. Cousin Rachel is still cramming for exams. The servants are harassed which makes them sullen. Only my cousin Penelope greets me with unabashed happiness. Since many guests will come for the shoot she asks if I mind sharing a bedroom. Au contraire – I am delighted.

Monday August 6th

Have settled in and met everyone. Now, dear diary, a secret! Undressing for bed, I paused to admire Penelope whose body is as lovely as her sweet nature. Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw her bottom. Across her pale curves are raspberry-red weals, most laid alongside each other, but some criss-crossing, a few with raised edges which must hurt when rubbed by her chemise. A shiver ran through me, for both cheeks are afflicted, either by a cane or – if anybody is cruel enough to wield such a thing – maybe even a horse crop.

So surprised was I, and so quickly did Penny drop her nightdress over herself, that for the moment I did not trust my eyes. I took care to continue our talk as if nothing was amiss but spent an uneasy night, the sight of her marks returning often as I lay, eyes closed but mind wide awake. I must pluck up courage to ask how they came about.

Tuesday August 7th

A busy day and late dinner. Afterwards, charades, then early to bed. Penelope and I are close, so I came easily to the subject which troubled me. I put my arm around her and whispered,

“Penny, my dear, may I ask you a question?”

“Of course, you silly thing. We share everything, don’t we?”

“Dearest, I do not mean to pry. But I could not help but notice your marks…you have been whipped sorely. Who did such a thing?”

There was silence. Penny’s head dropped and I thought for a moment there would be tears, but she only sighed and said, “I’m sorry… I thought to keep them secret, but they are such bitter stripes.”

“Do not apologise. I’m sure you did not deserve them.”

“Oh but I did. Not so many perhaps, and not so hard, but I was to blame.”

“Do you want to tell?” I asked.

Penny turned, took my hands, and we sat on the bed. She did not seem to mind sitting on the hard mattress, though it cannot have been painless. She began her story.

“As you know, Rachel is to take exams. She hates cramming, especially in the holidays, and her tutor, Dr. McIver, complained about her work. He said Rachel was lazy and not progressing as she should. Well you know Aunt Edith – she is adamant Rachel must gain entrance to St. Bride’s College, and took it upon herself to tell McIver to take ‘necessary steps’.”

Penny’s emphasis on the phrase told me the tutor was being told to be strict, and knowing Edith, that surely meant the cane.

“It was about eleven in the morning”, Penny continued. “I was passing McIver’s study when I heard angry voices. I paused, and could hear the Doctor berate Rachel for her slovenliness. He lectured her for a while, with me listening hard at the door I confess, then told her to bend over the desk. A funny thrill ran through my tummy. I should have walked away but, fool that I am, I stayed. McIver began to cane, Rachel was yelling, and suddenly Aunt Edith was there gripping me by the ear and pulling me away from the door. She was furious!

“Wretched, snooping girl! How dare you eavesdrop! If you’re so interested in discipline, you shall taste some!’ Then she burst into the study and told McIver that when he had finished with Rachel he had another naughty girl to cane!”

I took Penny by the waist and drew her to me, nuzzling her cheek as she told me the rest of the tale. It appears that Rachel was dismissed, and Penny told to strip. She was pushed towards a desk where Edith grabbed her hands and pulled her arms almost out of their sockets. When Penny lay flat, her breasts pressed into the desk-top, my aunt shoved a firm hand into the small of her back, to tilt her buttocks upwards. Finally Edith said; “There, McIver – ready. A second culprit to chasten!”

“Whatever your ladyship decrees,” replied the unctuous teacher.

“Ask Doctor McIver to cane you, Penelope. And don’t forget to explain to him why!”

“Forgive me, Dr. McIver. I listened at the door while Rachel was being punished. It was a contemptible thing to do, and I deserve to be admonished.”

“Admonished? Thrashed, my girl!” interrupted Edith, angrily. “You deserve to be thrashed!”

“Yes,” said Penny humbly. And then to McIver: “Please do as my aunt says.”

McIver, apparently delighted at having a second young woman to whip, and keen to ingratiate himself, set to with a will, the spinster Edith urging him not to take pity but to make Penny as sorry as she could be. She wept bitterly but still the cane cut her flesh until, with every new stripe, she screamed and danced in pain. McIver did not stop until Edith said he could, and by then Penny had counted ten strokes laid on hard.

I kissed Penny as she told me her story and, when she was done, I asked her to show me her stripes. She lay sideways on the eiderdown and I moved her chemise to see more closely the tutor’s handiwork, hoping the passing of time had brought some healing, but there was very little. Across the perfect white field of her buttocks, ten rows of raised and raspberry coloured furrows stood proud.

Wednesday August 8th

Lunch today was an unhappy affair. We were all at table; Silas, Edith, Rachel, Penny and myself, and at first the talk was innocuous. Uncle is pleased that Barnaby Flint, the head keeper, has raised so many grouse. The dogs are fit. The beaters have been hired. There was a brief silence while we ate, then for no apparent reason, Edith raised her voice and cut into the conversation like a knife:

“I am sure there is nothing more conducive to good behaviour in a young woman, than a well-flogged bottom. It repairs her attitude to her lessons, and ensures respect and consideration in her dealings with her guardians.”

We froze, exchanged glances and hung our heads too, too unsettled to respond and not wishing to give Aunt Edith an excuse to punish us.

At that point Rachel burst into tears and ran weeping from the room.

I had thought, until that moment, that I was the only one to notice how, when Rachel arrived to eat with us, she had drawn up her chair slowly, and settled on the seat as though reluctant to sit at all. But Edith too had noticed Rachel’s distress and concluded, like myself, that McIver had given her another ‘dusting down’. Edith showed not the least surprise or regret at Rachel’s distress but simply observed, with a wry smile to Uncle Silas;

“You did well to recruit Dr. McIver. He has such a clear understanding of the need for discipline and an uncommon skill with the cane. I am sure, with his continued earnest attentions, Rachel will pass her examinations.”

My aunt then turned to Penny and indicated at me.

“Perhaps you two will care to ride this afternoon?”

It was a cruel suggestion, for she knew Penny could not bear to sit astride a saddle while her own seat remained wealed and painful. I had to say something to help Penny out of this situation, so said with an apologetic smile, “Dearest Aunt, riding is such a lovely idea… but I’m afraid that in my current delicate woman’s condition….”

I let the words fade away, casting a shy glance at my Uncle Silas.

Edith took my meaning and said nothing but I saw the deep anger flash in her eyes. I have been reflecting on this conversation and I am sure the picture of a thrashed girl’s bottom adds relish to Edith’s meals. I hope she has no such ideas about me!

Thursday August 9th

The more we are together, the more intimate Penny and I become. There are things we have discovered I shall never forget. During our intimate playing, which includes much dipping of fingers, we have each found a tiny pink button hidden in the high archway of the secret cave between our thighs. It brings immense pleasure and joy!

Friday August 10th

Undressing tonight Penny enquired how the welts looked on her pretty rear-cheeks. They are much improved to the point where they would not be noticed by one who did not know what had taken place. I took a mirror and held it so she could see, quick to assure her that her skin grows smooth again. In response she kissed my tummy and walked her fingers across my buttocks until they slid into the crease. Dear Diary – Lord forbid that anyone should read this, but suddenly the need came upon us to explore each other’s ‘golden gate’. I dare not write where our fingers went but no fingers have ever been there before.

Saturday August 11th

To the butterfly pool with costumes and towels. The sun, hot even for August, made us hurry to undress and we did not bother with costumes but plunged in to the cool water naked. Later, lying bare in the flower-dotted grass, our mouths became explorers into the wet divides of each others’ secret nooks and valleys.

Returning, we met Barnaby Flint who doffed his cap and, with an unpleasant leer, murmured how glad he was to see us ‘enjoying’ the Estate. He means trouble and we both trembled in a terrible funk – had he seen us at the pool?

After dinner our worst fears were confirmed. Flint had betrayed us and Edith confronted us with our nude bathing and our love-making. She told us grimly that nothing would happen today for McIver was off the estate, but he will be back late tonight and tomorrow we must report to his study at eleven o’ clock. Edith glared at us both and said, “Penelope, if you think your last punishment was bad, it is nothing compared to what you will get in the morning!”

Sunday August 12th

I have written this standing up, and even that was hard; it took me much of the day to stop crying. I have never suffered such severe punishment, the cane lashing into my naked flesh time after time. McIver made it an ordeal neither of us will ever forget.

When it was over we were made to stand in the corner, hands on head to cry ourselves out, and for Aunt Edith to come and see whether the tutor had marked us enough or whether we should have more. We could not bear half of what he’d given and writhed and tossed across the desk as the cane lashed down. I was amazed that our distress could not be heard but our cries were hidden by the roar and crash of guns as the shooting party peppered the grouse.

But McIver was a gun. His eye fastened on our bottoms as he took aim, whipping the stick down pulled the trigger and the cane-cut caused the explosion – there is no other word for it – which engulfed my bottom in fire. He caned as freely and as careless of the effect as the guns who shot the grouse, quite unconcerned by my howls, twists to escape and tears which splashed onto the desk-top.

When he had given me six strokes, he stopped and signalled Penny – who until that time he had made to stand at the far side of the desk, grasping my wrists and pulling me tight – to release me and let me stand. I could scarcely do so but he caught me by the arm, walked me to where Penny stood then took her to my place, bending her ready to be thrashed.

Now I had to hold her arms and the fuselage of shots started over again, this time on Penny’s bottom which still showed signs of his last punishment and therefore made the strokes she received even more painful than mine. I cannot describe her contortions, they were almost as frantic as he flogged, but he cut so quickly that it seemed like no time at all before six more dreadful lines were seared across my cousin’s so tender buttocks.

If relief can come at such a time then I felt such a pang, believing once he had given us each six strokes that would be the matter done. Imagine my horror then, when he ordered Penny to get up and moved her back into my position, taking me to his side of the desk. I prayed it was over and there would be no more caning – but, incredibly, I was wrong. For he pushed my face to the desk-top, made my bottom-skin stretch into the bent position and told Penny to hold my wrists again.

I begged him to spare me and looked with my tear-streaked face straight into his eyes, pleading for him to relent. But he whipped in hard, the explosion came and I was lost to all hope, howling as he sought out those parts of my bottom which had not yet been marked, then filled the whiteness with strawberry lines.

I protested in every way I could. My shrieks he ignored, my pain was nothing, my pleading when I could control myself enough to plead was dismissed out of hand.

When he had given me a second six, he paused so I could absorb his work, leaving me for a few moments, my hands locked in Penny’s, who stood terrified knowing that six more were due to her. The guns outside barked and I had a grotesque vision of grouse climbing to escape, blasted through the air, spinning to earth. I felt like one of those devastated creatures as I bucked and reared, legs almost giving way, body ready to slip to the floor.

I had scant time to reflect. McIver made us change places again, and I caught Penny’s desperate look as I grasped her wrists and pulled to keep her stretched. She struggled against me so much I feared McIver might give her a third set of six. He had no cause to restrain his hand for our lasciviousness had been broadcast all over the estate. We were drenched in ignominy and were not so shameless as to deny we had agreed, and deserved, to be caned.

Twelve each was the end of it, after which we were sent to opposite corners of the room. McIver sat, began to write, and went on for fifteen minutes until the door opened. I dared not look but I knew who it must be – only Aunt Edith would enter without so much as a knock.

At once McIver rose from his desk and moved to greet her.

“Good morning, my Lady. As you can see…” he waved a hand towards we two girls who were crying piteously, “…the miscreants have been dealt with.”

“Stop that damned noise, both of you!” stormed our Aunt, “or you’ll be given something to howl about!” Then addressing the doctor directly, she demanded;

“The cane. Where do you keep it?”

Instantly the damned man had it in his hand and passed it to her. She walked across to Penny, tapping it menacingly in her palm, and pushed my cousin until she was again bent over, the easier to study her bottom. She examined the fresh weals and I can well imagine that grim smile which flickered either side of her mouth. I heard Penny squeal – she told me later that Edith had prodded one of her stripes – and she bubbled a stream of apologies in case the woman ordered more punishment. Then the harsh spinster turned and bent me. Sobs were breaking from me and, since I was not so marked as my cousin I really feared I might taste the stick again.

Edith browsed for a moment then pulled us both to the centre of the room to stand back to back either side of her. She lifted our fallen skirts, first comparing Penny’s marks, then mine, noting how the cane had fallen, how much of our bottoms had been covered in stripes, how many stroke marks were on our thighs, wondering if there were any more places left to redden. I trusted there were not for she had only to nod then pass the cane across and McIver would begin afresh. For an age we waited until she finally spoke.

“They are well marked, McIver. But is it enough? Have we beaten the lasciviousness out of them? Or is more pain needed to ensure they reform?”

“Please Ma’am,” I whimpered, “I will reform… I am truly sorry,” Edith merely snorted.

“Oh Aunt Edith, please take pity…” Penny’s desperate plea was strangled by tears and she prayed her trembling bottom-cheeks would speak for her. Edith tapped the cane steadily.

“I am not impressed,” she snapped. “I know my own father would have insisted on a second round. McIver, what do you think?”

He answered in an ingratiating voice, “I am never one for leniency, your Ladyship. And caning is the best way to enforce moral standards. Perhaps just a final three each… delivered by yourself?”

The wretch had an instinct for saying the right thing. Edith smiled maliciously.

“Only three, eh,” she said. “Very well we will make them memorable ones. So you two girls like to lie on the grass, naked as nature intended, and embrace one another do you? Well you may treat us to a repeat performance. Remove every stitch of clothing… immediately!”

Shocked and terrified but too cowed to protest we hastened to obey.

“Very well, let us see you two young lovers embrace now! Come on, I mean it! Penny, put your arms around your cousin’s waist… and now let her arms encircle your waist. At once!”

We turned to face one another and Edith pushed us close together, our breasts, tummies and loins in close contact.

“Hold each other tight… and do not let go whatever I do!”

We pressed ourselves close together, not understanding why, our heads resting on each other’s shoulders. And that was the position in which we suffered the final three strokes.

Edith lashed them in and, as the cane landed across Penny’s bottom, she jolted forward into me. Likewise, when Edith thrashed my bottom, my abdomen poked into my cousin. Each cane stroke urged us closer, flinching and screeching as the cane fell over stripes already laid. Edith threw herself totally into the punishment, relishing every stroke. We clung to each other in despair and, as our tears dropped onto one another’s shoulders, I felt the tiny droplets trickle down my back.

We were ordered to our room. I feared Edith might separate us, and she would have done had there been a spare room, but she had too many guests. As we began to recover Penelope and I snuggled close, and taking care not to rub our bottoms on the sheets, we turned until we lay head to tail, our mouths close to the others sensitive part. Then we comforted each other, kissing, licking and probing, until nature took charge and our lips began to nibble at those tender little pink buttons.

It took much longer than usual for us to climax. But we had time, and when we reached our peak the fireworks were blinding, exploding in a joy unlike anything we’d experienced before. Ecstasy flooded through us, a tidal wave of consuming pleasure that pulsed and throbbed in a consummation more complete than we could ever have dreamed. When the prolonged sensation subsided, and we lay sated in each others arms, Penny muttered dreamily to me that perhaps, after all, it had turned into a ‘glorious twelfth’.

A Caning Story from Janus 29. More stories can be viewed here.

Justice seen to be done!
by Tony Nixon

I could hardly believe what was happening. It was just so unfair. Anne Hawkins and Diane Bennett had never liked me for some reason best known to themselves. The three of us had been in the same class at school for five years now, and at sixteen they seemed to have overtaken me in terms of maturity. They had blossomed from being silly little girls into very sexy young ladies, and I took every opportunity of ogling their long shapely legs under their school desks during lessons. It didn’t alter the fact, though, that they were a couple of wicked bitches with a spiteful sense of humour. They delighted in teasing me and getting me into trouble, but this was the last straw! They had hidden some of their things in my school locker and then reported them stolen. A search was mounted, the things were found and, as a result, we were all three now in the Headmaster’s office.

Mr. Thomas, the Head, was wearing his gown and looked most severe as he pushed the pens, coins and other items across his desk. “Are these the items you had stolen, girls?” he asked grimly.

The two girls quickly nodded and said, “Yes, sir”. How could they? They were sitting in two easy chairs next to his desk and, despite everything, I still couldn’t help admiring their legs.

“Anything to say, Robertson?”

“No, sir,” I muttered, staring down at the carpet to hide my anger.

“I regard stealing as a most serious breach of discipline which demands severe punishment!”

I cast a ferocious glance at Anne and Diane who looked so smug I could have hit them. Even so I couldn’t help but notice that Anne had crossed her legs and was revealing quite a bit of bare, shapely thigh, from where I was standing. Stupidly, I still fancied the pair of them like crazy. They had both taken to wearing high heeled strap-fastened black sandals over white knee socks, their skirts trimmed to just fashionably above the knee. This set their long legs off to perfection. It was strange to be thinking of such things at a time like this, but my hormones drove my brain in those days.

However I was snapped out of my short-lived reverie when the Head said, “And so, therefore, to the matter of punishment…”. A shudder went down my spine.

“Now, as I see it, I have two options open to me,” he began, then looked across at the two girls. “Since you brought the complaint I look to you girls for advice. Do you think the most suitable and effective punishment would be suspension from school or a sharp dose of the cane?”

I shuddered again and swore under my breath.

“Oh the cane sir!” said Diane all too eagerly.

“Oh yes sir,” Anne quickly added.

They smirked at each other in a way that made my blood boil.

“I see. So you think young Robertson should be caned do you? That would clear up the matter to your satisfaction?”

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison.

“Very well.” Mr Thomas then took out the Punishment Book from his top desk drawer and placed it in front of himself. He opened the book and took out a pen. “I am empowered to administer the cane to pupils on the palms of their hands or on their… er… rear ends, covered by one layer of clothing. Which of these options would you consider most appropriate, ladies?”

Shocked to be consulted, Anne stuttered, trying not to snicker, “the… er… rear end, sir.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing – that my punishment was being determined by these two little liars! It all seemed so bloody matter-of-fact! By now my palms were sweating and my stomach was churning. Yet even at this point I was staring at Anne’s gorgeous legs like some fetishist.

“And how many strokes would you consider appropriate, ladies?”

“Six of the best, sir,” said Diane gleefully.

The Head raised one eyebrow. “Six of the best, eh? You obviously concur with me that the crime committed here deserves a severe retribution.” He wrote in the book again. Then he dropped the real bombshell!

“Now girls, would you think its right that the offended parties in this case should witness justice being done?”

“Oh definitely, sir!” said Anne hastily, her face pink as she winked slyly at Diane, no doubt imagining the pleasure they would get from seeing me bent over with my trousers down

Mr. Thomas stood up grimly, pulling his gown around him. “I see. Well then you can help me with a few practicalities.” He moved across to his tall corner cupboard and opened the door. “I have a fairly large selection of school canes, but basically there are four different ones to choose from.” He then withdrew four canes from the cupboard and laid them side by side on his desk. He picked up a short, straight one. “This is for use on pupils palms so we can disregard it. As to the others we have the Junior, the Intermediate and the Senior cane – obviously each delivers a correspondingly greater degree of sting. What do you think this case deserves, girls?”

“Oh the Senior, sir!” they chorused, none too surprisingly. I felt sick.

The Head nodded and replaced the other three canes in his cupboard. This left the longest implement on his desk – a traditional fearsome crook handled three-footer.

“One last question, ladies,” he said. “Do you feel that the recipient of the cane should be afforded the aid of a chair or be made to touch their toes with legs held straight?”

They looked at each other, flattered and surprised. “Er… touching toes, sir,” said Diane after some thought.

“I see. So let’s recap, shall we? You wish to remain as witnesses as I give Robertson six of the best with the Senior cane, over his underpants, while be bends over touching his toes. Is that right? ”

“Yes, sir!” they both said, pink cheeked with excitement. Anne slid one shapely leg further over the other, revealing even more thigh, while I wished the ground would open up and swallow me.

“For something he didn’t do….” said the Head cryptically.

Time seemed to stand still in that room for a few seconds. Both girls’ mouths dropped open. Smirks disappeared instantly. Anne hastily uncrossed her legs. I’m not sure who was the more confused – me or them. What on earth was going on?

“You see, ladies, unfortunately for you and fortunately for Robertson, you were spotted putting those items in his locker yourselves. I have no idea why you wanted to get a boy into trouble for something that he wasn’t even aware of, but I regard it as one of the most despicable acts I have ever come across.”

Both girls now looked shocked and frightened, while I felt that a ton weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

“I’m sorry I had to put you through that, Robertson, but I had to be sure how far they would take this accusation and the eventual punishment… and may I say how much I admire you for not saying anything against these two wicked-minded girls.” Turning to Anne and Diane, he snapped, “Stand up!”

The girls looked quite pale as they scrambled to their feet. I noticed as they stood how their high heels accentuated the length and shape of their legs and the jutting swell of their bottoms under their blue uniform skirts.

“Now, Miss Hawkins, why did you formulate this plot against Robertson?”

“I-I don’t know sir…” came the mumbled reply from Anne, her head bowed.

“Miss Bennett?”

“Well he… because… er… I don’t know, sir…” stammered Diane.

“Don’t know? You don’t know why you were implicating an innocent class-mate in a serious accusation of theft?” He was at his most outraged and was putting the fear of God into me, never mind the two sexy young madams in front of him. They both stared hard at the carpet, their hands clasped firmly together in front of them.

“Whatever the reason was, there can be no excuse for trying to manipulate someone into receiving severe corporal punishment.” He paused and gazed out of the office window, avoiding all our eyes. “I can see only one fair way to deal with this matter. I have filled in the details in the Punishment Book, but I have not yet filled in a name or a reason against the entry. I feel that, in the interests of justice, I should enter the names Anne Hawkins and Diane Bennett with the reason, ‘Deceit and victimisation”.

My heart began to pound again, for quite a different reason. The girls looked aghast and pale.

The Head turned to me. “Robertson, would it settle the matter in your eyes if these two wretched girls receive the punishment they would have had me inflict on you?”

“Y-yes, sir, it would!” I heard myself stammer.

Anne and Diane both cast me a glance that could have burned through stone. Mr. Thomas picked up his pen and scribbled away in the book.

“Six of the best with the Senior cane is a very demanding punishment,” he said in a grim voice, “but since you both expected Robertson to take it without complaint, I shall expect you two girls to do the same.” With that he rose to his feet and picked up the Senior cane. It rattled tantalisingly against the desk top. He flexed the wickedly supple yard of rattan effortlessly into a half circle and then swished it experimentally through the air. My loins began to stir as I watched the crestfallen girls shuffle uneasily from foot to foot, their knees rubbing together engagingly. Anne subconsciously put her hand behind her back and smoothed her fingers over her bottom as the Head swished the cane. I coughed nervously. The thought of her exposed thighs was still killing me.

“Robertson, these wicked girls were quite excited about being witnesses to what they assumed would be your punishment. I believe in justice being done and seen to be done, therefore I believe it is right that you should witness their caning.”

My heart skipped a beat and I became acutely aware of a tightening at the front of my trousers. It was as if mild electric shocks were passing through my body.

“But sir!” cried Diane in shock, “please -“. The arch bitch on the spot!

“Be quiet, Bennett! You were quite prepared to stay and watch me cane Robertson, so why should he not be afforded the same choice?” snapped Mr. Thomas, fiercely. There was another uncomfortable silence. “Well, Robertson, do you wish to remain?”

“Oh yes sir!” I blurted out, trying desperately not to sound too eager, and failing. “So be it,” he said, moving away from his desk. “Come and sit in my chair, boy, then you are out of the way.”

I shuffled around and sat on his large comfortable chair, glad of a chance to hide the huge tent in my trousers behind the leather topped mahogany desk. I glanced down at the Punishment Book which was still open. There were several entries at the top of the page – three fifth form boys had received four strokes for smoking about two weeks ago, then a few others including, interestingly, Tracie Ashcroft, a rather attractive girl in Form 5B who had received two strokes on the hand the previous week for truancy. I never knew about that. How exciting! I wished I could have looked through the whole book, but my eyes were distracted as they rested on the last entries – “Anne Hawkins, Form 5A, six strokes on the buttocks, Deceit and victimisation. Diane Bennett, ditto.”

I jumped slightly as Mr. Thomas dropped the cane on the desk in front of me with a loud rattle and walked towards the centre of the spacious office to move a round coffee table into the corner. I would love to have touched that wicked, shiny cane, but I just stared at its simplicity, thinking of its latent power, and wondering how many other girlish bottoms had been visited by its avenging sting.

The girls looked transfixed with terror as the Head slipped off his black gown and hung it on a hook behind the door, then took off his charcoal-grey suit jacket and hung that up too. He obviously meant business! Striding purposefully back to the desk he picked up the cane and paced up and down the large open space in the centre of the office, lecturing the two girls about his shock and horror at their misdemeanours, flexing the cane to and fro the whole time. The girls’ heads bowed lower and lower, their hands now clasped behind their backs, as though trying to protect their gorgeous bottoms from the imminent chastisement.

“It was only a little joke, sir”, whimpered Anne suddenly.

“A joke, eh? You won’t think it’s a joke when it’s your turn to touch your toes, Miss Hawkins!”

“Please sir, can’t we have it on our hands?” wailed Diane.

“Certainly not! You set the terms of the punishment, now you must accept it!” Suddenly he stepped into the centre of the office, swished the cane menacingly through the air and snapped, “Take off your blazers!”

My loins stirred once more as both girls hesitantly removed their blazers and laid them on the chairs that they had previously occupied, revealing their crisp white blouses, tight over their fully-developed breasts, the snow white of the material erotically enhanced by their striped uniform ties.

“Hawkins, go and face the door. Bennett, come here!”

The girls cast a rueful glance at one another, and parted to their alloted positions. Diane looked pale and forlorn as she moved to the centre of the room.

“Stand there!” Mr. Thomas pointed with the cane to an imaginary mark on the carpet, “with your back to the window and your feet together.”

I was apparently to be treated to a sideways aspect of the proceedings. The Head moved to the far side of the girl, flexing the cane in huge arcs as he did so.

“Now this will not be pleasant for either of you,” he said sharply. “As I have already intimated, it is easier to take a caning bent over a chair or desk but since you would have had Robertson touching his toes, then you can be punished in the same way!”

Diane swayed slightly, her hands clenched and held rigidly against her hips.

“Now… bend over!”

Those magic words quickened my heartbeat yet again. Diane swallowed hard, then bent gracefully forward, her arms outstretched, until with fingers straight and body straining her fingertips just touched her toes. Her pleated skirt rode up her silky-skinned thighs quite a few inches, but still obscured the designated target area. I was rather disappointed but I needn’t have worried because Mr. Thomas stepped forward and, with a deft flick of his wrist, flipped the skirt up onto her arched back, revealing a lovely pair of white satin-finish nylon knickers stretched taut over her exquisitely rounded bottom. Diane had obviously not expected this for she gasped in horror and began to straighten up.

“Just one layer of clothing, Miss Bennett… remember? Now touch your toes!” snapped the Head.

She complied slowly. I noticed her outstretched fingers trembling as they pushed on to the ends of her shoes. Her knees were perfectly straight and the high heels, uptilting her whole frame, accentuated and enhanced the gorgeous shape of her long, smooth legs.

The Headmaster positioned himself on the far side of the bending girl and planted his feet a little way apart for balance. Reaching out with the cane in his right hand he ensured that he was the correct distance away from his target. The tension in the room was unbelievable as he laid the final punishing foot of the cane right across the centre of the girl’s perfectly rounded bottom. Diane flinched at the first touch of the cold rattan, knowing it to be only seconds away from causing her extreme pain. Mr. Thomas tapped the cane three… four… five times on the same spot. I watched entranced as the firm but fleshy bottom cheeks wobbled with each tap – a reminder of the tender vulnerability of soft female flesh. Her longish blonde hair covered her face, but I could well imagine her look of fearful apprehension. Anne cast a nervous glance over her shoulder to see what was going on, knowing that her turn was soon to come.

The Head suddenly set his face into an expression of steely determination. I crossed my legs self-consciously, somewhat alarmed by the swelling in the front of my trousers yet revelling in its cause. Mr. Thomas swept the cane well back. Diane’s buttocks tensed and tightened as she anticipated the stroke. I wondered how hard he would hit. I supposed they would be let off lightly, being girls.

Then, suddenly SWISH! THWACK!

Diane Bennett let out a yell like a scalded cat, shot bolt upright, clasped both hands to the seat of her knickers and rubbed like hell!

“Owwwwww Aaaaaahhhh!” she whimpered, tears already pricking her eyes.

Good God! I thought. No mercy here because they’re girls! Far from it!

“Get back in position!” the Head boomed. “I’ve hardly started with you!”

My heart pounded like mad. Diane hesitated slightly, but bent to touch her toes once more. Her skirt was again flipped back, the cane tapped once more on the stretched nylon drum before it, perhaps an inch lower than last time. Then…

SWISH! THWACK!

Another loud yelp and Diane was up again, hopping from foot to foot and massaging her injured rear. Anne Hawkins had turned to watch the cause of the awful sound effects and was looking scared to death.

The Head suddenly exploded. “Miss Hawkins! Turn and face that door immediately! Miss Bennett, bend over and stop making such a fuss! I’ve seen Juniors take the cane better than this.”

“B-but sir…” she whined, snuffling slightly.

“Touch your toes girl!”

She was indeed making a fuss, but the Head was certainly on form. He was whacking that yard of swishy rattan down with a vengeance onto a tender target that I guessed had never even been spanked before. Hesitantly Diane bent forward.

“Skirt!”. This time Mr.Thomas made her reach back to flip her own short skirt to the small of her back. How I wished I could have seen the two raised red stripes that must have been adorning that pretty posterior. Her knees were bent this time and she appeared to be trying to lower her bottom out of range.

“Straighten those legs. Now!”

They straightened. Her trembling fingertips stretching to reach her toes.

“If you get up again, Miss Bennett, or if I have to remind you once more of the required position to take a caning, I will get Robertson to hold your hands tightly and put you across the desk for the remaining strokes!”

Oh God, no! I thought. She’ll be bound to detect my excitement – my sweaty hands, my shaking fingers, maybe even see my stiffie… but then there will be the thrill of staring into her eyes as the cane bites and watching the pained contortions on her sexy face.

Tap, tap, tap… SWISH! THWACK! Another squeal after the explosion of sound but the Head’s threat had worked because, although her fingers left her toes and her knees sagged slightly, she did more or less maintain her undignified, submissive position. Within seconds she had regained her posture, even though she was making high-pitched moaning sounds which aroused me considerably.

Tap, tap, tap… SWISH! THWACK!

This time a shrill shriek and a frantic rubbing together of thighs, mobilising her scorched rear into a very erotic side to side wiggle. Her hands made white-knuckled fists then slowly straightened out again. Now she grasped her ankles firmly and braced back her legs.

On this stroke, I endeavoured to savour the technique a little more. The ‘Tap, tap, tap’ was quite low down her thinly-covered bottom cheeks, then a fairly substantial swing back and suddenly the tip of the cane vanished in a blur as it travelled at incredible speed with a whistling Swish! punctuated abruptly by the satisfying (to me!) Thwack! of rattan against sensitive girl flesh. Diane yelled loudly and I realised that she had started crying quite considerably. I also noticed that when she yelled she jerked her head back, causing her hair to toss in the air. Deep muffled sobs came from Diane as Mr.Thomas prepared for the last stroke.

This one was so low down that he was tapping to get his aim almost on the rounded crease where bottom becomes thighs. This meant that, due to the V shaping of Diane’s knickers, the cane would be biting into bare flesh. Diane must have realised this and moved her bottom to one side. The Head gave a sharper warning tap then, as she responded, and as if to catch her by surprise, he swept the cane swiftly back and flicked it sharply down again in one energetic stroke.

SWISH! THWACK!

Diane tossed her head back and let out a ghastly shriek. I swiftly re-directed my gaze on her rear-end, in the hope that I would at last see a red line from the visitation of the stick to the lower extremities of her cheeks, but I was foiled. She must have realised that her torturous punishment was at an end and so leapt upright, rubbing her throbbing sit-upon furiously and attempting to stamp the pain away in a peculiar dance routine. Her hair was stuck to the tears on her cheeks, she was crying loudly and unashamedly and making a hell of a fuss, but for her at least, it was over. Her twisted expressions of exquisite agony were testimony to the punitive power of Mr. Thomas’ right arm and its lithe, three-foot rattan extension.

The Headmaster let the cane drop down by his side. “Well I can’t compliment you on taking your punishment particularly well, Miss Bennett, but at least you did take it without the need for Robertson’s assistance. Let us see if Miss Hawkins can manage to do the same. Now go and face the door!” He then turned to Anne. “Miss Hawkins – take her place if you please!”

My heart began thumping again, because I had to admit that Anne was the one I really fancied and I couldn’t wait to see her arse wriggling under its painful ordeal. She looked resolute as she moved forwards. She was obviously trying to hide any fear, but her wide staring eyes and flushed cheeks gave away her suppressed panic at the plight in which she now found herself. As Anne moved forward, Diane shuffled painfully over to the office door and stood facing it. Anne and the Head were too preoccupied, but I watched in delight as Diane put her hands behind her, under the back of her skirt lifting it high as she did so, then plunged both hands down inside her filmy white knickers, one hand on each cheek, obviously an attempt to ease away some of the throbbing, burning sting. She was still sobbing very quietly and uncomfortably shifting her weight from foot to foot as though she just didn’t know what to do with herself. How I wished it was my hands down her knickers feeling those painful ridges and all that radiated heat! I could hardly tear my eyes away but I had to, for it was ‘top of the bill’ time.

Anne was standing staring downwards at nothing in particular but she was desperate to avoid my eyes. She was an incredibly sexy girl. Shorter in height than Diane but beautifully proportioned. She was well-spoken and obviously from quite a wealthy background, with a kind of serene arrogance that made you want to take her down a peg or two. Yet, despite this, she had a warm side to her nature at times and I often thought Diane was a bad influence. I smiled to myself at just what a warm side she would be presenting in a few minutes time! I had fancied Anne right through school and had fantasised about her often, but this was more gut-churningly exciting than anything my brain had dreamed up for her! I suddenly thought of the possibility of holding Anne’s hands across the desk in front of me if she didn’t take her ‘six of the best’ well. And staring into those large blue eyes, watching the pained expressions wax and wane. My mouth went quite dry at the thought!

Once again my reverie was interrupted by Mr. Thomas’ voice. “Stand there!” With his left hand he took Anne’s arm firmly and pushed her to the spot that Diane had just vacated. It was then I thought I had gone to heaven. Anne moved to stand with her back to the window, as Diane had done, but, presumably because it gave him more room, Mr. Thomas firmly turned her to the side which, to my delight, left me facing her bottom! I noticed that she gasped and rubbed two nervous sweaty palms on the sides of her skirt as she awaited the next instruction. She didn’t have to wait long!

“Bend over and touch your toes!”

I saw her swallow hard then, without hesitation, she bent forward, stretched out her arms and effortlessly touched the ends of her shoes with her fingertips. Her legs, somehow even smoother and slightly more tanned than Diane’s, were kept rigidly straight. With one accomplished, swift movement the Headmaster flipped back her school skirt. My blood raced as I gazed at the silky smoothness of her beautifully rounded thighs. Her knickers were much briefer than Diane’s – smooth, white nylon again but with lace trimming – altogether more breathtaking than her friend’s. They were cut away at the sides, making the ‘V’ that just covered her bottom all the more pronounced. It was clear that if the cane landed on the lower part of her cheeks it would be whacking essentially totally bare bottom! And what a bottom! So perfectly round and smooth with not an ounce of surplus fat.

The Head began to move into position and once more estimate his posture for maximum swishing power. I glanced across at Diane whose hands were still inside her knickers, now rubbing a little more carefully and slowly. Mr. Thomas swished the cane through the air a couple of times, as if to force everyone’s attention once more. He rested the cane about half way down Anne’s curvy rear. Not on bare flesh this time. Her bottom cheeks tightened in reflex action but as the Head ‘tap, tap, tapped’ the cane on the same spot I watched as the muscles relaxed again and her buttocks spread back to their full roundness. Her bottom was firmer and more resilient than her friend’s and so full and sumptuous to my eye. Mr. Thomas drew back the cane then…

SWISH! THWACK!

Anne’s bent frame jolted visibly on the sharp impact of the stinging rattan, but I was amazed and a little disappointed that she didn’t make a sound and barely shifted her position. At first I thought my mind was playing tricks and he hadn’t hit her properly but the Thwack! was every bit as loud as the strokes of Diane’s punishment. Then I wondered if Anne was maybe spanked at home and was more used to corporal punishment. Or perhaps this wasn’t the first time she had found herself in this painful position in the Head’s office! I did recall him saying earlier “This will not be pleasant will it, Miss Hawkins!” as if she had some prior knowledge of a caning. How I would have loved to flick through the Punishment Book to see if my theory was correct, and if so read the detail and the reasons.

The Head was tapping with the cane again – lower as I had hoped. This time the tip would land on bare skin. I was determined to watch Anne’s reaction more closely this time.

SWISH! THWACK!

Her body jerked slightly and I noticed her eyes screw tight shut, but she still didn’t make a sound. Diane glanced round in amazement at her friend’s stoicism and stopped her own childish grizzling immediately, perhaps embarrassed now by the fuss she had made. I couldn’t be sure if I saw a red mark where the cane tip had made contact because of a thin line of shadow caused by the lace trim of her panties… but I was definitely going to see something this time. The cane was tapping a good two inches lower than the previous stroke. As the Headmaster drew the stick backwards I saw Anne tense herself, her eyes screwing tight shut.

SWISH! THWACK!

This time the pretty girl’s body jerked and there was a definite audible sucking-in of air between partly closed lips, but still no real reaction. I was impressed by how well she was taking her punishment and thrilled to see a vivid red stripe had sprung up on the part of her bottom where the cane had landed, surprisingly stretching an inch or two round the curve of her cheek where the stick had flattened the flesh on impact.

A bead of sweat had formed on the Head’s brow. Unexpectedly he spoke.

“You are taking this well, Miss Hawkins. Congratulations… How many is that so far?”

A pause, then a muffled and very unhappy voice said, “Three, sir…”

“Ah, half way there… Perhaps young lady you would be so good as to count the next strokes out loud?”

Why had he demanded that? I asked myself, somewhat puzzled. He repositioned himself, then…

Tap, tap, tap… SWISH! THWACK!

The firmer whack of the rattan on Anne’s more resilient flesh was quite distinctive, and was sounding decidedly meatier as the target area lowered and the stick bit into more and more unprotected skin. There was another jerk of her body, almost as though she had received an electric shock, and another stifled gasp from Anne.

In a consciously restrained voice, the unfortunate girl mumbled, “Four…”, but the tell-tale higher pitch of her voice and the distinct quavering at the end of the word, followed by a gulping swallow told us that she was not as composed as she would have us believe. A red band of fire sprang up beneath the previous one, darkening in colour as I watched.

Anne shifted her weight slightly from foot to foot, but still maintained her position. Her face was now flushed and she bit her bottom lip as that ominous ‘Tap, tap, tap’ began again. This stroke was aimed at the lowest curve of her gorgeous bum. Slowly the cane went back…..

SWISH! THWACK!

Boy, but that was a corker! Harder than all his previous strokes that day. Anne’s head jerked back a little and she swayed slightly, her knees buckling a little after the customary reflex jolt of her whole body. She just held on to an anguished gasp which she managed to stifle into a sharp intake of breath. Another fiery red band leapt up exactly on target.

Hesitantly she stammered, “F-five…” in a voice cracking with pent up emotion.

Now I had fathomed the Head’s plan! He really was a master of the caning art. Calling out the number of strokes was to test and then help break Anne’s stoical vocal restraint. I also had to admire his skill in laying on the strokes so neatly parallel and smack on target. He had obviously had a lot of practice. How I wished I had his job!

Anne’s breathing had become short and urgent and I watched with fascination as her inflamed buttocks clenched and unclenched, frantically trying to ease the build-up of smarting pain.

The tension in the Head’s study had now reached fever pitch. Diane, forgetting her instructions about facing the wall, was watching with a mixture of amazement and admiration at her friend’s fortitude, presumably willing her to keep it up to the bitter end. I, on the other hand, was aching for Anne to break her silence on the final stroke. Anne herself was obviously determined, having got this far, to maintain her silence and her pride. Her face however registered just how difficult that was becoming, as did that continued mobility of her thighs and those lusciously striped bottom cheeks.

Mr. Thomas had a look of even more sheer resolve on his face as he planted his feet further apart and focused hard on his target. He laid the cane right along the natural line between Anne’s thighs and her backside. This stroke was going to hit virtually all bare flesh as the ‘V’ of her filmy panties had moulded itself into the hidden contours of her lower bottom. She flinched at the touch of the polished wood on her sensitive skin, but she managed to control the muscles in her bottom as her buttocks relaxed and resumed their normal rotundity. Her fingers were trembling as they pushed down harder onto her toes, bending them back and causing her knuckles to go white.

The room suddenly fell very silent. All that could be heard was Anne’s deep, laboured breathing. This was soon punctuated by that familiar ‘Tap, tap, tap’. To prolong the agony the Head tapped away for a much longer time.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Eventually he swept back the cane dramatically. Anne drew breath sharply and held it… but the swish didn’t come. He was keeping her waiting for this one. Of course! He was trying to catch this deceitful, yet so sexy, little minx by surprise, in the earnest hope of intensifying her already considerable suffering.

After quite a few seconds Anne turned her head slightly, in order to see what the Headmaster was up to. As she did so she let go of the breath she had been holding for restraint! That was the cue he had been waiting for.

SWISH! TTTHHHWAAAAAACK!!

She was caught completely unawares, as had been the intention, by an incredibly hard stroke and her whole frame jerked forwards. Her head shot back, her mouth opened wide as she gasped for breath and her eyes dilated, wide with shock. She nervously and rapidly gulped in air to control a scream of agony which almost emerged but was stifled. Instead, deliberately and just retaining control, but with great feeling, she simply said “Ooooucchh!” out loud.

She had started to straighten in a reflex action, but as she regained her composure after the searing sting of that wicked last stroke, she touched her toes once more and straightened her legs.

Through tightly gritted teeth she forced out the word, “Six…”. Her voice was strained, quavery and almost falsetto.

The sixth band of fire had sprung up on her lovely skin and I gazed at her partly-visible bum. A rosy glow had now spread over all the visible area, but the raised red ribs stood out, running alongside one another. And beneath those flaming marks, her bared thighs trembled.

Anne’s breathing had become quicker and even more desperate than ever and her chest was heaving. It was clear from the expression on her face that just one more stroke would probably have finished her resolve, but the Head was a man of honour.

“Stand up, Miss Hawkins,” he commanded.

Stiffly and painfully slowly Anne straightened herself up, allowing her skirt to fall and hide that glorious and thoroughly-thrashed rear end of hers. Her face was scarlet, her lips thin and tight as she gasped and gulped for breath between clenched teeth. Her eyes were moist and a solitary tear rolled down her cheek, yet she was evidently determined not to give us the satisfaction of seeing her cry properly. Her hands instinctively pressed against the seat of her skirt and the source of her unconcealable pain.

“Piece of cake eh, Miss Hawkins?” taunted the Headmaster somewhat cruelly. “Oh that was the easy part. Your problems really start when you have to return to class and sit down…” he consulted his watch, “…in about two minutes.”

Anne stared at a fixed point straight ahead in order to keep all her concentration and self-control, for she was clearly only fractions away from real tears. Indeed her beautiful eyes were already very shiny. Her hands, tenderly cupping her stinging bottom through her skirt, were now gingerly massaging the afflicted area.

The Headmaster walked towards the desk and laid down the cane. “Both of you, over here!” he ordered.

Two well-punished and subdued girls shuffled forwards. Diane had stopped crying, but was still flushed and continued to rub her bottom vigorously, though now through her skirt.

“That was a lesson I hope you will never forget,” the Head said sharply, “but if you do, I will be only too happy to remind you – and the next time….” he left the sentence unfinished and an unspoken threat hanging in the air. “Now get out of my office, the pair of you!” He was stern to the finish and it was clear to both quaking girls that they could hope for no mercy if they were ever sent to him again.

Both girls made for the door, Anne still very stiff and smarting. As they disappeared out of the door, both of them were rubbing their blazing hot bottoms in a most alluring way, as if it was impossible to take their hands away. They were utterly chastened. I felt that I really had seen justice done!

A Caning Story from Janus 90. More stories can be viewed here.

A Room With a View
by John Undermeyer

MY SISTER, Penny, is 23 but could easily pass for 19. She married her boss, Robert, who is twice her age and divorced, with two teenage sons who live with their mother. We told her not to do it. We said that in ten years’ time or so, when Robert lost his vigour and she still needed regular sex, she’d be sorry. She went ahead anyway.

Two months later I married Gus.

‘You don’t understand,’ Gus said to me during our engagement. ‘Penny married Robert because he’s experienced.’

‘Experienced at what?’ I asked, and Gus looked at me as though I’d just been found under a gooseberry bush.

‘At lovemaking, Dopey. Penny had a few men of her own age and they left her unsatisfied. She thought she’d try a one-night stand with Robert and he kept her going till morning. She had no idea it could be so good.’

It occurred to me to ask Gus how he knew this but I realised Robert must have told him. At that moment the man himself came into the room. He was tight-lipped, ashen, and clearly in a rage. ‘I have sent your sister upstairs,’ he said to me. ‘I do not intend to explain why. I am sure Penny would not want anyone to know what she has done. But I ‘m going to punish her.’

Robert was long and thin like a pencil and twice as sharp. He ran his own business and everyone who worked for him agreed he was decisive and immediate in everything he did. Here was ample proof!

‘No need to explain things to us, old man.’ Gus turned to stare out of the window. ‘We’re only weekend guests here, after all.’

‘Thank you, Gustavius.’ Robert looked at me pointedly. ‘Now if I might have a word with Gus alone…’ he began.

I realised I’d better leave the room. Three minutes later Robert appeared in the hall. He had the most evil-looking crook-handled cane in one hand and he took the stairs two at a time without giving me a second glance. No sooner had he disappeared than I felt Gus touch my shoulder.

‘Follow me,’ he said, and proceeded to lead the way through Robert’s big old house to the kitchen where a second set of stairs led up to what used to be the servants’ quarters. When we reached the first floor Gus signalled me to keep quiet and we tiptoed to our bedroom which was immediately adjacent to the one used by Robert and Penny. On the wall to the right of the double bed was a large oil painting. Imagine my surprise when Gus motioned me to help him lift it down. Its removal revealed a wide pane of slightly dimmed glass looking straight into my sister’s bedroom. The scene I saw through this window in the wall was tense and poignant and so shockingly intimate that I covered my face with my hands and tried to hide at first.

‘For God’s sake, Gus!’ I breathed. ‘Put it back at once. They’ll see us!’

‘No they won’t,’ he grinned. ‘On their side this is nothing but a mirror. Robert told me about it when he first decided to buy the house. Showed me this too… watch.’

Gus turned a tiny dial which the painting had also hidden. As it clicked on we could suddenly hear Penny’s voice through the wall.

‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ she was pleading in an urgent, breathless voice. ‘I truly am. I love you with all my heart and wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. But you were away in Denmark and Peter came to the house and we drank and ate and then drank some more and by the time I noticed the clock it was too late for him to leave. I didn’t mean anything to happen…’

I clutched Gus by the arm. ‘Oh no,’ I whispered, ‘she’s been unfaithful to him and he’s found out.’

‘Certainly sounds like it,’ Gus murmured back. ‘I wonder how?’

I slowly uncovered my eyes and peered through the glass at my sister. She was stark naked and I felt a surge of envy at her slender young body, shoulder-length brown hair and pert little breasts. Five foot seven, elfin-like in expression, fragile and pale to look at now and desperately vulnerable as she gazed tremblingly at her enraged husband.

I studied her profile with its fine straight nose and lovely dimpled crescent beneath, which curved down to a ripely full-lipped mouth now open in dismay. She had a firm jawline and a neck as graceful as a sea bird’s. I noticed Gus running his eyes down over her shapely-breasted chest. A groan escaped my sister at her husband’s stern words, and her nostrils widened slightly. Then she dropped her head in complete submission.

‘Why doesn’t she refuse the cane?’ I said to Gus, wondering at her silent agreement. He gave me that look which said simpleton, and I already knew the answer. Penny could refuse the cane but she knew she would be punished in one way or another. Robert could devise something much worse and longer-lasting. They were due to island-hop in the South Pacific this summer. Penny could forfeit that, and never know if Robert took someone else with him. He could easily make up an excuse to have a companion, to help keep contact with the office while he was away.

But right now he was pulling the dressing-table stool out from under the dresser. The seat had a satin cushion-top and was wide enough for two people to sit on. Robert lifted it with an audible grunt across the room until there was ample space around it, then he set it down and stepped back.

‘Over you go.’ His voice came clearly through the speaker into the room where Gus and I watched absorbedly. I marvelled at my younger sister’s obedience. She neither protested nor resisted. There was a dignity in the way she knelt at the stool, placed her hands on top of it, then raised her slim hips and positioned herself so that her tummy lay perfectly central across the burgundy satin, letting her head and hands drop to the other side. Her flowing brown tresses tumbled forward, obscuring her face and brushing the floor.

I continued to watch through the glass, amazed at the strange beauty of the scene. Robert, tall and impeccable in his neat dark suit, stood back to look at her. I had no idea what he was thinking but he paused for a full minute while my naked sister lay perfectly still and silent over the stool, waiting with extraordinary passivity for her husband to begin his punishing work. Penny was presented so that her bottom faced the mirror and Gus and I could see it in all its glory. I was always known that my sister had a lovely behind, but it was Gus who put its perfection into words.

‘I’ve never seen anything,’ he murmured into my ear, ‘that quite so invited the cane. I have admired botties in the aerobic class you go to. I have been attracted to botties on beaches and at your riding school. I have blinked at girls on ice-rinks and on the parallel bars. You have a lovely bot yourself,’ he said diplomatically. ‘But for sheer floggable perfection, for tight, perfectly equal halves of a heavenly apple, for the most seductive tennis-girl buttocks in the whole history of the game – this is the one. The perfectly adorable, cream-skinned, tight, tempting and totally unmarked bottom.’

‘Quite nice, I suppose,’ I said, not without a certain edge to my voice. ‘It won’t be so attractive when Robert’s finished with it though.’

‘Hmm… I don’t know,’ chuckled Gus and I punched his arm, half-amused, half-angry.

‘You’re just jealous, my love,’ he said. ‘You almost wish it was happening to you.’ Gus moved close to me and fondled my bottom. I pulled away but I had to admit to myself that the whole scene was undeniably arousing. And partly the excitement came from secretly spying on Penny when she could have no idea that I was watching her. How embarrassed she could feel if she knew that my gaze was attached to her arched buttocks and my heart was pounding from the thought of the cane.

Gus turned to the mirror again and gazed through. ‘Those cheeks are so beautiful I could almost let her off,’ he said wistfully. ‘It’s almost a shame to bring a rod to them. It’s as if Robert were about to damage a famous painting. Bring a hammer to Michelangelo.’

‘Oh, shut up and watch!’ I practically snarled.

As we now both continued to do, staring fixedly through the secret pane as Robert held the cane in his right hand, horizontally across his chest, and ran the palm of his left hand lovingly along its slender length. He did this several times: stroking the cane, caressing it, transferring the warmth from his fingers into the tenderising wood. After a few moments he stopped the stroking movements and began tapping his palm slowly, edging backwards as he did so, measuring his distance from Penny’s tense waiting body. I was fascinated to see how the cane bent under pressure and now quivered in the air between taps as though it were truly alive and eager to perform its shocking task.

‘That’s about right,’ said Gus in a tightening voice. He was riveted by the scene. I must admit it had me quite entranced, too, even though Penny was my sister. Or perhaps, because she was my sister – I just don’t know. My feelings were so confused. The cane moved upwards till it pointed to the ceiling, and Robert stood on tip-foe. Then, faster than either of us could follow, it whirred through the still air of the bedroom and suddenly it was home.

Deep and solid it struck, sinking into Penny’s fleshy bottom-cheeks. The noise of the impact sounded strangely metallic through the tiny microphone. Penny’s arms and legs all moved and her mane of shining brown hair swished as her head jerked backwards.

The sounds of her pain rushed from her open mouth in breathy cries. Her feet – the soles of which were facing us – drummed on the carpet. Robert kept the cane pressed against her stricken bottom-flesh for about five seconds before lifting it away. It was then that I saw the furrow it had ploughed.

And still, and still, and still, she continued to react to that first bite of the supple cane.

Gus and I were standing close by the spy-window, transfixed by what was happening only feet away on the other side of the glass. I was holding his hand very tightly, and his was squeezing mine.

‘I felt that in here,’ I gasped. ‘I hope she doesn’t have to take too many of those.’ I bit my lip in sympathy. Gus said nothing, but continued to stare intently at the scene. What a charge passed between our palms! How strange I felt inside!

We saw that Robert had shifted slightly when delivering the stroke, and now he moved his feet back into place and slowly raised the quivering wand. Down it came, striking like a furious snake! Penny was still jigging about when the second stroke landed, only a hair’s-breadth away from the first. I marvelled that Robert could be so accurate. Was it beginner’s luck, or…? My thought was stopped in mid-track by Penny’s cries bursting through the microphone. First a long, screeching ‘Aaahhhhgh!’ then by ‘Oh, please… please…’ Her head rolled to and fro, her streaked bottom lifted from the stool and shook vigorously, and her legs seemed almost to be cycling from the knees up.

Each time the whippy wood imprinted its shape into the full, fleshy softness of her buttocks, Penny’s body became taut as a bow-string and I noticed how, in a completely reflex action, her pubis was working against the satin stool-top. It was a grinding movement, a thrusting-downwards of her centre point, squeezing and squashing her abdomen against its flat support in a manner more suitable to be seen by a husband than a sister. Which made me feel even more wicked to be secretly watching Penny receive her punishment for adultery.

This squashing, squirming rhythm stopped as the cane was lifted off and my sister’s bottom tensed, still and fearfully expectant. The pain must have been gnawing like rodent teeth through the flesh of her buttocks, curvily silken flesh which had never before been even so much as touched by an angry spank, so far as I knew – never mind a hard, narrow, burn-producing cane!

I turned to Gus, who grinned at me sheepishly. I had caught him with his hand adjusting the part of himself that was never touched in public. I affected not to notice, then changed my mind and tutted disapprovingly.

‘Sorry, darling,’ he grunted softly. ‘But you must admit your sister is beautiful. So much like you,’ he lied.

‘And Robert is being awfully strict, and I’m only human too,’ I whispered, confessing my own weakness by clinging to him tightly. ‘Oh, that bottom!’ he moaned. Now sparks seemed to shoot through our clothes as we held each other. Four eyes lifted again to the glass. Whatever jealousy I had felt dissolved; we were as one.

Robert’s first two strokes had been calculated, controlled, with a decent pause between them, and Gus and I expected that the punishment would go on as it had started. I had already assumed that Penny would get the statutory six – which, believe me, would have been a terrible punishment no matter how young, healthy and brave you were. But when Robert raised the cane for the third time and brought it swishing concisely down, he began a series of whisking raps to my sister’s flinching, twitching bottom which followed one another as though he were conducting a fast-playing orchestra. Up and down! Up and down! And down again, again, again. The swift staccato cracks of the limber rod against Penny’s jiggling buttocks were clearly audible through the tiny loudspeaker, as were her pants, gasps and whispers.

This absolutely new and different kind of punishment, lighter yet infinitely faster, left Robert with his hair falling over his face, his cheeks puffing, his eyes fixed like some pilot in a storm, his breath snorting as he flicked and tapped and flicked again as if he were almost toying with Penny, although it could not possibly have seemed a game to her. I saw – and heard – that she could hardly bear it.

At first Penny yelped and twisted at the stinging, whippy nips but soon she was writhing so energetically and spasmodically that she had to grasp the stool with both hands to stop herself from tumbling to the floor. This did not in any way inhibit Robert’s spiteful wristy flicks. Gradually the turmoil in Penny’s lovely young body grew desperate, and slowly but surely she wriggled herself to the edge of the stool and half tumbled, half let herself down on to the carpet where she lay kicking and twisting, rising a little off her knees and falling back, undulating like some primeval rippling creature. Moaning, whimpering and yelping as she begged her husband to relent and stop the constant rain of stinging cane-pricks, yet giving herself up to them nonetheless.

As Penny, naked and utterly vulnerable, jerked and twitched on the carpet, tears rolled oilily on her downy cheeks while she looked up at her husband, acknowledging that she deserved this relentless manifestation of his wrath, but pleading piteously for it to stop. Penny rolled a little nearer to the glass through which Gus and I so raptly watched this incredible spectacle. She was kneeling, her bottom up, three-quarters towards us, her face down and hidden when Robert finally stopped his nippy, zippy cascade which made my whole body quiver in sympathy with Penny’s.

Gus gripped me tightly, his eyes glued to the deeply divided moons of Penny’s hypnotically weaving bottom. There were two vivid lines where the first two cane-strokes had fallen, but the rest of her seat was covered in perhaps a couple of dozen red dots where the very tip of the cane had stung like a giant wasp, jab and away, sting and away, prick and away, each wasp-tail adding its own injection of venom into that previously pristine bottom.

The plain result was that Penny’s buttock-muscles were working in a churning reflex action. Her cheeks clenched tightly, squeezing the cleft between them into a ruler-straight line. Then they relaxed, only to spasm tight again, squeezing the firm mounds together. Open and shut, open and shut. It was the kind of movement, jerky and uncontrolled, that I only experienced myself when Gus worked me to that zenith of perfection and I burst forth inwardly, yielding and grateful for his steady loving attentions. Indeed, I had previously had no idea that a cane could make a dainty feminine bottom like Penny’s do what in my experience was normally inspired by the action of another rod altogether. And still the spasms went on! I guessed Penny was desperately trying to dissipate the wasp stings, though the appearance of her posterior contortions gave an altogether different and supremely erotic impression.

The jostling, bucking and contracting had a mesmerising effects on us both as we stood, highly aroused, with our noses against the glass. I think Gus would have liked my sister’s lovely smooth bottom to go on clenching and unclenching like that, rhythmically gripping and ungripping, tightening and relaxing forever. Although I was becoming envious again of the rapt attention he was paying it I sensed that, like myself, he was wondering whether there was any pleasure now beginning to meld with the self-evident pain. I did nothing to distract his looking. I must admit that my sister’s spongy undulations had a remarkable effect on me: I actually felt myself doing it too, clenching and unclenching my own buttocks – whether in sympathy or excited unison I could not be sure.

Finally Penny gained control, first of her stinging bottom and then of herself. She must, I am sure, have realised that although Robert had at first determined to show her no mercy, he had in fact been kinder with his flurry of wasp stings than if he had delivered six single, full-out strokes – and that the darting, nippy cane had stung, certainly, but not burned and flared deep and hard as it might otherwise have done.

We continued to watch through the glass, open-mouthed in a kind of wonder as Penny began to pick herself up, then walked slowly and penitently towards Robert, her head hung down and arms outstretched in entreaty, asking to be forgiven.

‘I’ll never do it again,’ we heard her say in a tiny, plaintive voice, so alien to her normal bright confidence. ‘Not even think about it, my darling Bobby. Not ever again, I really promise. I’m sorry… I deserved it all.’

It was then that Gus switched off the eavesdropping system and told me to help him replace the picture. As the adjoining room regained its boundaries he took my hand and, with a gentle yet urgent movement, reminded me of what I had earlier seen him adjusting. And later than that, after Gus had shown me visible evidence of how eagerly he needed attention, and I had sought tactile confirmation of his stunning firmness of purpose, another set of girlish buttocks began to clench and unclench, tighten and relax beneath him, and another feminine voice was moaning and whimpering, gasping and crying out…

I felt so pleased, and so naughty, that I do believe I deserve the cane.

A Caning Story from Janus 94. More stories are available here.

Girl In The Frame
by John Undermeyer

I WONDER if you know the magazine Artlife? It’s a monthly effort, mostly about painting and sculpture and often reviews exhibitions at London’s private art galleries. I’m the editor and not long ago I was looking rather urgently for a piece to lead my next issue.

As editor I frequently receive calls from gallery owners, so I was not surprised to hear from Fiona-Jane McCullum. Fiona is a Scot d’un certain age who owns a well-known gallery in the vicinity of Berkeley Square. She is careful about the work she shows, so when she rings I pay attention to what she says and usually attend her previews.

This time the invitation was especially intriguing. She was showing work from a school led by her elder brother. You will understand that by school I do not mean a place of education. I mean, rather, a group of artists who have joined together, in this case in one place, because they share a similar outlook and philosophy. They are conducting — as they like to put it — a search for some artistic truth.

‘So you want to introduce me to the McCullum School?’ I chuckled down the phone.

Fiona explained that her brother was the head of a group of young artists who lived in a large house in Cornwall. I would subsequently discover that Douglas McCullum was a middle-aged man, very well-built, with a huge head of hair, a full-set beard, rosy face, black cheery eyes and a disposition for good claret. He was rarely out of his smock which was besmeared with paint from his brushes, palette and hands. His companions were a group of young men and women who were experimenting with certain painting techniques. Every summer they spent a fortnight in London exhibiting their work and naturally they used Fiona’s gallery.

‘The preview is next Monday and I believe you ought to be there…’ Fiona told me.

‘All very well,’ I said, relieved at the prospect of hopefully being able to fill a looming hole in my next issue. ‘I’ve certainly had some good copy and pictures from your past exhibitions. But I must say…’ I paused because I had to put this delicately, ‘…the McCullum school is not one I am familiar with. And — as you know — I’m not one who enjoys strange or outlandish experiments in oils…’

‘No more am I!’ Was Fiona’s tart riposte. Then, more pleasantly: ‘You’ll see some very good work, I promise. It’s impossible to describe it on the telephone, but it’s stimulating work. I’ll say no more now… just come. OK?’

The phone went down. I knew Fiona never hung rubbish so I went along, although I had not the least idea what to expect.

The viewing had a most unusual effect on me which I shall describe as best I can. Fiona met me at the reception table with a grateful smile, a slim catalogue and a glass of well-chilled champagne. After the usual kisses and how-are-yous she said, ‘Take your time. Enjoy what you see; you may even give your readers a surprise or two in next month’s issue. But don’t leave without speaking to me again.’

She urged this last sentence on me in a way that convinced me that I would be missing something if I slipped away without saying goodbye. But I was not ready for what I finally saw.

You will know, if you know Artlife, that most small galleries in Mayfair, Chelsea and Soho rarely show work that depicts the human form in all its natural realism. Blobs, anomalous patches, large indecipherable shapes and other oddities often litter the walls. But far from distorting and rearranging its figures, this school depicted them with skill, grace and beauty. I began to be impressed. I was looking at really gifted life-drawing and painting and there was an overall feeling of passion about the work. It evoked incense and could have been thought of — in a certain sense — as worshipful.

Most of the paintings were of young women, or young couples. There were a few landscapes; one in particular caught my eye. It was a huge house, perched about 500 yards from the edge of a sheer cliff, the walls of which plunged some 500 feet into what I later learned was the Atlantic. I was to discover many strange facts about this house, not the least of which that it had been built ‘back to front’. You approached it through a long drive of close-planted pine trees only to be confronted by the rear. The front aspect gazed (as in this picture) out over the sea.

The paintings were accomplished in a palate that moved from pale greys to indigo, via all the shades of blue. The predominant colour was that of incense smoke when burned from a stick. The figures (as I say, mostly girls) were willowy and mysterious. There were sprites, wood-nymphs, huntresses, dancers, tall, slim, arms and legs stretched to fine points, bodies poised to throw a javelin, reach for a plant, catch a bird in flight or pull a star out of heaven. There were girls in pirouette holding a wand or torch or standing on tip-toe preparing to dive into a lake. Mostly they had bird-like necks from which bent pale, bashful heads sprayed about with long shanks of flowing hair.

All the images were naked. Breasts were the shape of saucers or shallow wine bowls, arms and legs were taut and trim, waists dissolved into a boyish narrowness and tummies were hard and flat. The beautiful slender legs had (so it seemed to me) been elongated slightly and melded into feminine thighs then into firm, tight buttocks. And here was the strange part. The buttocks appeared to be sucked in at the cleft, their muscles clenched tight, utterly closed — indeed squeezed together almost vehemently. The cheeks were like two parts of a glass marble which had been split, melted, then when molten, pressed together again. Strength, fitness, vitality and vibrant youth were all present but so also was pain. You may feel it strange for me to say that these fairy figures conveyed vibrant pain. I too found the sensation rare. I can only assure you that after long and careful appraisal I became convinced it was so.

You are, I am sure, familiar with Rodin’s The Kiss. A similar erotic rapture suffused virtually all the paintings from this strange school. Young women lay naked, their heads in the laps of young men, their sinuous arms wrapped adoringly around the legs of their seated masters. Figures twined sensuously with a quality which reminded me of the old love-carvings in the Tantric temples of India. Some poises carried the hint of yoga. There were echoes of Degas’s ballet girls, though without their pumps and tutus. There was certainly the discipline and spirit of the ballet exercise class. One naked girl was poised high on a tightrope, a paper umbrella in her hand. Another danced on a high wooden bar. All the work left me — and I will confess it unashamedly — with a feeling of spirited, singing sexuality.

I began to wonder how much of this exhibition I dared illustrate in Artlife for many of my readers are fastidious and all believe in art with the utmost good taste. This work was tasteful enough but it was also seductive. The beautiful people in these scenes were sexual beings. Men had the faces of Creek gods. The girls possessed an allure, a startling preternaturalness unsullied by the trendy hairstyles and knowing glances of big-city life. Their faces were open and smiling, their eyes innocent and happy, their poses inviting inspection and admiration. At first I was impressed; then, falling more and more under their influence, beguiled; finally, although I would never admit it in my own publication, I was aroused.

One canvas, showing a young woman reaching to pluck an apple from a high branch, her body stretched so that every curve and crevice could be seen in its ultimate definition, reminded me of Enobarbus’s description of Cleopatra: ‘She makes hungry where most she satisfies.’

When I found Fiona again I was ravenous to know more about the McCullum school of art. The gallery-owner looked at me teasingly over the top of her half-rim spectacles. When I raised an eyebrow to encourage her to explain, she broke into a taunting grin and drew her tongue along her teeth as if to say ‘Think what you’d have missed if you hadn’t come’.

‘You’d have to be nerveless not to catch the scent,’ was what she actually said. ‘Evocative, isn’t it? I’m glad my brother has been willing to put his more successful efforts on show.’

We were walking towards the back of the gallery where a roped-off staircase led to the floor above. On the scarlet cord across the first step hung a notice: PRIVATE. Viewing only when accompanied by a representative of the gallery.

‘Since you are clearly enjoying yourself I think perhaps I can take you upstairs. There is a second exhibition which I show only to those I am sure will genuinely appreciate it.’ It was clear as she re-clipped the red rope behind us that I was to be shown something the general visitor would never see. When we reached the upper gallery it was poorly lit but Fiona turned up a series of dimmer-wheels to full brightness and I caught my first inkling of why this room was for trusted patrons only.

The canvases were much larger than those below and the figures on them fully lifesize. These pictures could most certainly not under any circumstances be reproduced in Artlife, although no doubt the majority of my subscribers would have been fascinated.

The first showed a giant room which might once have been the dining hall of a stately home but was now quite unfurnished, with whitewashed walls, uncurtained windows and uncarpeted floor. The windows gazed towards that familiar clifftop, then out into the sea. Two figures formed the centrepiece. One was a girl in her twenties, fully naked and bent like a hairpin. She was high on the points of her toes. Her legs, shut so tightly they seemed to form a single stem, streamed upwards in a smoothly curving line taking in her calves and thighs. At the top of her legs, pushed proudly in the air, was the most perfect bottom. It stuck upwards almost defiantly, tight, round, tantalising in its invitation, smooth, curvaceous and beseeching attention.

This gorgeous dome of dimpled flesh swelled outwards then curved into a complete ‘U’ turn, stretching downwards now, the outline of the totally bent spine melding into long slender arms which flowed sleekly towards hands and fingers that strained to her toes. The longest finger of either hand just touched the tips of her tilted feet. It was the ‘bend-and-touch-your-toes’ position par excellence.

By this time Fiona had left me alone and was signing some papers at a large desk at the end of the room. I had not noticed her going, so closely was I studying the picture. The girl’s head was tucked hard into her knees. Her inverted breasts pressed firmly against the front of her thighs. Her long, smoky hair fell across part of her face, touched the floor and spread outwards from her feet like spilled wine.

Toes and fingers were stretched to the limit. I peered to study what could be seen of her features. She was serenely pretty; her eyes, painted sapphire, were wide open and sparkling, her small mouth pouting in what could have been — in a different kind of picture — a softly blown kiss.

The second figure was a young man of about the same age as the delightful girl. He was dressed as if for the ballet, but planted firmly on the soles of both feet. He wore a haughty, imperious look, and his head was held straight and stiff as he stood to one side of the tip-toed enchantress looking at her with a mixture of mastery and worship. One hand was fully outstretched and then I noticed a third hand entering the picture from the side of the canvas. This hand was passing our ballet dancer a crook-handled cane.

You may legitimately ask if there were weals on the bottom of this upturned girl and I must report there were not. But studying the face of the dancer, and the eagerness with which his fingers stretched to reach for that whippy, offered wand, I could not doubt that had this picture represented the same scene but thirty seconds into the future, there would most certainly have been four, perhaps five, finely-ridged tramlines on that unblemished skin.

I moved to the next large frame which was a portrait picture showing head, shoulders and part of the upper torso, trimmed just below the breasts. It was a girl, and as I looked I saw that she was the same maiden who stood bent doubled over on the previous canvas.

Light caught the top of her head and the long silky hair which was strewn in glory all about the sides of her sweet face, framing the high-boned cheeks, covering completely both her ears, falling in wanton abandon across part of one eye, then down over both shoulders. Most of her hair vanished behind her back, but another lock led the viewer’s eye to the most delicate, up-tipped and brazenly erect nipple.

This, I realised, was the painting of the same girl, some five or ten minutes after the ballet dancer had accomplished his task. I was looking at a portrait of sorrow and grief, of misery and distress, of shame and self-pity, of irredeemable remorse and very vibrant pain.

Down each youthful, downy cheek there still trickled a wet channel of tears. The eyes had clearly been streaming only minutes before but now they shed their brine slowly and irregularly as a melting icicle drips in a bleak and wintry sun. Yes, this was the winter of her discontent. A storm had burst between the moments depicted in the last canvas and this. In the unshown interval the cane had been utilised and laid aside, and the girl allowed to rise and stand upright.

The artist had captured the baleful and humbled look in her almost shuttered eyes. He had not missed the way her tears had glued together her erstwhile separated eyelashes. A bulging pearl of brine was balanced on the lower rim of one eye whilst her other gazed wistfully, having just blinked away — or so it seemed — the droplet that was now coursing towards one side of her pert and pretty nose.

Her nostrils, I noticed, shone at their openings with glittering albumen and I asked myself whether it was right to show a perfect portrait with a runny nose. Yes, I counselled my critical mind. When a woman weeps as copiously as this there can be no doubt that the nose must shed its liquid too: this was only a post-punishment truth. The painter had conveyed this passion so eloquently that in my transport I was moved to feel for my kerchief, so that the penitent might wipe away the offending evidence of distress. Even had her face been dry, one could still clearly have seen the girl’s preoccupation with sensations that possessed her whole consciousness.

Those lips, which (as I told you) in the last picture might have suggested a softly blown kiss, were now turned down bitterly at both comers. They parted slightly in the centre and I could tell, so acutely was the scene depicted, that the girl was breathing through her mouth. No doubt the nostrils were partly unable to take the air. Tears had run across her mouth and left a shimmering and wanton track of dampness on both lips. There were even one or two now hanging perilously on her heart-shaped chin, just waiting for the next heave of her breath to shake them on to those glowing breasts or into her dishevelled and dampened hair.

My mind went back to the pictures I had seen downstairs. I remembered how I had been convinced that the buttocks of so many figures had been clamped fiercely tight. How the cheeks of so many bottoms had been held so hard, tension shrieking in each half of the glass marble. Here was the explanation. Expectation. Expectation of corrective pain. Immediate expectation of the bite of the cane. Fear of that searing bamboo sting.

I retraced my steps a few paces to look at the first picture again. Here was the impish mistress, bent double and stretched tight, on the point of receiving her punishment. I hurried to the second canvas. Here was the penitent after the deed had been done. I could only surmise how many strokes of that proffered wand it had taken to reduce the girl to the tearful state in the portrait. But I could not doubt that the cane had been laid on with a will. I looked once more at the downcast eyes which seeped soft salty water.

I lowered my gaze to the breasts, one of which was partly covered by her hair, the other quite naked. They were so beautifully firm, I thought it unlikely they needed support from even the daintiest bra, and I imagined how adorable those breasts would be to caress. How telling, too, that the secret caning of that peach of a naked bottom had brought both nipples to a state of rigid wakefulness. Surely, even when she made love her nipples could not attain that length and hardness. And they had been painted with such realism that I was almost tempted to lick the canvas and make a complete fool of myself.

Both of these adorable mounds showed traces of how the young lady had wept, for there were glittering beads on her breasts and their tracks ran down from her eyes, across her cheeks, to pause at the chin then topple over and bedeck her upper body. The streaks showed how they had fallen. Yet there was the purest and most moving poetry in the face from which tears were still slipping. Not a trace of resentment could be seen on it. There could be no doubt, I concluded, that the ballet dancer had mastered the skills of whippy rattan and given this forlorn young upstart such a sizzling bottom that simple words could not express all the nuances of her feelings.

I was on the point of moving to the next canvas when I heard the sound of people mounting the stairs. These, too, must be special guests, I thought, for Fiona had stressed that only a chosen few were invited to this first floor, and could even then only come if accompanied by a member of the gallery staff. But no member of staff was present. Instead there was a giant, rust-bearded merry-eyed Father Christmas of a man, and beside him a slim, long-haired and very attractive young woman.

Fiona-Jane was on her feet and hurrying forward to greet the newcomers. ‘Douglas!’ she whooped. ‘How good to see you. And you too, Clarissa.’ She flung her arms round the bearded man’s neck and dotted him with kisses. Then she drew back and shook hands with the girl. ‘I wasn’t expecting you till next week. You said you couldn’t come to the preview.’

The big man was clearly Douglas McCullum, head of the school whose paintings had so captivated me. But it was Clarissa I was studying. Surely I knew this girl? The face was so familiar; the sapphire eyes, the flowing locks of hair, the mouth that pouted slightly as though she were blowing a kiss. I looked at the portrait of the weeping woman again. Of course. They were one and the same. It was Clarissa who had touched her toes, been caned, and was painted again with the unfakeable proof of her tears.

She walked towards me with a delicate outstretched hand and a truly lovely smile. ‘How do you do?’ she asked. And without waiting for my reply (which may have taken a few seconds, I was so surprised at this meeting) she went on, ‘I see you have been studying me on canvas. Don’t I make a wretched spectacle?’ With a most affecting little giggle.

‘You must have been hurting terribly…’ I began in an attempt to show sympathy but she brushed my embarrassment and condolences aside. ‘Yes, my bottom was burning, and I did cry hard as you can see. But isn’t the finished result a superb painting? It was my friend Dominic who painted it. We had the canvas and everything else ready. Then Dominic gave me the cane and we hurried on to get the results into paint. What do you think?’

Her voice was girlish and cultured, and her face was so cheerful, and she was obviously so pleased that Dominic had captured her tears and shame, that I simply could feel anything but pure wonder. ‘I tell you what I think. I think this work is so good I am going to buy the picture.’

Weeping Clarissa now has pride of place on my living-room wall. Whenever I look at her the frisson starts inside me and images of her under the cane run riot through my mind. She would not stay silent, I am sure of that, for her expressive nature would not allow her to suppress her cries and gasps. Nor, I feel, would she wish to deny her witness the delicious satisfaction of seeing her full response to discipline. I gaze at her watery eyes, her downturned lids, her tear-streaked face and naughty, uptilted, elongated nipples and remember her smile when we met. And there is another chapter to her story.

Douglas McCullum has invited me to the big house in Cornwall, overlooking the cliffs which plunge into the Atlantic. As editor of Artlife I am potentially his most influential advocate. I am to be allowed full freedom of the house and to watch the artists at work in their various studios. Clarissa is to be painted again, this time by another artist. I have commissioned the picture especially. The subject? The same as before, of course, because I cannot see too much of this beautiful girl.

Douglas has made me a promise which I look forward to in great anticipation. Clarissa will be painted with the tears once more coursing down her cheeks. And I will be allowed to watch. Not just while the portrait is being done. But during her trial and preparation when she is to be awarded a full dozen strokes of the cane.

A Spanking and Caning Story from Janus 49. More stories can be found here.

In A Distant Country
by R.P. Forrester

The past is another country. L.P. Hartley? Yes. And certainly that idyllic spot, that little village set in the sparkling mountains that I wandered into as a young man is another country. A country which then had not known the ravages of war and postwar; a country now only of my mind.

It was just before the war, 1938 I think, but as yet in that remote mountain-ringed region of Central Europe there was no hint of what was shortly to come. I was walking, with a rucksack, occasionally taking a lift on one of the rare vehicles, studying the language (or telling myself I was) which was a dialect of German (I suppose now it is Russian they have to speak). At any rate English travellers, indeed any travellers, seemed to be very rare birds and perhaps that is why I was treated with such friendliness. And allowed such intimate insights in that household.

I simply wandered in along the dusty road one sunlit autumn afternoon. I stayed for four – or was it five? – days. And in those four or five days… The fact is that because of events I could not afterwards go back, I could never subsequently go back. So it remains only in my mind, like a shimmering impossible dream. But I know it was not a dream.

My introduction came that very first evening. There was no hotel in the little village, no inn offering accommodation, but when it became known that I wanted to stay for the night I was quickly offered hospitality at several humble private dwellings. I was, to say the least, fortunate in my choice because I had not then seen the two girls. The two daughters of the chosen house.

I was doubly, triply, fortunate, though I did not know it then, in that the younger girl was to have her sixteenth birthday in two days’ time. That birthday… But I must keep things in chronological order, and on that first evening it was the elder girl, 18-year-old Liese, who took my notice, and with a vengeance. Not least because I had her ripe and shapely bottom bared in front of me for a whipping.

I haven’t said that they were both delightful young creatures: blue-eyed, apple-cheeked, with thick honey-coloured braids down their backs. Yes, two quite stunning young ladies, eager to converse with this stranger who could just about make himself understood (naturally they had no English).

And perhaps it was basically the visitor’s fault, I cannot clearly recall, but possibly in their excitement they were too forward in the eyes of their father, ‘showing off’, and he decided to give the older one a lesson. Although I was assured it was not my fault…

At any rate in that cosy little living room there was suddenly an ‘atmosphere’, with the stern-faced, moustached father barking something at Liese. Did she unwisely answer back? Whatever it was things got rapidly worse, the father’s eyes flashing and quick, harsh words being spoken. I thought I could make out what he was saying. Liese was going to be beaten.

My pulse rate began to rise as I realised I had got the correct gist. Liese was a good-sized, statuesque creature in her tight-bodiced red dress and the thought of some form of corporal punishment being meted out on that firm-fleshed body was highly arousing. Naturally I assumed that whatever the punishment was it would be carried out in private – a bedroom say – as it would have been in England where, in those days, beating a daughter was not the rarity it is today. I was not expecting to see the punishment but the mere thought that it was to happen was arousing enough.

But then it became clear, from the father’s words and actions, that it wasn’t to take place elsewhere. It was to be there, in that snug room where this visitor was standing with the family. For Liese was being told to lift her skirt… and lie over the table.

Liese’s face had become bright red, her sister’s was pinkish and I imagine mine was bright red too. What was I supposed to do? Discreetly remove myself? Liese gave me a hot-faced look and defiantly grabbed up her knee-length skirt, taking with it an underlying white petticoat. Her sturdy, shapely legs were in white stockings, gartered at mid-thigh. Above were white, lace-edged knickers, not brief by today’s standards I suppose but brief for those days and they left all of Liese’s ripe upper thighs bare. This sudden revelation just about knocked me for six. Was I supposed to see this?

But no one acted as if I should leave. I suppose after all I was the honoured guest. Liese’s mother in fact, a handsome woman of some 40 years, gave me a smiling, half-apologetic but friendly look which seemed to say: daughters can be trying, can’t they? So I stayed; red-faced and round-eyed.

Holding her skirts aloft Liese stepped forward and obediently laid herself over the table. Her father at the same time went over to a cupboard. He returned holding a slim, whippy switch such as might be cut from a young hazel. My eyes were simply goggling, transfixed by this stick and even more by Liese’s ripe, tightly-knickered bottom now thrust out over the edge of the table. I was soon goggling much more as Liese’s father strode over and in one deft movement, no doubt well practised, had the tight white knickers down and off her bottom.

He fiddled a bit with her skirt, making sure it was well up round her waist. I must admit I was now in a state of some sexual excitement with this stunning girl before me, strong legs straight and together with the knickers round the tops of her thighs, and the upper part of her lying horizontal on the table. And right before my eyes that fantastic bare bottom. I was standing, as were Liese’s mother and sister, but I very much wanted to sit down. Fortunately in those days men’s trousers were somewhat large and baggy!

Right away, having assured himself that his daughter was properly positioned, the father raised the switch and brought it whipping down.

There was an awesome CRACK! as it sharply met the waiting flesh. A muffled grunt of pain from the stricken girl and I rather think that I gasped out myself in unison. Liese’s bottom twitched and clenched but otherwise she stayed still. There was now an angry red stripe transversely across the centre of both ripe cheeks.

As I watched, scarcely able to contain myself, Liese’s father gave her another six – seven in all. Seven fierce red stripes across that sumptuous pale bottom, a couple of them criss-crossing. The girl stayed in position throughout it all but halfway through she began to squeal – and I guessed she was crying. This proved to be the case when finally Liese was allowed up; she was blinking rapidly and wiped a hand quickly across a clearly tear-wet face before struggling her knickers back up under her skirt.

It was all suddenly over. My host put away his switch and they all acted more or less as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened – although the somewhat chastened-looking Liese did very soon disappear, perhaps to apply some soothing salve to what must have been a very painful backside. I was given some wine – my host’s own brew – and could now sit down though my need for this was not quite so pressing as earlier.

The mother, sitting next to me, observed, ‘Unmarried girls need to be disciplined by their father. I expect it is the same in England?’

I said that this was so but I thought a punishment would generally be in private. She smiled.

‘Oh, but you are our honoured guest.’ (Thus confirming what I had suspected earlier.) ‘And also I expect Liese did not mind to be seen by a handsome young man.’

I probably blushed at that. At 25 (as I then was) I could not imagine that it could be so: now I am older and wiser.

I saw Liese again first thing the next morning when she brought coffee and hot water into my room. Her bright ‘Good morning, Sir’ and smiling blue eyes showed no sign of embarrassment at what had happened in my presence.

Trusting my luck I asked, jokingly, ‘I hope you are not suffering any serious injury?’

She laughed. ‘Oh I am now recovered, after a night’s sleep on it. Or rather I think I sleep on my front. But that is how it is when you displease your father.’

I felt a little surge of excitement at the thought of this handsome girl lying in bed on her front, with that splendid bottom throbbing from the fierce cuts of the switch. What would her response be if I asked her to show me? But of course I did not dare ask that. Something else was said, I forget what exactly, but then with more laughter Liese said, ‘Anyway if you stay till tomorrow you will see Margit’s bottom. It is her sixteenth birthday.’

Not unnaturally, I think, I looked nonplussed at this. Liese repeated what she had said adding, ‘Surely you have that in England?’

‘Have what?’ I asked but I could get no answer – only tinkling laughter.

A little while later, when I went down to breakfast, the two girls were whispering together. They glanced at me and Margit went very red in the face. I guessed they were talking about what had been said in my room but that didn’t make me any the wiser. What could bare bottoms have to do with birthdays? It seemed ridiculous, quite inexplicable. But one thing was certain, I was going to stay around for the birthday if they were prepared to put me up.

They were most keen for me to stay, and the birthday was mentioned by the girls’ mother as well.

‘Please, you must also stay at least for Margit’s birthday which is tomorrow.’

I said I would be happy to, wondering what I could read in those eyes which were as deep blue as the daughters’: a look of amusement perhaps?

Apart from that sense of curiosity there was also the very certain fact that I was not at all keen to immediately leave these two beautiful girls; Liese especially. I had great good fortune in that regard because immediately after breakfast the mother said if I wished Liese would take me up into the mountain to see a local beauty spot – a waterfall. Margit, she remarked, had to help with preparations for her birthday. Needless to say I said I did wish, very much indeed.

We set out, with some provisions in my rucksack and in my head I must confess still most arousing thoughts of Liese’s splendid bottom, which now where it was necessary to walk single file (I naturally let her go first!) I had surging and swaying in front of my eyes in that same red dress which had been so mind-bogglingly lifted yesterday evening. Hotly I pictured those smooth and shapely thighs, the tight laced-edged knickers, and the full firm globes underneath. My walking shorts, like my long trousers of the previous evening, were soon under some strain at the front.

I asked Liese again about what she had said but got no answer, only that same amused laughter. I also, with my thoughts in more sombre mood, probed what my fair companion knew of the international scene. I was well aware, as were most of us in England then, what was brewing up. I knew what could easily happen at any moment; what, as we all know now, did very soon happen. All of that meant nothing to Liese. She just shrugged those pretty shoulders; she could not possibly imagine war coming to that idyllic backwater, and events elsewhere didn’t really mean anything to her.

That was also the attitude of them all: her father, others in the village. War? But who would be interested in them; they were poor and simple people with nothing except a few fields, a few cows. England, Germany, France… they shrugged their shoulders. They were shortly to find out, I fear.

But at 25 and with this beautiful companion on that remote mountain track, I did not let my mind dwell on such weighty matters. Not with Liese’s ripe bottom in front of me straining the red cotton of her dress at every sturdy stride. Emboldened now that I was alone with her, I asked about her beating. Did she get such a punishment very often?

‘Oh yes,’ she said with a little laugh. ‘Quite often.’

It seemed from what she said that corporal punishment for girls was much more common than in England at that time (where in turn it was much more frequently resorted to than nowadays). It seemed that a girl, in particular a ‘grown-up girl’ as Liese put it, could expect it for most shortcomings – from her father and also uncles etc. ‘Grown-up’, said Liese, was when a girl reached 16. She gave that little laugh.

‘Margit will be 16 tomorrow.’

The thought did occur to me then, I must admit, that this might be some clue to the mysterious birthday business, but Liese was going on to further fascinating details. An unmarried girl was beaten regularly in her own family, that was how it was ensured that she was a ‘good’ girl and the family’s honour was maintained. Once she was married the beating was taken over by the husband.

We had stopped for a moment on the track and Liese turned to me, smiling-eyed.

‘At the wedding the bridegroom is given a special switch, tied with ribbon. When he enters his new house with his bride the first thing he does is to give her a whipping with it. That is to ensure she respects him, and also to bring them both good luck. It is an old custom.’

I found it a little difficult to believe. Thinking of yesterday, and Liese’s bare bottom, I asked ‘On the bare?’

‘Oh yes,’ she laughed. ‘It is always like that.’ She kicked at a stone. ‘When I am married that is what will happen. For good luck and to see I behave myself. Until then it is my father who must see I behave.’

With all this talk of switching and with beautiful Liese close in front of me, her round breasts stretching the bodice of her dress, I could feel myself getting distinctly excited again.

‘So you are a very good girl then, Liese,’ I observed.

‘Good’ of course included behaving decorously, chastely, as regards the opposite sex. A daughter’s virginity was no doubt highly prized. And yet Liese’s family had been quite happy for her to go off up the mountain alone with me. Were they so sure of her behaviour, and trusting of me? Or could it be that I was such an honoured guest that…

I realised suddenly that I had become very excited. Shorts, like long trousers, were also in those days rather capacious and the effect was hopefully not immediately apparent. Eyes smiling, Liese agreed that she was a good girl. We began to walk again.

Somewhat later we stopped for some lunch, not far from the spectacular waterfall. I forget how it began again, but I must have found some way to once more raise the subject of CP, which as applied to Liese and her sister completely bewitched me. I went back to what she had said about her uncles as well as her father switching her.

‘Anyone else?’ I asked. And then (I had probably drunk too much of that red wine or I would never had been so bold), ‘What about an English visitor?’

Had Liese perhaps been thinking along similar lines? The tip of a pink tongue came out to moisten the full red lips. ‘I think so, if I did something.’

‘What?’ I asked, pulse racing.

We were sitting on the pine-needled ground, with the wine bottle and glasses and other bits and pieces. My glass, half full, was near Liese’s foot and she deliberately kicked out with her shoe, knocking it over, spilling the wine.

The large blue eyes met mine. ‘If I was clumsy and knocked your wine over.’

I got to my feet. What with the wine and everything else I almost fell down again but I got a grip of myself. ‘Come on then,’ I told her and walked, a little unsteadily, to a nearby fallen pine. It made a comfortable seat. There were no suitable switches around but I had something equally pleasurable in mind. I indicated that Liese was to get over my lap.

She did: a solid, heavenly weight that took my breath away. Head spinning, I grabbed up her skirt A moment’s hesitation – but she was lying quite passively, and hadn’t she said in respect of bare bottom ‘always’? My trembling hand went to those tight knickers… and began sliding them down.

I can see it now – see it, feel it, smell it. The sunlit clearing, the aromatic scent of the pines – and the girl bare-bottomed over my lap. My hand, as in some paradisical dream, beginning to rise and fall on to the resilient silky flesh of the ripe globes of her bottom.

It was, let me say, the first time I had ever spanked a girl. It was a wonder I didn’t faint with the excitement, but I didn’t. I think I kept on for some time, until Liese gaspingly complained that she’d had enough. She struggled up and with a red-faced glance at me began pulling up her knickers. Perhaps she was expecting something else at that point. Whether she was or not I was in too much of a state, my mind in too much turmoil, to contemplate anything else.

I don’t recall what was said; perhaps we were both somewhat embarrassed afterwards, at the sudden intimate contact, a contact that for me was like an electric shock. So I rather fancy not a lot was said as we collected up the things and began our descent.

My mind is hazy also about details of the rest of that day – all except one event, that is. Probably I was still walking about in a dream from what had happened up on the mountain; I was walking on air. The one event I am not hazy about occurred later that evening when I had gone up to my room. Suddenly, as I sat at the little table writing my diary (a diary which disastrously I was soon to lose), there was bright-eyed Liese. Again it is quite possible she might have had something else in mind but what she got was the same as before. A spanking, over my lap with her skirt up and her knickers down. My hand splatting heart-stoppingly down into those ripe womanly globes.

Doing it in her own house was if anything even more mind-boggling than before.

That was Liese and though she did not disappear from the scene – far from it – it was now, or more precisely the next day, that the younger sister Margit came more firmly into focus. She was very much a younger version of her sister, slimmer but with her figure already ripening into womanhood. She was that next day 16: a womanly age it seemed in those parts, a marriageable age. There was an aura of unconcealed excitement when I went down in the morning. I kissed Margit on the cheek, congratulating her, and I could feel her trembling. I gave her as a present a silk scarf I had brought with me from home.

I immediately found myself caught up in the heady atmosphere, the feeling that something extraordinary was to happen over and above what we in England might associate with a birthday. I could hardly wait… and I fancy even the heady delights of Liese for the moment took second place. What was to happen…?

It was after the meal, in the middle of the day. A splendid table-groaning feast with, it seemed, half the village crowded in the room – though I was told they were all relatives. The table was cleared by the womenfolk, but the wine bottles remained and toasts continued, primarily to the new 16-year-old who was looking ravishing in a lacy white dress. In the middle of all this one uncle stood up.

‘Are we now ready for Mr Switch?’

There was a sudden silence and then it seemed everyone was talking at once. Talking and laughing. They were all getting to their feet and heading for the door, filing out. Then I saw that not everyone was going, it was the children and the women. Was I to go? But as I took a step Margit’s mother squeezed my arm, her eyes bright and smiling with the wine.

‘No, our honoured guest must stay!’

Very shortly just the men were left – uncles, the grandfathers, Margit’s father of course, me – and Margit herself. A rosy-cheeked, golden-haired vision in white surrounded by these soberly-clad men. Did I have some inkling now? The room had quietened.

Margit’s father walked purposefully to the cupboard as he had done on my first evening. He took out the switch which I saw now had a white ribbon tied near the thicker end.

The men were seated again, Margit standing in the centre near the table, and I sat down too, conscious of a sudden need, a sudden tightness in my trousers. Yes, I had a pretty good idea now what was going to happen, incredible though it might have struck my English sensibilities. Standing next to his daughter, my host addressed the assembled group.

‘Margit is now sixteen. So according to custom she will demonstrate her acceptance of family discipline, which she will continue to accept so long as she remains an unmarried girl in this house.’

He turned to the red-faced Margit and she nodded. ‘Good; please prepare yourself then.’

With my heart leaping like a mad thing, I watched Margit reach up under the full skirt of her dress and take down lacy white knickers. They came right down and she stepped out of them, and placed them on the table. Then she bent herself face down over the table.

With one smooth movement Margit’s father swept her skirt up over her back, exposing the white, gartered stockings, bare upper thighs, plump bare buttocks. Then he handed the switch to one of the grandfathers who had risen to his feet. The old but still sturdy man stepped forward and gave the switch a preliminary wristy flick, to loosen his arm. And then he brought it slicing in across Margit’s trembling thrust-out nates.

It was the second switching I had witnessed in the two days I had been there, and I had also myself spanked the older girl twice, but this, this ritual sixteenth birthday switching, was in a complete class of its own. And let me say it has remained in a class of its own, for I have never since come across anything which has remotely affected me in the same way. The first grandfather gave Margit four, and then the other delivered a like number, all of them hard, biting strokes that had the girl gasping and writhing. Then the switch was offered to me…

I had to refuse; such was the state I was in I was sure I would disgrace myself in some way. So the stick was offered to one of the uncles, who willingly took it and enthusiastically followed the two older men. Then another uncle, and another. Poor Margit’s writhing bottom was criss-crossed with red stripes and though she had at first been merely gasping she was now crying out. I don’t know exactly how many men there were but there seemed to be a considerable number and they all had to have their turn. That, it seemed, was the custom.

At last they had all had their turn except Margit’s father – and me. He turned to me and at this point insisted that I perform – I was told later by the mother that every man in the room had to take part, that was the ancient tradition. So I had to give her four like all the others. I got to my feet and took the switch. The first was a mere tap but once I had done it something seemed to get hold of me and I had to bring it down hard. The last two I gave the wriggling girl were, I am sure, quite as stinging as anyone else’s. My adrenalin was surging from the exhilaration of actually whipping her bare bottom myself – a sensation so exquisite I could never attempt to describe it, nor have I ever been able to forget it.

Finally it only remained for Margit’s own father to complete the ritual with four of his own. And then it was over. Margit stood up; her skirts fell down to hide the angrily-striped buttocks. Her face was tear-stained but she managed a smile. She had merely undergone the customary rite and could now consider herself grown-up. It was the custom, the tradition, and that will make almost anything acceptable. For the initiation into adulthood it was a very small price to pay, and I am sure it had never occurred to her that attainment of this milestone could be celebrated in any other way.

The wine was being poured again and now the others were coming back into the room, joking and laughing, teasing Margit. She was now one of the women, as opposed to being a child, and more than once the older girls and women made her display her bottom – to much laughter and ribald comment, as they compared the stripes to what they themselves had suffered.

That was it, the drama was over. The party continued, I think there was some dancing afterwards but my memory is again hazy, as if subsequent events were thrown in the shade by the brilliant glare of what had gone before – which itself blazes as brightly in my mind as on that day more than 40 years ago. One other thing I do remember well, though, is the next morning. It was not now Liese who brought in my coffee and hot water but Margit.

She was now an adult and so presumably could go into the guest’s room, and perhaps had persuaded her sister that the privilege was hers. She was not shy about what had happened.

‘So now you have seen me as well as Liese.’ It was said with a coquettish smile.

I agreed that I had and meeting her frank gaze I said that perhaps I should check that she had not been injured in that region. I rather think she wanted me to say something of that sort. For she had no hesitation in getting over my lap.

Did I stay another day or was it two? All I can clearly recall, in the absence of that lost diary, is that I had a rendezvous to keep soon afterwards, in Trieste, and so I could not linger as I would have wished. As I travelled on to Trieste I was determined to retrace my steps and return – to Margit and Liese. But I never did, I could not. The storm clouds that had been gathering now began to rumble in an unmistakable manner. And suddenly a lone Englishman could no longer wander as he wished.

So I never went back. Possibly now I could, at least to that geographical spot, but I would not wish to. Because I know that the world I glimpsed so memorably on that vacation certainly does not exist. Those simple people with their traditional ways and values, that sparkling little village, above all the two girls – all of that went when I walked out, with more than one backward glance, on that fine autumn morning so many years ago.

It has surely disappeared, like many other things. But at the same time I carried it with me, bright and clear. As I still do.