Poor Mama! Monica suppressed a desire to giggle. She managed to maintain her features in the sedate and dejected condition appropriate to the occasion. Mama's feelings would be hurt and her dignity and sense of what was proper affronted by even the smallest flicker of amusement. Monica wondered if her contemporaries in the gathering had the same mixed emotions as she herself. She believed it un-likely. But she was fairly sure that the assemblage of matrons all shared and carefully disguised the same mixture of guilt and relief that she suspected were, at that moment, battling in Mama's consciousness.. Poor Mama! It must have been a most difficult decision.
The Tea things chattered on their tray and the veneer of a quiet Victorian afternoon was easily maintained by a polite murmer of gentility. Monica noticed that most of the talking was done by the Mamas. The other young ladies like herself had little to say, even though their Hostess, Madam Dubois, went to some pains to include them in her vivacity. Monica guessed that their thoughts must, in some measure, mirror her own.
Just yesterday! It had begun with Papa. A different and frightening Papa who had used few words and been unmoved by tears and who, having delivered his ultimatum, left the study at the same time as Mama had entered it. Mama had been equally terse, equally well informed, equally adamant.
"You have behaved impossibly."
"Yes Mama."
"You agree that the best thing for you is to be punished?"
"Yes Mama."
"You agree to enter Madam Dubois's establishment of your own free will?"
"Yes Mama."
There had been a lengthy pause. It was then that Monica sensed the conflict in Mama's mind. Since the awful decision had been reached and accepted by all there was doubtless a great surge of relief at having so difficult a task relegated to someone else, but a relief tempered by a guilt that a loved daughter stood condemned and consigned to the mercy of an Institution in which perhaps no mercy lay.
"You do understand, my dear," there had been a pause for suitable words to form, "Madam accepts and deals with only the most recalcitrant and erring young women? I am happy to say that she confines her clientele to gentlefolk or the nobility, but because of the temperament and history of her charges her methods must of necessity be stern and painful and prolonged. Dearest girl; your father and I have agreed that we will not coerce you. But we realize your need of punishment is greater than we who love you can bear to inflict. You possibly have some knowledge of Madam's methods. Some of your friends may have spoken of it. I want you to be quite sure that you can contemplate this severity and accept it with humility. Think hard before you say a final yes."
"I have thought hard, Mama." She had been tearful more at her mother's distress than at her own. "And I do agree it is the best way. I am sure I will hate it and wish to be home with you again. But I will try and bear what I must with humility."
There had been tears and embraces and Papa had patted her shoulder with approval at dinner that night. And all through the family turmoil Monica had sustained a pleasurable thrill of excitement. A stirring of an emotion that had puzzled her for a long time and which she only vaguely understood.
The next vivid impression was of Madam herself. Not what was to be expected at all. But better. Much better Monica decided. She wasn't that old, and she wasn't ugly, and she wasn't huge. In fact she was undoubtedly the most attractive and soignee woman in the room. Her greeting had been warm. It was as though she was truly happy to see Monica. There had even been a brief kiss. An unusually warm kiss for a first meeting. Monica could still feel it on her cheek. Again a thrill of excitement. There was nothing ordinary about Madam Dubois. Perhaps there would be nothing ordinary or drab within her house.
The tea, the cakes and the conversation had been admirable, Madam Dubois had shown unusual charm, tact and understanding. What followed was handled with the same forethought and expertise. She now took up position in the center of the drawing room. Attention was instant.
"The time has come for my permanent guests and I to take our next step. We will retire briefly in preparation. If you ladies will excuse us."
She beckoned to Monica and several others. They followed her dutifully with only time for a backward glance at their parents. Up the stairs to four open doors. A young woman was thrust into each and the door closed and locked. Monica found herself alone in a small room bare except for a single chair.
The single form fitting garment was disturbing. It was also attractive as was its wearer who unlocked the door and surveyed Monica with a competent smile of greeting. She was little older than Monica herself. She moved with a lithe grace that betokened strength. She wasted no time in greeting.
"Please to undress." It was a command. Not a request. The accent was French. "You leave your things on the chair. You will not be needing them. I will care for them for you."
Monica flushed. Within the framework of her life thus far one did not casually undress. She fumbled uncertainly with a button.
"My name is Arlette, Mademoiselle. You will obey me please."
Standing completely naked Monica was aware that she had crossed a threshold. She fought down the urge to use her hands to try and cover those portions of her person previously secret.
"Your body is admirable, Mademoiselle. I am glad. It is pleasanter so." Arlette scrutinized Monica's nudity with studied care. "And now please to turn and place your hands behind your back."
She had produced a length of cord and with deft practiced fingers crossed Monica's wrists and bound them firmly. "Please, you will come. I will hold your arm."
Monica had known embarrassment when she had placed the last of her clothing on the chair. Now with her hands tightly secured behind her back she felt doubly naked. She could cover nothing, hide no part of herself. She moved and had awareness in a new dimension.
The authoritative grip on her bare arm led her through corridors and rooms to stop finally before a large oak door. Arlette tapped. Monica suddenly realized that she was about to know the most abject shame of her life. Her worst fears were realized. The open door revealed a luxurious study. Madam Dubois sat behind an ornate desk, a pleasant smile of welcome on her face. Monica's Mama sat stiffly and uncomfortably to one side. Her features visibly held under control by determined effort. Monica felt herself one vast blush as she was positioned before Madam's desk. With three pairs of eyes fixed upon her she again fought the natural urge to shrink and cringe. Instead she asserted her compliance without words by standing firm and erect, feet braced apart, head back, breasts out-thrust. Perhaps, too, she was aware of a need within herself to maintain her pride. Despite her scarlet cheeks she smiled first at Mama and then at Madam and stood waiting.
"Your Mama and I have discussed your case, my dear," said Madam Dubois. "We find ourselves in complete agreement as to the punishment merited. Since you have done me the honor to enter my house of your own free will you will not be consulted further. I will now formally pronounce sentence upon you."
She paused and looked benignly at the naked girl as though expecting some response. Monica flashed a quick sideways glance but her Mama managed only to look pathetic. Monica felt herself the center of an "Occasion." In a courtroom now would be the moment to come out with 'guilty' or 'not guilty.' Or perhaps some impassioned plea. Again she stifled a desire to giggle. Did those other girls suffer the same surge of amusement at this point? She doubted that they did. Just her. So she said demurely:
"Thank you Madam Dubois. I am quite ready."
"You are sentenced to six months imprisonment."
Monica prayed that shock would not register on her face. Six months! It was forever!!
"You will spend the entire period as you are now, naked and restrained. There will be no minute of the time in which you will be free of cord or chain. Each night you will spend heavily chained in a cell. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with another girl. Your days will be spent in bondage. By that I mean that as a counter to the unlimited freedom you have so gravely abused beneath your parent's roof you will now know the other side of the coin. You will have no freedom at all. Each day you will be stringently fastened in such ways as will either rob you of all movement or allow you only enough to enable a shift in position or the turning of your head."
Again a pause. Monica stood aghast, but silent. Good Lord, was there more to come...? There was.
"The loss of freedom is salutary. But you will enjoy it in conjunction with another facet of training in which I place great confidence: the whip. I have found that young women are particularly susceptible to the whip. A male, I believe, may often shrug off this correction. But a girl with a well striated bottom or back will remember. It touches her femininity. Each weal she bears carries a message that she will not forget. And so, Mademoiselle, on each Friday you remain here as our guest you will receive twenty strokes with the cane on your bare bottom. In the event that you do not heal quickly enough between thrashings we can vary your penance by whipping your bare back instead. Of course," she hastily interposed; having caught a flicker of disjtress on Mama's face, "when the whip is used we will take care to protect your breasts and nipples; we have some small cups with which we shield them. They will not be cut."
Monica's mind was in turmoil. Almost piteously she once more turned to her only hope of succor. But the stony misery of her mother's face dammed back the pleas and protest that her tongue strove to utter. Helplessly she stood, not knowing what to say. There had been temptation to throw herself at Mama's feet to clutch her imploringly in the way that, in the past, had always earned her clemency. But now, naked, and with her hands tied behind her back such a gesture could produce only the ludicrous. She knew miserably that it was too late. There was nothing she could do, nothing she could say.
Arlette's voice was cool, but firm. "You will now come with me. Mademoiselle." Again Monica felt the strong grip upon her cool skin. As she was guided toward the door she tried to turn to her mother to make some sort of farewell but was propelled forward. Madam Dubois's voice was intended to be reassuring: "Don't worry, my dear. Obey Arlette. Your Mama will come and say good-bye to you in just a little while." The door closed and Monica stumbled hurried-ly where she was meant to go.
It was a large room. Widely spaced posts rose from floor to ceiling. Against one of them a naked girl was tightly bound. Monica had not seen her before. The girl accorded them only a brief flicker of interest then returned her gaze to where a sobbing woman, who Monica recognized as one of the guests at tea, was embracing awkwardly another naked young woman who was also securely bound to one of the pillars. She, too, Monica recognized as one of her fellow classmates: it seemed as good a terminology for the group as any. She cringed inwardly in sympathy with the sufferer who obviously was feeling the deepest shame at her exposure and her helplessness to make even the slightest gesture to placate the distress in which her mother was whispering both admonitions and affection in a choked undertone.
But Monica was able to give this small cameo of misery only a brief attention. She herself was thrust against a pillar. A strap circled her waist and was cinched tightly. She was held firmly against the rigid timber while her wrists were freed from the cord that had secured them behind her back. What happened to her then, she realized miserably, was probably a foretaste of her condition in the months that lay ahead.
Arlette was more than competent at her task. Her fingers flew with surety and a cruel strength. Cords were drawn under Monica's armpits up over her shoulders, crossed behind her and knotted tightly. She found herself held immovably, shoulders wrenched back so that the cords bit deep and burned with an unyielding intensity each time she breathed. The stricture thrust her breasts forward provocatively. Instinctively she raised her hands to cover them, but her wrists were caught and pulled taut behind the post where they too were securely tied so that she could not move them. Then her ankles were deftly corded with two firm bands that circled both her ankles and the wood; one leg on each side of the post so that they were thus slightly parted enhancing her exposure. Tentatively she essayed a shiver of revolt. But found that she was held immobile. She could move only her head. She wondered miserably if her neck would be bound too, thus robbing her of even that small motion. But when Arlette straightened from her efforts and gathered her unused cords she smiled amusedly at her captive. Then left the room accompanied by the distrait mother who had managed her final good-byes during the time it had taken to render Monica helpless.
The three captives examined each other. Monica uncertainly, the other new girl in mute misery and the stranger with a broad smile that Monica found vaguely indecent under the circumstances.
"Hurts, doesn't it?" the strange girl asked.
There was no answer.
"It's a beastly way to be tied. The longer they leave you the more painful it gets. But maybe being naked hurts worse for you. Does it? My first day was so long ago I've almost forgotten. But being naked was pretty bad."
"Then what are you looking so happy about?" Monica demanded.
"Oh, I'm just amused. I've been given a job. Quite a privilege really. I'm supposed to brief you four new girls on what to expect and what to do. So I have been tied here for the afternoon."
"You mean you are like us? In prison--to be punished?"
"Yes. Sorry and all that ... should have told you. My name's Eve. Never mind the rest of it. I even have a title. If only that stuffy old Queen Victoria could see me now, she'd toss me in the Tower for life. Actually I'm doing a full year here with Dubby-we call the Madam that when she's not around. I'm seven down and five to go." Her face suddenly sobered. "It's a long time."
"You seem damn cheerful about it," said the third girl resentfully.
"No, not really. But I told you this is a privilege. It is. I get to meet some new girls who probably feel a lot worse than I do right at this moment, and I've been given permission to talk. In fact I've been told to talk. You have no idea how good that is. They say I talk too much so often I have to wear a gag all day or maybe they order me to silence with some awful penalty if I break it. So I'm going to talk. Please ask me questions...."
Her chatter was cut short by the opening of the door. Monica felt certain that she was shamefaced and scarlet as her mother approached. Never had she known such bitter humiliation and such shame. She was heartbreakingly conscious of her out-thrust breasts and the black triangle that her parted legs exposed. Suddenly her courage failed. She did the thing she had promised herself not to do:
"Mother please! Please take me home! Don't leave me here like this!!"
It was hopeless, of course. She had known it would be. But she had had to try. Madame Dubois had smiled indulgently and stood watching as mother and daughter had shed their tears and made their fumbling farewell. When it was over Monica stood helplessly blinking back tears whilst the sad scene was repeated with the two other girls who were tethered by Arlette to their respective posts. Then the five girls were alone. There was silence for a few moments save for muffled sobbing. Eve broke it:
"Welcome to the Club, girls," she said cheerfully. "Glad to see you are all trim and shipshape. I hate fatties and bones. How about names?"
Monica heard a dejected girl's voice give her own name and other equally unhappy responses revealed a Marjorie, a Diana, and a Joan. Examining her companions she realized, with a pleased thrill that she could not truly understand, that without exception they were beautiful. She wondered if perhaps Madame Dubois insisted on that....But why.
Monica knew a sense of unreality about Eve. The girl's voice was quite matter-of-fact, almost cheerful. Her features portrayed no distress. Yet she was bound as tightly as the rest and must have been suffering the same burning cords as they cut into the soft flesh. But Eve did seem cheerful and was obviously determined to fulfill her task. Perhaps that was the answer: she might be punished if she failed to instruct....
"You have all just been sentenced," Eve continued. "Only the period of your stay here varies. We are all punished in the same ways and with the same severity. But I have to warn you that you can easily add to your inflictions by disobedience, impudence or constant complaint. Dubby and Arlette won't countenance any of those three things. In fact they won't tolerate anything at all. They can guess what we are thinkingI've often been whipped just because of a look on my face. So watch that."
"You mean we may be whipped more than the weekly whipping we have been sentenced to?" Diana queried bleakly.
"Indeed you can!" Eve assured her cheerfully. "So now is the time for me to try and tell you about punishment. That's what we are here for. Just simply to be punished. Our dear Mamas and Papas believe that if we are punished enough we will be good little girls for the rest of our lives-maybe they are right. I know that if I could be set free to go home I'd promise anything right now. But that's something to remember: you have all agreed to come here of your own free will and now that you are here stark naked and well tied you will never be set free or given any chance to escape. But your biggest shock is going to be the punishment: You see, I think it's the same with all of us. When we are told about coming here we are upset and repentant and scared and want to make amends so when they tell us about being chained and tied and whipped we just think 'Oh yes. I expect I deserve it.' We don't really think about it the way we should. I bet there isn't one of you who has ever been tied as you are now or whipped on her bare skin...?"
There was a shocked murmur of assent.
"Of course not! Neither was I! I feel an idiot now the way I agreed to everything. The fact is we aren't thinking at all at the time. We allow ourselves some silly mental picture of a bit of discomfort and humiliation and the loss of our liberty-I think it's the loss of liberty that looms largest in our minds. All the dances and the parties we'll miss, and we feel a bit heroic at what we are doing. We don't really think about pain. But pain is what we ought to think of most because it's what happens to us most. I bet you are all hurting more at this minute than you ever believed a few lengths of cord could make possible? Am I right?"
Another murmur of agreement. "But is it this bad all the time?" Marjorie demanded.
"It can vary from much worse than this to just simple fatigue and boredom from having to stand against a wall all day because of a little band of metal round your neck-connected by a chain to a ring in the stone, of course."
"But this cord is cutting right into my shoulders," complained Monica. "I'm scared to even try and move. It hurts too much."
"Yes, I know. The way we are tied now is a bad one. Of course it depends on how long they leave us this way. The longer we are tied like this the more it hurts. But the real pain I have to prepare you for is being whipped. You just haven't any idea how bloody awful it is. Nothing that has ever happened to you prepares you for it. You think you'll grit your teeth and show 'em what you're made of and all that rot. But when Arlette slices into your bare bottom with that damn cane you beg and plead and struggle and do everything you promised yourself you would not do. You also do something I almost hate to tell you of: you howl. Up to that moment you never believe such pain was possible. But Arlette, without even exerting herself very much, can make you believe you are being sliced to pieces and each piece burned with a hot iron...." Eve paused, as though remembering. "The awful thing is that you never get used to it. It hurts just as much the tenth time as the first time. I suppose, in a way, being tied for punishment the way we are here one does get used to that. I suppose that you are suffering more at this moment than I am even though I'm tied just as tightly as you are. You do adjust. But it's in the mind. For the first days it's such an awful shock and the days seem endless. You get scared, really scared, that maybe they have forgotten you and that you'll stay tied that way on and on. But after a while you learn not to think or yearn for release. You just endure and try and think of other things. It's the awful yearning for the door to open and for Arlette to come and release you that makes the day twice as long and shreds your nerves. Remember that!"
"But what's the Madame like?" Joan asked timidly. "She seemed so pleasant."
"Being pleasant is Dubby's specialty," Eve conceded amusedly. "She does it well, and I really believe that's her true personality. I think she loves us all. We are 'her girls.' But just the same she is a true believer in the cord and the whip and keeping bad little girls naked and well restrained. I am sure she sees her work as quite noble in its way. Of course she's got Arlette. It's Arlette who really punishes us. Dubby has whipped me once or twice, but she doesn't often infringe on Arlette's province. She and Arlette seem to have a perfect understanding of their respective roles. Dubby gives Arlette complete authority, she does as she pleases with us. And let me warn you: Don't complain to Dubby about anything Arlette has done to you-anything at all. It will just get you another whipping."
"You sound as though we get whipped all the time," accused Monica plaintively. "I was sentenced to be whipped just once a week. Doesn't that mean anything?"
"It means that you can be quite certain of being whipped once a week," said Eve equably. "The sentence said nothing about the possibility that you might also be whipped every day. You can be. I remember once I was whipped five days in a row-just for poutmg.
A further question died on Monica's lips. Arlette had entered and swiftly loosened Eve's cords, snapped handcuffs on her wrists and led her away. In quick succession she treated the other three girls in like fashion. Monica stood taut against her post and wondered if being left until last might hold some significance. She found herself hoping that it did.
Monica's mind was in turmoil as she stood helplessly in her bonds alone and wondering after the last of her companions had been led away. Instinctively she struggled but was rewarded only by pain wherever the cords held her. Passive she subsided and tried to analyze her reactions to the rapid succession of shocks and impressions of the last two hours. It was almost too much: from a young lady of quality to a bound and naked thrall....Yet she could not deny a peculiar thrill of excitement and curiosity. She believed that she should be very frightened indeed. Was she? She examined herself and was not sure. There was an enigma in Madame Dubois and in Arlette, even in the girl Eve. The first two were quite different from her expectations. She would have used the words, much better. Eve was a strangely animated captive as a prisoner of seven months. Yet Eve had said nothing to encourage-quite the reverse.
As the cords fell away Monica got her first intimation of Arlette's total efficiency. She was untied except for her ankles then, whilst her feet were still held tight against the post so that she could not move from it, her wrists were neatly and tightly tied once more behind her back so that never for a moment did she have a chance to revolt. Ankles freed she was guided on a journey that ended in a prison cell. Three stone walls, a barred window high in one, and iron bars and a barred doorway for the fourth. She could look through the bars into a limited view of the corridor. She herself would at all times be open to plain view for anyone who cared to pass that way. There was a cot and mattress. Arlette seated herself negligently. Monica was about to do the same but was jerked erect by a sharp command:
"To stand before me please. Mademoiselle is to remember she is a prisoner. Prisoners sit when given permission only."
She knew a moment of revolt, one of many she would feel in the days and weeks to come. Who was this French snippet to order her about! But a quick glimpse of a dilemma quenched the hot words that had risen to her lips: of what use to protest! She had acquiesed to the plight in which she now stood. Neither could she physically seek to stem the tide on which she was drawn. The bite of the cords about her wrists were a bitter reminder that she could not fight or even run. Passively she stood as directed.
Arlette scanned her with amusement. It was obvious the French girl had accurately sensed her inward turmoil: "Mademoiselle would perhaps wish to struggle and free her hands. No? As it is in the books, to tug and twist and; voila, it is done."
Monica would have loved to stamp her foot in vexation. But, instead, said flatly: "No thank you. You have tied me too tightly. I would only look silly."
"Merci, not all are so sensible. Some fight very hard. They pull and pull and get very angry and call me bad words. Then I whip them. Very soon they behave and stand still, just as you, Mademoiselle, stand now."
Monica knew a claustrophobic moment. To lose the use of both hands and arms left one terribly exposed, doubly naked. To be whipped like this was something best not thought about. So she said brightly: "If you will always tell me what I must do I will try and please you."
"You please me very much," said Arlette.
Monica was conscious of more blushes as Arlette studied her nudity with what seemed a knowing and practiced eye. Unable to cover any part of herself she decided to stand taut and to the best advantage. Doing so she became aware of Arlette's approval.
"I think we will like each other very much," Arlette continued. "Perhaps we may even love each other a little." She looked up at Monica mischievously, "Did mademoiselle know it possible to love someone who whips you?"
"I don't believe that," Monica stated firmly.
"But it is true!" Arlette's voice held laughter. "But that is for another day. Now I think I must give you some small instruction. It is required that you should know some things and behave in certain ways. First I should tell you that you must call me Mistress, always. Madame, of course, is Madame to both of us. This shows respect. You will not forget?"
"I will remember, Mistress." Monica felt she had shown the right spirit.
"Tres bon, mon petite. Perhaps I may need to whip you a very little only. Just every week like the sentence say. It will be much joy to whip you. You have the figure magnifique. I will make you squirm to my delight. But now there are other things I must do to you."
"The "other things" had been dramatically obvious to Monica immediately she had been shepherded into her cell. When Madame Dubois had spoken of chains they had seemed a remote improbability. But not now! Monica realized she had not seen so much chain ever before. Could it all be for her!
It was! She watched, almost with incredulity, as Arlette with her usual deft decisive motions locked a metal band snugly about her left ankle. It was joined to another band by a very few links and this other band was now clasped to encircle her right ankle. Under Arlette's strong fingers the metal clicked shut with a frightening finality. It was as though the shackles had been tailored to fit so snugly did they grip her. There was nothing crude about them. They were beautifully fashioned and their mechanism worked with oiled perfection.
"Please to walk a little, Mademoiselle."
It was a strange sensation. Her first two steps were almost a stumble. With her hands fastened behind her back Monica had no wish to fall. Carefully she essayed tiny measured paces. She knew a flicker of fear at this new prisonment yet had to supress a desire to giggle. The linkage between her ankles accompanied her uncertain steps with a pleasant clinking sound as she made her brief journey and returned to where she had been ordered to stand.
Next it was a lighter but broader band that exactly clasped her narrow waist and was fastened by a padlock at her back. It, too, snapped shut with a firm and final sound and Monica found herself attached by a quite long length of chain to a ringbolt set in the stone wall behind the narrow cot. The metal was a conscious weight upon her slenderness.
"Oh no, please. Not my neck!" The exclamation was involuntary despite Monica's resolution to bear what she must. She eyed the shining collar with its long length of more slender chain that was now in Arlette's hand. Even before it was raised she sensed what its small circumference was intended to encircle. But her anguished eyes fell abashed before Arlette's broad grin of amusment so that she stood still and flinched only slightly as the cold metal clasped her throat and was locked snug with its chain falling behind her back and trailing to another ring set in the stone at the head of the cot. Light though the chain might be still it would constitute a constant drag upon the slight column of her neck. It seemed un-likely that she could ever grow unaware of it.
"Mademoiselle wears chains beautifully." Arlette sounded pleased. She tugged at the cords around Monica's wrists so that a moment later Monica was rubbing the chafed skin where the cords had held her tight. But the red indentations were immediately encircled by metal so that the two wrists were held in thrall by shining bands joined by links of but four or five inches in length. Fascinated she raised her hands and examined her new prisonment. The fetter was a thing of beauty. It was a part of her. It would allow her some small freedom with her hands. But not much. In their totality the chains that had been placed upon her rendered her more helpless than she had ever been in her life. Obviously no hand and no tool could free her: only a key. A key that she herself would never be allowed to hold.
"Again, mademoiselle. Please to walk-as best you can."
It was a pitifully small walk. The chain linking her ankles swirled. Those holding her at neck and waist tightened and became heavy as she approached the limits of their tether. Having tested the limits of their tolerance Monica once more stood dutifully before the girl whose prisoner she unquestionably was. She felt herself blushing again as she sought a natural posture for her linked hands. Should she hold them joined before her, raise them beside her neck or allow them to fall listlessly to half cover the black triangle of hair below her belly. She chose the latter and waited.
Arlette negligently resumed her seat on the hard narrow mattress. She hugged one knee and allowed her eyes to rove up and down the figure of the girl she had chained. Her tone was conversational.
"They seem very much, these chains, no?"
"They're horrible!" Monica burst out. "You don't need to chain me like this!"
"Oh but of course! Pauvre petite Monique! These lovely chains are not just for to stop naughty girls escaping-just one of them would do that. They are pour le shame. Mademoiselle wears them for a penance. She will wear them every night while she is here."
"But it's so silly." Monica was almost in tears. "There's nothing I can do. You are going to lock me up anyway and now I have to sit here with all these horrible things fastened to me. They won't stop me doing anything because there's nothing to do."
Arlette chuckled. "Mademoiselle is lucky. She should not complain. She will sleep very comfortably when she has got used to arranging her chains just so. They will hold you but they will not hurt you. If you think you are sad, then think of Eve tonight. Because she was not a good girl she now wears twice as many chains as you. There are chains also on her elbows and her knees and chains joining her ankles and her wrists and her wrists to her girdle. Poor Eve, she is so heavy with chains that she does not stand at all, or try to walk." Arlette giggled. "Perhaps mademoiselle would like to be chained like that...?"
"Oh very well." Monica hoped she sounded more docile than she felt. "I know I was sentenced to chains so I'll have to make the best of it." Her look toward her captor was pleading, "I will try and not complain too much. But it's all so strange and so new and so fast. I expect I'm frightened."
Arlette did an unexpected thing. Rising she clasped Monica's head and kissed her gently and lovingly on the lips. "Not to be afraid, mon chere petite. I think I will love you very much, and I think after I have whipped you many times you will love me. You do not believe this now. But you will." Gently she lowered her lips and licked tentatively at Monica's nipples. Then enfolded them firmly. Monica stood, her cheeks flaming scarlet, aware of a quite new sensation. Arlette stood back and encircled the circumference of each breast with one finger in a light tracery of touch. She smiled.
"There is a chain I did not speak of. It is very beautiful; made for firm breasts like these. It encircles the chest. Two rings fit around your breasts so that when it is tightened and locked at the back they stick out very nicely in front. It is very good for the playing with the nipples, such helpless little nipples when the chain is made very tight. I will chain you like that one day. But not now."
Arlette resumed her pose on the cot. "It pleases me to tell you of some of the things that will be your punishments. I am cruel, am I not?" She looked up at her captive roguishly. "But it will give mademoiselle much to think about while she is chained alone here. At such times it is good to have such things for there is much loneliness for naughty girls when they are chained naked and locked up for the night in their cell."
"But there are no covers on the cot," Monica pointed out, feeling that she somehow wanted to cling to the mundane. She had little wish to hear whatever it might be that Arlette obviously would enjoy telling.
Arlette grinned with enjoyment at her victim's digression. "But mademoiselle will sleep sans covers just as she walks sans clothes. Mademoiselle must at all times know that her person is ready and available for the whip. Mademoiselle has been naughty....The air will always be very warm...." she added as an afterthought. "And now perhaps I should continue."
Monica longed to protest the idea of sleeping naked on that sparse narrow mattress. Such a thought could have found no place in her former life. But that life was gone. She played now what seemed to be the only trump card she had left. "But, but surely you must...." She knew again that she was blushing, "there are times ... you will have to set me free...."
Arlette giggled happily. "Mais non, Cherie." Deftly she rolled back the bottom of the mattress which had indeed seemed unduly long, "Voila! The good Madame thought of everything when she had these nice cells made in which to lock naughty girls. You see! No trouble at all! Your chains are long enough."
Indeed they would be long enough, Monica realized.
The complete facility was there cunningly hidden within the cold stone of the cot or bench on which her mattress rested. Miserably she realized that she could be chained and left as she was forever without need to move or release her for the body's functions.
Arlette allowed the mattress to slip back and hide the utility. Happily she resumed:
"Mademoiselle glimpses how she will spend her nights. So I will tell something of her days. Our good Madame when she sentenced you told you how you would be robbed of freedom each day....Ah oui ma petite, you are about to say that you have no freedom now! But that is not so. You can walk several steps. You can rise or lay down. You can sleep or stay awake. You can scratch yourself when there is a place that demands scratching. In fact you are almost free compared to the manner in which our young ladies-our naughty young ladies-spend their days." She smiled mischievously. "Has mademoiselle perhaps ever spent a day standing in the stocks?"
"Of course not! You know I haven't...." Monica felt ashamed at such a thought.
"Ah, but now you will. I will lift up the heavy wood with its nice little holes just made to fit and mon pauvre Cherie will place her sweet little neck in the big circle in the center and her sweet little wrists one in each of the little circles to each side after she has taken her lovely hair and brought it forward and allowed it to fall down beside one cheek. Then I will very carefully let the bar down and mademoiselle will find that she can only wriggle her hands or her head. They will be held tight so that she must just stand there until someone decides to set her free. But that time will be far away. So she will just stand there and think about how foolish it was to be a naughty girl. She will even still be wearing the chains upon her ankles so that she cannot even kick."
"I don't want to hear any more," Monica said firmly but without hope.
"But there are other kinds of stocks, too. Mademoiselle should not despair." Arlette continued imperturbably. "One is so simple. You place your so nice derriere upon a bench and then your so nice ankles in the little slots so that I may lower the bar upon them, and there you sit. Sometimes we stretch the ankles very wide apart; this is very shaming to naughty girls. The holes are there to use. But it is such an easy way to spend the day, is it not? But there is one little thing-such a little thing. Your hands are tied behind your back so that you cannot use them to ease your position and your weight upon that hard bench. As the hours pass you wish very much that you could. It becomes so hard. Sometimes the naughty girls cry...."
"Surely it can't hurt worse than the way we were tied this afternoon?"
Arlette shrugged. "It is for mademoiselle to dis cover. There will be whole days like that. The naughty girls do not seem happy on such days so perhaps it is very painful to be tied so. But I tell now of the other kind of stocks-the not so nice ones. In these our little girl must sit as in the last I told of but now there is another bar to which she must raise her wrists and watch them clasped in the little holes so that now she sits with her feet spread wide and her arms spread and raised in front. She cannot move at all. Our girls tell me it is very trying to spend the day thus. Often I feel sorry for them and try to ease their ennui by giving them small pleasures with my hands and sometimes with my lips. Just small pleasure comprenez vous. Just enough to make them long for more, and then I go away and leave them. I am very cruel ... No?"
"I don't understand such things," said Monica miserably.
"I think you do, Cherie. You will. You will welcome my fingers and my lips very much on those days when you will stand very straight and very taut upon your toes because your wrists are fastened tight very far above your head. Such a day seems very long indeed. You so much long to lower your arms. You cannot. You must stand so all day. It is very bad."
Monica blinked back tears. The pressure of emotion and events were hard to bear. She wanted desperately to acquit herself well before this rather likable French girl who had become her Mistress. But it was hard. She felt supremely ridiculous standing naked as she was. Any motion she essayed resulted instantly in the sound of metal on metal. Even to shift her weight from one foot to another evoked the clink of chain. These small sounds of the links that held her kept her flushed with shame. There was no escaping them. They accentuated her nudity. The chains fastened upon her were a manifold emphasis of a bondage of which she was deeply ashamed. It was too late now but she ardently wished that she could undo those acts of her own that had brought her to this plight. Much of what the French girl was now describing became vividly real in her almost certain knowledge that she must certainly suffer such punishment. It was why she was here. But some of Arlette's references and promises left her disturbed by emotions not previously plumbed in her suburban girlhood. They were indeed disturbing. She knew that even though she might dismiss them verbally she would never erase them from her inward awareness. Nor did she wish to. She had even felt a guilty excitement. She felt sure, too, that Arlette was well aware that this was so. Monica was concerned at that moment on just how she should react to her beautiful jailer's teasing. She was normally a spirited girl. The chains and the graphic descriptions of punishments to come irked her. But she was under a control even more compulsive: her affection for her parents and her voluntary acceptance of this bondage, plus a wish that she could not stifle to try and do the things that she believed Arlette might truly wish her to do. Thus she stood a naked captive held in thrall more by a turmoil of emotions than by her chains. So she stood meekly with downcast eyes as she supposed a girl in her situation was "expected to stand.
"But it is not always so bad," Arlette continued cheerfully. "Sometimes, maybe as a little reward, I will chain you just by the neck only to the wall so that you stand quite naturally. But the chain she will be but a very few links only so that you will not be able to move away. You just stand. I will tie your hands behind your back so that you cannot use them to give yourself pleasure to relieve the ennui-this is very tantalizing. You will wish so much to have your hands. But they will be tied tightly high at your back. You will stand and stand and think and think and move from one foot to another and wonder what the time is. You will even move the small inches this way and that and turn a little to the wall. But always you will end by just standing. It does not hurt at all. One almost wishes that it did a little. It is a punishment of the most simple, but I remember it made me of the most angry to stand."
"You!" exclaimed Monica aghast.
"But, of course, Cherie." The French girl's laughter pealed out in genuine merriment at the look on her captive's face. "You do not think that Arlette is without knowledge of what she tells. The good Madame has sometimes been displeased with her grisetteperhaps I have punished too much or too little or perhaps I have been lazy or without politeness. When this is so the hand of our good Madam falls very heavy and poor Arlette finds herself standing in some position she would wish to be without ... or maybe sitting. It is never nice what happens at such times." She made a little moue of resignation. "Then even Arlette must suffer a outrance though always a contre coeur."
"You mean you get punished. Just like Eve and the rest of us?" Even to her own ears Monica sounded incredulous. "But why ... Why do you accept it?"
Arlette produced a delightfully Gallic shrug. "It is that this work I do pleases me very much. I would not wish to go away from it. The good Madam when she is employing me explained that I would be required so to dispose myself at her pleasure for two reasons she desired. First that she truly believes that girls need to be punished. Second she so wished that no infliction should be greater or more severe than is wise upon her girls. Thus Arlette has received all of the punishments much like-what you call it ... the guinea pig. So poor Arlette has been a guinea pig many times. It was not nice...."
"You-you mean you have stood in the stocks-and all those other things...?"
"Oh, oui, mademoiselle. So it is that it is known to Madam and to Arlette what our girls are able to endure. We do not punish them beyond that. Perhaps we take them to where they are quite sure they cannot endure. But it is we who know. Madam believes it is good that we should know this. Even though it has been of the most painful for Arlette to discover."
Monica eyed her companion with enhanced respect. It was all quite incredible. But then the chains whose weight she bore with constant awareness were incredible. Arlette's cheerful chronicle would have been fantasy a week ago. Now she believed every word of it. She quickly quelched an entertainingly vivid mental picture of Arlette shamefully chained or standing chagrined in the stocks. She pleaded:
"Please don't tell me more of these horrid things that I must bear. I'm sure they are awful and I'm sure I'll cry and make a fuss. I expect I'll find out all about them soon enough."
"Mademoiselle has six whole months."
Tears came to Monica's eyes: "Please, I can't bear the suspense. What are you going to do to me now?"
Arlette shook her head with a mock frown. "That is bad. Madam's girls do not ask of such things. To do so is to be punished. I should whip now that nice round bottom." She grinned mischievously. "But it is the first day and all rules are not yet known. Madam says always to be merciful. So I will not make the so delightful red stripes where you sit. They will be for mademoiselle to enjoy another time."
"Enjoy!" Monica wished she had bitten back the exclamation.
"Mais oui, Cherie!" Arlette's eyes sparkled gleefully. "Perhaps not of the first time-it is of a hurting most terrible. But if Arlette helps then one day mademoiselle ... who knows."
"You mean you'll be kind-that you won't make it ... hurt?" Monica's voice quavered uncertainly.
"Oh, non, non mademoiselle. That is not what I mean at all. Mademoiselle will always be whipped of the most hard. It is much the best so. When Arlette whips you your bottom will know it is of the most severe and you may come to feel such other things beside the pain....But let us not of this now talk. It is for another day." There was laughter in the French girl's voice. "Mademoiselle is of the most curious. So I will tell her that she is now ready for sleeping. There is bread, water and fruit. That is all. Mademoiselle will be alone for the rest of the evening and for the night. So she may do much thinking. Mademoiselle is not hurting. Her chains will hold her very tight. But they will not hurt. Not if you do not fight them." She smiled archly, "Or does mademoiselle perhaps think that after Arlette has gone she will fight her chains and maybe get free...?"
Monica knew she was being teased. But despite the knowledge she found herself raising her joined wrists and examining the metal bands that encircled them so snugly and the shining links that held them close. Then, disdainfully, she raised one foot and shook it so that its linkage swirled until it snubbed her ankle and held it taut. Each circlet of metal that prisoned her nakedness fit her with a precision and a tight caress as though tailored only for her. With a shrug of resignation she returned her foot to the floor and allowed her hands once more to fall so that she posed a picture of beautiful docility.
"Of course not! You know I won't." It was hard to keep her voice even and without resentment. "I could never get free of these-these things...." She shook one wrist so that the answering clink of chain emphasized the fine degree of disgust with which she, a young woman of fine breeding, managed to clothe that last word.
"So sensible a girl." Arlette approved. She grinned amusedly. "But you will see: after Arlette has gone and ma petite is all alone she will amuse herself to test what those nice chains will permit. It is natural so. We all do. But now I must leave my little caged pigeon. Arlette has much work...."
With sure swift motion the French girl rose and, clasping Monica's head gently between her hands imprinted a soft warm kiss upon her lips, a kiss that Monica instinctively yearned to prolong but which left her watching dolefully as her lovely jailer left the small cell. The heavy metal barred door clanged shut with a harsh finality and Monica knew a moment of fear as the key was turned and the sound of well oiled bolts sliding home told her brutally that she was indeed captive. Arlette tossed her a laughing kiss of farewell and was suddenly gone. She stood naked in her bonds and gazed forlornly through the bars at the huge key to her cell where it hung mockingly on the wall across the corridor where Arlette had placed it.
Monica would always remember this first evening of her captivity. But it was a strange mixture of emotions that she was prey to. The first was fear. With Arlette gone there was a total silence broken only by the sound of her own chains if she moved. Her so total enslavement was frightening. All movement inhibited. Caged within stone walls and iron bars and a door terribly locked. Her nudity made her doubly defenseless, doubly shamed. Suddenly the walls had eyes and she longed to cover herself. Suppose she was forgotten here-left locked and chained as the days dragged by! Resolutely she thrust such thoughts away. Her plight was exactly as she had been told it would be. There was no cause for panic. She remembered her sentence: to be chained in a cell at night and to be punished each day: to be regularly whipped once each week. She shivered, but not from cold. The air was warm. She was a normally courageous girl, but the time ahead was daunting.
Striving to rationalize her condition she knew that she was able to contain her panic because of Arlette. Arlette had a way with her. Monica had little expectation of either connivance or leniency from this exuberant French girl. Madam Dubois's discipline would undoubtedly be imposed to the letter. But still it was good to know that the key to her chains was held by a girl of her own age with whom she might laugh and perhaps seek comfort. There was a reassuring glow in the memory of Arlette's lips....Monica found herself examining a seemingly irrelevant pleasure in her memory that her jailer was beautiful.
She was tired of standing. She had stood thus since Arlette's order to do so. Now she could move. But how-where! To so immediately prove Arlette correct in her prediction would be annoying; but she had been right, there was a nagging compulsion to test the limits of her confinement. Monica took a tentative step toward the door, then another. The chains that held her at neck and waist uncoiled and followed her like obedient pets. Another hobbled shuffle and yet another....Suddenly her tethers asserted their authority. Her neck snapped back and there came a harsh tug at her waist. She stood, the chains taut joining her naked figure to the wall. It was infuriating. She was still several feet from the door. She doubted that she might even reach if someone was to offer her something thrust through the bars. She was worse off than even the animals in the zoo. They, at least, could reach the outer limits of their prison. There was a bitter humiliation in this knowledge that the cell door could as well have been left open. Chained as she was she could never pass through it.
Dolefully she retraced her steps and tested the mattress. It was hard. She had expected it would be. She ate a peach and drank some water. A mental picture of her parent's dinner table and the savory food that would be dispensed from it left her aware that her punishment encompassed more than the loss of liberty. Prodding the mattress with her chained hands left her wondering if it might not also include the loss of sleep. It seemed improbable that a girl might lay on this unyielding bench and be quite naked with no covering whatsoever and every part of her held in the embrace of chains whose unaccustomed weight imposed a constant awareness and their clinking and rattle as she moved was like a small and mocking laughter at her discomfort.
"What cannot be cured must be endured." Monica remembered the adage ruefully. She lifted her chained legs on to the narrow bench, stretched out and lay down. But there was chain everywhere. The links that had been all too short when she had striven to reach the door now coiled beneath her redundantly. Angrily she thrust them away and off the surface on which she must lay. But then their hanging length tugged at her as a weight at her neck and at her middle. She wished that she might have been chained only at wrist and ankle. These strictures were bad enough but could be borne. It was the long lengths of chain tethering her to the wall that had become an enemy to rest. Unhappily she tugged and pushed until they ceased to irk.
Suddenly and strangely she fell asleep.
It is to be supposed that Madam Dubois was well aware of the tonic quality of the unexpected. Certainly none of her new charges had imagined that on the first morning of their new condition they would find themselves standing in line on the polished floor of a well appointed gymnasium. Six naked young women, chained at wrist and ankle; otherwise free. There had been smiles of recognition as they had been shepherded together and some rueful grimaces over the noise of their chains. But they had been adjured to silence by Arlette as she had brought them from their cells. A silence that none would break for Madam Dubois herself was present and, even though her face bore a smile, her hand held a black and wicked looking riding crop.
"Attendez! To stand very straight and to make a thrust out with the chest, please."
There was a shuffling and much clinking. Stealing a swift glance sideways from her position at
THE ENDof the row Monica felt an impulse to giggle-the room seemed suddenly filled with breasts and nipples. But she took a deep breath and stuck out her own dutifully and waited.
"It is not good that young women have no exercise," said Madam Dubois. "Mostly, as you have been told, you will move very little or not at all. So each morning we will have the blood to circulate with drill that my good Arlette will instruct. Please to pay attention and obey. You wear the chains because you must. It is best so ... no silly ideas. But they will not impede the motions required." Madam Dubois's eyes swept benignly over the erect row of girls, "To not obey is to be whipped." Suddenly she cut the air in a swift arc with the crop. Its vicious whine prompted six female spines to an even greater rigidity, "It is a good sound-No?"
Monica was tired and hot and damp when Arlette was through with them. Eve was the only one who had acquitted herself well. She was used to the chains. The rest of them found their metal bonds a handicap. There had been some sharp admonitions. But the whip had not been used.
"It is good to perspire. But now we shower." Madam announced.
The shower room was as unexpected as the gym. A bare stone compartment with a hose. On the opposite wall a metal ring. Arlette disposed her class around the room. She then motioned to Eve who obediently stepped up to the metal ring and offered her hands so that their chain could be padlocked to it. She thus stood with her hands held above her head, but not strained. She was free to move within the limits of the linkage that fastened her wrists. It was obvious that the position was not new to her. She stood waiting, not happily, but evidently with a knowledge of what was about to take place.
There was no pause. Madam picked up the hose, turned on the water and directed the strong spray full upon the chained girl. Monica, watching, lost any illusion that the water might be warm. Eve gasped. The sardonic glint her eyes habitually held was instantly replaced by one of abject misery. Gasping and shaking the water from her eyes she turned this way and that in response to curt orders. Madam's voice was crisp: "Back," and then "Front," and again: "To the side please." Watching the helpless girl endure the awful spray that cleverly sought out every intimate part of her it was hard to know if this was an ablution or a punishment. Monica guessed it to be both.
The water stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Arlette unlocked the padlock and handed Eve a heavy towel with which the chained girl quickly began a fumbling effort to dry her shivering nakedness as she moved to join the others. Arlette beckoned to Monica.
Miserably she took the same stance as had Eve. Determined not to disgrace herself she raised her chained hands and heard the click as Arlette snapped the lock. She must stand now as though part of the wall itself. Her stricken gaze sought Eve to see how well it might be possible to dry oneself with chained hands. But at that moment the water struck her full force and all other things were forgotten in one great gasp of pure agony.
It was far worse than Monica had imagined it would be. No doubt Eve had become inured to it. But she was not. The awful cold and the stinging jets bit at her as though alive. She had never known cold like this. Cold so awful that it enveloped and demoralized completely taking her courage with it. Dimly through the battering of the water she heard Madam's voice issuing the commands that she must obey. Pitifully she tried, but whichever way she turned the water sought her out relentlessly. As though from a great distance she heard her own voice: "Oh, please! No more! Oh, please atop!! I can't bear it...."
Instantly the water did stop as though bv magic.
"Mademoiselle perhaps prefers the whip?" Madam's voice was equally icy.
Monica had never felt more bereft. Hands chained above her head, naked, water dripping from every part of her, unable to move from where she stood. Blinking she shook the water from her eyes. Instantly they focused on the awful slenderness of the whip in Madam Dubois's hand. She was sure it would hurt unbearably. She felt ashamed of her weakness. Reason dictated that it was better to endure the water alone rather than both the water and the whip. Once more she heard her voice pitiful in its hopelessness:
"I am sorry, Madam. Please forgive me. I do not want to be whipped. Please continue my shower. I will be good...."
"Tres bon!" said Madam Dubois approvingly.
Once more the water sought and held its victim. A victim who, this time, turned and stood as she was told and who did not again cry out beyond the involuntary gasps that were beyond control.
Thus Monica received her first shower.
They were allowed to help each other dry. Each dis covered that there was much of the human anatomy that could not be towelled by linked hands. They were grateful. Arlette helped. It became evident that their next phase was immediately ahead and should be speeded. Chained feet sped this way and that with quick menacing steps. Monica found herself with Marjorie and Arlette in one more bare room. Its only furnishings appeared to be what looked like a couple of large wooden packing cases. But the sides of which were open and barred so as to resemble a cage. The tops were open.
"Please to step in." requested Arlette cheerfully.
Marjorie and Monica eyed the cages with dislike. They seemed far too small to hold a girl.
"I can't step in. Not with my feet chained," Marjorie pointed out reasonably.
"Mademoiselle is stupid-No?" Arlette took her reluctant captive by the arm, "Just to sit on the edge and lift feet over and in. So easy. See."
Explained that way it was indeed quite easy. Monica doubtfully followed suit. Arlette had pushed Marjorie down into a sitting position. Monica sat. To do so she found herself hugging her knees. Her head remained above the level of the top. Surely she would not be compelled to bow it between her legs so that she would be compressed almost into a ball! But no. Arlette was busy with what appeared to be a lid. Monica now noticed that the top edge of the cage contained a flanged groove. Behind her neck she realized was a half circle into which she was fitting quite snugly. It was easy to guess the rest. But she watched as Arlette fitted the lid into its groove and slid it up the length of the cage towards her captive's throat. The lid, too, contained its small half circle which completed the prisonment of the neck. Arlette busied herself with lifting Marjorie's hair over the lip of the wood, then slid the cover home. She then pushed down a bolt at the bottom end so that the cover was now held immovably in its groove and the two matching half circles firmly gripped Marjorie's neck. Thus she was held captive, hugging her knees, within the cage. Her nudity clearly visible through the bars at each side. Totally helpless to reach the bolt that might free her. Her head quite divorced from the rest of her person which she could not see through the smooth boards that formed the lid. She sat with only her head visible above the box. She could turn her head. But that was all. It was held snug. It was simple. It was ingenious. It precluded escape. Monica hated it.
But she sat quietly as she, too, was secured. When it was done and the bolt shot home it was a strange sensation to be held thus by the neck and be unable to see any part of the rest of herself. Her chained hands were now confined as they embraced her legs so that she could not even thrust a finger through the bars. Her toes were thrust against the bottom end of her cage. To stretch or to ease her position was impossible. She glimpsed an unhappy vista of the hours to come.
"The first day is to be kind," Arlette explained.
"You have company. You see each other. You talk. You do everything except get out of the little cage. No! Arlette will bring water to drink sometimes. Maybe if you are good girls Arlette will scratch the nose." She laughed cheerfully. "The nose it always itch when the neck is held so. Is same in the stocks. Is very hard to bear."
"Of course it's hard to bear," said Marjorie petulantly. "You don't mean you are going to leave us like this all day?"
"Mais oui! It is the all day that is for punish. An hour or two-pouf! It is nothing. But after awhile you will wish very much to get out of your nice little cage. Now I go. You will be here when I returnno!"
The door closed. Their happy jailer gone the two captives stared at each other dolefully.
"Bitch!" said Marjorie with feeling.
"No!" Monica's fervent exclamation was involuntary. "She isn't like that at all. I like her. She's only doing what she must."
"You can't tell me she doesn't enjoy it."
"Well, yes," Monica conceded. "But she isn't spiteful or cruel or cold. I can think of worse...."
"Yes, my old man for instance."
"Who?" Monica's curiosity was piqued.
"The Pater. Dear father: The nice man who sent me here." Marjorie's voice was bitter. "Don't you have one?"
"Of course." Monica bit her lip. What did one say about one's male parent at a time like this. "But I wouldn't say...."
"You wouldn't say he was cruel to you: that's it, isn't it!" Marjorie was vehement. "Well, mine is. I expect it will be a lot worse here. Look at the way we are fixed right now. But being home isn't much fun for me either. I don't suppose I'll get whipped here much worse than I did with dear old Dad."
"Your father did that to you!" Monica was truly shocked. In her world young ladies did not have fathers who used whips. Mother had used a cane once or twice but that was all.
"It's nice to talk to someone about it." said Marjorie resignedly. "Better than just sitting in these damn boxes and gaping at each other. It's going to hurt after awhile. I can tell already. So I might as well tell you the story of my life. Make you feel better about yours.
"Mother died when I was born. I suppose he resented me for that. Aunt Amy, his sister, came and lived with us. She raised me. I think she resented me too. And I think it was her who got him started...."
"Started?"
"Yes. This punishment idea. Aunt Amy thought a girl ought to be punished for everything-that's the way I remember it when I was quite small. Then as I grew up she handed the whip and the cane to Father and after he had used them on me for awhile-they always found plenty of excuses-I think he got to enjoy the idea and he bought some of his own. Wicked awful things supposed to be used on horses, not girls. After I was about twelve years old he always made quite a ceremony of it. I had to bare my bottom and touch my toes, and I mustn't move. Sometimes I did move. Then I got double. He loved to have me bend over with my bare bottom in the air and just waitsometimes as much as an hour. He would leave the room from time to time so that I'd have to wonder if it might be safe for me to straighten up for a rest. But he caught me nearly every time; I think he just waited outside the door. So in the end I just bent over and waited like a good little girl. I think I must have been the goodest little girl in the county. But it never did me any good.
"Then when I really began to grow into a girl; a young woman; a female or whatever you want to call it. You know ... all of a sudden you find yourself with two breasts and a curving bottom and all that lovely black hair below your tummy. That's when they really branched out with other things besides the whip. They called it: 'making me ashamed.' It did. I could have died."
Marjorie paused as though remembering. There came a rueful twist of her lips, a half smile.
"The first thing they did sounds almost funny now. But it wasn't then. It shamed and humiliated me beyond anything I had known. They were sporty types so there were always dogs and horses. There were kennels for the dogs. One quite big one kept separate and unused. The dog had died. They took me out to it one morning and chained me to it with a leather collar locked around my neck. I could sit outside where anyone might see me or crawl inside where there was scarcely room to move. But I couldn't get more than about four feet away from the damn thing because of the chain. It was wickedly mortifying. I felt as though the whole world was looking at me chained there like a dog. When I heard anyone coming I crawled inside. They left me like that for twenty-four hours. Gave me bread and water and left me alone.
"They used a lot of things like that. It didn't hurt, of course, just shamed me. They looked after the hurting too. The whip was always around somewhere. But it's just in the last couple of years since I grew to be what Aunt Amy calls 'fully developed' that they got their worst ideas. They thought of a way to shame me and hurt me at the same time.
"Aunt Amy knitted me what she called my 'punishment suit.' It was heavy soft wool and was in three pieces. I had to go to her room and strip naked and allow her to put the damn thing on me. It was really a pair of tights with no middle. The top was a sweater or vest effect. It fitted me like a glove. I might as well have been naked, it showed everything. It had a turtle neck and a snug tight fitting band that clung just under my ribs. Then there were two legs. You might as well call them stockings. When they were on and pulled up tight they reached all the way to the top of my thighs and clung there as though they were glued. You couldn't see a bit of my skin except for what really mattered, my bare bottom, my tummy and my cunny. It made me feel twice as naked as being totally stripped. She then gave me a wrap and told me to follow. I trotted after her like an obedient puppy. I was so damn thankful for that wrap. With all the things that had happened to me I had long since stopped being prudish, but there was something about that awful punishment dress that made me curl up with shame that someone might see me. Even with Aunt Amy after she had tugged and stretched it on me I'd blushed and wanted to use my hands to hide what was showing. Anyway she took me out to an empty shed that had once been used for storing something but wasn't in use now though it had been cleaned and kept tidy and in good repair. Maybe it was a good thing that it did have a good door and lots of clean windows set high in the walls. I suspected that whatever was going to happen to me in there I wouldn't want any more people watching than I had to have.
"In the middle of the floor there stood a heavy packing case. My Aunt motioned me to jump up on it. She then produced two objects that turned out to be wristlets. They were quite wide and padded with sheepskin. She buckled one on each of my wrists. I wondered what I had done to earn such comfort. Even though she drew the straps terribly tight they did not bite or cut like ordinary straps or rope. I soon found out. Each had an iron ring. When Aunt Amy pointed above my head I soon saw what I was in for. Obeying her curt command I raised my arms and, by standing on tip toe, managed to slip the rings into the sharp curve of a hook suspended above by a chain from the rafters. I was still busy placing them and wriggling my wrists so as to be as comfortable as possible when she jerked the box away and there I was hanging with my toes at least six inches off the floor.
"I don't suppose that ever happened to you. So you can't have any idea how bloody awful it feels. The worst thing is that you can't do anything about it. You just hang and feel foolish and helpless. At first you kick and wriggle. But you soon stop because it hurts. I stopped, and there was good old Aunt Amy sitting on the box. I could see she was getting ready to give me one of her lectures. She looked so infuriatingly approving of what she saw. Me!
"I got the usual. I expect you know it too. The duties of a parent. Have to be cruel to be kind. Spare the rod and spoil the child. But this one ended up with a really grand finale. They had decided there was no need to exert themselves to whip me. From now on whenever I was to be whipped I would be hung as I was right then and the groom would do the job. It was like her saying: 'After all, what are servants for!' She made it sound as though I should feel glad that good old George the groom had been promoted from currycombing the horses to currycombing the horses and whipping the young Mistress. Probably another half crown a week. Imagine my feelings...."
Monica could well imagine such feelings. She had a brief awful vision of a man entering the room they were in at that moment and leering at her nudity through the bars of her cage. Such a thing could not happen, of course....But just suppose! She cringed.
"What was George like?" she asked, torn between horror and curiosity.
"You know the word 'yokel' or the jokes about a country bumpkin: well that's what George our groom was. He was about my own age and he was likable enough. All I'd ever had to do with him was to give him the odd order about a horse to ride or some errand for the Pater. Now, all of a sudden, I was told that George would come in and whip my bare bottom while I was strung up like a gaffed salmon. I could understand, then, my Aunt's concern over my punishment dress. After all, George was just a servant. It would be only proper that he should see just the part of me he was working on and no more. But that 'part' loomed very large in my consciousness as I hung there and listened. I was terribly aware that he wasn't just going to see the curve of my bottom that he had to whip. He was also going to see my 'front.' But this did not seem to bother Aunt Amy at all. It was part of my punishment-this 'shame' idea that had become such a big thing with them...."
"I don't believe it...!" said Monica without conviction. What she was hearing opened up horrific vistas quite beyond any personal experience. She was both fascinated and repelled.
Marjorie grinned, amused at her companion's Victorian reticence. "Not to worry. I'll tell you anyway.
It passes the time. You do believe it, of course. You just think people shouldn't talk about such things. I do declare this place must be an awful shock to you!"
"Anyway, having delivered this bombshell, my Aunt left and firmly closed the door. I just continued to hang there wanting more than anything else in the world to cover up that nice little furry spot between my legs. I knew I was all alone. But I felt as though everyone in the south of England was having a good look at it.
"It took George quite a long while to show up. That was part of the punishment, of course. You'll learn all about waiting here. It's awful. When he did show up he was just as I'd expected; red faced and sweating. His features were about the mixture of servile embarrassment and unholy joy that you'd expect. I pitied him for one and envied him the other. It was a memorable occasion for our groom! He gaped in popeyed amazement at my naked middle, then dragged his eyes away from it and studiously looked elsewhere. He took off his hat and kept turning it in his hands. I'll do the best I can with his dialect:
"'E, Missy, I be sorry ter see 'ee like this, I be."
"George wasn't a bad chap. I knew he felt he had to say something even if it wasn't true. I suspected that he was closer to Paradise right then than he'd ever expected to be."
"I expect ther Missus tole 'ee, like, what I got ter do ter 'ee...?"
"I let him have it with both barrels: 'Yes, George,' I said. 'You are going to whip me on my naked bottom."
Marjorie chuckled reminiscently. "George had been red before. Now he went scarlet."
"It ain't nothin' I wants ter do, young Missy. But I got me orders."
"I wasn't going to let him down easy, so I suggested that if he didn't want to whip me he could just kick the box over and I'd get down and we could have a nice chat instead. Poor George. I really think he was in agony. But I could see, too, that it was hopeless.
George would do as he had been told. After all why wouldn't he! Any man would give a lot to be able to whip a naked girl while she was hung up by the wrists."
"They wouldn't!" exclaimed Monica hotly. "I'm sure they wouldn't...!"
Marjorie smiled complacently. "They would, you know! Poor kid. You have a lot to learn. Men love whipping girls. They'd say they didn't. But I know better. Women love it too-at least some do. I'm damn sure our good Madam and our so charming Arlette adore doing it."
"George was no conversationalist. He took off his coat in a business-like way that sent shivers up my spine. He went behind me. Looking over my shoulder and twisting a bit I watched him hang it on a nail and take down quite the wickedest of the long slender riding crops that dear Old Dad had purchased 'specially for his naughty daughter's bottom. As they say in the novels: I knew at that moment that 'my time had come."
"'It be twenty strokes I has ter lace 'ee with, Missy,' George announced in a husky voice. And then, without any warning he gave me the first of them.
"I don't suppose you have ever been whipped," Marjorie continued meditatively. "You will be. It hurts more than you believe possible. Of course I'd been whipped many times before. But never hung taut as I was now. Good faithful George whipped me harder than anyone else had ever done. I'm quite sure he honestly felt he had to-quite apart from also enjoying his work. I remember I kicked and squirmed and yelped. Hung like that a girl can writhe into all sorts of shameful contortions. I did them all. But it did no good. George patiently waited until my naked bottom swung around into what he considered its best possible position and then sliced it again. By the time I'd had ten strokes, just half my sentence, I was almost hysterical with agony. Every time a lash fell upon a weal already on my skin it was so awful that I about went into a gymnastic display at the end of my chain. If it hadn't been for those cuffs I was strapped with my wrists would have been cut to the bone.
"But these gyrations did one thing for me. As I swung back and forth I managed a look at George as he stood there waiting with that damn whip. He was really sweating now. But it wasn't with exertion. Inside the front of his trousers there was a damn great bulge. I knew what that meant-I expect you know too, even though you are probably too prissy to admit it! I could have killed the big oaf! To think that suffering what I was having to endure made him feel that good....It was infuriating. But it also gave me an idea."
"George," I said. And I made my voice as hurt and little girlish as I could. "If you'll stop whipping me now I'll let you have me."
"Well, he stopped alright. He walked round in front of me, and this time he had a damn good long look at the only thing I had to bargain with before he looked up at me without saying a word. I could see I was going to have to spell it out a little more clear-ly. It wasn't easy. I'd never had a man before. If the pain hadn't been so awful I'd never have thought of such a thing. In a very small girl's voice I said: You can stick that great big thing in your trousers into me all you want if only you'll let me down and not whip me any more. You want that, don't you?"
"Never had a maiden offered her all more humbly. And never did it do a maiden less good. Can you guess what that farmyard lout said:"
"I be doin' that ter yer anyway, young Missy, when I be through wi' yer whippin'."
"Imagine my feelings. I'd never felt so naked and alone. I realized instantly that hanging helpless as I was I could not bargain. I could not do anything except suffer what others wished to do to me. But I had to try: "If you do that Daddy will horsewhip you and send you to prison." I vowed with as much conviction as I could muster."
"Will 'ee naow. Ter Guvnor won't be knowing!"
"I'll tell him!" I said hotly, feeling sure of this trump card.
"I thought 'bout all that." George said ponderously.
"Afore I decided what I'd be a'doin' to ee." He leered up at me knowingly. "You ain't goin' ter tell no one because if yer gets rid of me then next time yer a 'hangin' like this then it'll be old Hawkins the Coachman who'll be a'doin' the whipping. Yer wouldn't like that would yer?"
"George was right. I wouldn't like it. Old Hawkins was very much the old family retainer. Very loyal. Often very drunk. He was also religious in a way that I suspected would prompt him to lay on the whip twice as hard and twice as much-you know, for the good of my soul. And in the end I'd probably find him doing just what George was going to do-or worse. There are worse things, y'know. But I made one more try:
"I won't be hanging like this again." I said firmly. Not believing a word of it. George didn't believe a word of it either."
"We know that 'baint so, don't we young Missy. I 'specs 'ee be a'hangin' ter way 'ee is now right often the way I hear."
"George sounded positively gloating. I knew I was for it. I'd never felt more hopeless. I just wanted to get the whole damn business over with. It would be heaven to get my feet on the ground again. I just didn't care any more about what George was going to do to me when I'd been whipped. I was even curious and half excited. I'm sure all girls are about that first time. I bet you were...." Marjorie laughed at the blush that suffused Monica's features. "Alright, alright, don't pretend! You don't have to say a word. I know."
"Anyway, I just gave George the most haughty glare I could muster arfd closed my lips tight. He just grinned like a Cheshire cat and took up his position behind me once more. "Ee have some right fine marks on that nice little backside o' your'n." He observed. "Only ten mor' strokes ter lay on. I be give 'ee real good 'uns naow." And right there he gave me number eleven that was so awful I actually screamed and danced at the end of my chain like a puppet.
It finally ended. These things do. You'll discover that here. While it's going on you can't bring yourself to believe that they'll ever stop. But they do. We'll be let out of these cages sometime. But it'll seem like years. So I hung there, hurting like blazes. But thankful that the awful pain in my wrenched arms and shoulders would soon be over too. I had a surprise coming....
George wasted no time. While I was still sobbing and gasping from the last stroke that felt as though it had cut me in two he opened up his trousers and took out a weapon so big and so stiff it scared me. I just couldn't believe it could all get inside my slim little middle. He kicked the box over and got up in front of me so close I could feel that damn thing rubbing against my belly. Before I could get my feet adjusted he had grabbed me from each side under my bottom with his great hams of hands and lifted me up so that my feet were on each side of him and my cunny was pressing down on the tip of that thing that was going to go inside it. He was frighteningly strong. He handled and held me as though I was a doll. I was so shocked and amazed at what was happening to me that I didn't even say anything. Looking back I realize George was being kind. He was not brutal as he could have been. He did not ram me down in one first stroke. But played with my cunny by letting the hard moist tip rub against it so that it soon slipped a little way in quite easily. I was still hanging by my wrists. He held my legs prisoner under his muscled arms. He began to raise and lower me gently and then with increasing range so that each time I came down I was more rigidly impaled. I hurt quite a lot. You know how it is for a girl that first time, so I don't need to tell you. He achieved the impossible and got the whole enormous thing inside me. Even a novice as I was could tell he was enjoying himself very much. When it was over he quickly kicked the box away before I could get my feet on it. I was still hanging. He looked at his Thing as he buttoned himself up. Then up at me.
"I see it be just time for 'ee, Young Missy. I be sorry for it hurtin' like. Next time it'll be real champion for 'ee."
"Next time!!" I suppose he could see the great big question mark on my face.
"Oh, aye. I got small job ter do in stable. Then I be back ter do 'ee agin'."
"But let me down! Oh please let me down!" I pleaded.
"George looked genuinely surprised. "I can't do that, young Missy," he explained. "The missus wer' very firm 'bout that, she were. "Let the young hussy hang there for an hour afterwards" she says ter me. So that's what I got ter do. I be right sorry for 'ee. But I'll do 'ee as often as I can so mebbe 'twont seem so bad." He turned and left. This time I heard a lock click in the door.
"Think about it. It was bloody awful. But I suppose you could make a funny story out of it. I'm sure a man would. I'd been stripped, hung by the wrists, whipped and violated. Now I had to go on hanging with my arms almost pulled out of their sockets. My only immediate prospect of relief was that, having been competently deflowered, George would come and 'Do me' as often as he could manage it in an hour.
"So I just hung there and waited and, sure enough, good Old George came to 'Do me' three more times. I suppose you can guess that after the next time I enjoyed it. I really think George tried to be kind because it soon began to feel wonderful so that I even forgot the pain in my arms. It was such a relief, too, when he held me like that. My weight was off my wracked shoulders. The last time I wished he'd go on and never stop. It was such ecstasy that I gasped and groaned and cried out almost as though I was being whipped again...."
"But that's a terrible way for a girl to be treated by her guardians." Monica declared. "Why didn't you run away?"
"Oh I tried that." Marjorie assured her cheerfully. "I tried it the next day. But they must have been expecting it. I was caught red handed. I was really scared. I expected to get the skin whipped off my back. But this time my dear Aunt thought of something that she said: 'Fitted the crime'.
I was locked in a cupboard until evening. Then Auntie let me out and announced that we were going for a walk. And that's just what we did. You can imagine I was mystified. The only unusual thing about our 'walk' was a very ordinary looking bag that my Aunt was carrying. Our's is a big country type house with a lot of ground-mostly park. Lawns run down from the house, but between us and the main road we are shielded by a sizable wood. Aunt Amy led me down the path and along one of the many small paths that bisected the trees and shrubs. She took me to a point where it was just possible to see and to hear the scarce bit of traffic that used that road. She then looked around as though searching for something. I was absolutely quivering with both curiosity and apprehension. After a few moments she seemed satisfied and, taking me by the arm, led me a few paces to where a small tree stood quite alone. I suppose the trunk was six or eight inches. It had a couple of boughs branching off at a height of five or six feet. It wasn't much of a tree. But it was ideal for what she wanted it for. She then told me to strip.
"Afterwards you think of fine heroic things you could have done. I could have run for the road or stamped my foot and said 'No!'. But, of course, I did neither. Like a good little girl I started to undress. I took my time, hoping that Aunt Amy might relent or maybe keep some little something on. But every time I looked at her questioningly she shook her head, so it wasn't long before I stood in front of her quite naked and scared to death. I had figured out what would happen: I would be tied to the tree and whipped all over: that was why I was naked and that was why my Aunt was doing the job. It wouldn't have been proper for George or any of the servants to have seen the young Mistress in the altogether. I was shivering with fear about what was in that bag. What kind of a whip would it be!
"But it wasn't a whip. When Aunt Amy turned it upside down a lot of metal objects tumbled out. She made me hold out my right hand and I stood naked and feeling foolish while she fitted a metal band round my wrist and fastened it tight with a padlock. A piece of chain was attached. She took this and, lifting my hand to about eye level, passed the chain round the tree trunk above the first of the branches, so that it could not be pulled down, drew it tight and padlocked that too. She then explained that since I had wished to leave my home she was going to give me the opportunity to do so for at least one night. Instead of my nice comfortable private bedroom with its soft warm bed I could stand there naked until she chose to come and release me. I could, of course, shout for help and perhaps someone on the road might hear me and come to my rescue.-She passed this suggestion to me with a fine sarcastic relish. She knew damn well I wasn't likely to do that and have any Tom, Dick or Harry come and find me naked and chained to a tree just waiting for anything they might want to do to me. I was too far from our house for any noise I might make to be heard there. Actually I was scared to death someone on the road, a coachman or rider who could see over the hedge might catch sight of me. I was covered with shame at the thought. Whatever they did I wouldn't like it. I knew it was useless to plead. So I just stood and watched Aunt Amy walk back towards the house carrying every bit of my clothing with her in the little bag.
"It was a cleverly awful way to punish me. Night was close. I had to stand there naked with my wrist chained just high enough that I could not lay down or sit down or even kneel. I had to stand. It was a warm night. But that was about the only good thing. There were gnats and I was kept busy slapping at myself with my free hand. I couldn't even reach all of myself so they had a field day on my skin. It was a tantalizing position. Except for one wrist which I could not move even an inch from it's fastening on the tree I was quite free to move as I liked. But that one wrist held me there by the tree as effectively as though I was swarthed in chains or rope. I looked around. There was no cover. I stood nude for anyone to see who might care to look. From time to time I could see movement on the road and hear the rattle of harness or a carriage. At such moments I pressed myself against my tree as though I was a part of it and prayed that the driver would not look too deeply in the trees. I thought of poachers and crawly things, and as it got dark I had to really work at keeping down panic. Sometimes I couldn't stop the tears. But I stood there through the night. It was awful. I tried to sleep but every time I nodded away I fell and jerked my wrist. I was never so thankful to see anyone as I was to see Aunt Amy in the morning. But she just gave me a drink and an apple and left me there pleading and crying until she was out of sight. That was a bad moment: the knowledge that I was not going to be set free. I was terribly tired and drooped exhausted against the tree all day. When night came again I became frightened and desperate. I jerked at that damn chain until my wrist was bleeding. But, of course, it did no good. About the time I knew I was there for the night Auntie showed up and set me free. I'm ashamed to say I kissed her and kept saying thank you all the time I was putting on my clothes. And that was that. Aunt Amy had planned it all very shrewdly."
Marjorie fell silent. She grinned ruefully across at her fellow captive. "Sorry to be a bore. Didn't mean to. Got carried away. You're the first person I have been able to tell it to. Thank's for listening." She frowned, as though with effort, then asked: "I'm starting to hurt, how about you?"
Monica had been hurting for some time, but had been sufficiently engrossed in Marjorie's chronicle that it had been easy to ignore. Suddenly she longed to stretch her legs and to shift her weight from one cheek to another. The cage, with it's close stricture round her neck, denied her.
"How long have we been like this?" She asked hopefully.
"I don't know. That's part of the punishment." Marjorie explained. "It's one of the worst parts-not knowing."
"It feels like hours and hours. I'm so stiff and cramped I could scream." Monica said wearily. I can't really move at all. This business of fixing our necks this way-it prevents you doing anything."
Had it been possible for Monica to move within her small cage her reflexes would certainly have prompted her, for at that moment Marjorie pealed out a most horrendous scream.
"You gave me an idea, darling." Marjorie gasped. "Let's see how much our little Frenchie will stand for." Once again her voice split the air so that Monica shrank aghast. She could conceive of no possible benefit from her companion's vocal protest; a protest that was continuous....
But when Arlette arrived it was an undramatic entry and a negligent sauntering over to Marjorie's cage. She raised one foot on it and leaned forward smilingly as though her prisoner's screams were but a whisper.
"Such a foolish little girl." she said quietly. "Please to stop such noise."
Marjorie's face reflected a most convincing spasm of agony. "Let me out of here." She gasped. "I'm dying!"
"Then we will have so nice a funeral, with flowers." Arlette responded cheerfully. "And now, please, much quiet."
For answer Marjorie let go with one more piercing shriek.
Smiling quietly Arlette went to a large chest in a corner of the room. After rummaging a few moments she returned carrying an object that at first baffled Monica, but which she soon recognized as a gag: a broad leather strap with buckles: in it's center an extrusion of rubber. Marjorie recognized it, too. "You're not going to put that on me!" She said defiantly and forgetting to scream.
Without answering, Arlette bent and placed the rubber against Marjorie's lips. The rebellious captive closed them tight and made muffled negative sounds from behind clenched teeth.
"Ma'am'zelle has her small joke, no!" Their jailer observed pleasantly. "Please to observe. I have here a pin. I now start to push it through mademoiselle's ear. When mademoiselle opens wide her noisy little mouth, I stop."
Eyes flashing anger but without demur the sorry captive parted her lips and accepted the rubbed pad. From the careful motions as Arlette pushed it all the way in it was evident that it must completely fill the mouth of the punished girl. Arlette then buckled it very tightly at the back of the neck beneath the victim's hair.
"I think now we have much peace." she announced with satisfaction. Thoughtfully she wiped away tears that Marjorie had been unable to control. "It is most good that our little mademoiselle should cry. Tears become her. Here, I wipe away."
Arlette had brought with her a tray with a jug and glasses. Monica drank eagerly the water offered. Marjorie watched with a woebegone expression. "Bad girls do not get drinks." their jailer announced primly. Then, quite without warning, she bent and kissed Monica full upon the lips. It was a long and lingering sweetly moist caress to which Monica found herself responding with a surge of warmth that left her blushing. A moment later their jailer had gone, the door closed, the bolt shot home.
Monica felt guilty. True, she was still a prisoner and in pain. But compared to Marjorie she felt almost lucky. That leather band across her companion's jaws looked wickedly tight and uncomfortable. Marjorie was angrily moving her head this way and that within the narrow compass that her confinement allowed but was obviously finding no alleviation to this new infliction that had been fastened upon her. The small verbal offering that was all she had to give sounded, even to her own ears, pitiably inadequate: "I'm sorry, darling. Terribly, terribly sorry...."
Thus, slowly the hours of their first captive day dragged by.
* * *
In telling the story of Monica's incarceration in the establishment of Madam Dubois it would be tedious to recount in detail the pain, the shame or the boredom of each hour of each day. The punishments she bore were varied and ingenious. Most emphasized, as Madam Dubois had told her they would, her loss of liberty. They were rarely designed for pain, but rather to cause her to yearn for such simple privileges as to take a free step, or to walk, or to stand, or to stretch, to raise her arms or to lower them. It is therefore amusing and perhaps pertinent to tell of her second day.
The center of one of the main corridors of this sizable mansion widened out into a circle. Perhaps designed for statuary or a fountain. In the center of it now there stood a fluted marble pillar five feet high. From the flat surface of the top of the pillar a polished metal rod extended up another fifteen inches. At its base a single shackle and eight inch chain were immovaly stapled. Prompted by Arlette Monica mounted the stepladder provided and gingerly stepped on to the marble surface which was of no greater diameter than would accommodate her two bare feet. Arlette locked the shackle on her right ankle, removed the steps, then stood back and regarded her prisoner approvingly.
"Ma petite cherie makes a statue the most beautiful. So lovely a nude."
Monica felt the familiar blush. Would she never get used to being naked! But at the moment she was more concerned with keeping her balance. The top of the pillar on which she stood seemed a long way from the floor. She dare not slip or fall or seek to lower herself from her pedestal. To do so would leave her horribly suspended by one ankle. Experimenting she discovered that there was indeed an adequate surface on which to stand. With care, and remembering her tethered ankle, she could even turn this way or that.
"The rod is so that mademoiselle may not sit or even squat."
Monica knew a moment of anger. They had thought of everything. She would simply have to stand erect all day. There was nothing else she could do. She felt shamefully exposed as she watched Arlette pick up the ladder, throw her a kiss, and then disappear down the passage. In a few minutes she heard other footsteps and realized with horror that this punishment must inevitably include being stared at by the staff or anyone else using this part of the house. A middle aged charwoman came into view carrying a mop and pail. She looked up at the chained Monica with no more than a cynical amusement as she passed. Monica realized that some unfortunate girl probably stood as she was standing every day so that those who passed found the sight un-remarkable. She was angry with herself for shrinking and trying to cover as much of her person as two hands might contrive. She knew then, as other maidens through the ages had discovered, that two hands can never properly shield from view those three treasures they so ardently wish to hide. She let her arms fall to her sides and stood fully erect. Let them look, damn them! Thus she stood out her second day. By evening she was so tired that she welcomed her small cell and offered herself gladly for her chains so that she might dispose them about herself on the bench and fall asleep.
On her third day Monica entered an unsuspected door. She always remembered it. Nothing was quite the same ever after.
It was a strangely narrow room. Walking carefully in her chains Monica allowed herself to be led inside. Arlette closed the door. "Today we have the privacy, ma petit."
Monica was glad. The previous day had filled her with aversion to being stared at. She surveyed the room in which she would spend this day. It seemed harmless. The usual rings in the walls, of course. But it was well lit and cheerful. It contained no more than two narrow benches set end to end. Obeying Arlette's gesture she climbed up to one, watched as her lovely jailer pushed the benches tight together, then allowed herself to be positioned so that her bottom rested on the lower one and her back rested on the other. They were small. There was no more room than that which she occupied. Even so her thighs and legs hung over the end. Passively she helped as Arlette unlocked the chains from her wrists. Then became acutely aware as her arms were pulled down and slightly back and her wrists strapped firmly below where she could not see them one on each side of the bench. Testing she found that she could not raise her shoulders, and her head only with difficulty. Her immediate field of vision was occupied by her breasts which this stricture had thrust into prominence.
Next a leather strap cinched tightly about her small waist. Then the chains from her ankles; to be immediately replaced by tightly buckled leather anklets. Arlette surveyed her prisoner speculatively, then affixed long buckled straps to rings, one on each side of the narrow room at the height slightly above the level of the bench on which Monica was secured. Next she did something that caught Monica by surprise and brought a protest to her lips; a protest she angrily quenched. She was tired of being ashamed. Let them do as they wished. But what Arlette did next shocked her sense of what it was proper for a girl to do or to have done to her. Her right ankle was raised and thrust sideways so that the ring on it's anklet could be clipped to the strap from the wall. Her left ankle was served in the same way so that now her most intimate privacy was spread wide.
Monica understood now the narrow room. It was ideal for the straps that controlled her legs. Arlette now pulled carefully on the buckles, first one leg then the other, until they stood out rigid at almost a rightangle to her victim's tightly strapped body. Being slightly raised they ndw supported the weight of Monica's haunches so that when Arlette removed the lower bench from beneath her captive's bottom it's position in no way changed except that now it hung suspended beyond the rest of the bench to which its agonized owner was attached.
"Oh please, please Arlette! Not so tight. It's tearing me in two."
Soothingly and exploringly the French girl ran her fingers up and down the strained legs and thighs feeling the taut tendons. She shook her head. "Non, non! Is not enough. I tighten just a small bit more. I do not want ma petit to be able to move even of the smallest."
Monica sobbed and pleaded as each of her ankles were drawn out another notch in the strap. She cried that she could not stand it. She was being split in two. The pain was unbearable. In panic she struggled but found that the only part of herself that she could move even the smallest fraction of an inch was her head.
Arlette listened understandingly. "It is very bad, yes. Arlette knows this. But is not so bad as all that noise. It is that you think too much of all that part of you that you show for all to see. This shaming is what you feel worse than pain, I think."
Monica's being was swamped with an awareness of something so awful that she found courage to tell Arlette of a condition that normally she could never have voiced.
"Arlette, Oh please. My lips ... you know, my lips down below. You have stretched me so wide they are open. I can't close them. It's awful."
Arlette's laugh was pure merriment. "So what, ma petit. There is only Arlette to see, and I wish it so. What is such a little opening between two girls. See, I will close them-so." Deftly she did so with nimble fingers. Then laughed, "But voila! These douce little lips they open right up again. Perhaps they are wanting something-a man maybe?"
Monica writhed inwardly at the mere thought. "You are teasing me Mistress."
"So now it is 'Mistress', ma Cherie. My little pigeon must wish to please. You have forgotten, haven't you. For such forgetting your Mistress should tighten each poor little leg one more notch."
"I'm sorry, Mistress." In her present position Monica found it easy to be humble.
"Mistress is much forgiving." responded Arlette cheerfully. "Now I go and get the man for which my little pigeon's lips open so invitingly."
Monica was aghast. Surely such awfulness could not be. To be seen like this by a man. To be left like this at the mercy of a man. It was unthinkable. Suddenly she remembered Marjorie-it must have been unthinkable for her too. But it had happened. "Oh no, no, no! Oh please ... don't do that to me!" It was a cry of pure agony.
"But mademoiselle has had a man. It is not something new." Arlette pointed out reasonably.
Monica heaved at her bonds in anguish but succeeded only in throwing her head from side to side.
"It is the reason mademoiselle is here n'est ce pasthis man! Our good Madam makes so large her business because of these men-always men. And such foolish girls." Arlette looked and sounded pensive. "Do not feel so shamed. Perhaps he did not give you pleasure, this man. It is sometimes so. You do not wish to try again...?"
Monica clenched her eyes and flung her head from side to side in negation.
"Well then, perhaps not today me pauvre petit. Arlette has a man who is always most pleased to be of help." She chuckled merrily. "But it is not the thing Arlette likes most to do. Perhaps sometimes to relieve the ennui. That is all. But now, ma cherie, you feel much shame because your pretty lips are pouting. I help."
Monica gasped. With what emotion she did not know. Arlette had come to stand beside the bench. Without warning she reached down and firmly cupped the furred source of Monica's distress in one small hand. "It feels better, no?"
Nothing in Monica's previous knowledge had prepared her for this ultimate sacrilege of a stranger's hand, albeit a female hand, being placed so firmly on the sacred spot. True, her mind had toyed with such a fantasy. But she had not believed that even a doctor or a husband would so presume. In her world such things were "Not done." Yet now, in this shameful exposure the hand of a beautiful girl was warm upon her. She closed her eyes again, fearful of what they might betray. She believed she should feel guilt because she passionately did not wish that hand to leave its resting place.
For minutes the French girl stood motionless, quiet-ly smiling as she gazed down at the pinioned naked girl. Then gently she bent and sought Monica's lips with her own. The hand that had covered as though to protect now began a tender rhythmic caress. The kiss was long. A kiss such as the naked girl had never known. As the mobile lips were withdrawn at its end Monica opened her eyes drowsily and smiled into the beautiful face so close to her own. Involuntarily she opened her lips again, her tongue flickered moistly, her eyes pleaded. Fiercely the hovering lips resumed their coupling, tongue entwined with tongue. The tender hand, moist now with that which its own touch had generated, began its loving quest....
Monica surrendered, not to what was so obviously the inevitable but to a force of physical and emotional ecstasy. A depth of human awareness for which she had never been prepared and of which she had no previous knowledge. Her unuttered protests against the spreading wide and violation of her most secret place slithered away from her consciousness as foolish words that might have shamed. She would not utter them now or ever. She had started on a journey to an uncharted land of infinite wonder. She could not now retrace her steps. She did not want to....
Arlette was deeply moved with tenderness for this exquisite girl whose nakedness had been delivered into her hands. She would so use it as to wring the utmost subtleties of sensation for them both. Rememberings endowed her fingers and her lips with evocative skills.
To Monica the pain from her sundered legs had become a dull glow of awareness that she was possessed. That she was owned. That she herself had ceased to be. With closed eyes she traversed the paths of beauty to the Wonderland that only Arlette knew. It was a strange tempestuous adventure. The visions of such beauty as she had known were there, so that she walked by streams and through sun dappled woods and saw Camelot in mist upon a mountain. But there came deep canyons into which she plunged with cries almost of pain so that her head tossed from side to side and her limbs strained against the strictures that held them. Then would come a time of peace until, without warning, she was plucked from Earth and raised into a cloudy kingdom of pure light where she was held and held until with small songs of utter joy she was allowed to drift back to the sweet damp grass of a June meadow. Only once did she open her eyes. It was then, with a gasp of pure happiness, she saw her Mistress in glorious nakedness kneeling above her so that she knew she was about to be guided into the most ultimate ecstasy of them all.
Monica did not remember falling asleep. She must have drifted into slumber from some quiet place when her Love had gone away. Opening her eyes she noted the light had changed. She suspected the passage of hours since she had been fastened thus. There was no change in her condition. She was still spread wide. Still unable to move. No doubt it had been the pain and the aching that had wakened her. She was alone. Drowsily she thought about the pain and the ache. She could do nothing about either. But it seemed that she could bear them. She knew this was so, not because of fortitude, but because of memory in which they played a part. She could feel that her secret lips were still stretched invitingly open. She did not care.
She was filled with wonder. Wonder at what had befallen her and a most curious wonderment at what might happen now. There flitted through her mind a reflection that her Love might easily have set her free. Why had she not? Or she could at least have eased the awful tug of the straps upon her ankles and thus given her less pain. But she had not done so. Monica was still stretched tight and bound fast. Why? Surely after what had happened she had earned surcease. Her mind toyed lazily with the thought then discarded it. It did not matter. If pain was her condition, so be it. She examined the possibility, quite happily, that perhaps the straps might be tightened more. Thus it was in a happy reverie that Monica spent the remaining hours of her punishment. She wished that her Mistress would return, either to give more pleasure or to inflict more pain. It did not matter. What mattered was that she existed. That once more her fingers would touch the compliant flesh.
The two girls radiated happiness that evening when it came time for Monica to be chained. Their glances constantly met and lingered as Arlette busied herself.
"Make them tight, tight, tight on me darling." Monica pleaded.
Her Mistress laughed delightedly. "Of course I make them tight. So very tight with my love. My little pigeon must never, never escape from me. See, like this!" She clicked one of the metal bands loudly shut.
"Mistrss, please....Remember that first night? You told me of other chains used to punish. You said that Eve was wearing them. Put them on me now. I want you to."
Arlette smiled at her naked prisoner with amused affection. Lightly she kissed the raised lips. Without a word she fetched the metal bands and links. Monica stood erect, her pulse quickening, her eyes bright.
In other ways, at other times, with someone else this new shackling would have been hard to bear. Those who had devised it had done so shrewdly understanding a captive's desolation at the obvious redundancy of chains that could not add to their already total helplessness and thus could only be to punish.
First Monica's elbows were joined behind her back. The metal bands clasping her arms tightly above the forearms. The linkage just long enough that she would not be in actual pain. Next chains linked her manacled wrists to her manacled ankles. Her hands must be held low before her. If she need touch her face she must then squat down to obtain the necessary slack. But even this was then denied. Other short chains fastened her wrists to the band about her waist so that, except for quite small motions, she had lost the use of her hands altogether. It would be difficult for her to feed herself: possible perhaps, but hard.
Following her Mistress's laughing suggestion Monica essayed to walk. There was much clinking of chain and a resigned shuffle back to the bench. "It is enough, ma petit? You are happy?"
Monica breathed a sigh of wonder at herself. She found joy in this tight clasp of metal that must substitute for her Mistress through the hours of the night. But quite another wish was now uppermost in her mind. Looking at her chains she felt dismay:
"Darling, can we ... I mean-will you ... how?"
For answer Arlette slipped out of her clothes, "Mais oui, Cherie. We can and we will-oh, so very much. First I chain you, then I love you. That is good, no! I think it is very good. Now, Cherie, you lay down. I help with the chains. When they hurt you it will be a good hurt. See, Arlette removes none of them. Cherie will wear them all. But now I push them this way and that and here and there-so! The chains, they will not stop Arlette doing anything at all that I wish to do to you. Also they will not stop you doing anything at all I wish you to do to me. Chains are to stop escape. They do not stop pleasure. See-your Mistress knows the way. Now I show my little pigeon...."
Once more time passed. Once more Monica traversed the Wondrous Land. When it was over and as she drifted into sleep she heard, quite clearly, her Mistress tell her that on the second day from today she would be whipped.
Since her first dismay when hearing Madam Dubois pronounce her sentence Monica had carried with her, most of the time, a vague disquiet. The good Madam's discourse on the virtue and effectiveness of the whip left little doubt it would be used. She was to receive twenty strokes each week. Now, knowing the day itself, her whipping became a constant companion in her consciousness. Events of the last several days had made such an impression of awareness to all things that Monica was able to consider the impending infliction of a whip upon her bare skin with a greater degree of detachment than would have been possible only a week ago. She thought much about it whilst enduring her punishment in the intervening day-a quite relaxing day by the standards of Madam Dubois. She was required only to stand against a wall to which one of her wrists had been chained well above her head. Tiring, frustrating, but giving much time to think.
She could understand Madam Dubois's opinion that to be whipped was a far more searing experience for a girl than for a man. There was something so personal about it. That a whip or a cane wielded, even by another girl, could seek out and attack her most secret recesses would be hard to bear or to forget. Yet Monica found herself strangely fascinated by the prospect. She was astute enough to recognize within herself the hope that it would be Arlette who would whip herand the obvious reason for that hope. It was certainly not with any belief that her lover would hurt her less: Arlette had told her very plainly that she would whip her far harder than she would the other girls. Had told her in fact that all her punishments would be more severe because of this love they shared. Monica had not bothered to try and discover why this should be so. She had asked no questions. She was amazed and happy to discover her own contentment with the secret knowledge. She was glad that it should be so. She felt no urge to reason or dissect.
Arlette had explained that Madam Dubois employed a second Mistress. Her time was taken with other girls so that Monica had not yet seen her. But her existence would make it possible for the two of them to steal much time together for they shared their work as suited them. Her name was Hester. She was as blonde as Arlette was dark. She would be present to help with the whipping. Monica would not be the only girl to be whipped that day. Arlette said it would be a quite ceremonial affair done with much ritual as prescribed by Madam Dubois in her conviction that to whip them regularly was the greatest service she could render "Her Girls". Monica found herself wanting to giggle at the prospect of something resembling a debutants Ball.
But the humor was fleeting. She felt only pure horror at the thought of being whipped by Hester or by the good Madam herself. With them she would be defenseless. Naked without the garment of her love. What had Eve said: "A worse pain than you had ever believed possible...."
It was the room that Monica would always think of as 'The first Room'. The room by which she had first entered this new world: the room of the pillars. To each of these pillars now there was fastened a naked girl. She herself was one of them. The fastening was such that at first glance the girls seemed free-simply reaching up to eye level, one hand on each side of the pillar, for some reason of their own. A second look would show that each wrist was firmly cuffed so that the girl could not advance and lean against the pillar, the rigid fastening at that height rendered it painful to bend her arm. She must stand passively at arm's length to receive the whip.
Madam Dubois was speaking. Monica admired her poise, her charm. She was indeed a beautiful woman. Her very correctness made incongruous these rows of naked palpitating femininity. Her smile showed only a pleased affection for "Her Girls". Her voice was warm:
"Since you are to stand as you now are for the day I have decided that your whipping will be divided into four inflictions of five strokes each to be given you at intervals as may be convenient to us. I like to keep in touch with my girls so it is my intention today to myself give you your first five. I will be busy elsewhere afterwards so I will leave the balance of what you must bear to be dealt with by Hester and Arlette." Her eyes roved round the room as though with a personal message for each girl, "You may be surprised by the manner in which you are secured. You have much freedom. I want you to understand that you have permission to kick and to struggle as you may wish. I think it good for those of you who are new that you have this liberty. The whip will not hurt less and you cannot evade it but it is perhaps less frightening for you than if you were immovably bound-that is for another day." She paused, as if for effect. "We will now commence. One of you may volunteer to be the first. Your request will be made politely and formally: "Madam, please whip me." I am waiting."
Except for a small shuffling of chained feet there was silence. Diana was quietly weeping. Her head bowed, coping with the tears by brushing her cheeks against her prisoned arms. Monica felt embarrassed: To ask to be whipped might sound false as though currying favor. It was Eve who came to the rescue:
"Madam, please whip me." she requested in a firm voice. Monica wondered if it was bravado or a wish to aid the rest of them to whom the present moment was terrifying, whereas Eve had told them that for her to be whipped was commonplace.
All eyes now focused on Eve. She stood erect, her eyes seeking nothing but the post to which she was fastened. Her features impassive. Madam Dubois carefully took up a position behind her. She carried, now, a most wicked looking long and limber cane which she proceeded to swish up and down so that it cut the air with a whine that evoked visible tremors from the naked girls. Without warning it cut a wide arc and embedded itself cruelly across the lower softer part of Eve's bottom-a bottom that still bore some quite vivid traces of a previous caning. Monica felt a tremendous admiration for the sufferer, apart from a gasp and a jerk at the impact Eve had shown no other reaction. The second blow was equally fierce; its result the same. Watching, Monica sensed that Madam Dubois viewed the situation as a challenge. Confirmation was immediate. Tapping her victim's thighs with the cane Madam requested:
"Open wide the legs, please."
Obediently, but with obvious reluctance, Eve spread her feet to the limit of the chain that joined them. Since the girls were expected to walk with shackled ankles this chain was fairly long, certainly long enough to enable the girls to kick or writhe as Madam had intimated they might wish to do. This separation of her feet that Eve had found possible placed a new strain on her raised arms and made shamefully open and exposed that part of her to be punished.
Madam Dubois studied the new pose, made tentative motions with the cane, changed her own stance slight-ly, then made a vicious slash that curled round one cheek and ended deep within the innermost recesses of Eve's being.
The stroke had been deliberately intended to break Eve's stoicism. It succeeded. She gave a small cry of agony, threw back her head and lashed again and again frantically with one leg as though to rid herself of so great a suffering. Her ankle chain clashed and clattered on the floor until her struggles slowly subsided and she again stood waiting. Madam changed sides and, with equal skill, repeated the stroke with identical results. With the fifth stroke she did not touch the bottomcheeks at all, but struck upwards inside the thigh with a cunning knowledge that sent the prisoned girl into such gyrations of pain that Monica feared she might injure her wrists.
Without comment or delay Madam Dubois went to where Diana's tear stained face was fixed upon Eve's suffering.
"We see much of tears here, cherie. But we do not approve them. You will stop crying. I am now going to whip you. Not as severely as you have just witnessed-that silly girl was being obstinate. But I will whip you hard. If you choose to start crying again I will double your dose. So, ma petit, you may decide: five strokes or ten strokes. I do not mind at all."
Diana's features were a study in emotion. Monica guessed that too much was happening too fast. She watched, breathless, as the fresh victim swallowed her tears and choked back her gulps and stood erect as she had seen Eve do. But the result was predictable. At the third stroke Diana once more burst into a flood of weeping and compounded her offense by cries and exclamations of anguish together with pleadings for Madam to "Please stop." She leaped and twisted and turned in a way that wrung Monica's heart. But the inevitable result of her loss of control was that she actually did receive twice the number of strokes that she need have had. It was a lesson to the rest of them. Monica found herself making a fierce vow to acknowledge suffering but to choke back tears. It would seem that this was what Madam expected of a young lady being whipped.
Watching the third girl being whipped Monica realized that perhaps Eve's choice of being first might have much to commend it. Eve's immediate punishment was over now and she stood watching, tired and strained, but able to muster a rueful grin when her eyes caught Monica's. Whereas Monica was increasingly aware that, with her own flesh still unmarked, she was enduring a vicarious suffering with each lash that fell upon those who preceded her. As she watched each stroke and heard each pitious cry her store of courage ebbed. She resolved to remember.
When the last stroke had fallen on other female flesh Monica found herself facing the first stroke that must fall upon her own. She was palpitating inwardly, her heart thudding with a beat she feared all must hear. But she managed to keep her features reasonably composed as she watched Madam Dubois advance. A composure that became doubly difficult when, instead of whipping her, The Madam tilted her chin, turned her head and kissed her on the lips with a warmth to which Monica involuntarily responded, then watched bewildered as their beautiful executioner returned to a position on the floor from which she could command the room.
"We have here an exception to a rule." she explained bestowing her Mona Lisa smile. "I have received on ma petit Monique the reports most favorable. She has been obedient and most understanding of that which she endures. Her Mistress, our good Arlette, is most proud of her and has asked a privilege on her behalf." Madam paused portentiously. "It is a privilege which perhaps our dear Monique might willingly forego. But it is privilege nonetheless. Believing it beneficial to all I have approved." Once more Madam Dubois produced a suspenseful pause. Monica had a feeling of being tested. Her heart was beating even faster now. "It is quile simple. Her Mistress Arlette has asked to be allowed to whip her at all times today. Not, as I am sure you all suppose, with the intent of a punishment less severe-quite the reverse! So proud is Arlette of her charge that she intends to whip her with unusual severity in the belief that she will so comfort herself as to give pride and encouragement to all who watch."
To Monica it was another of those moments she would never forget. Not for the words Madam Dubois had spoken, but because of her own reaction to them. Appalling as the prospect might be, and she caught a look of shocked commiseration from Eve, her heart had slowed and she felt only a great peace and happiness that it would be Arlette who would whip her and no one else. Awful as she supposed the pain would be she would have gladly accepted the addition of hot irons as long as it was her Love who applied them. Her eyes sought those of her Mistress and found reassurance. Arlette held the cane now. But Monica did not care. What she had beheld had been of love.
What profit can there be to count the strokes of a whip or the cruelty of its pain. In Monica's stay within that house she was to be whipped many times. She came to know much of pain and how best to bear it. It would never be, for her, as it was with the others. For her the whip was an umbilical cord joining her to her Mistress-to her love. Thus, in this her first knowledge of it, she was to make discoveries those others would never know. A sentence of pure agony so great as to become its own alchemy in a transmutation of sensation into an exquisite sharing between herself and Arlette.
Like most first things it was to be remembered as such. Monica would always remember that first cutting slash and the protest of her tortured flesh. But with it she was to recall the small smile she managed to direct toward Madam and the lifting of one fettered foot in recognition of the pain she had received. As the second stroke bit deeply into her bottom she knew what she must do to survive. She closed her eyes and forced herself to drift into that Land she shared only with she who held the whip. Her leg jerked against its tether and there were small tremors on her flesh, but her face remained serene. Even when told, as Eve had been told, to spread her legs wide she did so without fear. The ensuing agony was so exquisite that it took her once more to the depths and to the heights so that she was only dimly aware of the undulations of her nakedness and of her feet once more obediently separating to make taut the length of their chain.
Thus Monica came to know the whip.
It was evident that Madam Dubois did not favor fraternization between her girls. There had been many days between the time Monica had spent alone with Marjorie and the moment now, after Arlette had left them, that she stood looking down at the youthful Joan. She herself was locked in the standing stocks. Joan sat on her bench with her feet spread very wide and locked in the other pillory, her wrists tied behind her back so that she could give herself no ease or relief from a position that would become increasingly taxing as the day wore on. Yet, true to her promise, Arlette had given Monica the worst position. She had suffered these stocks before standing with head bent and arms widespread. Almost she could envy Joan her bench to sit on even though it would become cruelly hard by evening. But Monica had come to adopt much of Eve's cheerful cynicism about her punishments. She suffered them without complaint. So long as it was her Mistress who snapped shut the lock or drew tight the buckle she was content. Today would be a change. She had someone to talk to.
"Are you really only fifteen?" She asked curiously.
"Of course. Why not?" asked Joan cheerfully. She was a bright child who seemed happily unaware of her curved femininity. She wore nudity like a gown.
"Well, it's young to land in this place."
"Oh, I don't know," Joan said thoughtfully. "It's the same thing that brings us all here, mostly, isn't it? Hester says it is."
Monica was not sure what to say.
"It's this thing here between our legs," Joan continued unperturbed and oblivious of Monica's hesitation. She peered pensively down at the dark triangle that her punishment now so prominently displayed. "You can see mine better than I can, and I can see your's better than you can the way you are fastened, so that makes us even."
"But surely not with you!" Monica felt absurd. Why be polite.
"Why not with me?" Joan laughed up at her fellow captive. "Because I'm only fifteen or because it doesn't look as though its been used much? Why on Earth do they have to stretch us like this so its always in full view?"
Monica felt it tactful to answer only the last question : "They think it shames us. It does. I hate it...!"
"It doesn't bother me. They can look at it all they want. Everyone else has. But it hurts. I'm going to hate this in another couple of hours. I think they are horrid to tie my wrists like this. I can't do a thing."
Monica uncomfortably found herself looking at the younger girl's most secret place now so wantonly in view before her eyes. Did it look well used? Did they ever? Were you supposed to be able to tell. How much of such unmentionable things was this precocious moppet aware of.
"You mean you have been sent here because of a...." She had been going to say: man. But amended it quickly, "because of a ... a boy?"
Joan grinned up at her and laughed gaily, "A boy! Of course not. I'm not here because of a boy. I'm here because of a girl."
Monica's entry into the Wonderland that Arlette had created for her was still sufficiently new and secret that her first reaction to Joan's unabashed admission was embarrassment tinged with disapproval. Then, guiltily, she dissembled:
"What on Earth do you mean?"
"Oh, come on now! Don't tell me you don't know all about it. I knew all about it before it actually happened to me. I'll admit I hadn't quite believed all the girls used to whisper to me. But I found out."
"And you got caught?" Monica's curiosity was rising. Joan was an entrancing little creature.
"Of course. We were bound to get caught sooner or later." She giggled. "Mummy and Daddy were so shocked. I felt quite sorry for them. I didn't feel the least bit repentant-at least not until I got sent to this place.
"If it ever is all over." rejoined Joan somberly. "It seems like forever. I'm sentenced to six months. That's your time too, isn't it? Hester told me."
"Yes. I think that's what most girls get." agreed Monica. "It's awful for poor Eve. I feel sorry for her. But she seems cheerful enough. But if she can bear it we can. You adjust. You discover small compensations and comforts. One of the things I have had to realize is this getting chained so heavily every evening in our cell. The first couple of nights it was awful. I just hated having those things locked on me everywhere and having to rattle and push them around all night so you didn't lay on them. But now, after being like this all day, I go to my cell quite happily and even help Arlette put the chains on and then I lay down and go to sleep, I'm so damn tired and I feel so good that I'm able to do it-even like that."
Joan nodded. "Funny, I've recognized it too. With me it's been being kept naked all the time. I couldn't bear it at first. Seemed as if a hundred eyes were staring at me all the time." Her familiar giggle returned, "All men, of course. But I've got used to it. Of course they keep it warm so that it's possible. I like it. It's so very convenient. Except for the fun of picking them and fixing them I don't want to wear clothes again. I'm a brazen hussy. I like being naked. I suppose one thing that helps in this," she continued speculatively, "is that all us girls have decent shapes-even the Mistresses. There isn't a fatty or a thinny among us. I'm glad. I know I look nice from the way Hester looks at me."
"There are other ways, too." Monica pointed out. "I know today's a bad day for us both. But about half the time they make it easy for us. Just some little bit of us chained to a wall so we have to stand. Tiring and frustrating but not cruel. On those days I find I can get into a sort of dream so that the time does pass without too much agony." She strained and brought her ankles back together. "But not today." she said ruefully. "Today's bad...."
In all her times of loneliness, and they were many as she stood chained or pilloried, Monica often asked herself how well she might have borne her punishments had not Arlette been a part of them. Arlette made all things bearable or even glorious and wonderful. It was a question Monica could not answer. But the other girls did survive. She wondered about Diana. Weeks had passed but she had not yet shared a punishment room with Diana. Her curiosity was piqued one morning when she found herself delivered to Hester. Perhaps today was to be the day. But when they entered the punishment room it was Joan who stood against one wall with her wrist chained above her head. Without a word Hester treated Monica in like manner and left. As usual, bolts slammed in the door after it was shut. Joan was ecstatic.
"Oh I'm so glad it's you." She enthused. "They have kept me alone for just days and days. I'm aching to talk. I'm aching to do something else, too. But Hester's horrid chaining us to opposite walls like this-and by one hand, too! Just to make it tantalizing."
In mock anger Joan looked up at the chain that held her slender wrist and tugged and rattled it in a hopeless effort to get free. Monica laughed.
"Silly, you know we can't get loose. Let's be thankful Hester left us one hand to do what we like with. See, I can blow you a kiss...! And just to show you how much I'd love to I'll even try and jerk my chain loose."
Amusedly she gave a half hearted pull. Her wrist shackle fell open. It hung with its chain from the ringbolt in the wall, empty.
Bemused by the unexpected both girls stared fascinated at Monica's wrist. It was free. Through its owner's mind there flashed the instant thought of escape. It died as quickly as it had come. Her ankles were still chained and the door was stoutly fastened. It was Joan who broke the astounded silence:
"Hester closed it but not hard enough to snap the lock. I remember now I did not hear it-you know how awful it sounds."
Monica's reaction then was instant. Her ankle chain swirled as she crossed the room, taking her companion's head in her hands she kissed her hungrily on her lips: "There, there, there. Again and again and again. I've been longing to do this ever since last time. I'm going to love you to pieces before I chain myself up again...."
Later, when Joan had caught her breath she demanded: "But darling, why? What do you mean: chain yourself up?"
"But I do have to." Monica wailed. "Don't you see. I can't get out of the room, and anyway my ankles are chained just as your's are. And I can't get you free. If Hester comes and finds me like this I'll be punished. Maybe we both will."
"Silly, silly!" sang Joan gaily. "Don't you see. We can have all day. When we hear her at the door you can just go and put the band around your wrist but don't snap it shut. She won't notice. Just look unhappy-that'll fool her. Then toward evening you can chain yourself again. But by then we'll have had the most wonderful day ever...."
Monica found indeed that it was truly wonderful. The younger girl was ecstatically responsive. Every touch brought its small moan or little cry. She was hungry for a girl's hands. They knew happiness. Their only sorrow was the shackle that implacably gripped Joan's wrist suspended high. It frustrated the total consummation of their desires. But Monica found joy in her total possession of this vibrant body whose one free hand sped knowingly to its task. They shared, and loved.
Any suspicious sound sent Monica frantically back to her wall. She found it easily possible to clasp the metal band so that it seemingly imprisoned her wrist She would stand for a few minutes until sure of safety then slip the wristlet once more and resume her lovemaking. At noon Hester made the usual routine visit, gave them a drink and left. She noticed nothing. Monica managed a convincingly weary pose. Then when silence returned, her lips and her hands found Joan in so great an absorption with sensation and emotion that, after minutes had passed, both girls stood frozen in pure horror at the sound of Hester's voice: "You seem to be enjoying yourselves."
Opening eyes that had been tight shut in happiness Joan and Monica saw that Hester must have soundlessly opened the door, slipped inside, and stood watching them: for how long it did not matter. She had seen enough. She surveyed them enigmatically. Then, as though this was a routine task, she pressed each girl back against the wall and carefully examined their nipples and their pubic hair. Next she looked at Joan's chained wrist. It was bleeding slightly from abrasions its owner had been unaware of in her striving to give as much of herself as she could. Hester nodded as though in confirmation. Then gave her attention solely to Monica: "Come with me."
Madam Dubois was her usual charming self. Standing unhappily before her Monica felt sure that should the Madam ever attend a hanging the victim must feel her presence and privilege. Her own nudity and her chained ankles felt untidy by comparison with this immaculate woman whose clothes always had the look of having arrived from Paris but an hour ago.
"It would seem that the evidence is quite conclusive." She nodded at Hester and then turned an inquiring gaze at the naked girl. "Have you anything to say my Dear?"
Monica could think of nothing useful to say. So contented herself with a demure, "No Madam."
Madam Dubois smiled warmly as she enumerated points: "Leniency might have been of the most possible had you behaved as you should. When you dis covered that the lock on your wristlet had failed to catch you could have easily locked it yourself and acquainted Hester with its fault when she came to you later. Or you could have remained free and asked Hester when she came to you later. Or you could have remained free and asked Hester to re-chain you at midday. You did not do these things. You deliberately deceived our good Hester. You deceived her with motives of the most deplorable."
Madam paused and eyed the culprit appraisingly. Monica longed to use her hands to cover herself but fought down the impulse. She longed, too, to defend herself. But remembering the reason some girls were in this house she knew she had no defense. But she tried:
"Joan is not guilty, Madam. The fault is mine."
"That is to be considered. But she is not without culpability. Such a sweet girl. Have you a proper shame?"
"Yes Madam." Monica felt injustice. But was trapped.
"Tres bon. And now, my Dear, we must decide what to do with you. What do you suggest?"
Monica suspected she was being played with. What a question to ask one already convicted. "I should be punished, Madam." she said firmly. It seemed best to get the sad business done with.
"Mais oui! What an admirable girl." Madam bestowed her warmest smile. "So we will punish you. Not today. Not tomorrow. But on the day after that you will be fastened in a manner appropriate to give the utmost exposure to your so lovely person and receive one hundred strokes with a whip."
Monica was aghast. One hundred strokes! It always taxed her endurance and courage to the limit to accept the regular twenty without breaking down.
"But Madam," she stammered, "A hundred! I cannot stand a hundred-no girl could. Oh, please Madam ... please."
"Ma pauvre petit. Do not so distress yourself," Madam Dubois's smile was of the warmest. "Come, come Cherie. You are in good hands here. We will not strip the skin from your pretty back. It is not as you think. It is not with the cane. The cane is for the bottom. They suit each other. But now, with one hundred strokes it is much the best that we use instead a whip-such a beautiful whip. You shall have all day, Cherie, in which to feel its caress, and so that no part of you may receive more of it than it can bear you will be whipped from the knees to the top of your shoulders at the back, and in the front some appropriate number across that part of you that always get you into so much trouble. Voila. You feel better?"
Again Monica felt it an unfair question. True, the description of her punishment just outlined plus the almost affectionate voice used to so outline it had, in a small measure, restored her courage. Perhaps it might be bearable as all other things in this house had proved bearable. But she had to ask:
"Who will whip me, Madam?"
"Does it matter?" Madam gave a Gallic shrug. "A whip is a whip. But it will be your own Mistress, Arlette, who shall give you the strokes. Arlette is, as you know, of the most severe."
Again that same thrill of relief she had known once before. However frightful her ordeal might be; if it was Arlette who held the whip she would survive it.
"And now," said Madam Dubois benignly, "I think, my dear Hester, you had better take our little pigeon to her cage and chain her very tight. She will have much time in which to consider what is going to happen to her on the day after tomorrow."
Hester led Monica away. She did indeed chain her very tightly and with as many chains as she could find places to put them. When she had locked the door and gone away Monica sat miserably on her bench. She could scarcely move so weighed down with chains was she. It would be a long evening and a long night. If she slept, she would dream about the whip.
Monica knew a feeling of unreality. The night had passed. Even loaded with the extra chains she had slept. Now, once more she was standing before the desk of Madam Dubois. Arlette stood quietly to one side. Her Mistress had brought Monica here. Why? Why not a punishment room?
"Please remove the chains from Monica's feet." Madam requested.
Monica watched wonderingly as Arlette complied. With the fetters gone it felt strange. It was the first time for a long while that" her ankles had not borne their weight. Dark circlets remained as a reminder on her skin.
"And now, ma petit Monique, please to put on your clothes."
The quiet command was almost like a blow. It caused the same sensation in the pit of her stomach that the sentence of the whip had created the previous day. Put on her clothes! It could mean but one thing. Pitiously she entreated:
"Please Madam, don't send me home in disgrace. I've hurt them enough."
"Our little girl jumps to the conclusion, yes." Madam Dubois was amused. "Please to do as I ask."
Her clothes were neatly stacked on a chair. Tears came to Monica's eyes at the sight of these small treasures that she and Mama had bought with love. She had scarcely expected ever to see them again. It was so long ago now since that awful day she had removed them and entered another world. Fumblingly she put them on.
"There is a mirror and other things. Our little girl must look her best."
Arlette had to help. But finally she stood, a smart and attractive young lady of fashion. Incongruously she wished that she was naked again. The clothes felt stuffy and uncomfortable.
"It is a holiday." said Madam Dubois.
As in a dream Monica did as she was told and followed where Arlette led.
For the girl who had been a prisoner it was an hour of incredible sensation. A tremendous question mark in the mind: a question no one seemed concerned to answer. In walking, her steps were still inhibited by chains no longer there. The clothes made her warm and uncomfortable. When the door of the house closed behind them she reached for Arlette's hand-almost afraid. Should she fear freedom! Or was this freedom! The scent of the trees and the wet earth was so very good. Suddenly she knew how much she had missed such things in prison. Momentarily her spirits soared. Surely what was happening must be good. How wonderful to be walking down this street. How much better than being chained in some dull room. She felt a twinge of guilt about Joan and wondered what her daily punishment might be. Shyly she glanced sideways at her companion. Arlette was sauntering casual and unconcerned. Why, oh why didn't she explain. End this suspense. Falteringly she asked: "Darling, what-oh what are you going to do with me?"
Arlette smiled then and met her eyes. "Me? Why nothing Cherie. Arlette does nothing with her little pigeon. It is for her little pigeon to decide what she wants to do. Voila!"
"Oh, Arlette, I don't know what to do. It's all so sudden," Monica smiled.
"So! Then we sit on a bench in the Park and talk."
"But why?" Monica demanded when they were settled.
Arlette's hand was warm upon her arm. "Because, Cherie, when today is done you will have made much discovery about yourself. Madam will have made much discovery, and your parents; they too will know much about their little girl. Their so dear little girl."
"You mean I'm being put to some sort of a test?"
Arlette's shrug was delightful. "It is what you make it, ma petit. Have not its possibilities occurred to you?"
"You mean I could run away?"
"I could not stop you," Arlette agreed.
"Or you and I could spend a lovely day in a hotel somewhere?"
"That would be most enchanting."
"Or I could call a hansom and go back to my parents."
"They would surely welcome you."
Monica stamped her foot angrily. "Oh, don't be such a tease. Help me!"
"I think now we go to a Corner House where you will see much people and we will have good coffee and little cakes and little sandwiches," Arlette said sagely.
In the afternoon they shopped. Lunch had partly returned Monica to normalcy. Harrods was a joy to her. Almost she bought a dress, then rejected it. "How do I know I will ever wear it?" she asked petulantly.
Arlette was like quicksilver. "We look then at the perfumes and the jewelry," she evaded tactfully.
A strange afternoon. Part happiness, part angry frustration. The empathy with her Mistress was ever present. But it helped the turmoil of Monica's mind not at all. It was not until dinner at the Strand Palace that the French girl became positive:
"I must advise mademoiselle to go home."
"Oh, don't call me mademoiselle!" Monica pleaded. "It sounds like those first days. And how can I go home-how can I?"
"You mean, you will feel that you have failed?"
"Yes."
Arlette shrugged. "Oui, I know all about the duty. And the guilt. Go then to a relative or to a friend. There must be many."
"Oh, no. I couldn't. Suppose they found out...."
Arlette placed her hand tenderly on her companion's arm. "My dear one. This is your hardest day, n'est ce pas. Arlette knows. So much harder than the chains and the stocks-pouf, they are nothing. Perhaps not harder than those days when I whip you. But still, not easy."
It was all hard to believe here in this once familiar place with its orchestra, the bustle of waiters, the subdued hum of polite conversation. Surely her small cell and her chains and her weekly whipping must be a dream. It wasn't, of course. But it had that quality.
Arlette continued. Almost as though talking to herself: "There is not the curfew. But it is evening. It is well that I remind you of tomorrow. If tomorrow you are in the house of Madam Dubois I will fasten you naked so that you are stretched and taut and throughout the day I will place upon that lovely body I adore one hundred weals that will become red and purple and black and will be worn for so long a time as those marks now on your bottom; but worse, much worse. You will scream much while I do this. Even though I do it with love there will be times when you will scream. To be whipped so is very terrible. Think on this Cherie. Now we go to the theatre."
It was nearly midnight when they said good bye. There were tears. Monica had never felt so bereft or so alone. She wondered if she could have forced herself to return with her Mistress had the whipping of tomorrow not existed. She did not know. But it was too terrible a punishment for her store of courage. Miserably she watched Arlette's cab out of sight. Now she would go home. She longed to feel her mother's arms and hear her father's voice. But not like this. She shrugged resignedly and hailed a cab.
Sight of her home brought more tears. So dear and familiar a place. Frantically she told the driver to circle for ten minutes. It would give her time to compose herself. The horse's hoofs beat a tune that said over and over: failure, failure, failure. As the time came close she opened her bag to have her fare ready. On top of her handkerchief, where only Arlette could have placed it, lay a small padlock, one such as had so often secured her in this way or that during these past weeks. She sat gazing at it long after the vehicle had come to its final halt. The cabbie had to break her reverie. It was late for young women to be out alone. Mechanically she gave him an address....
It was Arlette who opened the door. Passionately they kissed and clung. Reaching her cell Monica flung her clothes to the ground as though they contaminated her skin. Neither spoke. There was no need. Proudly naked Monica extended her wrists for the chains. Then her ankles. Thankfully she lay down asleep.
Morning brought its own bitterness. She could have been safe in her own room at home: she expelled the vision. Her day could have been of comfort and diversion instead of pain: she closed her mind to the knowledge. Had she chosen nobility or simply been a fool! She rejected the choice. What was left? She knew what was left: Arlette! Musingly she peeled and ate a peach, her chains providing a metallic accompaniment to each motion. Why must she face her motives and determine them. Did they matter. She was where she was. There would be no retracing of steps-she felt sure of that. So why was she here! Love for her parents: Passion for Arlette: a need to prove something to herself, courage perhaps! Guilt and a need to atone. Monica shook her head resignedly. It was something of all of these. In their totality they had brought her to this day. This most awful day....
So great was her fear of what she was about to suffer that her teeth started to chatter as Arlette led her, ankle chain snubbing at each step, to the light bare room where she would spend her day. The absurdity enabled her to provide a half hysterical laugh which Arlette shared. It made her feel better so that she was calmly able to raise her arms as her Mistress directed and watch as her wrists were strapped tight to a horizontal bar above her head, her arms spread wide. Arlette then unlocked the fetters on her ankles and set them aside:
"Please now, to spread very wide the feet apart."
Monica obeyed, and fleetingly remembered Joan.
Looking down now she saw that just beyond each of her widely separated feet a ringbolt in the floor held a short chain that ended in a heavy leather anklet. Arlette fitted these on her and buckled them tightly, then went to the wall and by the turning of a winch handle caused the bar above Monica's head to slowly raise so that the captive girl's arms were drawn up causing her ankles to tug at their fastenings in a futile effort to ease her position. The victim gasped as first one and then the other heel left the floor. When Arlette stopped turning and flipped the ratchet the naked girl hung in the form of an X. Arms and legs spread wide. Half hanging by the wrists, half standing on her toes. She made a wickedly beautiful picture. Stretched and taut. Her head slowly turning from side to side as she sought to assess the degree of her bondage. It was the only movement she could make.
Arlette ran light fingers caressingly up and down the strained beauty of the girl she possessed so totally. They lingered here and there and evoked gasps from parted lips. But even as she slowly knelt and her lips and then her tongue reached for their ultimate quintessance of ecstasy not even a shiver or the ripple of a muscle was possible from the rigidly held nudity. Monica responded with moans of happiness and a constant tossing of the head. But that was all. Even when it was done she hung no less taut though her head fell back and was still. She knew at that moment that the whip could find every secret part of her and that she could contrive no motion to evade it-not even a quivering of her flesh.
A minute passed in blissful satiety before Arlette broke the silence: "Is it that you sleep so long, ma cherie?" Her voice conveyed slightly more than the question.
Monica longed to prolong her mood. But reality returned. What now! But she knew what now. Raising her head she met her loved one's eyes. Then saw the thing in Arlette's hands. It was quite beautiful. Perhaps three feet long, tapered, black, supple, responsive to every pressure of the feminine fingers that controlled it. Arlette played with it pensively, ran it through her fingers and across her hands, coiled it, let it fall negligently its full length to the floor. Neither girl spoke. The whip had its own eloquence. Then, with that same thoughtful air, the Mistress draped a coil across her victim's taut arm, let it fall over the shoulder and down her back, drew it forward and down across the lifted breasts. Monica quivered inwardly. But the small gasps emerging from her parted lips were the same sounds that ecstasy had evoked just minutes before. Guided by Arlette, the leather had an almost silken touch. The two girls gave themselves utterly to this taunting suspense. To Monica it was a delicious prelude to something she dared not contemplate. To the Mistress it was the first notes of a symphony. Her whip was the bow tentatively testing the taut string.
"Ma pauvre petit! We must sometime begin. It is best now."
Monica nodded in acquiescence. Her eyes still half closed. She could not speak.
Waiting for the pain that would be new and different and more awful than anything before, Monica recalled all those other times when she had cringed before that first stroke of the cane across her buttocks. It was always the worst moment of all. The Mistresses prolonged it purposely. To counter the unbearable she had managed to create a limbo in the mind into which she retreated lest she plead and scream. She was always cruelly plucked from it by the first cutting blow across her flesh. But it helped. A naked girl under the whip clutches at even the smallest victory.
It curled around her slender concave waist. A band of fire, a thousand knives, a white hot brand. Everything within her writhed the dance of agony that her strained nudity was helpless to perform. Somehow she kept the vow she had made not to scream. A gasping moan escaped but she bit it back. The tossing of her head between her raised arms was her true confession of pain beyond bearing. Pain encompassed all her consciousness except for one small agonized comer of the mind bracing for the next stroke and pleading: 'Oh, not yet. Not yet-not yet...."
The Mistress leaned against the wall, her eyes hungrily focused on the thing she had done to the naked girl suspended before her. It was so beautiful, this circlet of red at the narrowest part of the rigidly held body, a red division on the white skin, rapidly becoming a raised weal like a neat belt dividing the slim hips from the first thrusting rib. So great a pity that the tortured child could not bend and examine herself. She would be so proud of what she bore: a scarlet circle of pain on a field of white. Arlette was pleased with the simile. It would be a pity to give the second stroke that would spoil the effect.
It was Monica who finally broke the silence.
"Darling?"
"Oui, Cherie."
"Oh, darling, it was so awful-worse than I thought. Is it, is it possible for a girl-for me, to stand-to stand a hundred?"
"It is sad, ma petit." Arlette gave her French shrug, "But it is possible for a girl to bear. It is of the most possible for my little pigeon. She is not as others."
Monica gave a small mute nod of acceptance. If her love said it was so, then it must be so. She strained at her fastenings in a wish to observe her wound. But they defeated her. Sight of her waist was denied.
"Oh, darling. I didn't scream that time. But I will the next-oh, I know I will...!"
"It does not matter, little pigeon. It is good to scream. It is not forbidden. I will make you screamso very much."
Arlette came and began a gentle play with her fingers on the naked nipples. "There. It feels better, no! But I must not take all the time on this nice thing. We have so much to do, ma petit." Playfully she pinched each bud she had teased erect. "But it is good that I should tell you now that when I whip higher on your back I will make you wear a pretty bra' of leather. I will put it on you so that these two so beautiful things I love and which you love too will not be cut or even marked. The whip shall strike but it shall not touch. Madam, also, is most demanding in this." She gave a small trill of laughter, "It is that when a young lady is returned to her home from the establishment of Madam Dubois she should be in a condition of the most perfect."
"How long will it be before these marks I'm going to get today disappear?" Monica asked dejectedly.
Arlette pursed her mouth considering. "Perhaps a month, Cherie. Probably longer. My little pigeon's bottom already has so many fine colors, now I must add to them. Of a certainty it will be more than four weeks. But it is not for to worry. You will look adorable with your stripes." Again she laughed a merriment Monica could not share, but which somehow made her plight seem less harrowing, "Your Mistress will take much care with each stroke so that afterwards you may wear them with pride. The other girls will be jealous, no!"
"You're teasing," accused Monica. Not really minding. A feminine instinct had been aroused. Would she look nice wearing the stripes of a whip! Would she ... would the other girls....She remembered the multi-colored bottoms of all the girls, herself included. There was something erotically pleasing, especially when a single stroke stood etched upon the fair skin. "I suppose it doesn't matter much. It's simply months before I get sent home."
"You do not wish to go home." There was still laughter in Arlette's voice.
Monica's mental struggle to produce a protest to what she felt was an amused accusation: a protest which might be truthful and which she herself might believe in, was interrupted by the opening of the door and the sudden entry of Madam Dubois herself. As usual her presence dominated the room. With measured steps she circled the pinioned girl until she stood beside Arlette. As greeting she uttered but one word:
"Exquisite!"
For almost a minute she surveyed the naked stimulation of an X that was exposed so immovably for her inspection, and the ridged red weal that circled its center, "You are a very beautiful girl," she told Monica. "You will be a very beautiful woman." Almost to herself and as an afterthought she added, "The thought disgusts that a man should ever possess you." Then, in a changed tone, "My dears, the two of you have created something quite beautiful. If we but had an artist to immortalize so glorious a nude."
Suddenly she became practical. She addressed Monica: "You will tell me, my dear, your feelings at this moment."
The request caught the prisoner unprepared. How could she feel! Was this a trap? Was some obvious statement required of her-something humble perhaps? She did her best. At least it was the truth:
"I feel afraid of what I have been sentenced to, Madam."
"Nothing else?"
If Monica could have moved she would have squirmed. She had no answer. How unjust it was to bait her so. Very well! She was to receive a hundred strokes. Did it matter much if that became two hundred-or three hundred? She found herself in a welter of emotion in which nothing mattered. Her voice was level, but without hope
"I did what I wanted most to do. It was judged wrong. I have been sentenced to a hundred strokes with a whip. I must accept this sentence. I am fastened, as you see, so that I cannot move. I have received the first lash. Because of it I have to tell you that I am desperately afraid. I don't want to scream. That is all Madam." Monica's head dropped.
"Of course, my dear, you are afraid. I know that. But is there no other emotion?"
"I expect you mean guilt, Madam," Monica responded wearily. "Humility? That I should feel contrite." She shook her head, bemused. "I don't know. I have asked myself these things. Other girls have asked me. I am here because of my parents. It was their wish." Suddenly she had a flush of intuition, "I cannot tell you why I returned to this house yesterday. But I did return to be as I am now."
Madam Dubois nodded reflectively. She seemed to ponder. Her foot tapped the floor. Monica had a desolate vision of two hundred strokes instead of one. But Madam was a woman of surprises:
"You enjoyed your shopping, mademoiselle?"
Anger almost prompted Monica to demand: 'Whip me and be done with it!' Instead, she said meekly: "Yes Madam."
"Tres bon! So today again you go shopping with our good Arlette."
Astonishment blotted out every retort. Monica stared blankly at her tormentor. Madam Dubois burst into laughter.
"Ma pauvre Cherie. I am too cruel. There is no one hundred lashes. You have had them all. That so beautiful mark you will wear for so long a time."
Monica was dazed. She felt no relief: "But why...?"
"Why, ma petit! Perhaps I do not know why any more than you do. Let us say that you have been tested and not found wanting. We are very proud of you."
"You mean I won't be whipped-not any more?" Cautiously she added, "This time."
"Not any more-this time." Madam acknowledged. "And because we are proud of you and perhaps love you a little you are to have an afternoon of happiness."
Madam Dubois mused for a moment as though remembering. "Of course, our discipline. It is important too. So mademoiselle will spend the rest of the morning as she is now. It is not comfortable, that pose. I am quite sure. Then in the afternoon Arlette will take you as I have promised."
Gaily Madam kissed her astounded prisoner warmly on the lips. "Come, Arlette. We leave our little dove to quietly think. And to wish, perhaps, that she were not fastened as tightly as she is." In a moment they were gone, the door closed, the bolt slammed home. Monica was alone.
Captivity as total as endured by the girls of Madam Dubois teaches much. Each girl was no more than an extension of her Mistress. What the Mistress tossed to them they must accept. If, sometimes, it was a scrap of joy they must cherish and savor it to the full. Monica sought to do this now. Slowly there was enveloping her the full realization that she was not to be whipped after all. A glow of happiness pervaded her being: a flood of tenderness for the woman who had remitted the awful punishment. Had they ever intended to inflict it! She did not know or care. It was over. But now captivity reasserted itself. Madam had supposed her pose distressing. It was.
Monica had no idea of time. She was to be released around midday. She did not know how far off that moment might be. Suddenly with the whipping gone she found herself one large ache with points of pain at wrist and ankle and at the upper point of the inverted V that were her legs. The manner in which she had been fastened for the whip was a punishment in itself. A severe one. It was almost a vertical rack. Absurdly she found feminine comfort in Madam's exclamation: 'Exquisite!' It was nice to know that she looked beautiful; even if it did hurt. She tried to struggle, to ease her position, but could extract no faintest tolerance from her bonds. Her Mistress had done her work well. Never in the past or in the months still to come would Arlette show her the faintest trace of mercy or favor in her punishments. Thinking of Arlette she smiled happily. But with that smile there was much pain from every point of her stretched nudity, so that it was accompanied by a tear that trickled slowly down her cheek. Resignedly she settled herself to wait.
Monica chose the Park. She wanted to ask questions more than she wanted to shop. She was not sure whether she was angry or pleased or just curious. "It was all planned, wasn't it? Hester left that chain unlocked on purpose?"
Arlette considered the question, pushing a leaf this way and that with her foot, a half smile on her lips. "I am not supposed to tell you, Cherie. Madam would be most angry and I would get much pain," She gave a shiver that might have been simulated or real. Monica could not tell. "But, yes. You have guessed right. Hester does not make such mistakes."
"Why?"
"Does it matter, dear one? I am not sure that I know. Perhaps a test. Your parents may have asked that it be done...."
Monica knew a moment's thankfulness that she had not entered her home that decision wracked night.
"But what has it proved?"
Arlette laughed gaily. "It proves, ma petit, that you do not wish to leave Arlette. For this I am glad."
"I'll never want to leave you, Arlette."
"Even when I whip you very hard and chain you in so many ways?"
"Silly! You know I don't mind. If Hester did it I would mind terribly."
"You would not have returned that night if Hester had been your Mistress?"
Monica knew that here she had reached the core of her own doubt and concern. Was it need of Arlette or duty to her parents. As though reading her thoughts Arlette suggested: "Why worry, Cherie. What you did must have been the right thing. Otherwise we would most certainly not be sitting here."
Monica realized that this point was indeed the crux of the matter. So, she had done the right thing. Her mind leaped ahead.
"Darling."
"Yes, Cherie?"
"When it's all over-the six months, I mean. What then?"
"My little pigeon will go home. So happy."
"Oh, darling. You tease. I mean-about us."
Arlette examined the lovely animated face. "You would wish to stay a prisoner always?"
Monica thought about this a long time, her features tense. London rolled by the two girls unnoticed. Arlette watched the battle before her musingly.
"Yes. I would wish that rather than lose you."
Arlette's eyes were troubled. "I know. It is not easy." She brightened mischievously: "Perhaps if I am very cruel to my little pigeon she will be most happy to go home when her time comes? That is what I will do. It is simple, no?"
Monica matched the mood: "How splendid! T never thought of that. When I do not love you any more I will tell you and you can stop."
They shared their laughter and their happiness. "And you will not go to your home when the time comes this evening?" asked Arlette slyly.
"My home is where you are," Monica said seriously. "And today I'm not going to create awful decisions to face." She laughed infectiously with pure happiness. "Come, darling. I will buy you a silk blouse at Liberty's. No use buying clothes for me. I won't be wearing any. Let's shop."
They had dinner at the Cafe Royale. They were chatting happily over dessert when a male voice interposed: "I say there, if it isn't Arlette! Greetings mademoiselle."
Monica looked up, annoyed. Her freedom was short. She did not want it wasted by strangers. She was even more annoyed when Arlette found it necessary to make introductions. He was the honorable Freddie Arbuthnot. Monica was quite sure that in her life before Madam Dubois she had met a hundred like him and thought them ridiculous. She made an effort to show disinterest. But the honorable Freddie was not abashed.
"I say," he gushed to Arlette in a frightful old school tie voice, "What an absolutely ripping girl. Where have you been keeping her?"
Monica stifled a giggle. She wondered if this fop's equanimity would stand the strain of knowing where she had been kept and what happened to her there.
"Mademoiselle is a friend," Arlette informed him equably and non-committally. "And now, honorable Freddie, please to run along."
"The old dismissal, what!" said Freddie unperturbed. "You would cast me into outer darkness."
"Mais oui! Mademoiselle and I have things of which to speak."
"Why not talk about me?" asked Freddie helpfully. "Because there is nothing of which to talk. You are a-pouf...!" Arlette dismissed the subject of the honorable Freddie Arbuthnot with her Gallic shrug and a wave of the hand.
Freddie turned his charm upon Monica. "I say, that's a bit thick, you know. I'm really most frightfully interesting. I can tell you are aching to hear the story of my life-you are, aren't you?"
"No." said Monica, as rudely as she felt one could be in the Cafe Royale.
"Let it never be said I thrust my nobility where it is unwanted," said the honorable Freddie theatrically. "You have scorned a good man's love. I hope you have a perfectly foul time without me. I bid you adieu." He sauntered casually into the crowd.
"He is a-what you say? A silly ass." Arlette dis missed their visitor with a gesture. "A pleasant silly ass and sometimes useful if one is bored. But that is all."
"I was rude, wasn't I?"
"It is the only way to deal with Freddie," said Arlette as she deftly inserted a spoon into the peche Melba. "His feelings, they cannot be hurt. Think no more of him. And now, my very dear, of the theatres which shall it be...."
Their's was a very happy day.
It must be admitted in the days that followed there were often times when Monica wondered if the French girl was actually following her own suggestion, seemingly made in jest, to be especially cruel. Nothing specific but rather an absence of those periods in which the daily punishment was more from boredom and immobility instead of pain. There had been two days in a row in which she had stood with arms stretched above her head; an exhausting pose in which to be chained. There had been a day in which one of her wrists had been chained high above her on the wall and one ankle fastened thirty inches above the floor, so that she perforce stood on one leg yet had one free hand that was powerless to aid her in any way. Two more days had been spent with both feet and wrists held in the stocks. It had all been tiring and a drain on her confidence in herself and in her Mistress. She had taxed Arlette with the direct question. But had received in reply only a cheerfully bantering evasion. Thus she came finally to the morning when she was guided, her ankle chain swirling and tinkling on the stone floor, to a room she had no wish to enter again. It was a bright and cheerful room. It held the bench and the iron rings set in the wall with their buckled straps hanging.
"Oh no, darling, not this again."
"But, of course, Cherie. It has been so long."
"It's awful. Are you going to stretch my legs as wide apart again?"
"Mais oui, ma petit. Perhaps even a little more." Arlette assured her mischievously. "So that those wicked lips are well parted to invite...."
"Invite what? You are a tease."
Arlette shrugged. "What else: a kiss: maybe a tongue. You would enjoy teeth, maybe? Little teeth that bite."
"Oh alright. I'll be a good girl and won't argue. I suppose you want me to get into position?" Pouting, but remembering that this room held good memories as well as bad, Monica climbed on to the bench, lay back and allowed her arms to fall down each side. She even sought and found the straps and placed her wrists in them so that it took her Mistress but a moment to buckle them tight. Raising her feet she shook the chain that joined them, "Why not leave them chained, darling? Wouldn't it save trouble?"
"Mademoiselle presumes to make the small joke." Said Arlette with mock severity. "Mademoiselle will be sorry."
"Twenty strokes as well?" Invited the prisoner puckishly. "For insolence?"
"A so tres bon idea." Agreed Arlette cheerfully as she unlocked and threw aside the leg irons. "But first to buckle tight the anklets, so. And now to pull tight the straps." She giggled. "Never have I seen Mademoiselle so well displayed."
Monica wished that she herself could see what she was sure must be a most extraordinary spectacle. As before, she could not move. Her legs were stretched apart to an extent she would not have believed possible. It seemed as though the eyes of the whole world must be riveted on her black triangle of hair. She was thankful there was only her Mistress to see. This punishment was wickedly shaming.
"Oh please, let them back an inch, Sweetheart." She pleaded.
Arlette tested the tension of the taut thighs and legs thoughtfully. Then, brushing the hair to each side examined the lips normally hidden but now parted and exposed. "My little pigeon is now just as she was before." She announced brightly. "But we progress, n'est ce pas? We pull the buckle one more notch." And despite Monica's pleas and groans, some simulated and some all too real, she tightened the straps into their next resting place.
The naked victim tossed her head from side to side. "Oh darling, it's awful." She complained. "I'm splitting. I bet my poor cunny's wide open. I can even feel it is."
"Mais oui! Tres convenient for one who would give you pleasure, little pigeon. See, I put my finger right on that tender spot." She did so, laughing down at her victim. The intimate and knowing contact sent Monica gasping and surging against her bonds. Without further words the Mistress knelt, as before an altar, and bowing her head used her lips and her tongue and her teeth to take the bound girl into that Wonderland that only the two of them knew. When it was over and the last gasp had become a quiet sigh of happiness she softly withdrew and closed the door.
At such times Monica never wished to return to the consciousness of whatever punishment she might be suffering. Certainly not today to an awareness of the stretched legs that made her doubly naked. She stayed in her Wonderland for as long as pain would allow. She had developed a faculty for immobility and relaxation that eased the strains she was constantly subjected to. If you refused to let your mind dwell on your plight it helped. An acceptance that there was nothing you could do about it helped. The visits of her Mistress helped. Arlette came as often as her duties allowed. She brought pleasure with her. Pain was something that could not always be ignored. Madam Dubois would have professed shock if told that her Girls suffered actual pain in their confinement, and in this she would have been technically correct. Except for their whippings, there was no actual infliction. The pain came from long immobility or from some strained position such as Monica now endured. It began simply as an ache or as fatigue and intensified, to some degree, in proportion to whatever apprehension or panic its victim was prone. Monica had learned this. Keep panic at bay and much of the pain went with it. Never think in hours, only of the minute that was now. Thus she now lay stretched upon her altar of discomfort so that the minutes passed in a glowing reverie in which the hand of her love still rested lightly upon her senses. So great and fulfilling had been her orgasm that she drowsily hoped her lovely dream might last until her Mistress came again. She did not know how long she lay thus, eyes closed. At peace. Nor does it matter. It was a long time. A time brought to an end by an awareness that crept upon her senses. Intangible, yet enough to provoke her to reluctantly open her eyes. What she saw caused them to widen in a stare of pure horror. Framed within the wide V of her tortured legs there looked down upon her the vapid but beaming countenance of the honorable Freddie Arbuthnot.
To Monica it was a shock so devastating that no coherent reaction emerged from the turmoil of emotion within her mind: shame, fear, outrage, anger seethed. But the only words that came to her lips were a pleading but ineffectual: "Go away!"
"I've only just arrived." Her unwanted guest pointed out reasonably.
Never had the prisoner been more keenly aware that she could not move an inch. What weapon had she to use against this mortifying invasion. Words were not likely to pierce the sang-froid of the Honorable Freddy. She knew the type. But there was one more feminine weapon she could try:
"I'll scream!" she threatened.
"Please do. I'll wait." His voice was infuriatingly cheerful.
Monica could have killed him. Every muscle she possessed surged against the straps that held her. She knew she was blushing and inwardly cringing away from the shaming exposure to which Freddy's eyes now seemed locked in amazed fascination. "How did you get here?" she asked miserably.
"The usual way, dear girl. Front door and all that."
"If Madam finds you she'll call the police."
"Mais oui!" Freddy chuckled. "Bit of French that. Madam's gone to the country for the day." His eyes never left the parted lips that the helpless girl longed to close but could not. As though remembering a message he continued: "Arlette said to tell you she sent me with her love. Damned nice of her, what!"
"Arlette didn't send you."
"She did, y'know. We're old pals."
Misery enveloped the impotent victim. She recalled that Arlette had mentioned a man a long time ago. But why would her Mistress betray her to this absurd man about town. She recoiled from a thought that had sought entry to her mind these last several days....At any rate it was certain that The Honorable Freddy could only be where he was by Arlette's connivance and consent. "What do you want now you're here?" She demanded.
"Oh I say! Steady now old girl. Keep it decent and all that...."
"Please, Freddy! You shouldn't see me like this. You know you shouldn't. Please go away and leave me alone."
"Well, well, me proud beauty! Methinks ye sing a different tune."
"Very well. I was rude yesterday. I'm sorry. Is that what you want?"
"No."
It was on her tongue to ask him then what it was that he did want of her. But, unhappily, she realized that she knew perfectly well what he wanted and how very easy it would be for him to take it. Panic drove her to explore every hope: "Freddy, surely you have some decency."
"None at all." He assured her imperturbably. "I'm going to fuck you."
It was like a blow. The word had been whispered in cloakrooms, with a good deal of furtive giggling. She had never heard an adult use it. Now a man was going to do it to her as she lay naked and stretched wide to receive him. The four letter word burned her with fear and disgust. "You filthy beast!" She exclaimed bitterly.
"Not very chummy, I must say." Freddy complained. "This could be a bit of all-right y'know if we were palsy-walsy." He lapsed into a shocking simulation of the Cockney accent: "Ain't much use yer plying the 'aughty lidy-not with that little arse 'igh in the air and yer cunt wide open an' a winkin' at every bloke wot passes."
Monica felt certain that scarlet must surely be suffusing every inch of her. She sought for words to refute and to wound. "You bore me." She said with loathing.
Freddy guffawed coarsely. "I say, jolly good, that! A pun, by Jove."
Monica was furious with herself for the ill chosen word, yet felt a hysterical desire to giggle. "Don't you have a mother?" She asked bitingly.
"Steady on, old girl." Freddy remonstrated. "Can't possibly do it to the Mater-incest and all that." He now closely inspected Monica's hairy triangle with its gaping invitation. "Don't suppose she's ever been in quite this position. Much more sporting to do it to you y'know."
"Let me loose Freddy, please."
"Sorry, love. Arlette's orders. No letting loose." Again his inane guffaw, "Besides, we'd never get you into a position half as good as this. Absolutely ripping!"
Despite herself, Monica almost involuntarily joined his hilarity as he stuttered: "I say, old girl-another pun-what! Absolutely ripping! Oh, I say. You must be all-ripping, I mean. Jolly good."
"Haven't you any pity?"
"Not fer a 'aughty lidy like wot you be. Too good fer the likes o'me you are. I know yer kind. A good fuckin' is wot you needs. I'm goin' ter make yer ask fer it."
"You know I won't do that."
"Ah, my proud beauty! Next line goes: Unhand me villian! Doesn't it! There's no hope, y'know. You're quite at my mercy. Probably beginning to enjoy it, aren't you? Good Old Freddy will help a bit-like this." His hand decended and began to gently massage her sex. His other hand was raised in admonition, finger wagging. "No-no! I know the next line too. It's: Get your filthy hands off me you swine. Right?"
Monica squirmed in fury. It was exactly the words that had risen to her lips. Now she tried another tack: "I'll tell my father. He'll hound you into the ground."
But nothing could dent Freddy's armour of complacency. He was using both hands now. His fingers and palms were knowing and adept. Her loins and bottom hung suspended in the air so that they were an inviting offering for his ministrations. Monica could not see his hands at work. But she had become warmly aware of them. It made her angry and flushed.
"But you won't be seeing Daddy for a long time, will you Poppet." Evidently The Honorable Freddy knew a good deal about her. "By that time, my shrinking violet, this day will be but a happy memory."
"Happy!!" Monica put all her loathing and distress into the one word.
Freddy sighed romantically. "Alas joy is but fleeting. We must seize it as it passes." His finger expertly explored within her open lips and found what it sought. Monica gasped and again fought the straps. "Can't move much, can you." Said Freddy approvingly. "Just say the word when you want me to fuck you."
Monica did not deign to reply. But in the silence which ensued she became horrifyingly conscious that The Honorable Freddy Arbuthnot possessed a skill in dealing with female flesh that she would not have supposed him capable of. She knew that she was enjoying what he was doing to her. It was bitterly unjust, she reflected, that her own senses should play traitor.
Angrily she realized that if this continued she would soon be unable to stifle a rising passion.
When his hands were withdrawn her hope was short lived. Freddy undressed as casually as he did everything else, hanging his clothes absurdly on the ringbolts set in the wall for a quite different use. Monica could raise her head scarcely at all, but looking sideways she was able to see that The Honorable Freddy was one of those men who looked better with his clothes off than with them on. Apprehensively her eyes sought that object which was of the most vital concern to a girl in her predicament. It was huge and erect and very hard. It did not seem possible that all of it could be thrust within her and that her sex would accommodate it. Stripped, Freddy came and stood beside her. "Ready to say the word?" He asked encouragingly.
She vouchsafed no reply. She knew she was helpless. She knew he would arouse her; had in fact already done so. She knew he would have his way with her. But she did not have to be humble. She would cheat him there. Furious with the cheerful face beaming down on her she closed her eyes. But it took an effort of will to keep them closed and to regulate her breathing when his lips enveloped a nipple and deft fingers began to manipulate her other one while his other hand returned to its previous explorations with her sex. With gusto combined with a telling finesse her tormentor played upon her femininity as a skilled musician might play upon a harp.
It was an unequal and unfair contest. Monica was angry with herself and the weakness of her flesh. She was soon panting and gasping under Freddy's ministrations. She could not move, but reflexes fought her bindings. She longed to be free. She was shamed that he might think her easily aroused. It was such a little time past that she had been a virgin. There had been but the one single unsatisfactory union with a male that had brought about her entry into Madam Dubois establishment. It had taught her little beyond the mechanics of what a man could do to a woman physically-nothing of the emotions. It was Arlette who had generated within her the full fire of womanhood. Arlette was a past Mistress in every subtlety of sex. So skilled was she that she could take any one of Monica's limbs or any part of her body and bring her to a climax by that which she would do with it. In the time they had been together Monica had learned more from her Mistress of sex and of herself than most females of her station learned in a lifetime.
Freddy was, thus, not working on the barren ground that society and her parents would have approved. Monica was a woman whose every sense was taut and eager to respond.
Her intelligence dictated now that she adopt the same tactics that she used in her punishments. Don't panic. Think only of this moment. Ride with the tide. It is doubtful that Monica had ever heard the gem of wisdom offered to the female facing rape, often credited to the Chinese sage Confucious. But of her own initiative she allowed her senses to guide her into it.
Without warning Freddy bit her cruelly and laughed at her cry of protest. "Ready to ask nicely?"
"No."
He resumed his task. For a moment Monica thought he was actually doing what he had threatened. Her cry of pain caused him to desist.
"Be sensible, poppet." He smoothed back the hair from her face, obviously admiring the angry features glaring up at him. "I'm not cruel, y'know. But you are going to pay for that slight in the Cafe Royale. A grand Duchess dismissal, that was. So just to even the score you're going to ask me to fuck you and you'll do it in your very best Sunday afternoon voice-Just as though the Vicar was present."
"I won't!"
Freddy chuckled confidently. "You will, y'know. I've thought of the very thing to put you in an asking mood." He slipped under her outstretched foot, grinned with obvious relish at her hairy sex, then turned his attention to the buckled strap that held her right foot taut. "I'm going to keep pulling these tighter and tighter until you say those magic words."
"You can't. You'll kill me." Monica knew panic with a vengence.
"Oh, I don't suppose so, poppet." Freddy rejoined as he fumbled at the strap. Then added cheerfully: "I expect you'll begin to split a little before anything drastic gives way."
"I'll just do it by degrees." Freddy assured her. "I'll pull this one up one hole, then I'll pull the other leg up one hole, and I'll go back and forth until you come out with that nice little speech. Remember now, nothing angry or talking to the tradesman tone of voice. Give of your best. Embellish it a bit. Go into detail. Be specific." He tugged at the buckle.
It meant much to Monica that she treasure this last shred of pride. The pain as he tightened the strap was frightening. But she allowed no flicker of emotion to cross her face. Within her mind, however, simple reason was betraying her fortitude just as was her flesh. Freddy had roused her in a way she would not have believed possible. His hands and his lips had done their work well. He had taken his time. The bizarre eroticism of her condition had also been a potent stimulant. She had been shamed but intrigued. Her stimulated flesh demanded that Freddy finish what he had started. With shame she knew that she longed for him to continue. If only he did not insist on her total humiliation! She must indeed have hurt him bitterly that evening. If only she could stand the pain-surely he would not dare injure her.
As though in answer, The Honorable Freddy turned his attention to her other leg. Monica knew she dare not risk whatever its further tightening might do to her. Pain sliced at courage. She accepted defeat. She would have to capitulate. She would have to say the words she hated. That one awful word! If only he had not demanded that!! Miserably she felt certain that she had best make her request with its obscenities as flowery and explicit as she could. She felt sure he would demand further shameful things should her first try fall short of what he wanted to hear. "I'll say it!" she gasped heartbrokenly.
The honorable Freddy paused in his task and looked down at her with a pleased and amused expression. He kept silent. Monica took a deep breath and plunged:
"Darling Freddy; please fuck me. Please stick that great big thing of yours right into my cunny and fuck me very hard indeed."
She could have wept at the degradation.
The Honorable Freddy stood in silent admiration. Finally he enthused: "I say, y'know, that was jolly good!" Then, nodding with quiet satisfaction, as an afterthought: "A few more days with good old Freddy and you'd turn into a really corking girl."
He said no more. Monica was sure there was nothing more to say. She knew a moment of gratitude when her tormentor placed the second stool beneath her bottom so that the strain on her wracked body and legs might not be made more severe by what he was about to do. Thoughtfully and without prompting he also loosened the strap on her right leg in the same degree that he had previously tightened it. The relief, small as it was, seemed heavenly to the bound girl.
As usual Freddy exhibited great skill, tempered, now, with what almost seemed a faint tenderness. Monica's earlier dismay proved groundless. So aroused had she become that Freddie's huge weapon slid into her with a lubricated ease that brought her first gasp of ecstasy. She longed that her legs might be free, and her arms, so that she might clasp this male thing possessing her. Yet she found a strange and savage joy that she was stretched wide to invite and to receive. What better way for a girl to offer herself! The fact that offering herself had been her very last thought or wish was forgotten now in the flood and intensity of sensation that Freddy's manipulations evoked. The Wonderland she entered now was a different Place from that other. They need not be compared. This one was not shared. She was taken there by force. But as she was led through its canyons and its peaks it became a journey she hoped would never end. It did end, of course. But the male thing did not leave her. She lay beneath its weight not caring. Soon they began again to traverse the now familiar way. They made their pilgrimage again and again and again....
The Honorable Freddy left as silently as he had come. His victim remained stretched in her punished nakedness. No word passed. It seemed to him as he went that the girl he had ravished was asleep. He was content that this should be so. Monica herself wanted nothing more than the exquisite exhaustion with which repletion had released her being from awareness of pain. She lay suffused with a glorious satiety. Her mind empty of conflict.
It lasted a long time until the moment when she sensed Arlette's presence. Her Mistress stood between the strained thighs, looking down, features pensive. The silence remained unbroken, but their eyes locked and held. It was a communion of understanding. Yet Monica knew a feminine compulsion:
"Why?" The word was whispered more than spoken.
Arlette did not answer at once. She continued her meditative contempation of the captive. Then, as one humors a child: "You know why, Cherie."
"It was because of Joan, wasn't it?"
"You gave her what was mine." The French girl's voice now held emotion.
"But darling, she was lonely-so terribly lonely. It was all I had to give."
"Perhaps. Cherie. The Honorable Freddy, he was lonely too."
Tears filled Monica's eyes and overflowed. She shook her head to rid her cheeks of the salty drops but they were replaced by others. It had been an incredible day. Her emotions were as taut as her limbs. She had no will to fight or to justify. If only her Mistress would not reject her. That was all that mattered. Almost happily she surrendered to the feminine solace and sobbed quietly.
The Mistress wisely allowed the overtaxed emotions to find release. She was smiling gently as she finally patted the tired face dry. Then bent and bestowed a full warm kiss that was like a benediction to the bound girl. It was a kiss of forgiveness, and more.
"My little pigeon does not hate her Mistress?"
"Oh no, never-never, never!" The declamation was vehement.
Arlette kissed her again. A long kiss of love. When it was done she said somberly: "It is understood then: each day I punish you because of something you have done. Something of which I do not even know. Madam knows and your parents know. But Arlette does not know or care. Yet I punish you very much. It is understood. I am your Mistress. Now it is understood that I also punish you very much when you displease me who loves you. Because I love you, you belong to me. N'est ce pas?"
To the bound girl upon the bench her Mistress's words brought a surging relief. They were a clearer delineation of the bond between them than she had understood. It was what she wanted. What she had always wanted but only dimly glimpsed. She felt a great need at that moment to prove her joy: "Darling...." Her voice was hesitant and uncertain, "Whip me! I do not know if what I did was wrongI suppose it was. But it displeased you and made you unhappy, so whip me. Whenever I displease you, darling, whip me. Always...."
The Mistress answered silently with seeking lips and gentle hands. Then: "Of course I will not whip you, Cherie. Not this time. You have been punished enough. Arlette knows that when her little pigeon first saw that so silly Freddy she must have been much shamed and afraid. And in these last days Arlette has been most unkind with daily punishments of the most severe. No easy days for ma petit. So that is enough. But next time you are a so foolish girl you will be whipped to hurt very much. Please to remember."
Arlette playfully caressed the bound girl's nipples. Then did the unexpected-she loosed the straps that held the outstretched legs unbuckled the anklets and threw them aside. Monica's feet were completely free.
"Madam is away today, so little mice can play." She mimicked. "No one will visit our little pigeon to make sure her wings are properly clipped." She shook an admonishing finger, "But that is all the setting free. Mademoiselle still cannot move very much, and so she will stay until the proper time. But this is a small gift from Arlette that she may do as she wishes with her so nice legs and close her naughty lips so that they do not tempt."
It felt so good! Almost worth the travail to now know this miracle of freedom. At first she could scarcely move them. But soon she was pedalling an imaginary bicycle in the air. It was a pure joy. "Oh, I love you, I love you, I love you!" She laughed happily. Then, remembering: "But what about Madam Dubois? Won't she find out?"
"Mais mon, ma petit. Hester and I have the small understanding. What is it said: the scratching of backs. No one will know."
"I could tell her." Said Monica archly.
"So I am at your mercy!" Arlette threw up her hands in mock resignation. "You are having what they say; the whip hand. I must do as you say or else you tell? My little pigeon likes the thought? It is true."
"Silly, silly!" Monica laughed. A thought struck her: "I bet she'd punish me too."
"Of a certainty she would punish your Mistress the most terrible." Arlette agreed. "I would be much afraid to even think of what she might do to me. To let the honorable Freddy in here was very bad-But to let him have his way with Madam's favorite pupil...." She raised her eyes in mock horror. "It does not bear the thinking."
"What is Freddy to you?" Monica asked with curiosity.
Arlette shrugged. "I have told you. When one is bored he is amusing. In his stupid way he is quite nice. I have known him long. He wishes me to marry him."
"Marry Freddy!" Monica would have sat upright had she been able.
"It is absurd, no!" Arlette produced her Gallic shrug. "But I am most poor, and the Honorable Freddy is of the most rich." She twinkled at her naked captive. "We French are most practical about such things. It is not a bad thing to marry someone for his money. One may be kind even if one does not love. It is a small something I keep: this wish of his. Like a Bank account for the rainy day."
It seemed an un-likely event. Monica let the subject drop. But it had roused a question in her mind: a quite real fear.
"Darling, talking about Freddy and-and what he did to me...." She found it hard to ask, "Couldn't I have a baby?"
Arlette spilled laughter. "And have a so big tummy, yes! And have to explain to Madam! It is too terrible to think. Do not concern yourself beloved. Arlette made so very, very sure." Again the tender play upon the nipples. "These nice things are for Arlette only. No baby shall have them."
"Then we have nothing to worry about...." Monica sighed with happiness.
"You are too beautiful for worry, ma Cherie." Arlette whispered.
After that they did not talk much for a very long time.
* * *
The following morning it was Hester who unlocked her from the wall of her cell and tested the fetters on her wrists and ankles. Monica knew intuitively what lay in store. Hester refused to answer her questions as to where was Arlette and why. Hester herself was obviously disturbed. She wasted no time. "You'll know soon enough. Come with me."
Apprehensively the naked girl did as she was bid. Her ankle chain made its usual accompaniment to her measured steps. She raised her hands and examined the chain that joined her wrists. It was not usual for her hands to be chained at this time. It seemed an ill omen. She had little hope of good as she was pushed into Madam Dubois's office.
Madam Dubois never changed. Her kiss on Monica's startled lips was as warm as ever, as was her smile.
She dismissed Hester with a nod, then turned her full attention to the naked captive standing uncertainly in her chains before the ornate desk.
"Mademoiselle, yesterday, found her punishment bearable?"
"Yes Madam."
"Yet it was one of the most severe. The stretching of the legs, n'est ce pas."
Monica was angry with the involuntary movement that caused her chains to respond. "It is bearable, Madam."
"It was bearable perhaps because of-what shall we say, mademoiselle....Diversions? Some small pleasure...?"
Monica squirmed again. Miserably she realized the clinking of her chains were almost an admission. She buried her face in her chained hands to hide the tears; tears that she could not blink away. She started to cry with small choking sobs.
Madam Dubois quietly allowed the emotional storm to run its course. When the shoulders had ceased to shake and the linked hands had smoothed and dried the cheeks. Then asked: "And now, my Dear, would you like to tell me about yesterday?"
Monica looked at her inquisitor in misery and shook her head.
"Very well then, Monica. I will tell you." Madam's voice held a no nonsense ring. "Yesterday while you were undergoing a punishment that exposes a girl in a manner that none outside this house should ever see, Arlette introduced a young man into your presence and left him with you for several hours so that he might have un-interrupted enjoyment of your body. It is understood that you were fastened helpless to resist. But it is understood, also, that you had no intention of reporting this incident or laying a complaint as you had every right to do. You also had a duty which you have shamefully ignored. I know this young man. He is a follower of Arlette." Madam shrugged disdainfully. "He is neither good or bad. I have no interest in him. He did only what Arlette allowed and planned. It is she who is guilty."
"Oh no Madam! Please. She is not! It's my fault...." Her words sounded hollow and false even to her own ears.
"Please, my dear, don't be absurd. How could the fault be that of a girl immovably bound? I know your affection for your Mistress and, being a woman, I understand your wish to feel guilt. I can assure you that you are not the first of our sex to view ravishment with horror which, before long, becomes pleasure and even more. For this you wish to feel guilt. To take some of the guilt from Arlette. Nonsense! Don't be a silly girl."
Monica dabbed at her eyes. It was something to do as she stood naked awaiting judgment. She had no hope.
"What should I do with the two of you?"
"You can punish me. I suppose I deserve to be whipped." Monica felt she must make some response. Be contrite. Ask for something terrible in the hope thus to evade it. "But please don't punish Arlette. I ... I, suppose you must discharge her...?"
"You do indeed deserve to be whipped, my child. Arlette will not be discharged. She would not wish it. She and I have an understanding. No girl is without fault: she will accept whatever punishment I impose, just as you did when you came here. It is the best way."
"Where is Arlette?" Monica quavered.
"Come with me, my child. I will take you to her."
Monica remembered the room. She had spent a day in it. Bare except for the ringbolts in the wall, the chest, and in the center of the ceiling a pulley. Arlette was standing beneath it. She was quite naked. A broad band round her right wrist was fastened to the pulley rope. It had been tightened until the naked girl stood only on her toes, her right hand strained high above her head out of her reach. She looked frightened, but managed a wan smile.
Madam Dubois wasted no time in backing Monica against the wall and locking the metal collar about her neck. The girl found her tether short. She could not take even a single step. She would have to stand there straight and erect and facing her punished companion as she teetered on her toes only a few feet away yet totally beyond reach.
"First I should tell you," Said Madam Dubois, "That it was not Hester who betrayed you both. I believe her innocent. The means by which I learned of your scandalous behavior need not concern you. It is sufficient that I know." She turned her full attention upon Arlette. "You will be punished today. That is all. It will then be done. You know what awaits you?"
The naked victim nodded miserably: "Please Madam, not this all day. It is too awful. Please give me a lesser time on the rope and perhaps whip me instead?"
"I do not approve a Mistress being whipped in front of one of her charges." Madam announced curtly. "It is our little Monique's penalty to stand and watch your suffering. She will not enjoy it. She will feel guilt and will suffer with you. Your pose, which I have chosen with much thought, will not lessen your dignity as a Mistress in her eyes. But it is not good for her to see her Mistress whipped. The whip is for her, not for you."
"Please Madam, not all day...."
"You elect the alternative? I will give you one more chance to choose the easy way. It is your last."
Arlette shook her head negatively. She was too close to tears to speak. But watched, with a hopeless foreknowledge, as Madam Dubois went to the winch and began to turn. Watching, in shocked fascination, Monica beheld the pinioned girl rise higher on her toes and then, with a gasp only half suppressed, rise slowly until she hung suspended by one wrist, her feet eighteen inches above the floor. Monica understood why the wrist band was broad. Rope would have cut the skin and stopped circulation. The wide leather would carry the weight of the naked girl, perhaps not without pain, but without injury.
Next an anklet was tightened around Arlette's right ankle and another round her left wrist. Madam lifted and bent back her victim's leg and fastened the two bands together with a single link. Now the weeping girl hung from one wrist. Her other wrist and its opposite ankle were joined at her back. Her left foot hung without support.
Madam produced a triangle of wood. A broad base tapering to a rounded point about two inches in diameter. This she carefully placed beneath the naked foot that remained the only member of the punished girl that was not fettered. It was high enough that the foot could find a resting place on its rounded point should its owner desire. Monica realized that to rest weight on the triangle might well be more painful than to hang by the wrist without support. It would be a cruelly tantalizing alternative through a long day.
Madam Dubois surveyed her work approvingly. "I leave you now mademoiselles. You have a whole day together. You will have much to talk about. Adieu." A moment later she was gone, the door closed, the bolt shot home with its menacing thud. The suspended nudity turned slowly on her rope which gradually slowed until, fortunately, she hung facing her companion.
It was a terrible punishment. Monica surveyed the grotesquely contorted figure of her love with anguish. She understood now that pitious cry: 'Not all daynot all day....' She could not bear to watch, let alone endure. It wrung her heart to see the small loved foot reach for and find that small point of wood, rest there for a moment and then withdraw because of pain it could not bear. It was horrible to stand impotent. But she could not move from the wall, could offer no help. It was Arlette who broke silence, her speech punctuated with sharply indrawn breaths that told her distress more graphically than words:
"Oh, ma Cherie. I did not want you to see me like this. Madam is too clever. She knows that which hurts most."
"She's a beast!" Monica asserted vehemently. "To leave you like that all day-Oh Darling...."
"No, no, beloved one. Madam is not so. This-this thing you see now; it is of an understanding of long ago." Arlette's voice was already pale and tired. "The fault is all mine. We would not be as we are had I not been of the most foolish and jealous. So I deserve to hang like this." For a moment her voice broke, "But oh Cherie, I do not have the courage such as you. My little pigeon will be ashamed of her Mistress before the day is done."
"Scream." Monica urged. "I think it helps. I always wanted to." Then, suddenly curious: "How did she find out?"
The punished girl tossed her head angrily. Even this small motion caused her nude body to start its turning from the rope. With difficulty and a grimace of pain her foot sought the triangle and levered her back to face the girl chained to the wall. "Oh it was so foolish! That Freddy, he was smoking a cigar when he arrived and I did not take it from him soon enough. One of the maids she caught the so fine aroma and explored where she was not supposed to be. She hid and saw him leave your room. She heard us talk and watched him leave the house. She tell madam. Pouf! I would so like to hang her in this way that I am hanging."
Angrily Monica tore at her chains. It was a simple expression of frustration without hope. Madam had indeed been shrewd in her punishment. Even though she suffered no pain at all, standing thus all day would inflict its own agony. To be compelled to watch her love's wracked and strained nakedness was more than she could bear. "How bad is the pain?" she asked dejectedly.
"Ma Cherie, I do not know. My shoulder and my wrist, they are on fire. It is I think that I could bear it for an hour. But for all day I do not think I can bear this. This so silly thing that she had done to join my ankle and my wrist, it makes me feel the most foolish and strains me more. To move is pain. So Arlette will try to be very still. I hate that thing beneath my foot...."
They tried to talk. But what was there to say. Monica suspected that even the effort of speech hurt her suspended companion. Each small gasp of distress tore at her compassion and her love. The morning wore on. The punished girl allowed her head to fall to one side. Her eyes closed. Her features drawn as were the natural lines of her lovely body. She might have been asleep had it not been for her gasping breath and the small moans she could not suppress. From time to time she would essay to relieve her weight by seeking the triangle with her one free foot. But it was never for long. When the hurt foot fell away again she would turn slowly this way and that on the rope that held her captive. After awhile she gave up trying to control such motion. It was obvious that even the smallest movement hurt her.
Monica stood miserably without thought of her own weariness. Each moan and gasp tore at her. By midday Arlette's fortitude broke and her moans became cries of protest and agony. She even began to twist and writhe. One louder and more pitious cry was more than Monica could endure. She herself began to scream: "Help! Help!" and continued to scream at the top of her voice until finally the door opened and Madam Dubois swept into the small room.
"Stop that noise. Stop it! You silly girl." She examined the suspended captive casually but with interest. The captive girl's moans making no impression on her habitual smile. "So much noise...."
"But Madam," Monica pleaded, "She cannot stand it any more. She becomes hysterical. Please, oh please let her down."
Madam Dubois ran her hand up and down her prisoner's nudity. "And what of you, my dear?"
Arlette uttered no words but, instead, moaned an unintelligible cry of anguish. Her head raised, then fell back and was flung from side to side.
Monica threw caution to the winds. "You see! You are killing her! You must set her free-you must, you must, you must...!" She flung one foot against her chains in the only gesture she was free to make.
Her vehemence captured Madam Dubois's interest. She scrutinized Monica's tear stained face. "It is that you love her, n'est ce pas?"
The heartbroken girl nodded without evasion:
"Yes."
"So!" Madam considered her two captives thoughtfully. Then turned to Monica: "You would wish to take her place...?"
"Oh yes-oh yes! Yes Madam....Please let me!" Her outburst had been almost involuntary. Monica was glad it had been so. Such a request might be impossible to make if fully considered. But she knew her lips had not betrayed her.
Madam Dubois nodded quietly as though confirming some inward opinion. Her gaze rested benevolently upon the naked girl chained to the wall. A girl with tear stained face and pained eyes: "So! Such love is rare. Arlette is most fortunate. Yes, Cherie, it shall be as you say."
Without further preamble she went to the winch and loosened it. A moment later Arlette was sitting in a twisted posture on the floor. Her limbs still fastened and held. Her agonized face lifted in supplication. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
"Please, no. Oh, it must not be...!" Her voice was husky. Almost a whisper.
"And why not, my dear? Is it that you so much wish to hang there?"
"Oh, non, non, non! I do not wish it." Her voice was tired and despairing. "But she must not do this. It is not right that she be punished for me."
Madam Dubois surveyed the naked girl upon the floor reflectively. "You wish me to raise you again?"
Arlette's sobbing intensified. But she nodded vigorously.
"You love Monica, don't you?" Madam Dubois sounded amused.
"Mais oui! I love her so much." Arlette's voice held spirit and life again. "It was bad, that thing I did to her."
Madam Dubois laughed lightly. "What a pair you are! Both so noble. It is of a puzzle to know what to do with you. But I do know. Ma petit Monique shall have her wish-Quiet now! Not another word or you will both be sorrier than you are...." She shook an admonishing finger at the girl on the floor. "Quiet.
You will obey."
Whilst the girl on the floor wept quietly and sought to dry her tears with one hand, now free, Madam Dubois unlocked the collar from about Monica's neck. She also removed the chains that linked her hands. Next Arlette was freed from all restrainst then, her arm grasped firmly, she was taken to the wall and locked there with the band still warm from Monica's neck. Her hands were chained with Monica's chains. She accepted what was done to her limply and without protest.
Monica was trembling. She wanted to be dealt with before her courage ebbed too far. Her feet were still chained-Madam no doubt sensed her state of mind as too unstable to warrant freedom. Almost urgently she offered her right wrist and mutely and sadly watched Madam Dubois tightly buckle the broad leather wristlet upon it. Without instruction she positioned herself below the pulley and raised her hand to which the rope was attached. Madam turned the winch until the victim's hand and arm were stretched high so that she stood on tip-toe. The pinioned girl watched unhappily as her ankle fetters were removed, she was safely secured now, and saw them locked on her fellow captive's feet. She then voluntarily put her left hand behind her and lifted her right foot so that Madam could lock them together. It was a shaming and strained pose that she now held. A moment later her toes left the floor, her wrist and shoulder felt as though they would be wrenched from their sockets. Gasping with pain and shock she looked down and saw the tormenting triangle placed in position. Almost without volition her foot found it and tried to ease her weight. But no matter how she placed it the pain soon became too great to bear so that her foot fell away and hung alone.
No one spoke. Monica wanted to keep her features composed and her voice unbroken until Madam had gone-so said nothing. Arlette; engrossed with tears was too ashamed to speak. Madam nodded approvingly and left.
All things come to an end. Always afterwards they called it The Awful Day. So indeed it was. Monica had never so taxed her courage or overestimated her endurance. She had passionately wanted to bear her ordeal with serenity so that her love, chained there to watch as she had been, might not suffer the same agonies of remorse and guilt. But as the hours passed the unforgiving attrition had its way with her naked defenselessness so that she too, just as with her companion, began to moan and finally to utter those small, almost animal, cries that were an elemental protest against a relentless pain. Thus it was two shamed and exhausted young women who were freed as evening came. Madam Dubois, enigmatic as ever, gave an unexpected order:
"It is over. You, Arlette, will escort your charge to her cell. You will chain her as usual. You will also chain yourself naked as you are. I have arranged your chains for you." Seeing the unspoken question in their faces, she laughed good humoredly. "Oh, foolish ones. It is not as you perhaps deserve. Those chains, they are not on opposite walls."
Their night was happier than their day had been.
The Awful Day had brought them closer. Both wondered. But neither questioned. The elements for the sundering of ties had been present. But had not prevailed. They were happier than before.
With Arlette clothed they reverted to the routines of the House. The Awful Day but a shared memory. The punishments Monica bore each day were as severe as they had ever been. Neither questioned that this should be so. Madam Dubois was her usual charming self and showed much affection to both the Mistress and her captive. Time passed.
For all of Madam Dubois's "Girls" the highlight of their week was the day in which they were all fastened to their columns and whipped. Not that they enjoyed being whipped, but the ritual had a social aspect that was a break in monotony. It was during one of these sessions that Monica's curiosity was piqued by the birthmark.
She had known little of Diana. They had never been fastened close together or shared a room. On this day the other girl had been turned so that Monica could see upon her thigh a mark too positive to be a bruise. There was something intriguing about its shape and form. That night she queried Arlette. The French girl grinned amusedly and said: "So, you want to know. Tomorrow I will see to it."
She kept her word and even made it easy for them. They were backed against opposite walls, a metal band was locked tight about their waist holding them fast. That was all.
"I suppose this could be worse." Diana vouchsafed as her fingers explored the metal that clamped her narrow waist. "But I bet we'll hate it by evening. But then, we always do, don't we! I guess that's the whole idea." She grinned, a trifle ruefully, at her similarly pinioned companion. "Say, is your bottom sore from yesterday? Mine sure is."
Monica guessed that Diana, like the rest of them, had made her own adjustments to captivity. She seemed cheerful and unconcerned as though reconciled to authority's aberrant whim. There was something about her speech-"Are you English?" She inquired. "I'm curious."
Diana's laugh was half embarrassed, half amused. "Oh sure. I know. I don't sound quite right, do I. But, yes. I'm English. By rights I ought to be as nicely English as you are. I started out that way....But something went wrong. I visited America." The last words were bitter.
Monica waited. But her companion had cupped her face in her hands and was contemplating some horizon far beyond the confines of their cell. She waited for what she felt was a polite interval and then voiced the query that had brought them together: "I say, I know-I know you'll think I'm horrid to ask, but what is that mark on your thigh?"
Diana lazily returned from the distant place. Lifting her leg she turned it so that she might contemplate the source of the question-a question that obviously amused her. Yet her words, when she spoke, were bitter once again. "Pretty, isn't it. It's a brand."
Had she produced, without warning, a small bomb, a live cobra, or some horrible obscenity, Monica could not have been more shocked. What was the proper thing to say now. She made a faltering effort: "You mean-you mean-someone...."
Diana was unperturbed, her voice pleasantly conversational : "Yes. Someone branded me. They do it with a red hot iron, y'know. It hurts."
"But ... why? You let them...?"
"Of course not, silly! No one sticks their leg out to get a white hot chunk of metal clapped on it. I was tied tight; I can still hear myself howl. Gee, I sure did howl!"
Monica's face must have reflected her shock at an act not commonly contemplated by London gentility. Diana laughed with genuine amusement: "Cheer up, Sweetheart. It's not all that bad y'know."
"It's awful!"
Diana gazed at her fellow prisoner as though making an assessment. She took her time: "Yes, it's awful. It was its very awfulness-along with all the rest, that landed me in this pickle." There was amusement in her eyes. "You want to hear all about it, don't you? Can't blame you for being curious."
"Don't tell me unless you want to." Monica still felt a need to be polite.
"I don't mind telling you. But there's so damn much of it-Not that we haven't got the time." She fingered her metal belt ruefully. "And there's another thing," She paused awkwardly, then plunged: "It's good to talk about it. But after they know, people sometimes act as though I'd got leprosy. It's just so incredible that no one believes that I wasn't at least partly to blame. And then there's the feeling I'm soiled. I remember once reading a book about an Italian feud. The daughter was deflowered-I love that word-by the son of the other clan. Her father caught them in the act and shot them both. It seemed damned unfair." She tittered amusedly. "I had a feeling that Daddy felt he ought to shoot me: just to keep the family name pure. Instead he sent me here."
"Oh it can't be that bad." Monica protested.
"If it was any worse I wouldn't want it to happen to me," the other girl said reflectively. "See what you think about it." She giggled. "After you hear it all you'll probably ask to be chained in another room so you won't catch whatever I'm supposed to have. But anyway, there's a sort of preamble:
"Mother had a brother, my Uncle. He was one of those frightfully masculine type. Empire Builder and all that. Always shooting things. When he was about forty he packed up, took all his money, and went to America. He's supposed to have chosen America because he didn't want to be called a colonial. He ended up in a place called Oklahoma-it's a State. He bought a ranch and built a great big house. Soon after mother got a letter saying he'd married one of the local belles. A bit younger than him, but there were no photos, though my new Aunt wrote a lot of letters that were bubbling over with affection and invitations to visit. Mother thought she was probably vulgar but quite nice. A year or so later one of these letters told us that my Uncle had been killed in a riding accident.
"Oklahoma is so far away that I suppose ordinarily that would have been the end of it. Just one more Englishman buried in a foreign land. But the letters kept coming: warm, sympathetic, full of affection for the family she had never seen. Finally one of them suggested that I go out for a long visit: 'Just to round out dear Diana's education'. The idea caught on. It even seemed like a wonderful adventure to me. So Mum and Dad shipped me off; the feeling all round being that we were taking advantage of a glorious opportunity." She grinned wryly. "It was. But not for us.
"My first misgivings came on the train. It took so damn long. There was no end to that place. Besides, I was quite young to be alone. It was my first time. I didn't like the men who leered at me. But I've got to admit that almost everybody was very kind. Maybe it was a premonition.
"You have to go to Oklahoma to believe it. Even when I saw it I didn't really believe this could be happening to dear little Diana. The Conductor, a really nice old gentleman, put me off the train-they do it with a step affair, there's no platform, I found myself standing on a bit of dusty ground by the track. My luggage was in a pile a few feet away. There was a funny little shed-more like a tool shed instead of a Station building. There were also a few of the locals come to see the train, and these included a couple of real red Indians and a squaw. They were a rough, ragged, miserable lot. All of them were looking at me. But the biggest surprise of all, of course, was my aunt Caroline.
Diana paused as though reliving the scene. Monica tried to picture it. But it was another world. Patiently she awaited her companion's mood.
"She didn't seem much older than I was." Diana resumed. "We had all got the idea that she would be close to Uncle's age. I know I had. Now I was being warmly kissed and hugged by someone not long over being a girl. I discovered later she was twenty-seven. Along with the greeting I was also being very thoroughly examined. A better word might be appraised. I then got shock number two: Caroline produced a pair of really horrendous male creatures and introduced them as brothers Floyd and Leroy. She pronounced it as two words: Lee-Roy. One of them needed a shave. Both needed a wash. They also needed clothes. They were dressed, if you can call it that, in what is best described as bits and pieces. Even their Stetson hats, which they doffed with a great flourish as though unused to such a nicety, were filthy.
"If you could say that Caroline appraised me, these two oafs did more. I felt like a prize heifer. Their eyes undressed me so that I felt more naked than I have ever done even here-and goodness knows we're naked enough in this place. But there was quite a flutter of welcome. I had to be kissed and breathed on by both of them. All the vocalizing was in a dis gusting perversion of the English tongue that shocked me as much as any other single thing. It appeared, too, that I had also lost my name. I had become "Sugar" or "Honey-chile' " or some other Southern absurdity. Later on Caroline found her own name for me. In its way it was worse.
"There was a team of horses and what they called a buckboard. A two seated thing with room for luggage. The boys sat in the front and took turns driving. I sat in the back with My Aunt. I can't call her that, and I won't. But that's what she was. I felt lost and forlorn and afraid. It was all so strange. I might have digested Caroline, right then, but Floyd and Leroy and that strange dusty countryside was more than I could manage all at once. There was no road. Just two dusty tracks worn by wheels. I'd thought the train long. Well, so was this. We'd started early and about mid-day we camped and ate. They had brought food. It was strange to me. But some of it did taste good. This cheered me up a bit. But not much because the further we went the more I had a feeling that something was wrong. Caroline's conversation took an odd turn. She had started with pure gush and a great show of family. How were my parents? What sort of house did we have? Did I like America? Then, gradually, she worked around to the family finances and what relatives we had and where they were, and what did Daddy do? Were my parents likely to ever visit Oklahoma? It went on and on. I sensed she was driving at something. But I didn't know what. Perhaps she was just vulgar.
"We must have driven over twenty miles by the time we reached the Ranch. The letters had been right. The house was big. All wood, which seemed strange. There were a lot of outbuildings, paddocks and things-they call them corrals. Everything became very business-like. The boys took care of the horses-there didn't seem to be any servants. Caroline took me upstairs to my room. Uncle had made it all very English, so that part didn't seem too strange. My next shock came after I had washed and changed and went downstairs. Caroline had changed too. She had met me in clothes that were not too far removed from what I was accustomed to and wore myself. Now she had on almost nothing: a pair of men's trousers that were far too tight and had been cut off well above the knee. They were ragged. I couldn't tell whether her other garment was a shirt or a blouse. All I could really see was that this was too tight also. Very much too tight. Her breasts pushed it out tautly in front. She wasn't wearing anything under it. I could see the indentations made by her nipples. It was also open down the front far lower than it should have been. My first thought when I saw this wanton display was: what would my mother think.
"She saw I was startled: "It's a warm country, Sugar. Don't need much clothes. You're like to smother in all them things you got on. You want to help with supper?"
"No servants! I'd never helped with supper in my life. But it seemed best not to say so. I did my best with the simple things she suggested. The boys came in, their hair wet from having given each other a turn under the pump. We sat down to supper.
"Their table manners were on a par with the rest. They ate hugely and without conversation. They used a word that sounds quite impossible when I say it here, a word I came to hate. The food wasn't food. It was 'vittles'. Go ahead, laugh! They kept shoving dishes at me and I managed to eat enough not to feel rude. But I wasn't hungry. Then Caroline and I washed the dishes while the boys sat on what we would call the verandah and they referred to as the 'porch'. Dishes done, we joined them. Then the horror began.
Diana shook her head as though to rid her mind of a memory. She looked appealingly to her fellow captive across the room. "Look, Honey, if you want me to stop just say so, anytime. When I tell this I have to try and make whoever it is believe me. I have to tell it the way it was. You may not believe what I say I didn't really believe it even when it was happening. I'm going to have to use words you won't like. I don't like 'em. They're ugly and horrible. But Floyd and Leroy and even Caroline used them a lot at that place. So I have to if I'm to make you understand.
"They didn't even waste a minute. No small talk at all. The first thing Caroline said when we were all seated was 'Take your clothes off, Sugar.' It didn't hit me right then because I thought I'd not heard her properly. I just sat there, startled. But Floyd left me no doubts. His voice was clear and forceful: "Strip naked yer silly bitch!"
"I'd never been naked in front of adults since I was an infant. Don't suppose you ever were either? So you know how I felt. I just sat there pretending I hadn't heard a word, and sort of hoping the nasty dream would go away and that I'd wake up safe in England. It didn't. Floyd pulled me out of the chair, then held me in front of him by both wrists while Leroy and Caroline undressed me. Stripped would be a better word because they just tore my things off and threw them to one side as though I would never need them again. When they had me totally naked they resumed their seats. Leroy held me helpless and exposed in front of them. They listened with obvious enjoyment to all my protestations and threats-I think I even threatened the British Navy. I went through the whole range of outraged womanhood, and British womanhood at that! I tugged and struggled all the time, but it was quite ineffectual, Floyd held me with ease, and you can't do much harm kicking with bare feet. They watched, and I knew they enjoyed that too. I was sobbing, of course. When I finally tired and stood limply trying to cross my legs, I couldn't cover anything else, I just sobbed and sniffed and waited for them to kill me. Caroline took over where I'd left off:
"Now get this straight, you fancy-pants English whore. You belong to us. You can't escape, we'll make sure of that. The boys are going to have fun with you, and I'm going to have fun with you. Here and there we have a bit of business you can help us with. You may as well figure you've been kidnapped. It's as good a word as any. Don't get ideas about ransom. That ain't what we have in mind. You ain't going to get killed either, so quit snivelling. We want you to scream and howl all you like. We enjoy it. You will be hurt. But you won't be injured and you'll have good food. See, we're real kind, ain't we. When we are through with you-and that's a long way off yetwe'll send you home all nicely dressed and in good health after your wonderful holiday. And we're going to fix it so that no one will believe a word you say."
She turned her attention from me then and spoke to her brothers: "O.K. boys. Take her down to the shop. Best get that bit of iron on her."
"They had a complete blacksmith shop in one of the buildings. Caroline sat negligently on a box, Floyd kept his grip on me, and Leroy got the forge going and displayed a considerable skill with a job I watched in horror. A fascinated horror, I'll admit. From a long strip of metal about two inches wide he cut a short length which he proceeded to measure round my ankle. I was in no way surprised. I had guessed as much. I was to be chained like a slave. It turned out even worse than that. It was really something to watch. He was clever. He heated that bit of iron, pounded it into shape, punched holes in it, then when he had cooled it in water for the last time he set it in a vise and smoothed and polished it. Floyd sat me on a box and made me put my foot up on the anvil. The open circle was passed around my ankle and closed tight with a clamp affair they had. But before the closing Leroy set a metal ring in a channel he fashioned so that when the anklet was set in place the ring hung loose but as an integral part of it. Then he thrust two rivets through holes prepared on each side of the ring and on the inside of my leg and flattened them down with blows of the hammer that I felt sure would miss and hit me. I have never sat so still in my life. This done he again took a file and smoothed and finished his work. Even I almost had to admire it. My left ankle was firmly gripped by a band of heavy metal that fitted as though a tailor had measured it. Snug so that it would not slip and chafe, but not tight enough to affect circulation. Riveted as it was no one could remove it except a blacksmith. Certainly I would never be able to. From the band and inside my ankle there hung the heavy metal ring, not large but enough to take a link or a padlock. I felt like a slave girl.
"They gave me no time to think, but propelled me over to one of the barns. The metal felt heavy and strange on my ankle and the ring sometimes made small noises so that you would never forget you wore the damn thing. As though there was some sort of hurry about it they tied my wrists together in front, threw the rope over a beam and dragged me up so my feet were off the floor. They have done that to us here, so you know what it's like. But that first time is awful. It was with me then. I felt doubly naked. Caroline briefed me again: I was to get five lashes with a whip. Not because I'd done anything, but just to show me how it felt to be strung up naked and whipped. Then I would always have the choice of doing what they told me or being hung up and whipped-never for just five lashes again. It would be more. As many more as might please them at the time.
"I'd never been whipped in my life. But you read about it happening to criminals and such. You think because of your better breeding and being British and all that you could bear the punishment with a stiff upper lip like a pukka sahib. I tried. I turned and twisted under an intensity of pain beyond my wildest imaginings, but I did manage to keep quiet for the first three. After that, for the last two, I howled and pleaded and screamed. While I was doing it some little voice inside my head told me that I probably would do whatever they wanted rather than hang like this again.
"When that was over, and while I was still whimpering with pain and rubbing at the tears on my cheeks, Floyd grabbed my hair and used it to guide me to whatever was next. It turned out to be the house and my own room. They tossed away a rug so that I was able to see something previously hidden. It was a massive staple clamped and bolted into the floor, from it there coiled a long length of chain. The final link of this was then padlocked to the ring on my anklet. I would have a considerable freedom. But I could not leave that room. The two boys left. I was alone with Caroline and my shackle and my chain.
"Once more Caroline did the talking for her family. She used a reasoning tone of voice that horrified me on one hand and reassured me on the other. She wanted to keep me away from hysterics. She explained that they were going to keep me a long time. So the first thing I must do was write home a cheerful happy letter to tell of my safe arrival. They would post it. She asked me not to be silly unless I wanted to go back to the barn. I wrote two letters. She tore them up because of words I'd used in the hope of telling some sort of message. She threatened that if I did it again it was the barn for sure. I believed her. The third letter satisfied her. I even addressed the envelope. I didn't want to go back to that barn. My middle was circled with the most awful red weals.
"She tucked my letter away. Then explained that during the day I would have a lot of freedom because it would be almost impossible for me to escape. Every time I tried it would be the barn. I would always be naked. Any attempt to cover myself would be punished. I would do some work that would be shown me. But my main function would be to service Floyd and Leroy.
"It was like when she told me to undress. It didn't register at first. But when you live in the country as my family does you get to know what servicing means. I sat more or less shocked for a minute. Then I told her I was a virgin. It did no good. She seemed quite interested and pleased. She said the boys would be pleased too, and that they would toss a coin to see which of them would have the pleasure and privilege of breaking my maidenhead.
Diana smiled sardonically, her voice bitter: "Sounds absurd telling it here like this, doesn't it. I don't really blame anyone for not believing me. It was all so matter-of-fact. They shoved everything at me so fast. Caroline told me in a conversational sort of way that they did not want to give me time to think or to fight. I was sort of being trained along a narrow line between what my mind could accept and my body endure. They did not want to take me over into hysteria or breakdowns. Their motto must have been: 'Keep her active'. So, in the same 'Auntie' like manner and voice she went on to explain that Floyd and Leroy didn't have much chance for a bit of fun in this frontier place. Girls were few and far between, so I was a golden opportunity for them. She spoke of those two bastards as though she was a mother with two small children who were being given some nice toffee. She actually did have this sort of feeling toward them. So, she explained, I would have to understand that I would always be available. If, for instance, she sent me for a pail of water and one of them met me half way and ordered me to get into a certain position right out in the open there, I would have to do so and allow him-and this is the word she used quite casually-to fuck me. I was to be docile and to even help him in any way he instructed. I sure needed instruction then. I wasn't quite sure what she was talking about. But, of course, I learned.
"Of course I wept and pleaded and put my head in her lap and tried the two girls together stuff. But it did no good. She patted me and kissed me in much the same way you fondle something you have just bought at Harrods. She said I must be tired. It was evening now. Nothing more would happen to me today. I should get a good night's rest. I was to remember that I was chained and that no matter how I tried could not get free. In other words I wasn't to make a racket all night trying to get that thing off my ankle. Just go to bed.
"I did. I even slept."
Diana sent Monica a whimsical smile that was almost pleading. It was easy to guess that what she had to say now was not pleasant. She continued her tale somberly: "You know what it's like to be fucked, don't you. I don't suppose the first time is ever good for a girl. Actually though it wasn't as bad for me as I had expected. Knowing what I do now I realize they didn't want to damage the merchandise. All three of them played with me for what seemed hours until I was in quite a state. Leroy won the toss and when he pushed that damn great thing into me he did it with the same skill that he had shown in his other work. So I lost my maidenhead laying on some straw in a barn in Oklahoma. I got fucked nine times that first day. Leroy got one up on Floyd somehow." Seeing the look on Monica's face, Diana hastened on, almost tearfully: "You hate that word, don't you! Well, so do I. But it's so damn descriptive. There's not other word that paints the act in its proper colors. I was fucked! Why use some silly euphemism!!"
She fell silent then, remembering. Her face buried in her hands. Her shoulders shook so that Monica knew she was crying. It was horrible like this to be unable to help. She poked at the metal round her middle resentfully. But it would never release her to give succor to the weeping girl. But the tears ended. The cheeks were dried. Diana grinned apologetically and carried on: "You'd have thought that first day was it, wouldn't you. That I'd plumbed the depths. I thought so. But I was wrong. When Caroline had said that the boys wanted a bit of fun she meant it. And most of the time she was right there with them. You see...." She searched for the right words. "I hardly know how to describe Floyd and Leroy. Caroline had all the brains. They were like a pair of loutish adolescents. They were younger than she was. They looked up to her. She managed them. They seemed quite fond of each other. To them I was a plaything. A new and wonderful toy. Something they had always wondered about-a girl! Now they owned one. They were as pleased as a small child with a Teddy Bear. They had almost no sense of right and wrong. I am sure they were convinced that anything they wanted to do to me or to make me do was quite alright so long as they did not injure the pretty toy. Caroline had dinned that into them very thoroughly.
"The bits of fun were haphazard. I'm sure they were always spontaneous. The first happened the next day. During the morning they had each of them used me twice-See, just for you I avoided that horrible word! So in the afternoon they were playful instead of lustful. They had me follow them around while they did some chores. It was while they were feeding a pen full of quite young calves that Floyd gave a great guffaw and went and whispered in Leroy's ear so that they both turned and grinned at me. I could feel quite sure that whatever was going to happen would not be good-for me, that is. Floyd actually ran to the barn and came back with a few bits of cord. They tied my hands behind my back then lifted me into the pen with the calves. Another bit of rope cinched my belly to the rail and two more bits spread my legs and tied my ankles wide apart."
"You know one time I almost got away but when they caught me the punishment was awful."
Diana made a hopeless gesture with her hands, her eyes appealing. "Y'know what we whisper in cloakrooms and read about in those books we aren't supposed to see. About those enormous things some men are supposed to have. Well, even after what happened to me I still can't claim to be an authority. I don't know just how big these things can get. I'd only seen Floyd and Leroy's in my whole life. They'd looked and felt awful big to me. This thing I was looking at now was a damn sight bigger. I just don't know. I suspect we girls can stand a far bigger thing being stuck into us than we think we can. Anyway, as I stood and looked I just couldn't imagine that what I saw could possibly go up inside me. I reasoned that it was sticking up so high that I couldn't manage to get up there or to squat on it or whatever they would want me to do. The three of them stood smirking and enjoying my fear and puzzlement. They let me stew for quite awhile. Then the boys each took a wrist and with their other hand under my armpit lifted me easily so that I hung suspended above that awful prong. Caroline produced a small jar and liberally smeared grease all over it. I started to kick and fight. But they held me easily and Caroline pointed out, with her usual sweet reason, that I could either keep quiet and let them do it as painlessly as possible or I could fight and probably get torn and hurt.
"Quite a choice, wasn't it. As they held me with ease above that horrible thing the last wish in my mind was to be impaled on it. But, of course, I knew that regardless of what I did, that was exactly what was going to happen. I pleaded and begged. They laughed. So I just went limp and let them do what they damn well pleased.
"I suppose it was one more case of not wanting to damage the merchandise. After all, that portion of my anatomy they were dealing with was being used several times a day by the boys so no doubt they valued it. Anyway, they did take great care and a bit of time and some help from Caroline. When they released me I was standing, not quite on tip toe, with Leroy's wooden masterpiece further up inside me than anything had ever been before. They backed away. Tentatively I explored my situation.
"To have got everything so exactly right I think they must have had Caroline's assistance as a model and guide. At that moment I could not get both my feet flat on the ground without hurting. That meant it was as high as was practical for their purpose. My first effort, of course, was to try and step off it. Quite hopeless. Then I tried to get high on my toes so it would slip off-or rather, so I would slip off. I couldn't get anywhere near high enough for that. I wondered if it would have helped if I'd had my hands: I'm not sure that it would. Anyway, they had taken my hands away from me. So I ended up just standing. Held there by impalement on a wooden prick. It was an infuriating, shameful way to stand. I wished I was dead.
"All three of them obviously viewed my plight as immensely amusing. I've never seen three people more pleased. The boys kept slapping their legs and emitting great guffaws of merriment. I could have killed them.
"Purty lucky gal', I'd say." Offered Leroy, winking broadly at the others.
"Sure wish I were a gal' with sumpin' that nice to sit on." Said Floyd.
"Ever tried one bigger than that, Flossy?" Asked Caroline pleasantly.
"I knew I was scarlet. I stood there hating them.
"She ain't never goin' to run away agin'. Not and leave anythin' that good behind. Never find nothin' like it elsewheres." Leroy suggested.
"You try a'jumpin' up and down on it, Flossy. Oughta' feel damn good!" Floyd bellowed with laughter at this sally of wit.
"I knew, for sure, that jumping up and down was one thing I couldn't and wouldn't be doing.
"You are a lucky girl." Caroline said. "I really envy you that big beautiful thing. Y'know, it's going to feel wonderful after awhile. I bet if we ever get around to lifting you off you'll ask us to leave you right there."
"She was welcome to it as far as I was concerned."
Diana made a moan of resignation and shrugged. "They tired of it after awhile and went away leaving me standing there. It wasn't much fun. But eventually I did manage to stand flat footed-I suppose things had sort of got adjusted inside me: maybe I'd stretched-That sure did help." Suddenly she flamed scarlet. "But about that time I'd begun to realize that Caroline had known what she was talking about: that blasted thing inside me did actually begin to feel good, too good! Every time I moved there was a response. I couldn't move much, of course, but it didn't take much. I was wickedly mortified. I shrunk in horror from the thought I might have an orgasm right in front of their leering grins. Then it dawned on me: that was part of my punishment, along with just having to stand. It was just the sort of thing they would think of.
"Look, Sweetheart, enough is enough. I'm not going to bore you with all the detail of the time I stood impaled. Sure enough, and no matter how I fought it, I had orgasm after orgasm. I just couldn't help it. They were sometimes there when it happened. You can imagine how I felt with their eyes almost burning holes in me while I gasped and twisted. By the time that faculty was getting exhausted night had begun to fall. It sure felt lonely and hopeless standing there as it got darker and darker. I could well imagine having to stand there all night. I got awful scared at the thought I might fall asleep and my knees buckle. I could injure myself horribly. But about ten P.M. they lifted me off and chained my ankle in one of the stalls in a barn and I spent the night naked on some dirty straw. They had made their point that running away was not a good idea. But, in spite of that, I did try it again and again they caught me."
"This time my agony was even worse. There are no words for it. I suppose it's the ultimate in pain, the final agony. Those moments when they hold it steady to let it burn to the depth they want is unbelievable. I survived the "H". But when they came back again with the bar to go across the top I fainted immediately when they held it against my skin. It was one bit of luck I had that day.
Diana sighed and shook her head. "Sweetheart, I'm not going to go on and on. I could. But you have the general idea. There were days and weeks of this sort of thing. Never a day's rest. I don't suppose there are many girls ever who got fucked as often as I did in that time. As I said; I got to like it. Why not! Finally whenever I saw one of the boys coming with that look on his face I just lay down and spread myself ready for him. I didn't get whipped for the last six weeks. They wanted me well healed. And, blast them, my skin got as clear and pink as a baby's. Daddy was able to tell Caroline things. She did get some money and stuff, and finally announced that I would be going home the next day. I was taken to the blacksmith shop and the band struck off my ankle. It had been so well made that the red circle it left on me had disapeared long before I got back to England. On that last evening Caroline read me her letter.
"It was wicked, a work of pure genius. So sweet, so tender, so hurt! I was being sent home in disgrace. Bad, bad Diana had been caught carrying on a wicked, wicked affair with an awful, awful man who lived close by. This deceitful Diana had deceived all who loved her. Pretending to go riding every day, she had instead, spent the time with the awful man doing the worst possible thing a girl could do. But this was not all! Oh no! Not by any means. This depraved Diana was a devotee of unnatural lusts. During an orgy, when under the influence of the Demon Rum, she had persuaded her paramour to implant a brand upon her flesh as evidence of an unholy bond. No longer could the state of Oklahoma offer refuge to a degenerate harlot....
"Sure enough, the next day I was sent home.
"Her letter had been mailed long before she read me the copy. It reached my parents before I did. When I got home I found two stony faced people I hardly recognized.
"But I was certain all I had to do was tell the truth. I did. But the more I told it the stonier those faces became. You see, as I told you, the whole thing is just too damn awful for anyone to believe. Someone in Oklahoma might believe it. But no one in England was going to. Nobody did.
"I was sent here."
* * *
The days and weeks of Monica's sentence trickled away. It could be said that one was much like another. But this was not wholly true. The Mistresses varied the victim's daily bondage, often in ingenious and frustrating ways so that no girl ever knew what awaited her. The weekly whipping was an exception to the rule. It was strictly adhered to. The girls' bottoms were at all times vividly streaked. Monica found that her flesh never managed to clear away the evidence of the last infliction before the new one was superimposed on it. The girls, wryly but half humorously, compared their inflamed posteriors whenever the opportunity arose. They wore it as a sort of badge. In their constantly emphasized nakedness it almost came to constitute an article of clothing.
At about the end of her fifth month as a prisoner the morning came when it was Hester who opened the cell door and unlocked the chains. She smiled, knowingly, at Monica's obvious alarm.
"Not to worry. Your beautiful pet isn't in trouble again. We are just changing prisoners for the day."
"Why?"
"That's not for you to ask." Hester admonished severely. Then, nodding sagely: "You see! You need a sterner hand. Arlette's been too soft with you."
"She hasn't!" Monica flared indignantly. "You know she hasn't! Madam herself said I was the most punished girl in the house."
"Temper, temper! My, you do need a taste of the whip. Arlette spoils you by loving you. But I won't. It doesn't interest me."
"But where is Arlette?" Monica recklessly pleaded.
"Just as I told you. She's probably busy hanging Eve up by the thumbs. Madam has this idea of changing, and I've wanted to have a go at you for a long time. So here we are. Can't say I'm flattered at your greeting. But you'll be more polite by evening-I promise you. And, by the way, that question, too, will cost you some strokes."
"It's not my day to be whipped."
"You forget, my dear Miss, for bad behavior a girl may be whipped at any time and in any way her Mistress sees fit."
Monica did remember this injunction. Arlette had never whipped her other than on the one day. Her other inflictions were stringent enough: perhaps to compensate. But she had avoided the whip on the tender flesh of her beloved. But Hester was not Arlette....
"I'm sorry." she said humbly.
Monica wore only the wrist chains when they entered the Room. Its floor had been cleared. She was invited to lay in the center on her back. Quickly obeying, she watched Hester strap the familiar bands on her ankles, then the ropes to opposite corners of the ceiling. Soon she found herself lying with spread legs and well raised feet. Her chained hands made her position awkward. Surprisingly, Hester unlocked them.
"This thing's got you into a lot of trouble, hasn't it?" She put her hand on Monica's dark triangle. "Don't you ever get angry with it?"
Monica recognized sarcasm. But thought it wise not to provoke. "No, Mistress."
"Well, you should. I always feel these damn things are a nuisance to us girls. Sometimes they are everything. At other times they act as though they have a life of their own and make us do things....I'm going to punish yours. It won't be you I'm punishing." Her hand tightened and shook. "It will be this thing quite separate from you. You'll be able to watch."
Without explanation Hester tightened the last rope and left. Monica found herself quaintly positioned. Now that her hands were free she was able to sit up and use them to support her. Her legs were not so cruelly stretched as when in a similar position on the bench, but they were well separated and raised. If they were raised a bit more her bottom would be off the floor. But as she was, she believed she might reach a buckle on her ankle and free herself. She tried. She tried very hard indeed, and failed. She realized that Hester had left her just to tantalize. She doubted that the Mistress was finished with her as yet. As usual, she reflected, her fur was prominently displayed.
About the time the captive had resigned herself to spending her day thus, her Mistress returned. She carried a whip such as Monica had not seen before. She eyed it apprehensively. A glance that Hester did not fail to intercept. Still without a word, the girl in charge went to the ropes, by the time she was finished with their, adjustment the naked girl on the floor found her bottom well raised so that she now lay only on her shoulders. By raising herself on her elbows she could look up between her parted legs, and over that portion of her anatomy that The Mistress seemed most concerned with. But it had become a strained position. It was infuriating to have her body free and her hands free and to be held only by her ankles. She began to catch the implications of Hester's words. Suddenly she was frightened.
"This should all be new to you." Hester said, holding up the whip for inspection. "Arlette never used one of these on you because it's made for a particular spot that she liked to keep just for her own use. See, it's got several strands of lovely supple leather just exactly right for places that might injure easily. Every girl has several places like that. I'm sure you can think of them."
Hester playfully dangled the leather thongs so that they tickled the bond girl's sex which was now lifted and held so prominently as to positively invite attention: "I'm going to whip this until it's really been taught a lesson."
Monica was horrified. Her helpless exposure magnified the prospect of pain. Surely this could not happen to her...."Arlette will be angry." She warned, and as a final threat: "And Madam too!"
"Arlette won't know anything about it until afterwards." Hester pointed out. "She may even find it amusing that her favorite plaything now has some new colors. Don't be too sure she may not be pleased because I've done it instead of her. She probably wanted to, but didn't because it's you. As for Madam this is one of the approved punishments. I've seen her use it herself."
"Oh, please don't do it to me." She asked without conviction.
"I'm not doing it to you, silly." Hester insisted, enjoying her small fantasy. "I'm doing it to little cunny here. She's been bad. You'll be able to watch and see her get her just desserts. You're lucky y'know. It's not every girl that's able to watch anything as interesting as this--especially when it means so much to her. If you raise up on your elbows you'll have a real good view of every stroke. See, I'm going to stand in front and whip down between your legs so that almost every cut will streak down on your belly. You'll have a really marvellous view."
If this sarcasm was Hester's habitual approach to her charges, Monica felt glad she was not one of them. How lucky she was to have fallen to Arlette. The satirical attitude would be hard to pierce. But she tried:
"Please forgive me, Mistress. Don't whip me like that."
"I'm not sure it's you that should ask." Hester carried on her little game as she dangled the whip across that sacrificial spot the victim was trying so desperately to defend. "It's this little thing here.
Perhaps you'd like to plead on her behalf, since she can't talk."
Monica decided to be abject. It must be what Hester wanted. "Dear Mistress, my Cunny asks forgiveness and asks you not to whip her." She cringed at the sound of her own words.
"Isn't there a better and more explicit name for her than that?"
The naked girl groaned inwardly. She hated that word. "Dear Mistress, my Cunt asks forgiveness and asks you not to whip her."
Hester had been correct. The victim had a perfect view of her own torment. With agonized eyes she watched the whip make a wide swift arc and cut ruthlessly into her sex. True to the forecast the ends of each lash spent themselves upon her belly. Red stripes followed them.
As the full awfulness of this intimate punishment bit at her Monica realized a new shame. One, no doubt, artfully contrived. Being free, her torso and her arms and head reacted to the impact with an involuntary heaving and writhing that enabled her to make, what she considered, was a shameful display of herself. She wished she could have kept still and absorbed the anguish. She cringed at the gleam of amusement in Hester's eye.
When she did manage to compose her still quivering nudity Hester resumed her little game:
"Do you feel, Miss, that my nice whip may be beneficial to our bad little girl?"
"Yes Mistress." Monica managed to whisper. What else could she say!
"I think perhaps a little harder?"
"Oh, thank you, Mistress! But no harder please. It seems quite adequate."
Hester pursed her lips as though considering. "Well, we shall see." Once more the helpless girl watched the leather slice the air and bed itself between her legs. At the moment it struck she was quite sure one thong had found its way between her lips. Again she felt shame at the paroxysm she was quite unable to control. When it was over she miserably realized that her sex was still wickedly exposed inviting its next stroke. Anger flared at the injustice of her inability to shield or protect it. That after every contortion it should be exactly in position as though mutely pleading for the whip.
The next stroke was deliberately severe. The worst. Monica could not contain her cry of hurt. Her eyes sought Hester's pleadingly. They must have been eloquent: next time the whip sought her less brutally.
Hester enjoyed the day. The whippings were intermittent. The Mistress's absences prolonged so that, alone, Monica managed to rest, her arms flung listlessly to each side, her weight resting mainly on the back of her shoulders. Before her eyes, always, the red and purple stripes that she must wear. She cherished a small erotic hope as she looked at them that Hester might be right and her Love find joy in the colorations she would kiss. But it did not lessen the pain. Her sex burned and smarted and her scalded belly quivered. She drew some small comfort from the inflictions in her belief that this whip would indeed not injure. But, Oh, it hurt-it hurt ... it hurt.
Convinced that she must suffer thus until evening, Monica was overjoyed by an unexpected interruption. It came in the form of her own dear Mistress, Arlette. Her heart bounded with joy, a joy that doubled when Arlette released her-a strangely silent Arlette with troubled face. When Monica once more stood upon her feet, free of all bonds, she happily and as a token of love picked up her chains and held out her wrists for them to be locked on her. But Arlette smiled and shook her head and took them from her. She bent and scrutinized the work the whip had done, her expression enigmatic as she kissed and kissed again. Then, holding hands, she led her captive from the room.
It was evident that her Love had no wish to speak. So Monica, too, kept silent as they sped through the great house. She was not surprised when they entered Madam Dubois's office. Having ushered her into the presence her Mistress left and quietly closed the door. By the strangeness of these last moments Monica knew with a certainty that this was no ordinary summons.
With great kindness, and infinite gentleness, and with love, Madam Dubois told Monica, quite simply, that both her parents were dead.
* * *
We meet death as best we can. Our grief is measured by our love. Afterwards nothing is as it had been. Nor will it be again. We are changed. In the first days we enter a new world. It is better or it is worse. It is different. It is a time of vivid impressions: of words and faces-some of them quite strange. Some, you know, so etched upon the mind you will carry them to the grave.
It was so with Monica. She felt, she adjusted, she sorrowed. She made her way through family and friends and lawyers and bankers and the servants into this strange new life for which she was unprepared. She was young. She reflected, with some wonder, that she bore the adult responsibilities thrust upon her with a far greater serenity than she would have commanded had she never entered the House of Madam Dubois. She was sure that this was so. Instead of confusion at her sudden freedom from prison, she entered her new world with a remarkable assurance that surprised herself and others. It was a though her time in chains had given her strength and poise.
Death had come to her parents by way of a railway accident. It had been simultaneous and instant. Being the only child she inherited their entire estate. She was rich. The lawyer carefully explained those ways and by what means her wealth was measured. She was glad, but not surprised. She had known it would be so. There were no great decisions for her to make. Everything was in good order and well planned. Things would go on just as before. Everything, that is, except her life. Even that, it was explained to her, need take no new course. The home she had always known was a functioning entity with the familiar servants and staff. Around it the familiar friends and family on call. When the time came to place behind her that special time of mourning, Monica knew with certainty that she was a very fortunate young woman. She was also, considering the age in which she lived, astoundingly free....
As she moved forward into the social and domestic routine normal to her station, there remained a constant of which she was never long unaware. Her love for Arlette and her knowledge of the house of Madam Dubois became clear reality set against a background of the mundane. In this background there surfaced a number of young men. She had been told of their inevitability. She had become temptingly elegible. She had been warned to view them analytically. She had been amused and had wished she might have told her mentor of Arlette. Arlette was a bulwark against which an army of male attention could not prevail. But among the introductions, the invitations, the importunities, there emerged a single masculine presence that left her startled and irritated.
The Honorable Freddy Arbuthnot had sent a polite and formal card of condolence. Buried among a hundred others she had thought little of it. But when the maid announced his name as standing on her doorstep one afternoon his very temerity sparked a curiosity that led to his entry into her home and the sharing of afternoon Tea.
She had expected to feel embarrassed. After all, her condition at their last meeting was a memory ill designed for nonchalance. She determined her strategy as cold anger and contempt. No doubt he had come to gloat or to enjoy humor at her discomfort. She would defeat him. But The Honorable Freddy's sangfroid, as they murmured the polite rituals of greeting, was a weapon that matched her own. She had glimpsed previously the possibility that his inane exterior might be a veneer upon some harder substance. She had blushed when their eyes first met. Surely he was remembering her as quite different. But her color gradually returned to normal as he turned the conversation to casual and pleasant observations of London life. He avoided the foppish prattle but there remained a humorous twist to his lips reminiscent of the Freddy she had known so briefly and so strangely. When small talk had served their purpose he brought her to the inevitable confrontation. She had wished to thrust it at him. But, suddenly, in a quiet firm voice tinged with a hint of laughter he said:
"I'm not in the least bit sorry, y'know."
Monica considered this carefully. She did not wish to yield points. As though reading her mind Freddy spoke for her.
"Cad? That one comes easily to mind. Then, of course, the statement that I am not a gentleman. Then: how do I have the effrontery to thrust myself upon the poor bruised flower....Care to carry on from there?"
Monica wanted very badly to carry on. A flood of denunciation strove for utterance. But she sensed that the cold contempt was now a little late. She said, almost wearily:
"You are impossible! You just sit there...." Hastily she clutched her indignation: "Of course you are a cad. Oh-and all the rest. I'm not going to say it on top of you saying it. The only reason I allowed you in here was to discover why you had the temerity to call. Curiosity, I suppose. So I probably deserve any witticisms that may amuse you."
"I wanted to see you again."
"Why?"
"I wanted to see what you looked like with your legs together."'
Monica stamped her foot angrily, "There, that's a rotten thing to say. Can't you be serious?"
He gave her a level glance that met her eyes head on and killed her impulse to pull the bell cord to have him shown out.
"Poppet, I am serious. I'm in a serious mood this P.M. That's why I came to see you. Compliment, really....You see, m'dear I can talk to you in a way I couldn't possily do to your contemporaries. Y'see Madam Dubois took you a long way down a road they will never travel-"
"You mean I'm soiled. So I'm fair game...?"
Freddy made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Nonsense! You know better than that" He paused, considering. "Don't know all that you girls have to put up with in that place. But you come out ahead. Way ahead of the field."
"So?"
"So I thought I'd come and tell you I'd like to do it again." said Freddy cheerfully.
It served her right, Monica reflected angrily. What else could she have expected. "I'm flattered." She said coldly.
"Y'know I give a lot of thought to this profession of mine-being a cad, I mean." Said The Honorable Freddy somberly. "I'm really not a bad sort of chap. Some people even like me. But when it comes to poppets like you I'm all those things you wanted to say and didn't."
"You're just a rutting animal."
"I've considered that. But if that was all, I can easily buy all the pretty little shop-girls and tarts I could manage. Believe me, it's easy. But I'm like a hunter who scorns a sitting duck or a fluffy bunny and goes out and stalks a lion or a water buffalo."
"Which am I?" Asked Monica tartly.
"Well, you get the simile." continued Freddy unperturbed. "That time I spent with you was one of the most vivid experiences of my life. Everything about it was remarkable. Particularly you. Trouble is...." He gave her a quizzical smile. "It's habit forming. I've thought about you a great deal."
"I can imagine just where your thoughts centered." Her voice was icy.
"No. There's more to it than that. In a way you and I share something. In your case it's whatever Madam Dubois did to you. I don't pretend to be one of these clever Johnnies who can tell you why your mind works in certtain ways under certain stimuli. But the good Madam knows how a girl's mind works under the treatment she prescribes. A girl's never going to be quite the same after she's spent a few months in that house. In your case you discovered two things. A need you never knew you possessed.
And Arlette. Left in the bosom of your family you'd have discovered neither. Now you and I are linked by Arlette. I'm going to marry her some day when she's ready. I can wait. Pragmatic lot, these French. Perfect mate for me. No illusions. In the meantime I want you. I intend to have you."
"You expect me to lead you to my bedroom now?"
"No! That's the thing, dear girl: I want you just the way you were before."
"Don't be absurd."
Freddy shrugged. "Look at it my way. I suddenly found myself introduced into a situation, not of my making, that offered me far far more than anything I had ever known. After that the ordinary falls a bit flat. Being, as we have both agreed, an absolute cad-an utter rotter and all that I ask myself: why shouldn't Old Freddy have a bit more of the same!"
"And I must be the victim?" Monica asked sarcastically
"I must admit, Poppet, that you are always so rude to me that it does add a bit of spice to the action. And another thing you mustn't forget is that you are a very beautiful creature-especially with your clothes removed. There's nothing silly about you. You've been aching to pull that cord and have me tossed into the street. But you haven't done it. I'd make an odds on guess that if it wasn't for your time with Madam Dubois you wouldn't be listening to what poor Old Freddy is saying and trying to make up your mind as to just how much contempt you ought to pour on."
Freddy was so outrageous that Monica found herself curious. She examined him without anger now. She knew him correct in his summation that her present reaction was vastly more liberal and clinical than if she had never entered the portals of Madam's House. Had her parents been alive she would not have listened as she now did. Their horror would have stifled curiosity. But she was free with a new freedom she found exhilarating. Under this condition Freddy's crudities and stark statements were something she could deal with. But not with cordiality.
"You wish me to provide the room and the bench and the tethers?" There was some bitterness in her voice. She had not forgotten the awfulness of that moment when she had seen him surveying her through the V of her pinioned legs.
"Well, not really, Old Girl. That would be a bit much, wouldn't it. I mean to say: chivalry and all that. Man has to do the decent thing and provide facilities-what."
Monica suddenly glimpsed that, for The Honorable Freddy this charade was all very real. There was a mixture of incredulity and humor in her voice: "You're not going to tell me-surely...?"
"Of course, Dear Lady. You see: just as I said. You are sympathetically perceptive. You are not the only one with a town house. I have set aside a delightful room, well lit and secluded. I have had a carpenter and a painter Johnny busy, and a tack shop looked after .the leather goods with some imagination...."
"A sort of sacrificial room with me as the virgin?"
"I say now, poppet!" Freddy had the grace to look just slightly discomforted. "But yes. That about hits the nail on the head."
"You don't seriously think I'm going to enter that room, do you?"
The Honorable Freddy grinned confidingly, as though about to pass on the findings of much deliberation. "Well, actually, yes, Dear Girl-" He raised an admonitary finger to stem Monica's obvious wrath, "Now, don't go off the deep end, Poppet....Obviously I wouldn't have prepared the facilities unless I thought they'd be used. But good Old Freddy isn't simple enough to suppose his lovely victim is going to walk home with him this afternoon. The evil machinations of the villian will take a little time and a lot of groundwork before his panting prey lies bound upon the Altar-I say! Rather good that, don't you think...!"
"You intend to court my goodwill?"
"Dine with me at the Savoy this evening?"
"Not this or any other evening!"
'My plan contempated the sentiment you have so warmly expressed."
"Your plan! Do you intend to kidnap me?"
"I'd considered that." Freddy agreed equably. "A spot of kidnapping is a good simple approach to a female like you-especially considering the circumstances of our first introduction-bad hurdle for a chap, that one. But, no. No kidnapping! The mind of Freddy the complete Bounder is following a more devious course."
"Am I to be honored with your confidence?"
"Well, actually no, Dear Girl. Not at this juncture. Mustn't shoot all my ammunition at once, y'know."
"You hope to get at me in some way through Arlette?"
"No ... no. Thought of it, of course. But doubt if my French maiden would be too keen."
"You realize I'm bound to tell her all this nonsense?"
"I suppose so. Twin souls and all that rot. Doesn't change much though."
"Don't you think you are wasting your time?"
"No." Said The Honorable Freddy firmly. "I had to see you. I wanted to confirm something." He eyed her levelly. "Why not be friends?"
In truth Monica found it hard to hate him. He was a strange mixture. Certainly a depth in him beyond her first assessment. He was not dull. He would probably be amusing company. She could understand now why Arlette had not tossed him aside. But her vivid memory of her condition at their first meeting erected a barrier between them that she had neither the wish or intention to surmount. Her voice lost some of its chill.
"No, Freddy. I can almost say I'm sorry; but no."
He shrugged resignedly as though accepting an expected rebuff. "You won't forget, will you Poppet. Freddy the Cad is quite unscrupulous when it comes to the pursuit of the haughty maiden." His voice hardened. "Honestly, I mean it."
"I'll carry a hatpin."
He rose negligently. "Thanks for the Tea, m'dear. Believe it or not, I've enjoyed our little talk. Now good Old Freddy will toddle on to his next dastardly piece of work."
He held her hand for longer than he need. She did not withdraw it. Nor did she call the maid. But herself went with him to the door. At the top of the steps he turned and asked, quite without humor. "Do you know the other thing you learned in that house where I found you?"
She did not answer. She could not. She knew.
"You loved every moment of it."
The Honorable Freddy doffed his hat and decended to the pavement.
She closed the door: more furious with herself than with him.
* * *
It was a period that left Monica with a number of vivid impressions: her own reactions among them. Freedom demands decision, the examination of possibilities, the setting of a course. Arlette was always in the forefront of her mind. The French girl was now spending all her free time with her love. They did much together. They were happy. Monica found herself without curiosity as to any relationship Arlette might have with The Honorable Freddy Arbuthnot. She could understand him being an amusing diversion. She asked no questions. The two girls debated the wisdom of Arlette giving up her work and moving in to Monica's home so that they would be always together. But here French practicality dictated continuance of the status quo. Arlette loved her work. She had a real attachment and sense of loyalty to Madam Dubois. She believed, with a Gallic cynicism, that one loved more if one loved less. For the moment both were content.
The personality and nature of Madam Dubois had etched itself deeply in the memory of her erstwhile prisoner. It was a memory of a charming sympathy and kindness, beginning at the moment when she had explained the simple facts of her parent's demise to the bewildered naked girl who had stood before her desk with sex and belly streaked and striated from the whip. Madam had made no reference to her condition, but had efficiently and smoothly made her comfortable and accompanied her into the strange new world with which she must now deal. With remarkable tact she contrived to merge her charge back into the stream of her family life. Then, herself, quietly withdrew.
Madam was almost the main topic of animated chatter on that day when Monica was host to her three fellow captives. The six month sentence for all had expired. They had returned to their homes presumably, as Marjorie quaintly put it, well trained. With Madam's help it had been easy to gather them together. On the day itself Monica had given her staff a holiday so that she and Arlette had done the honors. Gleefully she had insisted they all strip naked. A suggestion greeted with enthusiasm. Each girl admitted to an unexpected discomfort when clothed. They happily compared the remaining marks on their wounded bottoms and there were gasps, almost of envy, at the circular stripe around Monica's waist that remained her legacy from the single stroke of the most awful whip. Monica never disguised from herself her pride and joy in this adornment. She had no wish for it to fade. She wanted to wear it all her life.
But an outcome from this social reunion with its inevitable discussions of life in the House of Madam Dubois was to fix in Monica's determination a wish and compulsion never quite absent from her consciousness.
She invited Madam Dubois to Tea.
To English eyes there seems an incongruity in the formal French title. Madam Dubois came much closer to being a mademoiselle. She had managed to combine youth and poise in a manner that made her somewhat unusual profession understandable. She had a presence. She would never be at a loss. Looking across the Tea things at her visitor Monica saw a woman younger than she had at first supposed. It was as though in leaving her House she had also shed some years. She would be in her early thirties. Her former captive wondered what twists of Fate might have brought this beautiful creature to her present way of life. The civilities behind them, she produced a suggestion undreamed of.
"My dear, I want you to stop calling me Madam. It is a courtesy due my authority within my house. It has no place here. There is, after all, no great span of years between us. I have a christian name: call me Solange."
Monica blushed. She knew not why. A wave of tenderness engulfed her. She had never understood her feeling for her former Mistress, any more than she understood her love for Arlette. But she felt a great and natural pleasure in this new intimacy. She wondered if it would conflict with what she had to say. But did not care.
"Solange?" She savored the name. How beautiful it was. "Solange....There is something I must ask you."
"I know, Cherie. I have seen it waiting to be said. I even know what it is. But, in your own way, you will ask."
"You know!" Exclaimed Monica, feeling foolish. "Mais oui! Solange has known this moment would arrive."
Monica wondered if her guest truly could know. She gathered her courage and plunged.
"I am bothered," She confessed. "By something that is half a duty and half a wish. Either one leaves me feeling guilty." Almost hesitantly she took a quick look at the full red lips and their amused half smile. Yes, she could indeed believe now that Solange was aware. "You see, when my parents died I had been with you for five months. My sentence...." She paused and looked at her guest appealingly.
Solange laughed unaffectedly. "Ma pauvre petit! Your fine British honesty tells you that you were sentenced to six months and thus now owe someone somewhere one whole month of captivity, n'est ce pas?"
Monica nodded, embarrassed.
"My dear child! You have not supposed that I have been waiting-or that I would insist...?"
Monica shook her head vigorously. "No. no. Oh no! I know you wouldn't. I suppose it's a sort of feeling that I owe it to Mummy and Daddy. They sent me to you. It had been their wish."
"And that is all, Cherie?"
Monica could not meet her eyes.
"Would you not be a so foolish girl to accept the chains and the whip when there is no need?"
"Yes...."
Solange looked at her youthful hostess with tender amusement. "It is, of course, Cherie, that you find it hard to say that which is truly in your heart-this thing that makes the guilt: Solange knows....You wish, once more, to be stripped, to bear the chains and feel the whip and have Arlette bind you with straps and cords as well as love, n'est ce pas?"
Monica's eyes implored.
"Come, ma petit! You suffer all too much with this so great guilt. You are seeing things that are not there." Solange laughed reassuringly. "This thing with the guilt. It is only there if you make it so. You absurd Anglais...." Swiftly she took the three paces between them and kissed the younger girl warmly: the distressed lips, then the eyes in which there were a hint of tears-tears of a great relief. "And now, you silly child, you will sit while I tell you many things...."
Solange made herself comfortable and demanded another cup of tea.
"There comes, I think, a time of discovery for us women." She said reflectively as she sipped. "It comes about in many ways. You found it in my house. I found it in my own way long ago. Some never find it at all. You see--for most there must be the spark before there is the fire. No spark-then, pouf! they never find what lies hidden. Then there are the others, the greatest number, of course. For them there is no spark and no fire and because they have never felt the warmth they do not feel the cold."
Solange put down her empty cup and stretched with a sensuous enjoyment. "You feel much guilt because you have made this discovery that you have a need deep within you to wear the slave chains and to suffer the slave whip and to be the love slave of she who wields it. Well, I can tell you, Cherie, you are not the first naked girl to so discover herself.
"I will not tell you now of the path that led me to this knowledge. It is a story that does not really matter. It happened. I was young. Like you, I could not bear to relinquish what I had found. It became my life. Circumstances made it possible for me to buy my House here in London where there is so much money and so many busy Mamas so anxious that their little girls be taken off their hands for a little while to learn obedience. Pouf! One may call it Fate. It became so easy. All fell into place. I found Arlette. I found Hester. In doing what I most wanted I created a profession. I am a woman of consequence. I am offered much respect. It is truly most droll.
"Since first I opened my School of Deportment there have been so very many tearful maidens pass through my hands that I might forget most of them if I did not keep a record. It is of interest what happens with them, and this I try and follow-these little birds suddenly let out of their cage. It is amusing.
"But, for most of them it does not really matter. I have chained them and whipped them and kept them locked up, and have found much joy in doing these things to them. This is bad, no! I will not say so. I love to whip these lovely creatures who squirm and plead and shed their tears. It is, for me, a great happiness. Their Mamas, too, are much pleased for when they return home, even though they did not find what you have found, these little girls are much different. They have grown up.
"Now Cherie, the thing that you must know and underhand is. that here and there at rare intervals there will emerge a girl like you. There are not many. Perhaps none exactly as'you are. The others are of a type. For me I could tell them on the street. They are douce. Nature has designed them for their role. You are not like that. You are like me-or will become like me. No one seeing you now would know you for a slave. But you know and I know. That is what matters. It is of the most importance that you know and must find no strangeness in the knowing.
"And so you see there emerges from my house a sort of Club, an elite. Those lucky ones who have found something they will never relinquish...."
"You mean that-that other girls have wanted what I want?" Monica still found difficulty with her heart's desire.
"Of course, My dear. And I have given it to them."
"You mean-they have come back to your House as prisoners?"
Solange shrugged amusedly. "Well, call it what you will. They have come back. But they are not as free as you. So we have been obliged to practice small deceits on Mama. They visit somewhere for a daytwo days-sometimes a week. Sometimes only an afternoon. But they spend the time with me."
"Arlette and Hester look after them?"
Solange smiled quietly. "Oh no, My dear. These little pigeons are mine. I alone give them their heart's ease. They do not fall back into the routine of a class. Some have expected to and have been much surprised at what awaited them. These are not novices. They are female creatures whose novitiate is past. Returning now they begin to learn a richer and more satisfying role. Even you, ma petit, have not glimpsed the end of the path on which you have just set foot."
"You mean, you will....You'll take me...?" Monica was breathless.
"Mais oui, Cherie. To refuse you would be to deny my whole existence."
"And-and ... Solange, what is at the end of the path?"
Solange laughed gleefully. "Come, come! You do not expect me to tell you that. You must make your own discovery. Solange will lead you. Step by step and stripe by stripe. The whip shall guide you with its own delicious agony."
Having got thus far Monica plunged deeper under a compulsion she knew would allow her no rest until she voiced it. "Solange, you make it so easy, yet I find this hard to say...."
"You wish, perhaps, Solange to ask her little pigeon's question for her?" The Frenchwoman asked dryly.
Monica flushed. What she was about to ask would probably make her guest laugh. "I was thinking," She said as firmly as she could. "That since I cannot just disappear it might be most practical if I served the rest of my sentence one week at a time. But what you have just said about the ... the whip...." She managed a small nervous laugh. Then, finding re-assurance in her companion's evident amusement, struggled on: "Well, what I want to ask is....Oh, you know how it was before. I had to be whipped once a week. Now-if I come to you for seven days will you please whip me when I arrive and again before I leave. I wish it so."
Monica sat back, part of her tension had gone with those words she had found so difficult to voice. The French woman's reaction told her that, with them, she had crossed a Rubicon.
"Come here, Cherie."
Monica obeyed.
"Kneel. Here, between my knees where I can touch you."
Knowing a great happiness Monica did as she was bid. Edging as close as she was able she sat back on her heels and looked up into the lovely eyes so close to her own. The French girl gently took the young and eager face into her hands and, raising it, fastened her lips hungrily on those ready to receive them."
"My dear, I knew you must ask that. Solange was cruel. I should not have made you. Of course I will whip you in those ways. It is the old, old prison rule that they called 'The Welcome' and the 'Farewell'. But before you make this so great a step there is something I will tell you now. Perhaps when you have heard it you will not wish to become the slave or the captive of someone like me."
Monica smiled up into the lovely face. Held like this she cared not for what she might now hear. It would not change her resolve.
"I will be cruel to you, Cherie."
Monica nodded happily.
"My dear, I will be very cruel. I will make you scream. You see, I am not just as you are-though sometimes it pleases me to become so. I find a so great happiness in a naked girl. A girl who I own by virtue of the chains which prevent her escape from those things I will do to that graceful body which is hers. The whip is one of these which you understand. But I will whip you harder than you have ever been whipped before. And that will have to be very hard indeed. And I will whip you often-there will be reasons which you will come to know. These are the only terms by which I will allow you to enter your cell again. Can you accept them? I do not urge you to...."
To Monica at that moment it seemed a very small price to pay for so great a need. She said so.
Solange nodded understandingly. There was compassion in her eyes. "Mais oui. It is something you must do. I do you no kindness to refuse. You will scream, you will plead and you will regret. But we will love each other. This is one of the great mysteries that we just accept. Something that only women know."
Her fingers lingered caressingly across the neck, the hair and the features raised so trustingly and so at peace. Slowly she leaned forward and, once more, they kissed for a very long time. When it was over Monica asked breathlessly:
"When may I come?"
And so it was arranged.
* * *
In saying that Mrs Spicer-Bassett was a tweedy Englishwoman one covers her description as adequately as did the rough weave itself. Her presence in the drawing room of Madam Dubois had about it much the air of the Bull and the China Shop. An awkwardness that Mrs Spicer Bassett coped with in much the same manner as she rode to hounds or dealt with unsatisfied factory tenants.
"You're most highly recommended." She made it sound like an accusation.
Madam Dubois acknowledged the compliment with an inclination of the head. "We accept only young ladies above a certain class. There are no regrettable associations formed here." She explained.
"Damn sound idea! Do it with horses. No different with gels." Mrs Spicer-Bassett surveyed her hostess with faint approval. Not as Frenchy as she had expected. Too young, of course. And too damn well got up. But still, she had a way with her.
"Damn nuisance, this gel of mine-not mine really. My sister's actually. But I'm her only living relative. Want to keep her on course. Made a fool of herself, young Poppy has."
"Poppy?" Madam Dubois sounded dubious.
"Not her name, of course. Name's Messalina-pure nonsense! Can't call a gel' that. Can't call her Messy. So I call her Poppy. Serves the purpose."
"You would wish Poppy to spend some time with me here?" Madam Dubois's equanimity managed to prevail.
"Got to spend a bit of time somewhere." Mrs SpicerBassett contrived to make this observation sound like banishment to one of the penal colonies. "Too young to come out, of course-another year or two. But not too young for what she's been up to-young hussy."
It was evident that Mrs Spicer-Bassett considered a London drawing room no place for detailed descriptions of her ward's exploits. She was, no doubt, inhibited by a proper British reticence. Couldn't be too careful with foreigners. Whole business a bit rum when you considered it....Finding words inadequate, she swivelled upon Madam Dubois a massive broadside of penetrating scrutiny.
"Have to get the form first, what! Can't be too careful."
"You are thinking of the methods we employ?"
"Yes, actually. Heard a bit about it from the Norton-Goulds. You did that little bitch of their's a bit of good, I must say."
"Ah, yes. I remember Ursula Norton-Gould well."
"So do a lot of people." Said Mrs Spicer-Bassett darkly.
Madam Dubois produced her most charming smile. "I do understand your concern. It does you credit. In accepting a young woman here I insist on complete authority. My methods are my own. They would never find general acceptance. But it is the result that counts. In that my disciplines have proved effective."
"You whip 'em, don't you?"
"Among other things."
"Could do that myself-often felt like it. Damn sure it's good for 'em! Never seemed quite cricket though-not with Emily's girl. Sooner you did the job." Mrs Spicer-Bassett paused for reflection. "Silly question this, I suppose. But these fillies of yourshow do they make the running?"
Madam Dubois casually pulled a bell cord. Smiling benignly at the earnest features of Poppy's Aunt she said thoughtfully:
"My dear Mrs Spicer-Bassett. I can see that you take your responsibility as guardian most seriously. I think that by far the best and kindest way in which I can answer your last question is to allow you a more intimate glimpse of one of my pupils than I generally sanction. But I will ask of you a small forbearance: you may be startled, you may be shocked, I am sure you will be surprised. But let us play our little charade. When it is done I will value your comments."
While the tweed clad guardian was gathering her thoughts, any response she might have made died unsaid, for at that moment the door opened and there came into her field of vision something that she described afterwards as: 'Damned astoundin'!'
The girl who entered was perhaps nineteen. She was completely nude. She walked with controlled steps because her ankles were chained together by silver shackles that were obviously a costly and quite beautiful product of a jeweler's skill. Her wrists were similarly joined. Both connecting linkes were sufficiently long to give her a considerable latitude of movement. But the manner in which she wore them made it very evident that they held her captive. The girl herself was lovely. She walked with a grace and assurance that seemed almost enhanced by her chains as they swirled and provided their own metallic accompaniment. She walked with head slightly bent, her eyes seeing only the carpet, looking to neither right or left. Reaching the seated figure of Madam Dubois, she knelt with fluid ease, in spite of the confining links, a hand on each of her hips, her head bowed.
"You will bring us Tea, Cherie."
"Yes Madam."
Mrs Spicer-Bassett followed the lithe movements with fascinated gaze. When they were alone again she looked at Madam Dubois and said with a hearty conviction: "Well, I'll be damned ... '.!"
Her Hostess laughed. "The child, she is enchanting, no?"
"I'd say she was enchanting-Yes!" Said the guest with fervour. "How the Devil d'you do it?"
"It is a strange mixture." Madam admitted. "A thing of the flesh and a thing of the spirit. They can be made one. It is not always easy-for you must remember how it is to be sixteen-to be very young."
"Hr-r-ump. Forgotten long ago." Mrs Spicer-Bassett sounded as though she was well content to relegate her youth into limbo. "Can't understand! How in Hades d'you get 'em to come to heel? Never seen anything like it."
The advent of the Tea trolley enabled Madam Dubois to leave the rhetorical question unanswered. She watched her guest with quiet amusement.
Mrs Spicer-Bassett sat enthralled. She was envisioning 'Young Poppy' enacting the role of this quite incredible girl. A chastened, demure, obedient Poppy. Her intent to quibble about high tuition fees died.
With a practiced dexterity the youthful chained hands sped about their task. The watching woman guessed shrewdly that the slender wrists must have worn those chains often and long to acquire so complete an unawareness of them. The prisoned fingers were deft and sure. They poured the Tea, they proffered the cup, they arranged the trolley so that a selection might be made from the sandwiches and cakes. The young serene face was intent, the eyes averted, the lips mute. Having completed her initial task of serving, the naked girl sped to a position beside and slightly to the front of the Hostess's chair where she sank to her knees and with lowered head, her chained hands resting lightly above her knees she rested back upon her heels motionless in total submission.
It was a rare moment. Mrs Spicer-Bassett had nothing to say. She sipped her Tea and nibbled her sandwich without tasting either. Her eyes remained glued upon an incredible tableau. The bowed loveliness of the naked girl and her equally beautiful Mistress. As speculation slowly returned to her dazed mind her normal dubiety returned with it. Surely this could not be as it seemed. Some sort of trick? A French trick, of course. The girl must be under some sort of influence. She would find out. She drained her cup and set it down.
Instantly and effortlessly the girl was upon her feet and once more in charge of the trolley, performing her task of replenishment with poise and grace, but in total silence and with elusive gaze. She was in motion an appreciable time as she filled the needs of both Madam and her guest; the supple fluidity of her movements a joy to behold. It was then that Mrs Spicer-Bassett saw quite clearly something that she was surprised at having failed to notice previously. The girl's ivory skin was striated from knee to shoulder by the red and purple stripes of a whip. Her bottom, when she bent forward to serve, showed itself ridged with the purple welts from what was most probably a cane. Here then was the answer! Faced with punishment like that no girl would dare say boo to a goose. She fired a tentative round:
"Gel's had quite a drubbing, what?"
"Yes."
Dammit, was that all! Just a casual, yes. The woman would have to do better than that!
"Bit much, wouldn't you say."
"It depends on the need and the purpose to be achieved."
What did that mean! Couldn't half kill a gel-even in a good cause. She tried again:
"Are you sure the filly isn't too damn frightened to speak?"
"She only speaks when given permission."
Mrs Spicer-Bassett's retort was stopped in mid air. Madam Dubois raised her hand and smiled understanding.
"Your doubts are so very natural. Forgive me. I put a strain upon you that perhaps I should not have done. Having taxed you thus far it is but fair to allow you a complete freedom so that your mind may be at rest. I will leave the room. You will be free to ask as many questions as you wish. Even if the answers are hard to credit I must ask you to believe them for there are no others."
Madam Dubois turned her attention to the kneeling girl. "You are free to speak, Cherie. Please be attentive to our guest while I am gone." With a cheerful nod and a smile she swept from the room. Lithely and gracefully the nude girl came and knelt before the puzzled guest.
The older woman was at a loss. She felt foolish. Here was something she did not understand. She much desired that young Poppy should become as this girl who now knelt submissively at her feet. On the other hand she had an uncomfortable suspicion that she was being played with. Damned awkward position to be placed in-confound the woman! Kindness, no doubt, the safest wicket. She bent and raised the lovely face and was further disconcerted by an unmistakable glint of humor in the calm eyes that met her own quite without embarrassment.
"Don't be afraid m'dear. You must tell me: Are you being ill treated?"
"Oh no, Madam!" The voice was as clear as the eyes.
"How d'you get all those marks on you then?"
The girl smiled and shrugged as though dismissing a thing of small import: "I have been whipped, Madam."
"Of course you have, you silly girl. Looks to me as though you need help?"
"Oh no, please!" The young voice sounded genuinely shocked. "Perhaps you do not understand...."
"I understand enough that we should find you a coat so that I can take you out of this house."
"You mustn't! Oh, you mustn't! I will not go!" She shook her head free and looked up imploringly. "I am here because I wish. Because it is considered best that I be here. All the girls are here because of this."
"Are they all chained, and naked, and marked?"
"Of course. That is why we are here."
"You like it?" Mrs Spicer-Bassett felt out of her depth.
The girl made an emphatic motion with her chained hands:
"It is not that we like or do not like. This is something that is. It happens. It has been made absolute by our own will and the will of others. It is like the sunrise-we do not question it. Truly I could walk from this house with you now-" She grinned with an amusement obviously genuine. "But my steps would be somewhat less than yours for I do not have the key to my chains. But even if we do this it will prove or accomplish nothing. I belong here."
"But that whipping....How can you bear it?"
This time the girl laughed lightly. "These marks are not from a single punishment. I have received them over a number of days. As for bearing them; there is no choice. We are always securely fastened. It is better so. We ourselves prefer it rather than the shame of being unable to stand still or control ourselves in the positions we must hold. Your Poppy, should she agree to come here, would feel as we do."
"What do you mean: agree?"
Again the glint of amusement in the level eyes: "Madam Dubois will accept only those who agree with their family that they should enter this house. It is true that there are times when we wish we had not so agreed. When I am being whipped I wish only that it would stop. When it does stop we do not frantically strive to escape-it would be useless. We are always chained. For us to leave before the appointed time would render pointless the pain we have already endured. We wish so very much to prove ourselves. Nor do we wish to be rescued...." She added shyly.
"You mean you don't want to walk out of this house with me, a free girl?"
"No. I do not wish that at all." The respectful voice was emphatic.
Mrs Spicer-Bassett wished that she had left well enough alone. This quiet self possessed girl, for all her nakedness and her chains, made her feel like a prying meddler. Couldn't very well pick the damn gel up and carry her into the street. Bad form that! Once again an enticing vision of a reformed and subdued Poppy flitted across her mind's eye. She pursued another tactic:
"Very well then-take your word for it. Won't meddle. But, tell me: what-what the Devil have they used on you?"
The chained girl laughed: "You mean these marks? Well, I should tell you that mostly it is our bottoms that are punished." She gave a wryly humorous grin. "Nature seems to have designed them for the purpose. When it is there that we must receive an infliction a long, thin, flexible cane is used. It hurts very much, especially if we are bent over so that the skin is taut. When it is on another part of us that we must receive the pain a leather whip is considered best as it will not bruise where there is bone structure beneath the skin. It is a single leather thong that is not tapered at the tip. Madam has found that such a whip-and most are made in this way-will cut the flesh so that it takes long to heal or does not ever leave without some trace."
"Never used a riding crop on you, eh?"
"No Madam. But it is kind of you to take an interest. I will mention your suggestion to my Mistress." The young voice was demure-or was there a hint of sarcasm.
Damn the little hussy. Made a fool of her. No help needed there! Mrs Spicer-Bassett found herself possessed of an outrageous wish to use a fine black crop she kept for her ponies on these rounded impudent cheeks for which she had so recently felt compassion. Damn gels'-never knew where you were with 'em! But further explorations into this new world were halted by the return of Madam Dubois. She smiled at her guest and nodded at the kneeling girl who immediately rose to her feet, took charge of the trolley and demurely left the room, her ankle chains swirling their metallic message of a strange captivity.
"The dear child was able to reassure you?"
Mrs Spicer-Bassett was quite unable to withstand the assured charm. "Damned impressive." She admitted. "Never have believed it. Think you can do that to young Poppy?"
"I am quite sure we can."
Mrs Spicer-Bassett decided to take the hurdle at a full gallop: "Give you the reins, eh. See what you can do with the little filly. Spare the rod and spoil the child, what! Got my cheque book here somewhere if I can find it...."
And so it was decided.
* * *
It was quite different from what Monica had expected. She should have realized, she knew, that Solange would make it so. She had entered the House quivering. A tremendous glow of happiness enveloped her. Now, an hour later, these feelings were as strong as ever but, added to them, was a thrill of fear.
She was naked. It had felt so good to shed her clothes. Paradoxical that in chained nudity she should find freedom. She was strapped tightly upon a raised bench, her legs hanging over its edge, her bottom raised high and supported by a firm bolster beneath her hips, its prominence painfully emphasized by the strap encircling her waist and cinching it down with such severity that she could not move her lower cheeks at all. Her ankles were tightly fastened somewhere below, as were her wrists: the bands so tight that she did not even try to flex them. She lay face down waiting.
This would be her "Welcome". They had both laughed about it as she had been made ready. This was to be the first of the two whippings she had asked for. Even as she tightened the straps Solange had warned her again that she would be sorry. The whippings she would now receive from her new Mistress would take her into realms of pain as yet unexplored. Monica knew that her rounded bottom was offering itself in an exposure never before thrust upon it. She could not move or even flex it. She felt her skin there cruelly taut. She was offering a target for the cane in a way she had never done. She shivered in anticipation. She would try hard. But she knew from the look in Solange's eyes that she had little hope of enduring the twenty strokes in stoic silence. The first few perhaps, as the pain built up. But beyond that she did not know.
Solange was making her wait on purpose. She had told her so, quite matter-of-factly. It would do her good to be naked and feel the air where soon she would feel the cane. It would be beneficial that she should struggle and find she could not move. The cane had been placed where Monica could see it clearly. She was not compelled to look at it. She could turn her head-it was the only movement permitted her. But, even though she was annoyed with herself for doing it, she always turned back so that she could examine the slender cruelty of this thing that would weal her. Except for the whip lash around her waist all her other wounds had healed. She was offering a quite virgin sacrifice for the imprint of fresh ridges of agony on that portion of herself now thrust and raised in blatant invitation. Solange was right. She would be more cruel than Arlette. For one awful moment the bound girl felt terribly alone.
Yet, when her Mistress returned, it seemed natural and so easy to laugh and to joke and to speak of her predicament as though it was someone else who was secured there. Thus they came pleasantly to the moment when Solange picked up the cane and, pressing it firmly across the helpless curve in a measuring slice, said: "And now, you adorable little pigeon, I am going to hurt you very much."
Was it worse than she had imagined! She surged against her restraining straps as though driven by the impulse of an electric current. Even under compulsion of an agony beyond her most fearful anticipation she moved no part of herself. She was helpless. Proudly silent she could feel the bruised flesh ridge itself into her first welt. But she had no belief that she could bear the remaining nineteen, or that any infliction so truly awful would actually happen to her. Surely Solange....
The second stroke caught her unaware. She could hear the grinding of her teeth as she clenched them. Mentally she heaved and writhed making gasping exhalations through her dilated nostrils. Why, oh why, must Solange strike so hard! With the flesh of her bottom stretched tight in its thrust to accept the cane the resultant agony was double anything she had ever known.
With the next she threw her head from side to side in the only physical expression she could make. In spite of clenched teeth a small moan escaped. It seemed quite impossible that her flesh could endure seventeen more such lashes. Her bottom would be cut to shreds. Yet her suffering was forgotten as she felt Solange's lips seek her own. They kissed passionately.
"Such delicious pain, n'est ce pas me pauvre petit."
"Oh darling, darling, don't whip me any more. Please!"
"C'est dommage. It is as I told you it would be, Cherie."
"But I can't stand it! I didn't know how awful it would be."
"Poor little pigeon! Solange knew how awful it would be. That is why you are strapped so very tight, ma petit."
"You ... you-aren't going to give me seventeen more like that, are you?"
"Mais oui! You know I am, Cherie. Not one less and not one less hard. You see, my dear one, you are not going to be a prisoner: you are going to be a slave. My slave. I must break you as a slave is broken, so that with each stroke you become more a part of me and do as I would have you do, and think as I would have you think, and feel as I would have you feel."
"But, Solange, I will be your slave. I will be anything you wish. You do not have to whip me."
Solange bestowed a lingering kiss on a tear stained cheek. "It is so easy to believe what you have just said, my dear. Solange knows that her little pigeon believes it. Yes. You are my slave now if I was satisfied with such a slave as you would be. But I am not. As you now are it is hard for you to understand or to believe-you do not want to believe-that when I have given you your twenty strokes you will be ten ... no, a hundred times more my slave than you could ever be if I stopped whipping you now."
"Then please ... please-not so hard. Please darling...."
Solange bent and playfully bit her captive's ear. "Was it not this same little girl who asked that she be whipped very hard indeed-not once, but twice. I seem to recall...."
"All right then: so I was a silly girl. But I don't deserve this!" Declared the captive petulantly.
"It is not for you to say what you do and do not deserve." Solange assured her. "Such decisions are for me only. Because of impertinence we will start your whipping all over again. The total will now be twenty-three."
"Oh no! You wouldn't!!" Monica was aghast.
"Oh, but I will. You know I will, don't you?"
Monica did know. There was that in her Mistress's voice that told her beyond doubt that her naked bottom would still receive twenty more of the wicked strokes that she could not bear to contemplate. How could you love someone and hurt them so much! Yet it was possible. What was about to happen to her would cement their love even more firmly. She did not know why-perhaps no one did. But it would be so. She longed with her whole being to evade what must happen. But it would happen.
"Darling...." She sobbed in a small strangled voice. "I don't think I'm going to behave very well....I'm sorry."
Suddenly they were both laughing. Monica's small struggling laugh, it is true. Yet nonetheless laughter. It was a sharing between them. Almost reverently Solange bent and kissed the raised welts on the curved flesh. Then, once more, she kissed the warm lips, lingeringly with deep feeling.
"You will behave very well indeed, my precious little girl. All you have to do is scream. I will whip you steadily until it is over. And you must scream. You must scream as loud as you can."
Monica screamed.
Its woman scent rising erotically in the still air. The screaming continued for a little while, then died into sobbing moans. Monica was panting. Her mind uncomprehending to any stimulous but pain. But slowly the silence and the cessation of the strokes upon her feet awoke her awareness to other things. Once more Solange sat beside her, drying her tears and smoothing the damp hair. When her sobbing had subsided so that she could speak the punished girl asked huskily:
"It is over?"
"No, Cherie."
Solange saw the naked body tense. The breathing stop. Monica looked up at her in horror.
"I know, my dear you will not forget these lessons we have shared. You think that is enough. It is not. You have received half your punishment. You will lay as you are all afternoon waiting. Knowing that I will return and that those pretty feet will once again feel the cane. It is in this time alone with your pain and with your fear that you will truly learn and will truly become a slave. The whipping that will come then upon those poor defenseless soles will be the key that will cement and lock you forever as my slave. You will never forget. You will not forget, will you, Cherie?"
This time Monica had pleaded. She wept. Yet both girls were conscious that she used care in what she said and the form in which she spoke. She made no mistakes. Frightened as she was, she forgot no admonition. Solange let her quietly exhaust her hope and plead herself into silence. Then left her alone with her tears.
Monica lay naked, sweating, exhausted and terribly afraid.
It was as Solange had said. She lay there upon her rug. Her feet sundered from her yet still able to transmit their suffering. Bleakly she relived every moment of the bastinado. Every question asked and answered was etched forever in her mind. It was true. She was not the same girl who had walked so blithely into that room so short a time before. She would never be quite that girl again. She did not want to be. For that other girl was fallible and thus a constant invitation to the whip. If this new girl was to be whipped in the future-and she little doubted that she would be-it would not be because of a careless word, look or motion.
She never knew how many hours she lay alone. There was no moment of the time that she thought of anything other than the whip upon her feet. The whip she had known and the whip that would return to her naked feet still upturned in agonizing invitation. An invitation she would gladly have withdrawn, but could not. Struggle as she would she could not prevail against the straps or the chains. Often she looked over her shoulder towards her bruised and welted feet against their post as though wondering why they did not free themselves and her too. But suddenly and tearfully she thought of Solange, and was glad that they could not.
She learned much in those hours she was made to wait. She believed herself broken. Without will. She wished to know that she was broken. But how could she tell. She could not just say it and make it so. Perhaps fear; this fear that possessed her was the sign. Could you become a slave only by fear and because of fear. It was fear that set you apart. She loved deeply. But it had not made her slave. Slowly and increduously she found herself grateful that her feet would be caned again. It did not stop the fear. Oh no! Her fear fed upon itself. But when it was over-then she would be sure. She would know that she had crossed into the world where only Solange ruled.
As always with Solange it was worse than had seemed possible. When it was over she could not move, but lay exhausted with pain. Feeling numbly the unbuckling of the straps and the locking of the familiar chains upon her ankles. Her breathing and the thumping of her heart took long to return to normal. They were replaced by a great lassitude. A welling of relief. The Mistress made no move and said no word, but waited patiently for her to recover. Finally Monica herself pushed stiffly up on to her knees and looked up at the lovely face filled with concern and with promise.
"No more, Cherie. It is done."
She nodded, a lump still in her throat. Cautiously she essayed to rise, but fell back with a small articulation of pain. Turning, she reached and examined her foot. What she saw caused her to look up at Solange in piteous appeal.
The older girl knelt and taking her broken victim in her arms kissed her with passion and with love. "Solange understands, my dear. They are very bad: those poor little feet. Such innocent little feet! And now you must walk upon them and they will hurt you very much. Come, put your arm across my shoulder; you can do it even with the chain. And I will help you. Very slowly...."
It was very slowly indeed. Almost with every step a protest or a plea strove for utterance. Her feet were wounded. Her whole being revolted against putting them on the ground. Each step was torture. She thought of refusal, but sensed that, for Solange, this walk was part of her punishment too. To protest might mean that she would be fastened again and the bitter strokes resumed. She no longer possessed yesterday's temerity. Except for the involuntary gasps of anguish she kept silent. There was now so much to remember.
She had known no greater joy than when she saw the Ring. Gratefully she sank upon the carpet and bowed her head so that her collar might be locked in place. Without permission and without volition she fell asleep.
Later, in the darkness, Solange awakened her. They made love with fierceness and abandon such as Monica had never known.
* * *
Aunt Millie was a surprise. Not only by sipping Tea and nibbling cake in Monica's drawing room. But in herself. She was one of those small fumbling ineffectual women who seemed forever lost in a perplexing world. She coped. But in a sort of rearguard action, cutting her losses. Her husband was much the same in an even more absent minded way. The world saw little of him. He collected stamps. Aunt Millie did what must be done. She was much loved and was the butt of much family humor. Somehow they had contrived to produce a child, a girl. The family wag advanced the view that this phenomenon resulted from a search by Aunt Millie's spouse for a triangular Cape which he had inadvertantly mislaid.
Monica suspected from the start that Aunt Millie had a problem. It took two cups of tea and three pieces of Maderia cake to reach it.
"My dear, I don't know what the World is coming to."
Aunt Millie had never known what the world was coming to. Monica simply agreed and waited.
"They do the strangest things, you know."
She omitted to say who or what did the strangest things. Monica made a shrewd guess.
"Couldn't have happened when I was that age."
Aunt Millie took another piece of cake in a manher that suggested she was building up her strength.
"Young Melissa, you know. You remember Melissa?"
Monica remembered. A bony child with bright eyes. They had met at family gatherings. Separated by an age gap of four years that placed them between them an unbridgable chasm.
"Of all things...!" Aunt Millie produced a handkerchief. "The boy who delivers the groceries from the village. Dashed bad form."
Monica made appropriate sounds. She wanted to laugh.
Aunt Millie eyed her over the handkerchief: "Don't be offended, dear girl. Your mother told me....That place you went to? Thought I'd ask...."
"Of course, Auntie. I don't mind talking about it. Really, I don't."
"Bit impressed with that woman. Saw her at the funeral. What's her name?"
"Madam Dubois."
"Right! Seems to have done wonders for you. Different girl y'know."
"I've grown up."
"Yes. But....anyway we all thought so. Think it would do for Melissa?"
Monica was in a quandary. She had not seen the child for some time. She would be fifteen now. She almost blushed at the thought of what Aunt Millie might say if she knew of her own tuition in the House of Madam Dubois.
"It's quite severe." She offered tentatively.
Aunt Millie nodded and used the handkerchief. "Supposed to be, isn't it! I mean, that's the general idea." She eyed her youthful hostess with obvious approval. "Seems to work miracles." Then: "Thought I'd ask you first."
The idea was instant. Monica knew she could never resist it. "Would you like her to come and stay with me?" She asked unblushingly.
It seemed probable that the idea had ocurred to Aunt Millie also. She perked up. "My dear, would you...."
"Of course! It might be good for both of us."
"Shocking little hoyden y'know."
"I'm afraid most of us are."
"Can't remember." Ventured Aunt Millie dubiously. "But actually she's a sweet child. I say....!" She started as though remembering. "I told her to go and play in the garden. Perhaps we might call her in."
This time Monica did laugh. The whole thing was too precious. She felt immensely happy. Nor did this happiness diminish when Aunt Millie returned with the child. Melissa was a little beauty. She was not a child at all. When their eyes met each recognized the other. Each knew. They embraced. Monica found herself wanting to go on holding this vibrant youngster.
"Can I have cakes and Tea?" Asked Melissa.
She ate and drank, eyes bright with excitement seldom leaving the figure of her older cousin. Aunt Millie continued to be practical.
"My dear," She said to Monica. "Should Melissa prove ungrateful you must write immediately and I will come up to town. I want you to have complete authority. If, for any reason, you deem it wise that the dear child should enter-you know ... that place, please do what must be done." She eyed her daughter severely, a look that in no way diminished the younger girl's relish in her tea. "You are in complete charge. Melissa understands that. Don't you Melissa?"
"Jolly good cake, this." Said Melissa.
"I asked you a question, Melissa."
"Sorry, Mumsy. You are sweet. Of course I'll do everything cousin Monica tells me-just everything. You know I will, don't you Monica?" she asked demurely.
Monica blushed, but said nothing.
Aunt Millie kissed and said good-bye.
Melissa was pure joy. How such parents had produced her was a mystery Monica did not concern herself with. It seemed probable that she might be the product of more than one grocery boy with a possible second gardener thrown in for good measure. She possessed an exuberant zest that was infectious. She appeared to have no inhibitions at all. She did not appear to find strangeness or embarrassment in her situation. One felt that no matter what her situation Melissa would enjoy it. With affectionate abandon she threw her arms round Monica's neck and kissed her vigorously.
"Oh, thank you-thank you! I just know I'll be so happy with you. We're going to have such fun. It'll be so jolly-just us. I'll do everything you tell me. Honest, I will!"
She broke away and danced around the room humming some small tune. Suddenly she stopped and looked direct at Monica.
"You're supposed to whip me, aren't you?"
Seeing the consternation on her cousin's face she laughed gaily.
"You mustn't feel badly about it. I'll let you, you know."
"Where on earth did you get that idea?" Monica demanded, her pulse rising.
"Oh, come now...." Melissa danced up, bestowed another kiss, and swirled away again. "Mother was so angry she told me things about that....what she calls: "That House", and then I knew a girl who knew someone, she told me things. They do whip you there, don't they. It all sounds so jolly exciting." She eyed her cousin mischievously: "Did they whip you, Monica?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I say! Tell me about it."
"It hurts."
"Well, I daresay it does. But, I mean....how do they go about it?" She looked mischievous again. "Is it-is it on the bare....you know?"
"They keep you naked all the time." Monica began to feel a need to keep her end up. This child was preposterous-and delightful.
Melissa was impressed. "Coo. Oh! Doesn't it feel funny? I mean-everyone looking...."
"There's only girls there."
Melissa considered. "Well, anyway, I look pretty good. I'm not afraid." She seemed determinedly ready to shed her clothes. "But the rest of it....Do they tie you on a triangle like in the books? Or to a post. Or do you just bend over, or what?" She giggled. I bent over a good deal in school."
"They fasten you in various ways." Monica assured her. "But one thing is certain: you won't get loose."
"What do they whip you with?"
"A cane on your bottom and a whip over the rest of you."
"You mean-all over...?"
Monica nodded. "Yes. You wouldn't like it. I didn't." Then, as an afterthought: "Where on Earth have you picked up this thing about whips?"
Melissa was unabashed. She grinned cheerfully. "Well, I got caned a lot at school. They made us bare our behinds. It hurt, but I got it so much I sort of got used to it. The girls always talked about it a lot. Who got so many of the best and who cried and who didn't. For a moment she turned serious. "I discovered that most people like to talk about it. They pretend they don't. But they do. I believe a lot of people like to whip us girls....Y'know, there's books about it. Then, when Mumsy talked about 'That House' I could just see dear little Melissa being strung up to a mast or something and being flogged with a Cat, just like in the navy. It made me all shivery. But a nice sort of shivery....I say, Melissa?"
"Yes?"
"Is it like this with you? Finally when I got caned or whenever that sort of thing got talked about I found that I get a funny sort of excitement as though I really loved it instead of hating the pain." She paused a moment and then plunged: "When this happens the points on the end of my breasts get hard and stick out and feel terribly nice when you touch them. Do your's do that?"
"Melissa! You're impossible!"
"Well, do they?"
"Yes." Monica admitted.
"See! I knew we were alike. When you whip me both our nipples will get hard and stick out. Won't it be fun!"
"They won't, you know." Monica assured her. "If you get whipped from now on it will hurt so much they'll probably disappear altogether."
"Do yours?"
"Shush! Where do you get this idea I'm going to whip you?"
"From Mumsy, of course. She and Daddy could never do it. But I know she thinks it would be good for me. I expect she was too embarrassed to ask you. Mumsy's like that. But she sent you a message."
"A message?"
"Yes. May I go and get it?"
"Of course."
When Melissa returned she carried a most beautiful slender cane. Handing it to Monica she explained: We had it wrapped in a coat. It's too long to get in a suitcase." She giggled. "Mumsy thought it wouldn't be quite nice for us just to carry it. But she thought it most important that we bring it. She didn't expect you to have one." She winked slyly, "Not having any bad little girls around."
Monica flexed the weapon and slashed it in the air. It was magnificent. She felt her own flesh begin to tingle, and was annoyed when she sensed her own nipples sprouting into life.
"Has this been used on you?"
"No. Mumsy bought it just 'specially for you." Then, miscievously: "And me."
The irrepressible child did another pirouette. "Oh, Monica! I'm so happy. It's all going to be wonderful, I know it is." Gradually she slowed. Obviously in the grip of some thought:
"I say, Monica. If they whipped you like that I bet some of the marks are still on you. Are they?"
"Yes they are." Monica admitted without caution.
"Let me see them. Oh-please...."
Monica considered. This child was a delight. She obviously knew nearly as much of sensuality as Monica herslef. She felt a compelling desire to strip naked and shock the little minx. It would be fun to watch her face when she beheld Solange's work. But the last of the strokes was barely a week old. Every part of her was striped and empurpled to an incredible degree. In only one of the seven days had she not been whipped: that day they had enjoyed their little pleasantry with Mrs. Spicer-Bassett. For the rest Solange had continued the infliction on her sex that Hester had not had time to finish that fatal day. Another day she had been bound with breasts outthrust so that a silken whip could be used upon them. Her back and waist had received some further attention and her "Farewell" had left her almost as exhausted as her day with the bastinado. Several times a day now she stripped and admired herself in the mirror. Solange had insisted that she not return to The House until the wounds had faded. Monica felt such pride in these marks she bore that she longed to show them and to share them with this eager companion who she liked more every minute. She temporized:
"I'd have to strip naked."
"Do you mind-? From what you have just told me you must have been going around all naked for simply months and months."
"What I should do is use this on you." Said Monica smiling as she laid the cane upon a table. Then she stripped. It took little time. She had long since dis carded most of the cumbersome stuff that swathed most girls of that period.
"There, is that what you wanted?"
Deliberately she stood half upon her toes, her hands clasped behind her neck, her breasts arrogantly outthrust, her belly concave. Very slowly she turned herself so that every inch and crevice came into view. Nothing was hidden except the soles of her feet. She would not show those. They were something special. They still hurt her. They were something private between herself and Solange.
Melissa gasped. Her eyes glowed. For a long time even she had no words. When she did speak it was an exhalation of awe.
"Oh darling! It's beautiful. You're beautiful. More beautiful than anything I've ever dreamed of."
No words were spoken as Monica put on her clothes. Melissa sat dazed. Obviously seeing in her mind still the spectacle her older cousin had provided.
But it was not long before the elfin grin returned and the active mind seized upon the fact that Monica had wondered if the child would discern. She voiced the obvious puzzlement.
"But Monica, you haven't been in that-that House for simply ages and ages. You couldn't have got all those marks from that long ago. Most of them are quite recent. I can tell-anyone could...."
"So?"
"So somebody whips you." Melissa danced up and down in ecstasy. "Who is it? Oh please tell me."
"Somebody I love." Monica watched her charge curiously.
"It's a girl, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"I knew it would be. Oh, you're so lucky! I do envy you. And I think it's so wonderful that you can be the way you are-talking to Mumsy and everything. So very correct and dignified and all the time your body is covered with those beautiful terrible lovely marks. Do you want to tell me?"
Monica began to feel that it might be better if she and this precocious darling child walked before they ran. Her personal affairs should be disclosed a bit at a time. She would change the direction the conversation had taken. The most obviously easy way of doing so appealed to her very much.
"You may bend over and bare your bottom." She told Melissa smiling.
If she had bestowed a diamond necklace it could have scarcely have produced a more brilliant sparkle in the bright eyes. But, for Melissa, it became evident there was no half way. Her clothes flew here and there. Furiously she tore them from her until she stood as Monica had stood. Proud, straight, unblemished, more than beautiful. The heady aura of youth emanated like a tangible presence around her.
"How do you want me, darling?" Melissa bent and touched her toes. The result was almost too inviting to bear. "Like this?"
"Or I think this might be very good, don't you?" She crouched on all fours then leaned down so that her forearms, her head and her chest rested on the carpet. Her bottom rose up delightfully alone and exposed.
"Or some do it like this. There was a girl at school who always got caned like this at home." She bent over the back of a chair so that her feet were almost raised from the floor. It was a most suitable pose for the business in hand.
"You will stand the way you were in the first place. Straight up, head back, stick your chest out, hands behind your neck." Monica ordered. "I want to talk to you."
Smiling hugely the nymphet obeyed. Obviously immensely pleased with herself. Monica sat and negligently toyed with the cane. Let the little minx wait. It would be good for her. She recalled some of the waiting she had done herself.
"I don't have a nice triangle to tie you to, or a post or anything like that. I'm sorry." She explained. "So we are really going to see how much you enjoy this beautiful thing." She held up the cane and admired it. "At school they give you so many "Of the best" don't they: and you have to stand still. Well, it's the same here. Except that you are going to get five in each of those delightful positions you so sweetly demonstrated. Think you can stand that?"
The excited face turned and grinned confidently. "Of course I can. Oh, darling. Don't keep me waiting. I've waited so long-before I came here, I mean. Please start."
"We may as well do this properly." Monica was enjoying herself hugely. When I give the word you will ask me properly and at length to cane you. You can go into all the detail you feel pertinent. Then, after each stroke, you will say thank you, and you'll say it nicely. Now, here's the thing you can start worrying about. It should take that silly grin off your face. I'm going to whip you hard. I don't think you can stand it. But you must. You may wriggle, or kick, or toss your head. But you must not leave position and you must not scream. If you do, then that particular group of five will be doubled. If you disgrace yourself I'll find something to tie you with and then it will be thirty instead of fifteen. Is that clear?"
Once again it was as though she had bestowed a priceless gift. Melissa's eyes sparkled. She was gasping with pleasure. The silly grin, instead of coming off, was now wider than ever.
"Oh yes....yes! You're wonderful. I knew you would be! May I bend over now?"
"Not until you've said your little piece. You may commence."
It was a glorious game. They both knew it. They made their own rules.
Melissa turned gracefully until she faced the seated girl with the whip. Provocatively she held herself taut thrusting out her breasts so that their temptation was well nigh irresistible. Deliberately she separated her feet enough that her thickly haired sex seemed, to Monica, to fill her whole vision. Melissa was gorgeous. Pertly she began her speech:
Her attitude was impudent. Each word was impudence. Melissa was intent on mischief.
"Darling Monica. I have been a bad girl. Oh terribly bad. Poor Mumsy was in tears. So I must be whipped." Her eyes twinkled direct. "I expect it will do me no end of good, and I'll be a much better girl afterwards. All the whippings I've had up to now haven't done me any good at all. In fact I've rather . enjoyed them. But poor Miss Edwards our Gym teacher only used a funny little cane and never hit very hard. I am sure, darling Monica, that you will be much, much stronger and will hit much, much harder and be much, much cleverer at hurting me than she was. So may I bend over and touch my toes and keep my legs straight so that my bottom sticks out beautifully, and will you please give me five terribly hard strokes across my bare bottom with the cane you are holding. When that is done please give me five more while I am in the floor position. And then please give me five more while I am bent over a chair. Please hit me very hard indeed. I promise I won't move or cry out. I may wriggle and gasp a little. But if I move please give me a double dose. Thank you, Monica for being so sweet to me. May I bend over now please."
"You are an impudent little minx." Monica laughed. "This is going to hurt you much more than you think it is. You may not be as mischievous when I am through with you. But if I was really trying to turn you into a good little girl I shudder to think what I might have to do. Yes. You may bend over."
It was almost too beautiful to bear. There was a tightness in Monica's throat and a stirring in her loins as she took her position to one side of the enticing rotundity that thrust itself in the air for her attention. She suddenly realized the significance of this moment. She herself had been whipped many times. But she had never whipped a girl. She had never wielded the cane. She had never tightened the strap, the shackle or the rope. Now, waiting impatiently in front of her, was this ultimate perfection in femaleness. She shook herself, as though from sleep. She must not look so dreamy or so dazed. Her impertinent victim was watching her cheerfully from one eye.
She struck as hard as she could. The result was surprising. Melissa did not flinch. The watching eye remained bright and curious. The girlish voice said 'Thank you' with a clear modulation. But the biggest surprise was within herself. As she had felt the cane bed itself in the tender flesh and had seen the weal leap into existence she had felt a surge of wild fierce joy and a wish to strike and strike again marking the virgin canvas of Melissa's youth. Perhaps this was how Solange felt with her. She struck once more.
The result was the same. Melissa's control was incredible. Monica sensed a challenge. Perhaps she should give more thought to what she was doing.
She took a fresh stance, measured carefully by tapping the waiting bottom, and took a wider and swifter arc to bring the cane slashing down just below the curve. This was better. The watching eye was gone. One of Melissa's legs was raised and bent but was immediately returned to place. There was a faint breathlessness about the thank you.
But the naked girl took her five strokes with no more than that. A shifting of her legs and a tremor in her voice. When she was allowed to stand up she turned a radiant face to her cousin and grinned ruefully as she rubbed her bottom.
"Oh darling!! They were stingers. Real swishers!
I didn't know anything could hurt that much. You are wonderful."
"You are wonderful too." Monica kissed the warm lips-were they trembling slightly...."I don't think I could stand like that. Ready for the next five?"
"I say, darling. Do you think we could wait a little while so I can rub my bottom and sort of get used to the idea?"
"No."
"I knew you'd say that. You always say the right thing. Never let little Melissa take advantage of you. She will if you let her, y'know. You're sweet and I adore you even if you do hit awful hard. How do you want me this time?"
"Head on the ground. Bottom in the air."
They took their time with the pose. Only the suppleness of extreme youth made it possible. Melissa crouched so that her thighs and her stomach pressed together. She lay with one cheek turned on the carpet. Her breasts touched the carpet. Her back was amazingly bowed and curved. She wriggled and squeezed so as to place her bottom to its ultimate disadvantage. It was unbelievably thrust upwards. Never had a culprit offered such help to her executioner.
"I'm stretched tight as a drum." Melissa giggled. "That cane is going to hurt like billy-O. I'll try and be a good girl. But I'm all trembly."
It was an amazing target. Monica marvelled that she had not seen it before or that it had not been used on her. The exposure was almost frightening. How could Melissa be so cheerful! She would try to break the younger girl's resolve with the first two strokes: one high and one low.
Melissa took the high stroke with no more than a quiver in her voice. The low one sent her tumbling on the rug grimacing with pain and rubbing her wounds with both hands. Monica felt a brute.
"You're a hero." she said soothingly, and knelt by the writhing girl. Bending down she kissed the hot cheek. "Don't worry. I won't double it this time. I know how hard this must be for you."
A moment later two soft arms were around her and eager lips found hers. Melissa had kept the tears at bay. The grimace had gone. There was still a sparkle in the eyes.
"You are sweet! I knew you were! I'm so ashamed."
"Don't be, Sweetheart. I know how it hurts. I think you did well."
"Well, I don't. I was going to be so proud this first time. I'm angry."
"Only three to go. And you can rest."
"No!" Melissa was emphatic. "I'm angry with myself. Punish me. I want the whole extra five. I deserve them. And make me keep still. Make me!"
She looked up into Monica's concerned eyes. "Promise me something, Monica. Really promise. Don't ever let me get away with anything. No matter how I cry or howl or anything. If I know I can twist you I will. You called me a minx. I am. I can't help it. I'm being a really good girl with you now because I love you and because I'm so happy that I'm going to live with you. And I'm being terribly honest about all thistelling you....But I want this whipping. I know I ought to have it. Now I'm going to get back into position, and that makes eight more strokes I have to have like this."
Monica was apalled. In the brief time they had been together she had come to love this glowing child. She discovered now that she had not the least wish to break her spirit or her indubitable courage. She felt cruel for the severity of the strokes she had given. She could so easily have guided Melissa more gently into the. realm of pain: a realm it was evident she was determined to explore. She recoiled from the prospect of inflicting eight more such strokes to the round bottom once more being wriggled into defenselessness.
To have refused to go on would be to betray Melissa. It was needful to the child to receive this punishment and to accept it heroically. There was but one thing to do. She hoped that because the small bottom was already well whipped the lighter strokes she would now inflict might not be recognized as such.
Melissa flinched now when the strokes found their mark upon her. But she managed an articulate count each time. Her strained and arched figure swayed several times. But always she managed to hold the abject pose. Monica longed to take her in her arms and comfort her. Why, oh why had she said fifteen. Five or ten would have done as well this first time.
It was a subdued Melissa who rose to her feet this time. Without excuse or explanation she wrapped her arms about her cousin and quietly rested her head against her cheek. Monica could feel the thumping of her heart. For a little while her breathing was heavy. Neither felt a need to speak. After a goodly time the younger girl braced herself and dropped her arms. She smiled tenderly and raised her lips to be kissed as a small child might have done. Monica's heart overflowed as she watched Melissa walk to the big arm chair and drape over its back allowing herself almost to hang there so that the maximum curve and stretch might be imparted to that portion still to be punished.
As Monica whipped Melissa's bottom the hanging legs jerked and bent more than before. But the pose was never broken. When the fifth stroke fell she was thankful that the child had not detected her clemency. She was angry with herself at her own mixed feelings about the whipping. To have started it with a savage lust and to have finished it with a tender compassion. How strange we are, she reflected. How little we know ourselves.
The naked girl slipped off her perch. Automatically her hands flew to her bottom where she explored her welts with careful fingers. Monica was astounded to watch a smile of satisfaction slowly replace the tautness of pain. The elfin grin came back. Quite unselfconsciously Melissa thoughtfully transferred her fingers from her bottom to her breasts. With evident enjoyment she touched and stroked her nipples. They were hard and erect. "See." She said excitedly. "I told you so. They always do it."
Monica felt almost middle aged in the face of this youthful resilience. Even though she had been merciful Melissa had sustained a painful punishment. Her first whipping of such severity. Yet she appeared to have forgotten it already. But this was not the case. Having satisfied her curiosity about her bottom and her breasts she turned her full radiance on her cousin. There were more hugs and kisses and exclamations. Then she stood back and looked Monica squarely in the eyes.
"You cheated." It was a flat accusation. Monica said nothing.
"You felt sorry for poor little Melissa. So you whipped me lightly after I fell over. I know."
She came and kissed again. But then her voice was surprisingly firm. "You cheated. I suppose I cheated too, in a way. So there's only one thing to do, isn't there." Quickly she placed a finger on Monica's lips. "No. Don't say anything. You must do this-you must! You must double this last lot. Please! That's five more I must have. And, darling-" She looked deeply into Monica's eyes. "You must make them very hard. The hardest of all. Don't cheat again. You see, I'll know if you do...." Her smile was a mixture of the elfin and pathetic. "I suppose really it's me who is in the best possible position to judge. See-I'm already impudent. I'll go to the chair now. I may as well admit that I expect I'll kick and I'll howl. Don't pay any attention."
And that's the way it was.
* * *
The advent of Melissa was one more milestone. In less than a year Monica's life had been totally changed. She herself had been changed. Nor would there be any retracing of the steps she had followed. That could not be done even had she wished. She did not wish.
