Sixteen of the Best

by Sarah Veitch

  It will not surprise you to know the most-used position is to bend the girl over my desk, either with her arms stretched out sideways so she can grasp the desk sides, or reaching across the desktop so she can draw herself towards the opposite edge. I like the head turned away so she can neither see her punisher nor tell when the stripes are coming. Seeing the stripe as it is about to land cannot of course make it any less painful but it does allow the miscreant to prepare herself, perhaps stiffen her muscles and mentally grit her teeth. Kept completely ignorant of when the cane will fall creates a constant terror of being stroked even when the cane is at my side. It is a subtle thing but I do like to make punishment as terrible to contemplate and as hard to bear as I can.

  The height of the desk is preordained and designed to be sat behind, not bent over. But one has to decide whether the girl is allowed to stand with her feet flat on the floor or whether she should come away from the desk slightly and spread her legs wide so she goes up on her toes. On her toes the cut of the rod puts an extra strain on her legs, but it is of minor importance and if you cane hard enough it scarcely matters whether she's flat-footed or on her points.

  About the caning itself. You will have heard stories about Boys' Reformatories where usually there is a Sergeant at Arms to cane delinquents. The boy bends over a table and his tormentor is said to march to the end of the room, wind himself up like a tiger then rush forward and slice the boy's behind as though he is scything corn. I have to tell you that if any boy were caned that way, with such untrammelled ferocity they would be almost cut in half. More to the point the sabre-slash is not the most effective way to wield a stick.

  What I find best is to use a cane some three-and-a-half feet long and carefully assess your distance from the presented bottom. Practice helps you take up your position quickly with the bottom within easy caning reach. Pull back the rod some little distance and by all means raise your arm slightly, but the swing need not be a long one, the pain is generated by adding a decisive twisting flick of the wrist at the moment of impact. It is no more complicated than that.

  But you must flick hard, so you put real bite into the cut, flex the wrist muscles with all your strength, so it's not so much a cut from a great distance but a twisting stab with the length of the cane feeling like a thousand knife points. Four or five of those and the most hardened culprit knows she is defeated and you will very soon have her pleading for leniency. I take no notice of such begging.

  Rushing at the bottom and slashing wildly is an effective way to tell a juicy story but it by no means bears resemblance to real-life punishing. In life it would probably mean you miss the intended spot. You might also break the cane, do damage to the desktop and make a fool of yourself with your demonstrable lack of experience. Steady determination, the proper amount of concentration, a sense of occasion and the need to instil in the girl the seriousness of her offence are all more effective than an uncontrolled attack, however flamboyant a picture the latter may conjure up.

  In the dormitory there are two positions the girl may assume, either touching her toes or lying face down on the bed. Of the two I find toe touching less efficacious since there is an almost irresistible temptation to swing upright the moment the rod strikes. You can (and I do) emphasise that every time the girl stands she earns herself a further stripe, but I find 'touch-your-toes' to be my least favourite position.

  Flat on the bed is another matter. At first the girl is perhaps tempted to enjoy the tiniest release of tension for she is lying full length along the bed. I take several pillows and tuck them beneath her hips, so the buttocks are pushed well up and free from any encumbering blanket. The girl is then told to grasp the bed-head and hold on for dear life as I take my time measuring the distance, extending the waiting period, standing way out of sight of the recipient and generally contemplating what is always a pretty scene. The flogging when it comes can be hard and steady, there is no chance of the girl standing, slipping off the chair or desk, rubbing her buttocks or otherwise impeding punishment. You can go on slightly longer than you would if the girl were bent over and need not worry if the stripes are serious. The miscreant does not have to walk anywhere afterwards and can be left on the bed to cry herself to sleep and even stay resting until you decide she is ready to take up duties again.

  The final position, and the one which is secretly my favourite, is where the girl is either on the bed, or on a desktop, flat on her back with her legs raised not just up in the air but bent over on themselves until the ankles are by her ears. This is difficult to achieve with a female who is tubby or worse, but for the girl with a lithe figure who has stayed supple through work, it is very effective. Ask me to choose between desktop and mattress and I choose mattress for one simple reason. The girl's legs can be spread on a mattress so that her treasure is utterly disclosed. There is no way female charms can be hidden when the calves of her legs are alongside the cheeks of her face. Once those tender lips are vulnerable the girl's mind will do most of the work for you, for she will never be sure that you will resist the temptation to flog her in there.

  When I have a girl heels over head I punish with the tawse. You can lay the tawse firmly across the backs of the thighs with relative impunity and prolong whipping much more than is advisable with a cane. The tawse metes out no less agony provided it is used well and if, as you come to the end of your session you decide that you will, if only once, admonish those tender inner lips, the tawse accomplishes that coup de grace better than the cane. I need not tell you that the memory of whipped inner lips stays with a girl for the rest of her life; the tale of my cruelty will be the talk of the dormitory and go down in legend as the most demonic act ever perpetrated.

  Dormitory gossip is of course an essential part of my regime. The girls need no encouragement to talk about their chastisements and often those who have escaped the rod are anxious to see the effect it has had on those who have suffered. The girls may think I do not know of their unquenchable curiosity and believe if their inspections ever came to my attention I would forbid them. But I do know, and far from forbidding I relish its taking place, for it strikes awe and pity into everyone and encourages the company to reflect on how to avoid such suffering.

  There is also, I suspect, a slightly more invidious side to seeing the results on someone who has been flogged severely. The observer thanks her maker that her own bottom is not so marked but she also - and I touch on this matter lightly since we are all gentlemen here - enjoys a strange and secret frisson of excitement at the whipping and might even experience certain palpitations in her (how shall I put it?) private regions. One thing I can tell you, if I am looking for a bottom to cane late at night, I will certainly find one if I go to a dormitory where a girl has been punished during the day, for by showing off her wounds she has excited several of her companions into a state where they cannot but pleasure themselves. And when I catch a girl in the throes of such self-abuse I rip the bedclothes off her, throw off her chemise, and have her heels over her head for a dozen quick cuts that soon put a stop to any pleasurable feelings she might be enjoying.

  You will gather from what I have said neither cane or tawse lack employment in the Reformatory and it has to be so if the girls are to keep their home, clothes and bedding clean and attend to their chores. You may be surprised to learn half of them can scarce read or write and I must set that to rights before they are released. Any gentleman who would like to witness an everyday flogging please nod and I shall choose one of the girls and make an example of her here and now. They have been in bed a mere thirty minutes and it will not be the first time I've dragged a mischief-maker into wakefulness and put her to the test.

  If you wish to forgo that experience, I thank you most sincerely for your courteous attention and throw our meeting open for questions. After questions we shall go straight into our debate. Ah... I see the toddy is on its way. I shall be grateful to soothe my throat after my address and for the moment, while we sample the refreshment, shall return to
my seat. Thank you.

  Goddess

  Tulsa Brown

  'PLEASE write down which issues you would like Madame to address today, Lieutenant,' Yu Chen Li said, handing me the familiar blank recipe card.

  Her false fingernails were squared-off ovals, perfectly manicured to blunt ends that could never be confused with claws. They were painted gold, the only trace of glitz in the tiny Oriental woman's demure business attire. In the three years I'd been coming to Madame, I'd never heard Yu Chen raise her voice. We'd never talked about the traffic or the weather, not even in the midst of Montreal's worst blizzard.

  Four women dead

  Asphyxiated

  500 meter radius of Notre-Dame Basilica

  Angels?

  Pregnancy alert bracelet

  I crossed the last item off the list with three strokes. We hadn't concretely linked it to the case, nor posted it in the newspaper.

  'May I have another card, please?' I asked.

  Yu Chen smiled and dipped her head deferentially, the eternal geisha. 'You know the rules, Lieutenant.'

  I did, dammit. Madame read these little cards like Rorschach tests. My mistakes, the faintest tremble in the ink, were as important to her as the words I wrote. I sighed and handed the card back, my scribble glaring, neon nakedness: Lieutenant Detective Dan Volka is uncertain and tentative today. His nuts are in knots.

  'Please take room number two, and Madame would like you to shave.'

  I felt a clutch of alarm. 'I... can't. I'm playing racquetball this weekend. It's a tournament.'

  Yu Chen raised an eyebrow, a roaring rebuke on her porcelain-smooth face. 'Madame canceled another appointment to make time for you. I thought this session was important, Lieutenant.'

  It was - desperately. Something terrible was in process in the city, and my exhausted mind was a swamp, twisted, gnarled roots and bottomless mud. For more days than I cared to remember, I'd been running in relentless circles, chasing specters of leads, or gnawing the same clues until they were shapeless nubs. Then yesterday afternoon, another body had been discovered, and the swamp had become a maelstrom. At 8pm I'd phoned Yu Chen to beg for an appointment.

  'Madame is very gracious,' I said. I relinquished my credit card, feeling the usual small gust of relief that there was no one who would question the charge. I left the reception area and set out into the process.

  Inside room two, I waited as the heavy door eased shut behind me, the decisive, metallic clink of the bolt vibrating in my bones. It was locked now. The only way out was through the other door on the opposite wall, just as plain as the one I'd entered by, except for the four explicit words above the frame: You have chosen this.

  The only way out was through Madame.

  The room was Spartan: a tub and shower, toilet, sink and mirror, one padded bench. The unscented soap and shampoo were always the same. The only alterations came in the hygiene products Madame might select for the day. The enema equipment had terrified me at first, but I didn't see it often. Today's extras were the shaving cream and disposable razor.

  No racquetball tournament for Dan Volka. I couldn't imagine running around on the court with shaved skin, my winter-white legs stark and strange despite the muscles. The other players were from the force, too, men I'd known for ten and fifteen years. All in our forties, we were called the geezer league by the young bucks, but we were ferocious competitors and the best of friends.

  No one knew I came to a place like this.

  I turned on the water and set the temperature with precise movements, as regimented as the gestures of Tai Chi. I placed the towels in neat, folded squares on the floor, always the same way now. It had taken me a year to fully appreciate Madame's words: 'Ritual is not simply repetition. It is powerful preparation.'

  She was right, of course. I unzipped my pants and my cock was already swelling, lengthening, tingles licking the base of my balls. At the same time, my heart thudded with apprehension, but fear wouldn't stop this process now, or pain. I'd come to Madame for something more important than those two trifles.

  Focus.

  I used to play chess, played it with the total absorption of the addicted, rushing on the consuming high of concentration and mental battle. Until the age of thirty-nine, I ran, too, competing in local marathons, even though I didn't have a runner's body. I was fit but bulky, bones too dense, shoulders too broad, an animal designed to fight, not flee.

  That meant every day's training was penance, and the events themselves were grueling ordeals, stomach cramping, muscles howling. I ran anyway, hating the pain and reveling in my hatred, how it cleared the stubble and sharpened my mind to a laser point. When I finally thrashed my dead husk body across the fiery finish, my thoughts could have cut granite.

  'You masochist!' my friend Andre LeFavre laughed. 'Go to the gym. Or better yet, pay me. Hell, I'd pound on you for a couple of hours a day.'

  I didn't need chess or marathons anymore.

  After the shower, I allowed three inches to accumulate in the tub, then crouched on my knees. I was fully erect and trembling with trepidation, and excitement. A maddening little imp masquerading as logic jabbered on my shoulder.

  People are dying, and you're shaving yourself like a Hollywood whore? You're paying two days' salary to get your rocks off, Volka?

  Focus. I lathered the foam over my chest and began shaving in short downward strokes, carefully circumventing my nipples.

  The first time Madame had arranged for this had been my fourth visit. For three sessions she'd just explored me, my physical needs and limits, tentatively probed the psyche I clung to, and thought I hid. Then abruptly she'd turned the key in the lock.

  'Ross will shave you now,' Madame said.

  And he did, with a straight razor. I stood in a tub of ankle-deep water, clinging with both hands to a metal ring above my head, and watched my video image projected on the wall: a pale, strapping forty year old man under a spotlight, being lathered and scraped by a black body-builder in a thong. Ross was oiled and he gleamed; his single, dangerous blade flashed when it caught the light. I was very hard, dick and balls harnessed in a leather cock-ring, throbbing at the edge of pain. It was hypnotic, terrifying.

  'Spread,' Ross said.

  I widened my stance as far as the tub would allow, his touch rippling through me in gusts of alarm. I held my breath as his deft hands lathered me behind my balls, and up the crack of my ass. Even with his handling, the blade was cold, a long, dangerous weapon that rasped as it sheared the short, protective curls away. I clenched the ring above me, and narrowed all my powers of concentration into a single command: Don't move.

  Then Madame's voice floated out of the darkness, a diaphanous scarf trailing leisurely on a breeze.

  'We've never spoken about your work, Lieutenant.'

  I flinched and Ross swore; I never felt the cut. My heart pounded, knowing that my weaknesses were laid upon her plate now. She understood why I was here. And my title, the polished rail of rank that held others back, was a call to her. She curled the word with the lightest flip of her French tongue, nailed it for the grand joke it was.

  'Madame, we must stop,' Ross said. 'He's bleeding.'

  'What a pity to pause when we have finally begun,' Madame said thoughtfully, but the unbreakable rule about blood was her own.

  That was three years ago. I still had the scar, a faint line high on my inner thigh that only the most devoted lover would notice. It hadn't been a problem.

  I was truly naked by the time I dried off, every pass of the towel sending fresh sensation over my body, down my legs, around my genitals, whispering up between my buttocks. I felt light and anxious, a runner in the starting block, heart thrumming with desire and dread. I paused in front of the door, reading the words once more.

  Don't forget you've chosen this, Dan Volka.

  The room was about twenty-five feet square, although it was difficult to be certain. Only the pertinent parts were illuminated at any one moment, by spotlights or video
images projected on the wall. The darkened ceiling was a jungle of cords, metal lamps and cameras - the machinery behind the magic. I knew Madame used a handheld remote but it seemed incomprehensible that she could orchestrate a light and sound show, and perform on a man at the same time. I suspected that Ross had more duties than I knew about.

  He was waiting for me now, arms folded like a huge mahogany sentry as he stood beside the stark beam that illuminated the black sponge mat. Two manacles dangled from chains and I prayed Ross's only job was to help me into them; when he fucked me I was crippled for days.

  A single red circle was projected on the wall. It began as a fierce dot, no more than a cigarette tip, that expanded and diffused until it was a warm glow, the size of a dinner plate. Then it contracted into a dot again. It was a rhythmic throb of light, accompanied by a perfectly-timed pulsing hum. Open and close, open and close.

  I walked obediently to the mat, but when Ross lifted my arms, I felt the gut-wrench of instinct to pull away, run before it was too late. I took a deep breath and held myself still, and he closed the cuffs around one wrist, then the other. The restraint spread me into a Y, my pectoral muscles tingling, taut.

  Ross glanced up and down my shaved body, and smirked. For an awful second I thought he was going to reach between my legs and touch the scar, but he bent in a mocking little bow and backed into the darkness.