by April Hill
The turtle bath brush never saw service again, since Callie decided the very next morning to change the bathroom color scheme from green to blue. She tossed the goggle-eyed turtle in the trash, telling herself that the turtle’s presence wouldn’t be missed.
“What happened to my bath brush?” Matt asked the next morning.
“It was looking really grungy,” she replied lightly. “So I threw it away.”
Unfortunately for Callie, their weekly trash pickup wasn’t for two days. Within minutes, the turtle was back in the house and soaking in a sink full of bleach—to lessen his general grunginess and reduce the smell of rotting banana peels he’d acquired during his brief stay in the garbage can.
“The turtle is mine,” Matt said sternly, though a slight grin made his threatening tone less ominous. “It’s the first present you ever gave me. Keep your hands off the turtle, and nobody gets hurt.”
“But it’s so tacky,” Callie protested. “And anyway, what good is it? You never actually use the stupid thing.” She realized just a moment too late what she’d said.
Matt smiled. “Yeah, but I finally figured out what it is good for.”
* * *
While it hadn’t been a barrel of laughs, that first spanking hadn’t been extraordinarily painful, either, and for Callie, the apology that followed more than made up for the remaining sting in her lower portions. The making up was so pleasant, in fact, that both Callie and Matt forgot to be careful while doing it.
They decided that if the baby turned out to be a girl, they would name her April— a sort of small private joke, and an ongoing reminder to Callie that practical jokes can have unintended consequences.
They didn’t get an April. They got Danny instead. And as Danny grew older, and began to be…well, Danny, Matt said it was probably poetic justice.
Later, Matt would insist that his response to the letter prank had surprised him as much as it did her—a claim that Callie didn’t entirely believe, but couldn’t prove to be untrue, either. (One never knows for certain where one’s new spouse has been before you met him, does one? Let alone what he’s done with whom, or how many whoms there’ve been before you.) It seemed to Callie, though, that what did happen popped into Matt’s mind just a bit too quickly to make it believable that it was the first time he’d done it. There was also the question of what might be called his “technique” in the doing of it. It occurred to Callie, unfamiliar as she was with such practices, that somewhere, Matt had gotten a hell of a lot of practice. Either that, or it simply came naturally to him, which didn’t bode especially well for her future.
A second unintended consequence of that first April Fools’ Day was that afterward, Matt was always prepared for her April Fools’ pranks, which took most of the fun out of it for Callie. Eventually she stopped even trying, deciding a bit sadly that the whole April Fools’ business was pretty silly anyway—a vestige from elementary school, when she and her friends had always found it uproariously funny to try to top one another.
* * *
Nine years later, with two kids, three dogs, two real turtles, and a three-legged hamster, Callie had become the traditional, if not totally contented suburban soccer mom. They still lived in the same house, but Callie thought they’d outgrown it, and she’d already begun looking around for something bigger while Matt was at work. He had recently made detective, which meant that he wouldn’t be in a squad car at all hours, driving alone in some of the most dangerous areas of the city. This was a relief to Callie, and gave her one less thing to worry about. In general, though, she was happy, but restless. Before marrying Matt, she’d had her own business—a small but highly unsuccessful antique shop that finally closed for good after she borrowed most of her own merchandise to redecorate the apartment she was sharing with Matt.
Now, she spent her days cleaning and endlessly decorating the house, and driving kids here and there. Since Matt was still required to put in a lot of overtime, she began spending what free time she could at the garage sales and flea markets she had always enjoyed, accumulating merchandise for a vague sort of business venture she had in mind, but was too disorganized and frankly lazy to actually plan for. And since old habits die hard, it wasn’t long before she’d filled the house to brimming with all the treasures she’d found. Hence, the need for a bigger house—and the cause of most of the arguments she was having with Matt.
After that first, impromptu April Fools’ Day spanking, just after they were married, it hadn’t happened again, though even Callie would have admitted that she often had it coming, mostly because of her stubbornness and her quick temper. Recently, however, Matt had begun dropping some fairly broad hints, suggesting that spanking—under certain specific circumstances—might not be such a bizarre idea, minus the plastic turtle brush, of course. Even Matt had agreed that the turtle had been kind of over the top.
“It probably wouldn’t happen real often,” Matt insisted, trying to explain his reasons for believing that spanking his wife and the mother of his two growing children might be reasonable, and not as bizarre, weird, awesomely creepy, and grossly inhumane as the wife herself suggested when she first heard the idea.
“You know, just when you…” Matt had paused at this point, searching for the right words to describe what both he and Callie already knew to be a problem that was becoming steadily worse. “You know, when you lose it, the way you do, sometimes.”
Callie narrowed her eyes and glared at him. “You are speaking, I assume, of my temper,” she said icily.
Matt sighed, something Callie had noticed him doing a lot, in the past year. “That, and your…c’mon, Callie, you know damned well what I mean. Sometimes you do things that are…well, just out of line. And on top of that, there’s the damned fighting.”
“What fighting?” she inquired hotly. “We don’t argue any more than the other married couples we know.”
“We don’t argue at all,” Matt said wearily. “We fight—over nothing, and way too often. No, I take that back. We don’t fight. You fight. I stand there and listen, and when I can’t take it any longer, I retreat somewhere to get some air and lick my wounds. And then, after a while, you come around and say you’re sorry, and I do what’s expected of me. I tell you not to worry about it. We make up, and then it starts all over again. And nothing is ever settled—or ended.”
Callie winced at the description of what she’d always preferred to call their “protracted discussions.” What Matt had said was true, of course. She hated losing an argument, and when her case wasn’t strong enough to win, she kept wrangling over every little detail until Matt threw up his hands in frustration and walked away.
“So, what has spanking me got to do with any of that?” she demanded, although she already had an idea of what Matt’s answer would be. “And how is this brilliant idea of yours going to help anything, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Matt took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m figuring it’ll work something like this. When we’ve already talked something to death, and when you won’t stop haggling—say after two clear warnings to stop—you get your butt walloped. Hard, and for real. No kidding around, like the turtle thing. Then, after you’ve cooled down a little, we can go back and discuss whatever it was—intelligently, and with a few rules and limits. Same thing goes when you get….okay, let’s just call what happens episodes of poor judgment.”
“And who gets to make these rules, as if I don’t already know?” she demanded. “About our quarrels and my so called poor judgment?”
Matt sighed. “I guess that’ll have to be me.”
“Yeah, sure,” Callie said, cackling. “Like I’m going to agree to that. You make all the rules, make yourself the judge and the jury, and when I don’t agree with what you decide, I get spanked?”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Of course, I trust you,” Callie said, with a small, biter laugh. “I trust the head teller at the bank, too, and the guy who works on my car, but I’m not about to let
either one of them spank me like I’m some bratty little kid.”
“Bad analogy,” Matt said, grinning. “I’m your husband and soul mate, the love of your life, and your children are the fruit of my loins. All I’m asking you to do is to trust me to be fair, and to decide when you need…” He paused for a moment. “Okay, when you need a little help with some of those boundaries and limits we’ve talked about. Look, babe, I honestly don’t mind arguing. I don’t even mind fighting, if it’s something worth fighting about. But what we’re doing now is exhausting both of us.”
“So, if I agree to this stupid spanking idea of yours, will you promise to stop going off to another room to sulk, the way you usually do?” Callie inquired smugly.
Matt nodded. “I don’t think that’s exactly what I do, but if you want to put it that way, it’s okay with me. You can call it anything you want to—just so we stop these stupid, never-ending quarrels.”
And so, Callie agreed—in principle—to be spanked, at certain times and under certain conditions. Even though just thinking about it made her giggle.
Three weeks later, Callie had excellent cause to stop giggling about it.
They were in the living room, discussing the new, much more expensive house Callie wanted. It was another one of the discussions that never seemed to get settled. From Callie’s perspective, the reason it never got settled was because Matt had this ridiculous idea that they couldn’t afford a new, larger house, and that their present house would be big enough if Callie would sell, give away, or throw away a few of the antiques and collectibles that filled every room in the house to the corners. In this particular evening, the house discussion had been going on for three hours, and Callie—on the theory that talking louder got her point across better—was close to shouting. It was late. They were both tired and should have been in bed two hours ago, but Callie wasn’t showing any signs of quitting, or even slowing down.
“Okay, that’s it,” Matt said firmly, and in a tone that actually said finally. “The facts are that we’ve got four bedrooms, a living room, family room, three full bathrooms, and a den that cost as much to decorate as Buckingham Palace. We’ve also got a finished basement and a two-car garage full of your flea market finds, and an attic crammed with garage sale crap that’s probably going to crash down on our heads some night and make our kids orphans. Just tell me—reasonably, and without yelling or swearing—why two thousand nine hundred square feet isn’t big enough, with only two kids? Then, maybe next year, when I’m up for promotion, maybe we can…”
Callie had heard all this before, of course, but that didn’t stop her. Even Matt’s first warning didn’t stop her. Nor did she stop when the second, even firmer warning was delivered.
Later, Callie would argue that she thought there was supposed to be a third warning, and that what happened wasn’t what Matt had said it would be. But for once, her arguments got her nowhere. Before she was absolutely sure that he meant to really do what he’d threatened, Matt had dragged her across his knee, pulled her jeans and panties all the way down to her ankles, and started spanking—hard, fast, and pretty much everywhere within reach. Having never been genuinely, seriously spanked before, if she didn’t count the turtle business, Callie’s first thought was that what Matt was doing to her rear end wasn’t in any way what she’d agreed to. Her second thought was to attempt an escape, an idea that came and went quickly when Matt explained—between smacks—that the next time she tried squirming off his lap, he’d bend her over the back of the couch and use his belt. With that, he rearranged her across his lap with her head virtually touching the floor, and added a volley of rapid, scalding swats to the tender backs of her thighs. Callie’s mouth opened wide, at least partly in astonishment. If this was what Matt meant by a real spanking, she was in very, very big trouble.
Callie wasn’t sure how long that first real spanking lasted. She was too busy trying to muffle her howls with a sofa pillow to keep her eye on the lovely old Equalizer school clock she’d picked up at a garage sale for only sixty bucks. What she did know was that Matt seemed to have his role in this spanking business down very pat. It was almost as if he’d been practicing, and maybe even planning the whole thing. Which then made her wonder, as she had during the turtle event, if the desire to spank a woman, and the knowledge how to, was an inborn trait in some men—her man, specifically. Callie had led a fairly protected, basically pain-free life, and she’d never even broken a bone. Short of childbirth, she couldn’t remember anything that hurt as much as this spanking had.
After it was over, Callie was out of breath, probably because she hadn’t stopped kicking and wailing the entire time she was having her ass set on fire by the man she’d made the mistake of marrying. Matt helped her to her feet, but she still winced when she took the first step. Her entire behind was, indeed, and without a trace of overstatement, on fire. Both cheeks were throbbing, and actually felt hot to the touch. She knew this because she touched the area just once, before thinking better of it. Her underwear was still pooled around her ankles, but the idea of pulling it back up was almost as unappealing as the way she probably looked.
Determined not to cry, Callie stood there for several long, embarrassing moments, expecting, or at least hoping for, an apology. She was convinced that Matt would be horrified by what he’d done—now that he’d really done it. Especially after he saw the indisputable evidence of what he’d done—her red, glowing butt.
No apology was forthcoming, even when Callie accused him of “needing to resort to something like this to win an argument.”
“It wasn’t meant to win the argument,” Matt said quietly. “It was meant to stop the argument. And it worked.”
Callie heaved a resigned sigh. Matt had always been a very pragmatic kind of guy. When something worked, he believed in trying it again. And from that evening forward, she knew that he would do just that.
* * *
Years had passed since Callie had last attempted an April Fools’ gag, and she rarely even paid attention to the first of April, except when their kids reveled in some trick one of them had played on a classmate—or on their unsuspecting and purposely gullible parents. So, when Matt tapped her on the shoulder early one April Fools’ morning, she fell for it without hesitation.
“Guess what, babe,” he said, nuzzling her ear. “We can all sleep in, this morning. It just came on the news. There was a late spring blizzard last night. They’ve called a county-wide snow day—for me and the kids.”
Callie moaned with pleasure, made a kissing motion in his general direction, and pulled the covers back over her head. “That’s wonderful, darling. Now, go away and let me sleep. Today’s your chance to spend some of that quality time with the kids you’re always talking about.”
Five minutes later, when she was comfortably snuggled in, warm and sleeping peacefully, the bedside alarm began its incessant screeching, directly in her ear. Matt leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Rise and shine, sweetheart. The TV weather guy says it’s going to be in the fifties, the kids are downstairs howling for breakfast, and Jenny says to tell you she can’t find her school shoes, and that she wet the bed again last night.”
When Callie sat up in bed groggily, with her hair in her face, he was grinning. “Oh, and by the way, it’s April Fools’ Day.”
“You rat!” she wailed, hurling her still warm pillow at him. “I’ll get you for this! I swear it!”
“You’ll have to wait ‘til next year,” he said cheerfully. “And remember, forewarned is forearmed. I’ll be on the lookout for acts of revenge.”
But Callie wasn’t the sort to give up that easily.
She called Matt at noon, and when he picked up the phone, he was already chuckling.
“Okay, let me take a wild guess. The house is on fire? You totaled the car? Won the lottery? What?”
“Very funny,” she said smugly. “I was simply calling to ask you to stop on the way home and pick up a loaf of bread and a half-gallon of milk.”
>
“That’s it?” he asked warily. “You’re sure one of the kids hasn’t been expelled, or picked up and sent to juvenile hall for misdemeanor hair pulling or cheating on a spelling quiz maybe? Is one of the dogs pregnant again, or…?”
“Grow up, Mathew, dear. I have better things to do this afternoon than play childish payback games with you.”
Dinner that evening was a bit odd.
“Which one of you guys wants to taste this for dear old dad?” Matt asked, offering each of the kids the steaming bowl of chili Callie had set in front of him. When they exchanged bewildered looks, Matt grinned across the table at Callie. “I sort of figured that a good mother wouldn’t stand by and let one of her hatchlings swallow a half-cup of pepper, or…” He sniffed at the bowl. “Or maybe a few extra tablespoons of Tabasco sauce?”
Callie took the bowl and made a show of eating several spoonsful of the suspect chili before setting it down in front of him again. She dabbed her mouth with a napkin, and turned to the children.
“You’ll have to excuse your father,” she told them sweetly. “He’s losing his mind. It sometimes happens that way, they tell me—suddenly, and without warning.”
The kids giggled all through dinner, and Danny managed to fall off his chair twice, grabbing at his throat and making revolting gagging sounds.
“You can’t be too careful, Dad,” he said solemnly as he sat back down. “I heard that’s how they got to Napoleon. They put it in his chili.”
“Yeah, and since when are you passing history, moron?” his little sister inquired. (Although Jenny had only begun kindergarten in September, she was already showing alarming signs of following in her older brother’s footsteps.)
Danny retaliated for his little sister’s remark by throwing a handful of buttered crackers at her, and from there, the evening went downhill quickly.