Dragos Falls

by Carl Hamlin

  When she finally went limp, Mike laid down next to her so that he could face her. She remained in place, a wide smile below her teary green eyes as they pressed their faces together to kiss. Mike continued to pet her back and bottom as she recovered.

  They kissed and murmured expressions of love for a few minutes, and then Aubrey slightly raised her head, gave a low whistle and whispered, “You’ve done it.”

  “Done what?”

  Aubrey sighed. “Well, I already liked being spanked, but I only kind of sort of liked getting paddled. But now, you’ve learned to give me a spanking with the paddle, so it’s really not actually a paddling, but just kind of an extra good spanking. Is that making sense?”

  “It doesn’t have to.”

  Aubrey again began to laugh. “Never mind then. However, I think I am getting spoiled already being with you.”

  Mike laughed as his stroking of her bare flesh continued. “You’re not a spoiled brat are you?”

  Aubrey giggled. “Let’s see… if I were to become a spoiled brat, I may have to have my bottom warmed… again.”

  Mike shook his head. “So what’s the verdict?”

  Aubrey exhaled a theatrical sigh and began to shake her head. “I guess we had better not take any chances.”

  Mike pursed his lips and brought a faux scowl to his face. “Better safe than sorry?”

  Aubrey bit her lip in mock angst. “I think so. It would be best for everyone.” Then she began to giggle, as Mike got up to kneel next to her once more.

  The surface of the paddle felt cool against the hot flesh of her lower bottom. As Mike began to shuffle it back and forth across the most thoroughly paddled portion of her bottom, she felt an irritating stinging, but it was a soreness that also seemed to rekindle her arousal.

  She was so transfixed by the afterglow of her climax, she did not realize the paddle had moved away until, “crack… crack… crack… crack… crack… crack”. The swats were harder this time, and she found herself surprised and excited at how quickly she was again becoming aroused.

  She again felt the pleasuring of Mike’s fingertips, but only for a few seconds before: “crack… crack… crack… crack… crack… crack… crack”. The harder swats were making her cry out in both discomfort and pleasurable anticipation, and she did not understand the movements she felt as Mike knelt behind her. And just when she thought that the past two evenings had allowed her to experience as high of a level of pleasure as she could ever expect, she watched in a new rush of excitement and anticipation as Mike leaned forward and reached under her pillow once again, but this time retrieved the vibrator.

  Aubrey woke at around 4:00 AM, and went into the bathroom. When she walked out, she pulled the curtain back to see that it was once again raining, and even though she had never been a gardener before, she knew that the soft rain she was seeing in the darkness would be good the day after the weeds had been taking care of. She knew that she would be able to spend the day sewing and mending, and she would not mind that one little bit.

  She reached back and began to rub the sore bottom, nearly laughing out loud at her mental observation that having her bottom red and tender to the touch had turned into a nearly constant condition over the past few days. Then she thought to herself, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  She closed her eyes in contentment. Even though she was only twenty, she had experienced more sexual activity in the course of twenty-four hours than in the rest of her life in total. She was stunned and delighted as she tried to wrap her mind around the fact that she had just experienced an evening of incredible passion and experimentation with… her husband.

  Just thinking to herself, the word “husband” brought her a chill of excitement, a prayer of thanksgiving, and a nagging doubt as to whether she deserved him. He had been a school principal, a man of responsibility and respect, and a pillar of his community. She was a community college dropout who had worked at menial jobs. She had a compulsive disorder that made her want to steal for some inexplicable reason, and ironically, she had been one of the kids sometimes sent to the principal to be paddled. Now she had her own principal and her own paddle, and still had the compulsions. She just hoped that he would continue to enjoy her treatments. For if the paddle was now her only available treatment, she had certainly found a skilled and enthusiastic therapist.

  She walked into the bedroom and found herself smiling at the slumbering figure in the bed. She walked back into the bathroom, and opened the medicine cabinet where they had stored the condoms. Seeing the substantial stack of foil packages, Aubrey felt a great sense of gratitude toward Watson for his foresight and favor.

  She would not at all mind having a child with the fine man she had found, but she felt she was not mature enough to be a mother, and the entire matter of medical care loomed large. Through the course of time, she expected that someone in the village would assume the role of a midwife out of necessity, if for no other reason. There were other young adults in the village, but she assumed they were all feeling the same sense of caution when it came to procreating under the circumstances. She reached for one of the foil packs, planted a kiss on it, then walked back into the bedroom and placed the tiny package on her nightstand. As she lay back down in the dark, she nearly laughed out loud at the thought that she should have checked to see if any of the condoms were labeled as having a flavor.

  Aubrey woke again around 6:00 AM, stirred awake by the movements of Mike getting out of bed to look outside. She decided to turn over and doze for a few more minutes, but was brought back to consciousness when Mike returned to bed and woke her with a smack to the bottom. She sat up groggily, then was handed a sheet of paper from the smiling husband. The message was written in pencil and had been slipped beneath their door. “A few mornings of sleeping in may not be a bad idea. Congratulations to the newlyweds! Albert.”

  Aubrey began to smile and laugh as she set the letter aside on the nightstand. The next thing that she did was to pick up the condom pack and dangle it teasingly in front of Mike. They began to laugh as they opened the package, Aubrey constantly teasing her suddenly but significantly aroused husband to hurry up.

  Suddenly the laughter and frantic activity ceased, as they went quiet and began to kiss and caress until Aubrey welcomed Mike on top of her. They then began a slow, lengthy session of lovemaking that finally brought them both to the warm and tender moment they sought, as a soft rain fell on the roof and sides of the house, the little house far enough away from the neighbors, that no one could hear them cry out together.

  Mike and Aubrey had a special and precious first week together as husband and wife. They decided to take Watson at his word, as they found that morning sessions of lovemaking were highly pleasurable.

  Aubrey’s talks with the other women in the village seemed to have brought her much more acceptance. During each of those conversations, she told them that she could not honestly say she would not succumb to her compulsions, but assured them of the consequences her husband had pledged to her that she would face.

  People in the village came to like Aubrey over the next week. She cheerfully accepted their requests to perform mending and to even make new items of clothing for them. She also worked alongside everyone in the village during the hours of tending gardens, and she came to feel as much at home in Dragos Falls has she had back in her small town in Oklahoma.

  During the same time, Mike and a handful of others had achieved some limited success in their communications attempts. One of the radios was able to pick up BBC broadcasts, so they were able to listen to reports of British military over-flights of North America and the colonies of survivors that had been spotted by use of surveillance cameras mounted on the aircraft.

  The reports indicated that foreign rescue efforts were still being hampered by concerns that the epidemic could yet provide a threat to outsiders attempting to help. A couple of the villagers were fluent in Spanish, and when a broadcast out of Mexico was interpreted, it was understood t
hat Mexico had been sealed off south of the border with America to prevent the spread of the epidemic and to prevent the migration of anyone, who could possibly be a carrier, to the nation that had, somehow, avoided contamination.

  However, broadcasts intercepted by shortwave reception from Europe, indicated that most of the surviving colonies were in the southern and western states. It was impossible to know how many Americans and Canadians were still alive. It was known that there were no known attempts at communications coming out of any large cities. As the residents of Dragos Falls listened to the cumulative results of their sparse communications, the reality sank in that they were probably going to remain there for the rest of their lives.

  Attempts at using cell phones were still spotty at best. Some residents, such as Mike, were able to charge their phones and reach friends and relatives in Europe and South America. However, while doing so did provide a sense of relief for many, it really garnered them no additional information, and in the course of two days, there were three despair – driven suicides.

  Chapter 9

  Many of the residents of Dragos Falls were rattled by the sudden spurt of villagers taking their own lives. As more realities set in, Watson and Marlene began watching more closely for alcohol abuse, and any incidents of domestic violence.

  The young female attorney, who had been paddled by Mike for her participation in the night of drunken target shooting and brawling in the mud that kept some residents awake, had subsequently entered into a feud with the people in the house next door. They had a baby that had been born just before their trek from Iowa, and the child was having problems with teething.

  Sally McCormick may have been a proficient civil attorney, but she knew nothing about the travails of child – rearing. The middle-aged couple with whom she was residing had tried several times to explain to her that a teething baby simply cries a lot, and it does not necessarily adjust its sleeping schedule because somebody is in a bedroom eight feet away when the weather is too warm to close the windows at night.

  Sally was becoming problematic in many ways, for many would have judged her the most attractive woman in Dragos Falls, and at the same time, one of the more difficult individuals to get along with. While Marlene had done all that she could to keep confidences when Sally and her erstwhile friend were brought in for some rough justice at the hands of one Mike Powell, many of the residents reveled in the stories of how the curvaceous attorney with long black hair had received a bare bottomed paddling while her mouth was gagged and her hands tied behind her because she couldn’t endure the punishment under any other circumstances.

  Now the woman, who from time to time, had been threatened with contempt of court for mouthing off to judges, was at war with a frazzled set of young parents attempting to cope with a common childhood malady. Sally’s housemates tried to convince her that the last thing the young family needed was frequent harangues and complaints from her.

  It finally happened that after a day of gardening, a chore she felt was below her intended and usual station in life, Sally allowed herself to have a little too much scotch too late in the evening. It then happened that, after an hour of tossing and turning and listening to the baby crying a few feet away, Sally hopped out of bed at midnight, charged over to the neighboring house and began to pound on the door.

  When the tired and frustrated young mother answered the door, Sally began to rant. Not needing such late night, scotch – fueled feedback, the young mother attempted to close the door and shut Sally out.

  That was when Sally tried to punch her, but instead only managed to ram her fist through a door glass. Doors started coming open as startled neighbors, some of them armed, came out into the night. One of them was Constable Jim Hastings, who escorted the attorney in her nightshirt over to the school building, so that they could wake up Marlene to tend to the bleeding hand.

  By candlelight, Marlene cleaned up the wound and applied bandages. Then before Sally left, she informed her that she had another appointment with Mike Powell and his paddle at noon the next day in the principal’s office. The woman stood in silence for a moment with her jaw hanging open, then remembering the alternative, nodded her head in resignation and headed back to try to sleep some more. Even she knew she was too spoiled and pampered to be able to survive on her own. She would have to remain in the village, bend over the desk, clench her teeth and allow her backside to be roasted.

  That morning, Mike was out of the house by 6:00 AM, walking around the village to check on the conditions of the various gardens. Aubrey was out of bed as well, and although she had a stack of mending at the kitchen table waiting for her, she found herself pacing the floor and rubbing her forehead as she had often done in times of stress.

  As Mike had left the house that morning after kissing her goodbye and giving her a tight hug, she was tempted to stop him and tell him that she needed to deal with a relapse of her compulsion. And in spite of his assurances that he would still love her and provide the harsh correction she knew she needed, when it was time for her to take him up on his word, she had felt too ashamed and embarrassed. She was as upset with herself because of that, as with the actual relapse itself.

  She got up from the table, went into the bedroom, then walked around to her bedside stand and opened the top drawer. There was the bracelet she had picked up at a neighbor’s home when she had gone to get some clothes to be mended. It had been sitting there right by the stack of blue jeans needing repaired, and she would never be able to explain to herself or anyone else why she had taken it. Logic told her that she could never wear it, and if she needed any further convincing that she was not stealing things that she needed or would even use, that would have been it.

  When Marlene knocked on the front door, Aubrey nearly jumped a foot off the bed and slammed the drawer shut. The knocking on the door continued as she nearly began to hyperventilate and had to force herself to take one step after another to get to the door where her friend stood waiting for her. She opened the door and Marlene smiled at her. “Is Mike around? I suppose he’s checking gardens right now.”

  Aubrey had a difficult time even speaking. “Yeah… I think… you’re probably right. I do think he was going out to check the gardens.” Marlene looked at Aubrey with a puzzled expression.

  “Okay…I just want him to get in touch with me. Unfortunately, I’m going to need for him to put on his disciplinarian hat today. I would like to have him at the school at noon to do his…special work.”

  Aubrey attempted to act nonchalant, and even faked a laugh. “He is good at that…I can attest to his skill with the paddle. So…I will tell him as soon as I see him.”

  Marlene nodded, then almost asked Aubrey if something was wrong, then decided otherwise. “Okay. Remember…I need him at the school at noon.”

  Aubrey nodded. “I’ll tell him.”

  As soon as Marlene left, Aubrey shut the door and leaned her back against it. She kept her eyes closed for a moment, then sat down at the table and tried to force herself to get to work on the jeans needing patches.

  She could hardly work without beginning to cry. She was afraid that, once Mike learned of her relapse he would change his mind about staying with her.

  She forced herself to keep working on the clothing, but kept making mistakes, and had to redo two of the patches. Then she heard footsteps, and saw Mike opening the door.

  As soon as he walked in, she could tell that he seemed agitated and she wondered if he somehow knew about her theft. However, he sat down the table and laughed.

  “More problems last night.” Aubrey was still uncertain regarding what he was talking about, so she simply sat and listened. “Everybody’s talking about our lady lawyer Sally. I’m sure you remember when she came to the principal’s office.”

  Aubrey began to tremble. “I can never forget that. What happened now?”

  “Awww…she got mad about a crying baby last night. Tried to punch the mother and ended up putting her fist through a window.”r />
  Aubrey had trouble breathing. “I suppose that’s why Marlene wants you at the school at noon. She told me she wants you to paddle somebody.” Aubrey tried to bring some humor into her tense situation. “Well, she is quite a hottie. I suppose you won’t mind paddling that bare bottom again.”

  Mike stood up and walked around to Aubrey and placed his hands on her shoulders and began to rub them sensuously. “The only bare bottom I ever really want to see again is yours.”

  He walked toward the door. “I suppose I had better let Marlene know that I got her message. I’ll be back in a little while.”

  As he began to step out the door, Aubrey suddenly spoke up. “Mike…”

  “What is it?”

  Aubrey took a deep breath and forced a smile. “Oh, nothing. I’ll see you later…I love you very much.”

  Mike walked back over, and then leaned down and kissed her on her forehead. “And I love you very much, too.” He walked back to the door, opened it and left.

  The guilt Aubrey was feeling was nearly overpowering. The confusing sentiments about corporal punishment began swirling around in her mind. She surprised herself when she started to wish that she could figure out some way to have her punishment be so harsh she would never again be tempted to get out of line, or at least to open up to Mike and have him help her through it as she had agreed to do. One thought came to her mind, but she wondered if Mike and Marlene would think that it was simply too outlandish. She did not feel that it would be, but the final decision would not be hers. Still, she felt it would only be just and fitting.

  When it was just before noon, Aubrey decided it was time to stop pacing the floor and go to the school building to get everything off of her chest. She took a deep breath and walked out the door and headed toward the school, and as she approached the building, she could see that a large number of people were gathered outside. She knew that a situation like that would not be pleasing to her husband. Then she realized that the constable was standing at the front of the school opening the door, with the problematic attorney next to him.