by Rachel Burns
Chapter 5
Britney
Each step hurt my swollen feet. The shoes I was wearing were brand new, and they dug into the back of my heels. I walked slower than before and again he followed me.
“It’s part of the punishment, Britney. I told you not to run away, and I told you not to go on after I caught up with you. I meant what I said about complaining. If you do, I’ll spank you here on the spot, and you’ll still get what you got coming for running away at home.”
I nodded that I understood.
I said nothing, but sometimes I couldn’t stifle a sniffle. I wished he hadn’t been here to see my defeat. I felt like a fool, in spite of the fact that I believed that it was my job, even my duty, to get away from him. It didn’t matter that he had been nice to me.
It didn’t matter that he took care of me and was considerate of my feelings. He’d spanked me so hard the first day I came here. I’d been drugged and groggy and still he did it to show his power over me. He had a bad side. That bad side was making me walk on blistered feet even though a horse was here.
I guessed it was at least noontime. I looked at the sandwich in my hand. I figured that he may have drugged it before, but now it was clear that it wouldn’t have been necessary. He’d had no need to drug me to get me back to his house quickly other than his stupid dollhouses.
If he’d really been stalking me all of these years, why hadn’t he given me a dollhouse when it would have been appropriate for my age?
He probably worked at the toy store and saw me on an old tape. But how could he have known that it was me? New York and Florida were far apart.
I felt confused. Asking him questions didn’t always bring answers. There was no way that he was even five years older than me. He must be a college graduate who studied to be a teacher.
I took a bite of my sandwich. It was my favorite. Why had he made me my favorite sandwich when he was mad at me for running away?
A loving parent would do that. At least, they did on the TV shows that I liked to watch when I was a kid. The moms constantly made their children their favorite dishes and smiled as they laid plates in front of their child.
My mind continued to wonder as we walked. I thought about the amount of land that he owned and the little house that he lived in. He could live in a palace if he sold off some land. If he were rich, plenty of women would want to marry him, and they’d wear whatever he picked out for them to wear without complaining.
That boiled down to the question: Why me?
Why had he gone all the way to Florida to get me?
There wasn’t anything special about me. This didn’t make sense. Was this some sort of illusion that I was having. Maybe I was reacting badly to the pistachios that my mom put on my birthday cake. They had mushrooms like that. It could be an allergic reaction. I’d eaten them to be polite. I shouldn’t have pointed out that I hated them, and that it was my birthday.
My mother once told me that I had been a surprise. They’d only planned to have one child.
I scolded myself to stop feeling such self-pity. It wasn’t helping, but somehow it was. When I thought about the past, I could take the next step forward.
Would it be easier to walk if I took off my shoes?
I looked over my shoulder. The man I knew as Daddy met my eyes. “Go on, darling. We’ll be home in two hours. We’re making good time.”
Two hours sounded terrible. He might as well have said forever.
“Are your feet hurting you?” he asked me.
I stopped walking and turned back to him. “Yes,” I admitted.
“Do you want to complain about it?” he asked, with a twinkle in his eye.
“No,” I turned back to the road and continued on.
About five minutes later, I couldn’t take it anymore. I stopped and took off my shoes. It was easier to walk without them pinching into my skin. The cold ground was soothing.
“You’ll get sick if you do that, but it’s your choice.”
“I choose to go without.” I picked up the pace, regretting that I’d gone to see the ridge.
“Suit yourself.” To him, this was all a game.
To me, this was one of the biggest disappointments in my life. I’d seen myself as a hero. People would have taken an interest in me and thought that I was brave for getting away. I would have been proud of myself for taking my destiny into my own hands and doing what had to be done. It would have made me a stronger person.
Instead, he would punish me and show me exactly how weak I really was. This was going to backfire in the worst way.
The ground was so cold. My feet felt like they were burning by the time his house came into view.
I walked to the door, eager to go inside and warm up, but he grabbed hold of my forearm and pulled me around the side of the house.
“Naughty little girls get spanked in the woodshed,” he told me as he walked.
I was distracted for a moment when the horse went into the barn and closed the door behind himself.
Daddy saw that I’d seen the horse do that, and that I was puzzled by it. “I trained him to do that. It took years for him to learn.”
“How old is the horse?” I asked, thinking everything around here took years and years to learn, but no one was that old.
“That can’t be your biggest problem just now, can it?” he asked me.
Again, he avoided answering me.
He opened the door to the woodshed and guided me into it. Wood was everywhere. Split logs were piled up and nicely stacked all the way to the ceiling and there was a pile in the middle of the floor. I guessed they were scraps from the dollhouses he made. Nothing was being wasted.
There was a workbench with an ax on it. Daddy picked it up.
A chill went down my spine. I pictured him chopping off my hands so I couldn’t open doors. Then I imagined that he’d chop off my feet so I couldn’t run away again.
“Please don’t,” I begged as loudly as I could get my voice to go, but it only managed a soft whisper.
“You have to be punished. You endangered yourself. The woods are a very dangerous place to be.” He looked at me like he was explaining something very simple to me. Something that was so obvious that it didn’t need explaining.
“Raise up your skirts and bend over the top of the bench. Go on now,” he told me.
I didn’t move. In fact, I wasn’t even breathing.
“Britney, you have to learn that there are consequences for your actions. What if I hadn’t gotten to you on time?”
“You couldn’t have been too worried if you took the time to make sandwiches and pack a bag.” I gasped, because I’d said that aloud. I had only meant to think it and not say it.
His eyes told me that it would have been better if I had kept my big mouth shut. “I assumed that you would be dehydrated and hungry. I saw the food and water as first aid.”
I dropped my eyes, thinking how stupid I was to provoke him when he was already so mad at me.
“Lean over the bench,” he demanded.
I shook my head at him.
“We won’t begin until you do,” he informed me.
I looked up at him. “Why?”
He gave me a confused look. “Why what, darling?” he asked, sweetly.
I didn’t understand why he didn’t simply push me over it and beat on me until he felt that I would never try to runaway again. “Why do I have to move?”
“Move?” he repeated. The corners of his mouth lifted up slightly. To him, this was all a joke.
“You mean why do you have to lean over the workbench to receive your punishment?”
I nodded without looking at him.
“Because it shows me that you are accepting your punishment. It shows me that you know you deserve it, and I know that the punishment will bear fruit, and you will learn the lesson I intend for you to learn.” His words were spoken so kindly, but I didn’t allow myself to fall under his spell.
“What if I don’t feel that
I deserve to be punished?” I asked him, carefully.
“Then we’ll wait.”
“Wait for what?” I asked. I was so used to asking him questions that it came naturally. He always answered then, unless they were about his age or the horse’s.
“For you to realize that you do deserve to be punished,” he replied.
He could wait a long time for that, I thought.
We stood still a long time. Neither of us said anything. I figured he’d try to point out the error of my ways, but he didn’t.
The silence in the shed took on a heavy weight. It felt like it was pushing into my body, pressing down on my chest. I knew what he wanted, and I knew what I wanted. I wanted to get cleaned up and go to bed.
Would he make me play school all afternoon, or would he put me to bed afterwards so he could work on dollhouses for other little girls?
“How much do your dollhouses cost?” I asked him, once again, unable to hold my thoughts inside.
“Two thousand and five hundred dollars,” he answered, promptly.
“No wonder my mom wouldn’t get me one.”
He grinned and looked away from me.
“How fast can you make one?” I asked him.
“Two or three a month. More before you came here.”
“Would it be better if I left?” I asked, helping he would see me as the annoyance I was.
“It would be better if you accepted your punishment and laid down over the bench,” he sighed.
“What happens when I do?”
“I’ll whip you?” he answered, matter-of-factly.
“Whip?” I took a step back from him. I felt a huge sliver of wood poke into my tender foot. I lifted my foot so I was only standing on my tiptoe.
“Yes, whip.” He opened a drawer on the side of the bench and took out what appeared to be a thick belt.
I looked into his eyes to see if this was a joke. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“No, never. The day you die will be the saddest day of my life. I like you the best. Maybe I shouldn’t admit that, but I do. You’re different from the others. You fit perfectly into my life. I love you.”
“I still don’t understand why. And if you love me, why would you want to hurt me?” Tears were running down my face as I stared him down.
“Giving a punishment is showing my love. You matter to me. So much that I wouldn’t let you become someone you aren’t. If you get sassy, I’ll spank you. But if you do something like you did today, something that put you in danger of never being in my arms again, I’ll whip you out here.”
I lifted my hands to my face and cried into them. I wanted this to be over so badly, and I needed to get the sliver out of my foot.
“What happens afterwards?”
“That, darling, is a very good question,” he praised me. “When I feel that you’ve learned your lesson, I’ll forgive you, and we’ll never have to talk about this again. It will be over, and I’ll never remind you that this punishment needed to take place.”
“Do I get to go to bed afterwards?” I asked him.
He grinned again before he nodded at me. “That was some hike we went on today. At least, you got some fresh air. If you could also learn to never try to run away again, then it was a very productive day.”
I leaned over the bench careful not to put any weight on my foot. I didn’t want the sliver to go in any deeper. I wanted to go to sleep. Sleep would give me relief from my pain.
“I told you to lift your skirts first. You won’t feel this like you should through your velvet dress and the your underskirts.”
I bent down and gathered the hems in my hands and lifted them high, but not high enough that my bottom was free. I leaned over the bench again, lying on wood that was as fine as sand on the beach.
Daddy took hold of my skirts and pushed them higher so my bottom was uncovered. He yanked down my panties. I could feel them around my knees as they rested on the calf of my bent leg that was protecting my foot.
I felt so naked. How much of me could he see?
I pressed my legs together and prepared for the whipping. The word ‘whipping’ was scaring me. Would I be marked with lashes for the rest of my life?
The boys at school would often tell me that I had a nice ass. The boys that considered themselves to be invincible and the gods of the hallways would say things like that as I bent down to get things out of my locker. It was so embarrassing, but they said it often. Other boys would stare at my breasts. I tried not to wear tight clothing, but they gave me the feeling that I was a piece of meat to them.
To make some meat tender for cooking, you pounded on it.
Was I only a piece of meat for Daddy too?
The heavy belt landed, knocking the breath out of me. I had never felt such pain before. I forgot about everything else.
I reached back to see if he had broken the skin. I felt the hard lines from the edge of the belt and where it had landed, my flesh was warm, but my skin wasn’t broken.
“I’m not finished, Britney,” he told me coldly. “Remove your hands and keep them out of the way.”
My floodgates bust open at the thought of getting more strokes over the one I already had.
“Be brave, honey. You can do it.” he assured me, making it sound like he was on my side, cheering for me. If he really wanted to help me, he could stop and leave me alone.
I removed my hands wanting to get this over with.
The belt landed immediately, making me cry out so loudly that the horse must have heard me. The sting was unimaginable. “I’ll never run away again. I promise. You have my word.”
“I’m glad to hear that, but to be on the safe side, I’ll give you a few more to make certain that you never forget this lesson.”
“No, Daddy, please no,” I begged.
I received my answer in the form of another stroke. I grabbed onto the edge of his bench and twisted around, trying to find a position that would help me with my pain. The pain began to fade quickly from an excruciating sting into a steady burning throb. I cried, unsure how many more I could take.
“Lie down, Britney. What you did was too bad to be satisfied with three strokes.”
I sniffled unable to get my crying under control. I flinched and reached back, expecting the next stroke. I wanted to protect myself.
The belt landed against the top of my thigh.
I howled out in pain.
“Keep your hands away, Britney. I’m warning you.”
My breath was jerking in and out. I was feeling dizzy as I slid my hands under my tummy, hoping my weight would keep them in place.
“Good girl.” He gave me the next stroke, and I screamed out. It hurt too much for me to try to pretend otherwise.
The next one landed, hitting only my left cheek, but it had such a snap to it that I had screamed, straighten up, and reached back again.
Promptly, a stroke landed across my thighs. Exactly where it had last time.
I dropped down to the floor and sobbed into my hands. I couldn’t take anymore. My legs were shaking, and I had a feeling that I might fall to my side. I wouldn’t be able to get up if that happened.
I felt like I was burning with fever. My backside was ablaze, and the pain didn’t go away between blows anymore.
“Britney, you’re almost through.” Daddy was lifting me up and laying me back over the bench.
I let him, knowing that he was being kind by helping me.
The belt got my right cheek. My head reared back, and I called out to God to save me. I expected the blow to my right cheek, and I had braced myself for it, but the bracing didn’t help. It hurt terribly. I folded my hands together and rested my forehead on them and sobbed, feeling completely sorry for myself.
Another blow landed, hitting my right thigh. I screamed out so loud that I scared myself.
I waited for another blow as I sobbed, and my body jerked with tears and fear.
I heard the drawer opening and closing. “I think ten is enough. R
emember, you promised to never run away again.”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“As soon as you’re ready, I’ll help you inside and get you cleaned up for bed. I hope you won’t be up all night.”
I shook my head. I planned to sleep for days on end. I might never wake up again.
I felt him lifting up my frilly panties and slipping them back into place, and I squirmed about. They didn’t fit anymore. My poor backside was too swollen.
He lowered my skirts and waited. I wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but I wasn’t able to move just yet. I still needed to pull myself together.
Chapter 6
Elias
I took Britney a good while to collect herself. But when she did, she bent down and removed a sliver from her foot. It was bleeding. I’d forgotten that she wasn’t wearing shoes any longer.
I got a handkerchief out of my pocket and wiped her eyes dry when she faced me. Her tiny nose was running too, so I wiped that for her too. Then I brushed the sawdust off of her. She was wearing the red velvet dress that I had wanted her to wear for Christmas. I’d clean it and make sure it was ready for her on that day. I wanted everything to be perfect. I could see around her on the floor with her dress spread around her while she opened the box with her puppy in it.
I already ordered one for her. The puppy still needed to be weaned, but she’d be here for Britney on Christmas morning. I would pick him up the day before Christmas.
I planned to take lots of pictures to remember our first Christmas together with. It killed me that one day when she left this world without me. I couldn’t even promise to join her in heaven one day.
I lifted Britney into my arms and carried my naughty bride into our cottage hidden in the woods. The time we had together would be perfect; time spent together only the two of us.
In a few years, I wouldn’t be able to dodge her questions about my age. She’d know the truth. That day would be like starting at square one again. She might want to leave me.
I carried her down the stairs to her bathroom. I’d hoped to be able to move her upstairs soon, but she proved that she wasn’t ready for that by running away this morning.