It is time to phone Elsa again. This morning, for the third time in a row, I woke up thinking of Chris, and a wave of guilt and shame overwhelmed me. I lay there thinking of my behavior toward Chris, and I felt a strong desire to be spanked-- followed by a powerful sexual arousal at the thought of the spanking, which in turn increased my feelings of guilt and shame: a pernicious cycle indeed.
I could not ask Chris to administer the punisment, even if we were speaking to each other: to ask for such loving attention at a time like this would be completely unfair. Fortunately Elsa is able see me this evening; in fact she invites me to spend the night at her place.
During the drive over I wonder what form my punishment will take. On the last occasion I had done nothing really terrible: it was just a silly temper tantrum, or something like that. Embarrassing, not truly shameful. Elsa sat me down opposite her, fully clothed, and listened to my confession, interrogating me and then scolding me, but in a sympathetic way. By the time she was ready to spank me, all my left-over anger from the incident had melted. When she pulled me towards her and turned me over on her lap it felt like a soothing embrace; her hand seemed to caress me as she bared my bottom. Even the spanking, given with a small leather paddle, felt like blessed relief. This time I need something much more painful and humiliating. I have already explained this fact to Elsa although I have not told her exactly what I did.
It is not yet dark when I arrive. Elsa's lover, Margaret, opens the door. She gives me a chagrined look exactly like the looks children exchange when one of them is about to be punished. `Elsa is still out,' she tells me. `I'm supposed to get you ready.' She takes me to her room and hands me a nightgown, pale blue linen. I do not hesitate to undress in front of her since she has by now seen every part of my anatomy naked. At least once.
`Where is Elsa?' I ask.
`Out getting switches,' Margaret says gently. A good sign, I think: multiple switches, taking a long time to gather. After a serious mistake like the one I have made with Chris I often fantasize about being caned or beaten with a thick rod, but in practice I find that kind of sharp pain almost nauseating. Far preferable to have my backside scourged with a bundle of twigs, or to have a series of light switches broken over my behind until it is a stinging mass of red, swollen flesh.
Margaret says, `Let me braid your hair for you.' The first time I was seriously punished at Elsa's hands, my hair became impossibly tangled during the flogging--- and what followed the flogging.
Margaret fetches a comb and a pink ribbon. She twists my hair into a single long rope. `My, you look awful,' she says, studying my face in the mirror. `You look all sort of... hollowed out.' She is right: I have not eaten in days; the bottom of my stomach fell out when Chris hung the phone up on me last Friday, and it has not come back. Margaret gives my shoulders a squeeze and kisses the top of my head. `Don't worry; you'll fell better soon,' she says, in the tone of someone who knows. With her arm around my shoulders she walks me into Elsa's room.
Someone has put a fat cushion in the center of the bed. `God you are so tense,' Margaret says. `Why don't you lie down.... not over the cushion, right here next to it. I'll try to relax you. She guides me face-down onto the bed and starts rubbing my shoulders and back. `Christ you've got knots here the size of walnuts. You haven't been sleeping well either, have you?' It is an incredible relief to be touched in a friendly way after all these days of estrangement and alienation.
`Is she spanking hard?' I ask.
`Let me show you.' Margaret stands up and raises her skirt. She does not lower her panties, but pulls them up on one side to show a buttock covered with red welts, layers of them. `The strap,' she says unnnecessarily, snapping the elastic back into place in a way that sounds painful. `I'd better get you into position now,' she goes on. `Take off your panties, will you?'
Of all Elsa's routines this is the most humiliating. I will have to confess and be scolded while lying with my bare bottom sharply raised over the cushion, vulnerable and pathetic. Margaret raises the hem of my nightgown for me as I bend over the cushion, taking care to keep my thighs and buttocks close together. I know that eventually my legs and bottom will be bouncing and twitching and separating, but I want to start out as modestly as possible. I also want no part of the cushion over which I have been bent to get between my thighs. Elsa long ago stopped putting me over the spanking bench because its pressure against my crotch made me get excessively aroused, when the spanking drove my backside up and down. It is true that I am always somewhat aroused during spanking-- but wetness which is visible or too easily detectable by finger (before the end of the punishment at least) is rewarded by another scolding and another spanking, usually by hand, but in such a way as to violate the modesty quite a bit.
Margaret hands me a pillow from the head of the bed and I hug it, inhaling Elsa's scent as I hear Elsa herself coming up the stairs. I turn around to look at her, noticing how sharply my bottom points up into the air and how round the buttocks look, bent over like that.
Elsa is holding not (as I hoped) the bundle of twigs that forms a classic birch rod, but a half-dozen or more switches less than the thickness of my little finger. `Take these,' she says to Margaret, and moves rapidly to the side of the bed. SMACK! Her hand comes down in the center of my backside, so suddenly that the top half of my body jerks upwards.
`What do you say to me?' she demands.
`Good evening, Elsa.'
`That's better,' she says. `Now tell me what happened.'
`It's about Chris.' I am so ashamed of things I have said and done that I begin to launch into abstractions: I have been guilty, I tell her, of selfishness, thoughtlessness, narcissism, hedonism....' SMACK! The hand descends again, this time making me yelp. Although I am keeping my bottom cheeks together I can feel the spank in the soft tissues between them, the more so because of the angle at which I am bent.
`Don't talk that nonsense to me!' Elsa says. I know better than to reach back and rub. I tighten my hold on the pillow and go on explaining, feeling more sad and regretful than ever over what I have done. Every so often when I seem to prevaricate or obfuscate Elsa stings my bottom with another angry spank.
At a moment I can never predict, she has had enough. She begins to scold me in a ferocious tone: "This is dreadful. This is not your usual naughtiness; this is wickedness and you know it, my girl And furthermore it is harmful to you. I can see that you have been abusing your health and emotional well-being again, quite apart from any damage to Chris. I am going to punish you very severely this time, my dear. I regret now that I haven't cut even more switches, but believe me I will use every one of these to its greatest advantage. I will whip your little bottom to ribbons darling, and if your bottom gets too torn up I will start on your thighs. And don't think that crying and screaming will stop me because I am determined to go on until I have broken all these switches."
Contrary to all good judgment I look over my shoulder as Elsa raises the first switch high in the air. It hisses and cracks as it swings on an arc into the plumpest area of my bottom. At first I remain propped up on my elbows. I stare at the carved pattern of the headboard in an attempt to distract myself; but even before the first switch has broken I am burying my head in the pillow. The soft tender lower half of each buttock stings and itches and finally burns. With the second and third switches my bottom is doing an embarrassing dance, moving around so much that at times my thighs or my hips are lashed. "Ow! Ow! Elsa!" I cry out. "Ow, Elsa! My bottom!"
"Yes, your bottom!" she repeats furiously, switching harder and faster. "You are getting your bottom whipped like a naughty little girl. Aren't you ashamed? Margaret, look at that naughty whipped little schoolgirl's behind."
"Whip her hard," Margaret says, her voice trembling a little. "Give that bottom a good licking."
"Elsa Elsa Elsa!" I cry out, and then, finally breaking down, "Cris! Chris!" I sob into the pillow throughout the entire application of the last two switches. The instant that the final one breaks I grab my bottom, one cheek in each hand, and roll onto my side, falling off the cushion and lying among the broken switches, a few of which jab into my injured flesh.
"Get back over the cushion and hug your pillow," says Elsa. "You can cry as long as you want but you will lie there looking like the well-spanked girl you are until you have had a long time to think about your wicked behavior."
I turn my bottom up over the cushion again, hastily. I know slowness would bring at the least a barrage of slaps on my wounded flesh. I take deep breaths in an effort to slow down my weeping and relax my throbbing behind. Margaret whispers something and leaves the room. Elsa seems to have retreated to the armchair in the corner.
I begin to think of my betrayal of Chris, for which I have just been so soundly whipped. I begin to think that I cannot endure this state of affairs. Up to this point I was determined to maintain silence; but now I begin to think it possible..... well, a reuinion would be so rapturous. Perhaps there would still be marks on my bottom, and I could show Chris how I had been punished for what I did. I picture Chris fingering the lines on my bottom before turning me over and spreading my thighs...
Elsa stands up with an alacrity I can hear. She goes out to the hallway and calls for Margaret, loudly and repeatedly-- Margaret must be in the kitchen or something. `Come here and look at Alice,' she says.
I tremble as I wait for her arrival: a test is imminent, one which I suddenly fear I will fail. `Have a look at Alice,' Elsa says. `Tell me what kind of state she is in.'
Margaret sits down next to me and tenderly pulls the lower part of one battered buttock aside. She slips a finger in far enough to brush my clitoris. `She's O.K.'
`Are you sure?' demands Elsa. `Get that finger in there.' Margaret comlies. As sometimes happens, this action causes what was there all along, but safely inside, to become external and obvious.
`She's still O.K.,' Margaret says, her voice sounding a little tight. In a few angry strides Elsa is beside the bed. She hauls Margaret up by the wrist, turns her around and slaps her bottom twice. Then she rudely thrusts my thighs apart and puts a hand between them. SLAP! SLAP! once on each bottom cheek as I desperately try to squirm away. A hand spanking always hurts surprisingly, after the birch rod or the switch.
Elsa sits down and pulls me across her lap-- hurriedly, so that my right leg does not rest on her knees but hangs down to the floor. I try to reach a more composed position, but Elsa has already begun spanking: broad, forceful slaps which come bown sometimes on once side or the other, sometimes right up the middle. No matter how much I twist my hips around, trying to make the spanks land in the better-padded places, Elsa's hand seems to come down again and again in the same spot right between my cheeks. I do not just emit little screams, as I did while being switched; I moan continually with pain and shame. When I look up I can see Margaret looking at me ruefully-- and also with fear. She must suspect that Elsa plans similar treatment for her bottom.
After what seems fifteen minutes of ferocious spanking Elsa throws me down unto the bed, like a child rejecting a doll. While slapping my bottom she was silent but now she starts berating me: `Are you happy now, Alice? You came here to be punished for your selfishness and narcissism, and I have tried to help you. But obviously my punishments mean nothing to you-- or rather, they only serve to flatter your egotism even more. And you, Margaret!---' she turns to her lover and, I suppose, makes some type of gesture, because Margaret comes closer, timidly at first and then suddenly throwing herself across Elsa's lap.
I turn my head slightly, gaining a full view of Margaret's bottom, whiter and slightly fleshier than my own, and her writhing legs. Elsa slaps Margaret repeatedly, raising her hand over her shoulder each time. I watch with some regret, because Margaret is being punished for telling a lie on my behalf; and yet it was such foolishness on Margaret's part to think she could really deceive Elsa.
Margaret has an enviable way of geting into the rhythm of a spanking. When Elsa spanks her bottom it seems to spank back, although it is completely relaxed.
Elsa wraps her left arm around Margaret's wist and pulls her in closer. She spanks in random order: side middle side middle middle middle side side thigh. Then she pauses, and her left hand slips down Margaret's back to her bottom. Margaret's head snaps up. "Oh, no, not that," she cries out.
"I'm sorry," Elsa says firmly, slidling her middle finger between Margaret's buttocks. She works it in a little way and begins slapping Margaret's buttocks again. Margaret hands her head back down. It sounds as if she might be sobbing a little.
Once Elsa is gone from the room I move over to make room for Margaret, shoving the cushion down to the end of the bed. "I must go make dinner," Margaret says, but I grab a lock of her blond hair as if to restrain her. "Stay a minute and tell me something." I am curious about Elsa and Margaret: how they make love; how often they make love; whether or not they are still in love. I settle for asking Margaret how they met.
"I met her in that karaoke bar," Margaret says. "I was singing. Elsa was there with another woman-- her name was Ruth, or something like that-- but Elsa says she was very interested by my performance from the start. I sang one thing, and then she sent up a request for another, which is unusual, especially at that place. Later I went to her table and we talked. She told me I “projected a great deal of sadness," and I suppose she was right. I started to tell her about what was bothering me. Very soon her friend started looking around, bored, and then she kind of huffily went off to join some other people.
"What I told Elsa about was this fight I had with my sister, Janet, over a really stupid thing: this inheritance from our aunt. It was a big box of out-of-date mostly cheap jewelry that got dropped off at my sister's place, and she invited me to come over and take what I wanted. I don't know why I did this-- I acted like a crazy person-- but I instantly grabbed this ring with a humungous diamond in it and put it on my engagement finger. I dunno, maybe I was thinking that Janet was married and she already had a nice diamond ring, but it was so piggy of me. Janet started yelling at me because I din't bother to ask if she wanted it. In the end I slammed my way out of the house with the ring still on my finger. I was still wearing it that night when I met Elsa, she laughed because she had been thinking that I was engaged.
"As I talked to Elsa I looked at the ring and saw that it was really ugly: the diamond not very bright, cloudy in fact-- even if I didn't hate diamonds. It looked like something you would get out of a gum machine. Seeing how revolting it was made me start to cry and ask over and over how I could have quarreled with Janet over something like that. Elsa took me into the ladies" room so I wouldn't have to cry in front of everyone. Once we were there I fell into her arms. I said, “I wish someone would punish me," and she asked me what I meant. I wound up telling her that sometimes when I felt this bad for whatever reason I would go home and hit myself all over with my hairbrush, leaving bruises on my arms and legs. I couldn't believe I was confessing this, it seemed so pathetically sick.
""That's terrible!" Elsa said. she sounded outraged. “You could damage yourself that way. Why don't you bend over and spank yourself on the bottom?" I said, "I can't believe this. How would I do that? I would feel so silly." But even as I said this I got a huge rush of excitement. I remembered the last time I was caned at school. The girl (it was a Senior, not one of the teachers) was so angry with me that she pushed me down over the bed and spanked me with her hand for a while before she even went to fetch the cane.
"Something about being left there with my bottom stinging, and waiting to be caned, got me really excited, and after the caning I couldn't wait for the girl to go so that I could mastubate, crying and having an orgasm at the same time.
"Immediately the experience seemed so bizarre and embarrassing that I put it out of my head; but now, with Elsa talking to me, I longed to go through something like that again. She was hugging and patting me there in the ladies" room and I just swooned into her arms.
"I told my friends that I wouldn't need a ride home. Elsa and I went to her apartment-- the one she had before we got this place. We went straight to her room and she re-enacted the boarding school thing for me. Well, she refused to use a cane that first time, but she had a paddle which worked very well, I can tell you. I was bent over the bed, just like at school, and she whacked me until I was in tears, and then put me all the way up onto the bed. I couldn't tell whether or not she expected me to masturbate-- the last part of the story I'd told her-- with her standing right there, so I just stuck my head in the pillow and cried, which in itself felt pretty good.
"After a while Elsa said, "Shall I hug you?" I was going to sit up, when she surprised me by pushing me back down and lying full length next to me. She hugged me, embraced me, with her entire body. Our legs were wrapped around together and I remember being worried because she still had her trousers on, tight black ones, and I was afraid I would come all over them. She reached down and rubbed, kissing me at the same time, and I came all over her hand instead.
"That spanking was purely a labor of love. Later she began to get sterner and actually punish me. This thing with my bottom-- opening my bottom with her finger-- did you see that?"
I admitted that I had seen. "I hate it," Margaret said. "I hate having naything stuck in my bottom. She hardly ever does it, but she threatens me a lot.: "Be still or I'll spread your bottom," she says. Oh, it's terrible."
Elsa calls sharply from the foot of the stairs. Margaret jumps up and runs out. She does not bother to replace her panties (which have fallen to the floor during her spanking) but runs out hastily. I reach for the panties and hold them while I masturbate, once with immediate results, another time more slowly.