You wanted to see me sir?
Original fiction – for adult eyes only
You stand beside the dark, wooden panelled door staring at
the glistening brass sign. You see the word “Headmaster” written in gothic
script and your heart races. You swallow hard, trying to moisten the back of
your arid throat. Your palms begin to sweat. It happens like this each time you
are summoned to the study.
You wipe your hands against your immaculately-pressed
pale-grey trousers. You could cut your finger on the crease that runs down the
front, all the way to your feet. You take a deep breath and with a not-too
steady fist you rap your knuckles against the door.
“Come!” The voice from within is clear and imperious. You
run your tongue across your cracked lower lip and grip the handle. The door is
stiff and you have to push hard to get it to move. The job done, you stand
inside the study, eyes cast to the floor. “You wanted to see me sir?” you
croak.
Even as the words are leaving your mouth you look up to find
the headmaster standing in the middle of the room. He is gently flexing a thick,
whippy curve-handled cane behind his back. There can be no doubt about his
intention; there will be only one outcome from this visit.
“Mmmmm,” the headmaster often starts a sentence with a
mumble. It is as if he is buying time, so he can perfect in his mind the words
he wants to say. You watch him carefully.
He hasn’t changed since your last call to the study. His round belly
strains the front of his waistcoat, his body is the shape of a pear. When he
stands, his weight requires him to roll a little on his heels so he can remain
upright. You see flecks of cigarette ash down the front of his waistcoat. How
many boys in the past, you wonder, has the headmaster thrashed for the heinous
crime of smoking? There are spots of
dandruff on his shoulders. This fact may be a minor miracle since he is almost
entirely bald, save for tufts of unkempt black hair at his temples. The study
is warm and the windows are firmly closed. A faint whiff of coal tar soap is in
the air.
The headmaster takes the cane from behind his back and now
he holds it in front of you and flexes it. He is demonstrating that it can make
a perfect arc. The rattan rod is a little over three feet in length and as
thick as the pencils they use to draw in art class. He finishes his bending and
taking the cane in his right hand he swishes it through the air with some
force. He is saying to you, “This is an almightily efficient punishment tool.”
You don’t need to be told this, you are not on your first visit to the study.
“Perkins,” the headmaster almost growls. “You are a
sixth-former, a senior boy.” He stops speaking and peers at you through
half-moon spectacles. It is as if he is confirming to his own satisfaction that
you are indeed Andrew Perkins, aged eighteen, of the Humanities Sixth. You stand,
hands clasped contritely behind your back. You know the form. The headmaster
will jaw you for a bit. He will list all your shortcomings and add to them
details of your recent misdemeanours. When he is finished you will confess your
sins. Only when that is sorted will it be time for atonement. You act as if in
no hurry to reach that point in the proceedings. You wait, only half listening
to the headmaster droning on. You stare down at the toecaps of your black,
lace-up shoes. You notice they are well overdue a polishing.
“You are a senior boy,” the headmaster repeats himself as he
often is inclined to do. He shakes his head as if in disbelieve that such a
thing could be possible. You are a sixth-former, but not a prefect. You
definitely are not prefect material. Too independent of thought. That’s your
version of the matter, anyhow. If interrogated on it you will stick to the
story.
The headmaster drones on as if he is carrying the weight of
all the world’s woes on his shoulders. “Truanting!” He barks out the word as if
it describes the worst crime humanly possible. Skipping school. Missing
lessons. “What kind of example does that set the younger boys?”
There is a pregnant pause. You are startled awake. You
assumed the question was rhetorical (so many of the headmaster’s are). Now, you
realise you are expected to say something. “Don’t know, sir,” you splutter unconvincingly.
“Don’t know! Don’t know!” the headmaster’s voice raises by an octave. There is
more silence. The headmaster appears flustered as if he has lost his place in
the script. You continue to study the bare floorboards beneath your feet. “Not
good enough, Perkins. It won’t do. Not at all.” The headmaster concentrates
hard on flexing the cane between his hands. He does this for a minute or more.
At last he gets back on track. “Not the first time is it,
Perkins?”
“No sir,” you agree quietly. Your palms are sweating again.
The room is airless and your temples are beginning to ache.
“Last time it was six, I believe.”
He means he gave you six strokes of that cane across the
seat of your trousers. You remember it clearly. Each and every one of the
swipes. In your mind you try to formulate an answer to the headmaster’s
question.
Too late; he is speaking again. “But obviously it wasn’t
enough.” He leans forward so that his face is close to yours. You smell tobacco
on his breath. “Not enough. Not enough, at all,” he repeats himself.
Now, he has straightened up and is pacing across the study.
It is not a large room. There is space for a desk, the headmaster’s chair and a
couple of straight-backed chairs which are kept in corners of the room. A worn
armchair rests against one wall. Against another are bookshelves and cupboards.
The headmaster stops his pacing. He glares at you from the far end of the room.
His steel-grey eyes are piercing. The toothbrush moustache above his top lip
bristles. “Pah!” he says.
He tucks the cane under his arm. “Take off your blazer and
put it on my desk.” He nods toward the desk in case there is any doubt in your
mind what he means. Your hands are not as steady as they might be as you
unfasten three buttons. You slip the woollen blazer from your shoulders and you
fold it lengthways before gently settling it on the wooden desk top. You take
care that the headmaster cannot see the pocket of the blazer where the packet
of ten Player’s Weights and box of Swan Vesta are.
With that task completed to his satisfaction, the headmaster
slips the cane into his hand and with it points to a spot in the dead centre of
the study. “Stand there, boy,” he intones. Your heart flips a beat. It does
this every time. You have no control of your body. You make the three small
steps that take you from the desk to the place where you are to be beaten.
The headmaster’s forehead is wet with perspiration. The
armpits of your own shirt are wet too. Is it too late to halt the proceedings
for a moment while a window is opened? It seems so as the headmaster is ready
to press on.
“Face that way,” he points toward the wall with the shelves
and cupboards. You know he wants you to do this so there will be enough room
for him to stand behind you and swipe his cane across your backside without
hitting a wall.
You do as instructed. You are submissive. The headmaster is
in charge. You have broken rules. You must be punished. It is the way of the
world. Without order there would be anarchy. Then where would we be? The
headmaster clears his throat. From where you are standing it seems he has just
swallowed a pint of phlegm.
“Lower your trousers,” he says in a clear, steady voice.
“Bend over and touch your toes.”
You do a double-take. Lower
your trousers. Crikey! Is all you can think. Now your heart is really
running. You feel your face flush and your mouth is drier than the Sahara
Desert. “Come on boy,” the headmaster swishes his cane, “I haven’t got all
day.”
Your pale-grey trousers fit you snugly so you have no need
of a belt. You look over at the headmaster, appealing with your eyes. You speak
no words. The glare you receive by way of reply convinces you the headmaster
will truck no objections. Utterly defeated, you find the button on the
waistband of the trousers and with some difficulty you force it open. The four
buttons that make up your fly are easier to deal with. The front of the
trousers falls open. The tail of your white school shirt covers your Y-front
underpants. For a moment you hold onto the trousers before, aware of the
headmaster’s piercing glare burning the back of your neck, you let go. The
trousers slither down your thighs and snag at the knees. You part your legs a
little and they continue their journey south until they end up as a puddle on
top of your shoes.
You stand, unsure what to do next. “Bend over, touch your
toes.” The headmaster is in no doubt about the order of events. You know from
painful past experience that to the headmaster “toes” means exactly that: toes
and not knees, or shins, or ankles. You stretch forward. As you do so blood
rushes to your head dizzying you. You blink hard three or four times and the
sensation goes.
Touching toes is not as simple as it sounds, it puts a
terrible strain on your calf muscles. But, you know how to do it. You have been
in this position before and probably will be again. You spread your feet a
little and keep your head low and bottom high. Now, all you can see is the
floor beneath your feet and your red and white striped tie dangling in front of
your face.
You hear the boards squeak as the headmaster moves across
the study. You tense when he stands directly behind you. He takes hold of the
tail of your white cotton shirt and drags it up your back. Even in the airless
room, you feel a slight draught as the flesh on your lower back is exposed.
He grips the elasticated waist of your underpants and tugs.
The cotton digs into the crack between your cheeks. Then, with the palm of one
hand the headmaster gently rubs first your left buttock and then the right. He
is smoothing away the creases until the Y-fronts fit you like a second skin.
You hear him take two steps away from you. Your breathing is increasingly
heavy. You are bent submissively, offering up your backside for punishment.
You feel the cane tap against your stretched underpants, the
headmaster is finding his aim. You suck on your bottom lip. Any moment now. You
know this will hurt; intensely. That is
the point after all. Why go to the trouble of caning a backside unless it hurts.
You understood that. A boy has to learn the error of his ways.
Swish! The cane swipes through the air and lands with
terrific force across the middle your bum. You hiss as air escapes through
pursed lips. You can’t help it. Every schoolboy that ever there was knows that
sometimes you just can’t stop yourself. It’s some kind of reflex action; the
body’s way of coping with all that agony.
You know the rules; you are permitted to grunt and groan.
But no matter how much it hurts do not stand up clutching your blazing
buttocks. And on no account blub! How could a chap hold his head up high at
school if the fellows found out he had cried during a caning?
The second cut lands, slicing into your bum just below the
first. The headmaster is an expert. His fame has spread far and wide across
many generations of naughty schoolboys.
You concentrate on the floorboards as swipe number three
connects with the top of the thigh. Bare flesh. “Jeeeez!” You wriggle your his
hips left and right. Your fingers leave the toecaps of your shoes. You nearly
jump to your feet, but stop just in time. That was low. Too low. You’ll have a
deep purple mark there that won’t clear for days.
“Keep still boy. Fingers on toes please.”
The pain is searing. You feel perspiration running down your
bare back. The headmaster pauses allowing you to settle. He swipes the fourth
high; on the top of the curves, well away from the thighs. He is administering
the strokes with some vim. He likes to put a lot of beef into his canings, just
like he beats carpets at home.
You are in shock, you breathe hard: in-out; in-out. You can
feel four clearly-defined welts throbbing across your bum; all in neat parallel
lines. There is a strip about two inches wide blazing across your buttocks. The
headmaster might have rolled a white-hot poker across your backside.
Your eyes are moistening; it is the heat in the room, the
strain of having your head at an unnatural angle and the start of tears. Before
you have time to think of the indignity of crying, number five strikes lower. This
one hits the fleshiest part of the buttocks, where you have most padding. The
cane sinks deep into the meat and leaves a long line of searing pain before
bouncing away. This time you stifle a yell. You cough a little; there is a
taste of vomit at the back of your throat.
There is one more to come. At least, you suppose so. The
headmaster had not announced it would be: “Six of the best.” He usually does.
Why didn’t he this time? He has already told you that the Six he administered
last time had not been enough.
You feel him shift his position a little. Ah Ha! You think.
This must be the final stroke. He is famous for this move. He thinks it makes
it a real “headmaster’s caning.” It will be something awesome, more vicious
than an ordinary beating from, say, a form-master or housemaster. You brace
yourself. You screw your eyes tight and clench your teeth. You are ready. “Bring
it on,” you say, but not aloud so that the headmaster can hear you.
The headmaster places the cane at a diagonal across both your
cheeks. It is running from bottom left to top right. Tap-tap-tap. You tense
your whole body and as you do this your shoulders heave. Whop! The cane seems
to move at the speed of sound, you can hear the whistle as it flies through the
air. Then it crashes into your bum. It cuts across the five welts already
oozing across your once-creamy-white posterior, setting each one of them ablaze
again. You grip your shins, you want to jump up and stamp your feet about, run
up and down on the spot, rubbing your hands across the scorching flesh.
But you managed to stay down. You are proud. It is over now.
It feels like you have sat on a barbecue. You wait, breathing hard for the
instruction to rise. You hear more squeaks on the floorboards, the headmaster
is on the move again. From the corner of your eye you see him walk slowly
towards a tall, thin cupboard. Slowly, for he is in no hurry, he delves into a
pocket of his waistcoat. There he finds a small key. He uses this to unlock the
cupboard. You hear a distinct rattling sound as he places the cane inside along
five or six others nestling there.
The headmaster returns to his desk. You hear a drawer open
and a book being removed. You continue to stare down at the floor. The
headmaster finds a page and writes in the book.
“You may stand Perkins.”
Hot, sweaty and sore, you unfurl yourself and regain a
standing position. You want to rub away at your roaring backside, but you know
from experience it does no good. You will just have to wait for the pain to go
away on its own. Soon enough it will become a warm glow, but that slash on the
back of the thighs will continue to hurt for quite some time.
“Sign.” The headmaster slides the punishment book across the
desk. You hesitate. The headmaster understands your predicament at once. “Pah!”
he has no patience. He reaches back into the drawer and finds a half-chewed pen,
which he rolls across the desk.
You pick it up and with unsteady hand you sign your name.
Only now does the headmaster say, “Get dressed. You are
dismissed.”
You do not need telling twice. You pull your trousers up to
their rightful place and fasten the button on the waistband. You leave your
flies undone. You pick up the blazer, even in your present situation you still
have presence of mind to ensure the cigarettes and matches do not fall from the
pocket.
You slowly open the oak door. Outside, you pause and take
three deep breathes. Then, you hurry into the room across the landing. Inside,
you whip down your trousers and underpants and point your bare bottom at the
full-length mirror. You admire the six very distinct lines across you bum.
Gingerly, you trace their outline with the tip of a finger. Your flesh feels
like corrugated paper.
You look at your face in the mirror, noticing only for the
first time that your beard needs a trim. As you are thinking this the door
opens. The headmaster stands on the threshold. “How was that?” he smiles.
“Fantastic, as always,” you say with genuine admiration.
“Do you want a drink first, or shall we go back in and do it
on the bare now?” he asks.
Picture credit: Unknown.
For
more Original Fiction, click here
Traditional School
Discipline
Comments
Post a Comment