Waiting to be caned
Original Fiction – for adult eyes only
The classroom is stifling hot, even though it’s not a warm day. The windows haven’t been opened in days and you can cut through the dense aroma of twelve eighteen year old schoolboys. The mathematics class has not properly started. Ninety minutes of tedium stretch ahead, but before we settle down to our textbooks there’s to be a little entertainment. And I’m part of it. Me and my classmate Carstairs.
Mr McMaster, our maths master, has already extracted a
stout, but extremely whippy, rattan cane from an extensive collection he keeps
in an adjacent storeroom. It is a more than a metre long and as thick as a
pencil. It has the traditional crooked handle. It is a dark yellow with
brownish notches running at intervals along its length. It had once been a
straight rod, but it is now slightly warped (the result of much use in recent
years.)
He has already swiped it through the air several
times; it is his way of gaining his pupils’ undivided attention. All but two of
us are agog, eyes almost on stalks, jaws set firm; waiting for the sport to
begin.
Carstairs and me are the two exceptions. McMaster
flexes the cane menacingly between his hands. His eyes set narrowly. He scowls,
and then he grimaces. Another typical school afternoon is about to get
underway.
It happened so quickly. The
New Democrats won the election by a landslide and
suddenly all anyone was talking about was Responsibility, Law and Order,
Discipline. Before you knew it corporal punishment had been brought back. And
not just to schools either. Soon it was universities, apprentices at work. Now
just about anyone under thirty can be whacked at work. They brought back the
birch at the law courts.
We were forced to wear short trousers with our school
uniforms. All of us. The most senior boys as well as the kids. They said we
were all children and we should remember that. We should look like we were
kids. We should know our place. I wasn’t the only one who felt a complete fool
when I first had to walk around with bare knees. But I soon got used to it. I
wasn’t the only one. Everyone at school wore short trousers. And not just my
school; all over the country schoolboys were in shorts. There was no law about
it, no one dictated it, it just sort of took off.
McMasters has this rule. If you get less than 75
percent in your homework, you go across the desk for six of the best. No
exceptions. No excuses. He says the ‘poor result’ is because we’re slacking,
not putting in the work. Being lazy. It’s not fair. I try, but believe me
mathematics is hard.
He’s not the only master who swishes the cane. They
all do. But McMasters does relish it. Not like my form master Mr Duggan. He had
to swish five off us last term. We had been caught smoking. Eighteen years old!
It’s not illegal for us to smoke. We do it all the time, even at school. But
not anymore. So, it was Six, touching toes, across the seat of the short
trousers. It hardly hurt. I don’t think Duggan’s heart was in it. Maybe he’s a
secret pacifist.
No such luck with McMaster. I’m sure he enjoys
it. Is he a sadist who enjoys inflicting physical pain? I don’t know. Maybe
it’s about power. He can order us to present ourselves meekly across the desk,
backside pointing to the ceiling. He delights that we are eighteen years old
(nineteen some of us) and we have to kowtow to his every whim.
He makes a big drama of it. Not for him the simple bend
over, touch your toes, whack! whack! whack! There’s a whole lot of ritual.
We have to take an ordinary wooden chair and put it so the back’s right up
against an old-fashioned single desk (who knows where he found that but it’s
kept in the corner of the classroom for one purpose and one purpose alone.)
Then we have to kneel on the seat and stretch across the desk and hang onto the
legs. This makes your bum stick out at a provocative angle. It makes a terrific
target for his cane.
But he’s not ready yet. If you’re wearing a blazer
he’ll grab hold of the tail and drag it up your back until it’s at the
shoulders. Then he’ll grip the waistband of your shorts and tug until the cloth
digs in between your crack. Two perfectly presented cheeks.
That’s precisely what he did with Carstairs. I’m
watching him now prostrated across the desk, head low, bottom high. He’s
clenching his cheeks, trying to stiffen them, to make them as hard as a cricket
ball. It’s a difficult trick to pull off. The idea is that the firmer you make
your bum the less the cane will hurt. It can’t penetrate into the flesh (that’s
the theory; I don’t think it’s been scientifically proven.)
McMasters makes me stand in front of the class to wait
my turn. I have an uninterrupted view. Carstairs’ buttocks are twitching,
awaiting the onslaught and the inevitable agony as that cruel cane crashes into
his upturned cheeks.
I hadn’t notice before how round and plump Carstairs
is, his bum’s like a couple of rugby balls. There’s enough padding to absorb some
serious whacking. McMasters tucks the cane under his left armpit and wipes the
damp palms of his hands against the legs of his trousers. Absurdly I think of
our gym master and how he makes us cover our hands with chalk we have a better
grip on the wall bars.
Satisfied that his hands are dry, McMasters slips the
cane into his right hand. There is an inaudible gasp among the boys. The
anticipation is keen. Each one of them is loving every moment. I would be
myself if I were not the next attraction in the show.
Don’t ask me to explain (because I can’t) but every
boy I know gets off on these public beatings, even though we know that it could
be us in front of the class submitting their bottom to the master. So, we enjoy
it while we can.
My thoughts are curtailed by the sound of the cane
swooping through the air. Followed by a heavy thwack and thud as the fierce
rattan swipes across and sinks into Carstairs’ stretched bottom. His shoulders
shudder and his hips swivel as a wave of pain like a bolt of electricity judders
through his body. He shuts his teeth and just about swallows the almighty roar
his injured body is demanding he make.
Richardson, the captain of rugby, leans forward in his
desk in the front row, to get a better view of Carstairs’ legs as they continue
to stomp up and down against the tiled floor. Toby, the boy to his right,
crosses and uncrosses his own legs before wriggling forward in his chair to
ensure his privates are properly hidden beneath the desk.
McMaster paces the room. It is part of his ritual.
Like so many schoolmasters he is a bit of a ham actor. He is waiting for the
pain in his victim’s backside to subdue a little before reigniting it once more
with a follow-up swipe. His pause also adds to the tension. Carstairs gulps
down a lung-full of air; he grips the legs of the desk and waits for stroke
number two.
It lands a centimetre or so below the first. I can see
two well placed lines across the seat of the boy’s trousers. McMaster is indeed
a master with the cane. God knows in the short time since corporal punishment
was brought back he has had enough practice. As he turns away from the
distressed sixth-former and resumes pacing I glimpse the gleam in McMaster’s
saucer-like eyes. They pop like a frog’s.
He waits twenty or thirty seconds (it feels like
hours), turns and lays in the third stroke. Carstairs body bounces. His stomach
rises from the desk but with superhuman effort he resists his body’s demand
that he jump up before fleeing, howling from the room.
He does not make a sound. I admire his fortitude. I
know that I will not be so stoic when my turn comes.
Picture credit: British-Discipline.
Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com
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