Three Up Before the Head

 Original Fiction – for adult eyes only

The headmaster sighed the sigh of the dead when he was told the news. Of all the childish things boys could do this took the biscuit. Perhaps, he thought, there might be an excuse for immature behaviour from lads in the First Form but not from seniors in the Sixth.

Well, he told the school’s janitor, if they insisted on behaving like little children they should not be surprised if they were treated like little children.

That explained why three eighteen-year-old sixth-formers were standing in front of the desk in the headmaster’s imposing study. And like the naughty little boys they were they stood with their feet apart and their hands on the heads, looking every inch like junior boys. If the headmaster had his way they would all be wearing grey short trousers like the juniors. Only the impracticality of finding short trousers to fit stopped him from putting a plan into action.

It was spring and in a few days the holidays would begin. The last days of any term were always a problem. Boys were excited and high spirited and were apt to get up to any number of pranks. Most were harmless and went unremarked but some had more severe consequences.

The headmaster glared at the three boys standing before him. ‘Freeman, Hardy, Willis,’ he intoned, ‘You are incorrigible. The only futures you can look forward to are as second-hand shoe salesmen.’ He sighed deeply as if he were carrying the weight of the whole world on his shoulders, ‘Would you care to tell me what possessed you to play such a trick?’

All three boys found a fascination with knots in the wooden floorboards near their feet. The silence in the large, dark room was deafening. What had possessed them? High spirits most certainly, but also a lack of maturity to understand they had gone too far.

Their mischievous act involved reorganising the school’s prized topiary garden into a whimsical display of animals and symbols, leaving the normally immaculate arrangement of shrubs and plants in disarray.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now standing before the headmaster the three boys had changed their minds.

It had been impossible to keep secret the identities of the culprits and rumours spread around the Academy like wildfire. A furious school janitor reported the boys.

The headmaster, a stern man named Mr. Harrington, decided that swift and decisive action was needed to preserve the school’s reputation for discipline.

The headmaster’s study was an imposing room adorned with dark wood panelling and leather-bound books. The boys exchanged uneasy glances as they took their place in front of the headmaster’s imposing desk.

‘You have brought shame upon yourselves and upon this institution,’ Mr. Harrington declared, his words resonating in the sombre room. ‘The canings I am about to give you are not merely for punishment but to remind you of the responsibility that comes with being a student of Willowbrook Academy.’

As Mr. Harrington spoke, the sixth-formers felt a mixture of fear and remorse. He rose from his chair and the floorboards creaked as he made his way to a cupboard in the far corner of the room. All three boys remained with stares fixed ahead at the elaborate window behind the headmaster’s desk. They did not need to turn to watch the headmaster; they already knew what was kept inside the cupboard and what were Mr. Harrington’s intentions.

The headmaster had a collection of canes, some thicker than others, some longer. He chose a stout, but whippy, dark brown rod. It was a little over three feet in length with the traditional curve handle attached. It was as thick as a pencil and the headmaster knew from his lengthy experience at the Academy that it was an effective punishment tool. The three eighteen-year-olds before him might have behaved as if they were thirteen but they would be punished as seniors.

He swiped the cane through the air and it made a terrific swishing noise as it flew. Still standing in the corner of the room Mr. Harrington instructed, ‘Each of you pick up a wooden chair and place it in the centre of the room.’ There were several old straight-backed chairs in the study. Their primary purpose was for visitors to sit on but they had a secondary use as well.

‘Line them up a few feet apart,’ he instructed. The boys, heavy of heart made the arrangements. ‘Stand behind your chair.’ Usually when more than one culprit was before the headmaster, Mr. Harrington would beat them one after the other. This time, for he believed variety was the spice of life, he intended to beat the boys together.

The boys stood nervously behind their chairs. ‘Bend over,’ the headmaster instructed and he swished his cane in order to raise the level of tension in the dark room. Each boy was tall enough to fit comfortably over the back of their chair and grip its wooden seat.

Mr. Harrington watched dispassionately. Each boy wore immaculate pale grey trousers with a crease down each leg that was sharp enough to cut bread. Their red blazers rode up their backs. Each boy had round, plump bottoms that stretched against the fabric of their trousers as they presented themselves to their headmaster’s gaze. ‘Terrific targets,’ Mr. Harrington mused to himself.

The boys heard footsteps on the creaking floorboard and suddenly Mr. Harrinton stood, cane in hand to the left of the trio. Without a word, he tapped the cane across the centre of Freeman’s bottom and was delighted to see the buttocks clench. He observed the outline of the boy’s underpants beneath the trousers. For the first time that day he wondered whether he should make the boys lower their trousers for a caning across the seat of their white Y-fronts.

It was not usual for him to cane a boy trousers down, but also it was not usual to be confronted with three sixth-formers with such childish mentalities. It was too late to change his plans now, he thought, and he let the matter drop. He ‘sawed’ his cane across the fleshiest part of the boy’s bottom and let fly. He was rewarded with both the sight of a thick line appearing across the cloth of Freeman’s tightly-fitting trousers and the sound of air escaping through the boy’s clenched teeth as he tried desperately to stifle the yowl the pain in his bum demanded.

Hardy was next. He could not see the anguish on his pal’s face but he heard well enough the muted howl. His own neck was wet with perspiration. He shut his eyes tight and gripped the seat of the chair. A shudder ran up his spine as the headmaster ‘sawed’ the cane across his bum and took his aim. The crack! of cane thwacking against plump bottom bounced around the walls of the dimly-lit study. Hardy’s legs buckled, his hips swayed and unlike his partner-in-crime he was unable to stop a cry of pain bellowing forth.

Willis waited his turn. Unlike the other two he had never been caned before. Willowbrook Academy was a traditional school (curriculum, rugby and caning) and with its record for discipline it was impossible for any boy not to feel the sting of the rattan at least once (or more accurately perhaps six times) in his time at the school. But Willis had only joined Willowbrook at the beginning of the Sixth and had largely kept his nose clean in his books since then. He had been a reluctant participant in the garden escapade and had in his own words ‘gone along for the ride.’

An education should be about experiencing new things and Willis was certainly doing that. He had previously been to a liberal school where corporal punishment was unheard of. But, he had read about canings in umpteen novels and comics and had often wondered what it would feel like to be summoned to the headmaster’s study, ordered to bend over and then to receive six-of-the-best. It had been a fantasy in his own head but now he was about to experience the real thing.

And he had an expert to initiate him. Mr. Harrington did the sawing thing again, took aim and cut Willis’s bottom along the undercurve where the buttocks and the thighs meet. ‘Yowlll!!!!’ Willis shot to his feet and danced from one foot to the other while also rubbing furiously at his boiling bum. Never in his life had he felt such pain, not even that time he fell off his bike and fractured his wrist.

‘Pah!’ Mr. Harrington hissed with disgust. ‘Get down boy.’ Willis did not care that he had probably disgraced himself in front of his pals. His bottom was on fire and he couldn’t stand the pain. But, reluctantly, slowly, he resumed his position and Mr Harrington returned to the front of the line and prepared to deliver swipe number two to Freeman.

In the time it had taken the headmaster to cane the other two boys, the pain of the first cut had eased to a dull ache, but when the cane landed for the second time it reignited the agony.

Over the next minute or so Mr. Harrington went down the line delivering the very best swipes he could manage across the stretched backsides of three of the silliest boys in his school. Freeman and Hardy suffered in manly silence but Willis was distraught and by the time the ordeal was ended his face was smeared with tears and snot.

Each boy received six of Mr. Harrington’s very best strokes. Then, ‘Stand. Replace the chairs,’ Mr. Harrington watched, his cane tucked under his arm like a sergeant-major, as the three boys shuffled around the study. ‘Stand in front of my desk. Hands on heads.’ Despite all three boys wishing desperately to rub away the aches in their bottoms they complied.

Mr. Harrington liked the sound of his own voice. He wasn’t about to release the trio without delivering a speech. ‘I hope this serves as a lesson to you,’ he began, but no one was listening, all any of the boys could think of was their own throbbing buttocks. ‘Discipline is the bedrock of our institution, and it applies to every pupil, no matter how talented or witty they may think they are. Use this experience to reflect on your actions and strive to become a better person. Now you may go.’

It would be a neat ending to the story to report that the three boys heeded the headmaster’s wisdom and became better pupils and upheld the school’s time-honored traditions. In truth one boy might have tried, but the other two were too far gone in their own immaturity to ever mend their mischievous ways.

Picture credit: Generated by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

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