The room was dark; it was a magic room so it had to be.
It had a chair in it so she sat down.
The chair was lit but she could see no light source, but then she was shaking and she could feel no source of her fear. It all seemed to make sense.
She knew then she had to talk. It was as though something inside popped and she had to say it all.
Her words were little pins in the dark, brittle as old iron, sharp as new pain on old hate.
“I know this is ridiculous and I don’t care anymore. I know what I am supposed to want and not supposed to want. I know what I am supposed to be. I know that what I am feels so totally unacceptable to me and to, augh …”
Her hand went to her head, flat against the side and she hit herself several times with her palm on the temple.
“I just can’t do it. I can’t do it. I miss being spanked. I miss feeling safe. I miss being touched. I miss knowing where the edge of everything is. I don’t want you to be nice to me, and I could not give a damn if you understand. I do not need your sympathy.
“Do you know what?” she asked the nothingness, “I have an interview in two days. A stupid one that will be ridiculously hard and I know I can do it but I swear, “ and her face broke and tears started, “I swear I am coming apart. I see bits of me floating off, like I have lost my centre of gravity. I am sorry. I am sorry I am not better or stronger or something, but I need this. I can’t do it. I can’t.
“Please. Help me because I can’t … I don’t … please.”
She still cried. The tears were hopeless and she knew that, keeping her head and eyes to the side, to avoid a gaze that was not there. Her face fell into sorrow and her shoulders shook.
Magic is not real. She knew how pointless it was to cry, and self expression is so very nineties. She stood up and walked out again, the door finding her hand in the darkness. She walked out of the room.
She was back in her own kitchen. There were dog prints on the dark slate and a splash of mud on the paintwork where a dog had done the final flourish of shaking his tail dry. There was a pile of paper by the microwave which she had to go through, and a saucepan with two old swollen pieces of pasta by the sink.
“It’s a good life,” she assured herself as she turned to collect the papers.
She rested her head against the cupboard above and shut her eyes. Dogs, big kitchen, food to eat and a good job, who should be so lucky?
“I am in the richest four per cent of people in the world. I am lucky just to be born where I am and when I am. These cries are the cries of a girl who has time enough to spare.”
But she couldn’t stop the tears; concerned, she put her hands on the paper to prevent her tears from running on the ink.
So when she turned and she saw them at her table she thought it was perhaps hysteria. She wondered if one could book oneself in to a psychiatric ward and if she would be allowed out for the interview.
She waited for them to go or turn into jellyfish or whatever passes for insane hallucinations these days.
It was that she knew them that made her accept it when the first man spoke. Each man she knew, but only one she had met. It was he who spoke first.
“You need a spanking,” he said, in his familiar deep, calm voice. She watched him sitting in her kitchen chair, one elbow on its arm, his thumb under his chin.
“And you need to go to hell.”
The answer surprised them both. She was mad with him. Mad with him for not being with her and mad at space and time. She was mad that he could sit there and state that. It was like being told to take your jumper off when the house was on fire.
And he was fast, fast as real life and just as sure of himself. With two strides he reached her and caught her wrist in his hand. She gave in to what was magic or insanity or just sheer need like a drowning girl would give in to a pocket of air.
She was over his leg in a moment, his leg that was propped up on the chair he had been sitting in. She was uncomfortable, precarious and more than aware of six eyes upon her as he stripped down her loose trousers and her knickers. The spanking was thorough. She had forgotten how much it hurt and at first thought it must be a mistake. This could not be what she needed. But as his hard leg pushed into her stomach and his harder hand made contact with her ever pinkening skin she started to feel herself again.
“Get off,” she said, a familiar and ignored request. “That hurts.”
He said nothing but rather redoubled his efforts, the loud slapping sound breaking the silence of the room.
“No more.” Her voice was softer for the first time, pleading not demanding. She had stopped the struggle to keep her legs together and her modesty intact. Her bottom was feeling swollen, all of it covered with sharp smacks. “Please.”
He took the time after that to make his point. Faster and harder than before and then slow again, deliberate and solid strikes that made her breath leave her body each time. She said nothing at all. She just existed in her body and accepted his discipline.
He placed her gently on the floor and she put her arms around him. The familiar smell of him, the feel of her lips on his neck, and as leaned over her the joy of his kiss, all of these meant the moment was real. She cried and held on to him.
“I miss you. I miss you. I miss you,” she wept in his ear.
He placed her in the corner, knickers a distant memory, put into his pocket for safe keeping. It took several minutes of crying before she thought about what was happening. Her pink, swollen bottom stuck out in a most undignified manner under her blue tee shirt. Her kitchen was her room, she owned it and yet here she was, disrobed and on show. She tried to creep farther into the corner to hide. She waited for him to call her, waited to be held, waited for her reprieve but none came. She tried to understand what was happening, tried to understand what it meant, tried more than anything to wish them not there, not seeing her.
When she was called out she realised she had only been there ten minutes. Still, they must have seen everything, everything. She blushed bright red all over again when she was told to turn around, and pulled her tee shirt down in front when she did so.
The second man spoke, his handsome face looking serious and stern.
“Go and get me your hairbrush.”
She left in a hurry, mostly because her hairbrush was upstairs and fetching it gave her respite, if only for a moment. She looked at her bum in the dressing table mirror, lifting her tee shirt up and touching her pale hands tenderly to her hot bottom.
She heard a light cough of introduction. He was there, standing in herbedroom doorway. Tall, dignified, authoritative as ever he leaned against the jamb and held out one large paw. She shook her head. It was almost imperceptible and it was not defiance, it was disbelief. He did not move one muscle. Looking at the carpet and with every toe curled in she moved slowly towards him and lifted a betraying arm out, a light wood paddle hairbrush at the end of it, her head looking down, trusting he would take the brush.
He took it and they both knew he was going to be hard on her.
He sat on her bed and drew her over his lap. He placed the wood on her hot right cheek. It cooled her for a moment and he spoke to her. He spoke in a gentle voice but his words made her squeeze her eyes shut in shame. He spoke of disobedience and transgressions. He spoke of deeds left undone and of deeds done that should never even have been thought of. He spoke of secrets she thought she had kept. So that when he first lifted the brush she longed for him to strike. But he had one final admonishment.
“Part your legs. Every time you close them there will be a consequence.”
“But I can’t do that,” she protested. “I can’t, please don’t make me.”
One strong arm pulled her around so that she was angled partially away from him; the move allowed her legs to split apart as though it were natural.
In this way, so shy, exposed, and already sore, she was undone before he started. The brush was a lethal implement. The back of it was large, solid maple wood, and when it landed it covered her, making her call out in a shriek.
In moments she was scrabbling at the covers trying to get away, but her movements were almost comic in their lack of effect. He lifted her waist with ease, pulling her closer as he focussed on her inner thighs, which, untouched so far, burned hotly with each strike of the brush.
She did all she could to obey him but it was all but impossible with the evil implement biting at her. Over and over, with a terrifying eye for detail, he covered her upper thighs and cheeks. He felt it the moment she broke in his arms, but continued without a break in rhythm for minutes more.
She found herself seated on his lap, unsure of how she got there. She cried into his shirt while he kissed the top of her head. He spoke little, just soothing nonsense. When her tears abated and her breathing was normal he laid her out on the bed and stroked her back while they waited.
The third man came in while she lay, face down on her bed, then she felt herself moved to lie across it. Pillows were placed underneath her, her bottom stuck up, presented.
“But I can’t,” she said, “I …”
The third man said “sshhh” softly and kindly, as though she were whispering in the dark.
“How many times?” he asked, and she screwed up her face to try to work out the answer.
“Four,” she heard the answer given from the far side of the room, “She closed them four times.”
And so that it what he gave her. It does not sound much but her bottom was so hurt, so swollen and sore that the four blows he made her count stayed with her all night, four neat, even stripes of red, the only red on her bottom, deeper than the pink that surrounded it.
She slept. The three men watched. Night fell, creeping across her room like a lover returning to bed, and still she slept.
In the interview, when she sat, there was the tiniest wince, a brief indication that something was amiss, but the panel dismissed that, and it was the only moment in the entire hour when she seemed at all put out.
