It’s important to picture these windows: coated with years of grime that drifted from the industrial smokestacks from the nearby town across the river; high up and West-facing, so that the sun blazed off them as it set, blocking the view of the Head’s crepuscular activities, routine and otherwise.

All the girls feared the Head, and, in general, they averted their eyes from his windows whenever they passed beneath them. I say, “in general,” because, when pupils had been summoned — an event which reverberated through the school the way the sound of a falling body echoes away from the gallows from which it plummets — when a pupil or pupils had been summoned, the entire school was on alert, and eyes that would normally have shied away from the windows now stared up with unconcealed fascination.

Why this change in behavior, you might ask, and I have often wondered the same thing; attribute it perhaps to the spectacle that one sees at the zoo, where the fierce beast is safely caged — occupied with some piece of meat that is not likely to be a spectator.

And in those afternoon hours when punishments occurred — when the Head was otherwise occupied and it was safe to stare — the girls crossing the courtyard looked up, hoping to see the face in the window, the face of the girl astride the Bicycle, the face through the grime, the open mouth obvious until the rays of the setting sun turned the glass to a sheet of reflected fire.

The windows were never opened, so the mouth was the only sign of the suffering that the girl endured; no sounds, no pleading, no yells, no cries for mercy, none of that escaped the room. But the face spoke volumes even so, and a quick glance from the courtyard below could often determine from the contortions of the face where the culprit was in her ride.

Or rather, The Ride. Was she freshly mounted on the mechanism, her legs spread, her cheeks thrust even further apart as the finger dipped in vaseline was applied? Could the position of the mouth reveal the moment when the Head placed the Nozzle at the girl’s aperture, the moment when it was pushed in, firmly inserted until it was deeply set and protruding from between the cheeks?

In the case in point — that of Brittany — how to read from the mouth what couldn’t be seen from below: the red cheeks spread, the tube dangling down from between them, the girl desperately peddling on the apparatus, with any cessation in her exertions resulting in the immediate and automatic administration of soapy water from the reservoir above her head. And where has the Head set the resistance of the Bicycle to the girl’s efforts? Is she raised up pressing down with all her might to make the wheels revolve, to stave off the washing out she’s poised to receive?

And at what point does her focus shift as she feels the Head tapping the cane across her bared cheeks? What does he see as he administers the punishment, the bare cheeks, the hose between them, and the horizontal lines left by the cane? As he thrashes her buttocks does he think about what he might choose to do to her after; and will the girls in the courtyard looking up see from the expression on her face that it’s being done? See the change in her visage to accommodate pleasure as well as pain?

***

All interesting questions, ones for which I have no answers that I choose to give. But I remember those days well, I remember the girls in my rooms, and I remember the rides they took as they straddled the apparatus of my devising.

I remember Brittany too, even across those many long years. Vivid memories, which, alas, I do not feel obliged to reveal.

Held in this posture Brittany watched as the Head came into her field of view for a moment to show her the jar of Vaseline he’d opened; after a brief pause he disappeared back behind her where, after a short search for some other piece of necessary equipment, Brittany felt his hands forcing her cheeks even further apart than her posture rendered them, heard his finger go into the Vaseline and then firmly and quickly far up into her tight bowels.

No words were spoken as she was prepared; the Headmaster was a great believer in the deed as opposed to the discourse that could have preceded it, and in this case years of experience had taught him that the progression of events spoke more to the victim than any words from him could have done. She’d been stood in the corner with her backside bared, had to stand there listening as the girl before her took her ride, moaning and then screaming as the ride reached its crescendo with the emptying of the reservoir and, when the last few soapy drops had run in and the cramping had begun, with the application of the cane to the bared cheeks by the Headmaster. Brittany had stood in the corner listening, not being allowed to see, and suffering all the more for the deprivation of that sense, her imagination pushing up images to match what she heard that were, if anything, worse that what was actually occurring to the suffering schoolgirl behind her.

And now that it was Brittany’s turn, the Head had been almost solicitous when he’d taken Brittany up onto the platform where the Bicycle stood and from there had directed her to mount it and position herself with her behind sticking back and her cheeks spread far apart. And even now, as he lubricated her rectum and bowels, he was attentive to her reactions, forceful but at the same time almost gentle, almost making her feel that he was doing something he didn’t want to do.

Brittany bent with her behind out, feeling the Headmaster’s finger penetrating her there, the almost sensuous moment when she felt the tip of his finger at the tight ring, his pausing to tease her, and then the thrust of penetration as he forced it in, the greasy lubricant making its entry a discomfort without causing her any real pain. In and out the finger went, the lubricant almost soothing after the figging, the in and out almost stimulating, the feeling kindling something approaching desire, a desire for the thing she knew the Head sometimes did with the girls he’d punished, did to them after the punishment when he bent them over the stool in his office or — she’d been told — while the girl still straddled the Bicycle.

The finger moved in and out and Brittany — still a virgin in that area as well as in the more commonly contemplated place — found herself responding to it, the response drawn from her despite her terror at what she was about to have to endure, what the Head had already emptied into the reservoir that would soon be surging into her behind.

The finger moved in and out, and Brittany knew that it would end soon — the presence of the finger and the soothing motion it was making — and that what would follow would be the nozzle that the Headmaster had already prepared. A large nozzle coated with Vaseline that she knew she’d be forced to have once he’d rendered her bowels sufficiently receptive to it. The finger moved and Brittany thought about the nozzle there instead, and the soapy water that would flow down through it from the reservoir as he gave her the strap and then, as she cramped, set the Bicycle in motion and prepared to give her the cane.

The finger moved in and out, and Brittany found herself responding to the motion, as much as it humiliated her to have that response. The finger moved, Brittany moved with it, and the nozzle hung, swinging back and forth from the long rubber hose, waiting to be inserted where the finger had been.

Which is a pity, because the piquancy of a young woman of legal age (I do not exceed the limits of decency or legality, even in my my most pitched imaginings) under the rod is … well, hot. The older man in charge, the young woman bared or — preferably — unclothed only from the waist down, domination, submission, unexpurgated arousal hidden behind an ostensibly routine and traditional correction that not merely should proceed but rather must proceed.

For boys the ancillary apparatus was real enough: the Eaton birching block, for example, is completely real, as is the long and disturbing history of correction at this “fine” boys school (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eton_College if you doubt me). But were girls really bared, horsed and birched or caned on their naked posteriors? The drawings and modern re-creations are real enough; the historical truths behind them, not so much.

Happily the allure of the idea is enough to overcome its historical unreality. “The willful suspension of disbelief” would be the relevant phrase, especially when the story has the appropriate amount of gothic horror and seeming historical accuracy.

Take “Vaseline,” for example, that “much maligned substance” as one of the unhistorical histories I have in my possession so sweetly puts it. Real substance, US patent issued in 1872. That much of the etymology is clear enough, and indeed externally verifiable.

But, ah well, for the more maligned uses, is there a historical record? Probably, but a cursory search of the net doesn’t reveal anything spot-on, some entry of the first bit of pornography to describe, say, how

… The Master now stepped forward until he was close behind the girl as she was presented to him spread-wide over the block. The buttocks bore the wheals of the cane and of the strap he had chosen to apply after. The illumination was poor between her legs, but the engorged sexual organs spoke to the girl’s state of mind, and to the peculiar fascinations she had towards correction which guaranteed that the correction would be even longer as a result.

But none of this was on the Master’s mind as he stepped forward in the otherwise empty room, his eyes feasting on the girl’s spread buttocks and on the tight portal nestling between them. The gaze does not alter as he unscrews the tin of Vaseline, unbuttons himself and begins to apply the grease to his prick. Our angle of view is not such as to afford us a precise view of the moment of his entry; but his moan of ecstasy and hers of distress is enough for us to understand: that which was inevitably to occur has now indeed occurred, and, penetration begun, it will be a long time before the Master completes, unplugs and dismounts the resisting girl he has begun to ride.

There, couldn’t have said it better if I’d written it myself. Which, unfortunately, I have; as I said above, as much as I’d like to stumble onto a trove of historical fact, it probably doesn’t exist.

And then there are those lovely images, also undoubtedly inauthentic … but … ah what if one or two of them were real? Is this the same sensation that we feel rummaging through old boxes of books in the antiquarian’s shop? When I first went to Paris, the booksellers by the Seine — yes, I confess, I looked through their wares, hoping for a bit of Victorian naughtiness, although admittedly the French were never known for flagellation but rather frottage and whatever other cavorts the Gallic national soul embraces (to my recollection, body odor and fragrant fromage would top the list).

But imagine an image such as the one you see above: she’s restrained, her bloomers are dropped to expose her posterior. We can’t see her right hand, but her left is clearly locked down; her fingers wave in the air, a desperate counterpoint to the pleas that are perhaps ringing from her lips?

No implements are visible, nor indeed is her chastiser; is he the one taking the picture, or is it some minion, who, after preparing the culprit, proceeds to record for posterity her posterior, as yet unmarked? Where is the disciplinarian; is he even now taking down the most vicious of his canes, swishing it through the air in a practice stroke or two? Are there other things we could see if only the angle were better, if only the lens of the primitive camera captured a greater part of the scene? The Indian rubber bag (certainly in use by the mid-1800s), the bakelite nozzle (bakelite was invented in 1907, so perhaps the nozzle should be ivory instead?), the warm water with the bar of soap dissolving in it …

Well, I’d pursue the thoughts. But this is only an interlude after all, so I’ve probably already said too much.

But the Head was used to being in control of the school and everything in it, including particularly the psychological warfare that he waged on the schoolgirls. To purposefully administer discipline in his office knowing the culprit waiting her turn in the other room was likely listening and watching, that was what the Head appreciated. And now, to have that control taken away by the presumably well-meaning but still unexpected and unappreciated intrusion of his own secretary and one of the teachers into the outer sanctum of his office where the girl — Brittany, that was what she was called — waited to be punished? The Head found no pleasure in it.

Nor in the almost instantaneous results of that intrusion. He’d had to put an abrupt end to the ride of the girl he’d been dealing with, and just at the point where her exertions were becoming most mortifying and poignant. And then after disconnecting her from the horse and, after the dismount and a bit of tidying, seeing her out of the office, he’d had to hurry to get the equipment readied for the next girl, and at the same time get Brittany into the corner where, he hoped, her inability to see what she heard would combine with her vivid imagination to push her terror to some sort of pinnacle.

That, at least, was all well and good; not part of his original plan, but still within the broad theme of how he maintained his iron grip on the school and the schoolgirls within it. But rushing broke his concentration and — if he had to be completely honest about it — also spoiled his fun. And the thought that the actions of his secretary and the teacher would force him to arrange for the handyman to plaster over the hole in the wall … that was a dismal thought indeed, so much so that the Head almost wanted to cancel the proceedings altogether and spend the rest of the afternoon by the river for a good sulk.

But he took pride in his little rituals, and was optimist enough to find a silver lining in the blackest of clouds. So there could be no doubt that the discipline session would go on; and as the Head contemplated Brittany’s behind and the thing he’d found cause to insert into the middle of it, he found that the sight had unexpectedly stiffened his resolve. It was amazing what a freshly carved piece of ginger could do, along with a little of that newly invented wonder material, Vaseline.

And soon enough the Head had turned back to the girl astride the horse, bent forward waiting for her ride, or rather for the little ceremony that always took place before the ride began.

It took only a few turns of one of the adjustment wheels to the side of the mechanical beast to cause the girl’s position to change, to cause her buttocks to spread and present themselves widely separated, upthrust and ready for the correction that preceded the prolonged purgative ride. The Head checked that he’d gotten the fresh length of hose ready, and that the thick nozzle on its end was correctly secured and well lubricated.

The reservoir was filling nicely, and the heavy soap content in the water was plain to see. The head picked up the reformatory strap that he always used to prepare the buttocks for the subsequent caning and reflexively swished it through the air in a practice swing.

If he’d been listening he might have heard Brittany draw a deep breath behind him, although the noises she’d continued to make as a result of the fig’s action in her rectum would likely have drowned out her intake of breath.

The Head raised the strap again, this time reorienting himself so that the descent of the heavy length of leather would end on the girl’s buttocks rather than empty air.

A moment’s pause, and the then the downward arcing of the strap towards its target began …

Once the chest was moved, the peephole was exactly where she’d been told to expect it. Crouching down, well aware of her pinned skirt and the sight she presented of her full behind in her too-small panties, Brittany squeezed herself as close to the wall as she could and peered through the hole in the plaster to the scene on the other side.

Much to her surprise, there were two girls in the room; a situation not unheard of, but still one that she found distressing, for it suggested the punishments the Head was administering that day would have witnesses, something that every girl in the school particularly detested. The view through the peephole was too narrow for her to see the girl astride the apparatus of correction; however, she was able to see the girl kneeling with her nose in the corner well enough.

Her uniform was the usual black sweater and pleated skirt; the underpants white and, as she could clearly see, positioned far south of their usual location. That too was normal; when you waited for correction you were invariably bared, and the Head apparently preferred the underpants down to the thighs so that the “target area” (as he liked to call the tight fleshy buttocks of the young ladies) was nicely framed.

And then there were the white kneesocks, fine for the more juvenile girls but dreadful for the older ones, whose fashion sense — while still puerile — had nonetheless matured to the point of detesting anything they had worn as mere children.

But there it was — or rather, Brittany corrected herself, there she was, the girl on the other side of the wall, head down, bared-behind up, quivering at the sounds of the machine as it operated behind her, out of Brittany’s view, the girl shaking as she knelt, waiting her turn.

The girl knelt, Brittany watched. Who was it, she wondered, but the girl cradled her head in her arms — sobbing quietly, Brittany was sure — so there were no clues that would provide an identity. It didn’t look to be one of the usual miscreants, who were legendary for their determination not to show fear (although there could be no doubt that at some point they broke; but not, Brittany presumed, at the point of merely waiting to be chastised).

No, it had to be someone new to the process, perhaps as new as Brittany herself, for Brittany could see that the girl’s shaking had become more pronounced, perhaps rising in synchrony with the pitched cries that were now coming from the culprit being forced to ride astride the mechanism.

The kneeling girl shook; the noises from the girl on The Bicycle reached a fever pitch; and then, suddenly, the handle on the door to Brittany’s waiting room began to turn.

Brittany looked up, frozen in her crouch, unable to move as the door swung abruptly open and several faces looked in at her from the dank corridor outside …

(To Be Continued …)

Or rather, The Bicycle, in capital letters, always whispered from one girl to another in hushed tones. “He says I have to ride The Bicycle in his study this afternoon …” or “I heard she was in his study for a long ride on The Bicycle,” with a quick turn of the head to indicate the spent recipient of the machine’s infernal mechanism.

How the headmaster came on the design was never clear, and, whatever the actual source of his inspiration, the hoary antecedents of the mechanism was something that no one had ever dared to discuss with him. Opinions varied as to its likely origin. One camp held that, being a man of science, the bicycle was sui generis, and had, like Athena with Zeus, sprung forth full-blown from the head’s overstuffed cranium. To the contrary, the other camp posited, the headmaster was a man of history as much as of science, and was a scholar of the art of the thorough correction of the sweeter sex — as was amply evidenced by his other methods in that direction as well as the two locked shelves of moldy tomes in his study with suggestive titles such as “Wholesome Methods for The Discipline of Females,” or “A Panoply of Implements for Application to a Girl’s Un-Knickered Posterior for Chastisement.” Therefore, this camp concluded, there must have been some historical antecedent for the head’s design.

For the girls who had been required to ride, the inspiration for The Bicycle seemed clear: a direct communication with Satan himself. And, if you were to see a recent recipient of its attentions you would likely agree that — even without viewing its mechanism acting on the rider — there had to be something diabolical about it, given its effect on the poor girl or girls who had recently been subjected to that mechanism.

In this regard there was, foremost, The Gait, best described as a markedly slow walking speed, legs unusually far apart and spine curved somewhat to cause the posterior to protrude, as if there were some intense pain in that region that could only be reduced by keeping the cheeks as far from each other as was humanly possible. Those most knowledgeable in these things — the senior girls (who had more years of risk of experiencing discipline) or the habitual miscreants (whose experience was great regardless of the passage of time) — claimed to be able to distinguish a recipient of The Bicycle from someone who had received a caning alone; and could certainly tell both categories from a girl who had experienced the less painful but still humiliating experience of being hand spanked on her bared behind while bent across the headmaster’s ample lap.

***

Whatever its origins, and regardless of the likelihood of her later identification as having had a ride on it, Brittany stood waiting in the small changing room outside the head’s study for her turn on the dreaded mechanism. There was complete consensus as to why the head had the changing room; indeed, there could be no doubt as to his determination to have its being there, since he’d had it built almost immediately upon his arrival at the school.

And standing there waiting, listening to the noises from the other room, trying not to look behind the corner of the chest against the wall to the peephole she’d been assured was there, Brittany was under no illusion as to the purpose of the room — to increase the terror of the culprit as she waited to be corrected, plain and simple.

This was something else the girls debated: how the headmaster, otherwise such a sweet man, could go to such lengths to make the anticipation of correction as excruciating as the correction itself. There were teachers who wouldn’t hesitate to administer a rap on the knuckles in the classroom; there were instructors who would, without compunction, take a girl into the corridor for the application of the school paddle over a skirt. There were even faculty members who had a predilection for more public humiliation — to whit, skirt up, knickers down and bared cheeks whacked in the classroom while the other students watched (or tried not to watch, especially if they were next). But for all the awfulness of these corrections they lacked the element of anticipation that the headmaster seemed so delighted to emphasize.

Standing in the waiting room, feeling the cold air blowing on her knickered behind, trying not to hear the shrieks of agony from the other room, Brittany felt herself the paradigm example of the effects of that anticipation. She’d been taken out of class by the head himself — something that happened only infrequently, even with the repeat offenders. She could replay each moment of that humiliation: the droning on of the teacher (it was etymology, her most abstruse and therefore least favorite subject) terminated by the abrupt opening of the door to the corridor, the head’s entrance and progression to the desk at the front of the room, the sounds of his shoes against the old wooden floor the only noise in the otherwise dead-silent room. The conversation between the head and Mrs. McGregor (for aren’t all such figures Scottish?), and then her exit from the room, the Head’s left thumb and forefinger firmly grasping her ear.

And now, alone in the waiting room, hearing the sounds of the mechanism as it rocked forwards and backwards, and the groans of the girl on the machine as she was stretched from one position to another as it moved, Brittany stood frozen, waiting for her turn on the device.

“Kafkaesque” would have been her thought, had she known of Kafka; although truth be told the sentence was delivered by the headmaster and not by the action of the machine. But the head was almost certainly familiar with the reference, and would have appreciated it, were he not currently engrossed in the action of the machine, soon to be completed on the culprit astride it, sooner still to be reengaged on Brittany’s bared posterior as she pushed the pedals forward over the mechanism, its shafts turning, its pistons rising and falling, penetrating and punishing and purging as they did …

(To be continued …)

Words are sometimes best expressed in their original form, so let the audio speak for itself. I should note that the person you hear has an upcoming punishment session that, alas for her, will also be recorded.

[click here for audio]

You haven’t been a good girl, I’m sad to say.
And i think you know that
- no, Daddy… i haven’t behaved lately
You didnt write your lines for example. and that doesn’t make me happy.
- i was supposed to… and disobeyed…
And you need to be punished for that.
- yes Daddy, i do
- i’ve been a bad girl.

The punishment is to be public, at least some portions of the goings-on recorded and made available. Which parts, she wonders; her mind quickly runs wild to the worst possible scenario, where it’s the noises he chooses to disseminate, the noises her behind makes when he allows her to release, the noises that broadcast to the world how he’s had to punish her, how he’s had to put her bare-bottomed over his knee and wash her out with soapy water, and then put her on a metal bedpan in front of him to expel.

She can’t stop thinking about it, not only what he’ll do when he punishes her, but what he’ll reveal about it after, what other people will know he had to do to her.

Will they see pictures of her spanked behind? Worse, will they hear her being spanked, hear her pleading as his hand descends over and over to land on her red backside? She knows she argues when he disciplines her; knows she cries at some point, even when it’s only a handspanking. Will he choose to let other people hear her, hear her begging, hear her wail?

Will he record the lubrication of the plug; or, worse, his deliberations about which plug he’ll use? He has a distressing habit of speaking to her as he browses through the selection; she’s in the corner with her nose to the wall, of course, so he’s really speaking to her bare bottom more than to her, but it’s nerve-wracking to have to listen to him picking through the possibilities, doing his best impression of goldilocks, “This one is too small … this one is too large … this one is just right.”

Of course what he considers to be just right invariably strikes her as much too large, perhaps not when she’s in the corner and can’t see what he’s selected, but certainly when he has her kneeling with her head down and her behind up with the plug slowly penetrating her bowels. He likes having her in that position for insertion; often he’ll put the plug on the lower part of her back and have her balance it there while he goes off to get coffee. “If it falls, you’ll be punished, sweetie,” he says to her in his best Daddy voice; she does her best, which would be fine if he weren’t so absent-minded, but frequently he comes back in only after a very long absence spent wandering the kitchen, come back to find her still in position and the plug on the floor. The result is always the same — his sighs, followed by the application of a liberal coating of vicks to the nozzle and then her bottomhole. And then her loud squeals as he thrusts the plug in until her behind closes on it and only the base protrudes.

She wonders if he’d show that, her kneeling with her head down and her backside up, cheeks spread wide to reveal the tight little hole between them, the vaseline or vicks glinting on it as she waits like a good girl. She’s never seen herself like that, but he’s told her many times how naughty she looks; worse, he’s told her how she’s always wet between her legs when she waits to have the plug put in … and only bad girls get aroused at the thought of having their bottoms used like that, don’t they. More punishment for an involuntary reaction she can’t influence or control; and it makes her even wetter just to contemplate that.

***

And then the enema. Enemas, she corrects herself — for she never has just one; invariably it’s a series he administers, since he insists on her being “completely cleaned out” when he punishes her, her behind scrupulously clean for his probing finger, and then his cock.

Would he show that? Would he show her bent over her lap, behind up, cheeks spread on the nozzle? Would he show her positioned over the sodomy stool, his finger deep in behind to check her?

She thinks about the nozzles he uses; wonders what he’d show? When she’s been a good girl she gets the thinner douche nozzle or a ribbed plastic one; when she’s been very bad he insists on using either the double bardex compliance nozzle or a thick blue vibrating plastic nozzle that makes her feel the need to go even before he starts the flow of soapy water. Would he show that? Would he show it in her behind … or would he show it going in, sliding slowly up into her already-distended bowels, his hand forcing it slowly into her ass, past her red bruised cheeks?

The enemas and — if she’s been a good girl — the opportunity to expel after each one. And if she’s been bad, he puts in the same plug and then administers something she particularly hates/desires: the cane.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have 12 of the best,” he tells her, actually managing to look sad as he says it. And she knows he means it, knows he truly is sad to have to give her each stroke, have to make her count each one out loud as she feels the searing pain biting across her backside. Sad, despite the rock-hard lump in his pants, sad, despite the fact that he enjoys every minute of her punishment.

“Count them for me, sweetie,” he says, “we’re in no rush to finish,” by which he means he’s in no rush; as for her, the soapy water churning in her bowels makes her more and more desperate for it to be over. More and more desperate as he makes her count each stroke out loud, “enunciation counts,” he says, emphasizing each syllable with a cane tap: “e-nun-ci-a-tion” with a heavy stroke of the cane at the end.

***

And this time? She was supposed to write lines, and didn’t. She promised that she would; promised a number of times. She knows she’s been bad, knows she deserves the punishment she’s going to get.

“I haven’t gotten a proper punishment yet,” she thinks, “and I deserve it. I need to have it.” What’s coming is inevitable; the only question in her mind is how much of it he’ll share with the world.