The Punishment Book

So yes, the story goes like this. That morning we had to dash out quite early; we were in a rush. Abel grabbed a freshly delivered bottle of milk outside the front door and handed it to me with a mumble. I took the mumble for the usual order to hurry up, so I plonked the bottle on the kitchen counter, grabbed my keys and followed him outside; we needed to beat the rush hour.

Four hours later we returned home from our errand in a less frantic state. We walked into the kitchen, and Abel beheld the milk bottle on the counter.

"You didn't put the milk in the fridge," he said.

"Yeah," I said. (Thinking - so what?)

"You. Didn't. Put fresh milk in the fridge."

"Oh, yeah. Oops," I said, realising my mistake. And then I added: "Oh well." It was my day of speaking in simple sentences.

"Bad girl," said Abel. It must have been his day of speaking in simple sentences, too.

I frowned and stuck my tongue out at him.

"I'll spank you for this," he said.

"No, you won't," I said. "We were in a hurry; I didn't have time to do it. You told me to hurry up."

"Watch your tone, young lady. I told you to put the milk in the fridge."

A strange sort of resistance bubbled inside me. No, you didn't tell me to do it, I wanted to say, you said "mumble-mumble", and you were facing away from me, and we were rushing to leave the house.

But I was watching my tone, so instead of saying all this, I frowned and threw a balled-up parking sticker at him, and stomped my foot for emphasis. It felt really, really good, especially when I saw the "wooo boy" expression on his face.

"You," he said.

"What?" I couldn't help grinning.

"Are in so much trouble!" He grabbed me by the hand and marched me upstairs. I whined all the way up, but in truth I felt exhilarated; here was my beloved taking me in hand, and the feeling was oh so sweet. I pounded my feet into the stairs and heard them moan, and was fully prepared to be moaning in pain too, in just a few seconds' time. Ah, I thought, a caning, finally, that'll teach me, that'll make me mind him, that will...

My heart continued to sing to me just like this until the moment Abel returned from his dig around the heap of implements with something I'd forgotten we even owned: a thick frat paddle made out of light wood, with holes drilled into its smooth surface. My breath stopped. Paddles are my eternal nemesis. I'd received my first ever punishment with a holy paddle shaped like a tennis racket, a lifetime ago. I've always found the thick wood extremely hard to cope with, and found the numbness it caused terrifying.

My mouth opened, then closed. Then opened again, to let out a feeble "nooo": a breath rather than a sound.

"Over," said Abel, nodding at the bed.

He didn't tell me to lower my jeans. I silently congratulated myself, despite knowing that paper-thin denim made no real difference when heavy implements came into play; I bent down with my palms on the bed.

I didn't take it well at all. I got four swats, which sounds like not very much at all. However, when the swats are delivered by a strong man wielding a solid chunk of wood, and when what you're used to is the slicing pain of a cane, the punishment makes a solid, strong sort of an impression. The impact threw me forward each time, and knocked the breath out of me, and I wailed, and I complained at the top of my voice, and was generally quite as disgraceful taking my punishment as I had been while earning it.

Very soon, though, it was done. We hugged and made up, and each headed to our desks to work the rest of the day away. Abel reminded me that this punishment was going into the "Punishment Book", I shrugged and thought: "Yeah, yeah," and that was going to be that for the day.

Or so I thought, until later - but not too much later - we were in the kitchen, frying onions for that evening's Bolognese sauce. The onions were hissing quite cheerfully; Abel was stirring them, and I was dancing around to a perv-friendly CD, a new "TaTu" album. Life was good. I was only a tiny bit sore.

Abel's parents phoned. He clenched the phone under his chin and continued to stir the cooking.

I walked over to the stereo and turned in up, because I couldn't hear it very well through his phone conversation.

I hadn't really meant to cause localised outrage with it; I simply hadn't thought about it very well before I did it, just as I hadn't thought about leaving the bottle of milk out on the surface instead of sticking it in the fridge. If I'd stopped to think, I'd probably not have turned the music right up while Abel was trying to chat to his father.

But I did it, and glimpsed at Abel, and I saw him scowl at me in this "What are you doing, young lady?" way; it was like a bee had stung me. Well, what are you doing looking at me like that? I thought, and scowled right back at him, and turned the sound right up again. Still not really thinking about it, you understand.

Clearly fuming, he pointed at the pan with the sauce and walked out of the kitchen. I danced about to the music - yes, it's pretty bad, but everybody is allowed their little musical embarrassments - and stirred the onions, and smirked about making the man get the hell out of the kitchen when I wanted to listen to my CD. When Abel came back having got rid of the phone, I gave him a wide, cheerful, toothy smile and a bum-wiggle for a good measure.

"Right," he said, turning off the gas under the onions.

"Yeah?" I said.

"You are a spoiled, badly behaved little child. Turn off the stereo and get thee upstairs."

I must have been particularly dense that day, because only then did I realise that my behaviour could be seen as bratty in a very basic, childish way, and we all know what happens to brats, and it was the second time that day that I was behaving like a brat, and it wasn't even on purpose, and I was in trouble now.

Oh, the shame of it.

This time I trudged upstairs without much of a fuss, saying unflattering things to myself all the way up. By the time I made to the bedroom, Abel was already waiting with the Holy Paddle in hand, and he ordered me to take down my jeans. I whined at him - only a little bit, only because not whining would have been against my character - but he said: "Now!" - and that was my cue to push down my jeans, and then my panties, while he informed me that he'd be giving me six swats this time. Because, you know, four swats had obviously not worked a few hours previously.**

To be fair, I wasn't even a little sore from my previous paddling. I heal pretty fast.

So, over I went, with my palms on the bed and my now woefully bare behind in the air. I saw him take aim.

The impact of the first swat shocked me so much that I could only open my mouth and gasp; the pain was appalling: nothing had a right to hurt as much as that. I gave a belated howl, and grasped my butt (as though that would help). Even the paddling a few hours before hadn't prepared me for this kind of pain. I couldn't imagine taking one more of these - never mind five.

"Back in position," said Abel.

I babbled apologies, and promises, meaning every one of them, because nothing would possibly inspire me to repeat the offence; it was out of character for me, anyway, and what had I been thinking? All the same, I obediently bent down again, and Abel took aim again.

Over my shoulder I saw how high he raised the paddle, and screamed even before it began its descent. When it hit, I screamed louder and higher, and scrambled out of harm's way, clutching my injured parts. Paddles are pure evil, they are the essence of pain; I could feel an odd mixture of burning and the beginning of numbing up, the terrifying sensation of my nerve endings shutting down. "I can't take this!" I yelled. "No more, I can't!"

"Well, you have to," said Abel. "Get back here." (By that time I'd danced away to the other end of the room, which isn't very far, but still not anywhere near the line of fire.)

Four more? Of these? Whimpering, and promising him Heaven and Earth, I returned to my rightful bending-over place. I can't remember the next two swats precisely, but it was more of the same, only worse: the pain, the numbing in my butt, the screaming (from me) and the reassurances (from Abel); I had become hysterical, and there were two more to go.

Except there weren't. Clearly, the sight of his wife going off her head with pain had touched upon some deep reserves of pity in Abel, for he stroked my shoulder and said: "Have you learned your lesson?"

I promised that I had, suddenly really eloquent.

"I believe you," he said. "I'm going to let you off the last two strokes. With the understanding that nothing like this will ever happen again. Yes? Good girl."

I slumped with my chest on the bed, and allowed myself to express just how sorry for myself I was, by whimpering, rubbing my behind, and sniffling, and all that. Abel hugged me briefly, then told me to get myself together and come down to the kitchen for more hugs, because dinner needed attention.

Then he raced downstairs to save the dinner, and I did something I do very, very rarely: I schlepped to the bathroom with my pants still around my ankles, and angled our only mirror so that it showed my butt. I'd expected to see it swollen to twice its size (an unwelcome image as it was) and redder than a ripe apple.

Though luck. It was a tender shade of pink.

Maybe if I endeavour not to get spanked quite so much, my backside will learn to mark again. But I don't think I could survive such a long dry spell.

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* Yikes, that would be alarming, because Abel could conclude that if the current level of pain I suffer during any given punishment infuses me with goodness for a month only, maybe he needs to make sure I'm in more pain. May I just publicly state the following: Abel, sweetie, there is no connection between how much a spanking hurts and the time I next screw up. None. I swear.

** I'm not sure I buy into this philosophy of increasing the number of strokes every time, because no single punishment is going to turn me into an angel; so if we're not careful, very soon the soundtrack to my spankings will sound something like: "Owch! Fourteen hundred and ten, thank you, sir!" Unless one created a cut-off time of goodness, so that if there was no repeat for, say, ten minutes after the punishment, then it's worked for long enough, and it doesn't have to be increased.