Proper Spanking Stories

On Spanko'

2011-06-18T23:04:00.001-07:00

The Group: A New Story Everyone Will Hate

2011-06-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

*OK, my loyal readers who are used to the highest level of literary art are not going to like this. This story sucks. I've never even seen the TV show "Lost". I was watching, just now, Toy Story 3 and, though delighted because several scenes are very funny, I got a little bored and wrote this chapter one and it really, really isn't all that perfect. Still, maybe I just need to get into the habit of writing again to reattain what we all agree was the awesomeness of what PallidBust once was, which is awesome squared with a Poe cherry on top of nothing has ever been better. I have a chapter two in my head, which involves both a young lass getting spanked and, spoilers, for the first time, a woman spanking.... an MAN! I know, breaking new ground, maybe if I keep on this line but I really am not feeling this story. I feel robotic about it.

Also, some will not like the politics of this story. The politics is the only aspect for which I don't apologize, except to Ayn Rand whom I kind of ripped off here a little. And is surprising to me how many spankos are brain dead, knee-jerk leftists. Now, wait, as I write that, maybe that is the way it should be. Spanking is considered "conservative" as in, old school, as in, the people who understand economics. (Aside, I am not a conservative, nor am I a Republican-I am a Libertarian, and yes, there is a difference, damn it.) But I can see how, making a mockery of convention, a spanko incorporates spanking (discipline, order, authority) into sexplay. Or money, but the people into the money aren't reading the blogs about spanking, they're cashing checks. The spankos are actually interested the the philosophy and psychology, because we seek each other out. We're weird. We like spanking. Not normal. Why is this paragraph single spaced when the others are doubled? I did NOT push a button to make this so. This happened to me. Damn it, Blogger pisses me off sometimes.

Anyways, I think I'm going to post this crap-tastic chapter one, then write off the cuff on why spankos tend to be libs. Yes, I'm going to do this right now.

The Group

Chapter One

The group of strangers still didn’t know how they awoke in a forest. They didn’t know why each was selected: they could find no commonality of race, age (youngest 18, eldest 40), gender, education, wealth… anything. They didn’t even know who selected them. Hell, they didn’t even know if they were selected. They just knew that they were removed from their lives in America, and placed in a forest surrounding a mountain none could identify through the canopy with cargo barges full several tons of axes, saws, and whittling knives. All dressed to individual size, including the boots, wool socks, blue jeans, and corduroy shirts. Well, they also knew there was a housing shortage, and that it was because Tom was lazy.

Tom finished yet another spear for Billy, which Billy took impatiently so he could practice throwing it at a mark he axed into a tree away from the village. Tom, exhausted, noticed the reclining light and made his way to Lauren. She sat before one of the many thorny bushes in the area. Thorny for a reason. Beneath the outcropping of thorns lay a bounty of fat fruits and vegetables growing on the same veins around a solid, stocky trunk. Tom sat down.

‘It’s just not possible. No plant produces fruits and vegetables.’

‘Yet,’ Lauren stated, concern on her face as she navigated her hand out of a foot of barbed, serrated plant, producing a palm of tubers and berries. Now a smile. ‘Quod ergo demonstrandum. Eat.’ She held the food up to Tom in the hands laced with the light wood-weave Tom made for her. They were poofy, ugly gloves made of hard wood strips that made it possible for her to learn how to penetrate the bushes, but they weren’t perfect. They were good enough to allow a foraging artistry that Lauren learned through painful trial and error, but learned it she did.

Tom took the food and ate. He ate quickly, faster than his calm countenance would have suggested. He managed to say, ‘Erat, not ergo.’

‘What did you do back home?’

‘High school, then college, then the world.’

‘What did you study in college?’

‘I forget. Shush.’ Tom edged a few inches away from the female so he could eat in peace. Lauren smiled.

‘TOM!’ Oster guffed his way forward as fast has he could and sat down between Tom and Lauren. ‘I (woof) told you we need those planks put up into more huts. Is that, Lauren, give me some more of those fruits and berries, would ya. Tom, why aren’t…’

‘I already built you three huts, and there’s plenty of wood for a fourth already. Just put them up.’ Tom didn’t look at Oster. He focused on his food.

‘You’re the carpenter.’

‘I asked you people to help me so I could show you how, but I got a lot of no’s and later’s and “I’m busy”. And the next hut I build is mine.’

‘Tom…. Come on.’ Oster took the food Lauren pulled out of the ball of photosynthesis driven shark teeth. ‘Thank you. I’ll need more, though. Tom. Come on.’

‘I’m too tired to try to sleep with twenty people snoring around me and twisting in their sleep. I need space to sleep, I need sleep to work.’

‘Tom,’ Oster said, patiently, as he ate. ‘These huts belong to all of us.’

‘Then all of us can build them.’ Tom twitched his head and saw the left flank of a standing mob. They looked down on him. ‘Tomorrow I’ll take ten of you and show you how to select and down a tree. And I’ll show you how to make planks.’ Tom turned and looked Oster right in the eyes. Lauren knew Tom’s eyes were bright blue, but she didn’t know a man’s eye color could flare. ‘The next day I’ll show ten others how to whittle wood nails so…’

‘Tom! You’re talking like the rest of us aren’t contributing!’

‘Oh, am I?’

‘Yes, you forget we’re all in this together. Yes, we all see you work very hard… oh, thank you, Lauren. Tom, the rest of us are searching for rescue. We can’t just stay here forever. We need someone to help us out of here. That has to be our first collective priority.’

‘Searching for help.’

‘Of course.’

Tom finished his last tuber. ‘We need to find someone to help us, is that the plan?’

‘Well, of course, Tom. What else? No, no, Lauren I’ve had plenty for the moment, but don’t stop. Plenty of people behind me, directly behind me, need food too.’ Oster looked back at Tom’s blue eyes. ‘Tom, our goal has to be to leave this place and return to America and all her wealth. We can’t stay here.’

Tom looked back at the people behind Oster, then at Oster. ‘I learned in kindergarten that America wasn’t always that wealthy. And people didn’t cut down trees and cut planks to build ships to get back to Europe.’

‘Tom….’

‘And the next hut is mine.’

‘Tom, please.’ Oster laughed. He looked behind at the people behind him. They were many. He looked back at Tom. ‘Everything belongs to all of us! That’s only fair, isn’t it?’

Tom looked to Lauren, who turned her face and focused on taking fruit and vegetables out of the bush, then handing them to the line forming to her right. It was a long line.

‘Tom, let’s be fair. Eventually, if we stay here long enough, each of us will have a hut. But that’s just silly. We need to share for the time being, and soon we’ll all be rich again, back in America. But we EACH must SACRIFICE for the moment.’ Tom looked to the group. Billy stood there with the spear Tom made minutes ago. Billy had cold eyes like the others.

Tom stood up. He smiled. ‘Right. Sorry, I was being foolish, arguing such things with you.’ Oster stood up and took his hand.

‘So we should expect another hut soon?’ They shook and shook hands.

‘You better believe it. Don’t worry. I’m going to build the best hut I’ve ever built, real soon.’

‘OK!’ Oster turned to the people standing, waiting. ‘Let’s get around the fire and discuss all the book deals and movies we’ll be making wants we get rescued.’ Oster led the people to the fire, spirits high. Lauren looked up at Tom, standing there, still smiling. It was a cruel smile.

Twenty days later Tom lay on the roof of his hut. He tightened the veins across to planks that had leaked the previous night. He shook his head and sighed and remonstrated himself. His hands hurt from the bush cuts and he realized that all he had learned making this hut could only be useful if he started over on an entirely new hut, which he decided to start the next day. He didn’t have anything else to do. He missed TV and thedrudgereport.

‘Hello!’ Tom rolled off his roof and landed on his feet, using the structure as shelter, and grabbed a spear. ‘Um, Dr. Livingstone I presume!?!?!’ Even at distance, Tom, collecting himself, recognized it.

‘Lauren?’

‘Yes, you fool, now come here my feet hurt.’

‘Are you alone?’

‘Not now, am I?’ She tripped over a defensive log. ‘Fuck!’ Tom put his spear aside and the next thing she knew the red head sat on one of five benches around a camp fire he had made for no reason he could think of. Tom sat on the same bench, looking at his hands. ‘So, you’re doing well. Um, so… things took a rather dark turn after you stole away in the night. See, I only had the one pair of gloves, so everyone kept telling me that they were hungry, and that I should get them more food. And I got tired. And I said someone else should spend part of the day wearing the gloves and getting the food, but everyone told me that I was so good at it that it really didn’t make sense to waste another person’s time so that I should stop being selfish and do my part. And I noticed that my part was rather larger than the others and I said this, and they called me lazy. And then I said well I want first pick of the food, and they threatened me with punishment if I kept demanding more than my fair share. They said since I was good at this work, I had an obligation to do this work, and if I didn’t then I was starving them on purpose. On purpose! Like a monster that keeps people in camps! Horrible thing to hear. I felt sick about it. Then I thought, well fuck them. But they were so many and I’m only me and I don’t know kung fu or anything. Then I thought, Tom. Tom wasn’t there one morning and—‘

‘Lauren, I don’t know.’

‘Tom. Tom, look at me, please.’ Tom complied. His eyes were blue, but not flashing. Lauren breathed in, realizing what had happened to his spirit. ‘Tom, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it as I tracked you down like prey and it occurred to me that you were bullied, and I turned away from you and pretended not to see. I pretended to be small and unimportant so I could pretend my opinion didn’t matter. I did this so I could justify keeping quite. I don’t matter, so what does it matter if I say nothing when injustice happens? Just do my job and hope I’m not next. Well, Tom, I was next.’ Lauren grabbed Tom’s hands and held them between them. ‘Tom, I am sooo sorry that I what the fuck happened to your hands?’ Lauren moved his bloody hands this way and that with her little paws. ‘Tom… Tom, answer me.’

‘I needed fruit and vegetables. From the bushes. I made another pair of gloves but…’

‘Still not all that easy, is it?’ Lauren smiled. Tom smiled back. ‘Haps you could use a coward like me around, hmm? Hmm?’ She cleared her throat. That done, she continued her questioning. ‘HMMPH?’

‘Yes, but Lauren I don’t know. I can’t… what if you don’t stop talking or become a pest or something like that?’

‘Hmmfph.’ Lauren kept fondling his hands as if her hands could heal them, which is ludicrous because her body was fully packed with thetons. ‘Pest indeed.’ She removed a roll of long leaves from her pocket and revealed them to be full of a white sap. ‘I found this while stalking you so I can keep you up all night talking about my hair.’

Irritated: ‘That’s not what I meant. Look, I haven’t thought this through, you ambushed me. I’ve obviously had a bad history with other people ahhhhhhh. Wow.’

‘See?’ Lauren rubbed the sap on his hands gently at first, then as the numbing increased, hard so that the tree blood got deep into Tom’s dermis. ‘Good for bug bites, too. And of course you’re concerned. And of course you can’t trust me. I treated you horribly and I feel so bad about it. Oh, I have an idea.’ She popped up from the bench and walked around a pile of wood bits Tom had dubbed his “work shed”. Different works of different links that served no immediate purpose but seemed foolish to through away. He was in a forest. Where would he throw them?

Lauren inspected, poked, picked up and put down until she found a 25 inch stick, about an inch and a half wide and a quarter inch thick. She whacked it against her hand a few times, then wished it through the air with long strokes. She nodded, satisfied, and returned to Tom. She handed the stick to him.

‘Do you know why I’m handing this to you? Do you know what it’s for?’

‘Ah, you want me to spank you with it?’

‘Pervert.’

‘Well, what then?’

‘Oh no, you’re right, I’m just saying that you guessed “spanking” pretty quickly so, you know, pervert.’ She smiled. ‘And no, I’ve never done this before, but it is called for now I think. I want to stay, Tom, and I want to stop feeling guilty.’ She stood in such a way as to suggest, to Tom, that she was far more patient than he. He took the stick and looked at it, turning it over in his hands. Then he laughed.

‘Why the Hell not? There’s nothing on TV anyway.’

‘That’s the spirit. You’ll see, this is one of my many brilliant ideas.’ Proud of herself, swaying back and forth slapping her hands in front of her, she smiled and waited. Then she got tired of waiting. ‘Well? Get on with it.’

‘OK.’ Tom stood and looked around, like he was about to steal something. Of course nobody was there except squirrels and squirrels are all perverts everyone knows that. Obsessed with hoarding nuts and chasing women up trees: disgraceful behavior. It had to be said, but now back to the man spanking the woman.

‘OK, well. Um…’ Tom kept looking around. ‘I guess if you’d arrange yourself over the bench we can get started.’

‘How?’

‘Which way?’

‘Whatever is most comfortable I suppose.’

‘Right. OK.’ Lauren looked at the bench, about a foot above the ground. ‘I don’t want to just bend over with my hands on the bench, that will hurt my lower back and I don’t like getting stiff and I would like some support so… Tom, don’t get Puritanical on me.’ She added this last part when she unbuttoned her jeans and lowered the zipper. She knelt down, facing the bench along the broad side, then lowered her jeans to thigh level, and bent over the bench so that her head nearly touched the ground on the opposite side. The white cotton panties only covered the top of her bottom, which wouldn’t be the right place to spank anyway, Tom guessed. It could hurt her spine.

‘You don’t want me to get Puritanical? I’m about to spank you with a stick, what could be more Puritanical?’

‘I meant prudish, then. I’d never feel that stick through the jeans.’

‘Actually, I’m betting you would.’ He said, talking to her ass.

Bent over the bench, talking to the man standing behind her, she threw her hands up in the air in frustration, and then landed them back down to balance herself. ‘We’ll you’ve seen my ass now anyway, so get on with it. From my current vantage point I don’t see any ants yet but it’s only a matter of time.’

‘See, this is what I’m worried about. You. Are. Bossy.’

‘Bossy!?!’ Now she really was frustrated. She kept her position, ass in the air and face at grass level, but he body vibrated and her hands battered the ground. ‘I’m pants down, over a bench ass in the air face at grace level! Asking you to whoop that ass because I feel bad! Is this opposite day?

Tom was amused, but kept it from his voice because… well, he didn’t know. Instinct, maybe. ‘How many do I give you?’

‘A lot. I’m not going to respect you if you whack me ten times. This has to be an event to remember, and it has to be personal, so you have to whack away until you feel that I feel the we know where we stand.’ Nothing happened for longer than Lauren liked. ‘Tom, I’m serious. If you wuss out of me I’m going to walk all over you. If you show me that you’re a man of will, I’ll be much happier respecting you.’

You have TOTALLY DONE THIS BEFORE.’

The woods were lovely dark and deep for about twenty seconds.

‘Admit it!’

‘Fine! Fine. Sorority days, big sister, love her but she was on a total power trip and, yeah, you know, I have some experience with this sort of thing which is how I know it works. Look, I trust you, I wouldn’t do this with just anyone.’ Tom stared at her ass some more. ‘Tom, are maybe I should say “sir”, the hardest part is the first few licks. After that you’ll get the hang of it and it’ll take all my wailing to get you to stop. I trust you, so please trust me.’

‘This is absurd. This is like bad writing. Only a horrible writer would write this situation.’

‘That’s how we know it’s real. God likes to play games with us, it’s why he bothers to keep us around. Now, for love of HER, would you please-‘

‘God is totally a guy.’

‘Bah!’

‘Fine. Fine. I’ll do it. Not because of the God thing, because of the… whatever. I forget how we got here. So, estimate, under/over, how many whacks?’

‘It’s more an art than a science, but whack until my bottom is mostly red, then start count and keep in mind how much noise I’m making. If I’m only making little mews and grunts, I’m still defiant. I need to be taken down a peg or two, so you know what, get me to say, “I’m a naughty girl!” then finish up, like, at least ten more but it’s important that you feel satisfied so keep going until-‘

WHACK

Lauren sucked in, surprised of course, and then breathed out. She measured the initial sting and building burn. She made an expert conclusion. ‘Good. Good, good stroke. But keep it up, don’t spank then stand around counting out “One Mississippi”, you need to keep up a brisk, regular pace or there will not be a buildup of-“

WHACK

And, at long last, the dance commenced. Tom had played some golf back in the world, so he had a pretty good low swing and after a few swings had managed to land the stick evenly across the cheeks. She had a pretty good butt for this type of pastime, he thought. Toned, plenty of flesh. Spanking or no, he didn’t much care for women with tiny nothing bottoms. Like a horse without reigns. When you want the creature to move, what do you pull? Pure Anarchy.

Back to the dance. It was a dance. Lauren’s bottom, at rest, was positioned about half a foot from the bench. Upon the whack, it rose half an inch in height and retreated, part from the force of the blow and part from Lauren’s instinct to flee pain, a few inches towards the bench. A rubber band effect took effect, and after only a few seconds her bottom returned to the resting point and a little further as Lauren overcompensated from the blow, and just as her bottom reached the apex of its journey another crack from the stick. This merging of action from both spankee and spanker formed, naturally, after only thirty seconds. After that it was, like a dance formal, a repetition of reciprocal roles.

Being repetitive, Tom had some time to think. So did Lauren, but her thinking was muddled at the moment. You know women, slightest thing and they forget their middle names. But Tom could still think, as he worked on his golf swing, and he was impressed. This looked that it really hurt. Not really really, like broken limb, but it must sting like the dickens yet Lauren, as she predicted, made only mouse squeaks. Kind of an “eep” but broken up with the occasional gasp or “ergh” but all of her reactions were adorable. And the spanking continued and continued to be adorable but it kept going and quite frankly, Tom was getting hungry. He added some zip to his swing and Lauren moved from “eeps” to announcing full voiced, testy, “ows”.

‘OKokokokokok… I admit it. I’m a very naughty girl. There. I think we can now move on to ow! What the fuck!?’

‘You said to keep spanking after you said-‘

‘Not necessary this time! Not at all! Are you satisfied?’

‘Yeah. Well, not really. Content, I guess, but I was content before we started.’ WHACK. ‘You said that you wouldn’t respect me if-‘

‘I’m a liar! I’m a very naughty girl, and sometimes I lie, and that was a lie.’

‘So we’re good?’

‘Yes.’ Lauren said from the ground.

‘You know I’m talking to your ass right now?’

‘May I get up?’

‘I really need to give permission for that?’

‘Of course. Punishment isn’t over till you say. It’s amazing to me how little you know about this sort of thing.’

Tom looked at his stick. His “whoop’in stick”, then back at her ass. He looked around again to make sure nobody saw him whacking a woman half his size, but he didn’t see anything but degenerate squirrels. He whacked her again.

‘Why would I know anything about this sort of thing?’

Talking to the grass, Lauren wiped some tears from her eyes and sniffed. ‘Oh please. Are we done?’

‘You said you were supposed to call me “sir”?’

‘Oh! La de da, look at the fast learner! Can I get up now, sir?’

‘Yes.’

Lauren lifted herself and staggered a bit. Tom grabbed her arm to steady her, which acceptance she accepted until she shrugged him off. She did it in a polite way, but still, she’d just been spanked pretty freaking bad. She grabbed her jeans, breathed in, then out, then in, then pulled them up. ‘Ouch. Motherfucker. Shit-on-a-stick, mutherfucking ouch.’

‘It’s impressive, how calm you said that.’

‘Can I stay now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I’m hungry. Do you have more of those wood gloves for the bushes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Ouch. Now tell me to kiss the paddle.’

‘I’ve decided to call it the whoop’in stick.’

‘A rose by any other name—nevermind. I have to kiss it, otherwise I’ll get bitter.’

‘What difference does it make if—‘

‘Don’t be difficult!’

‘Yes, Ma’am.’

TO BE CONTINUED….

Yeah, I know, nobody believes me on that

All the Stories are in the first 2 Years

2011-05-22T23:42:00.000-07:00

So if you come to this site, ignore the early months and go straight to the back. I think I'm going to start working again on some of my unfinished stories. It's very late here and I can't sleep. I think its because of the monster under my bed.

PB

Two Actions Lacking in Iron Man II

2011-04-08T21:03:00.000-07:00

Too... predisposed to go into it now, but I'll comment on them later.

PB

Sometimes I love a Hack's Work

2011-01-15T21:30:00.000-08:00

Aaron Sorkin is a hack. He's the worst kind: he's supposititious. He puts forward what seems true in order to eliminate the needful feeling to explore the truth, which costs time and effort and thus appeals to instant gratification. I assume I'm not the only one into that.

And worse!, he makes characters to fit his engineered story, as opposed to making characters who generate a story. A very, very sad human. My narcissism pities those that don't know they are narcissistic. I'd hate him but I'm confidant that he hates himself more than I ever could because ever moment of self reflect requires that elitist to find a equivocation or conjure a lie. And thus the petty are punished. Also, it's wrong to hate, but whatever. The important thing is that I don't feel bad owning and loving each season of The West Wing.

So, that perfect logical proof stated and accepted by every living human(and most of the dead), I feel no harm in LOVING this scene in one of his movies, each of which make shit house rats appreciate the luxury of shit houses.

PB

P.S. Do I know the endings of all my my neglected stories? Yes. Do I have more stories to start so I can neglect? Yes. Am I going to do any work? Come on, you know.

Take that, Venezuela!

2010-10-31T07:46:00.000-07:00

Now the world shall live a year of prosperity and peace, as the new Miss World is American!!!! And Southern, which is power icing on the awesome cake.

Not only does free market capitalism and the rule of law produce wealth, justice, and scientific super-doperness for all, it also produces hotness. Wow, the spell checker recognizes "hotness".

Some might call me petty for using the Miss World competition to support my economic theory of freedom and degrade fascism in South America. I have an answer to these calls: so what?

I confess that Miss Egypt is freaking beautiful. How didn't she win? Did she drop a baton in the talent section? Whatever. All that matters is the world is yet again ruled by an 18 year old southern American girl. Just as Thomas Jefferson dreamed...

My favorite pitty is self-pitty

2010-09-05T20:43:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time. I've been busy. I've done more physical labor this summer than in my previous, entire life. Still, I have these ideas for stories, and I think about them all the time.

And speaking of discipline, I've been dealing with self-discipline, with what some may call "chemical dependence". Sometimes I get rude and mean, and I don't want to be that way, but I also don't want to be bored. Some people don't want a drunk asshole around. Some people may even object to putting the " before the period, but screw them. I have more important things to worry about.

Point is, I'm not making any promises, but I felt a great pleasure writing my stories, and I think two or three people took some pleasure in reading them. And each story I started is a planned story. I know how it ends, I just haven't written it down because I'm lazy and because writing, for me, hurts at first. Hurts in a place I can't rub. But I'd like to finish them.

So, overly mawkish as I am, I'm none-the-less still here.

Niki Flynn grew up and is out?

2009-09-09T20:54:00.000-07:00

What the Hell?

Never say never

2009-08-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

That said, time, for humans, only exists in finite stretches. Never and always have a different meaning for the living than it does for the grammarian. I don't want to say I will never finish these stories I started. The pain, for me, is that they are finished in my head. I know the plots, the arcs, the words, but I'm just not going to write them. At least for now. That's the pain. The pathetic thing is, and is, is that I don't just let the blog go. And, in addition, I don't know what my problem is.

I've written this next paragraph many times. I deleted them all. Everything I write sounds fake even if it the truth as I see it. Still seems fake. This seems somehow worse, but it is as honest as I can make it.

Meanwhile, I have put myself to work in a more direct fashion in my biological life. There is a lot to learn in the world. There is always something else to learn. So I guess I'll do that for now. For you few, you precious few, that liked my work, my advice is to spend all your waking time re-reading it and sending me money.

PB

The Good Stuff

2009-06-28T23:35:00.000-07:00

I've enjoyed Restrained Elegance for some time. Top notch producers and lovers of the art of the perverted. Well, moments of genius must be appreciated if the human race is to mean a damn.

I recently watched their film "Chef Mistress" starring Ariel Anderson and Amy Allen. Bondage/spanking/smoking-hot-chicks/and cooking. People, treat yourself, buy a membership for a month and download years of pictures then cancel before they rebill, but make sure you download and watch Chef Mistress. Sexy, sure. But sexy is all over place. This film is better than mere sexy-- it's funny.

And no, I'm not going to write anything soon. I'm busy and I think I have biochemically induced depression.

PB

Jesus Christ on a Pogo Stick

2009-06-10T00:28:00.000-07:00

This is the most pathetic thing ever. So sad. It appears that Eliot was right. This is so depressing I don't even feel bad for being a bad person anymore. Wait... crap, this might be the prologue for The Road Warrior!

Tits in a gay bar, I LOVE The Road Warrior!

The annoying thing is that the new dark age of Western Civilization is the center of the Coventry Mysteries story line. I can't possibly be expected to write these stories as fast as the West collapses. And if I could, why bother? Put in all that work so that China could own it? I think not. I don't work to build Education Camps.

However, I do have an impressive cache of guns. So much fun. Of course, I've also read The road, which read like less fun. But I don't have a kid. I just have a bunch of guns.

PB

This is rather annoying

2009-05-18T08:22:00.000-07:00

What I don't get is, is that I I have changed NOTHING in the blog format, yet the blog format keeps changing on its own. What the Hell?

Got it!

2009-05-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

Abelard Winchester Coventry Mystery Series

The Superfluous Book

I had another half-hour to kill before the client scheduled a knock on the door of the smartest man in Proper, and loyal leg man or not I was bored at my little desk and I wanted someone else to know it. Coventry, at his rather grander desk, finished his third newspaper, scoffed at the world, and took up the inventory reports of his apocalypse bunker. He was right on his daily schedule.

‘Boss, I’m bored. I think I’ll hit the Stairmaster for a few-“

‘You labored on that machine this morning for six minutes past an hour.’ Abelard Winchester Coventry, registered genius, kept his eyes on his work but wasn’t done with me. ‘Exercise is excellent for the brain and the heart, but further waste of calories would be Sisyphean, not to mention vain.’

‘No doubt. But keeping this chair from floating into the ceiling fan isn’t stimulating my mind.’ Plus, beach season was on its way and I had a little number that allowed little mystery, but I didn’t think that argument would hold any of Coventry’s water because he was a prude so I demurred. ‘So, I’ll just pop up stairs and…’

‘You finished your crossword?’

‘Yeah.’ I waited, then made a face and said, half keeping the inner child sarcasm to a minimum, “Yes.’

‘You finished it entire?’

‘I’m finished with it, yes.’ Silence. ‘Fine, I couldn’t break into the bottom left hand side at all, and only half finished the other bottom half. If we had the internet then—‘

’We would have an electron miasma poisoning our synapses. 60 Down is “Trousseau”.’ He spelled it for me, and given that hint I had to get back to work. Bastard didn’t even write in the answers, he just looked at the crossword for a few minutes before I cut it out. Yes, vain displays are Sisyphean.

---

When I admit clients I like to think that the Coventry home is a study in contrasts. Their reactions to shifts reveal a thing or two about their mental states. My procedure was wasted on Francine Able, but I used it anyway. A short woman, early forties, and buttoned up and prim from shoes to boring hair. She was pretty, in a tight little female way. She dressed like she was on her way to beg to a banker or preacher. She took one look at my jeans, black T-shirt, and dark strained red hair just touching my shoulders and she made a face to say “a terrible mistake must have been made because we both occupy the same space.” I get a different face when I usher male clients.

Ahem.

I tacked her down as a mean Sunday school teacher, and dismissed her accordingly. Then I smiled and ushered her through the sunlight drenched yet barren hallway to the dark, brooding private office of the boss. He kept the lights dimmer than most would like in their office, except for a few wall lamps highlighting various doodads he liked to stare at from time to time. One of the doodads was an early, discarded page of the second draft of the Declaration of Independence he got from a former Supreme Court Justice whose wife was a doper and needed cover. That case was before my time.

‘Missus Able, sir.’ I showed her to a chair more comfortable than mine, watched her sit, then took a flanking position at my desk. My standing orders at this point are to look, listen, and disappear until spoken to.

‘You are Abelard Coventry, correct? I am in the right place?’ Her voice was stronger than I would have suspected. I’d expect it to be hoarse from yelling at small children about Hell I guess, but then the boss tells me that I’m too impatient for any critical thinking analysis more time-consuming than prejudice so what do I know? Also I’m still not used to the southern accent. It still feels like an act; like an amateur theater group playing Gone With the Wind, but damn it these people actually talk like this. Weird creatures, but we went to a Hell of a lot of trouble to conquer them in the Civil War, so we’re stuck.

‘Yes, madam, I am Abelard Winchester Coventry, for good or ill, and this is my dogsbody, Fallon Bridle. Her tongue is vulgar and lacking in grace, but it’s discrete. You wish to hire my services, but I’m, ha, afraid your letter was as vague as shadow in a trench.’

‘Yes. Well.’ She clutched her blue purse/bag to her blue clad chest and I wondered if she had a breathing device in it hooked to her lungs because the color of her 19^th Century modesty-conscience getup hurt even my throat, and I was all the way behind my desk and out of harms way. ‘I suppose I must tell you everything?’

‘First you must tell me what you want. The issue define, hopefully, we can omit the necessity of universal cogitation.’ She took the boss rather well. Most people assumed he was making fun of them, which wasn’t fair because he was just mean, not mocking. However, I think Francine Able was more embarrassed than nonplus.

‘Well, my husband has a number of a photographs, five, and I want them.’ Oh really?

‘I shall presume you have asked him directly for these photographs.’

‘Don’t. I haven’t in ten years.’

‘You are separated?’

‘No, of course not!’

‘Well, madam, I fear you may be asking omniscience of me after all.’

She cleared her throat. Here it came. ‘My husband is Dr. Perry Able, dean of Falcon Head Preparatory Academy, and we have been married for twenty years last month. He is a very cautious man, and I’m afraid some early experiences, before we met, soured him on the whole idea of trusting women.’

‘Not unwise.’ Dogsbody or not, someday I’m going to kick him.

‘Hmph. I see I was justly warned of your prejudices as well. Well, in any case, then you understand, and I suppose you will think he has some… some… psychological disorder. I’ve been told that before, by experts.’

‘I reject psychologists, at least expert psychologists, but I accept the terms of the school if used under a named dictionary. However, I suggest, for the interest of my time, you make yourself plain using the direct words of whichever language you are most comfortable with, if not English. I need no more “wells.”’

I’ve seen this before. Anger helps people get over their embarrassment long enough to spill it. However, boss doesn’t infuriate potential clients for this reason. Or any reason that I can detect, but then again I’m not a detective. I’m a dogsbody.

‘Well, as a deposit of my trust, I allowed my then fiancé to take pictures of me in compromising positions in a context that… doesn’t speak well of my propriety. In order to have something on me. An advantage. And I performed the acts because of love. Do I need to detail them?’

‘I will charge you extra if it is necessary.’

‘Well…’ she stiffened. “He took the pictures, and hid them from me, and now I want them.’

‘Do you--no. Why do you want these pictures now, when you want no alteration after 20 years of marital bliss?’

‘Because he’s a fool to still doubt me. He’s always been foolish, in his way. He has been nothing but kind to me, and I love him and he loves me back, and we have created and raised three perfect children that I love more than I can say, and I want those Goddamn pictures and I will pay to get them.’

‘This may be an expensive want.’

‘I have my own family accounts and I’ve saved my allowance. My needs and pleasures are more than met by my husband’s largesse. I need and want those pictures.’

‘Yes, well I don’t empathize but I do sympathize. However, after I remove the pictures your husband will notice them missing and your tranquil union will be jeopardized.’ I like the lack of “if” in that sentence. ‘Pretend reason, madam. To what purpose do you wish these pictures?’

‘To give them back to him, of course.’

‘Of course. I shall need a written contract, dated, and a retainer adequate to fill the final bill; otherwise these pictures could give this job the patina of blackmail to the causal observer. I suspect a period of three days effort. That is expensive. Fallon, type what I say, and make three carbon copies.’

---

I walked Missus Able out with two copies of the contract: one for her and one for her lawyer. She gave me one last disapproving look, then thanked me like people thank their dentists and was off to whack children with rulers or cluck her tongue at married adults holding hands in public. I heard Coventry banging about in the kitchen, as glaring and sparse an enclosure as the hallway. I slipped off my shoes and padded on my bare feet to the kitchen’s sill just to annoy him. Plenty of brilliant men thought my feet were cute. This genius thought my feet allowed me the art of autokinesis. I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms over my lower class T-shirt.

‘I don’t think she likes me.’

‘She no doubt considers you a harlot. Not without reason: her subconscious very likely saw the two artificial holes in your ears made with blades for the purpose of pagan adornment.’

‘Hmpf. Check adequate?’

‘Ample. The woman has no talent for business. That she has no training should be obvious.’

‘Spotted right off when I saw that her shoes fit. Speaking of business, I assume you wont be leaving your rabbit hole for this job.’

‘This afternoon I shall be reading a transcript of a recent talk on economics and disease in Africa by Emily Oster. It came in the mail while you climbed a nonexistent mountain in the comfort of my home. The female is an ecstatic thinker, but she can think, so I shall require solitude to check her work. I wont require a woman scampering underfoot to distract me. Later, I must solve the solar panel problem for that fool in Arizona. His check cleared. Non-goat herders in Arizona are invariably trustworthy.’

‘Who would want a woman underfoot? I’ll arrange with the client for a good time to get into the house. I figure we should get the servants out so they don’t gossip about a nubile, breathtaking young lady like me in too tight jeans noising around the Master’s chambers. I can find these pictures in your three days of effort.’

‘No need. The pictures are in the dean’s office of the preposterously named Falcon Head Preparatory Academy.’ He mixed an ice sauce, from scratch, with the force some people use to murder.

I turned my head to get some of my hair out of my eyes. ‘How do you figure?’

‘A tale of wife searching for photographs, in her own home, for twenty years—and not finding them? Claptrap. Wives are as good at sniffing as bloodhounds. There is only one qualitative difference between female humans and dogs.’ He opened the oven, sniffed, then closed it. ‘This trout resists. Remind me not to patron this fisherman again. He has bad luck. For a female of status to grow so desperate as to relay her graceless tale to two strangers means that she has checked all paper trails, so no safety deposit boxes. No banks, no post offices. Besides, such a man with the credentials to govern such a privileged school, forsaking riches, would no doubt amuse himself with pictures of his wife in his sanctum sanctorum after giving a lecture on morality to an errant student. I suspect he is a gadfly. A graduate of Harvard. The institute attracts a wealth of students blissfully free of reality when they pretend to think. Still, ring in nose, they have their uses.’

‘Yeah, a bunch of dummies. So what’s the plan?’

‘You will contact your patron, Miss Feinstein, and-‘

‘She’s not my patron.’

‘You will contact Miss Feinstein, whatever she is, as she is ideally placed in their society, and she will enroll you tomorrow at the Academy as her hopelessly rebellious niece that has been expunged from institute after institute. That should satisfy two egos. Once positioned, you will act out, play the brat, be sent to the dean for a lecture, and memorize everything in the office. Then you will finish your school day as a schoolgirl in case I need another intrusion. The work may require an additional day. I shall expect a report on the office after Miss Feinstein drops you off.’

‘The academy is for high school students. I’m twenty-six.’

‘You are sufficiently youthful. However, you may make what preparations as you see fit. Please don’t use drugs in my home. Keep the receipts of legal purchases.’

I could be insulted or flattered. To serve Coventry, and to keep from committing the act of homicide, justified or not, it’s a good idea to go with flattery whenever possible.

‘What’s the one qualitative difference between female humans and dogs?

‘Dogs don’t bite the hands that feed them.’

As a woman, I was offended.

I sniffed the air for the rainbow trout. He noticed it, but then again he notices everything.

‘I prepared it as Wulfe Trout. There is more than enough for two.’

‘I’ll call Feinstein after lunch.’ The problem with a genius is that he can make things, like trout, better, so he has to be suffered. As a woman, I was offended. As a dogsbody, ruff-ruff.

---

The bus. I rode a school bus, and the horrible thing was that it was rather pleasant. It had been some years since I suffered a pack of young men sniffing about. Dogs. Lovely, adorable dogs. Still, none of them could tell the difference between confidence and arrogance. And they didn’t seem to appreciate that, after the glorious act of sex is finished, there’s this whole thing called “living together” that happens. Jesus, I felt old. But compliments never hurt.

I’d never been to a prep school (state educated, or “state inculcated with banalities and platitudes” as some bosses say), but I’m pretty sure even prep school high schools have changed since I was a sweet little thing sneaking cigarettes behind the gym and living the Breakfast Club dream. This school was for advanced students (kids with parents with money) between the age of 18 and 19 who wanted to clep out of the first year of college.

I didn’t go to college myself, except to bail my sister out of jam.

‘Miss Handel.’ Finely. Third hour and I was called upon at last. Now to start my errant plan. Step one: I continued to doodle in my notebook with my head down. ‘Grace Handel, please. Would you like to answer the question?’

‘Which question?’ I murmured, still doodling a scene from Boogie Nights.

American History Professor D’Accord persisted. ‘The question I just asked about early American History.’

‘Don’t give a shit.’ I murmured again, but this time a little louder for the benefit of the class. Heh-heh-heh, my brilliant plan was foolproof.

‘Well good for you! Class, I was going to wait a few weeks, but Miss Handel is absolutely correct. Bunch of bullshit.’ I stopped doodling, but kept my face down. Frozen, perhaps, is a better word for my face at that moment. I’d been made! ‘What we know of it is mostly lies, and whatever is true is largely just lies and opinions from a bunch of dead men. Oh, and quite bullshit.’

I looked to my left, then my right, hiding behind my hair. I felt a certain buzz in the air. Twenty young minds suddenly cared.

‘Instead of wasting our time with some bullshit, let’s discuss how we think American history should have begun. Huh? Sound like fun, class?’

The class of teenagers was unanimous that Make Believe class would be more fun than History class. At the end of the hour the general consensus was that George Washington should have been more like Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Martha Washington should have been like “that chick in Terminator.” Also, I was lauded as a hero, especially by the teacher.

Modern Education: 1/My Plan: 0.

Next hour was gym, and I hadn’t played volley ball in forever so I put My Plan on hold. My serve was rusty but true. I also fenced for the first time and I must say jabbing someone with a sharp stick is as enjoyable as it sounds.

Then lunch. They didn’t serve Wulfe trout. It may have been fish sticks, or perhaps pizza, but I’m sure it wasn’t Wulfe trout on ice sauce in a almond honey glaze.

OK, right back at it six period: math. Never liked the stuff. The problem with My Plan was that the teacher told me not to worry about being called upon because it was my first day, so I folded five pieces of paper into five triangles (footballs) and flipped them at the girl sitting in front of me. The first one missed, but the second one donked her right on her pate. She reacted, and I prepared for a good dressing down, which I would ignore until I was sent to the principle for capital punishment. Heh-heh-heh, My Plan was unstoppable.

The teacher, Mrs. Reynolds, took my footballs, then spent the rest of the hour teaching the class how to make the things tighter and firmer than mine: and she never mentioned angles or hypotenuses or any of that crap I didn’t remember. Again, I was well received. I only had two more classes to go to get sent to detention.

My Plan stood on the edge of a knife.

But it was ok! They wanted to play rough? Well, sister, I can play rough.

We mob of students had ten minutes to scramble in the halls to get to our next class, and I spent my time asking, loudly, “Hey, anyone holding? You, you holding? Anyone have any hydro? KB? Some kind bud? Come on: I’m dry and I have a hundred bucks—‘

A female teacher stopped me! Yes, nothing could stop My Plan. It was beyond the pale, you see. Then the teacher smiled.

‘Please, we do not allow crass commercialism on school grounds because capitalist imperialism destroys the mind. If you must buy pot, please do so after school in the parking lot like all the other students. I understand the green van has the best prices but the blue Chevy has the highest quality. Now you really should get to class, young lady. Much to learn!’

damnitdamnitdamnitdamnitdamnitdamnit.

Other than the “young lady” bit I couldn’t fucking believe it. I admit I panicked. And oh hell my science class was in Building A. Where was freaking Building A?

‘Hey, excuse me…’ A pair of girls walked by me, distracted in conversation, so I tapped one of them on the shoulder. ‘Could you please tell me where—‘

‘What is going on here!’

I turned and dropped my books, terrified at the screeching behind me. It was that same teacher that told me where to go buy illegal drugs, but now she glared at me. I turned around to make sure she was looking at me. The girl I tapped looked mortified, but mortified at me. She covered her face in shame and ran off crying, her friend comforting her.

‘Look at me!’ the teacher said, and I did. ‘There is NO touching, ever, young miss! Are you a savage?’ I thought she might spit on me. ‘You are coming with me to the principle’s office right now, young lady!’ She didn’t grab me, because touching wasn’t allowed, but she non-the-less railroaded me to horrible lecture, perhaps even detention.

My Plan was unstoppable.

Oh how very timely!!

2009-05-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

I got nothing done this weekend. My first edition of the Coventry series hasn't changed in months. However, it has slogged along a little beyond my first posting by that point. I wasn't planning to post it until the first story was complete, but then I just read this:

A teacher with nearly 50 years' experience yesterday spoke of her 'devastation' after being banned from her school over a claim she assaulted a pupil.

Thelma Hoskins, 67, said she simply put her hand on the boy's shoulder after telling him off for disrupting a lesson.

FEAR ME, MORTALS! Yea, Pallidbust can predict the future!!!!!

Holy crap, western society is falling apart faster than I thought. Having no children, and being a heavy smoker, I don't even care anymore. It's funny, really. We witness, without a doubt, the largest mass suicide ever, and people are only concerned about housing prices. This sorry state of affairs is particularly good for me, because it proves Abelard Winchester Coventry, registered genius 100% correct.

Now, of course, the problem is to write his tale before it becomes history, and before the environmentalists outlaw electricity. Pallidbust finds himself in a race against the fourth dimension itself.

Without further ado, some more of the first tale of Abelard Winchester Coventry, registered genius. Enjoy while you can.

Damn it.... I can't seem to post it from Microsoft word without it being in one mush without spacing... crap. This is embarrassing. Somewhat humbling as well. Ummm.... I'll work on it.

Not Dead Yet

2009-05-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

People, really, I know I've done nothing on this blog for ages, but I've had some-ahem-health issues, I've quit my job, I'm moving to another city, and I'm going back to university. I'm dealing with a lot of shit here.

I'm a little bitter that quitting was so amicable. I really wanted to say something like "take this job and shove it" or "you can't fire me: I quit!" but instead they threw a nice little party and everything was all smiles. I think some of them for glad to get rid of the token conservative, even though I've explained to them a thousand times that I'm a libertarian, not a republican or conservative. Goddamn commie lefties just can't listen.

However, those are excuses. I will make a very less limp than a garden hose effort to finish the first of the Coventry series or the next chapter of Tessy. It's in my head, I just need to get it down in light pixels.

You know, they say the difference between professional writers and amateurs is not talent, but that that professional writers actually write. I begin to suspect that this is the case.

Don't forget, my loyal beyond reason fans, to keep on rocking in the free world. Unless you happen to view my blog from North Korea. If that is the case, dude, that really sucks. Try to escape. South Korea has an excellent film industry. Have you seen Old Boy? Freaking outstanding.

PB

And I'm back in the game...

2009-02-25T17:50:00.000-08:00

Runners: take your mark. Set... GO!

OK, It's been awhile

2009-01-29T15:33:00.001-08:00

I know I know I know. But I really have been very, very lazy. I mean busy.

In any case, this is the funniest complaint letter in the history of carping.

I read it at work and was crying by the end. People in the next office thought I was having a heart attack.

PB

P.S. At the very least, this weekend, I plan to add some more links to other "lovers of the rod" type sites I like to visit. Hopefully I'll finish the next installment on the mystery series. Slow but steady.

Abelard Winchester Coventry Mystery Series

2008-12-18T21:18:00.000-08:00

Abelard Winchester Coventry Mystery Series
The Superfluous Book
I had another half-hour to kill before the client scheduled a knock on the door of the smartest man in Proper, and loyal leg man or not I was bored at my little desk and I wanted someone else to know it. Coventry, at his rather grander desk, finished his third newspaper, scoffed at the world, and took up the inventory reports of his apocalypse bunker. He was right on his daily schedule.
‘Boss, I’m bored. I think I’ll hit the Stairmaster for a few-“
‘You labored on that machine this morning for six minutes past an hour.’ Abelard Winchester Coventry, registered genius, kept his eyes on his work but wasn’t done with me. ‘Exercise is excellent for the brain and the heart, but further waste of calories would be Sisyphean, not to mention vain.’
‘No doubt. But keeping this chair from floating into the ceiling fan isn’t stimulating my mind.’ Plus, beach season was on it’s way and I had a little number that allowed no mystery, but I didn’t think that argument would hold any of Coventry’s water because he was a prude so I demurred. ‘So, I’ll just pop up stairs and…’
‘You finished your crossword?’
‘Yeah.’ I waited, then made a face and said, half keeping the inner child sarcasm to a minimum, “Yes.’
‘You finished it entire?’
‘I’m finished with it, yes.’ Silence. ‘Fine, I couldn’t break into the bottom left hand side at all, and only half finished the other bottom half. If we had the internet then—‘
’We would have an electron miasma poisoning our synapses. 60 Down is “Trousseau”.’ He spelled it for me, and given that hint I had to get back to work. Bastard didn’t even write in the answers, he just looked at the crossword for a few minutes before I cut it out. Yes, vain displays are Sisyphean.
---
I like to think that the Coventry home is a study in contrasts when I admit clients. Their reactions to shifts reveal a thing or two about their mental states. My procedure was wasted on Francine Able, but I used it anyway. A short woman, early forties, and buttoned up and prim from shoes to boring hair. She dressed like she was on her way to beg to a banker. She took one look at my jeans, black T-shirt, and dark strained red hair just touching my shoulders and she made a face to say “a terrible mistake must have been made because we both occupy the same space.” I get a different face when I usher male clients.
I tacked her down as a mean Sunday school teacher, and dismissed her accordingly. Then I smiled and ushered her through the sunlight drenched yet barren hallway to the dark, brooding private office of the boss. He kept the lights dimmer than most would like in their office, except for a few wall lamps highlighting various doodads he liked to stare at from time to time. One of the doodads was an early, discarded page of the draft of the Declaration of Independence he got from a former Supreme Court Justice whose wife was a doper. That case was before my time.
‘Missus Able, sir.’ I showed her to a chair more comfortable than mine, watched her sit, then took a flanking position at my desk. My standing orders at this point is to look, listen, and disappear until spoken to.
‘You are Abelard Coventry, correct? I am in the right place?’ Her voice was stronger than I would have suspected. I’d expect it to be hoarse from yelling at small children about Hell I guess, but then the boss tells me that I’m too impatient for any critical thinking analysis more time-consuming than prejudice so what do I know? Also I’m still not used to the southern accent. It still feels like an act, like an amateur theater group playing Gone With the Wind, but damn it these people actually talk like this. Weird creatures, but we went to a Hell of a lot of trouble to conquer them in the Civil War, so we’re stuck.
‘Yes, madam, I am Abelard Winchester Coventry, for good or ill, and this is my dogsbody, Fallon Bridle. Her tongue is vulgar and lacking in grace, but it’s discrete. You wish to hire my services, but I’m, ha, afraid your letter was as vague as shadow in a trench.’
‘Yes. Well.’ She clutched her blue purse/bag to her blue clad chest and I wondered if she had a breathing device in it hooked to her lungs because the color of her 19th Century modesty-conscience getup hurt even my throat, and I was all the way behind my desk and out of harms way. ‘I suppose I must tell you everything?’
‘First you must tell me what you want. The issue define, hopefully, we can omit the necessity of universal cogitation.’ She took the boss rather well. Most people assumed he was making fun of them, which wasn’t fair because he was just mean, not mocking. However, I think Francine Able was more embarrassed than nonplus.
‘Well, my husband has a number of a photographs, five, and I want them.’ Oh really?
‘I shall presume you have asked him directly for these photographs.’
‘Don’t. I haven’t in ten years.’
‘You are separated?’
‘No, of course not!’
‘Well, madam, I fear you may be asking omniscience of me after all.’ She cleared her throat. Here it came. ‘My husband is Dr. Perry Able, dean of Falcon Head Preparatory Academy, and we have been married for twenty years last month. He is a very cautious man, and I’m afraid some early experiences, before we met, soured him on the whole idea of trusting women.’
‘Not unwise.’ Dogsbody or not, someday I’m going to kick him.
‘Hmph. Well, then you understand, and I suppose you will think he has some… some… psychological disorder. I’ve been told that before, by experts.’
‘I reject psychologists, at least expert psychologists, but I accept the terms of the school if used under a named dictionary. However, I suggest, for the interest of my time, you make yourself plain using whichever language you are most comfortable with, if not English.’
I’ve seen this before. Anger helps people get over their embarrassment long enough to spill it. However, boss doesn’t infuriate potential clients for this reason. Or any reason that I can detect, but then again I’m not a detective. I’m a dogsbody.
‘Well, as a deposit of my trust, I allowed my then fiancé to take pictures me in compromising positions in a context that… doesn’t speak well of my propriety. Do I need to detail them?’
‘I will charge you extra if it is necessary.’
‘Well, he took them, and hid them from me, and now I want them.’
‘Do you--no. Why do you want them now, after 20 years of marital bliss?’
‘Because he’s a fool to still doubt me. He was been nothing but kind to me, and I love him and he loves me back, and we have created and raised three perfect children that I love more than I can say, and I want those Goddamn pictures and I will pay to get them.’
‘After I remove the pictures, your husband will notice them missing and your tranquil union will be jeopardized.’ I like the lack of “if” in that sentence. ‘Pretend reason, madam. To what purpose do you wish these pictures?’
‘To give them back to him, of course.’
‘Of course. I shall need a written contract, dated, and a retainer adequate to fill the final bill; otherwise these pictures could give this job the patina of blackmail to the causal observer. I suspect a period of three days effort. That is expensive.’
---
I walked Missus Able out. She gave me one last disapproving look, then thanked me like people thank their dentists and was off to whack children with rulers or cluck her tongue at married adults holding hands in public. I heard Coventry banging about in the kitchen, as glaring and sparse an enclosure as the hallway, so I slipped off my shoes and padded on my bare feet to the kitchen’s sill just to annoy him. Plenty of brilliant men thought my feet were cute. This genius thought my feet allowed me the art of autokinesis. I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms over my lower class T-shirt.
‘I don’t think she likes me.’
‘She no doubt considers you a harlot. Not without reason: her subconscious very likely saw the two artificial holes in your ears made with blades for the purpose of pagan adornment.’
‘Hmpf. Check adequate?’
‘Ample. The woman has no talent for business. That she has no training should be obvious.’
‘Spotted right off when I saw that her shoes fit. Speaking of business, I assume you wont be leaving your abode for this job.’
‘This afternoon I shall be reading a transcript of a recent talk on economics and disease in Africa by Emily Oster. It came in the mail while you climbed a nonexistent mountain in the comfort of my home. The female is an ecstatic thinker, but she can think, so I shall require solitude to check her work. I wont require a woman scampering underfoot to distract me. Later, I must solve the solar panel problem for that fool in Arizona. His check cleared. Non-goat herders in Arizona are invariably trustworthy.’
‘Who would want a woman underfoot? I’ll arrange with the client for a good time to get into the house. I figure we should get the servants out so they don’t gossip about a nubile, breathtaking young lady like me in too tight jeans noising around the Master’s chambers. I can find these pictures in your three days of effort.’
‘No need. The pictures are in the dean’s office of the preposterously named Falcon Head Preparatory Academy.’ He mixed an ice sauce, from scratch, with the force some people use to murder.
I turned my head to get some of my hair out of my eyes. ‘How do you figure?’
‘A tale of wife searching for photographs, in her own home, for twenty years—and not finding them? Claptrap. Wives are as good at sniffing as bloodhounds. There is only one qualitative difference between female humans and dogs.’ He opened the oven, sniffed, then closed it. ‘This trout resists. Remind me not to patron this fisherman again. He has bad luck. For a female of status to grow so desperate as to relay her graceless tale to two strangers means that she has checked all paper trails, so no safety deposit boxes. No banks, no post offices. Besides, such a man with the credentials to govern such a privileged school, forsaking riches, would no doubt amuse himself with pictures of his wife in his sanctum sanctorum after giving a lecture on morality to an errant student. I suspect he is a graduate of Harvard. The institute attracts the wealth of students blissfully free of reality when they pretend to think.’
‘Yeah, a bunch of dummies. So what’s the plan?’
‘You will contact your patron, Miss Feinstein, and-‘
‘She’s not my patron.’
‘You will contact Miss Feinstein, whatever she is, as she is ideally placed in their society, and she will enroll you tomorrow at the Academy as her hopelessly rebellious niece that has been expunged from institute after institute. That should satisfy two egos. Once positioned, you will act out, play the brat, be sent to the dean for a lecture, and memorize everything in the office. Then you will finish your school day as a schoolgirl in case I need another intrusion. The work may require an additional day. I shall expect a report on the office after Miss Feinstein drops you off.’
‘The academy is for high school students. I’m twenty-six.’
‘You are sufficiently youthful. However, you may make what preparations as you see fit. Please don’t use drugs in my home. Keep the receipts of legal purchases.’
I could be insulted for flattered. To serve Coventry, and to keep from committing the act of homicide, justified or not, it’s a good idea to go with flattery whenever possible.
I sniffed the air for the rainbow trout. He noticed it, but then again he notices everything.
‘I prepared it as Wulfe Trout. There is more than enough for two.’
‘I’ll call Feinstein after lunch.’ The problem with a genius is that he can make things, like trout, better, so he has to be suffered.
---
The bus. I rode a school bus, and the horrible thing was that it was rather pleasant. It had been some years since I suffered a pack of young men sniffing about. Dogs. Lovely, adorable dogs. Still, none of them could tell the difference between confidence and arrogance. And they didn’t seem to appreciate that, after the glorious act of sex is finished, there’s this whole thing called “living together” that happens. Jesus, I felt old.

Have you ever seen Weeds on WEED, man?

2008-11-30T08:28:00.000-08:00

As you all no doubt know, Weeds has the best spanking scene on TV since the black and white age ended. I've had a crush on Mary-Louise Parker for years(the woman doesn't age) so I netflixed the first season.

Awesome. I love this show. It isn't House good, or Scrubs good, but it is really really good and it's nice to take a break from watching shows about medicine. I used to work in a hospital, and I'd rather go to a snake charmer than to a hospital.

However, the show prompts a depressing question: why are most of the successful shows these days premised on moral depravity? Hold on, MLP is bending over a kitchen table in tight blue jeans... awwwww. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the future of my brilliant blog.

I think I'm coming out of my seasonal depression. However, soon will be the holidays, so I wont have much time to write before I spend all my time focusing on not killing myself.

I was thinking about starting a spanking themed "choose your own adventure" type series. Let my countless fans vote on where the story goes. Any thoughts?

PB

Lurkers of the World: Unite!

2008-11-11T08:34:00.000-08:00

You have only your anonymity to lose.

Well, here I am, Pallidbust: author/operator of Proper Spanking Stories. Here at Proper we believe in the imagination, so with few exceptions we only post the first few chapters of any given story, then let you, the reader, explore your own creativity to figure out what happens. Also there is a snoose button on my genius box, so I'm a little behind schedule on my writings.

Lets see, something about me. Well, I've always been fascinated by spanking, but I didn't realize that spanking was as necessary as food, shelter, and love until my high school girlfriend's birthday.

She sat on my lap and before us was a computer. Back then computers ran on vacuum tubes and were powered by two caffeinated gerbils on a tread wheel. We dialed Prodigy and were hurled into the internettubeswebhighway to look up the Victory Secret's website.

"How about this one?", PB asked asked in perfect innocence.
"You think I look old, don't you?" answered evil, backstabbing heart eating wench whom-I-hope married a drunk.
"Um... no, we're in high school. How about this one?"
"Fine."
"OK," I said, happy to make progress. "So I'll just pick the size and..."
"That's not my size!"
"Sorry." I smiled, hiding my teeth to show no aggression like the baboons. "You know I've never bought female clothing before so a learning curve should be..."
"Is this your subtle way of telling me I should lose weight? You think I'm fat!!"
"Um... no. Here, I'll just pick... this smaller size."
After I wiped the blood my from my eyes and found the strength to stand, I snapped my nose into place and asked my first and last love whatever was the predicament.

"OH, so now you're buying me paternity clothes in anticipation of getting me pregnant, so I wont go to college and learn how to maximize my potential as a womyn!! Dependent on you economic domination, I'll be your domestic slave, barefoot in the kitchen and, while not exactly illiterate, possessing only a high school literary background. My mother told me about guys like you. You're all alike."

Then, dear readers, Pallidbust learned the importance of spanking womyn. A little later I learned the importance of restraining orders. Apparently spankings should be consentual. Live and learn.

So take a look about. So far my magum opus is Reform. I warn you: it will be the best experience of your life. It'll be all downhill from there.

PB

Democracy Now!

2008-11-03T20:26:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is a "historic" election because, as you all know, not all United States Presidential elections are recorded by history. There's that "U.S. Dark Age" between 1874 and 1902--we have no clue who ruled in those years. Perhaps one man, perhaps unicorns. It might have even be me--wedon'tknow. History is mute. They just weren't historic enough to write down.

But tomorrow, the future, will be history when it is the present. So I submit a timely video for peer review.

PB

Education is a Lifelong Endeavor

2008-10-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

I've been reading about Roman Fasces. There has to be the first chapter to a spanking story in there somewhere. It's just too perfect.

The traditional Roman fasces consisted of a bundle of white birch rods, tied together with a red leather ribbon into a cylinder, and often including a bronze axe (or sometimes two) amongst the rods, with the blade(s) on the side, projecting from the bundle.

It has everything. A period when corporal punishment was the norm, handy birch rods (with the added tang of worse punishment from the axe), togas, legal authority... sultry Italian women. Everything.

PB

Writers' Strike!! Updated

2008-10-01T19:31:00.000-07:00

I have been insulted, and I demand satisfaction. Dammit.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Bad news for American writers hoping for a Nobel Prize next week: the top member of the award jury believes the United States is too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.

Yeah? Well, that would explain that Swedish flag on the moon. Also, I note, the F-22 Raptor, which I think we should use... That's right, people, we own the sky, so you should respect our writing better.

Horace Engdahl is quite the diplomat:

"Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world ... not the United States," he told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Tuesday."

Oh, I didn't realize. Well, I guess I'll go on strike then. I shall continue to not write, but now I'm doing it as the subject of a big, insular culture.

Now, I could give a "big culture" argument for the occasional accidents of beauty that is American scribbling, but instead I'll use pure logic:

Horace Engdahl is an asshole, and I hope he dies an asshole's death.

My stories about spankings are done until the entire U.N. passes a resolution to my glory. It would be their first resolution that actually did something in the world, and it would be glorious!

Hell with it. We still have Elvis. You hear that, Horace? Elvis.

*************Update******************

Magnus, a high ranking diplomat from the Constitutional Monarchy and Parliamentary Democracy of Sweden, has assuaged my wraith with wise words that, like the Outlaw Josie Wales, carry the word of both death and life.

The Great Writer's Strike of '08... is over. For here-on-out I shall resume not writing out of laziness, not revenge. Fellow citizens of the world, I ask you to try to get back to your lives as best you can. That is all.

PB

Find your voice!

2008-09-27T20:17:00.001-07:00

This is so very and egregiously funny that I want to have a daughter so she'll marry it and make me grandchildren that will carry the blood of My Family Line and this article, and these grandchildren will rule you.

The Lupus Pictures folks (they make good product) are looking for feedback from the fans. Seeing as I've estimated my fan base at about three-billion, yet have, like, two readers that leave comments, I understand their thirst for empathy. Oh how tragic is my life!

Anyway, it's kinda cool and "meta" that the spanking industry has gotten to the "Pepsi Challenge" stage of marketing. "What do you want in a film about spanking?" People, we are through the looking glass. I'm just saying.

On a personal note, I would like to personally note that I gave serious thought today to writing the next chapter of "Tessy Plinkerton Saves Proper", but then I got distracted by something shiney. It did shine... it shines still...

PB

Words fail me

2008-09-27T08:36:00.000-07:00

Paul Newman is dead. Damn it.

I am now depressed. I am going to go to a fancy eatery and order fancy food and drown myself in alcohol and confections. Tomorrow I am going to buy a shit load of Newman's Own salad dressing. I like the Light Italian myself.

PB

I'm so freaking lazy...

2008-09-25T14:58:00.000-07:00

"Lazy" is a word I use a lot to describe my work habits. I use it because I am just.

But I feel I should post something to appease my throng of fans. So here is a little thing I wrote some years ago. Am I proud of it? I can say only that I wrote it.

Enjoy.

A Man I Met in a Steam Room

“My left eye got blown out by a booby trapped Libyan cigarette. I found the Libyan. Made him eat his arm to his elbow before putting a hammer to his brain again and again. My missing pinky? Kalashnikov, Korean border. Cut off his balls, but he got away with his life. I made the mistake of trusting U.N. Peacekeepers. Never again.

“Oh, I have scars alright. I’ve got a red line from my right pinky toe to my dick. Sudanese cut me with a blade made from melted down Italian WWII bullets. Buried him alive with his family watching. I say my right pinky toe because I lost my left to a baby Great White on vacation in Nassau. It tasted like chicken.

“Bus bomb exploded in Dublin, sending a child’s femur bone into my ear; my left one. Can’t hear shit there, but I still have to pay for the second ear mic for my Ipod. I pled my special case, but the hippy manager at Best Buy didn’t care. Ain’t fucking Christian, you ask me.

“Scars? I strangled a Nicaraguan with his own intestines, but the fucker bit a chunk off my neck. He was a wetback vampire, but he died alright without air to breath. You notice how my hair parts funny? Cuz a Turk tortured my head with lemon juice and straight razors. It’s okay, I got him back with acid and rusty nails.

“You might have noticed my missing left testicle? Amsterdam whore got a little over enthused in her work. Bit when she should have sucked. I let her be, since she only had one leg and all—but I did not tip her.

“Scars? Let me tell you about scars. Got sent back to medieval Spain in a time machine. Fucking priests roasted my ass on the hotseat. Iron chair with a fire lit under. You know what your own ass smells like on the barbecue? I do. Those priest burned up my ass pretty good. Singed my only testicle, too. Here’s my necklace of their teeth. Mostly Incan gold. Sort of my rainy day money.

“My testicle still works, but I hate explaining the scars to the whores. Ruins the magic, you know?

Wedded Females in Despair

2008-09-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

There is no way spanking wasn't on the mind of the photographer of this TV Guide photo. No. Freaking. Way.

I feel that we are winning the culture war, spankos. Keep it up, and victory will be ours.

PB

Sorry ladies, but PB is in love

2008-09-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

Now I just need to meet the woman, and it's all gravy for old PB from here-on-out.

Enjoy my kindred.

Damn it! I can't figure out how to upload it here, so I'll link. She's so far... far away from me.

PB

I feel I should say something...

2008-09-10T21:46:00.000-07:00

I simply want to note, my billions of loyal and hand-wringing when will PB post a brilliant story again fans, that yet again England proves both that America is not the most lascivious and crass country in the world, and America needs to get over herself and start rating female's bottoms on a number system. I swear, you Brits are light-years ahead of us on vanilla spanking media.

Behold, some woman called Jennifer Ellison has, by democratic decree, the most delectable rear in all of Oceania!! Is there an international contest? I'm voting for Jessica Alba. Bring home the gold, Alba! USA!!!

Still, this Jennifer person seems delightful. "Rear of the Year" delightful? I am but one man, and I don't have the hubris to make such a claim, but surely she has the Rear of a Month at least. At least, people! Be fair.

I'm going to do something I almost never do: I'm going to be honest. The truth is, I posted this post for two craven reasons:

1. I didn't feel like writing a story. I'm tired.
2. People were tired of seeing Sarah Palin's massive face staring at them.

All legit reasons, if you ask me, but you haven't, so I've supplied the answer anyway because I read in a book that it's good to be proactive.

PB

Proper Political Spankings

2008-08-29T15:27:00.000-07:00

All of us here at Proper Spanking (me) officially endorse Sarah Palin for the next vice president of these United States because she is a smoking hottie. A fiscally conservative smoking hottie. Observe:

She's got this naughty librarian thing going on and I dig it. Put a ruler in her hand and... yes. And yes and yes and a billion times yes. There is something so sexy about smart chicks (I'm assuming she's smart because of the glasses). I think it's because breaking a smart chick with pleasure is a victory of male prowess over reason and education.

However, I'm not going to make a play for her, even though she is hot and as we all know power is sexy, because her husband is a lumberjack.

Look at him. I have never been drunk enough to hit on the woman of a guy that size, and I beat an Irishman (whose girlfriend just dumped him) in a drinking contest. Mr. Palin could bite through Joe Biden's skull, and may have to.

Sarah Palin in '08!

PB

--------------------------------UPDATE-----------------------------------------------------

I thought I stole the "naughty librarian vibe" line from my friend, but it turns out that stealing bastard stole it from Scottish comedian Craig Ferguson. Sorry, Craig.

Reform, Chapter 1en.

2008-08-27T20:45:00.000-07:00

Chapter 10

Same [Expletive Deleted], Different Day

I was a big freaking hero. So were others, but they can write their own books. I was all over the internet, the newspapers, the TV (though I didn’t have access to any of them), and the freaking President was going to give me a medal that I could probably sell for thousands of dollars. Ahhhh…. Victory. Sweet mother victory.

But it isn’t all about me. I knocked on Ash’s door with my arm that wasn’t in a sling, got the word, and opened it. My jaw almost broke on the floor. I waved my good hand in a frenzy.

‘You look awesome!’

‘It’s different!’

And she did. A knee length dress, red like her hair but with scary awesome Jap dragons climbing up along her sides, red like her hair, lip stick, red like her hair, a purse, red like… well, you get the idea. She looked like a high end, top flight harlot, piquing my envy. My purse holding muscles had atrophied, but I plotted how to steal hers’ nonetheless.

‘You packed?’ I felt childish in my school uniform, so I sat on her bed and unleashed my hair to hide behind it. My butt was still sensitive from the electro spanking, but if I knew one thing it was how to survive a spanking.

‘Joel’s on it. He should be at the car now. Your girl is getting that tracking doohickey inside me turned off so the satellites wont call down the army when I cross state lines, and Lauren is picking up my paperwork and I.D. cards. I’ve said my goodbyes to most everyone except you.’

I waved her away. ‘I don’t do goodbyes. If you don’t email me once a week I’ll track you down and kill you, satellite or not.’ Ash moved faster than my brain registered light via my eyes (a trick most people can do it seems. I need better reflexes). I found myself incased in Ash, her kneeling on the ground before me, messing her dress and squeezing all the oxygen out of me. She wept a little. That’s the way it is with tough guys. You can beat them all day with a cane, but if you wanna pump a gallon of tears just show them the end of a sap movie and they turn Niobe.

I hugged back.

‘Hey, maniac. Come on.’ I patted her back. ‘Look, it’s not like one of us is going to the moon, muscle atrophy from the reduced gravity to the extent that a return to Earth would kill us, and thus we’ll never meet again.’ The truth was that I wanted to cry to beat the band. Ash was being released into Taggart’s custody. The President, the public opinion whore he was, nixed the nine years she had coming (nine freaking years! That’s thirteen years of high school total!)(one year for reckless use of an automobile, eight for escape attempts) and, as parole, put the little vixen into the care of a recently retired Free Range Agent. The idea was that her parole needed to be watched by a man capable of killing a bear with his bare hands, and the retiree needed some excitement in a boring life of teaching others how to kill bears with bare hands. They say retirement is the number one killer. We’ll see…

Parole aside, of course, Ash and Joel were totally hot for each other. I watched Ash baby Taggart on the EMT’s stretcher when the cameras recorded Snuggle Bunny explain how she shoved Alexia’s nose into her brain by ramming the traitor’s breather into the locked Utility Room door again and again until the door burst opened, allowing SB to turn the power off before the damn bomb charged to a critical mass to kill us all. Adorable. I love having a tough guy protector for a girlfriend. If wolves, pirates, or DDU agents ever attack me, I’ll just unleash The Snuggle Bunny, sit back with a martini for sipping, and watch my enemies catch a world class beating.

I fixed Ash’s tear stained eyeliner (DAMN IT I WANT EYELINER TOO!!!) before escorting her to the garage. I prepared her for life on the outside, which was apropos because we were outside.

‘The trick to good Chinese food is wooden chop sticks. Don’t go into that ivory crap. Pretentious nonsense. Oh, and make sure Joel takes you out to eat after the movie. You eat before the movie and all the blood is in your stomach instead of your head, where it belongs at the theater. Plus, you know, you have something to talk about at dinner. Let him talk first. If you disagree on the movie he’ll get defensive because men are like that. Find out how he liked the movie, then… This is so unreal.’

We stood outside, in front of the garage, where a bunch of cars sat ready to be stolen, and nobody was spanking us. The other direction was Mother Earth with all her glories, plains and trees begging/demanding eye attention. An intoxicating paradox.

Taggart’s car sat around the bend in the guest parking lot.

‘I know. Getting out…’ Ash grabbed me and stared me down like she is want to do. ‘Joel has a Mustang. A real one.’

‘Well I want to see it.’ I pouted even though I didn’t really know what a “real” Mustang was, other than a horse.

‘It has an internal combustion engine. A real one. I love him. I…’ I pat her cheek. I could tell that was the first time she said it aloud. It wasn’t casual enough. It was a confession, not a statement. And she didn’t love him because he had such a vehicle; it’s just that an honest man on a public salary putting in the effort to acquire and maintain such a beast is the type it took to acquire and maintain an Ash. That type of guy. ‘I’m sort of scared, you know?’ I nodded. ‘Of course, I like to be scared.’

‘Is he going to… you know.’

‘He’s threatened to spank me everyday for the rest of my life if I don’t calm down, but I don’t think his heart is in it. He’s got this hang-up about keeping the innocent safe from pain.’

‘Yeah, but is he going to spank you?’ I like making her laugh. And I’m good at it.

‘Your girl is coming. Hey, could you distract her? Lauren is coming in a sec, and I only want one goodbye. Okay?’ See? Tough guys are saps. ‘And I have a stuffed animal for her in the car I need to get. And, you know, Joel is packing the car, I’d like a last private moment with him here, where we met, you know?’

‘But you didn’t meet him here.’

‘Yes, but I stopped hating him here.’

‘Right. Say no more. Run on, then.’

Ash walked off while I blocked the invading Snuggle Bunny with hugs and kisses. She only put one arm around me because the other was in a sling, like me, but I don’t accept excuses so I kissed her twice as hard to teach her a lesson. I did have to release her eventually because of oxygen and the human need to consume it. My nose never quite healed.

‘Where’s the psychoooo?’ Darlin Snuggle Bunny slipped into her southern accent. She did this whenever she got to converse with a fellow rebel, even if born again.

‘She’s being efficient. Wants to say goodbye all at once. How was your call to Governor Phair this morning?’

‘Just got off the line with the Honorable Lady. It was nice to talk to someone from Georgia, even if she wasn’t born there. Getting pretty sick of Texans and Yanks…’ Meaning me, so I punched her in her good shoulder. ‘Hey! Just for that I’m not going to name the next star cruiser after you. Happy now?’

‘Yank?! I’m from the… What?’

‘Yeah, the Queen Georgia Peach is slated to name this new fangled solar liner supposed to make trade with the plastic plants on Pluto viable. She told me I could name it for my legendary-in-our-times heroism and because she couldn’t think of anything good herself. I don’t know what her ideas were because our line got cut and I couldn’t get her back. But now I’m naming the dang thing after the family dog. “All aboard! The F.A.S. Roscoe leaves in ten minutes!”’

‘You are naming that damn thing the F.A.S. William Archer after my dad or I will—‘ She took one step closer.

‘What? What will you do?’

‘I’ll put salt in your coffee for the rest of your life. See your governor best friend save you from—wait. Wait, wait. Weren’t you turning off the tracker doohickey in Ash’s body?’

‘No. No, how could I? I wouldn’t even know who to call, and even if I did, what power do I have tell a Fed to… didn’t Taggart already inject her?’

‘Inject?’

‘Yo!’ Killroy sauntered up with her hands out in the “what the fuck” gesture of my beloved New Yorkers. ‘What the fuck!? Phone lines are out so I can’t get any paperwork through the Faxdat. It’s like Jersey around here.’

‘Paperwork?’ I said and thought aloud. ‘Lauren’s getting Ash’s paperwork.’

‘That ditz? Nah, Ash asked me, and I thought, “What the Hell,” ya know, “Hey, I once processed the paperwork for a big damn hero, you hear?” to my grandkids, sept I can’t because the damn phone lines are… hey, what’s with the power?’

Snuggle Bunny and I followed her gaze. ‘What?’ SB asked.

‘The light to the garage door security lock.’ Killroy said, pointing. The little box was dead of light. ‘See, the little button should glow red, but it ain’t on. Powers out now—this is Jersey I-swear-to-God.’

‘Wait! You didn’t deactivate Ash’s tracker, and you were working on her paperwork. So… Ash lied to me. So… Ash is—‘

‘Hey!’ Lauren pounced on us. ‘I have the letter!’

SB snatched it. ‘What letter?’ Lauren felt hurt. SB could be a little harsh at times of total chaos, probably because she preferred order over chaos, but I’m no shrink; I’m just the person that nibbles her ears.

‘The letter for Danielle in the Utility Room. Ash forgot it there and asked me to get it. Funny, the lights went out after I closed the door.’

We stared at her. Well, most of us.

‘Yeah,’ Killroy slanted her rat eyes at the garage. ‘All these tires are slashed but good. These cars aren’t going nowhere.’

‘Wait,’ Snuggle Bunny said again. ‘This letter is addressed to Taggart, not Danny.’ I snatched the letter from SB.

‘Oh?’ Lauren peered over my shoulder. ‘Well, Ashley didn’t ask me to look at it, she just told me to grab the letter five minutes after you two left her room, then make sure I closed the door all the way until I heard an electric snap. I thought it was a game.’

Killroy shoved me. ‘Hey, lookit. A ring of keys is hanging out of the Car key box. Lookit.’

Snuggle Bunny ran off to investigate. I squinted and kind of saw what might have been a ring of keys in the car key box hanging off the wall. I have 20/20 vision.

‘Did an eagle get your mom drunk and take advantage of her or something?’

Killroy sneered back. ‘Eat your carrots, Archer. They’re good for ya.’

‘Hey,’ Taggart! He limped up on his crutch. ‘Why do all of you look confused?

‘Psycho!’ Snuggle Bunny ran back to us. ‘Ash slashed the tires and stole all the Southdown car keys with her keys.’ Evil-Lyn (Snuggle Bunny rested dormant) displayed the ring of copied keys. ‘And she rigged it so Lauren here cut the power to the school by shutting the Utility Room’s door. I don’t know how she cut the phone lines, but she did.’

Taggart drew his phone like a gunslinger drew his gun that wasn’t there. I don’t know how few we are, those that have seen a Praxis Man astonished, but I’m a card carrying member of the club.

‘She lifted my phone.’

‘She left you a letter!’ Sweet Lauren, always so helpful.

Taggart, beaten and broken and deadly, looked right at me.

‘She said you were packing your car! Right over there!’ No Hollywood legend of lore could have timed it as perfect. As I pointed my blame redirecting finger at the corner, Taggart’s Mustang tooled off, a laughing red head at the helm.

Taggart ripped into Ash’s letter. He mumbled aloud:

I want you to catch me. I wont argue it: I’m crazy. I’d rather be caught by you and forced into your custody than court ordered. Like a real mustang. I want you to win, but I’m not going to make it easy for you, Joel. I’m going dark. I’ll be patient. You should rest a bit first before, you know, tracking me down. I wont cavort. I love you, but I think this is my last run, so I plan to make it a doozey.

P.S. To the girls, I demand our friendship doesn’t end at graduation, no matter where we end up. I love you too much for that. The Pattington Bear by the Mustang’s tire tracks is for Lauren.

Taggart looked up from the note to watch his Mustang run off with his mustang.

‘She will never sit down again.’

‘Hey,’ Killroy patted Taggart on the back. ‘At least I seen she was wearing her seatbelt. That’s something, right?’

Idiot.

Epilogue

Free two weeks to the day, I regained consciousness on the bathroom floor of the finest penthouse suite in Dallas to discover vomit in my hair. I opened my eyes and saw an empty bottle of my old friend, Jack. Someone had stabbed my half smoked cigarette into my vomit. I crawled to the shower, the full three feet, turned on the cold water, and cried.

Evelyn came back two hours later. From her fine attire she had been out early pressing the Establishment for a job at Southdown. She looked wonderful in a gray dress suit. She didn’t look like a child at all. She looked like a woman. Evelyn, tired, her suit hung neatly, sat at the living room table and checked papers in her briefcase. She had a briefcase already. I hadn’t even bought her a Indiana Jones hat yet. God, she’d look so hot…

I was dressed in black sweat pants and a white T-shirt because they were the only clean clothes I possessed. There was a cartoon kangaroo on the T-shirt I didn’t recognize, but I remembered buying it sometime that week, or perhaps the week before that. I don’t remember stealing it.

I sat down with my face and hair down, my hands in my lap. She ignored me.

‘I think, maybe,’ I began. ‘We should go back to the way it was before.’

‘Hmmm?’ She kept her eyes on her work.

‘I think, maybe, I’m not a very strong person.’

‘Hm.’

‘I think… well,’ My eyes and my hair were down. My hands were in my lap. However, they were not empty.

I put Evil-Lyn’s hairbrush on the table.

‘I… well, I’m pathetic. After four years inside, and saving the Free World, and two weeks later just look at me. I’m, well, with all this talk of freedom, and fighting for freedom, I don’t think I’m fit for freedom. I’m pathetic, and if you don’t want me around, I understand. But I think you should give me a chance.’ I wrung my hands. ‘I feel like a rat. I think, with your… help… I wouldn’t be so pathetic. I could be, you know, the way I was. When you met me. I can’t change the past, how I have been, but if I could argue how I will be, then…‘

She didn’t let me, the pushy bitch. She just picked me up and hugged me. I decided to shut up and let her talk.

‘Do you have any idea how painful the last week was for me?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Hey!’ She pushed me off her far enough to point a finger in my face. ‘Don’t you ever say you’re sorry to me, understand?’

No, I didn’t, but I didn’t feel I was in a position to argue. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Good. Never tell me you’re sorry,’ Evil-Lyn grabbed the brush. ‘Until I’ve made you sorry.’

Sweat paints around my knees, me over Snuggle Bunny’s lap, me right at home, I couldn’t help but appreciate how awesome the penthouse carpet was.

WHACKWHACKWHACKWHACKWHACKWHACK

‘Hey! Ouch! JEEZE! Warm up spanks! Warm up spanks! ACH! ACH! ACH! Jesusfuckingchri--YEOW!!!’

‘Warm CRACK up CRACK spanks CRACK are CRACK for CRACK good CRACK girls CRACK brat!’

Forty or so seat smackers later, I gasped into the carpet. Mmmmmm… I could get used to this. The carpet was much softer than Southdown’s. More tear absorbent, too.

‘Now, that was for calling yourself pathetic.’

‘Pardon?’ I’d been in Texas way too freaking long. ‘But… butbutbut…’

‘Danny, you learn, but after you learn a little you think you know it all.’ This is what she told me. ‘Yes, freedom is responsibility, but none of us are gods. The best you could do is give me my brush and ask me to use it when I see fit, and you did it. That’s not pathetic, wench. That’s knowing yourself. I’m so freaking proud of you.’

She rubbed my neck, but she didn’t fool me. I panicked and tried to beat it to safety. This was Dallas. There had to be a loaded gun somewhere in the penthouse. Probably next to the nightstand Bible.

Knowing her enemy as her enemy knew herself, Snuggle Bunny lynched my arm into my back, and raised the hairbrush I should have hidden in the penthouse fireplace.

‘Let’s see… fifty for equating my girlfriend to a rat, fifty for doubting your girlfriend’s love, and fifty for getting you a job.’

SMACK!

‘OUCH! Wait wait wait. Job?’

‘Yeah, dummy. What do you think I’ve been doing while you partied? Southdown is dangerously understaffed due to half of the teachers being foreign agents who are now dead or getting waterboarded; in any case not teaching. Since they named me the next Matron a week ago, I’ve been working with the state to fill positions. Guess whose teaching classes in literature and accounting next semester?’

SMACK!

‘No!’

SMACK!

‘That’s 3 smacks out of 150.’ Evil-Lyn mused. ‘What does that leave your bottom, Teach?’

‘Bitch!’

‘No, the answer is not 197 licks, but then again, you’re the accounting professor, so I guess I’ll just have to take your word on it. So, 196 then.’

‘No! No! I meant it-YEOCH! GAHH! GAHH! GAHH! JEE! WHAAAAAAAA!!!’

Sigh. That was damn fine carpet, though.

Couch Van Brown stayed coaching. She realized, after saving us by brutally slaying Gregor in the cafeteria (the Pope gave her a medal, which is pretty multicultural of his Holy Father if you consider she’s Southern Baptist), that we girls needed her protection and guidance more than some ice miners needed a psalm spouting third-rate cook. She’s added kickboxing and fencing to the regime. Every generation should be better than the last. The next generation of degenerates will be able to run the mile in six minutes, then kick the crap out of somebody.

The rest of the girls made out alright, but they can write their own damn book. Still, my story isn’t quite over yet.

Ash is doing fine. Taggart, in crutches, caught her in three weeks. She worked as a roadie for a touring German classic rock band with diplomatic papers that allowed travel without inspection. Taggart caught up to them in the Chicago Principality. Ash wrote me that she was so delighted at being hunted down that she didn’t even mind Taggart breaking the drummer’s left index finger. “Shouldn’t poke Joel in the chest like that,” she wrote.

She also wrote some science fiction. She claims, to this day, that Joel forced her to craft a wooden paddle that would scare even her, then spanked her with it every three days for two months, stopping only after she finely asked him to stop. Ash wilting to pain? Ludicrous, but I wasn’t about to call a psychopath a liar.

The day after she wrote this letter she escaped again. So Joel caught her again, spanked her again, then bought her the old timer’s used car garage. The old timer stayed on, immortal, and taught Ash all about cars. Ash was content for three whole months, then Joel read that body language. She was getting that cagey look about her, so he latched her to an 9 pounds 8 ounce anchor.

Now Taggart can’t even get her out of the baby’s room. Joel wrote me that Ash spent all her free time clutched to the rim of the crib, inspecting like a hawk, so Snuggle Bunny and I visited on Spring Break. It was a nice break from sending girls to get spanked by my Life Partner. I’m just not into spanking others. I tried spanking Evelyn for kinky fun, but we couldn’t stop laughing (after the failure, she dressed me up as a French maid and walloped me with a strap, just for clarification she told me). However, the girls fear my intimate relation, so I keep a pretty tight ship. Also, of course, I know every trick in the book.

Quis Custodiet ipsos Custodes? Answer?

Me.

Guess what we did first at Casa del Taggart?

Behold in all his glory! Daniel William Taggart. Taggart lied that Daniel was named after Ash’s father. Bah! Blonde hair like his daddy, eyes psychotic-sky blue like his mommy.

Danny William Taggart, before he could stand, learned how to pull himself out of a crib by kneeling on bunched up stuffed animals. I looked down on him as a giant. Half out of the crib, brain not even fully developed, he stared me square in the eyes, daring me. He smiled like he knew where I hid my cookies.

‘How much did it cost?’ I asked, squinting at the rug rat.

‘What?’ Joel asked.

‘To get the plastic surgeon to remove the “666”?’

Little brat wasn’t a year old and already got me spanked, right there in the living room. Ash and Taggart, laughing, assured Snuggle Bunny it was just a funny joke, but they didn’t assure very hard. My blonde taskmaster gave me a good one, but only half as bad as she could and had or would. My punishment done, I thanked Evelyn for my spanking, wiped my eyes, returned my clothes to their proper position, and sipped my second glass of wine slow, as I was allowed only three. Normally two a night, but this was a special occasion, so I could drink three.

Later I took everybody’s glasses to refill while Evelyn took Daniel in her arms and cooed at him. ‘He’s perfect.’ She looked at the baby. Then me. Then the baby. Then me. She smiled.

She looked at the baby again while I poured my third glass and then downed it all in one go.

The End

Reform, Chapter Nine

2008-08-24T14:43:00.000-07:00

Chapter Nine

We Will Defend Our Cafeteria Home

‘It’s here.’ I showed Taggart the secret entrance to the Den. It didn’t occur to me to get Taggart to pinky swear to never reveal the secret door, but he hasn’t yet, so don’t curse me, Reform girl. Anyway, if it weren’t for me you wouldn’t be able to use it at all to sneak a smoke because it wouldn’t exist.

I did everything I could to not look at the Vault door, but I could still feel that Relief Cold Cream smoke in my lungs and vowed never to smoke another cigarette for as long as I lived assuming I did live. If I died, screw it.

Taggart took off his belt, looped it around his chest, and pulled it tight. He hissed, then he breathed for the first time in minutes.

‘OK.’ Taggart snapped his nose back into place, but I didn’t throw-up because there was nothing left in my stomach. I tried, but nothing comes from nothing. ‘They’re in the cafeteria. I saw the lights. We need to move fast, but quite.’

We little girls up to our necks in an international conspiracy of murder nodded.

I think that soccer chest kicking champ goon broke a rib or three in the only trained warrior on our side. Taggart breathed hard and he couldn’t stay still. He sweat. He twitched. He checked his right hand. The first two fingers were broken for certain. He checked the pistol he lifted off one of the corpses outside. He did it with only six fingers, and it looked like it hurt, but he was satisfied with the number of bullets, and I think a little comforted to have a gun in his hand, even if it was only the left one (unlike Snuggle Bunny, he wasn’t a South Paw). Shaking and hiding the pain it took to breath, he looked to Ash.

‘Thank you.’ He hushed, a firm, straightforward thanks. ‘You acted on your own and saved my life. That was battle, and battle is fluid. Up there is a bomb, people happy to kill themselves, and hundreds of scared girls. This is precise. We need to be precise, or we lose. I need…’

‘I’ll do as I’m told, sir.’ Ash meant it. The “sir”, too. ‘I mean, really this time.’

‘Good. OK.’ His face was desperate and he only half hid his pain. He looked around in long neck arcs as if an answer were written on the walls of the Den of Iniquity, and maybe it was because he found it. He ducked his head and thought through three deep breaths. He sprung up. ‘We have the element of surprise. You two,’ meaning Snuggle Bunny and myself. ‘Get to the engine room at the far end of the school. The utility room, you know it? Good. That’ll give us time to get into position. Get there and pull the red switch down. That will turn off the power. That will be our signal. After you pull it, run. Get as far from here as possible—it’ll be too late for you to help more.’

‘It’s locked. I don’t have my keys.’ Evelyn bit her lip. ‘It’ll take time to get to my—‘ I offered my ring of copied keys Ash made and left me.

I told the truth. ‘I don’t know which key is the key to the utility.’

‘You and I,’ SB snatched the keys from my little paw. ‘Are going to discuss these keys.’ I told the truth!

‘Ashley, head to the south entrance to the cafeteria; I’ll be at the north. Gregor will have the detonator. She’ll be next to the kitchen entrance to power the bomb. The only electrical outlet is there. Locate her, then stay tight until the lights go out. A second later the emergency lights will come on, but don’t wait for them. Rush her the second the lights go out, and kill her. Pick up anything hard, and cause maximum damage to her head or neck. Hit again and again until her brain is jelly. I can barely walk. From the north entrance I can give you cover. Ignore anyone who gets in your way. I’ll take them down, I promise. There will be others, but they don’t exist to you. Only Gregor will have the detonator, so only see Gregor. Do we understand?’

Ash looked at him askance. ‘The lights will be out. How will you cover me?’

‘I’m going to memorize their positions before the lights go out.’

Evelyn had followed like an apt student, but couldn’t figure it.

‘She’ll just set off the bomb when the lights go out.’

‘No,’ Still in that hushed tone, Taggart looked away from us as if to see if the coast was clear, but I figured it was to avoid eye contact because we were fucked. ‘Those four wheelers outside carried explosion augments that would substantially increase the weak bomb she hid here. And they had a battery pack incased in lead.’ Oh Superman, no wonder you aren’t here to save us. ‘Gregor’s bomb is energy powered, not chemical. It has to be, or our dogs would have sniffed them out on monthly inspections. And her bomb isn’t powered all the way. It takes hours, and our satellites will have picked it up after thirty minutes of charging. It’ll have enough energy by now to kill most of the people in the cafeteria, but not much else. And she’ll have to plug the detonator in and crank it, which is…’ he covered his mouth and coughed something wet into a handkerchief. He looked at his product then tossed the cloth aside. ‘It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t know we stopped her reinforcements. They’ve made her whole life about this. She’ll want a big bang. She’ll wait.’ Another cough. ‘I’m sorry, but I need your help. Ash and I should have at least five seconds, but we have to hurry because she must be charging the bomb right now. She thinks we’re dead. We have the advantage.’

‘Let’s go.’ Ash climbed into Southdown with the enthusiasm she used to use to climb out.

‘But if…’

Taggart looked Evelyn in the eyes. ‘Then everyone in that cafeteria dies.’

Son of a bitch never heard of a white lie?

----------------

‘We’re fucked.’

Snuggle Bunny gave me a look. We hadn’t seen a soul on our fast trek to the far end of Southdown, first floor. Ash and Taggart took the stairs to the second floor. My feet hurt, and I knew SB’s feet hurt too, because of our damn hobbling school shoes, but we made good time.

I’d never known the second floor corridors to be so quite. Even 3:00 AM Sundays, when I sneaked a job or escaped Snuggle Bunny’s grasp, there was something going on. Some life. Now it felt like the DMV on Christmas.

Snuggle Bunny checked the hall, found it clear, and moved us towards the utility room. She shuffled through the copied keys. ‘This is crazy.’

‘I just said that.’

‘No, you said,‘ Evelyn found the key and inserted it. ‘And I quote, “We’re—“’ Alexia kicked Evelyn in the hand, snapping half the key in the lock, and punched Evelyn’s whirling face.

‘Alexia!’

Evelyn, indifferent to pain, charged the treacherous goonlet, but she kung fu’ed aside like a child. Evelyn hit the corner on her elbow and head. She didn’t move.

‘Alexia, they’re going to blow the school!’

‘No,’ she said, letting her accent slip. ‘We’re going to blow the school, and all the rotten roots in it.’ She didn’t talk like she was from Oregon anymore. Her accent was totally alien. She moved towards me. ‘We’re both dead; born dead, yet you feel pain, and we shall enjoy hurting you. Hurting your scheming little mind. Other than that New England senator’s daughter, we couldn’t hope,’ she snatched my arm so fast I couldn’t see, and twisted me to my knees. ‘for a better prize.’ I screamed. ‘We’ve always hated you, Queen Rat. Scamming with every undeserved calorie. Always thinking you’re so smart. Youyouyouyouyou. MeMeMeMeMeMeMeMe.’

She waved away my punches. She kicked me in the stomach, and forced me down to the ground, my arm behind my back. She bruised my face with her shoe.

‘There is only we. Kiss it, Archer. Show us what a whore can do with your mouth.’ I refused, so she in turn knuckle punched me in both kidneys then kicked off her shoe, stepped on her sock with the other foot to peel it off, and shoved her sweaty foot in my face. Then she quoted herself in mock sympathy. Oregon accent creepily back, and my blood ran cold. ‘”Hey, Evelyn, Gregor is going nuts on St. Croix in… Lauren’s room. She’s screaming, and I don’t think she’s in control of herself.”’ She spat on me. Literally. Hit the back of my neck. ‘You people are weak. You think Gregor doesn’t keep a camera in her office? Gregor knew everything all along, Archer, but she played until she had you and that plod Taggart in checkmate. And that “Evil-Lyn” of yours. Evil… there is no evil, there is no Good. And, oh poor baby, we’re afraid there isn’t even a Lyn anymore. Like the FA, she’s just a husk rotting against a wall. There is only will and power. Will,’ she bent my arm until I had to muffle my mouth against the tile floor, my lips making bubbles. Something snapped in my arm. It was a muscle, not a bone, I hoped. I screamed into the floor, kissing the floor with an open mouth. ‘And power. Power over other people. That is reality. The strong,’ She punched me in the lower back, my nose slammed against the floor, and I sobbed I think. My nose filled up with something salty and stingy. ‘The strong and the victims.’

She shoved her foot into my face again and again, once getting her pinky toe into a nostril.

‘Now kiss it and show me what a slut you are.’

I couldn’t breath, my arm twisted to breaking, the lock to the Utility Room was jammed with a broken key, Taggart and Ash waited for the signal that would never come, a cafeteria full of girls could blow at any second, Snuggle Bunny was limp and maybe dead on the ground, and all I had was a foot to kiss. So I bit off the bitch’s pinky toe.

Alexia didn’t make a noise herself. Instead she bent my arm and I made a forced and muffled grunt. I fought the pain until Alexia jabbed me in the ass with a Agony Tazer (those are illegal!). It wasn’t even a fight. I spit out my last meal and let out an inhuman, alien to my ears scream without break. I couldn’t even gasp once. Of course I don’t know how long I was thus electro spanked, but I lost it a bit from lack of oxygen. I thrashed and jerked, totally out of control. Alexia, grabbing me, holding me down, completed the circuit. She felt the Tazer’s current too—but she liked the pain. While I twisted and screamed in anguish, she bore down on me, feeding off her raging neurons. I didn’t care about anything but me, and I was in Hell on Earth. She let off my butt cheek, and I could breath, then she jabbed my other cheek, and I screamed. I remember thinking that I wished I could beg her to stop. But I couldn’t. The pain was… something else. Something that I still think about. Sometimes. I don’t understand how or why a person could treat another person like that. So I screamed.

The light fading, I could barely make out Snuggle Bunny hurling her venerable hairbrush, smacking Alexia in the temple.

The world inundated me. The Tazer left no lasting effects except one giant flaming scorch mark on my rear, but my body returned to normal status except a useless arm and that every cell in my ass screamed. I flipped over to see Snuggle Bunny put a knee in Alexia’s face. I scampered backwards on my sore butt. My sitter hurt so bad that there was no difference standing or sitting, but I didn’t care because before me Evil-Lyn squared off with her treacherous goonlet lieutenant who wavered despite looking like a starved tiger.

‘Get to Taggart, tell him the lights aren’t going off. I-‘ Alexia kicked but Evil-Lyn moved into it and caught her at the thigh. ‘Run, dummy!’ She slugged but Alexia caught it and twisted the extended arm. Evil-Lyn twisted and both fell to the ground jabbing at each other. I took off my shoes and socks, and beat it.

My arm and nose hurt, my ass felt like hornets had it for a feast, and my lungs burned from the smoke of burning cans of Relief, and I had to hold my right arm against my stomach to keep it from flapping around dead. The cafeteria was dead above me, but the stairs were on the far end of the school. I had to run the length of the school, a flight of stair, then the same length back, and every second that bomb grew stronger to kill more and more girls.

Passed Gregor’s office. Passed Alexia’s room. Passed Snuggle Bunny’s room (was she dead?), hit the stairs. A blister broke on the first step.

I coughed something warm and wet out and hit a wall but I bounced off it no matter how comfortable it was. One of Alexia’s kicks hit something that didn’t forget pain as fast as I forgot all the kings and queens of England last semester the day after the final exam. I couldn’t twist my chest right or left. It wasn’t pain, I simply couldn’t turn, but I could face forward and run. I faced the way and ran back the other way, towards the cafeteria, and felt pain and wonderful certainty that we’d win. A line I used to think was empty rhetoric escaped from a dark pit in my brain, and I was just driven nuts enough to love it. I muttered it as I staggered.

“Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time, we did everything that could be done. We finished the race, we kept them free: we kept the faith.”

Keep the faith. Goddamn right. Marathon, baby. Fucking Marathon.

It was disappointing to pass the relay stick. I turned the corner, fell to my knees, and between bloody nose spewing gasps, said, ‘Ambushed. Lights aren’t going out.’ Taggart got to his feet and fired away like it was the plan from the start.

I crawled to the sill, under his legs, with my palms over my ears. Ash ran from her spot in perfect form. Men and treacherous goonlets fell all around her. She ignored them like the Queen of England I forgot about would have ignore guys handing out fliers to a XXX strip club on Bourbon Street. None of them got a foot from her before Taggart put a bullet center mass.

God help me, it was beautiful,

A man in black robes, a curved dagger held high about his head, moved in on Taggart. I think it was my Math teacher. Killroy, a loyal goonlet, launched all her Brooklyn fury from her cafeteria chair and tackled his legs. On the ground the bitch that loved slapping her ruler against my second favorite ass until I promised to obey the rules shoved her ruler into the creepy priest’s throat. ‘Fuck with me? Fuck with me?! No, you fuck this! Ya hear?!’

That’s Brooklyn law enforcement.

Gregor was adorn in full battle armor. Gasping on the ground, it occurred to me that Taggart couldn’t just shoot her. She even wore a black helmet like an evil football player. She had to be killed up close, like any other dragon. Her shock wore off three seconds into Ash’s Run. She stepped idly to the bomb, a black box covered in wires sitting just outside the kitchen door.

The bomb was our microwave. The device that would blow my body apart into mere dental records had heated all the tacos that made up my body. The only good place to get tacos is Texas. It’s the best reason to go there. I liked my tacos extra heated, you see, so I always zapped them for some extra umph after nabbing them from the cafeteria, then I ate them, and my digestive system turned those extra heated tacos into the body that microwave was going to zap to bits. You young people might not know this yet, but in times of crisis, the mind looks for irony.

Gregor laughed and watched the spectacle. She put her detonator on the bomb. She didn’t even plug it in. She pointed a black rectangle at Ash. I didn’t know what it was, but it was a weapon for sure.

Taggart stepped two paces to the side, adjusted to a line of fire around my sitting classmates, and fired. Gregor wavered a little, but I don’t think she felt more than a slight shove from the bullet before pulling the trigger of her weapon. Ash, in mid stride, grabbed a cafeteria tray from the rack and blocked a wired dart from hitting her chest. The dart smacked the tray and exploded in volts, but Ash kept running.

Tray still splattering electricity, a second dart flew into Ash’s leg. It wasn’t fair. Ash couldn’t block both; nobody could with one tray. War, it would seem, wasn’t fair. She went down and convulsed as the amps played havoc with her nervous system. She twitched helpless on the floor, her beautiful red hair flaring out like Einstein. She didn’t make a noise, but then she never made a noise when Gregor attacked her nervous system.

Taggart, gushing blood from his face, tossed his empty weapon aside and slouched towards Gregor, a hundred feet away from him, and her two feet from the bomb. Beaten and helpless, he slouched towards hopeless doom with a single mind, making the last, perfect image of what a real man is for me. Except for my father, who is more than a man to me, though a gentle one that abhors violence. He didn’t even spank me. I thought about my father, and how he was right that Reform School would save me from myself, and what he’d think when he found out I was exploded in Texas. I thought about how he’d hurt himself for years. And the bitch of it was that he was right, I only then realized—Southdown saved my living soul, even if it killed me. But he wouldn’t know that. All he’d know was that I was sent here with his blessing and encouraging words to my unnatural death, and he’d suffer for it. Dad is sensitive. He’d suffer bad.

The girls sat in the chairs, too afraid to move, not knowing what was happening. I screamed at them to attack and kill everything, but it just came out as a gasp. Taggart slouched, I lay, Ash gyrated and there was nothing left to us but the glory of taking the enemy to the limit.

Or so it seemed.

Senator Gail swiped at Gregor with a chair, howling like a Viking. Gregor broke Gail’s leg and tossed her aside. The attack wasn’t without import—that limp would help on TV debates for sure. Some puss lawyer candidate walking up to the podium while Gail took longer due to the proud limp? Hell, you’ve got the Vet and Silver Fox vote right there. Also, the limp would show off her awesome, perfect, enviable ass… damn it. I want a perfect ass too.

Of course, I had to note to myself, I’d be able to beat her mile time now. Man, I am a self-centered bitch that deserves my spankings. Damn it.

Four men in black robes, stepping over Killroy and her choking playmate, attacked Taggart. He killed one of them as soon as he was in finger tip distance, the others he had to fight, which meant he was checked and we were all going to die.

‘So!’ Gregor screamed it. Then she laughed in a sniveling way.‘Now we reap what they sow!’ I stood, I don’t know where from the strength came, thinking to run at her, but she already had her trigger in the bomb. I ran anyway, around Taggart’s brawl, taking up Taggart’s course, because there wasn’t anything else to do. There was a chance Snuggle Bunny would live, and that was as good as I was going to get. If I had to die, then fuck Gregor, I’d die running like I was taught, like my father taught me, my fingernails for the eyes of the enemy, doing everything that could be done.

‘Archer! Come, meek!’

‘I’m going to—‘ I stood dead on a dime.

Hearing the gunshots through the music, Couch Van Brown exited the kitchen in her gray T-shirt, track shorts, and apron, and paddled Gregor’s head from behind with several pounds of bottom tested oak paddle. Eighties pop music spewing from the dangling ear phones of her pocketed IPod as she slammed her wooden paddle into Gregor’s floored brain again and again. It would seem the helmet was built to stop bullets, not Couch Van Brown’s paddle.

Taggart lifted himself from the now limp and useless goons, staggered to his feet, and watched the Coach deliver a final CRACK to the DDU agent’s brainpan. He looked like a confused fool, and I should know, because it takes one to know one.

Hundreds looked at the coach. Except for Ash, still paralyzed, all us girls and Taggart looked at the blood and gray matter drenched Coach Van Brown standing above the battered husk of a psychopath.

‘Meek,’ Coach Van Brown said, pointing a bloodied paddle at the mass of girls. ‘Does not mean weak.’

Then the lights went out.

Reform, Chapter eight

2008-08-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

Chapter Eight

The Truth Will Out

A motley crew in the mud wade;

to the dreaded Vault we MADE!

Sorry, couldn’t help myself.

I am a poet on a shelf.

OK, really, I’m done now. Honest. I’m no de Sade…

So on we did trod.

HA!

Sun fallen, I lead the way around the school to the Den from the outside, not willing to trash my good name forever by revealing the secret entrance from the inside. In tail, in no particular order, were Ash, Evelyn(this was a mission, got to keep things formal), Matron, and Taggart, his fingers around Ash’s neck. He managed to hold on for longer than 8 seconds, so Rodeo fans rejoice. Still, some heroes are never happy.

‘St. Croix should be in bed. No, in the nurse’s office.’

‘Agent,’ Matron ground her teeth like five out of five dentists didn’t recommend. ‘If there is a secret hiding place in my school, then I think St. Croix is using it to hide valuable property, and thus, I don’t want her to escape while we investigate.’

I stepped in some mud, but Evelyn pushed me on before I could scream out newly learned profanities. So attentive and there for me.

‘I’d chain her down to the bed. Five different ways, and she’d be sedated.’

‘We’re here.’ I said. The Den of Iniquity.

Moments later we stood before the terrifying Vault. Even if the dead people behind it were dead, I’m sure their ghosts wanted to suck my bones dry. This was a mistake. The dead were burying their dead—let’s walk away and keep up our end. Our duty was to pretend we never die, their duty was to stay dead. That's fair, I say.

‘Well,’ Taggart said to himself in the nicotine stained causeway. ‘This is new to me.’

Matron denied any knowledge of the door, which was probably true, as she wasn’t a smoker. ‘How did you learn of this place, Archer?’

I had to think fast, but nothing coming. ‘I was dared in here once.’

OH BRILLIANT!

‘It was for Freemason ceremonies. Esoteric ones.’ Everyone turned to my Snuggle Bunny. She looked self-conscious, then took Taggart’s flashlight and my handkerchief, and scrubbed away some of the caked dirt on the corners. Hieroglyphics! ‘This school used to be for masons, right? These weird engravings, and the out of the way location, must make it some secret temple for high ranking priests or something, right?’

I glared at her. How could she not have told me? Sure, nightmares, but how cool was that? Daydreaming Indiana Jones and me excavating the school's underground for postmodern mythical treasures could have made my time a little sweeter, let me tell ya. Oh, shit. I’m a lesbian. Evelyn was my Indiana Jones. I had to step in line to that. I’d buy her a hat when we got out. And the whip so… no, just the hat.

Taggart had one hand on Ash’s neck, but took back his flashlight with the other to investigate. Matron tapped her foot, glaring at his back. Evelyn took the opportunity to whisper, ‘I told you I’m going to run this place someday.’

‘You are awesome. What’s your hat size?’

Matron tapped until she got the attention she felt she deserved. ‘History is fun, but look at that lock. We’ll never get it open. We might as well go to sleep and I shall call a construction team for tomorrow.’

‘Oh,’ I’d almost forgotten Ash was there. ‘If I could borrow a hair pin I’m sure I could—‘ Taggart jerked her neck to shush the beast like you would a leashed dog barking at an Amish neighbor delivering homemade pie to welcome you to the neighborhood.

‘Gruber, take St. Croix. Don’t be afraid to bruise her wrists. Archer, hold this flashlight. No, there. No… on the lock. Lower! Good, stop… higher by half an—STOP! Don’t. Move. A muscle.’ The man who couldn’t give directions took a kit from a pocket and set to work tomb raiding.

‘My arm is getting sore, sir.’

‘Archer!’ Matron growled and I jumped. Taggart reacted.

‘Fuck. Wait, I think… I think that did it.’ Taggart put his back into it. He twisted his foothold, bent a little, but I kept the flashlight right on his grinding, shoving, irresistible backside forcing down a spiritual door of innocence and secret power that couldn’t be as powerful as Taggart’s hips until Evelyn kicked me.

The rust cracked and the door swung easy, sending Taggart through like a cartoon character. Then Ash accused, ‘That’s it! Lincoln on a pogo stick, you’re dating Danny!’ Evelyn backed up towards me three steps, in shock while Ash put her hands on her hips and bemused over us until even I wanted to slap her.

‘NoooOOOOOOOOO.’ Evelyn said, so I kicked her. ‘OW! I mean,’ now she whispered, ‘yes,’ then turned back half way in time for Ash to shove her into the Vault after Taggart.

Ash hugged me the fastest hug of my life. ‘Thanks, I’m out of here.’ I grappled her.

‘No, I got an angle for you to get out for keeps! Don’t be a fool!’ While we struggled a very funny thing happened. Hysterical, really. Matron Danielle Gregor karate jabbed each of us in the shoulder. I didn’t know if I still had my arms. Stunned and helpless, she shoved us in the Vault of my nightmares, tossed in a fire grenade, and pulled the massive door shut with a BASH while Taggart tripped over us to stop her, losing his flashlight. I saw the last sliver of light and knew it might be my last.

Hyperventilating, I darted my eyes around the dark room until I turned blind, deaf, hot, and suffering from singed hair. The room came alive, and I could see it was maybe fifteen by fifteen feet, but half of that, the rear half, was crammed with Cold Relief Cream cans and boxes of paperwork and money in flames, and the fire gave me enough light to see that the smoke wasn’t venting.

Paper is thin wood. Wood. Wood burns. Goddamn wood had my number after all.

Evelyn was on her feet, rubbing her head. Ash backed into a corner. Taggart found his flashlight and went to work on the lock.

My hearing returned as fast as it left me. Taggart said, ‘She jammed it.’ He looked around like most men look for the perfect sized Philip’s Head screwdriver in a messy garage. He was solid, but there was a wild, angry animal inside him that stretched its chains. And then Ash screamed.

On her knees, she dug her face into the stone corner of the room, screeching like nothing I’d ever heard before, but I bet it was worse than those bats in that cave her former mechanic boss battled a DDU spy. She dug and flailed and slammed her pretty head into brick again and again. I saw a fingernail cut off with a splat on a stone.

Taggart grabbed me and threw me to Ash; Evelyn followed. My limbs half worked again. I grabbed at her but she was too strong and wild, and she wouldn’t stop screaming. I looked at Evelyn(and I definitely needed Evelyn now, not Snuggle Bunny), and she agreed. We hit Ash at two angles, me from above, Evelyn from below. It was a tussle, but we got her on her belly. I had an arm and her head pressed to the ground so she couldn’t bang it, Evelyn had everything else. She still screamed and pleaded and begged. I couldn’t understand it, but there was definitely a “mom” and “dad” in her slobbering. I wanted my mommy and daddy too.

Taggart used his jacket to wave the smoke from the ceiling against the walls. Idiot, what was he thinking? We’re in a confined space. There was no way—and then it hit me. I was going to die. I learned that knowing you are going to die is just like dying. It’s like falling asleep when you’re not at all tired, and feeling, bit by bit, how nothing feels. It didn’t feel cold. It felt like nothing. You don’t feel your insides until they hurt or they go away, meaning you do feel your insides without appreciating them until they go Carmen San Diego.

Then Taggart responded. He threw himself at a segment of the wall and watched the smoke he just wafted against it. I thought he’d lost it, but then he waived his jacket four times at the spot, keeping his eyes sharp on one spot. I followed his eyes, and there it was. Venting smoking. Venting out, and fuck death we were going to live.

Taggart put his jacket back on as he studied the wall.

‘Hurry!’ I Felt like an idiot saying that, but I couldn’t think of any other way to help but to give my vote, and that’s how I learned the importance of voting.

The End

Just kidding.

Taggart flipped out his kit and poked the wall here and there while I experienced a drop in oxygen. Evelyn coughed once, then repeatedly. I think I did too. Taggart, fire moving around him, bit into his left wrist, his eyes blood red, and kept jabbing at different nooks in the wall.

I didn’t feel like I was dying anymore. Everything was quite fine, really. I was sleepy, but that was ok because I could use a nap. Ash kept moaning, and I wanted to tell her it was going to be ok because… the thing, I couldn’t remember, but we were safe now. Then she gave me an elbow to my chin and I was awake for three seconds and knew I was going to die before I was ok again.

Stunned, maybe the eighth time that day, I watched Ash tangle with Snuggle Bunny. Sigh…. didn’t Snuggle Bunny know everything was ok? Stop fighting! If you need to wrestle with a girl, hey, I’m right here. Except first I needed a pillow and a few days of sleep. Hmmmm... I love being warm. A little house cat curled up before the living room fire.

Taggart gave Ash the same jab to the shoulder Matron gave her(and me) just a few hours ago, grabbed her, pointed at me, then ran into the smoke. Damn it, Taggart, we were perfectly safe here! Taggart found a door! There was no reason to run away. Just wait until Taggart opened the door and—

Evelyn picked me up without even asking (which is a violation of our consent agreement), there was a lot of cigarette smoking, then I vomited on the cool stone floor of a smoke free corridor. I’d need that extra fifteen minutes of shower time for sure.

* * *

Sitting, Evelyn cleaned my mouth with my handkerchief(which was made for spanking generated tears but it worked on partially digested food nonetheless) while Taggart held Ash rolled up in his lap. Her skirt was up and all over the place, and I was amazed at how much the man she sat on didn’t seem to notice. He whispered to her down from freaking out status to soft whimpering.

‘What’s the deal?’ I whispered, looking around the dank stone corridor lit by modern bulbs on bolted wires running across the ceiling.

‘Didn’t you hear her?’ Evelyn whispered back. ‘I think her parents… when she was a kid, I think she saw her parents’ house burn down with them in it.’

‘Oh…’ Damn it. Why does shit like that happen? ‘I… I don’t…’

Evelyn finished cleaning me and got to hugging. ‘Nobody knows what to say. It’s just horrible.’

‘He knows what to say. Apparently.’

‘Apparently Taggart knows everything.’

Five minutes and Ash was almost back, but still wrapped up like a baby, her head on Taggart’s shoulder. I could see Taggart desperate to get moving, but he couldn’t leave Ash a wreck either. A minute later Ash poked her head up and whispered back. Taggart shook her to her feet, and slapped her across the face so hard she would have fallen if he didn’t hold her up. A full arch slap with the force of kicking mule.

I went to scratch his eyes out, but Evelyn put me in a strangle hold.

‘Ashley Thomas St. Croix, it happened! It wasn’t your fault, and your parents would have burned and died a thousand times so you could live one life. Their child lived, so their lives were successful, understand? Understand!?’ Ash stood up to him. She was back, but I was afraid there would be another fight and that one of them would die, and we couldn’t afford to lose either. Thankfully, Ash dropped in the most inhuman of fashion and nodded a consent, bitter as it was. Her panic and anguish were replaced with hatred. It hurt my stomach to see it. The mindset was something I saw, I swear, but I can’t explain it, then or now. ‘Good, because if we don’t move quick their lives will be made a failure. Everyone in this school is in danger. Can you move?’

Meaning us.

‘Yes.’ Evelyn spoke for us.

‘Good, come on.’

Taggart took his jacket off of Ash and put it back on himself, checked some pockets to sort himself out, then moved down the passage. We followed.

‘How…’ Ash wiped her nose with her sleeve and pretended nothing happened. She needed a good talking to about emotions, but now wasn’t the time. ‘How- how did we get out?’

‘Taggart found a secret passage way.’ I answered. ‘Which begs the question…’

This is going to be difficult to describe, but it seemed to me that Taggart put most of his mind on the passage, and allocated only a little smidgen to talk to us girls so we wouldn’t panic, so his answers sounded more like internal rebukes than explanations. See? Tough stuff I’m dealing with here. I don’t pretend to be any Shirley Jackson, but I will play her on TV for the right sized check.

‘Begging a question is a logical fallacy. You mean, “which leads us to the next question”, which is how did I know about the door. I didn’t, I deducted a door.’

‘Which leads us to—‘

‘The rust on the Vault door. That door hadn’t been opened in decades, yet those cans were new, so they must have gotten there another way.’

‘Rust can be faked.’ Ash said, her tone obstinate as ever.

‘I thought of that, but three facts suggested otherwise.’ Taggart tapped a light bulb and rung his fingers through the electrical cords, following them, occasionally stopping to read words on them. 'First, the Freemasons are excellent magicians, and all magicians need an escape route to fake apport and asport. Second, it would be inefficient to put rust on a door every time they needed to open it twice a month, as the tracts suggest. Third, and most important, they couldn’t very well carry the cans from the South Fence to the Vault without risking being seen, even at night. Or the money back.’

Evelyn shook her head. ‘You keep saying “they”. So, Gregor has a deal to scam us out of some cash for her cans, enough cash to kill for, but—‘ Evelyn stopped talking and thought as we walked down this never ending (and creepy) Indiana Jones type hallway. Damn it, a whip would comfort here and now, but I'm still not getting her one. ‘Why would she go and kill us over this? For some money? She must know she’d get caught and tried for murder after you disappeared.’

Taggart stopped to check the wall for something I don’t know what. He studied in silence long enough for me to want to scream. What the Hell was going on here? Answer me. My parents pay your salary!

‘She’s DDU.’ Taggart moved further down the passage.

‘Yeah right.’ I said before thinking.

‘What do you think happens if I don’t report in every eight hours?’ Nobody answered. ‘An army attacks. I’m not exaggerating. Agents, yes of course, but also copters, tanks, soldiers, satellite realignments—everything. Even grave digger detachments.’ That last addition didn’t sound like a very funny joke.

‘But she could leave us in the Vault.’ My sarcasm defense melted a tab. My stomach started to hurt. I felt like I was in bed after a nightmare, my dad explaining to me that, “yes indeed, the spaces under beds are homes for child eating monsters that can't be stopped, so be careful. Goodnight, baby. I hope I'll see you in the morning.”

Taggart spoke low and harsh, and feminism be damned—I couldn’t argue against that tone.

‘I have beacons implanted in my bones. A matron would know that. And it makes sense. We’ve gotten reports that the DDU has upped production of cans that fit the specs of Relief cans. We thought it was for a new type of drug. May be still. But we know they’ve been siphoning more and more money from our economy. These reform schools are perfect. Isolated, few adults, no police, girls minding their business out of fear of the cane. Indoctrination.’

Evelyn clutched me in shock, but we kept walking. ‘The essay topic change! No wonder she hated my paper!’ It must be true. I accepted the grave fact. There wasn’t one passive tense sentence in the whole brilliant thing. Her essay proved a masterpiece. Only a DDU bitch could hate it. Oh, and the whole freedom of the individual thing. Had to love that. But not one passive tense sentence! You try it.

‘Yeah,’ Taggart stopped, so we did as well. ‘Kids are vulnerable.’ He muttered, looking up and around, touching the wall, even jumping to touch the ceiling.

Ash looked back from wince we come, then at her feet, and counted with her fingers. Not really counting with her fingers, but using them as numerical bench marks. ‘We’re twenty feet from the stables.’ I didn’t even know we were heading south. I slapped my head.

The fucking SOUTH FENCE again. Those tire tracks Ash went on and on about. That’s how Gregor got the cans in. That’s why the fence was so well guarded. That’s why Gregor caned Ash so hard for snooping about. That’s why everything that could be done to keep a girl away from the South Fence was done in spades. And near the South Fence were the stables and Foxtrot’s shed.

‘Yeah. About twenty.’ Taggart finished inspecting the walls, then looked at us. ‘Look, Gregor knows the jig is up. She knows she’ll be caught, so she knows we’re going to find out everything about the operation, and a lot more that would cripple their operation. That means she has to destroy the school.’

‘WHAT?’ That was me blurting.

‘It’s her only play. Killing all the students will cause a panic, will reduce faith in our governments ability to protect the people, which is our first responsibility. If people lose that faith, then nothing else we do matters. It’ll generate calls for the old ways, the brutal ways. Simple prisons to turn citizens against their country. Close our country, crippling our economy. She wont let herself be caught—she knows too much. And by blowing up the school she destroys any useful evidence linking the scam to the DDU. They'll be hearings and witch hunts, all the press. Law suits. It'll be a good blow. The smart move.' Even Ash wilted. ‘But not all the evidence will be destroyed. Our side will figure out her operation. The truth will out. But too late to do much good.’

I asked, ever calm, ‘How can you be so sure they’ll blow up the school?’

‘Because I know how they think. They think in groups.’ Taggart answered. And fast.

He stared us down hard, somehow looking each of us in the eyes all at the same time. Ash and Evelyn looked confused, and so did I until I slapped my head, which is the only way to get me to think. Well, everyone seems to think slapping my butt works pretty good, too.

‘Oh my God. The DDU is selling cans in all the other Reform schools. She’s going to… she’s going to tell all the other… agents all over the country to blow up the other schools.’

‘But.’ Evelyn couldn’t take it all in all at once. Neither could I, I must admit. I knew it, but I didn’t know what I knew right away. ‘That’s thousands of people.’

‘Tens of thousands.’ Ash was grave, but dig a little deeper and you’d find wraith. That psychotic fury inside my crazy friend might have even given me hope. ‘Forty-three Reform schools. I’ve been to seven.’

‘So many murdered,’ Taggart’s tone became guttural. ‘We will have to start a war, even if the war serves the DDU. We wont have a choice. Millions will die.’

This isn’t right. It was way too surreal. Millions will die? Hours ago my biggest fear was getting spanked, for crying out loud. I am not adult enough for this crap! I never wanted to be this adult. I acted a certain way so I’d never have to be this adult.

Evelyn said, ‘She must have already made the call. It wont take long.’

I, here, must admit an intrusive thought. Here, in the tunnel, I was safe. I would not be one of the tens of thousands. I would live on, and my parents would be so grateful and loving to me after this horrible day was over. They’d freak when their TV told them of the holocaust. Then they’d learn I survived and rush to me and hug me and never let me go and daily cover me in chocolate and buy me anything I want and I…

‘Look at me.’ We obeyed the man from Praxis. ‘None of that is going to happen. I hate this, I hate to do this to you, but I need all the help I can get. This is too important. You’re all adults by age, and I need you to act like adults tonight, which means, I need you all to obey me. Like the military. Do what I tell you, when I tell you. You agree? If not, stay here until it’s over.’

‘I’m in, sir.’ Ash said it like another person. Like a person eager for authority, which is to say, like Ash’s Evil Twin, who is good.

‘Me too.’ Evelyn spoke for us, but I wasn’t sure.

* * *

We watched Taggart climb the ladder to Foxtrots’ shack. Then we listened to Taggart attack, subdue, and torture that creepy old grounds keeper. Ash flew up the ladder, then Evelyn, then me, not wanting to be alone.

The shack was rickety and dirty. Foxtrot, his ancient arm and leg broken, was none-the-less tied up with electrical cord and on the floor. Taggart tore furniture apart until he found a computer in a cactus planter. It was black and modern, and contrasted greatly with the wooden décor. No wires. Taggart clicked and clacked on the keyboard, gave up on breaking the code after five seconds and jumped on the twisted old man, a knee landing on a twisted leg.

Obviously, there was a scream.

And then another. ‘Turn around!’

Evelyn turned on the spot like a good soldier, then turned me around with more force than was necessary. She had my head at my neck, doing a good job of restricting my view. It didn’t occur to me to shrug her off. I couldn’t see Foxtrot, but I could turn enough to see Ash. Ash watched what I couldn’t, a hard look on her face. Evelyn, unlike me, could talk.

‘We don’t know he’s with them.’

‘Of course he is.’ Ash spat out.

‘But—‘

‘The computer, the shack by the South Fence, the passage entrance opening in his shack.’

‘But still… what?’

Taggart screamed words I didn’t know. A lot of “j’s” and “t’s”. It wasn’t anything European or Asian or African… it was too concise. Very. It was artificial.

Evelyn tried to control her breathing, but failed, so she talked to pretend to have control. ‘That’s the Didactic Language. Invented…’ Taggart must have done something horrible to that old man because my bones heard the next scream. I longed for the dank, dark tunnel. ‘Invented to remove nuance… oh, can’t this end? What if he’s just a creepy old man?’

Foxtrot answered Taggart with the same “j’s” and “t’s”. Ash looked satisfied. I didn’t understand the argot, but I know it couldn’t be gibberish. It was too consistent, and Taggart stopped doing whatever he was doing, and listened. Then a CLUNK and I forced a turn to see him at the computer, entering codes. Foxtrot cringed and crumpled along the wall. He twitched until he went limp.

‘OK. Good.’ Taggart dropped his head and closed his eyes. He decided, put his fingers on the keypad, and I heard the distinct sounds of four-wheelers not forty feet away.

‘No.’ I murmured. A cliché idiot was I.

‘Get back in the passage.’ Taggart clicked away at the computer while we failed to obey him. He repeated himself, and we repeated failure to obey him. Boy, I sure hope he doesn’t spank me before DDU agents slit my throat.

‘OK, word is out. But they’re not going to get here in time. Southdown is remote on purpose. For trouble makers.’

‘What about the military base?’ I asked.

‘Two hours away.’

Bobby or Harrison drove two hours just to ball me? I. Am. Hot!

Taggart shoved us, one by one, under a window and pointed a finger in our faces, one by one, and, in no uncertain terms, told us to stay put or he’d kill us. Then he punched Foxtrot’s lights out. It took him half a second to find the best weapon in the shack. A short rusty old ax. Against guns?

‘Listen,’ he whispered, crouched before us. ‘I have to neutralized them before we can move to the school’s main building. I have to do this alone, or I’ll lose the element of surprise. I need you in the school. The school is our objective; these clowns are just an obstacle.’ He tested the blade of his ax with his fingers. Not sharp enough to cut skin. ‘If I fail, immediately approach the school along the tree line, enter the school, and turn the main generator off. After that, hide or make a run for it. Our boys are coming by air. Stay low until the fights over.’

‘But you don’t even know how many are out there.’ Evelyn said.

‘We’re not in a position to pick our battles. Stay put.’ Taggart opened a rear window and climbed out without making a noise a dog could hear. Damn he had a great ass. I looked at the other girls. Evelyn bit her lip, but seemed in control. Ash, and I’m not making this up, looked at the window with a queer, contemplative look. So, she was human after all.

‘I want to confess something before I die.’

Evelyn jabbed me between rib three and four. ‘Don’t jinx us!’

‘Sweetheart, we’re up Jinxed Creek without a Jaddle. Anyway, I hid the Third Accounts Gregor was looking for in Lauren's teddy bear Dr. Featherstone without telling Lauren. So… sorry.’

Given our current situation, and my apologetic tone, I didn’t think I deserved those looks.

Men spoke that same weird tongue. I counted at least six voices, but they’re could have been thirty for all I knew. They were having problems getting men over the fence. One very loud, very in charge voice gave what must have been an order, and then I heard the clang of the dreaded South Fence meeting its fate. Sic semper tyrannis.

The South Wall rested in the dirt, like a lot of my friends would soon. I wanted to help, and I would, but we couldn’t win. At least Taggart got the word out and the rest of the Reform schools had a square chance.

Three screams, cut short, then gun fire. Taggart had engaged during the chaos of the fence falling. Evelyn rose to look through the window, so I grabbed her with all the wrestling skills Coach Van Brown paddled into me. It was a pitched battle until the gun fire stopped. We stopped fighting. We stopped breathing.

That very in charge voice yelled questions while someone got his ass kicked. They got Taggart. They got him, and were going to beat it out of him. I’m guessing the DDU agents weren’t using a paddle.

‘Where’s Ash?’

What? I looked around. The vixen! Maniac! Human my ass; she was deadhead!

We let go and shot to the window. Two men held a bloodied and clothes torn Taggart on his knees. Goddamn did he look hot. A third kicked him in the stomach. The forth and final, the commanding voice, pointed a pistol at Taggart. Black leather overcoat and sharp hat, tall and strong, though his face was emaciated and withered. He held an handkerchief against a blood flooding cheek. He repeated his question. “Jar tango res tinale?” Taggart ignored him and dealt with the pain. The commander added, “Tinalae” as a statement. He tossed his handkerchief aside and two handed the pistol to steady it. His face was a geyser of blood until Ash rode a horse over him. Chest to chest, a horse beats a man. Ash, showing off her animal husbandry, pulled on the reins, and the black horse danced over the fallen bastard until his face didn’t have any blood left to bleed.

Taggart’s legs grappled the man who kicked him, pulled himself free from the two holding his arms, then broke their necks faster than I could say, “He broke their necks!” Taggart pushed a corpse off and got to his knees. He scrambled across the battlefield to the enemies equipment. Only then did I notice the other axe opened bodies, but I didn’t count them. I didn’t even count the times I vomited. My dentist will be pissed, I thought.

This couldn’t be happening to me. I wish I just got spanked again.

Oh why not then

2008-08-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

I started this story many years ago. It didn't work for me. I don't know... it just didn't seem to work. But it costs me nothing to post it. Perhaps one of my billions of adoring readers can do something with it. I guess I'm not a good PR guy. There are a few turns of phrase I like, but damn it, the chapter doesn't work. I fear the story is vulgar at its core and can't be redeemed even with the brilliance we all know I have.

Enjoy!

The Bitter Workings of a Neglected Indentured Servant

(or Sex Slave: The Debate Continues)

by Pallidbust

My second day as a slave began with an early breakfast I didn’t eat, a long bath/shower/Turkish Sauna/shower/hair-skin-nails and girl chat with Simon’s wife, Pam, and then I was propelled into brunch. I, like so few people in the history of the human race, would meet my master over brunch. I know. It sounds ridiculous. Imagine how hard it is to write it. Its harder to write it than it was to live it.

And I did live it.

I sat with Pam on a lush couch in a lush living room in a mansion. Never been in a mansion before, but I supposed it was a lush mansion, but as far as I know it could have been a really crappy mansion as far as palatial palaces go.

Simon sat at his own thrown type giant chair and fought back the urge to gobble down all the brunch. I wore my only possessions. Dark blue tank top that just shows off my mid rift (which I was and am very proud of thank you very much), my blue jeans jacket that has served me since my older brother gave it to me eight years before, and tight-tight-tight low rise blue jeans that I stole from a wicked sorority sister when I dropped out of college because I loved them more than she ever could. Actually, I wasn’t sure they were mine anymore. If I were owned, and I owned the shirt on my back, then it made sense that my shirt was owned by whomever owned me. And what’s the difference between me and my shirt?

Now maybe you understand how confused I am. And was, but still am.

‘Mr. Simon. Missus.’ A tall man in a dark suit (ok, I admit it, an awesome dark suit) walked into the living room with a well practiced stride. Simon pounced and shook his hand and insisted that the new man sit. Apparently his name was Richard. A common enough name.

Richard unbuttoned his jacket and sat. He pulled out a flip notepad and reached for his inner pocket, probably for a pen. I liked his hair. It was very simple except for a slight, natural spiking around the edges only crude oil could keep down. He didn’t oil his hair. He probably had it trimmed once a week, but there was always a little showing to make it unmanageable. Very male.

Simon pressed. ‘You eating? Pam’s afraid you’re not eating.’

‘You look thin.’

‘Pam says you look thin.’

Richard paused a moment, taking in the scene. I could see his eyes avoid me. I’m use to it. Eyes either zero in on me or avoid me. That’s just the way it is.

Richard paused for a moment further after a failed attempt to respond. ‘Yes, I’m eating. So…’It was a pen! ‘How can I help y….’

‘Richard, that job you pulled for me last time… that was above and beyond, man. That was something.’

‘I’m glad you’re satisfied, sir.’

The man captured the whole room. He was so damned… I don’t know. He was very something. He put his notebook and pen back into place and waited. He looked like he never lost blinking games. Simon looked to Pam for something, got it, then turned back to this tall man in a suit that one could curl up in to die or snooze for hours if healthy. I should mention he had darkish blonde hair. Well, sort of brown. Or mostly black. Don’t know why I mention it, it just seems like one of the things one notices.

‘Richard, we’re concerned about you.’

‘I’m concerned about you, Mr. Simon.’

‘Frank! For goodness sakes, Richard, we’re at brunch! If you can’t call a man by his first name at brunch, then the Founding Fathers failed! Right? Of course I’m right.’

Frank Simon was in his fifties, an inch or five past being on the verge of being pudgy, and full of energy.

‘Right, Frank. So the last deal is holding?’ I could tell this Richard knew the deal was holding. He wanted Simon to get to it. Clearly a subordinate, but he pushed.

‘This is Fallon.’ That’s me. ‘See her there? Pam just loves her. Wants to adopt her; I can tell. What do you think? Brand new, right out of the pond. What do you think?’

He looked me over like I was a horse! That does not put you on my good side.

‘She’s very nice, Frank. Pam.’

Very nice? What the fuck does that mean? A new DVD player is very nice. It’s one thing to be humiliated like this, but for the love of God, I wasn’t nice. I was hot! If they were to enslave me, then the least they could do was note me as a high-end slave.

‘Good!’ Simon burst with joy. ‘Then she should suit you fine.’

‘Pardon?’

‘A gift. Enjoy her while she lasts. Only have her for two years. Then she’s off the farm.’ Business over, Simon attacked the snacks. ‘Pam, do I like this? That there.’

‘Yes, Frank. It’s what you gorged on during your niece’s confirmation while Dr. Lee begged you to stop.’

‘Right!’ He munched down. ‘Dr. Lee is a good doctor. He cares. Good catering, baby.’

Richard didn’t eat. He scratched at that bone to the upper left of his right eye and thought a moment. ‘Frank, I have my home just how I want it, and I’m not sure I can accommodate…’

‘Life is conflict, my boy! Greeks knew that even in ancient times. Please, eat, or Pam will talk my ear off. But not this stuff; that’s for me. Pam, what is it called? Find out who invented it, and make sure I make them rich.’

Richard sighed. ‘It was invented hundreds of years ago by an Italian working for the king of Spain. He’s quite dead.’

‘Then I’ll make the delivery boy rich!’

* * *

I sat shotgun in Richard’s black, scary SUV and fumed. It was so clean and empty of fast food rappers it was positively eerie. OK… I’m a sex-slave. That’s a forced situation. Humiliating? Sure. Invoking my righteous indignation? You bet. But this thirty-something bastard not appreciating the gift the great Simon gave him, namely me, that just pissed me off.

By the way, I use both the past and the present tense, because I feel like it. Get over yourself, English Major; this is my life story, and it’s very emotional.

I hid my fuming.

‘So… I’m your sex slave. Any orders?’

‘You’re not my sex slave.’

‘Well, lets review. I have to do everything you tell me, and if you so order, I have to enjoy it.’ He ignored me. Under normal circumstance ignoring me was suicidal. I knew this was not a normal circumstance, so I played it cool. ‘I mean, if you pulled over, told me to strip, bend over the hood, and then took me like a big strong baron, I’d have to not kill you in your sleep later, right?’

‘Why?’

‘Because my asshole ex-boyfriend had a charming little secret -- he was a coke dealer. Hurray! Kept his “supply” in my toilet… it was this or prison. A lawyer gave me the option: be a sex slave for two years, no record at all, or five to ten in prison as a sex slave to a large woman who wouldn’t care about my needs. Wouldn’t you choose free market slavery?’

My new master drove on a bit before addressing me. ‘I’d flee the jurisdiction if I couldn’t get justice, but you didn’t, you opted for me whether you knew it or not. However, you only need to serve me for a certain term. You’re an indentured servant.’

‘A sexual indentured servant.’

‘No. I promise you, if you just keep quite, you’ll breeze through the next two years with your virtue.’

Motherfucker. Look, I’m a feminist. I’m more of a feminist than you’ve likely met. I don’t even think in terms of feminism, that’s how feminist I am. The point is, I’m hot, I’m young, my “virtue” was as dead as my love for my ex-asshole-boyfriend, I’m smart as a whip, charming as a Kennedy, and this bastard isn’t at all grateful for getting me as a gift. Well… we’ll see about that.

‘I’m sorry to put you out. I know it must be a burden to have a nubile girl kneeling at your feet. It’s like having to take in a hapless brother-in-law with a gambling problem.’

‘Fallon, is it?’

‘Yeah. Or, of course, you can rename me.’

‘Fallon,’ he was calm, which upset me, as I was trying to get his goat. He had a big, fluffy, golden fleece goat, and I was going to get it, and gut it, then hire some redneck to roast it old school; but it wasn’t going well. So far he had total possession of his goat, well hidden behind an impregnable fortress guarded by gargoyles and Navy Seals. ‘Fallon, I don’t know what you’ve been told, and I don’t know what you expect. And I don’t care. I’m in this community. I work and live here. You’re my first indentured servant, and hopefully my last. If I want a wife I’ll order one from Russia or Korea. I don’t approve or disapprove of this community’s system. Its an ancient system, it works, it makes the powerful complacent, keeping them from turning Napoleon, and keeps honest young people, like yourself, out of a soul rotting prison. You are a shock to my system, but with patience, equilibrium is inevitable. Let’s be rational, OK?’

‘Ah… yes. Very good. So, are you a robot, or a Vulcan?’

He drove on. I really fucking hate being ignored. I must seem to you, my dear reader, like a vulgar person, given to foul language. Well I’m not. When I’m not entering slavery, I’m a dove. I’m a God damn Pollyanna. Anyways, I like attention. Ladies, you know what I mean. Gentlemen, you know the fucking horror.

‘What do you do for Frank?’

‘Mr. Simon.’

‘He told you to call him Frank.’

‘Brunch is over.’

* * *

Grasslands and corn. Lots of it. Every once in a while we passed a home. All of them nice. One of them had a pony. Boy do I envy the slave in the pony home. I hope Richard has a pony. I’ve never ridden one, but I could spend the next two years, sixteen hours a day, learning how to ride a pony and feeding it sugar cubes. I’d name it Basil if a boy pony, and Audrey if a girl pony.

My new lord and master pulled into a long driveway, but stopped well short of the two story number in the far distance, no pony in sight. Gravel driveway, if it matters to you. He parked, and rubbed that bone above his eye. Either he should see a doctor about that, or he should let me go, because I seem to cause it a lot of pain.

Good.

‘You didn’t put any luggage in my jeep.’

‘Yes I did. The slave-kit.’

‘I don’t like repeating myself.’ Shouldn’t have told me that. ‘You’re not a slave. Slavery is illegal, even here. You don’t have habiliments is my point.’ I looked him in the eyes, refusing to flinch. ‘Necessities.’ Shit.

Well, he had me there. Also, of course, he had me in general. I was had. I’m sorry if I keep getting back to that, but it’s not an easy concept to get accustomed to. Look, I’m ending my sentences in prepositions! I’m really thrown for a loop here.

He pulled the SUV back into the street and headed on down the road.

‘Master, aren’t you going to take me to your home so I can clean the kitchen floor with my toothbrush while you flick me with a riding crop for being lazy and/or insolent?’

‘You don’t own a toothbrush.’

He switched to cruise control. I just saw it… yes. A kernel of annoyance.

‘And don’t call me master.’

* * *

It was adorable. An adorable little main street with little mom and pop stores everywhere. Ah! A Homemade Ice Cream shop… gorgeous Americana.

I followed my lord and master into, what appeared to be, a micro-Walmart of some sort. It sold everything, but only had a few of each, and everything was overpriced by at least two dollars. And everyone looked happy, until they saw my above mentioned lord and master that is. They stiffened up a bit. Then they saw me, and confusion set in.

Interesting.

A sign read, “Welcome to Lauren and Paul’s Emporium!” Lauren and Paul were a couple in their forties. They seemed to run the joint. Richard spoke briefly with Paul, who nodded, confused, then amused. Paul then whispered to Lauren, who pounced! She took my arm, congratulated me on my red hair and being adorable (Lauren got it, what’s the asshole’s problem?), and ushered me to the female section of the micro-Walmart.

I looked over my shoulder, saw Richard approach, then was forced to look over a red sweater that matched my hair… but it didn’t, it was far too bright, but I needed all the friends I could get, so I agreed.

‘So, I guess she’ll need a sweater?’ Richard asked, like he was discussing his car’s maintenance.

Lauren seemed to have lost all fear of my vassal. She was in her element now.

‘One sweater? Mr. Rhodes… we’ll be a while.’

Mr. Rhodes, is it? Mr. Richard Rhodes. Alliteration… like a comic book superhero. A brooding superhero perhaps? One with a dark past that has focused his pain and fear into a brave and skilled crime-fighting persona? Or was he just a Dick?

‘OK. Look, get her what she needs. Put it on my tab. I’ll be back in an hour.’ Lauren shook her head. ‘Two hours exactly; that’s it.’ And the big strong man walked off, no doubt to find some wounded doves to step on.

‘Goodbye, Master Rhodes.’ He stopped on a dime and cocked his head like I insulted his mother. I believe he might have counted to five. He turned sideways. Paul and Lauren watched on, enjoying the newly-bonded spout.

‘Don’t forget her toothbrush.’

Erg. Hope he wasn’t serious about that. Ah hell with it. I’d achieved my first victory: public humiliation, so I smiled and shall smile at the memory as I type. La de ha, I am so pleased. Well, moments of joy don’t last. Back to it then.

I watched him through the windows as Lauren whispered in my ear.

‘The best thing to do, to start it off right, is to buy a lot of stuff. Let him know a woman has needs. He doesn’t have any experience with women that I know of, so how can he set the tabs too high?’ Paul gave Lauren a firm spank on the rear end, something I know old couples were into because none of them half way earned a B.A.’s in Women’s Study at Berkeley before dropping out to star as an extra in a B movie filmed in Thailand that they didn’t finish because of a monsoon but had no regrets because the Key Grip became their ex-boyfriend with a coke habit, but I didn’t hear Lauren object to the smack, or Paul relent, and I needed friends. I suppose people got tired of bickering, and just started smacking backsides to save time. I was in no position to judge, being a slave.

Besides, smack or not, I was winning round two already. I smiled a little wider. Victory two was in sight. Economic victory.

* * *

I don’t know how to describe houses very well. I shall keep this as short as possible, and you, dear reader, can use your imagination. If you don’t want to use your imagination, please watch some TV. I wont be offended. I recommend Desperate Housewives.

Two story, brick and wood. Modern, but not modern art. Brown carpet in living room. Big kitchen. Pool in the back (awesome!). Bookshelves all over the place, all packed. Big TV in front of couch, thousands of DVDs (awesome to a lesser extent). That’s about it. Just imagine a nice place without any plants. It was very clean, and as I carried load after load of possessions up to my room, second floor, I couldn’t help but noticed a heavenly aroma coming from the kitchen, which by the way, was very clean. The lying bastard didn’t need my toothbrush.

I had bought ten just in case.

I finished the moving, decided to nest later, and flopped downstairs. Oh, yeah, I don’t want to forget this part. He doesn’t wear shoes in his home. OK, fine. I would mind if he had pretentious Asian crap everywhere, showing off how “spiritual” he was, but he didn’t. Probably just liked clean floors. However, every time I passed the front door, I had to either take off or put on my sneakers, greatly increasing the time necessary to move my new habiliments from his scary, black SUV to my room on the second floor. I’m proud of my legs, and I’ve made more than one Stairmaster my bitch, but it was a good workout for my legs and glutes I admit.

I mention the barefoot affair as I consider it his victory number one. I’m still one up with my economic victory, but now I knew I’d have to watch him.

Too late. The slave kit, a green suit case, laid conspicuously on the couch table in the living room. It hadn’t been opened. Now… was I Pandora, or was I the cat? Wait… they both were curious, weren’t they? Both got it in the ass? I’m doomed.

Then the smell again and I realized I hadn’t eaten all day, and it was the late afternoon and I was very hungry. I will never turn down a free brunch again.

I peaked into the kitchen. I was very stealthy, but I couldn’t tell if he didn’t notice me or was just indifferent. I watched as he left an elaborate salad making factory to retrieve a marinating steak from the refrigerator. He carried a towel over his left shoulder with ease. Something about that towel over his broad shoulder gave me a… something. Damn you, words, you abandon me! Anyway, the towel over the shoulder piqued some instinct or DNA or something. I liked it, and filed it away in my memory so I would dream about Jeremy Brett in such a towel.

‘So, master, you’re one of those guys, right?’

‘Don’t call me master. What kind?’

‘The kind that are self-sufficient, don’t need any pestering female to take care of them, takes the garbage out without being told, knows how to cook… you know. Grown up, I guess.’

‘If you say so. Thanks for not calling me “master.”’

Shit!

‘You’re welcome, Ma...’ He stuck an asparagus fried in a creamy butter sauce in my mouth… victory number two for Richard Rhodes. We were even. Then I savored the asparagus, and considered unconditional surrender.

‘Is it ready?’

‘Grrhmmmmraahhhhh…. Um, I mean…. Yeah, its good. I mean, it’s as good as its going to be, Master.’

‘Stop it. Sit down while I think. This pestering has to stop.’

‘Why, Master?’

‘Fine. If you insist, you can talk all you want in your room until breakfast.’

Ahhhh…. here it was. The master and the slave. Finally, we were being honest with each other. I knew it. Men were men. They could put on whatever veneer they wanted, but when push comes to shove, they shove. Tall, hairless monkeys, everyone of them, thank the Goddess. Now we can stop playing games and come to some kind of workable if uneven arrangement.

I, of course, sat down in the dining room at a small table fit for four at most, and three of them would have to be skinny. I twiddled my thumbs and looked around the room. Nothing on the white walls. It felt like we’d both just moved in.

To Sparta.

He brought me a salad. Let me describe the salad, and yes, I’m bragging, because I got to eat this salad, and you didn’t, Nah-na, nah-na-na. From bottom to top: a thin layer of roman lettuce, red vinaigrette dressing, a just barely seared in cream and cheese sauce slice of tomato cut from the middle, a bunch of iceberg lettuce, light Italian dressing (my guess was Newman’s Own until I saw him making it from scratch), capers, black olives, the smallest lightest Cherub’s toe tap essence hint of heated feta, and crushed croutons. If that doesn’t sound freaking great to you, then you don’t have a human’s tongue, or you didn’t recognize many of those ingredients. Make a list, take them to the store, and treat yourself. You’ve earned it reading my mad ramblings this far. Or get your slave to do it.

Master ate his…. I’m sorry, excuse me. The man who I call master to piss him off ate his salad in the kitchen. I could hear him performing impressive acts in there while eating, but dared not move from my seat to risk banishment to my foodless room. Unthinkable.

He returned with more of the adequately perfect asparagus and little crackers with tasty stuff on them and… you know what, you’re probably not reading this for the food. Sorry. I’m going to save some time. We ate the pre-steak stuff, he apologized for serving the dishes out of order (he implied it was my fault), he asked if I were a vegetarian (nope, bring the dead animals on), and he gave me a little speech.

Cliffnotes speech: we’re stuck together. Stop trying to piss me off. I don’t want to have to treat you like others in the community treated their indentured servants, but if you push me, I will. I like silence, and don’t call me master again.

Cliffnotes response: Agreed. I’ll try. I’d prefer to avoid that, too, whatever that is. I have earphones, and I’ll compromise with “sir.”

Cliffnotes inquiry: Why “sir?”

Actual answer: Because its silly, and I want the next two years to be as silly as possible, as my ego is very bruised.

He thought about that one for several courses. He brought in the steak. I fought the steak. It was a tie. I destroyed all of the steak, along with the potatoes that tasted like the steak, but it might have delivered me a death blow. Then this Greek summer salad deal… I somehow made it to the couch and slumped and thought about cutting open my stomach. Instead I moaned with equal parts pleasure and regret. If the movie Se7en didn’t prove it to me, then that meal did: Gluttony is a deadly sin.

He brought me coffee. He sat in a chair, drank his coffee, and read a book. Didn’t say a word to me.

‘Sir, why are you being so nice to me, and so rude at the same time?’

‘Pardon?’

‘I mean, you feed me that… adequate meal, then you bring me coffee, but then you… oh my God is this freshly ground? Anyways, then you… oh, God… never mind, God, it is. Anyways, then you just sit there and… I guess its not rude, but it’s not normal, is it?’

‘I don’t know.’ He waited for a reply.

‘I guess not. Hey, what do you think is in the slave kit, sir?’

‘Hmmm? Oh, I don’t know.’

‘I’m guessing loin cloths and a neck collar with studs on it. Oh! You think they’re diamond studs?’ I expected a laugh, or a scolding even. Instead he grabbed the case and made to walk off. ‘Woa, where you going with that. I want to see.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Either I’m Pandora or the cat. Don’t know yet.’ He looked at me critically and hard so I could see his eyes in detail (bright blue). He set the case down, careful not to tip my coffee, and opened the case.

In the case, which comes free with any purchase of me, were an assortment of paddles, whips, a thin stick with a cute leather handle, cuffs, chains, rope… you get the idea. It looked like the briefcase of a perverted Englishman.

And no diamonds. Damn it.

He looked at me. ‘I hope you’re happy. I suppose these are for use on you.’

‘Pretty sure, Sir. Oh, wait. A manual. Let me see…. Well… a lot of copyrights… acknowledgments… index… ah, yes. They’re for use on me. For correction and pleasure. Hmmm…’

He snatched the manual from me, sat down and read. He scanned each page, flipping when he was done with alacrity. He was so intense and fast at reading it, and dead serious, that it sort made me a little goofy in the head. I shook the goof out of my head and handled an equally serious wooden paddle, like the kind the sorority I left had on the wall for decoration, except this one didn’t have a sticker of Snoopy on it. I’d never taken a good close look at a paddle. It didn’t look all that bad. I fell on my ass once Bruised her up nice. I lived.

‘I’ll put it in the closet, and that’ll be the end of it. Reason will rule this house.’

I reclined on my couch (I claimed it as a cat would), and found myself in complete agreement with Sir. Play it cool, entertain yourself, two years would be a breeze. Maybe I’d learn a foreign language. Or get “a degree from home.” Plant a garden. There were thousands to things to do. I would not, however, get beaten like a naughty indentured servant that just ached for attention on my curvy bottom then stick my finger in my mouth and, eye’s wide, say, “have I been a naughty girl, sir?”

No sir, Sir.

POTUS SPANKUS

2008-08-09T21:51:00.000-07:00

Is there more to a spank, in the mysterious mind of the female human creature, than the mere physics? Is physical strength via crude muscle alone the decider? Or can, perhaps, gravitas add import to the old sharp crack of hand on butt? Witness Americans in Cathay:

This highly tuned Olympic athlete supplicates and yields to the leader of the free world, inventing the transparent lie that the public spanking she requests is only "a jokey custom between players intended to offer encouragement." Ha! Yeah, right. She is a warrior, and thus can smell Bush's power. She wants it--no!-she needs it. I submit that to women, power is always the new black. And that man knows missile codes.

Bush eyes fresh prey....

But who among us can blame these Olympians? Look how happy a presidential spanking makes them!!! They burst with energy.

POTUS exercises his spanking mitts to keep them sharp and hard for the pole vaulters' bottoms:

Look at the cold determination. America's bringing home the gold for female pole vaulting, you can bank on it.

PB

Reform, Chapter Seven

2008-08-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

Chapter Seven

Be Careful When You Spank The Monster, That The Monster

You Do Not Become

Sitting on a beaten ass for six hours is like a whore vacuum cleaner: it fucking sucks. Every inch of my glutes were bruised, plus cane marks of such number that they overlapped into one welt which covered my sitter and bruised all the way to my tail bone, so there was just no way to get comfortable on a wooden chair while Henderson droned on about tax deductions. Cold cream should be tax deductible. And so should puppies and rainbows and Jimmy Page’s music and anything that eats wood. Wood was the bane of my existence. Hairbrushes, canes, armless chairs, sweet and horny Chemists I didn’t want… I hope advanced space alien termites conquer the world.

But the hours did pass and I made it to Snuggle Bunny’s room so she could ‘spank’ me into ‘proof reading’ her ‘homework’, or so everybody thought. Cruelly fully clothed, I lay on my stomach with her sitting at my side, rubbing my back, and we talked about normal girl stuff. You know, boys. Actually we didn’t talk about boys. We planned our first day out of this joint. Unless a boy was making Chinese food (Evelyn) or Chicago style pizza (moi), handing out popcorn at a picture show, selling lingerie, or tending bar, boys were not a part of our plan.

I did still miss boys. I’d like to have a few around, and perhaps one or two old men to impart paternal wisdom and forgiveness a la Yoda, but D Day- PIZZA! Do the Chinese in America make pizza these days? I’ve been out of the loop a long time, and maybe they do because they’re pretty clever. ‘We’ll have a large, full crust, extra sauce, with pepperoni, peppers, and Kung Pow Chicken and a side order of Mazerella Egg Roles please. For here. Do you have forks?’

KnockKnock… KnockKnockKNOCK. Two seconds. KNOCK.

‘Stay put, tough guy. Just Alexia.’ Evelyn was good with such things. I suspected she gave each one of her goonlets a different code. Type A, Type A, Type A. However, Evelyn, like all members of the constabulary, didn’t understand the subtly of crime. I made it to the desk, sat on the WOODEN chair, at great personal sacrifice, and pretended to prey on comma splices. Personally I don’t care about comma splices. A comma represents a pause in speech, but I also didn’t care to be spanked by my English teacher, so I learned how to spot them. When I get out of here, to, Hell, with, comma, splices.

‘Hey, Evelyn, Gregor is going nuts on St. Croix in… Lauren’s room. She’s screaming, and I don’t think she’s in control of herself.’ My heart stopped. ‘I thought you’d like to know. I… I’m not going to talk her down.’

‘What about?’ Evelyn morphed into Evil-Lyn, professional.

‘I don’t know; I just heard the screaming. Something about “where is it, St. Croix!” She didn’t ask for any of our help.’ Alexia left and I watched Evelyn stand in the middle of her room, having her own dinkum thinkum. I had to grab the seat of the chair to pull my aching and swollen bottom down to keep from sprinting to my room. She grabbed her hairbrush.

‘Can you control yourself?’

‘YES!’

‘OK, let’s go.’

My dorm room lay in shambles. Ash stood, indifferent, while Matron Gregor tore my room apart. Lauren sat on her bunk, clutching Dr. Featherstone the teddy bear, terrified and bent like a worm that just got stepped on. Gregor marauded like a crazed titan. Her hair swung loose and wild as snakes, like a Gorgon, to keep the Greek Myth motif. She scared me, and she hadn’t even noticed me yet. I’d moved most of my contraband out of the furniture she tore in half with her hands, putting most of my stash in… ahem, someplace, dear reader, just because everything was crazy these days, so I wasn’t scared of exposure. I was only scared for my life.

Gregor looked like murder.

‘Can I be of assistance, ma’am.’ Evelyn was cool, much cooler than I felt. ‘Perhaps I could…’

‘Shut it! St. Croix, you took it. I turned my back for five seconds, dealing with that thug from Praxis, and I’ve torn your dorm apart! Apart! It’s here! It must be here! You come here so often… Your game is up! Now answer me!!!’

Ash seemed not to have noticed. She stood there and looked dumb and distracted. Lauren whimpered a little.

‘Oh… I haven’t looked in there.’ Gregor, twice the height of Lauren, grabbed Dr. Featherstone, and yanked. I could see it in Lauren’s eyes. She was afraid to clutch because the tug-of-war might damage her stupid stuffed bear that got her through the day since the day her husband mailed it to her. Her husband wrote her every single Goddamn day, and called whenever allowed, on the dot, to tell her to talk about anything because he just wanted to hear her voice like a total sap. Gregor clutched Dr. Featherstone by his fluffy neck.

I wanted to throw up.

Ash slapped Gregor in the face, took the bear, and tossed it to Lauren. She then stepped between the woman and the girl and the bear, cocked her head to the side with her arms folded, and gave off the expression of a girl who just wants an excuse to give a beat down.

Everybody else froze in time. I’ve heard that term, “unthinkable” before, but never believed in it. People can think of truly horrible things, in fact people often think of truly horrible things; horrible things enter the mind out of nowhere—but sane people don’t seriously contemplate doing them. Those are just intrusive thoughts, and a sane person dismisses them as weightless Freudian nonsense.

Ash slapped Gregor. Gregor had been slapped. That was unthinkable. But it existed, and I saw it, so I had to deal. I think I internalized that before Gregor, cheek stinging, did. She did internalize eventually.

‘Evelyn, give me that hairbrush. All of you give me and Ashley the room, please, and shut the door.’

‘Ma’am, perhaps we should discuss this…’ Gregor gave Evelyn the look of death. I was terrified. She didn’t look angry. She looked insane. A little drool seeped out, and the sank, and then hung. ‘Ma’am, I will be happy to correct St. Croix while you…’

‘Get out!’ The drool dollop snapped as Gregor punched Evelyn in the shoulder and snatched the dreaded hairbrush Ash repaired out of Snuggle Bunny’s limp hands. I wanted to burn Gregor alive and I saw in my mind how a leg broken from a chair on the floor would fit into her neck if I jabbed at the right angle, but I stepped back instead. I was so scared I had to give my brain time to play it smart, and from that moment I never thought an army general in history a fool, no matter how stupid he acted or bad he lost. It’s an horrible decision to think first when your blood cried out for blood now. But that’s what some people have to do sometimes, if they’re unlucky.

In the aisle we heard the door lock, and not long after the sound of the fastest, hardest swats I’d ever heard. It was inhuman to me, and my lover spanked me with that very same hairbrush. I blanked during the disaster. My brain escaped me. Fortunately Evelyn snapped out of it.

‘Lauren, look at… look at me! You know where the Praxis guy is? Good. Go get him, tell him a girl is… hurt. Hurt bad. Do it now! Run!’ Lauren ran, happy for something to do.

‘We have to…’ Evelyn thought. The whacks kept coming. Sounded like three thunder cracks per second. ‘He’s all the way on the other end of the building.’ Evelyn knocked on the door. Nothing changed. She gave up on any semblance of etiquette and racked her knuckles on the door, but it didn’t pause the spanks. I couldn’t believe the sounds seeping under that door. Evelyn kicked, but only hurt her foot. I counted two hundred cracks before running away. Evelyn didn’t notice. The door was her enemy.

I turned a corner, covered the glass with my vest, then punched it. I then put my hand on the fire alarm lever. All I had to do was pull down. This is a confession. I knew my friend was being tortured by an insane woman that wasn’t capable of thinking about permanent damage to a girl’s bottom. I knew that. I knew Ash had no idea what she was being spanked for, but wouldn’t yield even if she did, so she would fight back and take a beating no girl in the FA should take. No girl anywhere. I knew Ash suffered terribly for being a good person. No, a great person. I knew I knew what I had to do. But I also knew that a false alarm for a fire would cost me an extra two years, minimum. Damn my weakness to the abject pitch of fortune, I paused because of the threat of those two years. As far as I know I’m the only person on the planet angry at me for pausing, but I’m angry enough for a thousand people and more. I am to the very hour I type these words.

I pulled down but an iron statue grabbed my wrist before I could lock the lever. I used both hands, but somehow Evelyn’s hand was too strong for me. Then I turned, to push her back, but she wasn’t there. Taggart, and Taggart’s arm, controlled me.

‘Where’s the fire?’ His eyes were blue. His face was strong but kind, but I knew he was a bastard.

‘There is a secret room you don’t know about. If you get Gregor off of Ash, I’ll show it to you.’

‘Gregor off of Ash? Ashley St. Croix? I already agreed…’

‘Gregor’s gone insane! She’s going to hurt Ash! For real hurt!’

‘Where?’

‘My room. Number 3…’ but he was off before I could even get the number out.

I ran after him but he was a freaking gazelle. Halfway we ran past Evelyn, who limped by us.

‘What’s going on?!’ Then my bunny made a 180 and followed, but it took her time to catch up because she limped and was built for upper body work while I was built for running the mile like a jackrabbit with Coach’s paddle at its ass. Taggart was built to war on Troy. I turned another corner to see Taggart kick down the door. It snapped like a little bitch before him. I gulped and ran, refusing ever again to show fear in the face of bullshit.

I heard some profanities from Matron that would have had me sleeping on my stomach for a month, and I also heard a thud. I made it to the sill and saw Ash on her hands in knees before an armless chair, gasping and red faced. I couldn’t see her bottom as it pointed towards Taggart, who pushed Matron Gregor to the back of the room like she was an annoying drunk at a bar. She grabbed at him, so he flicked her in the eyeball. That was a new one on me.

The eye burst with crocodile tears. I mean burst. She recoiled in shock, not pain, and had to sit on my bed with a hand over her flooding peeper. Her fingers couldn’t seal enough to keep tears from spurting out in streams. The scary agent forgot about Matron and grabbed at Ash, who resisted out of instinct. I don’t think she even knew what was going on. Ash was formidable, but Taggart was professional, and after only thirty seconds of getting scratched and punched he sat with the crazy penned over his knee as if to spanked her. Instead he inspected her wounds.

Ash continued to struggle. I ran to her face, too afraid to look at her other end, and talked her down. Her brilliant red hair was in the chic style they called “La Savage” I think. I whispered low until the humanity returned to her eyes.

‘You back?’

She nodded, gasping.

‘You going to sue? Cuzz I got this cousin that just passed the bar.’ She coughed out in pain. She tried to tell me not to make her laugh because she couldn’t breath but she couldn’t because she couldn’t breath.

‘How is she?’ I could see Evelyn out of the corner of my eye. She retrieved her hairbrush and hid it in a hamper while Gregor wept without emotion.

‘Fine.’ He still inspected. ‘She’s going to be just fine in a couple of weeks.’

‘I’m…’ The mad woman jabbed between huffs. ‘right(puff) here(wheeze).’

‘You’re going to be just fine in a couple of weeks.’ They were a Vaudeville act. He kept poking her here and there, I guess testing for internal bleeding, but I’m no doctor. He didn’t look like he was taking advantage, if you know what I mean, but you can never tell with men, if you know what I mean. He would have looked cruel if I’d only glanced at him, but after a few seconds I could see deep thought on an unpleasant matter. He was hard to read and I was emotional. In any case, Ash didn’t like it.

‘Let me up.’ She still hadn’t caught her breath.

‘Just relax I’m—‘

‘You said (gasp) I was fine!’

‘Then call me Captain Cautious!’

An impressive growl. I felt it in my spine. The option of dissent never existed. Most impressive of all is that it shut Ash up. She popped her eyes up to feign embarrassment like she likes to do to mock the Man or the concept of guilt. She took on a passive stance and focused on breathing. They must train agents to use that growl to settle down soccer rioters.

* * *

Ash’s legs were still weak from the torture, so me and SB(that’s an acronym for Snuggle Bunny, see how that works? Actually, I’m not going to use it, because I like typing Snuggle Bunny almost as much as I like saying Snuggle Bunny. I used to hate people like what I have become) each took an arm and walked Ash to Snuggle Bunny’s room to use three or four bags of suspect cold cream on her battered buns.

Lauren caught up all in a tilly. I don’t know what that means either. My grandmother use to say I ran up “all in a tilly” all the time to describe my arrivals, and now it’s my turn to confound others. ‘I couldn’t find…’

‘OK, Lauren; he found us.’

‘He rode in on a horse.’ Ash muttered, then sort of half laughed. ‘I like horses.’ We dragged her along.

‘Ash?’ Lauren was all heart. She clutched Dr. Featherstone and followed us like a puppy. ‘Are you ok?’ Ash did sound a little goofy.

‘What Ash is experiencing, Lauren,’ SB began to go pedantic on us, droning on and on like the big know-it-all she was. Adorable. ‘Is euphoria from an overabundance of endorphins and adrenalin the body dumps into our systems during times of stress. She’s not fit to ride a horse.’

‘Yeah, I feel overabundanced alright.’ Ash did seem all hopped up on goofballs. I think maybe I always have an overabundance of goofballs in me because of the rational fear I have of my luck. ‘We should do this every millennium. You know, like a pagan sacrifice.’ She turned to Evelyn, looking at her as critically as a drug doused brain could, then at me. ‘Say… something’s different around here.’

‘Not at all, St. Croix. Your brain chemistry is incapacitated by hysterical body fluids. Now try to conserve your strength by shutting up.’

We rounded a corner.

Ash looked at me, then back at Snuggle Bunny, then me again. ‘No… I’m certain that—‘

‘I changed my haircut.’

‘No you didn’t. It’s…’

‘Ash,’ Lauren decided to be useful, bless her. ‘I’m so sorry, no grateful… I am sorry, but more grateful, and so is Dr. Featherstone, but sorrow exists.‘ Poor thing was taking after me more everyday.

‘Lauren, I love you, and I love Dr. Featherstone. I love everyone. I slapped the bitch because I wanted to make her mad; saving Dr. Featherstone was a good excuse. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. Love is like a… like a… balloon. Anyone got a cigarette?’ Ash got heavier. ‘I’d like to stop talking for a little while.’

‘I think that’s for the best.’ Snuggle Bunny took on more of her weight, so I felt the need to do the same, but then she took on even more and gave me a look and I decided to graciously accept the silver medal.

Ash took a nap on Evelyn’s bed while I played M.A.S.H. Her sitter was just one giant bruise, and I knew it would be purple by breakfast, but no break in the skin. I’d never heard of such a beating, but she would be fine soon enough. What the Three Dollar Bill was she made off? Her ass is as the air, invulnerable.

Evelyn rubbed my neck while I painted Ash’s wounds with my ever shrinking supply of Gentle Cloud. This went on for hours, and would have been a peaceful time for me if I knew what Taggart and Gregor were doing.

It got dark. Something about the planet rotating, but I’m no astrophysicist, I only play one on TV.

I'll just blog a little

2008-08-04T16:19:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I should have absolutely no work at the office, so I will have absolutely no good excuse to not write. I'm curious what excuse I'll come up with.

Anyhoo, I think it gives off the wrong mojo to have my top post entitled with the word "horseshit" so I thought I'd point out two important things you might not have known. I'm here to help, after all. Also, I thought I'd get "edgy" and make it plain that, damn it, I'm not altogether a nice person.

First, Johnny Nash can sing. Mr. Nash starts about 50 seconds into it, after Miss Bassey. Now, I've heard this song a billion-jillian times, and every time I was "bleh". But however, however I know not, this youtube recording lets me hear this guy belt it. I mean, damn. If you don't believe me, at least listen to 2:20 and then kneel before this man's pipes. Humans can do this? I also like how he works the camera. None of these MTV frenetics. Chopping shots into ribbons because none of the plastic singers can keep a performance up for longer than two seconds. The man had class, and he appealed to the best in his audience. And he respected his elders.

Second, Paris Hitlon is a lot less helpless than people like to snipe about. I always figured she knew what she was doing. Clumsy, at times, sure. What child isn't? Whorish? Well, that's loaded. If one calls a girl sluttish, one is castigated as a backward Puritan Imperialist closed-minded dinosaur of the era of homophobes scurrying under the paranoia of vagina dentata. However, if one says she's just a girl exploring her body, with the help of billionaire playboys and sex toys, then one has reduced womyn to nothing but sex objects that can only break the glass ceiling via the open use of their body. As if Steve McQueen or Teddy Roosevelt didn't use their bodies.

I don't play games I can't win by design. Unless I can overturn the Monopoly board in a huff and scream, "A specter hangs over Park Place and Boardwalk--the specter of COMMUNISM!!!" Yes, I did that once. No, I forgot last Christmas. Twice. I can't win that freaking game.

Point is, I believe in Paris. Of course, I have no children to be corrupted, but I don't see how that has anything to do with it. I'm not even sure why I brought that up.

As an aside, I happily note that the spell check doesn't recognize the canard "womyn". The day it does, I'm heading to the hills with my gun to wait out the Mad Max hell that follows.

PB

P.S. It has been pointed out to me by an excellent person that the characters in my latest addition to the site, "A Neighborhood in Proper", are all detestable. People, please stay calm. It's the first chapter of an entangled serial--stories are normally about people changing over time. I assure you, nothing as it starts ends the same in my stories. Well... except gravity. And the doppler effect. And... well, except for science crap. People can surprise you if you let them.

What the happy horseshit is this?!

2008-08-02T16:17:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me today, for the first time, that I should google "Pallidbust", and I did.

Well, my oh my, guess what I found?

This! What the Hell is this?!

Somebody cut some of my stories (which doesn't bother me, it is the internet after all, but leave a comment about how brilliant I am first, you ungrateful bastards) then pasted them on... I don't even know what this site is about. Its not even a spanking site. Its like a, I don't know, organic food elitist wine sipping "Let them eat cake" snob site, and I hate that crap. I'm a simple man. A Red State American. A man of the people. A common man with common tastes and uncommon talents.

The thief didn't even give me credit. A little "Hey, Pallidbust wrote this, here's a link to his site" would have been nice. No, no... nice isn't the word. REQUIRED, NECESSARY, DECENT, LEGAL all seem like better words to me than nice. Well, Pallidbust is written into one of them... but no link.

Ahhhh heck with it. I should have expected stuff like this. It's not like it's like costing me money or anything, but damn it, it's rude. I feel violated.

Why is someone posting my spanking stories on a food and wine site? My brain hurts just thinking about it. And what wine goes best with a spanking? Red or white? Or does it depend on the instrument?

PB

A Neighborhood in Proper, Chapter One

2008-08-02T07:24:00.000-07:00

Chapter One
Enemies Foreign and Domestic

Kennedy stood in the middle of her living room. From the vantage she could see her kitchen, dining room, garden through the sliding glass doors, and the hallway to the rest of her fresh, one story home. She padded barefoot on white carpet through the hallway to find her husband sitting Indian style reading a manual on fixing their washing machine which lay open and gutted beside him. She eased herself down on Rick’s lap and nibbled his ear.

She was cursed for a minx, spanked, and sent off to tend her garden.

She returned to her living room pulling her jeans over a stinging bottom. Kennedy normally enjoyed her rear end. It was full and womanly, Stairmaster honed, and a source of power and pleasure. It had even taken part in a three year operation to fool a truly awesome man into falling in love with her to the victorious proposal of marriage. Many agents played a role, but the butt played its part in the man-nabbing.

Sadly, in times of discipline, a full, womanly bottom only meant more flesh to redden. More bottom meant more neurons. More neurons meant more pain.

On the floor, her aching butt in the air, she put her socks and shoes on, and, rubbing her wounds, obeyed her husband like she told “the preacher” she would.

Spring was new so few weeds yet, making it an enjoyable way to spend a Friday morning. It would have been more enjoyable to grind her husband into the hallway floor with a white bottom, but life is rarely perfect. Kennedy would know, as the ink hadn’t yet dried on her diploma for a Master’s in Philosophy.

Pleasantly warm climate except for the seat of her pants, the roses were red and the violets were blue. They smelled pretty good, too. Across the property line Jessica bathed her bikini clad body with sun and her liver with wine at 9 a.m., which Kennedy judged unwise, as Jessica was an Irish redhead, evolution rendering her utterly defenseless against the ravaging Sun God we mortals know by the name Ra.

‘Try to law talk your way out of a sunburn, lawyer.’ She muttered.

By 11 a.m. Kennedy had mended four broken stems, laid waste to an ant hill, cleansed the field of weeds, buried a half dozen smashed egg shells like in that movie she saw, tilled the soil, and collected several vases of roses whose time had come. Ra must be appeased with youth cut short! Jessica got sunburned and staggered away from her pool to the shade of her home for an undeserved nap.

Dirty, Kennedy decorated her home with flowers; hit the showers; noting, with satisfaction, the clothes washer fixed and operating due to the diligence of her slave male; buttoned herself up in one of Rick’s white business shirts she was supposed to iron but didn’t so it would still smelled like him; and entered her kitchen to prepare lunch.

Rick grabbed her from behind and nibbled her ear, which was unfair because he could do that without fear of a fanny fanning. However, she said nothing because Rick didn’t like the word “unfair”, and often vented his despise on her flank. If Professor Susan Willingham knew the extent to which Kennedy would sell out for the love of a male slave, The Teach never would have awarded the girl an A+ in Women’s Studies. No greater traitor to womankind was Kennedy.

Ah screw ‘em.

Still, he had to be punished for punishing her, so Kennedy pretended to ignore him by leafing through the Yellow Pages.

‘Whatcha doing?’ He liked to ask obvious questions.

‘Preparing lunch. What do you think? Domino’s Pizza or should we support local mom and pop business? The Inzio’s are pretty good.’

‘Female, that refrigerator is stocked. It’s too full. We should use our food before it rots. Cook something. We’ll cook together. You know: bond and crap.’ The nibbling grew a little sharper as his voice grew a little deeper and southern.

‘Can’t.’

‘Why?’ Every hair on her neck felt his breath. It interfered with thinking, as it was calculated to. Kennedy was in danger of unlearning literacy.

‘All the dishes and pots are dirty.’

Rick stopped nibbling. Kennedy, free from the intoxication, ignored this and got back to cooking. She decided to support local business, and reached for the wall phone. Very gently, like the sensitive slave lover with arms the size of tree branches he was, Rick seized her hand, forcing her to put the phone back on its cradle, then turned her around so he could loom down on her by two feet of extra bone length, a craven yet effective method of argument, she thought. Rick had a natural Will to Power. It made Kennedy cling to her mere Will to Life.

‘I thought you said you finished all your chores.’ It was not a question.

‘Yeah.’

Rick’s eyes were brown but somehow not soft. ‘Wouldn’t cleaning dishes be a chore?’ He, with surgeon’s precision, moved some rogue strands of blond hair out of his little wife’s eyes. Now she could not hide, thus she had to attack.

‘I meant I finished all exigent chores. Give me my hand back so I can provide my husband with a fine Italian meal.’ He looked down on her, an infinitely patient smile on his face, and serious brown eyes. He did not release her hand.

‘Jennifer Felicity nee Kruger Thompson, do you want to work or be a house frau?’

‘I told you when I graduated,’ she said, poking him in his chest just above her eye level. ‘I’m a house fraulein. Frau makes me sound dumpy. Come on! I’ll do the dishes tomorrow. Dishes are not exigent like a fire. Or shoe sale.’

‘Tell that to the roaches.’ Kennedy shivered. ‘Hey, we’re not far from swampland. Roaches will come and they will breed and lay eggs in every crevice and—‘

‘Stop!’ She hugged her husband for strength.

‘Come on.’ Rick put his arm on Kennedy’s lower back to lead her to what she assumed would be make-up sex. His hand through his shirt she wore on her lower back had the effect of a mommy cat biting and lifting the back of her kitten’s neck—paralysis. Kennedy’s mind still worked, and knowing her ability to impose her will on the world was checked and mated, she so resigned herself to pleasure that would make the hedonists of yore lime green with envy, the lowest of all emotions, the unmoved mover of all “evil”, though Kennedy preferred the word “un-actualized obsessive thought patterns” over "evil" as it had fewer connotations for the tenured popinjays to carp on and cavil.

Oh Pleasure!, my husband tosses me to you.

Instead, he stopped short in the living room, moved the armless antique chair she grew less and less fond of, and removed his belt.

‘Hey! I already got a spanking today. You can’t just—‘

‘Spankings are not vitamins, sweat heart. They’re taken as needed.’ He sat down, doubled over his leather weapon of sting, and waited. She met his eyes at level with a casual face to hide the excitement – that belt stung like Death onto Dying, her reserves of power to appeal and hide behind an Active Intellect had been wasted on growing inedible plants, and her bottom was already injured to boot. Her blood pressure warred against her mind. Her center did not hold.

Attack sentiment, the untermenschs’ weakness, the tale to wag the dog, the opium of the masses. ‘Well—‘ she mewled. ‘You know, eating pizza with our hands from the box, no plates, would be nostalgia for my college days. Wouldn’t that be fun?’

‘Your college days ended two weeks ago. You’re twenty-five. That’s not nostalgia. That’s immaturity. A few years from now we’ll be nostalgic and eat pizza without plates and drink wine from a box out of paper cups. Agreed?’ Kennedy had no answer. ‘Come on. Over my knee and get your spanking like a good girl.’ Grrr… he could make it a little more melodramatic to sooth her ego. Suffering a whipping, for example, is about one whole universe more dignified than taking a spanking.

‘Yes, sir.’ More unpleasantness. She could get a job, she knew. She even rejected offers, and not just from the local collage -- but damn it, she didn’t want a job. She liked to read in her pajamas at noon. She liked napping after sending her husband-slave off to gather resources for her suburban castle. She liked being worshiped for herself, not her status. But the fuckers at the bank had to complicate things. Stupid materialists…

Thus, her husband was her lord and master in the transient brutish world by Marxist economic reality and student loans. At least it was contract theory and not by divine right. Rawls and Locke were cold comfort against Hobbes, but there were none better. She bent over his knee, lifted his shirt she wore to bare her twenty-five year old ass (already red and sore), and grasped the chair’s legs with both hands with her tightest clasp. She set her face. ‘Ready for my re-education, sir.’

Play it cool, girl, that’s how you’ll get through this. Be cool, calm, and collected.

SWISH/ZING SWISH/ZING SWISH/ZING

Two months before the current leathering, Kennedy found herself in a similar position, facing the same belt with the same butt. She lost that fight too. The memory was fuzzy, but it had something to do with her duel responsibility of turning her thesis in on time and playing XBox. She tried to explain to her recently married lord and master that spankings, even disciplinary ones, should merely be symbolic (i.e., an act of submission and mea culpa and “all that noise”). Humiliation and token pain were all that was needed to admit her inferior position in the household’s decision making process. Thus, light smacking was all that was needed to complete the ritual of spousal correction.

Simple logic.

Rick, an engineer, rejected the smart talk nonsense. If Rick were an architect, Kennedy mused while popping and seizing during her punishment, she’d enjoy the ancient art of sitting more.

Kennedy didn’t like to make noise during her punishments, but this particular utilization of a husband’s pants lifter forced the young wife to make a real effort to keep quite. She bit her lip and grimaced and bounced her soft back-end and curled her fingers -- but she didn’t make a sound. She didn’t want the big oaf, patient and loving and giving as he was, to have the satisfaction. And of course he would enjoy her squeals. He was a male, and a male, by nature, enjoys the triumph of domination. He didn’t get drunk and beat her. Kennedy would have killed him long ago if he were that sort. He only spanked her for avoidable cause, and though he was thorough with the scorching of her bottom meat, he never approached within a million miles anything anyone with any sense would call a beating – he was a good man, not merely a male. And a good man slave at that, but that didn’t mean she had to give him pleasure equal to her suffering.

The spankings stung like the very dickens, and should therefore not be reinforced by positive feedback (yelling, begging, and mewling) in accords of the laws of behaviorism.

Normally she simply kept her eyes straight and accepted the pain, but this time, after lick twenty, with no end in sight, she went with the Buddhists and concentrated on her breathing and the nothingness of bliss and wringing her toes while her body bounced and her teeth clinched to a grand total of thirty-nine zingers. Forty save one. She thought it a bit Biblical, but spare the rod…

Five seconds went by without a zap of pain. Breathing hard, she took in reality and realized that her right hand had grabbed Rick’s ankle. She looked at her hand in amazement, and sniffed. Why should she seek support from her punisher? She made a mental note to write that question down later.

Kennedy stood up and rubbed herself, across her back the back of her husband’s shirt rising and falling (like Chinese yin/yang theory of empire) with the petulant act of self-amelioration. She rubbed deep. There was no point hiding it. Rick, still sitting, looped his belt for it’s secondary duty of keeping his pants up. Kennedy looked down at her feet and focused her mind on her blazing rump, making faces of annoyance as her fingers attempted to heal her wounds—but Kennedy was no Hollywood Scientologist, so her cheeks continued to sting.

She wasn’t mad. She knew she should be, but at the same time, she knew she shouldn’t. It was a practical reality that somebody had to be in charge. This was not a nation of free peoples: it was a home that needed harmony. Thus, someone needed to be corrected and accept punishment with grace; as a loving act. Otherwise there would be civil war, and nobody wins a civil war.

But one sacred and unspankable right was the freedom of speech. Kennedy knew Rick would die before spanking her for speaking her mind. He would not live in such a world.

‘I admit I should have washed the dishes and that I was childish in my defense, and I deserved a spanking, but that was a bit rough.’

‘I’ve given you harder. Much hard. And I noticed you didn’t make a sound.’ Rick said as he stood up and hugged her. Ha! She knew stoicism would eat at him.

‘I shouldn’t be punished more because I’m tough as nails.’ Tough words aside, she buried herself into her man. ‘That belt hurts.’

‘Tough guy, you decide if you’re spanked, and you decide how hard. A brat spanks a brat.’ Oh the philosopher was he! ‘Now go do the dishes. I have errands to run. We’ll eat a late lunch. Then we’ll enjoy the day together. We’ll hold off your third spanking till bedtime.’

‘Third spanking!?’

‘Five minutes with my hand for the five shirts you didn’t iron.’

‘Oh damn it!’

Finger in the face. ‘My girl doesn’t curse.’

‘No, sir. Your girl doesn’t curse.’ Cursing wasn’t really speech, as it was just barking out emotion without thought or reason, but damn it, Kennedy thought: I like cursing.

-----

Kennedy, bearer of all of mankind’s wisdom, wore only an apron as she washed the dishes. The air was cool on her back, backside, and legs, which is just what she needed. Also she felt like shocking her husband when he got home.

‘So we both got tanned today.’

‘Ai! Jesus, Jessica! I’m too young to have an heart attack!’

‘But not too old for a spanking it would seem.’ Jessica, in her red two piece bathing suit, closed the sliding door and took a seat at the island desk in the kitchen. She eased herself down on the stool like she’d gotten the lecture by leather Kennedy got. Kennedy could still feel the stripes across her bottom without the use of her hands. She took some satisfaction that the sun god Ra spanked Jessica as well, in His own way, and over the entirety of Jessica’s body.

However, Kennedy doubted the giant fusion reaction was as thorough as Rick.

‘That is none of your…’

‘Please! I saw the whole thing. The first rule of kinky fun is to close the drapes, you sexpot. Say, he really worked you over. Look at that sizzling rump roast!’

‘It wasn’t kinky fun. He disciplined his wife, that’s all. Someday, when you marry, you’ll understand---‘

‘Ha!’

Jessica was only three years older than Kennedy. They shared that special relationship that few knew. On the one hand, they didn’t like each other and openly professed it. On the other hand, they were the same generation and raised in sophisticated Blue States finding themselves freshly planted in an alien, small southern town; and they were neighbors, so they didn’t have much choice but be completely open with each other. Kennedy had never intended to divulge her humiliating matrimonial regime, but she shrugged the disclosure off. Time moved forward, and no truth, no matter how great and embarrassing, made public, can harm a soul as much as a the smallest lie. Kennedy made a note in her mind to write that down later. And improve the wording.

Besides, it’s better to get spanked raw by a Rick than to not have a Rick, so Kennedy considered herself ahead and Jessica behind, even if Kennedy’s behind throbbed. Hell, she thought. What good is having a woman’s body if it didn’t throb? Her mind worked on a treaties…

‘Anyway, what’s with you? You’re fidgeting like I would if I sat down, which I admit I wont be doing for a couple of days, so don’t joke about it.’

‘Sunburn. I’m not here for your charming discourse. I’m not even here to make fun of you for getting spanked like a bad little girl fifty years ago, though I am enjoying it. Look at those cute red cheeks!’

‘Stop it, or I’ll poison one of your trees.’

‘Ohhhh… I’d just have to tell your daddy, oops I mean husband, and he’d take you in hand and… hey, do you think he’d let me watch? You know, watch you get the tanning you deserve? In the same room, not through your windows like I normally do while drinking a martini. After all, it’s my tree you killed. Well, half of the tree belongs to the bank. That’d be fun: the whole committee of old male bankers watching you get spanked for a devaluation of immovable property. Rick will stop and they’ll check their actuaries and say, “Hmmm… thirty-two minutes and twelve seconds corner time should even the account.”’

Kennedy washed dishes and spoke through clenched teeth. ‘Presumably you are here for a reason…’ “You goddamn bloodsucking lawyer” she left that last out as implied. ‘I know you envy my ass. Yours is tight, sure, but we’re living in a J Lo era, so your little Veronica Lake sitter isn’t giving the men what they need, is it?’

‘Please. I walk into a bar, point the guy of my whimsy, and that’s it.’ Kennedy would have mocked her boasting, but, sadly, she had seen Jessica do that very thing a month ago when Rick forced her to have a Girls Night Out with the neighborhood women. Rick had a political bent. ‘Like I said, we both got tanned today. There’s a scorched spot on my back I can’t reach. Be a dear?’ Jessica held up a can of cream. Probably made from the eyes of baby seals or Carebears.

Kennedy removed her plastic gloves with a flop of water, kept her back to her foe, folded her arms, and glared out the window over her sink.

‘No. I refuse. A line must be drawn.’

‘Pretty please?’ The lawyer batted her eyes, but Kennedy refused to see those eyes like a sap jury was forced to. ‘OK! What do you want?’

‘I want you to have sympathy for my recent bout with my husband’s belt. And I want it to be good.’

Jessica sighed. She stood up, shook herself loose, and breathed in and out heavy. Then exploded.

‘Oh, poor baby!’ Jessica rushed like Kennedy was her only child that just fell off a bike. She fell to her knees and inspected the boo-boo. ‘Let me see. Ohhhhhh… men are such brutes! We’re you terribly naughty?’

‘Yes. Well, not terribly naughty. Sufficiently naughty.’

‘Perhaps you did need a little tap on the rear; I suppose we farer sex all do from time to time. But this is cruel and unusual!’ Jessica padded Kennedy’s roasted rump as if to heal it like a scientologist—but she wasn’t an Hollywood actor either. ‘Perhaps not unusual for you, but certainly cruel. Poor little blond headed elf! I should think four or five licks would have been enough to put a smart, good girl like you on notice. Isn’t that how they do it in England? Six of the best? More than necessary for such a good girl like you. The impropriety!’

‘I was thinking the same thing.’ Kennedy looked over her shoulder at Jessica, on her knees, gleefully making a fool of herself, going on and on. Kennedy didn’t like her, but damn it, you have to respect a good actress. Besides, Jessica was funny, and funny goes a long way. ‘Since you seem to like living in the medieval ages, perhaps we should call a midwife? Or snake charmer?’

‘Stop, stop. Stop before I like you. Turn around.’

Triumphant, Jessica bounced to her feet and bent over the kitchen island. The redhead’s lithe body was, indeed, red. She was covered in cream except for that damned spot on the back your own hands can’t reach, necessitating the hands of another. That spot is likely the strongest agent keeping society together.

Life without society—solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short, and annoying because that spot on the center of the human back above and below the reach of our hands itches.

Kennedy got the cream and got to work while Jessica twaddled on. ‘Must be nice, only getting burned where you can reach. What cold cream do you use after you compliantly bend over as I do now but for you--Hey,’ an happy idea flew into the vixen’s head. She tapped the structure she leaned over. ‘Rick ever bend you over this… what is this thing I’m over called?’

‘It’s a kitchen island. It separates the kitchen from the living room without interrupting the flow as a wall does; and yes, I’ve been spanked over it. Laugh it up.’

‘You must like getting spanked, it’s all you can think about. I was asking if Rick ever, you know, took you over it.’

I’ll get you, sophist lawyer, and your little rhetorical tricks, too!

‘That,’ Jessica screeched as Kennedy accidentally rubbed a burn too hard. Jessica bit her lip, cutting off the screech, and tensed, but kept her submissive position. ‘Is none of your business. And yes, five times. And counting. Hey, you’re not going to tell anyone, are you?’

‘What, that you make love in the kitchen? I think all couples do eventually.’

‘No! No. About, you know, how Rick, you know, is traditional.’

‘You mean that spanking Rick bares your spanking bottom for good spankings whenever you need a sound spanking? Spankspankspank. Bah. Who would I tell? You don't have any friends. Hey, thanks for the rub. You’d better get back to those dishes or poppa will take you to the woodshed again. And please, by all means, keep the drapes open. Watching your glutes bounce up and down is better than satellite TV. And free.’

‘Grrrrrrrr…..’ Kennedy reveled in negative thoughts for a few moments; however, negative thoughts were the cobbles used to construct the path to the Dark Side. Kennedy thought about how, should she ever get sun burned on the back, she need only snap her fingers, and her husband would rub her down and tell her how brilliant in mind and body she was while he did it. Jessica, the fool, had to beg her neighbor.

Kennedy was, though sore-of-behind, ahead.

------

Dishes done, Kennedy ironed her brutish husbands shirts in their bedroom. They smelled like him, so they offered a good distraction from her still searing backside and wounded pride. She did, every few minutes, give her cheeks a rub. ‘I understand, you’re hurt. Stop burning already!’ But they continued to burn. ‘You’re being excessive! I’ll behave, body, I’ll behave next time! Or run.’

She even ironed her man’s shirt that she dutifully lifted to accept her man’s butt-bruising brand of justice. So she disrobed and put on a purple g-string and one of her husband’s purple and gold college football T-shirts that ran halfway down her thigh. If she were big, just once, she’d spank him. Not out of revenge, not even to stop her spankings. The spankings worked. She’d rather get it over with than be lectured for hours, which is how the lovable Rick abused his wife before he acted like a big tough man and launched her over his knee for a good old fashion conflict resolution. Spankings hurt ass, but lectures suck ass, and sucking is ten times worse.

Not to mention guilt. It’s hard to feel guilty after a spanking.

But if she could spank him (just once!) maybe he’d know it really only took four or five licks to get the point across. Hell, even Jessica pretended to know that. Of course, then how would she know she was tough as nails? She might grow soft. Complacent. Un-actualized, content to ignore the lack of evidence of limits to her being. Stay in the cave with shadow puppets. Dull of mind, like a cow or Kafkaesque bureaucrat. ‘Hmmm… this is tricky.’

‘JFK! I’m home. Attend me!’

She squinted her eyes, glaring down the hallway to the living room. She could give him the cold shoulder, but then he could give her a the warm bottom. The brilliant thing about this kind of relationship is that it forces emotional engagement. She absolutely had to go in that kitchen, but she absolutely wanted to make him suffer. A little. Enough.

Damn it: a dilemma.

Kennedy had been a content 18^th century wife, happily washing dishes with a throbbing behind until Jessica piqued her ire. Kennedy was fluent in French and German. Had read Kant and Heidegger and Descartes in their own language (except for Latin). She was strong of body, smart, and accomplished, yet she couldn’t think of a better way to keep tranquility in her home but bend over her huge husband’s knee and bite her lip for an embarrassing (and bare-ass-ing) spanking. It was so simple and time tested. The modern magazines were insipid. Women get spanked, men spank, and that’s how we all live together. It worked the other way around, of course, but Kennedy couldn’t be the boss in this world. The real world was vicious and constant, requiring a focus and resolve that Kennedy didn’t want or even understand. Rick did. He was a fortified tower in the face of the enemy, born by woman, and better than any wall constructed by men. Kennedy thought, again, that she needed Rick to reign.

But now Jessica knew! And Kennedy felt stupid!

But oh was a spanking a good way to get her husband in the mood. It didn’t do much for her sadly, but at least it got some of the clothes off.

But it was so freaking humiliating! And Jessica knew! This is insane! How can no world view make me happy, and yet I am?

‘Feminism wasn’t about men and women. It was about women and women, and women lost.’ Kennedy said it as a revelation, to herself, but would have to think it over before knowing what it meant. She needed to write that down, when she got a chance. ‘Wait… didn’t I need to write something else down? It had something to do with…. shit.’

Still, her husband had to be dealt with. It was a time for war.

‘I’m ironing. If I don’t finish ironing, I’ll get flogged to death by this tyrant troll king that thinks violence is a perfectly healthy form of expression. And Nietzschean ubermensch that he is, he obeys only his will, pronounced “vill”, taking vhatever he vants with no morality, no reason; just vill to power. I’m his slave, hamstrung by my own Enlightenment based ethics. I am Belgium, he is Germany. I must do as I’m told or suffer the tortures of the damn, sir. Tortures of the damned.’

‘Female! Stop quoting A Clockwork Orange! The tyrant troll king beckons, and you shall heed!’ Rick used his highfalutin voice when he wanted to make her laugh. Tricky bastard. Wasn’t working this time. Nope, she told herself as she turned the iron off and padded to the kitchen. I will, she thought, do whatever he told me, and be passive-aggressive as a designated driver.

Kennedy got her mind right: No laughing. No smiling. Just obedience to my slave-boy lover. Mindless, selfless foot kissing with no backbone at all.

It will kill him.

She would have said ‘Yes, me Lord’ but she was being passive- aggressive, so she just said “I'm on my way.” She padded to the living room. ‘Oh.’ That armless chair again. She’d hoped that her dear husband would forget about the cruel third spanking for forgetting to iron his shirts, or at the very least give her hinie some time to heal. ‘Yes, Rick? Do you want something?’

She stood by the chair, for some reason next to the kitchen island instead of the middle of the room where he usually spanked her, pulled up her husband’s “GEAUX TIGERS!!” shirt, and awaited her fate. The belt? His hand? The brush? Something new and weird for his amusement, like knotted TV cables? He had said a five minute hand spanking, but she didn’t hold him to it. She put her mind to the idea that he could justly spank her anyway he wanted, anytime he wanted, for any effable reason, F-it. She must be a dull slave to cause her master pain. Then she’d get even, because he hated that crap. He has no defense, so she shall win.

How did she always get amazed at how big he was, she thought. Big shapely slab of iron. He sat down, a towel over his shoulder, and pulled her down. But he did it wrong. She ended up with her thighs on top of his, her bare butt hanging over the side where the cool air soothed. She clutched his chest on instinct. Had he forgotten how to punish? No, for him that’d be like forgetting how to golf. Was he going to spank her lap? No! That would be an evil… un-actualized.

Rick reached over the wife sitting confused on his lap, and put an Inzio box of pizza on her lap. He opened it. Pepperoni, extra sauce, and pineapple. Rick hated pineapple on his pizza. Kennedy, however, adored it. Rick, with his big hard cruel hands, pulled two slices out, closed the box, and used the top as a plate even though his wife slaved to clean all the dishes in his hearth.

He picked up one piece, blew on it, and offered his female a bite.

Kennedy glared at him, but she wasn’t as good an actress as Jessica. She poked him in the chest thrice.

‘This-isn’t-fair.’

‘I don’t want to be fair. I want to win.’

Kennedy bit into the offered pizza, and schemed her revenge. He’d still spank her, and properly whack some noise loose from her because five minutes meant one whole a hellacious amount of spanking, and yeah he probably would have a lot of fun smacking his wife’s butt, but after the punishment, ohmanafter, she’d grind him into jelly with sex. He’d won this battle. Decisively. But the war wasn’t over. She’d break him in bed. Yeah that would show him.

Go ahead, Kennedy thought. Feed me and make me feel special and force me to laugh and be happy because you’re so freaking nice to me I have no defense. The worm will sometime turn, and I’ll have my revenge.

‘What about napkins?’ Kennedy had sauce on her thumb.

‘I’m you napkin. Cleaning up your messes.’ Rick mouthed her thumb, and sucked and made noises like a hungry dog, and Kennedy laughed so loud she would have fallen to the floor if Rick didn’t hold her up.

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