I didn’t know her name, but the girl who had broken down and collapsed onto her bed was
still jabbering on when we heard him at the door. She didn’t hear a thing, but one or two
of us did. We all braced up properly, and the others caught on. Didn’t know whether it was
a good thing or a bad thing that someone was out of line. Would they attract all Stefan’s
attention? Or would we all be for it...?
But it wasn’t Stefan!
It was Petra. And she hadn’t anything on! Completely naked! Except for things on her
nips! And in her face she looked awful - her make-up all running, tearful, underneath the
mascara pale as death.
When we realized who it was, the tension completely collapsed. It wasn’t Stefan! The
relief was so huge we all just sort gave up on the standing-by-your-beds thing and crowded
round, asking if she was OK, what had happened, had he hurt her, where were her clothes,
etc.
She reacted very weirdly! She would have nothing to do with us! Said absolutely nothing!
Just looked at us through the tears, and shook her head and looked down and went to her
things. She seemed desperately miserable. She grabbed the big case. Then straight back
out! She kept her eyes down, but we could see she was weeping streams, tears actually
dripping off her. Almost stumbled to the door with the heavy case, the things on her nips
jingling - tiny little bells they were - and the door slammed. The bolt scraped across -
and we were back on our own.
What now?
Everyone was looking for a lead I suppose and we might have fallen meekly into line if
anybody had got back by their bed and raised their arms into that ghastly position - but
nobody did.
We just sat around on the beds, whispering and embarrassed.
Then suddenly a voice boomed out - Petra’s voice in fact - coming through on some kind
of PA system.
“Please,” she was saying, very weepy, “please listen. Stefan says you should be standing
by your beds. He told us but you haven’t.” She broke down for a second or so. Then: “And
hands behind heads, like he said.” Pause. “Stefan says he’s going to ... going to...
punish me for it ... You’re going to have to listen, but I’m the one who ... it’s just me
... and I’ll get more if you do it wrong... So please, please ...” she trailed off. “I
have to count to three,” she started again. “And then it starts. Please, please just do
it.”
We all jerked into movement together, frantic panicked movement. We had been so hot in
our macs that most of us by then had undone our belts and the top button. We leapt up,
feverishly doing ourselves up, getting our things straight. Kadri and a girl two down were
still buttoning when Petra got to three.
“Oh God, you’re not all ready! He’s counting! Please! I just get more-” she interrupted
herself with a cry, and we heard a sort of splat sound.
* * *
Stefan had hit the palm of her left hand with the end of a strip of leather.
She was back on the pole, holding her hands out in front of her as before, only now they
were palm upward, ready to get the punishment.
She cried out again as the leather hit her other palm with its sullen heavy splat.
And again, as the first palm was revisited.
And again, and again, and again.
The cries were getting louder each time, but still, this was another schoolgirl
punishment - only a bit more serious than the one being suffered along the corridor.
Schoolboy’s anyway.
Then suddenly with about the sixth crack Petra’s cries started to get really worse. It
was clearly getting desperately painful now. She had been told to keep looking straight
ahead as the punishment was administered but with the eighth splat she couldn’t stop
herself turning to him as the most desperate scream yet was torn from her with a
distraught look of alarm and appeal.
It was just momentary, she took her eyes away immediately, but she had earned herself a
pudding, as he put it.
Meanwhile she continued to be force-fed the main course.
It wasn’t costing him any effort at all. He just let the weight of the heavy leather
splatting against her palms do its increasingly agonising work. Each blow now hurt
terribly, and each further tenderised its target as well, so the next felt even worse: and
so on.
As the blows kept landing, first on one palm, then on the other, she had terrific
difficulty keeping her arms out and, worse, keeping her hands open. Each time the leather
fell she couldn’t stop screaming, head thrown back, tears almost spurting with the blow -
and as soon as the leather bounced up she couldn’t stop curling her fingers over the
tortured palm either. It was instinctive, nature’s attempt to protect from further hurt,
impossible to control. But then she had to control it, had to make those fingers uncurl
for the next cut, and this required a massive amount of will power. She knew another blow
was going to hurt so much, and every fibre of her wanted to curl her fingers tight and
snatch her hand away. Instead she had to keep her arms out and force, somehow force, her
palms flat. From an observer’s point of view, her supplicant gesture appeared to express a
sort of plea for the hateful leather to return...
Excruciating! Completely excruciating! And back it came, again and again.
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