Author's note: Here – at last – is the promised conclusion to "BIG TROUBLE." As always, this is a work of fantasy and fiction.
All day Sunday, the day after the shop-lifting misadventure, Brad thought about calling Matt, but he was afraid of having Matt's Mom or Dad answer the phone. He already knew that he and Matt would be allowed to stay friends. His stepfather had called Mr. Hudson and had discussed the matter. So, Brad decided to wait until Monday morning to talk with Matt. He knew he'd arrive at his door to walk to school with him.
On Monday morning, just as he was finishing his cereal, the door-bell rang. Brad's step-Dad hadn't left for work yet, so he answered the door.
"Hi, Matthew," he said.
"Um, hi, Mr. Maxwell, Sir," Matt said, nervously, as he stepped into the kitchen.
"Hi, Matt," Brad said, getting up and washing his bowl, spoon, and juice glass. His step-Dad had scolded him several times about leaving dirty dishes for his Mom to wash. Brad had decided he'd better stop doing this!
"Okay, boys, I have to get going. Don't forget to lock up when you leave, Brad!" Brad's stepfather said. He left the house.
Matt let go with a heavy sigh. "_s_h_i_t_, that was tense! I was so scared your Dad was going to say something about Saturday! He always makes me nervous....but this time! _f_u_c_k_!"
"I know what you mean! He makes ME nervous and he's MY Dad!" Brad said.
"Ready to go?" Matt asked.
"Sure."
The boys left the house and started walking to school, taking their time. Both wanted and needed to talk. Finally, Brad broke the silence. "So, I guess you got the belt?"
"Yup. Hard! It was one of Dad's A-Number One, top-off the line ass-whippings! I though I was going to die, and then I wanted to die!" Matt answered. Despite his anguish at the pain he'd endured, there was an obvious undertone of pride in his Dad's ability to dish out a strapping. "What'd you get?"
"He used his hand again. Hard! It hurt," Brad answered. He knew he should be glad his step-Dad hadn't used a belt, but somehow he felt inadequate compared to Matt.
"I don't doubt it!" Matt said. "God! Your Dad has the biggest biceps I've ever seen! Must have gotten them big like that pounding on your ass!" Matt grinned.
Brad grinned back. Matt clearly didn't think any less of him or his Dad because Mr. Maxwell had spanked Brad with his hand.
"So what happened. Tell me everything!" Matt said. He had the enthusiasm of a guy in the locker room asking how a date had gone. Had Brad's step-Dad gotten to third base?
Brad told Matt everything. He told him about the tense, silent ride home. He told him about the sample-spanking in the kitchen. He told him about having to wait. He told him about how he tried to convince his Mom not to let Wayne spank him.... leaving out only the tears. He was not about to tell Matt he'd cried like a little boy, begging his Mommy to save him from a spanking. He told Matt about the trip to the bedroom and the long, hard, painful spanking. "Man! He really laid it on!"
"Did you cry?" Matt asked.
Brad hesitated. His momentary silence was itself an answer. He looked at the sidewalk.
"It's okay if you did. I cried," Matt said.
"Yes, I cried. I didn't want to, but I couldn't help it," Brad admitted.
"I know. You don't feel so tough when your ass is on fire, do you?"
"No, I sure don't."
Sensing a down-turn in the tone of the conversation, Matt launched into his own account of what had happened to him. Matt was a born story-teller. He also had a way of dealing with being strapped that made it sound like a great adventure. Brad always laughed at Matt's stories about getting the belt, as if they were not actually about his best buddy getting thrashed within an inch of his life!
Matt's mother kept her iron grip on Matt's ear the whole way to the car. "God, I thought she was going to put her nail right through it! THAT hurt! Then, when she got in the car with me, she yelled at me the whole way home! She was so mad she didn't even notice when she went through a red light! I thought she was going to kill me before Dad even got his chance!"
Arriving home, Matt's Mom grabbed he son's OTHER ear and dragged him into the house. "I guess she figured I needed a matching set! They were both still red on Sunday!"
She hauled Matt up the stairs to his bedroom and only then did she release her grip. "Then she went down to their bedroom and when she came back she had Dad's belt – the one he keeps just for whippings. I thought, 'Oh, _s_h_i_t_! She's gonna whip me herself!' She didn't, though. She just put the belt on my dresser."
"There! Now you can look at that and think about what's going to happen when you father gets home!" Matt's Mom snapped. Then she'd left the room.
Matt's father was golfing, and Matt had a two-hour wait. Unlike Brad, he made the mistake of turning on his radio. His mother stormed up the stairs and pounded on the door. "You are not the sort of young man who should be listening to Rock and Roll!" she shouted. Matt's Mom always called it "Rock and Roll"! Matt turned off the radio. Then, like Brad, he did his homework, glancing over every now and then and looking at the belt.
"_f_u_c_k_! I just couldn't stop looking at it. I started getting the creeps from it! It was like I was afraid it was going to move or something, maybe come alive and slither across the room and strangle me!" Matt exclaimed. "My Mom's a piece of work! She KNEW what leaving that thing in my room would do to me!"
"That bites," Brad interjected.
"The Big One!" Matt added.
At last, Matt's Dad arrived home. Matt was fairly sure he'd be in a bad mood. "He's always in a bad mood after he golfs! He says he goes out to have fun, but he's so god_d_a_m_n_ed competitive! And he NEVER does very good!" Sure, enough, Matt's Dad had played a typically poor round and was in a foul temper. Matt heard him come into the house. He waited, growing more and more tense. He knew his Mom was telling his Dad what had happened, and the already sour mood was turning to vinegar.
"Matthew!" Matt's Dad thundered as he stormed up the stairs.
"God! He has this way of coming up the stairs! He pounds his feet on each step and he slams his hand on the railing. It is SO scary!" Matt said. "Then he came into my room, and he had THAT look on his face. I knew he was going to lay on the belt!"
"What on earth got into you, boy?" Matt's Dad demanded.
Matt was standing by his desk. "It was just a stupid prank, Dad. I'm sorry! I know it was wrong!"
"You'd better be sorry! And you're going to be a lot sorrier!" Matt's Dad announced.
Matt admitted to Brad that his fear got the better of him. "I kind of lost it. I started asking him not to give me the belt! That just made him madder!"
"When you do wrong, you should accept your punishment! I will not stand here and listen to you beg!" Matt's Dad scolded.
"I'm sorry, Dad," Matt answered.
Matt continued the account, telling it in a way that made Brad more and more excited as the story continued. "So, Dad went over to my dresser and got the belt. And he looked at me and took it in both hands and snapped it a couple of time! SNAP! SNAP! God! I hate it when he does that!"
"Now, you get your clothes off!" Matt's Dad ordered.
Brad already knew that Matt had to strip completely naked for a strapping. Matt had explained why: it REALLY put him in his place. "It's pretty hard to be _c_o_c_k_y when you're standing there in your birthday suit!" Matt had said.
Matt stripped. Then he walked timidly towards his Dad.
"Down on the bed!" Matt's Dad ordered.
Matt took a breath. The narrative was getting him as worked up as Brad. "So, I'm just about _s_h_i_t_ting myself, and I get down on the bed, and I hug my pillow, 'cause that's the only friend I've got! And Dad's standing over me, and I'm thinking to myself, 'Your ass is toast, Matt old buddy, and all for a couple of Snickers and some comics! _f_u_c_k_!'"
"Alright, Matthew, you committed a serious misdeed, and you're in for serious punishment," Matt's Dad announced. "I'm going to give you a tanning you won't ever forget! You will never steal anything ever again! Is that clear young man?"
"Yes, Sir," Matt answered. As he lay there, waiting for the belt to start descending, Matt wondered why he hadn't thought about the consequences BEFORE going on the shop-lifting run.
Matt shook his head. "We just don't think, do we? How come we're such dummies, Brad?" Matt asked.
"I don't know. Maybe 'cause we're just kids," Brad offered, sounding very philosophical.
"Yeah, that's what my Uncle Clyde's always saying. You know, he's that Pentecostal preacher. He's always going on about 'foolishness is bound up in the heart of the boy,' and I think he always thinks of ME when he quotes that verse! He's really happy Dad whips my ass! He says more parents should do that. Then we wouldn't have so much crime and stuff."
"We'd also have a lot more sore behinds!" Brad added.
"Amen, Brother!" Matt answered, imitating his Uncle's manner of speaking.
"Well, so he whipped you, right?" Brad probed, wanting the story to continue.
"Yeah, the Good Part!" Matt laughed. "He took a swing and let me have it. Boy! If only he could swing a golf club that good! CRACK! First I heard it, and then I felt it! It's this, this sting, like something really hot just got put on my ass! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! One after another, really fast, so I can't get ready! He's a pro! CRACK!"
Listening to Matt's story, complete with sound-effects, Brad felt like he was really there. He cringed and felt sympathy-pain when Matt shouted "CRACK!"
Matt's Dad lashed his son's bare rear over and over with the belt, raising a hot sting, and making it feel like Matt's tender skin was being peeled away. "Goddammit, it hurt!" Matt said. "And Dad kept stopping to lecture me about the evils of stealing."
"My Dad did that too!" Brad interjected. "He also told me I'd embarrassed him and that people were gonna go around saying he had a thief for a son!"
"God! That's what MY Dad said! Do you think they maybe have 'Dad School' somewhere where they all learn this stuff?"
"No. I guess they learned it from their Dad's. We'll probably say the same things to our kids!"
Matt laughed. "Gosh I hope I don't have a kid who gets into the kind of trouble I get into! I might try to send him back! Anyway," Matt continued, "he'd stop and lecture me, and then he'd start up again, just when my ass had stopped being numb. It was like he KNEW how to make it hurt the most! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!"
Matt admitted that he'd eventually been sobbing loudly and promising that he'd live a flawlessly perfect life from that time forward. "I'd have told him the sky was green if he'd said he'd stop strapping me!" Matt said.
"Still got marks?" Brad asked.
"Just a couple of little red marks on my hip. I hope nobody notices them in PE today," Matt answered. "What about you?"
"No. My ass was still red on Sunday, but it's okay now. As cute as ever!" Brad said slyly.
"I hope Patty pinches it today! You'll jump through the ceiling!" Matt said.
Patty was a beautiful junior who had decided to engage in cradle robbing. She had already pinched Brad's behind twice! The first time, Brad had been a bit offended and had felt violated. But the more he thought about the gesture, the more he came to like it. One day, when he saw her coming down the hall, he'd bent over at the water fountain, sticking his rear out provocatively, glad his Dad was making him wear jeans that accentuated his shapely posterior. "Hey, Sweet Cheeks!" Patty said. Then she pinched Brad's behind again. Brad was in heaven. He got an erection that took twenty minutes to soften.
"Well, Buddy," Matt said, "I guess our life of crime is over!"
Brad smiled. "Either that, or we have to become better criminals! The thing is not to get caught!"
Matt laughed and slapped Brad's behind. Brad returned the gesture.