Kylie and Stacy Jephcott's discomfiture toward being completely naked was clearly manifested by their body language. Heads hung southward, eyes at half-staff and fists crossed over their exposed crotch, the siblings lingered gingerly on the threshold of the bathroom, their grownup guradians following closely behind them.
There was something about the bathroom that was subtly different. Kylie could instinctively tell that something was not in its place. She had lived in this house long enough to know this, for her mother, Neva, was a creature of habit, who had a set way of doing things and place for keeping things. Neva loathed changes and things being moved about without her consent.
Kylie's eyes darted about and spotted the cause of the offense. It was the bottle of hair removing brulee on the sink counter beside the Plax. The Nair belonged to her mother, she knew, for she had been warned many times not to touch it or remove it from the cabinet. Was Kylie finally going to be privy to her mother's secret knowledge today? She continued to wonder about this until she heard her Uncle Malcolm address her and her brother Stacy.
"Okay," the uncle directed them, "Kylie, you sit up on the counter here. That's a girl. Stacy, sit over there on the edge of the tub. Okay now, you two, spread open your thighs wide. I said wide, Stacy. That's right. And keep them spread till I say otherwise. Neva, you ready with the Nair?"
Nodding in reply, the bouffant-haired Neva, still as attractive now at 45, as she had been twenty years ago on her wedding day, extended her palm to her brother-in-law. On it was a large dollop of the hair removing brulee. Malcolm assessed the amount mindfully and then informed Neva that she would require more. He poured out another large dollop of the brulee on top of the one already on her palm.
"Okay, Neve, spread this evenly and thickly over Kylie's hair to cover it completely," he instructed the mother. In the meantime he squeezed out the cream onto his palm also, helping himself very generously, and advanced to his nephew. While Neva was spreading the Nair onto her daughter's crotch and under it, Mal did the same to his nephew's crotch. Now, this older youth was sprouting a lot of thick hair, not only in his nether confines but also around his anus as well, so that Mal had to command him to effect a doggy kneel over the tub. Henceforth, Mal spread some of the sticky brulee around the boy's anus.
"Now we shall wait for about forty-five minutes before we wash off the Nair," Mal said. Mal and Neva left Stacy doggy kneeling on the tub and Kylie seated still on the sink counter, her thighs spread apart in a most graceless manner. The two siblings were warned to remain in their unattractive posture until the time was up and the adults returned to them to give them further instructions concerning their correction this evening.
"I can't believe this is happening," Kylie cried when the adults had left the bathroom. "I can't believe you're allowing this to happen."
"Well, I don't see you doing anything to stop them, either," Stacy rebuked. It was certainly rare of Stacy to rebuke his sister at all. Kylie had always been the one to give the rebuttals and reproofs; she had always been the domineering one of the siblings who otherwise shared a closeness that was enviable and moving to observe. The tables seemed to have turned now. "So just shut up, okay?" Stacy continued.
Kylie gaped at her older brother for a moment, realizing she was losing her power over him. She started to weep.
"Besides," Stacy said, seemingly turned over with some compassion for his sister yet, "this is exactly what we need. We gotta start behaving, sis. I guess we haven't been giving Mom an easy time or she wouldn't have resorted to this. We deserve all that we're getting."
When the forty-five minutes were up, Mal and Neva came back for the youngsters. Stacy was found in placid mode and seemed resigned to his fate. His sister continued to look truculent and unrepentant. Even so, she knew she could not fight her fate either. She was outnumbered and if she planned a revolt, she knew she would be on her own. Stacy was no longer fighting in her corner.
The teenagers were quickly let up and stood together under the warm shower. For the next twenty minutes they showered off with a large yellow bath sponge each, while the adults continued to watch over them. As they did, they watched also the clear and smooth skin of the youths' crotch becoming visible under the sponges' recherche cleaning enterprise while the showerhead rinsed away the residual cream and hair, drawing the slimy remains into the hole on the bathroom floor together with the steamy water.
So this has been Mom's big secret - Kylie thought to herself, laboring to be cynical about a product as functionally periphrastic as hair removal - big hairy deal.
The bath now completed, Malcolm tossed the youths a towel each and told them to dry off quickly.
As soon as they had toweled dry and were smelling fresh of the Lifebuoy soap that was still lingering on their skin, the youngsters were made to stand before the adults in the living room once more. The adults inspected their crotch thoroughly. Stacy was made to endure fairly lengthy scrutiny for not only his crotch but also his anus was subject to inspection.
When the adults were satisfied at last, not so much with the exactitude of the shaving process as with the signs that the teen rebels seemed resigned to the grownups' control and authority, they released them. The siblings stole a look at each other. Their jaws dropped. They must feel exactly as the adults did. Where now were the teenagers that had of late been on a lifelong common sense and etiquette holiday? For neither Kylie nor Stacy looked older than ten.
But Stacy was blushing at his penis's unbridled urge to extend itself in the way that was intended by nature. His smooth, hairless tool was a good six and a half inches long already. He blushed at his throwing a boner in the presence of all his family. Nor could he help being turned on by his sister's naked vagina that, having been shaved of its protective canopy completely, had been exposing its outward form and inward design to him all evening, particularly when Kylie had been doubled over for her inspection. Kylie, far from being, in like manner, consumed with erotic envy or admiration, revolted at her brother's staring at her aghast.
So preoccupied with their own nubile nakedness were they that neither had been aware of the cane that laid on the coffee table beside their mother. But Malcolm was now picking it up. He held it with a familiar ease and knowing. The foot-long cane had a tapered end and wooden handle. It was quite worn now for it had been Malcolm's sine qua non everyday of the last eight years when it had been indispensable at helping him to maintain discipline at that boys' special school. For surely he had caned quite a few bottoms in his time.
Now as the miasma that was clouding his dimming memory lifted, he could delineate in larger than life cinemascopic clarity the shorts and underpants pulled down to the ankles of the young offenders in order to bare their bottoms for their caning. How the bottoms quavered, how the welts broke out while the skin remained unscathed and how the boys cried and begged. And later, after the pressure of school and the worst of what had gone on in the term were over, how the boys returned to shake his hand and, in a retrospective liking for Headmaster Jephcott, thank him for showing he had cared.
Now Malcolm had eight more years for which to dispense his expertise and hard-nosed discipline before the stultifying compulsory retirement overran him. He hoped for the preservation of the cane's condition so that it, too, might faithfully continue to dispense its services at the new school to which he had been posted.
While Mal encapsulated, Neva repositioned the coffee table toward Kylie. The rumble of steel legs against the rug restored Mal to the present and the mission of the moment.
And what of the mission of the moment? Though Mal had never been married, dealing with two teenagers in the peonage of dysfunction could not be too far off his home base, not with fifteen years of experience disciplining those boys under his belt - all the wounded, the derelict and the hostages of dysfunctional homes. No, not far off his base at all.
Mal turned now to his pagan sun-loving niece.
"All right, Kylie, go lie on top of the table. Lay down on your back and throw up your legs," Mal commanded.
Kylie threw her brother a glance, her eyes wide and fearful, as if pleading to be rescued from this next indignation. Stacy ignored the flabbergasted appellant.
"Lie on the table now," Mal demanded his niece once more, raising his voice to a roar. He had already armed himself with measures to stave off any of the youths' usual tirade of complaints and obstructionist behavior.
Kylie swallowed hard and then moved to put herself on the table. Her mother hastened to help her along, gripping both her ankles together, and then lifted up her legs. This exposed her vulva and anus once more this evening. Mal tucked a throw cushion under the small of Kylie's back. Then flexing the cane in the air to test its dexterity a few times, Mal lifted it toward the path of his niece's raised buttocks and delivered to the girl her first stroke.
THWACK!
Kylie screeched. The lash quickly left behind a welt that was about an inch long and half an inch thick.
Lifting the switch a second time, Mal delivered another lash to Kylie's backside.
THHWACKK!
Kylie howled and her legs bucked in her mother's grip. Neva released her and then her brother-in-law pulled Kylie up.
"And this is a foretaste of the punishment you'll be getting in future for backtalking and use of profane language in speaking with your mother or me, in fact, anyone for that matter," Mal said to the crying girl. "It's also what you'll get for missing curfews, truancy and outright disobedience. Although being a teenager is a wonderful experience, life is not always fun and games, or about forgetting to be responsible.
"A spanking with my hand or the cane is what you'll also be getting for willfully refusing to do your part in the management of household chores which is yours to uphold by virtue of your membership in the family. Your mother and I shall honor the fact that you're at the teenaged stage with all the prevailing appeal of Gen. X standards and perception, but you are to honor the fact that you're still a minor and under your mother's jurisdiction. So forget your chores, out comes the cane every time.
"Additionally you'll be spanked for not honoring the time-tested rule that, like obedience to your parents, an apology is also the necessary staple of good manners. Little girl, you're going to learn to say sorry every time you have erred, starting now. I know that you've been acting rudely to your mother lately, the names you have used to call her, besides always challenging her orders. Now you know what to do about all your errors, don't you?"
Kylie nodded, sobbing out a wretched yes, while her hands flew to her bottom.
"Don't touch your bum," the uncle ordered, "put your hands flat on top of your head and stand up straight. Otherwise you're getting two more lashes of the cane."
The punished young lady raised her hands to the top of her head and rested them there, exactly as her uncle had wanted. Sniffling and whimpering, she stood up with some difficulty, all the while enduring the burning sensation that was emanating from the two inch-long wheals that had erupted on her naked backside.
"Go on and apologize to your mother," Uncle Mal ordered, "and mean it."
Kylie turned to Neva but remained standing where she was. "I'm sorry for not listening to you, Mommy," she sobbed, "and for calling you a pig, and for failing my exams. And I'm sorry I ignored my chores, and it won't happen again. I understand that if it happens again, I'll be subject to a caning by Uncle Mal or you."
Neva nodded, gathering the repentant girl into her arms, feeling a little awkward for the strange sensation, but adding that she accepted her apologies and promises and all was forgiven.
It was now Neva's older offspring's turn to be caned. Without even needing to be told, the boy, Stacy, placed himself prone on the cushion. It was still warm and a little moist from his sister's sweat.
"You're getting exactly what I gave your sister, plus one more lash, my boy," Mal said to his nephew, realizing what long legs he had now that they were held up in the air. The youth's penis was still erect and curling upward on his stomach. His testicles throbbed and twinkled imperceptibly. His anus puckered nervously.
"This is not just for right now," Uncle Mal continued, taking caution that his words did not affront the sensitive though miscreant boy, "but also for the future, for any infraction of house rules you shall commit. If I feel it's necessary, I shall also take the cane to your backside if you fail to live up to your personal potential, which you have plenty of, but you have clearly not demonstrated. This is due to lack of guidance and encouragement, both of which you had been growing up deprived of all these years. It is my hope that spanking you will eventually change all that. Do you understand me?"
Stacy nodded, weeping and biting down on his lower lip.
Not wishing anymore to prolong his nephew's ordeal unnecessarily, Malcolm raised the cane above his shoulder and administered to the boy his first blow. Stacy howled and then his feet trembled slightly and fell heavily to the table. His mother held them back up quickly with one hand, and with the other, she held away his vulnerable genitals. That allowed Mal to complete with some safety the boy's punishment of the three lashes to his naked and raised bottom.
THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
Because the boy was a virgin spankee, he had sobbed from his introductory lash to the completion of his beating. Neva had let his legs drop, but unsure what he was to do, Stacy remained prone on the table. He covered his eyes with his palms and surrendered to tears, sobbing quietly until Mal came to pick him up and soothe him on his shoulder.
The worst was surely over.
Not long after, Kylie ceased being tearful or vindictive, but in contrition was also that new kind of composure in her demeanor, as if there was now no need to maintain the burdensome contrivance of an overscaled expression of hostility toward adults and the adult world. So a divorce in the family could burn a hole in a child's protective ozone and alter his emotional environment, but it was simply one of the cruel hands life sometimes dealt helpless humanity. It wasn't the mother's fault or the father's necessarily. And someone did care how Kylie was turning out. Kylie felt a lightness of being now that her burden was lifted.
Stacy's tears dried up, too, and he was feeling tremendously relieved at his newfound mettle. He was astonished that he had been able to endure and surmount the cane's assault with a motherlode of pride. For like Kylie, Stacy had also arrived at his own psychological epiphany and he could almost fathom the esoteric mystery of the cane; it was a knowledge that seemed to have gravitated from his Uncle Mal. Nevertheless he couldn't ignore the immediacy of his pain and the need to clutch at his own bottom. He did this fiercely to soothe out the pain. His Uncle Mal tolerated it this time.
"Seeing how this is your first spanking," he said to Stacy and Kylie, "I'll permit you to rub your own bottoms this time. But in future, you do this and you'll get a repeat spanking. In future, it's up to your mother or me to attend to your post-spanking needs."
Next, the teenagers must take corner time to allow their first lesson to sink in. This was yet another new rule they were learning that they were going to have to abide by if they wanted to live with their mother and now also with their Uncle Malcolm.
Mal took the siblings' hands in each of his and led them to the dining room. He carried one of the six high-backed chairs to a corner of the room. In the next hour, Kylie must stand on the chair facing the corner, her spanked bottom thrust outward facing the supper table at which the adults would soon be having their tea.
Mal conveyed a second chair to an opposite corner of the room and made Stacy stand on it. Like his sister, he, too, must stand naked, and for an hour face the corner, and the inevitability of his present life with Uncle Mal for what was going to be a long, long time.
It was a choice he and his sister had both made.
But what a choice it was, and with what incredible implications for body and soul.