WHAT 'it' IS REALLY LIKE..... IF
4.2 YOU ARE THE OWNER AND HEADMASTER OF A SMALL BUT
PRESTIGIOUS BOYS' SCHOOL THAT 'CANES' -
ONE OF THE PERKS....
(CHAPTER 2 - A GOOD HIDING)
I make no apology for the subject matter of this entire series, as those who will see it must, necessarily, be looking for material of its type, butI do wish to mention that this whole sequence is a work of pure [?] fiction and that any connection or resemblance in name, place or circumstance between any 'character' portrayed herein and any person or institution, either presently or formerly existing, is a complete and unintentional coincidence.
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I saw the two boys collect the high-backed Club Easy that always did the honours on these occasions, from its corner and position it in the middle of the floor, with its back to the long, open area between the door and my desk. Donovan then retrieved the cane from my blotter, handling it as if it were red hot and propped up against one of the arms of the chair. In response to a whispered instruction, young Machado scrambled up on to the tall, leather-covered back of the chair and reluctantly and hesitantly draped his naked body over its padded top, allowing his torso to jack-knife against the cushion on the one side, while his bare legs did the same on the other, pushing his but- tocks up as high up as possible and pulling them fairly taut, without robbing them of all their 'give' and 'bounce', but stretching the crease where they met his thighs, flat, so that it showed as a band of soft, pleated skin which, I knew, would give the boy indescribable agony when I lashed it with the cane, as I fully intended to do.
I was struck, once again, by how small and defenceless a boy's bare bottom looks when positioned in this way for a hiding; Morrie's al- most fully-grown tail looked hardly any bigger than little Kevin's had, a few days earlier, although I knew full well that this was an optical illusion and that the contrary would soon be proved by the additional length of cane I would need to employ in order to thrash it as it deserved.
The twin firm, round cheeks which were so soon to be welted and bruis- ed by the slashing, hissing rod, could be seen to tremble ever so slightly in anticipation of the violence which was to be visited on their smooth golden-brown hide and the strong, muscular legs which were dangling behind the chair, too short for their bare, searching toes to find a purchase on the carpeted floor, alternately tensed and relaxed in an agony of dread. The curved back of the chair had the effect of parting the powerful thighs just enough to spread the lower cheeks of the boy's bottom and to expose his yet darker brown, lip-like anus and the back of his almost hairless scrotum to my view. Those sensitive parts were, however quite safe from the cane, as I did not have the inclination and would also not have enough strokes at my disposal to allow me the luxury of trying to place its tip in the tender area between the broad, curved cheeks.
The window overlooking the pool was open and I deliberately left it so, noticing, with grim satisfaction, that a deathly silence was again hanging over the area and that many of the boys had gravitated towards the fence closest to my study, so as to miss no detail of the drama which was to be played out in it. I intended to ensure that they were not disappointed.
I picked up the cane from where young Donovan had put it, savouring its balance, with most of its weight in its slightly tapering, waterlogged tip and, moving in behind and to the left of the jack-knifed boy, I swished it experimentally through the air, the sound producing, to my delight, a violent contraction of the already taut bare bottom before me; this boy was in no doubt about what was in store for him and while dreading it, was probably determined to fight his way through it. It is a real pleasure to thrash big boys like that, as the whipping becomes as much a conflict of wills as a contest between stick and flesh, the essence of fair play being that, if the lad is not broken within the pre-determined scope of his thrashing, he must be allowed his 'victory' and not be brutalised until he DOES break.
That thought had just occurred to me and I was in the process of laying the cane ever so gently across the firm, round tail in order to fix my aim and the length of stick to be applied to its inviting target, when I realised that, in fact, the imminent canings were STILL undefined as far as the two boys were concerned. I was on the point of announcing the number of cuts each would receive, when Donovan, who was standing on the far side of his friend and whose palms were, by then, pressing down on the younger boy's bare shoulders, as instructed, asked, in little more than a whisper, "How many, Sir?"
To this day I am appalled by the callous, deliberate cruelty of my reply, particularly as I had no intention of actually implementing my words. I said, "That will remain to be seen, but you can both expect a minimum of 12 cuts". Once again, with savage satisfac- tion, I saw the naked golden body which was draped over the chair-back flinch in anticipation and the taller, fair lad's face go bleak in the knowledge of what 12 strokes with that cane across his own bare bottom would soon be feeling like.
However, I had already privately decided that, all things remaining equal, Machado would be receiving 8 cuts and Haversham 10, both of which quotas would, in view of the victims' tails being bare and the force I intended to employ in thrashing them, constitute very 'good' hidings indeed, so my gratuituously cruel reply merely compounded their fears groundlessly.
In a silence that was becoming oppressive, I lined the cane up on Morrie's beautifully proportioned naked haunches and poised myself for the first stroke. Well used to thrashing boys' backsides, I did not lift the cane as much as draw it back horizontally, keeping my feet firmly planted on the floor and turning almost 90 degrees at the hips, thereby putting the full power and weight of my upper body behind the stroke, which I then delivered, hard and level, across the tightly braced centre of the boy's bare backside.
As the cane landed I knew that my eye was well and truly in and that both these young scamps would be receiving hidings that they would remember for many a long day. The cane met the outer curve of the bronze left cheek almost dead centre between hip and thigh; my timing and both the angle and the flexion of my wrist were perfect, with the result that the sheer weight of my arm and the downward pressure of my hand on the cane kept it, without any 'bounce' or let up, in direct contact with the firm, resiliant backside, making the pliant, heavy rod compress the bare flesh as it bit into the left cheek, flattening it slightly as it bridged the deep cleavage between the boy's buttocks and then repeating the same effect on the right cheek, but with the rapidly accelerating tip of the stick literally sinking into the bare flesh and not cutting it only because of the elasticity of the lad's tough young hide.
Almost vindictively, I kept the stick in firm contact with the already fully compressed buttocks for a few seconds, allowing the blazing sting and burn which it must have caused to develop fully and noticing, with grudging admiration, the impressive degree of physical control which the boy displayed. As the cane struck home, it was as if measurable surges of agony were radiating outwards from the strip of whipped flesh towards all his extremities, the most noticable being the effect on his dangling legs. As the ripple moved downwards, his strong, smooth thighs and calves bunched and shuddered until the blinding pain reached the long, curved toes and extended and splayed them, like a cat's claws, in a brief paroxysm of agony, before receding and drawing them back to clench tightly against the broad, calloused balls of his feet which, in turn, lifted slowly and steadily until their heels were almost in the crease where his bottom met his thighs and their soles were parallel to the floor. Throughout the entire convulsion, not a sound passed the boy's lips, but I could see from the muscles in his back and neck, which were standing out in cords, that he was already in serious pain and was probably doubting his ability to withstand at least another 11 strokes. Nevertheless, as he overcame his agony, he must have realised that the position of his upturned feet would inter- fere with the rest of his hiding and, unprompted, he lowered his legs, again fully exposing his naked rump to the rod.
I looked hard but briefly at the pain-racked bottom and regretted, again, the necessity for inflicting so much agony on something of such sheer physical beauty, but this was no time for sympathy and I drew the cane back and planted it again, no less hard or accurately, across both cheeks, about an inch below the first stripe.
An interesting aspect of caning a suntanned or otherwise darker-skinned bottom is that the strokes do not produce the livid, crimson weals offered up by fairer tails, but clear, chalk-white stripes, which soon turn into thick, rock hard ridges, with milk-chocolate centres and darker edges and which seem to erupt from the bare flesh with no preliminary discolouration.
I noted with interest that Haversham, who had lost his erection during the run-up to Machado's thrashing, had regained it spectacularly as the first cut had slammed into the younger boy's backside and that his by no means insubstantial organ, which was standing up almost vertically against his stomach, was glistening with moisture and was quivering and pulsing in time to his harsh, rapid breathing. As I drew back and lashed the cane a third time across Morrie's by then rapidly swelling buttocks, I wondered whether Donovan's obvious agitation might make him lose control even before his own rear end felt the sting of the cane.
For the present, though, I was far more intrigued by the progress of the thrashing I was administering to Morrie's bare tail. Each stroke, although delivered at a pace that made a blur of the approaching cane, seemed to operate in slow motion once the stick had landed on his bot- tom. I had deliberately planted the strokes on the outer curve of the boy's left cheek up to this point, one above and one below the original central stripe and each one had flexed tightly and uniformly across and around the twin naked buttocks. I found that I could actually watch the supple stick bending as it wrappped around the firm pads of muscle, sinking into them so deeply that where it crossed their crests, it had buried itself almost completely in the yielding flesh, which had then, in a violent convulsion, repelled it, following it with a blood-filled weal, which erupted from the clenching bottom, lengthen- ing progressively as the pressure of the cane gradually lessened from the left, until each cheek carried a welt which must have been between six and eight inches long and which extended from flank to cleft and from cleft to flank, the only difference in the overall length of each successive stripe being caused by the sloping off of the boy's tail as it tapered down to his thighs or up to his hips.
I was, of course, going to follow a deliberate pattern in thrashing both boys, as there were no strokes to waste if I was to whip them as soundly as I wished and within the number of cuts I had allowed myself. So, the next two lashes were applied at least as hard as the first three, alternately above and below the already ridged and swollen middle of a probably very sore backside, extending the overall width of the beaten area to within about an inch below the top of the lad's crack on the one hand and the same distance above his crease on the other, putting in place the five 'bars' of the 'gate' which was my intended design. The sixth cut was placed, with a malicious accuracy which surprised even myself, a fraction of an inch above the actual fold where bare buttocks met naked thighs and, at last, drew a sharp yelp of agony from the very soundly thrashed boy, whose backside must have felt, by then, as if it were being pressed down on the bars of a red hot grill. While lacking the technicolor effect of a well-beaten blonde backside, this one was, by then, showing a rosy glow through its golden brown hue which, together with the impressive set of corrugations which covered its surface, told me that this young man would be moving and, in particular, sitting down, with extreme caution for quite a while.
I then lined up for what were to be the part of his punishment which he would remember long after the rest had been forgotten. Up to that point and in spite of the force of the strokes, I had avoided breaking my pupil's skin by the simple expedients of keeping each stripe complet- ly separate from the others and not hitting 'through', but merely 'into' his tail. The first of those safety measures was about to vanish from that hiding, as I carefully aimed the seventh cut so that it would be angled across both tightly braced cheeks, slamming into each of the five parallel welts which already decorated them and missing the sixth and lowest, which was, in all conscience, already painful enough, only. To ensure that the stroke found its mark fully, I not only moved slightly towards the youngster's feet, but also bent my knees as I brought the cane diagonally across his bare tail and watched, with satisfaction, as the length of brown wood slammed into the existing welts, crushing them into the already suffering flesh and producing not only a chain of bright red spots of blood leading upwards over both cheeks, but wringing the first real howl of pain from the teenager, whose stoicism, under extremely severe punishment, was all the more remarkable as his volatile, Latin culture, unlike ours, set little store by 'a stiff upper lip' and saw no virtue in pretending that one had not been hurt when one HAD.
However, I was not yet quite finished with my young miscreant, who had, by some monstrous effort of will, remained draped over the back of the chair, with his heavily ridged, badly bruised and slightly bleeding bum still fully and helplessly exposed to the cane. I stole a glance at Haversham and saw a tense, ashen young face and, some way below it, a completely flaccid and very shrunken penis, both of which showed that he was already well into his own punishment and would probably remember the torture of standing so close by and actually feeling the shocks of his friend's flogging through his hands, for as long as he would the scorching strokes of the cane which were soon to be laid across his own naked bottom.
Moving back to level with the heaving, sun-kissed rib-cage, I quickly brought the cane down in a long, flashing arc and in a reverse diagonal, completing an agonising St. Andrew's cross which linked up seven of the eight perfect welts adorning the bare young bottom. For a long moment after the eighth cut landed there was absolute silence in the room, broken only by the chorus of horrified gasps coming from the unoffic- ial audience of eavesdroppers outside. Both boys were, of course, under the impression that Machado still had several cuts to go, as I doubt if the implications of the two diagonal strokes would have registered with either of them under those circumstances.
I allowed my well-thrashed, young aristocrat to lie in position for several seconds, bare, slightly bleeding tail blazing and body as rigid as a board, his mind no doubt racing in anticipation of yet further punishment and with a lowpitched, gasping groan of pure agony coming from his half-open mouth, while I waited to see if he had the self-discipline to stay in his uncomfortable position, inviting yet further strokes. When I saw that Haversham was not even having to work at holding him down and that he was ready to take whatever I might have in store for him, I took the cane in my left hand and, as I had done with little Kevin, rested my right palm very gently on my erst- while victim's back and told him that his beating was over and that he could get up in his own time and rub and jump around to his heart's content. I have never been able to see any reason for denying a lad whose backside has just endured a sound thrashing, the right to limit its after-effects; his punishment is complete and so my own jurisdiction over his movements should also come to an end, particularly when the hiding had been as well borne as that one had.
For several moments there was neither sound nor movement from either of the naked boys and then both of them said, as if rehearsed, "Thank you, Sir." and I realised once again the tremendous cameraderie which can exist between boys and which shows up best at times like those.
Realising that the first caning was over, the crowd of boys outside, forgetting that they should not have been listening in at all, began discussing the event with an enthusiasm which I curbed by suddenly passing by the window, the sudden silence drawing the attention of the main participants to the fact that their performances were being fully monitored by their fellows, a situation which clearly caused them a good deal of embarrassment, as they knew full well that every yelp of pain and gasp for breath would be noted and would be recalled when the physical effects were duly inspected later on.
(TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 3 - AND ANOTHER ONE!)