Author's note
This is the second part of the third segment of the tale.
Apostophes have started to creep. Exorcism seems to work.
The cane cuts across Smith's lower buttocks and upper thighs made it impossible for him to sit down; indeed his entire backside was aflame for several hours afterwards; finally the general fire settled into embers giving off a malevolent warmth rather than outright pain; the low cane cuts would trouble Smith for several days though.
His pain and humiliation resolved him to make his slaves' lives even more miserable. Also, though as yet not a formal thought to be displayed on the cinema screen of Smith's mind, some hidden recess in Smith's brain was conceiving the notion of getting revenge on Wilkins. After this pre- idea had gestated for a few hours it would eventually pop up on Smith's mental screen in the cognitive equivalent of Technicolor.
In the meantime Smith set about meeting his immediate needs. He sent for Dobson and also, ordered his inner circle to meet in the dorm next to his study.
Petreson, Thorpe, Melrose, Atkins and Drummond were assembled in the dorm when Dobson arrived breathless. "What does he want?" Dobson demanded.
Thorpe replied, "He's in quite a state, very cross."
"So he should be!" Dobson retorted. "He and I have just been beaten severely by Wilkins. Smith got the worst of it. A real roasting with the cane. His bum was a patchwork of red lines, the bastard deserved it, and .... Oh, hello Smith."
Smith had entered the dorm and had heard most of Dobson's tirade.
"Dobson! Stand there" said Smith pointing to a region on the carpet "and place your hands on your head."
Dobson blanched and did as he was told.
Dobson's overheard ill-chosen remark was not the reason for this command. Smith had already decided to take out his anger and frustration on the youth. Not only had Dobson jumped in with a confession when Smith might have been able to save the day but also he had witnessed Smith being humiliatingly punished naked, crying out and begging for mercy. That could not be tolerated. Dobson must be put back in his place as a slave immediately.
In an inchoate manner Dobson perceived this too and was afraid.
"Dobson betrayed me" Smith said to the silent boys around him, "He got me viciously beaten because he could not keep his mouth shut. He did not have enough sense to stay silent and let me extricate us both from the mess we were in."
Smith was inwardly very angry. He did not let his ire show, yet his presence was somehow menacing, his authority over those before him unassailable.
After witnessing Smith's humiliation Dobson had entertained the notion that perhaps he could face up to Smith and set himself free. No longer did he harbour such mutinous thoughts. He knew he must obey Smith. He knew that what was to come would be hell. He just didn't have the imagination to guess what kind of hell it would be, but whatever kind it was he must take it without complaint.
Smith's backside still throbbed horribly. He had determined that Dobson's should hurt much, much more. Smith was still chiding under his extreme humiliation, humiliation compounded by being undergone in front of Dobson. Dobson's humiliation would be an order of magnitude greater. Dobson would be reduced to a pathetic wreck, an abject slave.
Smith smiled one of his winning smiles and cast it in turn on those around him. Johann's heart leapt as that smile was directed at him. Even Dobson, who was its final recipient, was not unmoved.
"Very well Dobson you shall be searched for contraband. Johann you may officiate." Dobson did not like the idea at all but he had been through this before on several occasions and it was much less bad than some of the other things Dobson was, with his limited imagination, expecting.
Johann had endured many searches and witnessed many more. This was the first time he had been commanded to conduct one. He knew what to do and he knew that searches had to be carried out meticulously: their significance for the subject must lie in the knowledge that, so to speak, no stone would be left unturned and that events would unfold with painstaking slowness toward an utterly embarrassing denouement (Johann hoped fervently that Smith himself would take over at that stage). Johann's knowledge of the underlying logic had been deduced from various conversations that he and Smith had held side by side in bed at night. After satisfying himself in Johann, and usually, with deft hands, relieving Johann too, Dan would share thoughts he would never express to anyone else. Those thoughts variously frightened, excited and stunned Johann. Dan was such a complicated person. Johann both revelled in the complexity and feared much of the detail. Yet he treasured the fact that Dan, in a highly circumscribed sense, was his intimate friend.
Johann ordered Dobson to empty out his pockets.
Dobson was deeply disturbed by the thought of having to endure this procedure at the behest of a junior, it was pretty much unendurable when Smith, a fellow fifth former, did it. He almost balked, yet thought better of it.
Johann went through the contents of all Dobson's pockets with a thoroughness which would, which did, make Smith proud.
As each garment was divested Johann searched for the smallest place where a spy might secrete a rice paper message; he did not bother to wonder why.
Finally, Dobson, very red in the face, was standing naked before Johann.
Smith nodded encouragement and Johann continued with the intimate body search.
At last he reached Dobson's crotch and did everything that he had seen done to others and had endured himself. He did not enjoy this and kept hoping that Dobson had bathed recently.
After a thorough examination of Dobson's genitals and the surrounding area, a procedure that embarrassed Dobson and Petreson almost equally, it was time to instruct Dobson to turn around, spread his legs, and bend over. Indeed, the thoroughness of the previous part of the search, which Smith much admired, was much due to Johann's procrastination – his desire never to reach the final stage.
Dobson's ample, firm and well rounded bum was revealed, not for the first time ever but for the first time this day, to the onlookers in the dorm. It was immediately obvious that Dobson had very recently received a sound beating. Both buttocks were covered in freshly forming bruises that would encompass the entire area.
Dobson, with great reluctance, bent over. Johann stood gazing, with some disgust mixed with an ambivalence arising from his current power, at Dobson's buttocks, the cleft and the anus revealed within, and the back view of Dobson's dangling genitals. Slowly he ran his hands over Dobson's buttocks as he knew Smith would want him to do; Dobson winced several times but remained silent. Finally, being unable to put it off any longer, Johann ran the forefinger of his right hand around Dobson's anus, keeping about an inch from the edge of this orifice's muscular ring; Johann was relived to observe that the area looked thoroughly clean. Dobson groaned in an anguish brought upon by utter humiliation rather than physical pain.
The circuit completed, Johann straightened and looked into Smith's face. Johann's expression was quizzical.
Smith suddenly produced the rubber glove, snapped it loudly and said "Shall it be you or shall it be I?"
Johann mumbled "You please Dan, er", correcting himself, "Smith."
Dan was almost inclined to make Petreson go through with it. It would be fun to see him and Dobson squirm for different reasons. However, he decided against, as this final humiliation, never before inflicted on Dobson during a search, would have greatest effect coming from himself.
He did the deed himself, making sure that Dobson knew it was him doing it. He took his time and relished every moment when Dobson winced, moaned, or, in a humble voice, begged Smith to stop.
Finally Smith withdrew his digit and said "That was only a gloved finger. Soon enough you will experience something else, but not this evening."
On hearing this Dobson's emotions were divided between relief that this would go no further tonight and horror at the prospect of what had been promised.
Placed in a variety of conventional and also inventive positions Dobson next underwent a series of beatings with the whippy cane, the "paddle" and with the thin strap applied systematically around his genitals. Dobson was reduced to abject misery and tears. Yet his torment was not ended.
Smith gave Dobson a couple of minutes to compose himself before announcing the next torment.
Smith whispered something into Melrose's ear and Melrose scurried off. Then he ordered Dobson to lie supine on a bed with his hands on his head and his legs far apart. Dobson's bottom was still fiery from his beating and this position did not add to his comfort. Vaguely he wondered what was coming next. His mind had become partially detached from events around him, somewhat like a man forced to run in the same direction as a panicking crowd, and from what was happening to him.
Melrose returned bearing a mug of steaming water, a razor, shaving soap and a shaving brush. He passed within Dobson's restricted field of gaze. Dobson instantly became, like a insect landing on fly paper, unpleasantly re-attached to the world around him. He let out a low groan but did not have the energy to protest further.
Smith stood before the outstretched half-spread-eagled youth, the faithful Melrose beside him holding the instruments of torture. Smith gave Dobson one of his beatific smiles then took the shaving brush, wetted it and whipped up a lather of soap. He kept applying the brush to Dobson's pudenda until the boy's pubic hair and genitalia were engulfed in white foam. He picked up the wicked looking razor and gingerly tested its blade with his finger.
Hitherto, when shaving boys, Smith had allowed his victims to watch as best they could from their depressed eye line; indeed he had enjoyed waving the razor menacingly before their gaze. This time, however, Smith added a dainty refinement. He covered Dobson's eyes with a cloth. Far from sparing Dobson some of his ordeal this served to enhance it. Any youth lying thus was bound to want to shift his position from time to time; relieve the pressure on one spot and then another, especially so if his bottom had recently been thrashed. Dobson now dared not move. Despite being able to hear rustling noises from Smith's end of the bed he had no way to judge where the razor was in relation to his precious genitalia unless it was already in contact. When it was in contact, scything through short and curly hair, it would be madness to move unless he was prepared to risk a nick. It was even greater madness to move when it was not in contact because at any moment it might be about to make contact: genitalia, as is their wont, tend to wobble when that to which they are attached moves. Smith, even though he might have no intention of deliberately cutting Dobson, and he had no such intention, could not anticipate unexpected movements as he brought the razor to bear.
As Smith systematically swept the razor through pubic hair Dobson became ever more anxious and assumed a painful rigid posture summoning up all his willpower not to move. That tension became acute whenever Smith handled his penis either to remove the hairs at the base of its shaft or to move it out of the way of some other area of attention. When Smith worked on Dobson's balls the latter became paralytic with fear.
Finally the front was finished. Dobson was told to turn over and Smith finished tidying up the back end of Dobson's genitalia. There very few other hairs requiring attention around either Dobson's anus or in his cleft. Dobson was in a torpid state of shock by now but he summoned enough mental energy to guess that this was not quite the end. He knew that next it would be black boot polish, and so it was.
Smith had Dobson standing now. He knelt before Dobson and dipped his right hand into an open tin of polish that Thorpe, by his side, was holding. He took a liberal amount and rubbed it well into Dobson's pubic area and genitalia. It took several applications to ensure that all in front, up to the point where Dobson's now missing pubic hairs had once proudly reached, was black, and this included Dobson's balls (all round) and penis (all round and to the end of the foreskin).
Dobson was not permitted to leave the room until the polish was thoroughly dry. Even if Dobson bathed immediately it would take several days before the black stain ceased to be prominent and discernible traces would linger for a couple of weeks. The pubic hair would take much longer to re-establish, much like a lawn that had been hit by a severe drought.
Smith pronounced the show over. He took Johann by the hand and led him to his study bedroom. That night he gave Johann a particularly painful hand spanking before satiating his lust more forcefully than usual. Johann didn't complain, there was no point anyway, as he realised that Dan had started the evening particularly tense and was at last approaching his normal state. Indeed, he had received a glimpse of Smith's bruised behind on which the cane cuts were still vivid and he had partially understood Smith's mental state. When the taking of Johann was over, Johann was a little disappointed that Dan did not attend to his needs too; the events this evening had wound Johann's erotic tensions as taught as a spring. When Smith was sound asleep Johann made his way to the lavatory to unfetter the figurative spring.
Kekule, the founder of organic chemistry, claimed to have dreamt of a chain of carbon atoms, somewhat like a snake. This snake had danced about in his head. Suddenly the snake did the unexpected and swallowed its own tail: thus, in a dream, was discovered the hitherto elusive atomic structure of compounds such as benzene.
During the night, Smith's slumbering brain had performed a similar feat. Admittedly, his was not a discovery to amaze the world at large. However, within the confines of Thistletop School its consequences would be devastating. The proto-idea, whose existence in his head Smith had not previously acknowledged, had flowered and burst forth from this bud as a plan to get revenge on Wilkins: not petty revenge, certainly not: Smith's revenge would humiliate and destroy Wilkins.
For a while Smith lay (on his stomach to protect his still tender bottom) in bed, with Johann asleep beside him, savouring his plot. Then, wild with enthusiasm and a good humour he had not possessed the previous evening, he peremptorily whipped off the bed sheet, slapped Johann's bare bottom hard, tipped Johann out of bed and announced "Awaken lazy bones! We have work to do."
To be continued.