Chapter 7
Sweet Sunday
An Interlude by P. N. Dedeaux
Pure calendar art, thought Rita Henshaw, looking down at her cousin still blissfully asleep in bed. Meat magazine stuff.
The girl lay on her left side on the coarse horse-blanket, one leg drawn up; she had tossed off the top cover of the same material as evidently too hot or itchy. Her pale shortie top had ended up mostly around her armpits, and she wore no bottom. Tousled and slightly moist licks of blonde hair decorated her forehead-the room was rather warmer than was comfortable-and she was snoring lightly. All she needed, considered Rita, was to have one thumb in her mouth. But Little Mo' was learning. It was Sunday morning and, despite her cousin's announced weekend absence, she had held to the blanket rule. Pity she'd kept on the top, though.
Rita Henshaw flexed her cane. It was the first thing Mona Forbes saw on opening her pure mauve, rather muzzy eyes. "Morning, Mo'." "Eh, uh, Oh. It's you.
"I... uuh, ah . . ." The girl gave a Penthouse yawn. She plucked a little uselessly, realization flooding through her face. "I didn't exactly expect . . ." "Evidently not, dear. But you're coming along. I did promise you the occasional spot check. To keep our little lady up to snuff. Come on. Quick. Up!" One end of the cane released itself into a furiously quivering antenna.
The girl knuckled sleep out of her eyes and swung her legs over the side of the bed. "Please, Rita, you aren't going to punish me, for having kept my top on, are you? It was so scratchy and itchy and ugh."
"Poor thing. And you still have some lines on your so misused tookie."
"Are you?"
"Come on. Homage!" Rita stood sternly, her legs slightly parted, stretching the short no-nonsense skirt of light chino across her broad thighs, pantyhosed in charcoal nylon. Above, she wore a short brown cashmere cardigan, loosely buttoned over-breasts. "Start the day right, dear."
Mona slipped to her knees in front of her cousin. She put her hands behind her back and bowed solemnly forward to kiss the skirt hem, in between the thighs. Her sleepy forehead bumped.
"Don't be impertinent, dear," said Rita, moving it. "Here."
Her imperious left index finger indicated a spot in front of her left flank where skirt ended and bursting pseudo-silk began. To it Mona fastened a long, sleepy, drizzly kiss that moistened both materials and even made the multi-denier stuff rustle, beside drawing an appreciative "Mmmn" from their occupant.
"Don't overdo it, dear." Rita stretched, then shifted slowly out of her left steeple heel. She kicked the shoe forward.
"As it's Sunday, we'll start with a special, just to remind you of your place in life around these parts. Lave the inside of that exquisitely expensive thing with what I trust is your still innocent tongue.
"Thoroughly, Mona, understand? Imbibe the scent of warmed Gucci calf as you work and mentally compare i with the scent of hickory. After all that dancing last night, my feet are killing me already."
She watched the mildly mute and moving head and, when the second shoe had been done to satisfaction, she seized the napeful of blonde hair and brought Mona to her startled feet with it, half-bent over and head twisted to one side.
"Purlease, Rita, don't be cruel to me. I haven't ..."
"Cruel to be kind. First, we'll have some Recitation."
"But it's Sunday. I don't have to . . ."
"You can say Friday's. First three stanzas of The Charge of the Light Brigade."
Mona paced under twist and turn. "But I've forgotten them!"
"Foolish you. You know I can call on any repeat for a week. Now off with your modesty garment and hands behind your back.
When the bared girl's chaste-looking thumbs had been secured behind her with a leather-lined thumb-cuff, Rita went to the adjoining bathroom, humming, and turned on the shower. After a moment she returned.
"Not as cold as I'd like, but will do. Come on, dear, perhaps it will help stimulate that lagging memory of yours, and I don't only mean Alfred, Lord Tennyson. There are rules around here and some of them have been broken. Two minutes, and head right under."
Mona miserably advanced. Rita took a book from a shelf and riffled pages to the poem. She heard the first gasp, then only plashy water falling. Very Tennysonian.
"Okay," she called. "Out you come."
The girl trod back in, dripping. She stood so, hair plastered to her scalp, her other mane furze-bedewed, arms behind her and eyes tight shut.
"Begin."
She recited the lines, then waited, heaving. Her eyes opened.
"Three errors. Three swats." Rita snapped the book. "But first you do two more minutes, my fickle friend- hot."
She strode by the dismayed teener and turned off the cold tap, turned on the hot, widening the jet at the head a little. When it was a stream too hot to take her arm she held aside the shower curtain with a bow.
"Enter, and be drenched, my dear. Two minutes also."
"Please, Rita. Please turn it back to cold."
"Aren't you the choosy one! Silly, it isn't scalding. It'll just wake you up a bit, that's all." She reached and grabbed.
"Hiieeeh!" Mona swung in. The hot jet struck, stiffly, first on her breasts, then, as she turned, the length of her plushy back.
Rita, grinning, watched the needles hitting into the plump flesh as gurgling, gasping, stamping Mona fought to find a position of least prominence in the small shower stall. She finally sought most comfort in the distance, doubling over so that the jet struck and trickled down her bended be-hinds. It suited Rita's book. The older woman reached in and shut off. Mona panted, mouth wide.
"Warm enough for you? Now kindly fetch the paddle."
"For Pete's sake, give me a minute."
"That'll make it four, dear, two either side."
With a sulky look on her head-down face Mona strode purposefully through towards her bed, her pinkened pears streaming and shaking as if indignantly. Rita watched their wet shapes sidle out and fatten as the girl knelt on the bed.
The paddle was hung over it and she had not a little maneuvering to manage to get the striking end in her teeth and lift it off its hook. Rita watched her targets for that morning with pleasure.
"Can't think why they use the expression 'well-hung' for men. It precisely describes you from behind, dear. Were you having gooey dreams of Ron when I disturbed you, by the way?"
Mona was standing rosily in front of her, frowning as she munched her paddle. Rita accepted it with a sigh.
"It really is a pity to have to belabor such lovely lollies with this nasty, cruel, hard, unfeeling board. You know I'm forced to, don't you."
When Mona mutinously said nothing, Rita turned her and by the level of her connected hands bent her well forward. "Head right down. Study the wrinkles in your kneecaps."
Mona, her almost blowsy bottom still steaming, waited. So did Rita. "Ready?" inquired the latter. "Of course I am," snapped Mona. "Dear oh dear ..."
"I didn't mean ..." The wettened face peeked quickly- "Please!"
"You are glutton for it this morning, aren't you. That puts the score up to six, three on each silly-billy, and it also makes it reluctantly incumbent on me to hit, oh, much, much harder." She added, "I'll alternate but keep on one sitter if you clench or even if you demurely dance. Relax it and, yes, round it."
She pulled gently on the thumb-cuff. "Up a little, down a little. I often wonder at these moments not what you are thinking, before the Big Event, but what they are."
She patted the plump hinds with her plank. "Almost they seem to talk."
Flack! The wood whacked up the right. The half-bent buttock-ball bounced.
"Ow!" said Mona softly. "I . . . thththanks!"
Rita was pleased. The girl was really getting there. She hadn't asked for the ritual gratitude this time. She was also pleased at the strong purple smear the paddle had drawn up an the warm and wettened flesh. Just the right color. She swung and clapped into the left. "Phew! Er . . . thank you."
"You're welcome. You've no idea how nicely this board brings up your cane marks."
Again she sullied the skin of the right side. Mona mewed, but pluckily did not move. Only after the fifth did she definitely flinch and earned a blisterer on the same burster. Then she was skipping, hands behind, if tied.
"Golly, Rita, that damn thing stings . . . phew, you've no idea ... oh gosh it . . ."
"You must admit, my dear, you were a teensy-weensy bit on the rebellious side beforehand."
"Well, I'm not now. Jeepers, that wood really whops in, y'know it. I really think it's the very worst first thing in the morning. Really, Rit', do you have to . . . ?"
She broke off to look down. By now she was no more than treading water and her cousin was absently tracing the taped handle up her trimmed furze in front.
"Like to get 'em over with now, luv? Or leave them till after breakfast? Today I'll be lenient."
"What?"
"Come. You may not be Phi Beta material, Mona, but you're not all that dense. For trying to hide your ripeness from the loving touch of the blanket ..."
"Pur-LEAZE! I only put on my top."
"And that didn't seem to get you very far either, did it. Anyway, the penalty's always bottomless, isn't it. Unless! decide to take a whalebone to those whoppers you carry ahead of you with such insouciance-one of these fine days. What is it?"
"What?"
"What me no whats, child. Steady your jugs and think."
Mona looked down. "Six," she said sullenly.
"Invariably of the lickiest, for breaking a House Rule. However, I said I'd be lenient today and you did have on half only, so I'll let you off with three. Get your own cane."
The girl brooded. "Please. It's such a beast."
"A little thinner, I agree, but then perhaps stingier. So they do say. I wouldn't know."
"Please let me off this once."
"Honey, I do believe you're building up a real respect for Mr. Stick. Just get it, or you're in for a real ride on the roller coaster."
The paddle was hung over the bed, the cane on the wall across from it. Useful reminders both, in Rita Henshaw's modest opinion. She watched as the big-butted co-ed walked over and tip-toed to grip the dangling yellow cane in her teeth. Then she lifted it by the thong threaded through its hob grip, on which the letter M had been burnt in -- another reminder.
The two seats had been stained a very satisfactory scarlet, indeed. She presented the quivery limb to her cousin who accepted it and pointed.
Mona looked down in some dismay as the tough tip prodded and plumbed her erect right nipple. The cane pressed till the lump doubled back on itself, embedded in its roseate coin. Then it was released, standing out stubbily, with indignant quiver.
"Ouhhh," she whimpered softly.
The left was similarly treated. The fat cylinder wiggled.
"Must say you're putting on the poundage up there, Mo'. I don't suppose you get any complaints from the boys sitting either side of you."
"They, they aren't as big as yours."
"How do you know?" grinned Rita.
"I've. . . I've seen."
"But not felt, eh. Well, we'll weigh them up some time today. Meanwhile," and the little beetle of her fingernail scratched one red stub, "I'd say you were ready to give suck to a regiment. Are they always as stiff as this before a beating? If so you must really like it."
"I don't. I hate it."
"Well, to vary the monotony a bit-after all, no true tanning should be exactly like another-I want you standing up against that table, close. Thumbs on your coccyx, please. Now right knee right up and put your foot on the tabletop."
"My right . . . ? Honest, Rita, some of the positions you make me . . ."
"There. See how nicely that rounds out your left chub? Also making it harder to clench. I'm giving you the first on your left only, the second on your right only, with your left foot on the table, please, and the last a cliff-climber clean across the twain."
She steadied, Mona stood. With her right foot up on the table and her left leg duly braced it was true, her big left bun was bunched, its mass awaiting. The cane thrashed at it and clung, full across. Searing pain streaked the whole of the ham.
"Yiiikes!" A-tiptoe she arched. Pliant as a lover the lean wand had embraced the rubbery round so that its fearsome tip dug in on the inside, leaving the darkening fury of its mark on the very tenderest flesh.
"For Pete's sake, Rita. That's murder." Mona ground herself against the table edge.
"Left leg up now, please."
It was done. This cut was almost as bad, but bearable. For the third Rita undid the thumb-cuff and made her winsome charge touch her toes with her back touching the table. A full-blooded cut and Mona, jumping, banged her head under it. Rita seemed to think the subsequent sight of the teener rubbing her ritzy tail with one hand and the back of her head with the other particularly funny.
"Now then I know you'd like some breakfast. Two eggs or three? I'll fix it. I want that hair fluff-dry, dear, and shirt-sleeve order, please. That's nothing under the jeans, remember, and," she flung back a mischievous wink from the doorway, "rump patches are out."
Sunny side up, the eggs were excellent, the coffee even better. Rita took hers to the Women's Pages, Mona morosely.
Frankly, she sensed something afoot; she moved from one side to the other uneasily. The chair felt particularly hard today, or her jeans especially thin. All she had on was a white shirt, buttoned coat-style and cut short; its tail rested on the ledge of her behind, behind, no more.
She felt unpleasantly conscious of her bottom at the moment. The faded cottony jeans were skintight, seemed, indeed, to press into the fatty parts beneath her, sternly. Rita had hit. It wasn't fair to be paddled first, before a caning. That third had drawn hot wire across her hinder halves, Mona wriggled at the memory. She could see that damn hassock across the room. Trying to look innocent.
After breakfast, Rita settled to more of her Sunday supplement in an easy chair beside the dead fire, last light's, it seemed.
"You may want to do your room now, dear. And any other bathroom business as yet unattended to. I think I will profit by the same relaxed moment of the day in a minute, "Okay." Mona mooned off. Her chaperone watched the dry material move over the noble rounds beneath it. She had plans for that pair, all right.
Twenty minutes later the teener returned. Her cousin rein the same seat, but reading, this time, some of her young charge's blue books. What brought Mona up sharp ns the sight of the hassock. It had been brought out dose, for impending occupancy, it seemed plain, and on it lay two objects. One a cane, the other . . .
"What's that?" Mona pointed sickly.
Rita dropped her reading and cocked her head to one "I wonder. What do you think? To me it looks like a tort length of one-inch garden hose, green, hard, and pliable. When applied to the gluteal fat of a growing girl, I have an idea it might hurt. What do you feel?"
"You're not going to use it on me?"
"What's the betting?"
"Please. You're so goshdarned strict with me, Rit'. Honest, I don't mind taking an occasional whipping, maybe I even deserve them at that, but like that cane really stings. I mean it."
"Poor ickle you." Rita had gone grim. "Without meaning to pun, I want to get to the bottom of a few things about here. Come on. Sunday Settlement. Recite your faults. And remember our rule. If I know of something you've done wrong which you don't confess you get double."
Mona sighed. She looked about, but there seemed no entrances she could use as exits and she tugged at her shirt hem.
"Well. I did run out of toilet paper and had to make a raid on your tissues."
"So I saw. We'll let that pass."
"Then, I cut Bio twice. Ugh. Those frogs." "I'm glad you told me about that, Mona, as I'd checked at the college. Two cuts for each cut. Go on." "Well . . ." "What?"
"Maybe I did sneak a smidgen of your new perfume."
"Last night?" "Yes."
"No matter. Anything else?"
"I, I got a D on Midterm at Math. But," her face brightened, "an A in Physics."
"I checked on that, too, dear." Rita frowned. "Odd. I can't entirely understand why you got a D in a subject like Math and then A in its close relative. Unless you were grossly idle in one or hopelessly favored in the other."
The big woman shrugged. The growing flush in her cousin's face had not gone unnoticed by her, nor the fidgety fingers, the rise in breathing rate of the frosh's so senior chest. Why, there even appeared to be a kind of pulsing in the lump lodged at the apex of the thighs, bulging behind the tautened jeans, with their false fly-front .
"Sure that's all?"
"I ther-think so, yes."
Rita stood up. Smoothing her skirt, undoing a button of her cardigan at the top. An impressive specimen of womanhood.
"W-What are you going to do now?" Mona asked. "Attempt to clear your mind" (she tapped) "through your tail" (she tapped). "Four's the slate so far." She put aside the cane and picked up the hose length.
"I don't think you've made the acquaintance of this lovely and variety is the spice of life and all that. They say this one works miracles. Hassock position, please."
"Oh Rit', won't you ... I mean . . . like take it easy on me a bit . . . you absolutely blistered me in there and that cane . . ."
"I shall give it you over your trousers, yes. But first put your hands up like so."
"No!" was the petulant echo. Mona stamped. Rita, her hands at one earlobe, stayed them and stared. Mona was near tears. "Please. They hurt. And, and, one day I'm sure I'll ter-tear some skin."
Rita spoke softly. "So you did want your trousers down fork, after all? Show-off."
Mona wrinkled her rather pixyish features but wisely said nothing.
Her ears were pierced, as were her cousin's. From the latter's rosy lobes were taken twin thin gold rings, almost a jeweler's sleepers. Rita slid them through the soft and pulpy flesh under Mona's ears and there dangled from them two most convenient thumb-cuffs of finest 14-karat. In a moment Mona stood with her thumbs at her nice flat ears, as if listening for something.
What she heard was not reassuring. A smacky slap as Rita tried the hose on her own bigly fleshed calf.
"Jesus Christ," she said, hopping. "All right, kneel down and come over here. Over you go."
Mona bent a torpid torso across the pouffe. Her bottom bloomed, she held her anxious elbows out. Rita, appreciative, flipped up the derisory little shirt tail lying on the upper plane; into view came a circlet of tan waist, meek-looking.
"Can't you do it with the cane? I'll bet that thing hurts like, like sin. Besides, I'm all sore a'ready."
"With a butt as big as yours you can take an honest whaling without permanent pother. Now, let's get at the disaster area." Businesslike she bent. The side zip slipped of itself. Half the arse bulged out. Then she had to tug.
"Hell, you kids wear these things tight. Like peeling a banana, just. Or two. There we go."
The material lay marooned at Mona's knees. The heavy cheeks moved uncomfortably; the paddle blushes had dimmed a little but the cane streaks still spoke volumes. The telephone went. Rita strode and answered it with her implement hanging.
"Who? The porter? Whose porter? Oh, aha. Professor Porter. Of the Physics Department. Yes, I wondered if you'd call ... no, I'm afraid she's engaged just at the minute, professor, a little therapy . . . not entropy, therapy. But I'm sure she'd be happy to speak with you in a little while. Say a half hour? Fine. Thanks. Goodbye." Rita stood over the divided dumplings. "Anyone you know, dear? Now let's get this over with. I fear it's going to hurt you far more than it does me. You may be a dullard in Math but I'm sure you can count to four. Stick it up and, if you wish, say your prayers."
With flexed knees she swept the first almost horizontally into the ripe flesh; the hose met with a wet flaccid sound but its punishing power was attested by the wealth of its weal and the sudden jamming together of the twin peach-halves.
"Ieeeee!" Mona wailed, threshing forward. "ONE!"
For the second Rita cut at an angle but for the third and fourth the girl's toby was canted slackly, breathless, full atop the hassock and she was able to drive down two positive welters as hard as she could.
Mona squealed off, squirming. She rolled on the rug, her great limbs threshing greatly. When the world had subsided somewhat she knelt up panting and saw her tormentor standing in front of the fireplace cane in hand.
"Now, Mona, my dear, perhaps that will freshen up your memory. I told you I meant to get to the bottom of things and unless I'm mistaken you had a visitor here last night. Or have you"-and Rita's canetip speared a circle of ash from an ashtray-"taken up Romeo and Juliets?
"Even that wouldn't account for the level of Chivas Regal, which I know you hate, nor certainly for the condom missing from your secret store.
"Put two and one together and I surmise your mysterious stranger was none other than Professor Porter and he wasn't here to wash your feet in soda water. Let's have it now. How did he take you, where, how often-and when? You're in for it whatever you say so it might just as well be the truth."