Bend Over the Flogging Horse

R Humphries has a dilemma. At the Woody Back to School Unit the inmates are occasionally required to assemble in the Great Hall to witness one of their number being publicly punished.

So here is my dilemma. In my books these punishments have always been known as Public Floggings (the term has considerable historical precedent having been widely used in histories of CP, many works of literature, and innumerable memoirs). However, recent deplorable activities by radical extremists in some regions of the World have given public flogging a bad name.

In one of his many works, Frank Richards, the celebrated author of the Greyfriars stories, wrote a riveting episode in which Herbert Vernon-Smith is publicly horsed and birched in front of the assembled school. It is also well documented that a notoriously monstrous and permanently drunken Headmaster at Eton was fond of delivering public canings and many memoirists recall the somber atmosphere that prevailed during the performance of these rituals.

So, all things considered and after some careful thought I have chosen to continue to use the phrase in my stories as I feel certain that my readers will fully appreciate that the public punishments at the Woody Back to School Unit are totally unrelated to the aforementioned barbarities. Enough said.

Of course public floggings at the Woody Back to School Unit are steeped in ritual. R Humphries loves rituals. In the following extract from ‘Whops and Clobber’ poor old Debs Morton is paraded before the assembled community and publicly caned.

Deborah bent over the vaulting horse. Katie Beck took measurements and then told Debs to stand up. Debs watched morosely as Katie cynically raised the height of the saddle of the horse so that it was at an elevation that would be slightly too high for Deborah to bend over comfortably, and would mean she would have to remain on tiptoes throughout the flogging.

Deborah reached under her skirt and stepped out of her bumbags. She handed them to Katie. The Matron looked at the inside label to find the size. She crossed to a chest of drawers and after rummaging briefly she produced a crisply starched pair of white cotton gym shorts. She handed them to Deborah.

“Put them on,” grinned Katie.

Deborah Morton snatched the garment; known to the Woody Wags as whopping bags, and turned her back on Katie. She knew the form. She struggled and squirmed to slide herself into the shorts that Katie had purposefully selected a size too small. Deborah could barely fasten the button at the waist.

When the bell rang midway through the morning lectures the Woody gals knew what to expect.

“Assemble the inmates,” Katie announced over the public address system. “Deborah Morton, Phase 5, twelve stroke public flogging for vandalism.”

The announcement that Deborah would receive twelve strokes attracted a lot of raised eyebrows. Public floggings were traditionally divided into two categories.

Mandatory floggings were carried out during Callover and were limited to six strokes of the senior cane.

Punishment floggings were administered for more serious offenses that included cussing out the Brass or the Elite, smoking, boozing, scrapping or cutting curfew. At any time day or night the inmates could be summonsed to the assembly hall to witness a punishment flogging which was comprised of nine strokes.

A twelve-stroke flogging was unprecedented and the news was not well received by the inmates of the facility.

“Bummer! Twelve strokes is a bit strong,” grumbled Nix as she and her chums strode towards the assembly hall.

“Tough duty,” agreed Jojo. “Still it could have been worse, she could have been sent up before a parole board.”

“Thank heavens for small mercies,” sighed Rosemary.

Debs Morton was not thanking anyone for small mercies. Ms Lawton had Deborah pinned down over her knee, with her white cotton whopping bags rolled down and concertinaed around her ankles. Ms Lawton was giving Debs a damn good spanking. Debs had reluctantly allowed herself to be lowered downwards and stretched out into the mandatory full drape so that she was fully supported by Ms Lawton with only the tips of her fingers and her toes touching the carpet.

However much she hated being hand spanked like a grubby Deborah was forced to grudgingly admit that the warm-up actually helped her to get into the zone. Being caned in front of the whole unit was always a daunting experience but as a fully paid up mega-minx Deborah was duty bound to take her flogging without making a muff of herself.

Ms Lawton pulled Deborah in tight and Debs settled in for a few very hot and very sweaty minutes.

Debs pulled up the zip and fastened the button on the side of her shorts. The material chaffed against the swollen flesh. She wriggled involuntarily. Over the intercom she heard Katie summonsing the inmates to the assembly hall. She felt a shiver up her spine.

Ms Lawton was at the tall-boy selecting a cane, flexing them between her hands and swishing them through the air until she found one to her liking.

“You can consider yourself lucky that I haven’t sent you before a disciplinary hearing,” she told Deborah coldly, “but I can assure you Morton, I intend to flog you with the utmost severity.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Deborah, although she wasn’t too sure that she was exactly feeling lucky.

The Grand Dame held the door for Deborah and they entered the Assembly Hall. There was a grinding of seats as the inmates rose to acknowledge the arrival of the Grand Dame. Deborah stepped up onto the stage and stood beside the vaulting horse. She clasped her hands in front of her and gazed out over the assembled congregation. The Grand Dame ordered the inmates to take their seats and unhurriedly she asked Penelope Ann Evans to step onto the stage and call registration.

As she passed by Deborah, Penelope Ann threw her a sympathetic glance; Debs winked. The Red-shirt called registration efficiently and when she called Deborah’s name the gal on the stage turned to face her and replied in a voice filled with irony, “Yes, Evans, I’m here.”

Even the Grand Dame grinned at that.

Finally the Red-shirt returned to her place by the wall and the Grand Dame stood up. She moved to the front of the stage and addressed the inmates. She admonished Deborah’s behavior savagely and informed the assembled inmates of her intention to punish Debs extremely soundly. During the speech Deborah was pulling sarcastic faces at the gals who sat before her. They began to chuckle and were immediately silenced by the Grand Dame but when she turned suspiciously to look at her Deborah’s expression was one of stony indifference.

Ms Lawton slipped off her black double-breasted jacket and hung it up. She was wearing a white silk blouse with the collar turned up at the back. She unfastened the cuffs and neatly rolled back her sleeves to below the elbow. Deborah watched with stony-faced resignation. She was keenly aware that in a matter of moments the fireworks were scheduled to begin.

When the Grand Dame turned to collect the long thin senior cane from the table Deborah spotted her chum Rosemary waving crossed fingers from the back of the hall; Deborah winked again. The inmates chuckled behind their hands. If the Grand Dame was aware of Deborah’s performance she chose to ignore it.

She took the long crook-handled cane from the table and turned to face her victim. She held the long thin cane between both hands and flexed it into an arc.

“Bend over the horse,” she instructed.

Deborah turned and faced the vaulting horse. Due to the extra three inches that Katie had raised the saddle Debs had to tiptoe up as she bent forward at the waist. She reached down and gripped the legs on the far side, her hips rested on the top of the horse; she was balanced on the tips of her toes.

The inmates were treated to the sight of Deborah’s bottom, shrouded in the skintight white whopping bags with razor vertical creases, as it sat up proud and defenseless.

The Grand Dame stood to the left of Deborah and placed the cane on the upturned moons and tapped the stick down gently to gauge her distance. The tight gym shorts made Deborah’s slightly plump rump an especially enticing target. She tapped the cane down a second time and then a third.

Deborah closed her eyes tightly.

Satisfied, Ms Lawton pulled her arm back, cocked ready for release. With a look of rapt concentration on her face she swiped the cane downwards with extreme prejudice. The cane sliced through the air with a sharp whistle and rebounded off Deborah’s backside with a resounding crack.

Deborah felt the breath knocked from her and she held onto the legs with a vice-like grip. A line of scalding fire flashed across her tender behind. If the opener was anything to go by Deborah was about to experience an exceptionally painful few minutes.

The seasoned veterans in the hall watched closely. Although the Grand Dames back-swing was deceptively short there was no question that she had opened with a scorcher. The inmates exchanged knowing glances. It was clear that Ms Lawton intended to teach Deborah a lesson that she wasn’t likely to forget in a hurry.

The cane swished and thwacked again; Deborah felt as if every nerve end in her body had been sent into a hot prickly dance. The third slashed downwards and the hapless Debs felt giddy with pain. The collar of her blouse felt like it was choking her and her eyes prickled with hot tears that she would never let fall.

The Beak delivered stroke after stroke with deadly force. By the seventh stroke Deborah’s buttocks were evenly covered with hot stripes from top to bottom. The eighth and ninth strokes began to merge with the existing stripes but somehow Deborah retained her position without moving and was showing no indication of the trauma she was suffering.

Ms Lawton felt cheated; she was giving it her best and was getting no reaction. She set her mouth in a determined manner and took a tight grip on the cane.

“Let’s see how you like this,” the Grand Dame thought silently then raised the cane slightly higher than usual and brought her arm down with considerable force. The cane slashed across the target with a terrible crack, as if a rifle shot had been fired.

Deborah’s head was spinning. The flesh beneath her crisp white whopping bags seemed to be sizzling. She shook her head in a desperate attempt to clear the fog of pain. “It’s only whops, it’s only whops,” she repeated over and over. Somewhere in the distance she heard an audible gasp.

The Grand Dame stared at the cane in horror; upon its devastating impact the shaft of the cane had snapped off at the end. For a moment Ms Lawton was at a loss as how to proceed. During decades of thrashing thousands of luckless behinds she had never once broken a cane. It had never occurred to her that she might need a back-up. Clearly there was no time to send for another cane from her office, she couldn’t leave Deborah folded over the horse. Her mind raced.

“Melanie, bring me your ashplant,” she commanded. Quickly the Deputy Red-shirt came onto the stage and handed the Grand Dame the short swishy stick that she was required to carry under her arm at all times.

Deborah had no idea what was going on she just wanted the last two strokes to be over with. Her bottom felt fried and frazzled, all her blood seemed to have rushed to her head making her feel dizzy.

The Grand Dame flexed the ashplant with obvious displeasure. The light rod seemed like a mere twig compared to the regal senior cane that now lay cast aside, pathetically broken.

“I’m sorry Morton,” she announced. “This ashplant is most unsuitable; I intend to give you two additional strokes to make up for its inadequacy.”

The inmates gasped audibly. Deborah, in her upside down position, could hardly believe her ears. She vainly tried to object but before she could get words of her mouth her arse was under fire once again. Deborah’s head was spinning at an alarming rate as the twelfth stroke whistled through the air. She clenched her teeth as the nerve jangling implosion racked through her body. The thirteenth stroke followed swiftly with the same cobra’s venom. Deborah gripped the legs of the horse in white-knuckle desperation. By now she could hardly breathe through the bile filling her throat and nose and her bottom throbbed and ached and burned.

The Grand Dame let the cane fall by her side for a moment. She studied the white target thoughtfully. Deborah had not flinched or moved, not a sound had uttered from her lips. Ms Lawton was sure that if she put her hands close to the gal’s backside she would be able to warm them as if she was in front of a well-stoked coal fire. The Grand Dame lifted the cane for the final time.

The gals in the assembly hall watched in mute horror as the Grand Dame’s arm went up. Most of the gals congregated had experienced a taste of a prefect’s ashplant during their stay at Woodys. As such they were well able to confirm that, despite the Grand Dame’s reservations, the ashplant, in accomplished hands was more than adequate to stir up the proverbial hornet’s nest inside a pair of tautened bumbags.

When the ashplant came down with a terrific swipe not a single gal in the hall would have swapped places in Deborah’s gym shorts. The stick lashed diagonally across Deborah’s bottom, cruelly crossing each of the previous tramlines, the impact echoing around the hall.

Deborah nearly screamed. She wanted to howl, to yell, to open the floodgates and let all the tears burn down her cheeks. Instead she held her breath and prayed that the wave of agony would pass quickly. She ran the sleeve of her blouse over her eyes and nose. She hung upside down and tried to start to breathe normally. She took her time before she pushed herself up. As she tried to stand up her knees wobbled and Ms Lawton put her hand on her shoulder to steady her. Deborah Morton roughly shrugged the Grand Dame’s assistance away and leant against the vaulting horse. She took a deep breath before she turned and faced the audience.

The hall was silent. Every gal was watching Deborah in disbelieving silence. Despite her chalk white face and the thin set of her lips, she remained defiant. She brushed some hair from her face, tucked her tie back in her gym shorts and calmly stared out at the assembled inmates.

“You may retire to your study now Morton,” the Grand Dame told Deborah curtly. “We’ll post-process you later.”

The recalcitrant inmate looked at the Grand Dame contemptuously. “You wanted to thrash me, well now you have. I hope you enjoyed it,” her voice was clear and bold. When she had finished speaking she turned on her heel and walked towards the steps. Suddenly she turned around and curtsied.

“Thank you Ma’am,” she said sarcastically, “You won’t have to beat me like that again.”

As she hurried from the stage her heart was pounding and her bottom felt like a cauldron filled with spicy ingredients each competing for which could make the gumbo hottest. All the while she was waiting to be called back, but in a moment the doors of the hall were swinging behind her and to her great relief she was free.

If you liked the extract go to the Woodettes Storefront and BUY THE BOOK’s! You will not be disappointed! Lol! Bottoms Up! Thanks for stopping by … RH

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