He yelped even louder when an unexpected and harder seventh stroke landed, biting into his pain-ravaged arse, having crossed some of the earlier strokes.
“What the f…” he cried, having only requested six.
“Shut up and take it!” she ordered, clearly angry with him now and swinging the cane harder than before.
Number eight arrived, perfectly placed at the crease between his cheek and thigh, drawing the loudest scream yet from the client who came to her asking to be punished, but had only now told her why.
“That poor girl!” she accused, “she died because you didn’t have the balls to tell her you loved her when you should!? You deserve far more! This is from her!”
What would thankfully be the final stroke landed just below the last, searing a red line into the very top of his thighs, and while he didn’t know it was the last, she wished she could continue thrashing this bastard’s deserving bottom. ‘Never had anyone deserved it more’, she thought.
Years ago, Keith had a mate whose sister had caught his eye and with whom he ultimately fell in love. He’d known her all through school, but only at his mate’s twentieth birthday party had he seen how she’d grown into the beautiful girl he would come to love so much.
Jane was a petite girl, just barely over five feet tall, with young, innocent features, large brown eyes, and full pouty lips on a China doll face. Long dark hair with a fringe framed her cute face, while her body had ‘sex’ written all over it with firm, round tits making a perfect handful, a large-for-her-frame bubble butt, and a delicious gap at the very top of her thighs, visible when she wore the tight, little shorts he favored.
She also considered Keith a mate but had no idea just how smitten with her he was. How many times had he stared into those doe-like eyes and said only to himself how much he loved her, wishing he could summon the courage to share his feelings, but the fear of rejection robbed him of the backbone needed to declare his love? She moved away for a job opportunity, never knowing his love.
He remained friends with her brother until he, too, moved away, out of the country, with his new bride. Keith continued to visit their mum from time to time as, over the years, he’d come to think of her as his second mum, having lost his own to cancer. They were just friendly visits that she seemed to appreciate, as he reminded her of children who no longer lived with her or even nearby.
One day, as she told him of Jane’s progress at her job, he commented on how much he missed her, eventually revealing for the first time how much he felt for her. She, too, wished he’d had the gumption to tell her before she’d gone, thinking it might have kept her from leaving in the first place, but left this thought unsaid. She liked Keith and had thought they’d make a cute couple when she’d seen them together but didn’t interfere until now.
Attempting to arrange a reunion of sorts, she managed to get Jane to commit to a visit home without revealing their ulterior motive. The visit was set for a weekend, making sure Keith was also available, and though it seemed to take forever to come, they finally found themselves anxiously awaiting her arrival that Friday evening. She had no formal plan to get them together, nor did he have a plan for revealing his feelings, choosing instead to try to arrange a private, intimate conversation that would set the scene for his admission of his long-held affection for her.
Anxiety over her being an hour late turned first to shock and then horror and sorrow when a policeman arrived at the door telling them Jane had been killed in a car crash involving a drunk driver. They both sat or, more accurately, collapsed into chairs in the sitting room in disbelief as the officer provided some additional details and information about what they needed to do next.
No one can ever be prepared for such shocking news, and they were both devastated. Her mum immediately felt responsible for her death, since she wouldn’t have been on the road had she not arranged for this visit. Keith had the added burden of having his high hopes of a rekindled friendship, or even a relationship, dashed by this fateful outcome, which added to his feeling of responsibility as well.
Somehow, they both managed to get through the following days of a funeral, memorial services, and many well-intentioned expressions of sympathy from family and friends, but the hurt continued.
In a way, Keith felt he’d been in his own crash of sorts. His hopes had been raised when the visit had been arranged, and even if it didn’t develop right away, perhaps love would have come over time, but now his love would remain unrequited forever. He’d never be able to tell his dream girl how much he loved her; never get to hold her, kiss her, or make love to her, and it was all his fault, not only for his part in arranging the visit, but more because he hadn’t had the nerve to tell her of his love before she left town.
Over a short period, his thoughts became increasingly dark as he tried to deal with the ultimate responsibility he felt. He came to believe that his own life should end as well, that he had no right to live, having caused Jane’s untimely death. Having come to that conclusion, it still took a few days to make the final decision to do it, with an unusually spiritual thought that perhaps he and Jane would be reunited in death.
Armed with enough pills and drink to do the job, Keith drove to a park where the woods would provide enough privacy to do the deed as well as avoid an unwanted rescue. He started with the vodka hoping it would provide the false courage he needed to complete the job, and followed it up with more than enough painkillers to put him to sleep forever. His final drunken and drugged thoughts were of his beautiful Jane, and with tears running down his face, he pictured her welcoming him to whatever the afterlife was before he slept, hopefully for the last time.
As with so many things in Keith’s life, both before and still to come, it didn’t work out as he planned, as an early morning police patrol discovered his lifeless body, still in his car, and brought emergency services to the site in time to save him. He was taken to hospital, waking later that day to discover his attempt had failed.
Had he been given the chance to do it again, he would have done so, and that kept him in the hospital as the doctors realized his return to life was not the outcome he wanted. He stayed for almost two weeks, loaded up on anti-depressants, with Jane’s mum visiting him once, during which she gave him hell for what he did, saying she couldn’t lose him too and trying to convince him that he wasn’t responsible for what happened.
She was responsible for her daughter’s death, as she was the one who pressed for an immediate visit, and still not over her grief, it would be even worse had Keith been successful as that would add to the burden she already bore. Her maternal instincts kicked in, and she insisted that he stay with her for a couple of weeks following his hospitalization, so she could take care of him and make sure he didn’t try again.
Still dealing with his grief, he visited a porn shop in London’s Soho district and was surprisingly attracted to the BDSM section, viewing a film and buying a magazine. The film dealt with various forms of corporal punishment, but every scene seemed to end with an extremely painful caning. The subjects, both men and women, were often restrained in some way and given six, and sometimes twelve, strokes with a thin, whippy cane that elicited painful cries and left angry, red lines across the miscreant’s bottom.
The idea started forming in his mind during the film but solidified when reviewing the magazine and finding an ad for a disciplinarian who would mete out such punishments for a price. ‘I deserve to be punished like that,” he told himself, calling the number listed and making an appointment for a simple caning; ‘six of the best’.
He arrived at the woman’s flat, and a maid showed him where to wait. His nerves were on high alert as he had no idea what to expect but knew that he deserved whatever he got. A pretty young girl walked in, decked out in a shiny, black bustier with matching knee-high boots, and asked him what he wanted.
“I’d like six strokes of the cane, Miss,” he said with a shaky voice.
“Very well. Take your clothes off and lie on the bed with the pillows under your arse!” she instructed.
With shaky hands, he managed to open his shirt and pants, remove all his clothes, and lay on the bed as instructed. She walked around him, tying his wrists and ankles to the bed with leather cuffs. While his position left him just a bit aroused, his fear of the pain easily overrode those feelings, and he had to repeatedly tell himself he deserved to be punished to allow it to continue.
“Is this your first time?” she asked as she selected a cane from an umbrella stand. “I could tell,” she said after his affirmative nod. “Ready?” she asked finally.
“Yes, Miss,” he replied, closing his eyes.
In seconds he heard first the swish of the evil cane through the air, and then the percussive thwack of the cane hitting his upraised bottom. The pain wasn’t quite immediate but bloomed quickly into an extraordinary, stinging line of fire across the fleshy top of his cheeks, and he cried out. The pain was still registering in his mind when the second swish and thwack came with more immediate and intense pain.
“Oww! Ow, please, Miss! OWW!” he screamed again as the third stroke bit into his flesh.
The remaining three strokes were delivered in a similar fashion, though with increasing force, getting increasingly loud yelps from Keith, leaving him a sobbing mess. He couldn’t understand how anyone could want to inflict this unimaginable pain on themselves and silently congratulated himself for enduring the punishment he deserved.
“Now tell me why you needed to be punished,” the villainous, cane-wielding woman asked.
That’s when he told her about Jane, and his perceived responsibility for her death, after which the three intensely harder strokes he hadn’t asked for were delivered to his striped arse.
“I want my money back!” he demanded after being released from his restraints. “I only wanted six! Not nine!” he accused the stony-faced woman in black. “I’ll call the police!” he threatened.
“Yeah?! And what are you gonna tell them, huh? That you asked to be punished and wanted your money back when it hurt your poor, little virgin bottom!?” she taunted. “Get dressed, get the fuck out of here, and don’t come back!”
Slowly time healed his wounds, but never completely. He still thought of his beautiful Jane often, and his responsibility still hounded him, but he got on with life and his job at the electrical goods store.
As if life wasn’t done beating Keith up yet, the one person who understood his pain, Jane’s mum, and now his mum too, actually contracted cancer and was given a very short life expectancy. It was quite short as Keith only saw her once while she was still in hospital; fortunately, given the time to say goodbye and promise her that he would find love, despite his continued love for Jane.
Just months later, at a friend’s party, Keith met Iris, and they seemed to hit it off. Finally, someone showed him some love, and he saw her as his only chance to make a life for himself. They got on well with each other, paying the proper attention, and before long, marriage was being discussed, despite warnings from several friends about her real motives.