Detention Room

Albert has fun. Story from Blushes 1. Continuation of The Bookstore.

As it turned out, the sacrifice demanded of the unfortunate girl whom Mr Flood had sent to Mr Howell’s room at lunchtime — she was, after all, only a messenger — was quite unnecessary, because both Mr Flood and Mr Howell bumped into each other on the main staircase at the end of the day’s lessons.

Mr Howell was probably on his way to his storeroom in the hopes of finding someone or other who had come to have her pants taken down, although had he been asked he would probably not have been able to remember, being somewhat puffed by his ascent of the stairs. Mr Flood’s polite reminder halted the aged history teacher two stairs from the top of the flight.

‘No, no, old boy — of course I hadn’t forgotten. On my way there now.’

Mr Flood skipped lightly down the stairs and Mr Howell held onto the handrail and swore, in Latin, the one oath he could remember from the time when, long ago, he had taught that dead and useless language. It was going to be these stairs that got him, after all. Wearily he started back down, the detention room being on the lower floor, failing to notice as he descended the worried glance of a flaxen-haired girl who stood aside to let him pass with as wide a berth as possible before scampering upstairs to the bookstore at the end of the corridor.

On his way to the detention room, Mr Howell’s spirits revived — as Deputy Headmaster he was not called upon in the usual run of things to do detention duty, for which the girls in detention were no doubt grateful, because Mr Howell was the only master besides the Head empowered to administer corporal punishment — but Mr Howell relished the opportunity whenever it came his way. His wrinkled face looked almost cheerful when he arrived at the door of the room at ten past four and found seven girls standing beside their desks with looks of dismay on their young faces.

When the whispered groans had petered out, Mr Howell seated himself at the big desk elevated above the rest at the front of the classroom and did what he always did to begin with on such occasions; he set the seven miscreants an essay, to be finished within fifteen minutes, which would get the thing off to a quiet start whilst he settled himself in and decided which of the little sweethearts he would pick on first when the fifteen minutes was up. He had completely forgotten about the girl with fair hair.

Upstairs, the blonde girl waited worriedly for Mr Howell to return, peering through the glass doors and expecting to see him approaching at any moment. As time wore on, she felt if anything worse than she had to start with, since the door of the storeroom was unlocked and through it she could see the bit of shelf with canes and straps and a stingy-looking slipper on it, so that after about a quarter of an hour her bottom was already flinching at the thought of what was going to happen to it — eventually, that was. After what seemed to be another fifteen minutes, though it may not have been, running footsteps along the corridor made the blonde girl start and straighten up, although she could see that it wasn’t Mr Howell, of course — he couldn’t have run to save his life — but a flustered girl in a considerable hurry. She burst through the swing doors.

‘Twenty one, twenty two, twenty three —!’ In a panic, she threw open the storeroom door and scooped up a leather strap lying on the shelf. Canes clattered to the floor. ‘Oh, Lord! Twenty four, twenty five —’ She scrabbled about, picking up the canes, face flushed and panting as she continued to count out loud. ‘Twenty six, twenty seven —!’

She dashed away again. ‘Twenty eight, twenty nine —’ The blonde girl stared after her as the doors banged shut.

Down the stairs; ‘Thirty nine, Oh Christ! Forty, forty one.’

‘Fowler! Come here!’

At the bottom of the stairs the Headmaster glared up at the descending girl. ‘Don’t you realise it’s dangerous to go running around the school?’

‘Forty four, forty five — oh, please sir — I’ve only got fifteen seconds left.’

‘Left? Until what?’

‘Until I have to give Mr Howell this sir!’ she waved the strap under his nose ‘— or — or I’ll be the first, sir. Fifty, sir.’

‘First? For what?’

‘Oh, please sir — can I explain later? Please?’

The Headmaster, who had realised now what was going on, looked down at the panicking girl and mulled it over. Fifty four — fifty five —.

‘Very well, Fowler. You may come to my study when Mr Howell has finished with you, and you can explain to me then.’ Fifty eight — fifty nine — ‘Oh, and bring that strap. I shall be explaining one or two things myself.’

Fowler was gone, skirt fluttering as she ran pell-mell along the corridor to the detention room.

She took, according to Mr Howell, twenty seconds longer than the minute she had been allowed. Twenty being a nice round number, and the girl’s bottom, once she had tugged her knickers down and bent herself across her desk, being a nice, round bottom, Mr Howell applied twenty strokes with the full length of the strap and with considerable energy for one so advanced in years.

The wriggling, blubbering girl was told to sit down and the next girl’s essay was read out loud. Fault was found, inevitably. Her knickers came down and she too was strapped until she was sobbing uncontrollably. Each of the seven girls took her turn across her desk, bottom strapped until she had been introduced in no uncertain terms to the implement which was going to measure out the remaining hour and a half.

The strappings concluded, and two of the girls still weeping noisily, Mr Howell returned to his desk distinctly breathless.

With the sound of weeping fading gradually, the class stood beside their desks — fidgety, nervous, one girl rubbing at her bottom under her skirt, while the history teacher regained his breath sufficiently to announce that there would now be a quiz, the subject being history, of course.

An auburn-haired girl in the front row was directed to bend over her desk again, and arrange herself with her skirt rolled neatly to her waist and her knickers halfway down her thighs. Having done as she was told in a jittery muddle of trembling fingers and jellified knees, with her strapped bottom looming round and rosy behind her, she spluttered into tears, not knowing what she had done this time but certain that she wouldn’t be on her tummy across the desk again if that strap wasn’t going to revisit the tender places it had already attended to.

‘Now then — each of you will do precisely as this girl has done.’

With sideways looks, mystified, dubious, knowing that whatever was about to happen it was likely to be painful, the six girls still standing fiddled with their clothes, slipped their knickers down, shuffled into position across their own desks and kept their eyes on the strap as Mr Howell took it in his hand and began to patrol along the rows and down the aisles.

‘Pat — pat — splatt’ The sound of leather against palm set several bottoms twitching as their owners felt the passage of Mr Howell and his strap behind them, in their blind spots. The pacing finally stopped, directly behind the auburn-haired girl, and the playful splatt! of the strap across her heated buttocks made her whimper faintly in dread anticipation.

‘Battle of Hastings — when was it, girl?’

‘Um — ten sixty six, sir,’ she gasped, hands sneaking along her flanks as though she wanted to cover her nakedness but didn’t quite dare to do so.

‘Yes. You see — it’s easy, isn’t it.’ He strolled in a leisurely fashion to the next girl, with her bottom up-thrust, head down, eyes watching his feet as he stopped behind her.

‘Battle of Trafalgar?’

‘Um — er —’

‘Eighteen — what?’

‘Eighteen — um — ten, sir?’ Whack! The girl squealed as the strap smacked firmly across both of her bum-cheeks.

‘Oh five, miss. Eighteen oh five.’ Whack! ’Got it?’

‘Ooogh — ooh — y-yes sir — eighteen oh five, sir.’

Her hot little bottom shivered as the strap was laid thoughtfully across its twin rotundities.

‘One — eight — oh — five. Now then, what does one and eight and zero and five add up to, hmm?’

‘Er — eight, five — oh, and one — um — f-fourteen sir?’

‘Correct.’ And slowly, deliberately, the strap applied fourteen strokes, solid whacks each one, while the girl’s bottom jumped and swivelled and her hips bounced up from the desk with each stroke.

Fourteen fresh strokes, overlying the dozen or so she had already been given for the inadequacy of her essay, was enough to have the wretched girl in a frenzy of weeping before even half the punishment had been given her. When it was complete, after she had been ordered and eventually pushed back over her desk several times when the smart in her bottom had made her jerk to her feet, she couldn’t help but stand up again, doing a little dance on the spot as she clutched at her bum and sobbed loudly. Mr Howell passed on.

‘Battle of Waterloo?’ the strap splatted eagerly across the next obediently uplifted pair of buttocks, suffused with red in swathes which curved around each chubby cheek.

‘Um — er —’ She may well have known the answer, but the threat of the strap playing with her helpless bum-cheeks drove it from her mind. The only thing she could think about was the wretched vulnerability of her bottom.

Crack! The trembly cheeks squeezed together as the girl wormed her hips and clung to the edge of the desk, white-knuckled.

‘Eighteen fifteen. Add it up, girl.’

‘Ooo — oogh — eight, sir — and one — and one and five, sir — oogh — um — fifteen, sir.’

‘Sure?’

‘Er, yes sir. Fifteen sir.’ The strap flicked across the waiting buttocks.

‘Eighteen and fifteen? I make that thirty three, don’t you?’

The girl’s stifled groan said that, yes, if you looked at it that way, sir, it was thirty three.

‘But you make it fifteen, you say?’

‘S-sir — I’m sorry — I thought that was what you —’ She whimpered into silence.

The strap descended upon two more huddling, twitching, bobbing buttocks fifteen times, then the sobbing girl was told, ‘That’s your fifteen — eighteen you owe me.’

The strap stroked the full, sore, pert cheeks. It wasn’t her fault that her bottom’s impudently healthy invitation had taken the old man’s fancy.

‘You can come and get them tomorrow, in my storeroom, understood?’

‘Ooo — yes sir, yes. Tomorrow, sir — in your st-storeroom.’

‘Quite so.’ Mr Howell, his strap, and his dispensation of discipline continued, while upstairs the blonde girl waiting in the cul-de-sac at the end of the upper corridor whispered to herself that he’d forgotten, he really had, and somehow, by a miracle, she’d actually got away with it!

Timidly, quietly, guiltily, she pushed open the doors and crept, then walked, then ran along the corridor and down the stairs. Mr Howell didn’t notice her as she flitted past the door of the detention room, and for her part she was too anxious to be gone from the building to look through the window in the door. But no matter — the strap was busy with someone else’s bum, and to Mr Howell one girl with her knickers down was pretty much like another. After all, he never remembered their faces!