Under the Hammer

From Janus 6.11

Affecting his usual air of unimportance, and watching out of the corners of his eyes to see that everyone, staff and pupils alike, were suitably flustered and disconcerted by his unannounced arrival, the Inspector made his way in a leisurely fashion through the State School for Physical Studies, knowing that word of his coming would by now have preceded him in a flurry of telephone calls and hasty searches for the Principal so that she might be ready to receive him.

Passing the central gymnasium, he paused to watch the girls at work. He was seen at once by the young chief instructor, Miss Nicolevna, who at once invited him to take a seat inside and watch her girls practising. Of course, he’d know she would. Her job depended, as did the job of every other member of the staff, upon her willingness to please the Inspector. His good opinion, and more to the point his good report, was vital to anyone who valued her place in any of the State Schools over which he had jurisdiction, including the pupils.

He watched, fascinated, as the lithe, agile young bodies leapt, bounced, sprang, vaulted and pirouetted on and off the various pieces of equipment and back and forth across the floor exercise mat. Only a few feet in front of him a girl whom he’d never seen before went through a series of violent, straining evolutions, her back arching, her hips swinging easily, her strong, powerful thigh muscles thrusting her body this way and that as she stood, stooped, rolled over and back again, stood perfectly balanced on her hands and then flipped upright. The one-piece practice suit she wore, rather like a swimming costume with the addition of sleeves, clung tantalisingly to her strong young body, and he watched with rapt attention as she bent suddenly forward to touch the ground between her wide-spread legs, her pert, rounded bottom bobbing up cheekily as she did so, the brief practice suit pulling tight across her buttocks and tugging up between her cheeks, leaving their soft fullness naked to his gaze.

He interrupted the girl’s exercise, and asked her name.

‘Olga,’ she said, with a sweet, innocent smile, and added, when he asked her, that she was fifteen.

He stood as if to go, and then changed his mind and chatted briefly to her, his attention caught by her charming manner and her unafraid politeness. He saw Miss Nicolevna watching him, and knew she would understand as he reached blatantly round behind Olga and patted her patronisingly on her cute little bottom three or four times.

Olga was pleased by the Inspector’s kindness to her. She smiled sweetly again as he left. Olga hadn’t been long at the school. Olga didn’t know the Inspector.

Olga, therefore, was somewhat surprised when at the end of the practice period she was handed a note by Miss Nicolevna, which she was told to take at once to the Principals Office.

‘I’ll go at once,’ she said.

‘No,’ said her instructor, ‘it would be better manners if you changed first, I think.’

‘Yes M’am,’ said Olga, and trotted off to the changing rooms with the bouncy step common to all athletes and to gymnasts in particular.

Olga showered, and dressed in the white T-shirt and shorts which were the girls’ customary wear during the summer months, along with white socks and tennis shoes. She hurried along to the Principals Office, where she was disconcerted to find the Inspector in discussion with the Principal.

She apologised for interrupting them, and handed over her note. It was read in silence, then passed respectfully to the Inspector, who read it with a vaguely amused expression. He handed the note back to the Principal. Olga missed the slight inclination of his head which indicated to the senior member of the staff that she was to proceed.

The Principal coughed nervously, anxious that this should be done to the complete satisfaction of the Inspector.

‘There is nothing so offensive to me as a report of this nature,’ she said. ‘The very suggestion of idleness in your work indicates a total lack of appreciation of the wonderful opportunity given to girls like you by the State. The State has given you the chance to bring respect and international acclaim to our glorious mother country. Your attitude, as indicated by this note from Miss Nicolevna, is an appalling insult to the generosity of the Administration.’

She paused, glancing sideways at the Inspector, whose attention had now shifted to the girl.

‘I intend, therefore, to punish you most severely,’ she continued.

Olga was astounded and dismayed. ‘But M’am, this report is totally untrue, I try so hard to…’

‘Silence!’ rapped the Principal, ‘You are to be punished!’

‘But M’am, I don’t understand why!’

‘Young lady,’ interrupted the Inspector, ‘It is not for you to question the decisions of your Principal.’

Olga looked helplessly at him, her eyes appealing for the chance to defend herself.

The Inspector watched as she struggled to find the words. He spoke again as she was about to blurt out another protestation. ‘You will do as you are told.’ He paused to let the severity in his voice sink in. ‘That is my decision. Do you dare question that?’

Olga subsided in sudden fright at the Inspectors words. Of course she knew she dared not defy his authority.

The Principal opened the drawer of her desk, taking out a cane which trembled springily in her hand as she held it.

‘Has this girl been punished before?’ the Inspector asked.

‘No sir,’ said the Principal.

‘No, sir!’ said Olga impetuously, trying to emphasise the fact that she had never earned a punishment before, by virtue of her hard work.

‘Use the strap,’ said the Inspector, ignoring Olga.

The Principal took out the strap, a thick, heavy piece of leather some two inches wide and about two feet long. She went round the desk and stood behind Olga, who half turned, trying to keep her eye on her.

‘Face the desk!’ demanded the Principal, ‘Bend over it!’

‘Not yet,’ said the Inspector.

‘I beg your pardon sir,’ said the Principal.

With his eyes, the Inspector indicated Olga’s shorts. The Principal knew him well enough to understand immediately. From behind she reached round in front of Olga and hooked her fingers under the waistband. Olga’s eyes widened, and her hands flew to her waist, resisting the downward tugging.

The Inspector eyed her coldly. ‘Would you prefer the cane, Olga?’ he asked silkily.

The girl’s face, aghast at the suggestion, answered the question without words.

‘Then take your shorts down. There’s a good girl,’ he added ironically.

Olga’s shorts slid obediently down her strong, shapely thighs. Her brief white cotton knickers, regulation issue of course, clung closely to her slim hips, hardly a crease in the material as it snuggled tight against the flesh.

‘And now your knickers,’ added the Inspector.

More slowly, hesitantly, the white cotton rucked and pulled as she eased the knickers down, her eyes downcast and her cheeks flushing furiously as the little ruffle of hair appeared at the base of her flat, smooth belly.

He watched her carefully, catching her eyes as she risked a peep at him from under her eyebrows, enjoying her consternation.

‘Bend over,’ said the Principal. She prodded Olga from behind, as she hesitated, ‘At once!’

Olga stretched herself across the chill surface of the desk, fingers curling round the far edge.

The Inspector stood up, and sat down instead in the chair behind the desk, Olga’s face only a few feet from his own.

‘Perhaps you’d like to hold my hands,’ he said with some sympathy in his voice, ‘as it’s your first time.’

Obediently, Olga clasped her hands with his, feeling him pulling her tighter across the desk. She lay quietly, recognising the hopelessness of attempting to protest again, her firm young bottom pointing perkily up in full view of both the Principal from behind and the Inspector in front, although he could see only the upper curves of her buttocks from his seated position.

The Principal picked her aiming point on the crown of Olga’s buttocks, a point midway between the top of her bum and the crease where her bottom joined her thighs.

She waited for the Inspector’s nod, which would signal the first stroke. Olga’s sweet young bottom was by no means the first to have offered up its pleading nakedness in just such circumstances as these. The Principal had done this before, more times than she could remember, because this was often the way the Inspector liked it done. More in the interests of his own gratification, naturally, than in the interests of discipline.

In her desk was a list of those girls who had earned a punishment for some reason or other. It was her business to make sure that the prettiest of the girls had their whippings deferred until the Inspector should arrive on one of his official, sometimes even unofficial visits. To poor Olga, of course, this was the end of the world, but in fact it was a commonplace occurrence. Olga’s bottom was only the first of at least a dozen which would have danced their painful, wriggling jig for the pleasure of the Inspector before the day was out.

The Inspector’s nod, unseen by Olga, signalled the Principal to begin. The strap sped noisily through the air and landed explosively across the naked pinkness of Olga’s girlish bottom. The plump flesh bounced as the leather splatted against it, and Olga surged suddenly, uncontrollably, forward across the desk.

‘Ooooh!’ she gasped, her fingers digging into the Inspector’s hands. The Principal waited, knowing what was required of her, her arm drawn back behind her in readiness.

The Inspector nodded slightly. The strap swooshed towards its target. Olga twisted her hips violently to one side as the strap thwacked against her bum again, her hands jerking in the Inspector’s strong grip.

Another nod, another cracking stroke.

Olga squirmed desperately, and gasped again, ‘Ahhg!… Oww!’

She lunged hard against the restricting grip, her eyes meeting his suddenly, seeing him nod again, and then the pain splashed hard across her bottom once more, driving her forward against the edge of the desk.

The Inspector’s glance wandered away from the growing redness of the helpless girl’s wriggling bottom, looking into her face again, a smile flickering around his mouth.

Olga’s soft brown eyes looked pleadingly up into his, tears beginning to ooze from along her lower lids, the lashes damp already. Her little whimpered sob, whispering from between her moist lips, seemed to be the cue for another nod, another stinging stroke of the strap. It cracked solidly against the taut skin, dashing another blotch of swift-welling crimson against the already glowing cheeks.

Olga writhed against the desk, her gasps breathy and desperate.

‘Oooogh!… No!… Owww!… Please… No more sir… please.’

The Inspector gazed silently into her face, seeing her lower lip tremble, her eyes clamped tight shut against the imminence of the tears.

‘Olga,’ he said, quietly.

Her eyes opened, wet and reddening. The first real tear tricked down the flushed roundness of her cheeks.

‘Just one more, Olga.’ He squeezed her hands reassuringly. ‘Do you think you could bear just one more?’ he asked.

Olga’s brain screamed to her to say no, NO! But intuition said yes, you must. This is the Inspector. You will do as he wants.

‘Y-yes sir,’ she panted. ‘Yes — I th-think so. But it’s very sore sir, and…’

‘What’s sore, Olga?’

‘My — bum, sir, and I don’t think…’

The nod cut her short. With staring eyes she hovered on the edge of panic in the split second between the signal and the THWACK! of the leather. Her bottom bounced from side to side as the sting sank in.

The Inspector held her hands firmly still, until she had ceased her trembling. Then he let her go, her slim fingers dragging out of his grasp slowly, unsurely.

Olga eased herself away from the desk, the burning in her bottom aggravated as the movement invigorated the circulation in the vicinity of the punishment area.

She felt wobbly, and she toppled forward a little as she bent to retrieve her knickers.

The curliness slipped beneath the white knickers as Olga tugged them firmly into place, her mound a softly prominent bulge under the cotton. Olga pulled up her shorts, the Inspector’s eyes on her every movement, then she stood erect, prompted by the Principal, and waited.

The Inspector kept her waiting, looking into her face, expecting tears even now. Then at last he dismissed her.

‘You may go, Olga.’

‘Th-thank you, sir,’ she stammered.

When the door had closed behind her, he spoke to the Principal. ‘The list, please.’

The list was produced. He ran an exploratory finger down it, counting. ‘Fourteen,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘But I don’t see little Verushka’s name down here?’

‘No, sir,’ said the Principal. ‘She’s given no reason for punishment since your last visit.’

The Inspector looked at her with a bleak stare.

‘Does it matter?’ he asked.

He leaned back in the chair and spoke more quietly, almost to himself. ‘Dear little Verushka. She tweaks and twitches and wriggles so beautifully.’ He paused to complete the memory picture, ‘Unlike that young Olga.’

He spoke directly to the Principal. ‘I was very lenient with her, don’t you think?’

‘Yes sir, indeed you were.’

He considered again. ‘Olga will appear on the next list,’ he decided. ‘We shall squeeze some tears out of her then!’

He ticked off a name, and wrote a number by it. ‘Tania,’ he said, ‘will be caned this time.’ He continued down the list, then a thought seemed to occur to him.

‘Having watched Olga at practice, I did not gain the impression that she was the kind of girl not to do her best, you know.’ He looked questioningly at the Principal. ‘Are you of the opinion that Miss Nicolevna has perhaps exaggerated any slight faults in the girl?’

The Principal was not of that opinion, having had no time even to consider it, and knowing perfectly well what had happened anyway.

‘Yes sir,’ she said, ‘I believe you may be correct.’

He went back to the list. After a moment he said, ‘Send for Miss Nicolevna, please.’

The Principal picked up the telephone.

‘Oh, and by the way, have one of the girls pick up the package in my car. The long one on the back seat.’

He wrote a number down against a name. ‘You will be sure to whip Miss Nicolevna soundly, will you not?’ he asked, looking up. ‘I should like to see — ah — an interesting culmination to her punishment. Something, well, noisy and energetic, shall we say.’

‘Yes sir,’ the Principal spoke briefly into the phone.

The Inspector interrupted her. ‘I think I should like Verushka to collect the package, by the way.’

‘Yes sir.’

He wrote another number on the list, then weighed something in his mind. ‘Is the girl Borechkova the one with the fat little bum?’ he asked.

The Principal tried not to wince at his terminology. ‘Yes sir,’ she said.

‘I thought so.’ He crossed out the twenty four he’d written and substituted thirty six.

A few minutes later the Principal excused herself and went off anxiously to see what was keeping Miss Nicolevna.

The Inspector hardly noticed. He was thinking of little Verushka, collecting the package from his car. Well, hardly a package really, just a bundle held together by some sticky tape. He imagined her consternation at being sent for the canes. He pictured once again her sweet little bottom, decorated as he’d last seen it with a crimson criss-cross of cane marks.

He wasn’t sure, but he thought he might just allow himself the pleasure of caning her himself this time. And then, he mused, ‘I might have them all back in here, after their punishments, lined around the room facing the wall. I’ll take their knickers down myself and pat their dear young bottoms one by one, and then I’ll have them all bend over and I’ll just sit here and amuse myself by counting the stripes.

A cautious knock at the door brought him back from his reverie. ‘Come in,’ he called.

Miss Nicolevna closed the door carefully behind her. ‘You wished to see me, sir?’

‘Yes,’ he said. He studied her face, and then her figure, carefully, as he considered his next words. She was dressed, as were the girls, in white T-shirt and shorts, with the addition of a track suit top in red. The five-ringed Olympic symbol embroidered in gold on the red was a coveted badge of distinction, earned at the last Olympic Games. At twenty three she was already a veteran of international competitions.

‘The present Principal of this school will be retiring shortly.’ He watched the young woman’s face carefully. ‘She doesn’t know it yet,’ he added, pointedly.

Miss Nicolevna nodded, understanding that she was not to speak of it.

The Inspector came straight to the point. ‘I intend to recommend you as her replacement.’ He watched the look of incredulity spread over the girl’s face, and stifled her attempted reply with a wave of his hand. ‘You are familiar with my methods,’ he continued, ‘and my — ah — requirements, are you not?’

‘Y-yes sir,’ Miss Nicolevna thought of all the poor innocent girls she had consigned to the indignity of a punishment at the Inspector’s hands. She was indeed familiar with his requirements.

‘Quite so,’ he said, ‘and I shall of course continue to expect the same system to be observed. May I take it that you will serve me well in that direction, Miss Nicolevna?’

‘Of course, sir,’ she stated determinedly, prepared to sacrifice her scruples without a murmur and grasp jealously at the proffered prize. She knew this chance would not be given her again.

‘Thank you sir,’ she said, ‘thank you very much indeed.’

The Inspector nodded, pleased that he had thus ensured that his unusual opportunities for recreation would continue in the foreseeable future. He smiled contentedly as he contemplated the next move in his game.

‘Miss Nicolevna,’ he said, pausing for her to say, ‘Yes, sir?’ waiting until her eyes caught and held his. ‘Take your shorts down please.’

The girl’s mouth went slack, her lower jaw drooping as she tried to understand.

‘Shorts down, knickers down, and face down,’ he said, ‘Over this desk.’

He seemed to turn his attention back to his list, but he observed closely however as the bewildered girl slowly did as she’d been told, squeezing the tight shorts down over her hips, easing her knickers down a moment later, and in the absence of further instructions, stepping out of the clothes and standing in front of him, naked from the waist down, her hands crossed shyly in front of her.

Without looking up he tapped lightly on the desk with his pen. ‘Over the desk,’ he repeated. ‘The Principal won’t be long.’

Nervously the girl obeyed, lying across the desk, finding her face only a few inches from his hand, which still checked fastidiously up and down the column of names.

After a moment, unable to bear the tension any longer, she asked. ‘Am — am I to be p-punished, sir?’ her voice barely a whisper.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘why else do you suppose I should want you in that ridiculous position?’

She bit her lip, knowing she shouldn’t ask, telling herself to shut up and be sensible, but at last she had to voice the question. ‘B-but why, sir? Have I displeased you? Have I failed in some way?’

He ignored her for a moment, then in a disinterested voice he said. ‘No, why ever should you think that, Miss Nicolevna? You are to be punished simply because I say so. Is that clear?’

The girl swallowed the protest that tried to struggle free of her lips, threatening to dash all her hopes for the future. ‘Yes, sir,’ she whispered. ‘That is quite clear.’

‘Good,’ he said.

And then they waited for a while, he and she, until at last the Principal returned from her fruitless mission.

‘Proceed,’ said the Inspector.

‘Yes sir,’ answered the Principal. The cane whistled sibilantly through the quiet and thwacked solidly across the nervous, helpless buttocks.

‘Continue,’ said the Inspector, ‘at your leisure,’ and returned to his organisation of this coming afternoon’s entertainment.

Again the cane splatted sharply against the girls meekly surrendered bottom.

‘Ooohh!… Oooooooogh! ‘ Her breath ruffled the hairs on the back of his hand as the young woman gasped pathetically.

Crack!… ‘OWW!’… Thwack!… OOOH!’

‘Shut up, Miss Nicolevna,’ he said mildly, between the strokes. ‘Can’t you see I’m trying to concentrate?’

The cane sang again and the girl jolted forward across the desk, trying desperately to muffle the sob that rose to her throat.

‘And do try to keep still,’ he added petulantly. ‘I am trying to write you know.’

THWACK!… ‘Oooohoooo!’… CRACK!… ‘Ouch!’…

‘Do you remember,’ he asked the Principal, SPLATT!… ‘Ahhh!’… ‘Whether we caned young Nadia last time?’… THWACK!… ‘or whether we strapped her?’

‘We caned her sir, I think.’

Whoooosh!… WHACK!… ‘Ooooh!’

‘I see. Thank you.’

The Inspector wrote down another number. The Principal swung another stinging stroke across the prostrate girl’s twitching bottom. The girl shuddered and tried not to yelp as her bottom trembled under the cane. Her strangled sobbing was music to his ears.

The Inspector’s visit was only just beginning.

This story was a precursor to the Comrade Verushka trilogy in Blushes Supplement, which I will post next week.