Elixir of Life

Photo-story from Janus 100 featuring Jenny Close as Chelsea

Chelsea walked through the garden of the huge old house, fearful of the unknown. The statues seemed to stare, the walls to whisper. She paused before the wooden steps which led into the swallowing gloom, and wanted to run back to the comfort and shelter of Madam’s arms.

But it was her beloved Madam who had sent her here; who had pampered and prepared her, dressed her in this navy-blue pleated skirt and pristine white cotton top. ‘Yes, you’ll be afraid,’ she had said, but it will be exciting too. And it will be exciting for me to think of you.’

Exciting? Chelsea’s heart pounded as she mounted the steps and entered the rear of the house, passing with trembling gait through the kitchen and into the vast imposing hallway. The 21-year-old girl felt tiny and utterly insignificant as she trod up the stairway as Madam had instructed, hearing the creak of seasoned timbers and the tremulous hissing of her breath. More statues glared down at her petite form, filling her with icy dread.

Approaching the top of the stairs she gasped as an elderly man in strange apparel confronted her from a doorway and beckoned her sternly to enter. Chelsea could not know that this old man had been head valet of the house’s previous owner, Brigadier Hanbury-Boyce, and had been kept on by the woman who inherited the place on the old soldier’s recent death.

The woman for whom Madam had provided the unwitting Chelsea on this her ‘discipline afternoon’.

‘Enter, girl!’ Apprehensively, Chelsea came into the room. Fearful of doing something wrong, she stood nervously to attention, her pretty head slightly dipped. ‘My mistress, Mrs Hanbury-Boyce, requires me to inspect you,’ came the reedy voice of a man brought up in an age where cane and strap were in constant use. A man who therefore warmly approved of his new mistress’s predilection for chastising errant young females. Now here was yet another to brighten his jaded eye!

‘I trust that your underwear is clean, my girl,’ he piped lasciviously. ‘You will remove your skirt and permit me to see.’ Chelsea undid the skirt and slipped it down her legs, head hung in shame.

‘Stand up straight and turn around.’ Hands to her sides, Chelsea wretchedly responded, cringing with embarrassment and disgust as she felt the old man’s gaze hotly roam her exposed buttocks. Indeed, he stepped up close behind her, and for a terrible moment she thought he might touch her there.

Again he turned her, drooling at the sight of the skimpy plain white panties Madam had insisted she wear, then requesting that she lift her top so he might inspect her bra. ‘Hmm,’ the old goat muttered. ‘Perfectly clean. Now I need to see the target area my mistress will be attending to. Bend down and touch your toes, girl.’

Suppressing a groan, Chelsea did so, feeling her bottom rise and spread. She could hear the man’s horribly-excited, gaspy breath, and felt queasy. She had to remind herself that she was doing this to demonstrate her love for Madam, whose instant bidding it was always her joy to perform. It must be right for her to be here, despite all her feelings.

‘Perfectly delightful,’ the Brigadier’s old retainer gasped. ‘Now let me see you from the side, if you please, young lady.’ At his feverish word she straightened up, then leaned forward against the bureau, displaying her bottom in the most thorough and humiliating way.

With that particular ordeal over, and hastily dressed again in the belittling clothes, Chelsea froze when the old servant pointed at a cluster of lissom crook-handled canes and said, ‘You will take those down to the punishment room and present them to Mrs Hanbury-Boyce, who will be waiting for you there.’

Chelsea’s heart beat even faster as, shivering with trepidation, she made her way back down the stairs carrying the three canes, watched again by the cold, disdainful stare of the statues. They were watching her, she just knew they were.

The feeling was so uncannily eerie that it was almost with relief that she finally stood outside the door she had been directed to. She raised a tremulous hand and timidly knocked.

‘ENTER!’

Mrs Hilary Hanbury-Boyce will be remembered by assiduous readers as the Brigadier’s PA, who first got a taste for disciplining young females when dealing with the good soldier’s wickedly wilful (and enviably appealing) daughter, Linda. Following that incident the old soldier found Hilary so indispensable that he took her as his wife.

The Brigadier having recently died, Hilary — to the fury and chagrin of the rest of the Hanbury-Boyce family — inherited much of her husband’s money and property, including this beautiful old mansion which had been in the family for generations. And, with it, the freedom to indulge the pleasures she found in regularly chastising the buttocks of attractive young women. As in the case of Chelsea, it was as if she enjoyed punishing them for no other reason than for their femininity and allure to men.

The woman glared imperiously at the timid little scrap who entered. Big, dark appealing eyes in an infuriatingly-pretty, frightened face. The girl handed her the canes she had brought, then flinched at the sight of yet more of the crook-handled implements leaning against the fireplace.

‘You have been sent to me this afternoon,’ said Hilary Hanbury-Boyce in a powerful, carrying voice, ‘because the lady who has charge of you has expressed a wish that I chastise you thoroughly on account of your slatternly dress and pathetically inept behaviour! Look at the state of your socks, your hair! You’re a sheer disgrace. Do you accept your punishment?’

Chelsea murmured a tiny yes. ‘This is for Madam,’ an inner voice whispered. And with this realisation came an inward pang of guilt, for Chelsea had not known that she had offended her protectress in the ways she had just been told. Hilary selected a long, swishy cane and pointed at a curious piece of apparatus. ‘You will bend over that, and grasp the bars on the further side.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ whispered Chelsea. She could not know that the fearsome woman had had the appliance made to her own specification, to engender a sense of helplessness in those whom it would accommodate, and to raise the recipient’s bottom to an aesthetically-pleasing pinnacle.

And so it was with this girl. Once Chelsea was over the padded mount, and had done the usual squirming of hips and tummy, then settled to a tense stillness, the woman disdainfully flipped up her skirt with the tip of the cane and gazed at the pale, smooth cheeks uplifted for their punishment. If Hilary’s gaze seemed aloof, it belied the intense thrillings she felt inside at such a perfect specimen of girlish arse, neither too plump nor too skinny.

‘Get your head down,’ roared Hilary. ‘Down, you idle, useless girl!’ Chelsea tensed as the woman raised the cane, which quivered along its shaft as Hilary’s excitement made it tremble. It was always like this, sheer unadulterated joy — so much more sensually satisfying, surely, than the gropings and fumblings of so-called ‘sex’ that snips such as this indulged in.

The cane came down with a majestic whop, striking full across the centre of the fleshy semi-globes of the girl’s bottom and converting them to brief, violent motion. Chelsea’s body convulsed as pain bit deep. She had been spanked and chastised in other ways many times by her beloved Madam, and although it hurt, there was always something beautiful and yielding about it. But this — this, oh no, this was not like that.

For Hilary, however, the sensation was quite familiar, and very welcome in its recreation of many past feelings. Her hand seemed to float back from the fiercely stinging target, hover the cane high, then bring it sweeping down again with venomous acceleration.

‘Ahhhh!’ Chelsea gasped as her buttocks were made to burn again, the stroke driving her thigh-tops forward and causing her to clench, clench her hands on the two short bars as she fought to contain the fiery pain. Seconds passed, the woman gave a grunt and brought the wand whistling down again.

The girl’s buttocks had a life of their own! To Hilary it was joy unbridled to watch them judder and redden, their softnesses compressing under each impact of the stick. Some of the other girls’ whimpers were devoid of this one’s braveness, time and again filling Hilary with contempt — but her present subject’s life had been raw, unpampered, rendering her able by guts and upbringing to take the soundest tanning. The Brigadier’s widow was already becoming transported towards her hoped-for ‘high’ as she began to cane the bare, defenceless bottom with stern exultation. The swishy stick cracked down again, again, again, driving deep grooves into the soft curves, grooves which vanished like ghosts as soon as the cane sprang clear, staining each track a glowing pink.

Chelsea squirmed, writhed, gasped and moaned quietly under the steady onslaught. She accepted her destined punishment with good grace, never once spoiling the proceedings with even a murmured plea or protest. She had been well tutored in the etiquette of receiving correction. At one moment she called out Madam’s name, but her panting chastiser was too preoccupied with roasting her buttocks to hear. Madam would kiss her bottom better when she got home again. Madam would…

‘Ahhh! Ohhh!’ That hurt, the strokes were stronger, burning brighter. With a final gasping squeal, the woman delivered an absolute blasting cracker which stunned Chelsea’s senses with its astounding pain. A line of sheer flame blazed across both cheeks of her bottom, far hotter than anything she had ever received from Madam.

Then the girl was being hauled up by the back of her knickers and, bewildered and disorientated, was stood on her feet and made to turn around as the woman inspected her pert, thoroughly well-caned bottom, rubbing a hand intimately over the punished mounds, squeezing and patting.

‘You may go,’ announced Mrs Hanbury-Boyce. ‘I am finished with you… unless or until Madam sends you to me again.’

‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Chelsea walked painfully from the room, her bottom throbbing furiously beneath the skimpy skirt. As she came out into the corridor she was surprised to see an older woman, dressed exactly as she was herself, standing in obvious wait. Chelsea’s good nature caused her spontaneously to care more for the other than for her own unspeakable plight. ‘Good luck,’ she said, somehow just managing a rueful, conspiratorial smile as she briefly squeezed the other’s shoulder. ‘She’s in good form.’

‘Thanks,’ said the woman, who seemed more angry than fearful as she passed through the door and shut it behind her. Chelsea couldn’t resist the temptation to lean down and look through the keyhole, rubbing her scalded backside and now at last feeling the beginnings of a familiar compensatory glow starting to spread through it…

In the room, Hilary Hanbury-Boyce glared at her sullen visitor. Already she had selected a very special implement to treat this one with — a multi-shafted willow birch. If whipping that little snip had been a pleasure, this was going to be pure joy. Stephanie Jackson was 33-years-old, yet still wild-natured and self-destructive. From the moment she came in, having already endured the unexpected humiliation of the ‘inspection’ by the silly old fart upstairs, the lithe young woman breathed hostility and resentment.

‘So, Jackson,’ said Mrs Hanbury-Boyce, prominently holding the birch before her as the other looked away with a show of disdain. ‘I see you came here, and in the appropriate clothing. I trust you enjoyed your inspection by Reeves?’

Stephanie gritted her teeth, but said nothing. ‘It’s a pity,’ continued Hilary, ‘that you couldn’t have kept that busy little mouth of yours shut earlier. Like in the King’s Arms last week, for example, when I am reliably informed by the landlord that you referred to me as a “money-grasping old bitch” in front of several people.’

‘This is blackmail,’ Stephanie hissed.

‘This is just retribution,’ countered the woman. ‘I dismissed you from my employ for blatantly fornicating with my head of stables when you should have been at work.’

Stephanie turned to her ex-employer. ‘Yeah,’ she sneered, ‘and if I don’t let you give my bum a thrashing, you’ll tell my husband all about what happened. Right?’

‘My dear,’ said Mrs Hanbury-Boyce with a touch of menace. ‘You are free to walk out of here right now. I assure you that what happens next between us is entirely up to you.’

The women’s eyes met, and held. ‘You got me over a barrel, ain’t you?’ Steph Jackson spat out.

‘Not a barrel, exactly…’ Hilary indicated the appliance with a sardonic smile. ‘You will adjust it to lift the hips even higher, then mount it, please — as once my groom mounted you. Unless, of course, you prefer the alternative…’ Her voice tailed off.

‘You bitch,’ whispered Stephanie, stooping low to make the adjustment.

‘Oh, I am going to enjoy this,’ said Hilary with a tight little smirk, enjoying the sight of the long bare legs and maturely-ripened buttocks as, seething in a helpless fury of humiliation, the hard-case Jackson woman climbed up on to the apparatus and sank forward with a groan, hips high and legs stretched out behind.

Hilary helped to position her just so, turning Jackson’s down-hung head to the front, making her part her legs and place her ankles in the wider slots, then raising the absurdly brief skirt. Tight frilly knickers bisected a surprisingly splendid bottom, pinky-pale and plumply-ripe in comparison to the young woman’s general slenderness. Briefly, Hilary fondled the blatant globes, enjoying the other’s horrified squirming and strangled curse.

The long stems clattered sinisterly together as she raised the birch and brought it splattering down across the elevated buttocks with a horrible swosh. Stephanie let out a screech as multiple shards of pain blighted the full span of her bottom. Her body spasmed, she sucked in air. Oh my godfathers, that hurt!

Even as the burning began to subside, the birch thrashed down again, searching out new areas of tender flesh to bring to its biting attention, igniting, tingling and smarting. Swoosh-splatt… a sobbing cry… hwosssh-splatt… a most unladylike bellow… Then a pause, Stephanie’s buttocks prickling and burning as if a fire had been lit in her seat. Then… whoosh-splatt again, and her bottom squirmed and jerked while her fists drummed on the carpet. The viciously thin wands of the willow-birch hurt so much.

‘Flamin’ ‘ell!’ shouted Steph Jackson. ‘I can’t… can’t take no more of that.’

Hwosssshhh-thwapp! The birch sped greedily back to the rounded softnesses it seemed so much to enjoy colliding with. The woman struggled, cursing enough to make a trooper blush. ‘Kneel up!’ shouted Hilary Hanbury-Boyce. ‘I’ll have that arse tight over. Come on, up you get, trollop. Stick it out!’

She hauled the gasping, complaining Jackson woman up on to her knees on the apparatus so that her bottom jutted high, bent tautly over. Hilary regripped the handle of the birch and brought the shafts down with even greater force, grimly exulting in her dominance over this perpetual troublemaker with the doting husband who no doubt did disgustingly pleasurable things with her in a way that old Hanbury-Boyce had never wanted to do with her. This prurient thought caused Hilary literally to shudder.

Hard, hard, hard, she swung the quivery, hissing, splattering birch, pounding its multiple whips hard against the strained-back domes of Jackson’s bottom, watching them redden to an uneven sunset flush, jerking from side to side as if to shake burning sparks from the skin. Despite what the whinging Hanbury-Boyce family thought, these ‘discipline afternoons’ were Hilary’s only genuine pleasure, a pleasure which lifted her spirit to a transcendent high that lasted for days. A high which, once faded, needed regular re-stimulation to give her life meaning.

For this was Hilary’s reason for living, not the family fortune she had inherited. Did no one understand?

She sped the birch several more times on its excruciatingly painful visit to Stephanie Jackson’s seat, till even that toughie was reduced to shivers and quakes when she was finally allowed to stand up, rubbing ruefully at her smarting rump.

‘Don’t you dare, ever, bad-mouth me again in public,’ Hilary panted as the chastened younger female hung her head. ‘The score has been settled between us. Now go.’

‘Yes, Mrs Hanbury-Boyce,’ said Stephanie. She had intended her voice to be defiant, but it faltered and broke. She felt ridiculously young and out of control, deeply contrite yet strangely satisfied, even as her bottom throbbed with the heat of her thrashing.

Stephanie swallowed a sob and turned to go. For the moment Hilary felt as profoundly satisfied and at peace with herself as does a passionate woman sated in her lover’s arms.

But that delicious sensation, she knew, was bound to fade, until it could be stimulated to renewed heights on her next ‘discipline afternoon’.