Questions and More Questions

Story from Janus 57 by Michael Burntwood

Gym shoes pattered over the varnished wooden floor of the gym hall. The netball match had started. It would settle the question, which team was to be appointed to play in the school championship final against the winning team from the fifth form heats.

Long-legged sixth form girls were running up and down from one side to the other following the ball, eager to do their best to win the game and on Parents’ Day belong to the team which would show the younger girls that sixth form young ladies as always are the best.

One of the teams was dressed in dark blue leotards and the other wore white sleeveless vests tucked into brief running shorts of shiny red nylon. Today, however, it seemed as if there was something wrong. Miss Hampton, the gym teacher, had to blow her whistle to break the game from time to time.

Again the shrill tone from her whistle sounded within only the first minutes of the match. The game stopped and surprised girls stared at each other in bewilderment. An explanation came when Miss Hampton pointed her arm at one of the girls in a leotard.

Sighs of vexation were heard from several of the players in both teams. The player who had now once again caused Miss Hampton to stop the game was a slim-waisted blonde girl, the only one with a pageboy coiffure. She belonged to the blue team and was dressed in a leotard which seemed to have been outgrown at least a year ago. None of her chums was particularly amazed because they knew that Madeleine, for one reason or another, quite regularly became subject to their teachers’ displeasure.

‘That was the third time, Madeleine, that you deliberately aimed to hit Lorna with the ball. I can’t understand why you are more interested in attacking Sonia and Lorna than doing the best you can to help your team win. It’s unfair to them that some of you are fighting all the time. I suppose you and Lorna and Sonia for some reason are on unfriendly terms and can’t concentrate on the game. So we will have you three sit down on the bench and keep quiet. Then the rest of the girls can play this game according to the rules. To make the teams even, Carolyn can play for the whites.’

Madeleine, Lorna and Sonia looked sullenly at the teacher and glanced tight-lipped at one another. Then they very sulkily sat down as they had been ordered to, and Miss Hampton signalled for the game to recommence. Slender-built, lissom girls started to run across the floor, following the ball from one side of the hall to the other, calling out with excited voices. But it hardly came as a surprise when, only a couple of minutes later, the whistle blew again and there was a new break.

Girls in both teams now became annoyed because the signal had nothing to do with the game. There was no reason to stop the attack the white team was making towards the basket on the blue side. Though they were now sitting on the bench, the three girls were also the cause of this latest interruption. They had caught the attention of Miss Hampton as they were trying to push each other off the bench. The teacher was obviously more angry this time. In a very harsh tone she ordered the girls to stand up. Exchanging angry glances, the girls obeyed.

The scolding that Miss Hampton bestowed upon the miscreants finished unexpectedly. She sent the three 17-year-old girls to stand in the corner, and to stop them scuffling she ordered them to clasp their hands on their heads. When the girls had obeyed, Miss Hampton turned back to the teams and, clearly irritated, blew her whistle to start the game again.

The players, occupied with the game, did not care at all for the three unruly girls in the corner, even though something quite out of the ordinary had occurred. On very rare occasions it had happened that a girl had been put in the corner during a gym lesson. In the sixth form it had perhaps never happened before. But the girls chasing the ball were totally engaged in the game and going all out to win. Their young bodies in tight-fitting gym outfits flew across the floor on long teenaged legs, firm breasts bouncing and round buttocks jouncing above lithely-tapering thighs.

At times, when the game was stopped, some of the panting girls glanced at the three lanky figures in the corner. Gazing at their backsides and noticing their well-rounded bottoms, they would have welcomed with ill-concealed spitefulness the sight of reddish tramlines marking the skin on the nether halves of the three girls’ trim buttocks. Buttocks which Lorna, Sonia and Madeleine were displaying, as the leotard Madeleine had on, and the brief red shorts Sonia and Lorna wore, had ridden up because of their raised arms.

Most of the girls blamed Madeleine for what had happened. There were those, not only in Madeleine’s team, who had plans to show her what they really felt about her disturbing the game. They surely would know what to do when they returned to the changing room to shower and put on their school uniforms once more. Madeleine could expect to get slaps from hard hands or wet towels on her thighs and buttocks, till she had smarting blemishes on her bottom and the backs and fronts of her long, shapely legs.

The game had not proceeded for more than another five minutes before there was a further outbreak of disorder. Madeleine pinched Sonia’s right thigh. Perhaps she did it harder than she had intended. Perhaps Sonia yelped louder than she had cause to. Miss Hampton’s whistle stopped the play. Red-faced with anger and looking extremely stern, she turned to the girls in the corner in time to see Madeleine put her left hand back on top of her head. In the harshest tone she demanded an explanation, while the other girls on the floor stared, noticing that Sonia was rubbing her thigh with one hand. Very severely, Miss Hampton held her eyes fixed on the guilty-looking schoolgirl’s down-tilted face.

‘You are really the most incorrigible girl I’ve ever had, Madeleine,’ she expostulated. ‘Now go to my room and wait for me there. You can sit on the chair by the door — and don’t you dare do anything else. I’ll deal with you after the game. And you, Sonia and Lorna, sit down where you are. I’ll have a talk with you when the others are changing.’

Even Madeleine was forced to blush as she trudged alone out of the gym hall with all the girls’ eyes upon her. She sat down moodily on the chair in the gym mistress’s small room. On the other side of the door, the game started again. She could hear the sounds from the girls. They were however unusually quiet and had good reason to be low-voiced. All were aware that they had better be on their best behaviour. Miss Hampton had already been provoked far enough and would hardly stand for any more nonsense today. None of them wanted to tempt their teacher to resort to still stricter methods in order to maintain her control.

Madeleine now felt far from happy as she sat fidgeting on the hard chair. If she could imagine anything that Miss Hampton had in store for her, she felt certain that it would not be something nice. Her lips were closed and her eyes downcast, as if she were studying her gym shoes. She held her long legs stretched out, her heels resting on the floor and her hands nervously moving up and down along her lithe, silk-skinned thighs.

It was not the first time Madeleine had been in Miss Hampton’s room. She had been there before, but never in fear of being punished. It was awful to sit there and have to think about punishments. Shivering, she remembered what other girls had said about a girl who had been taken into this room for some mischief. She recalled what she had heard about where to look. She did not want to turn her eyes in that direction but could not withstand the temptation to check if what she had been told was true.

One look, a mere glance, was enough. It was true. It was there on the second shelf from the top. She could see part of it sticking out. It was the crook-handle end of it.

Madeleine bit her lip hard and rubbed her palms against the thin fabric of her leotard where it tightened across her narrow hips. She felt certain about what was going to happen. Miss Hampton would take that cane down. Then… in that very stern voice she sometimes used, she would tell her to stretch her left hand out, palm upwards… But… what if she wasn’t going to cane her across her hand…?

Madeleine shuddered at the thought. Could there be any way for her to escape? All sorts of thoughts raced through her head.

Perhaps she could explain to Miss Hampton what had happened? Why she had been so angry with Lorna and Sonia. It would be embarrassing for her, but maybe just for once the truth would help. Seconds ticked away and became minutes.

Madeleine became more and more anxious, sitting on the chair, waiting for something she hated to think about, but which was inevitable. Unconsciously, she had put her hands in between her thighs, pressing them tight to her crotch. She trembled and felt cold, wearing only the thin, outgrown leotard. She would have liked to convince herself that she was the innocent, injured party, but she could not. It wasn’t all the two other girls’ fault.

Breathing rather fast, Madeleine straightened up. Through the door she clearly heard Miss Hampton’s whistle sounding three times. Madeleine stiffened, sitting up properly on the chair. After a while everything became silent in the gym hall. One of the teams had won the match. Madeleine did not know which one. Then she heard the girls clattering away to the changing room. Cautiously she turned her head and looked across her shoulder at the door with its framed glass pane. She felt a cold shiver run up her spine — a shiver of fear that Miss Hampton was soon going to open that door and enter the small room. Her breath came in rapid gasps and her body rigidly quivered.

But all of a sudden there was a strange sound. A noise that set all her nerves on edge. She heard repeated dull slaps, which were followed by half-suppressed yelps from a girlish voice. Madeleine held her breath and listened intently, her cheeks growing paler. That sort of slapping noise was something she recognised. It had to come from a hand landing hard on tender flesh; the yelps were how a poor girl complained about a smarting pain which increased in her flesh every time the hand bounced up from the firm bottom, where it served the purpose of teaching the young lady how to behave.

Only after at least ten smacking reports did Madeleine become absolutely sure who it was. That was Lorna’s voice she heard squealing and whining. The noise went on and on and that kind of sound did not make Madeleine feel more calm. She became acutely scared, for it was obvious that Lorna was not getting off lightly. Minutes seemed to pass before the spanking came to an end and the stomach-churning squealing turned into a blubbering wail.

Madeleine wrung her hands, feeling tears coming into her eyes and a heavy pressure inside her. In a way it was worse to have to listen than to be chastised herself. She strained her ears, hearing what must be Sonia’s voice objecting plaintively.

‘No… no-oo, Miss Hampton! I haven’t done anything! It wasn’t me! I don’t know why Madeleine pinched me. Please. Pleeeease. Don’t. Dooooon’t. No-ooo. No-oo, Miss Hampton…’

Though Madeleine was scared, she could not stop herself. On trembling legs she stood up close to the door. Stealthily she raised a corner of the brown-and-white striped curtain and looked through the glass. She saw them in there near the wall to the left. Lorna was standing away from them, holding her hands to her tear-stained face.

Madeleine inhaled sharply and stared at Lorna. She could hardly believe her eyes. Lorna was 17 years old, as they all were. Yet she stood there so shamefully bared. She had her tight red nylon shorts right down and encircling her ankles, and was displaying her flat tummy and the dark triangle of her pubic hair. The lower half of her body was entirely exposed.

But Madeline’s eyes almost at once turned away from Lorna, as she caught sight of Sonia, who was half-bent across Miss Hampton’s lap. Miss Hampton was sitting on a low vaulting-box, clearly trying to make the eagerly-resisting teenaged girl lie down across her knee. She held Sonia’s left wrist with one hand and the other was grasping the girl round her waist.

Madeleine flushed. Never could she have imagined that anything like this could happen to the girls in the sixth form. It was extraordinary. First, Miss Hampton had ordered them to stand in the corner. That was probably the first time ever that girls of their age had been sent to be shamed like that in front of the whole form. But now. This was much worse. Miss Hampton not only spanked girls who were 17 — she even pulled their shorts down and took them across her lap!

Madeleine saw how Sonia struggled in vain to be free. It did not take Miss Hampton long, for the gym mistress was strong. Madeleine almost pressed her nose to the pane of glass. Sonia was perched across Miss Hampton’s lap and lay there with her legs floundering. She tried fervently to hold on to her shorts with her right hand, but a few slaps on her thighs made her obedient and the tight-fitting shorts were tugged down. And then Sonia became still, lying with her bottom up quite bare, prepared to be spanked till it was red all over.

The sound from the hard slaps could be heard more clearly now that Madeleine had her face close to the glass, and she could see with her own eyes how the arm was raised and then brought down, the hand rising high in the air and descending with sheer force. The sight of the rippling flesh starting to develop red marks from Miss Hampton’s fingers and palm became too much for Madeleine. She closed her eyes. Panting, she slumped down on the chair in great anxiety, convinced that her own punishment was going to be no less shameful. Miss Hampton would certainly perform what she considered to be her duty and it would be on Madeline’s behind, not on her hands. It was not much of a consolation to her that Lorna and Sonia were also going to leave school today with red and tender bottoms.

Further away, Madeleine heard the school bell sounding the end of the school day. Soon her mates would pour through the school gates, giggling and chattering and having nothing at all to worry about. With a deep sigh Madeleine wondered whether her chums, or at least some of them, really believed that she was not afraid of punishments. She was. Her bravado was only an outward act. She was scared every time she had to endure some kind of chastisement, whether at school or at home. Madeleine herself did not think any girl could be particularly brave when it came to having to pay for her misdeeds. A girl’s bottom was sensitive and a cane so awfully whippy.

Half-paralysed by shame and fear, she stood up when the door was opened and then shut again. She felt too afraid and too shy to look up. She knew it could be no one other than Miss Hampton who had come in.

All her fears came true. Miss Hampton went straight to the wall with the shelves and stretched up her arm and took down the cane, before she turned to her. Madeleine did not want to look up. She glanced to the left and looked out through the window There outside, she caught sight of other girls fully-dressed, crossing the school yard in pretty navy-blue uniforms, swinging their satchels, happy and carefree on their way home from school. Looking at them, she felt so ashamed and naked, standing alone in front of the gym teacher, clad only in her very tight, too-old leotard.

She heard Miss Hampton’s voice but did not distinguish the words properly. The gym mistress’s voice held no compassion for her. She was talking like teachers always did, about how schoolgirls were expected to behave. Teachers and parents always talked like that, but such words rarely inspired much interest from girls in their upper teens. She could not listen and she did not look up at Miss Hampton. Madeleine felt terrified and appallingly embarrassed, and she could not bear to look at the threatening cane Miss Hampton was bending between her hands.

The gym mistress angrily became aware of the girl’s disinterest and suddenly swished the supple cane through the air, striking the outside of Madeline’s left thigh with smarting effect. The searing, unexpected pain made Madeleine jump out of the way and let out a shrill, protesting yelp.

‘I told you to bend over the end of that couch, Madeleine,’ Miss Hampton repeated, pointing at the massage-bench alongside the wall behind the girl. It was high, covered in rather worn-looking brown artificial leather. On it was a cushion in the same material, but that looked almost new.

Tears were emerging from Madeline’s eyes, and a whimpering from her mouth. She looked down at her thigh, rubbing the sore red mark on her skin with her left hand. Then, with a deep intake of breath, she slowly and with very short steps went to stand at the foot-end of the couch.

‘Please, Miss Hampton,’ she sobbed. ‘It hurts. Please, don’t use the cane. I… I have marks already. Daddy caned me at home the day before yesterday. That was why I got so angry. Lorna and Sonia teased me when we were changing our clothes because I still had those marks.’

‘Yes, I know. They told me when I asked them why you were making such a disturbance. They have already been punished. Now it is your turn. Bend over and don’t let me have any more fuss.’

Madeleine was reluctant to obey, but hard, unrelenting hands helped her. The leather cushion was pushed beneath her tummy and when Madeleine lay forward on the bench-top, her feet did not quite reach the floor. Her long legs were dangling in the air and a strong hand held her down. Madeleine had no option but to resign herself to her fate. Miserable and unable to resist Miss Hampton’s demands, she felt her teacher’s hands at the legs of her leotard, tugging them up. Shuddering, she gripped hard on the sides of the couch.

It was awful. She knew that most of her bottom had been bared. The leotard had been pushed up so high the cloth was cutting into her crotch. Miss Hampton yanked it even further. Her bottom had now been made completely vulnerable, and all that Madeleine could do to suppress the sound of her sobs was to press her face flat against the cool leather top. Any time now she feared that the cane would fall ferociously across its target. Her bottom tensed and relaxed repeatedly, the soft flesh wincing in expectation of her first-ever caning from the gym mistress. Madeleine knew what it would be like. She was only too well acquainted with the ways in which a cane could hurt. Experience had taught her more than she ever wanted to know about such things. She hated and detested being caned.

The sensation therefore came as no surprise to her. She had waited in anguish for at least a minute for the cane to whip into her soft flesh, and sure enough it did. The pain was the same as she had felt only two days before, when Daddy had used the cane that was kept at home solely for that purpose. Miss Hampton had aimed carefully and struck straight across the bare centre parts of her buttocks. The searing pain made Madeline’s lips form a scream, but it never left her mouth. She succeeded in repressing it, but almost all the breath left her lungs and her hips heaved and wriggled.

The resilience of her bottom and the suppleness of the cane co-operated, and the teacher’s implement recoiled smoothly from the stung and quaking flesh. A stripe of white across the pale skin marked the place, well below the tugged-up legs of her leotard, where the cane had made its brief visit, and within seconds it turned pink. The first tears of pain fell from Madeline’s eyes on to the covered bench-top, yet Madeleine felt proud that she had not cried out.

The next two strokes were slightly less hard, although their cumulative pain and shock caused her hips to hump up and down energetically. But number four surprised Madeleine, as it really did hurt dreadfully. The scorching pain it caused very low down across her buttocks forced her to emit a plaintive cry and involuntarily she kicked up with both legs.

‘I see you really felt that one, Madeleine,’ said the gym mistress in a tight little voice. ‘Perhaps that was just as hard as you get from your father. The rest will hurt like that one did. You have six more to come.’

‘Oh no! No more, Miss Hampton! Pleeease! It hurts so awfully. Aaaaooouuch!’ Madeleine shrieked as the very flexible cane whipped into the apple-curved rounds of her bottom for the fifth time, indenting another set of tramlines right above the previous ones. This time the smart made Madeleine snatch her body up off the couch, her visibly inflamed bottom performing a mad dance in the air.

The gym teacher’s response was to order her to move forward on the bench so that her whole body, from head to ankles, now lay flat on its leather-covered surface, her long legs parted slightly and stretched out horizontally. Now Madeleine could not hold back her blubbering cries any longer. But as Miss Hampton made her wait in suspense for the next stroke, Madeleine tried awkwardly to induce her to let her off the rest of her punishment.

‘Please, Miss Hampton. No more now. It hurts. It really hurts. I’ve learnt my lesson — I really have. Daddy was so strict, I’m already so sore. Please, Miss Hampton, please don’t cane me any more!’ At the same time she started to struggle and attempted to turn on her side to protect her buttocks.

‘Oh no, Madeleine,’ the teacher warned her, suddenly sounding spiteful. ‘If you make a fuss I’ll give you two extra strokes.’

Madeline’s squeal this time was shriller when Miss Hampton’s cane, to emphasise her words, landed with a loud crack, etching a blazingly painful red stripe across both her thigh-backs at least an inch below the crevice where the swelling of her buttocks began. Crying from the savage smart, Madeleine clung tightly to the end of the padded bench, dutifully submitting herself to Miss Hampton’s unbearable discipline.

Now at last Madeleine realised how stupidly she had behaved. Instead of getting revenge on the two girls, she had made Miss Hampton more angry than she had imagined she could ever be. Never before had Madeleine been caned twice in one week. Once was more than enough — far more than enough. Sonia and Lorna had been lucky. They had escaped with a mere spanking. Of course a spanking was humiliating to a girl of 17, and still worse when she had been taken across the knee and had her knickers pulled down. But Madeleine would have given anything to have exchanged her punishment for the chastisement they had received.

Snivelling and sobbing, Madeleine tried to brace herself for the remaining strokes that were still due to her. She did not know how many more it was to be. She had lost count because of the pain. Had she been able to see her own bottom, she could perhaps have counted the number of strokes Miss Hampton had given her, for these marks were stronger and more livid than those left by the recent caning from her father.

The pause was over and Madeleine just had to cry out again when the cane scorched her soft flesh, almost too high up this time.

Again there seemed to be a pause, and Madeleine had a few moments’ grace. Her cheeks were wet with tears and she could not stop weeping. The lithe cane rested right across her nervously trembling bottom, aligning itself for another stroke. Madeleine did not know that Miss Hampton was studying the marks her cane had already made in her skin. She did not know anything anymore, only that she had been a very naughty girl and was now paying the price for her misbehaviour. The teacher seemed to be quite satisfied with the tram-lined marks her instrument had produced on Madeleine’s trim, girlish bottom with intent to make the culprit feel sore and remorseful. The girl still had to take a few more strokes, however, and she noticed a couple of areas where there were inch-wide gaps between stripes. Slowly she raised the cane again.

‘There are only three more now, Madeleine. Try to be a brave girl and your punishment will soon be over.’

The three cracking whacks fell only five to ten seconds apart and Madeleine cried out, wailing from the pain each of them caused her in that part about which parents and teachers seemed to agree that girls possessed not only to sit upon.

Whimpering and shivering, Madeleine climbed off the padded bench and stood up straight when Miss Hampton told her to. Tears were flowing down her cheeks and the red, swollen tramlines across her buttocks ached and burned like fire.

Weeping, Madeleine was allowed to leave the room and weeping, she showered when she had reached the changing room. The water helped to ease the pain, but when she towelled she felt the soreness of the long, raised stripes. As she dressed, her thoughts turned from what had happened to what she had to face when she came home. Mum had asked her to hurry, but instead she was already at least half-an-hour late. She could not leave until she felt reasonably sure that people would not notice from her face that she had been weeping.

At home Mum and Aunt Doris would be impatiently waiting for her. Aunt Doris was busy making a new dress for Madeleine, and that was why the girl was expected home straight after school. Mum had reminded her once again as she had left for school that Aunt Doris was coming to try the new dress on for size. Madeleine sighed as she thought how life for a schoolgirl sometimes seemed to be so complicated. At home she would have to undress and stand between Mum and her Aunt in nothing but her underwear. Protests would be useless. Aunt Doris could not come back another day and Madeleine could not try on the new dress when she was wearing other clothes.

No knickers in the world could conceal reddish stripes decorating a pouting girlish bottom after it had been given ten sharp whacks with a school cane and on the bare too. There was also the weal across the backs of her thighs, which was not possible to hide at all. Mum and Aunt Doris were bound to notice the marks which still were red and swollen across her buttocks. Mum would almost certainly pull her knickers down to see everything. Then, amidst all kinds of exclamations, she would probably count the stripes.

There were going to be questions and more questions. How would Madeleine be able to find answers to all of them? No, Madeleine knew there would be no end to all those questions a mum and an aunt could put to a poor unhappy teenaged schoolgirl, whose bottom was still fierily tender after having just been dealt with by the cane. And why, oh why, didn’t she live more than five minutes’ walk away from school?