Room for Improvement

Photo-story from Janus 83 featuring lovely Page 3 girl Vida Garman as Dulcie.

Pushing a broom. Dulcie in overalls. Tat. Sweat. Hair tied back with a scrappy ribbon. The floorboards and walls are bare. Stark. He will bark at me: ‘Work!’

He looks through the door into the room. Sees her stooping, lacklustrely prodding the bristles against the floor. Poor! Idle! What are muscles and sinews for? A roar: ‘Put some effort into it!’ He marches in and stands severe behind her ‘You’re not even trying! I get the impression you hardly care! But you’d better, my girl — oh, you’d better!’

She reapplies herself to her task, leans down, shoves the broom a little harder. Having him standing there like that, acutely critical of her every movement, makes her legs feel watery and her whole self cumbersome and clumsy. Under his censorious glare Dulcie strives to do what she feels is her best, making little grunting sounds to show him how much effort she is expending. But she freezes as his military tread clumps close. Her skin goes cold. Please don’t — I can do it myself…

His left hand seizes her upper arm. She tenses, hating yet darkly elated. His other hand covers her own on the broom shaft, hard and broad where hers is softly feminine. ‘Can’t you do the simplest job?’ he growls. He begins to guide her in the action, pushing and pulling her arms and the broom. ‘Here’s how you do it. Push, push, push, push!’ Dulcie becomes even more awkward and tense, possessed again of that awful hopeless, helpless feeling she thought she had grown out of but maybe never will.

Perhaps she does not want to ‘grow out of it’. Swamped by the power of his presence, drowning in his dominating aura she feels her tensions freeing, the weird sweet thrillings surge and ebb. ‘You’re absolutely hopeless!’ he rasps. ‘Give it here, I’ll show you how!’ He points to the dustpan on the floor ‘Pick that up.’

Dulcie stoops and does as bidden, feeling humble and tiny. ‘Now stand there by the wall,’ he insists. ‘Watch me carefully, and learn how it’s done.’ Shame flames her pretty cheeks, being made to stand like this, the humiliation of her dowdiness intensified by the sense of sheer inadequacy he inspires in her.

Carl is strong, confident, controlled — all the things that she is not. He begins to push the broom with vigorous, exaggerated, meticulous thrusts, demonstrating the separate stages of each sweep, shoving the dust into a heap. She knows that she must observe him closely, absorb the lesson, acknowledge his desire to improve her, and the need in herself to be improved. ‘Look at me! Look!’ he tells her. ‘This is how you do it!’

He straightens up and hands the broom back to her ‘Well, what do I want you to do now?’ he enquires in a voice which freezes. Dulcie does not answer. All words flee from her mind, leaving her bumbling and mute. Her grip on the broom shaft is slack, her blue eyes seem dead, face void of expression. Her very spirit feels dormant.

‘Get a hold of yourself, girl!’ he roars.

The sudden shout, loud in the small stark room, jolts her like the flick of a scourge. She flinches, rousing slightly. ‘Wake up, wake up, wake up! I want you to sweep the dust into the pan. Now!’

Dulcie crouches down on her haunches and stares at where he is pointing to the little dust-heap he has swept. She feels very small, lost and helpless as she bends and brushes the dust into the pan like a char, dowdy where he is trim and smart and tangy from aftershave. He is growling again, sending more shivers of delicious weakness through her, probing her frailties. ‘I have never seen such a pathetic, slovenly, idle performance! You’re a disgrace, my girl! You need sharpening up!’

His words splash cold into her mind. She can find no answer. Feels hopeless, hair in a mess, her body lumpish in the shapeless overall. Everything he says is right. She has no volition, no fight; needs this very special treatment that only he, of all the men she has ever known, can mete out to her. With a shout when she pouts and dozes. Wake me, please wake me! Make me alive! Dominate me with your male will! Make me do what you say…

‘Take this rag. Get on your hands and knees. Down!’ Dulcie slumps to the floor. On all fours. It seems, for a moment, that she adores the towering force he represents, humbly abasing herself at worship before him. ‘Polish the floor,’ he is saying. ‘Polish it hard, with plenty of elbow grease. Polish it until you can see your face in it.’

Her knees ache, back strains, elbows creak. Her hand rubs with the duster, forcing more shine into the shining floor, her features foggy in its surface. Carl’s close presence is both terrible and tremendous, his words like a whip. ‘Get a grip! Good grief, is that the best you can do? Put some energy into it. Rub, girl, rub!’

The toil is hard. His towering nearness, frowning down, ready to roar out a rebuke should her efforts slacken even for a moment, induces panic. She crawls around the floor at his feet, flustered and uneasy, agitating her elbow to force the duster from side to side, then in circles, then up and down.

‘Elbow grease!’ he urges. ‘Plenty of elbow grease. Work, girl — work! My God, you need a rocket behind you! Don’t you dare stop until I tell you!’

Indeed, Dulcie dare not stop. She starts to puff, feeling perspiration break out on her forehead and the back of her neck, warmth invading her cheeks. Strained and aching she shuffles on hands and knees about the floorboards, hugely conscious of his eyes following her every move. Sweat damps her armpits and the backs of her knees. She feels like a drudge, utterly unattractive; debased and subservient. Controlled…

‘More effort! More! Put your back into it!’ Dulcie grunts and strains till her right arm aches and the rest of her body, unused to such activity, begins to cramp and throb. There is cramp in her hand where it clenches the duster. The unyielding floor stabs pain through her knees, making them ache and stiffen. The jerking duster blurs in her sight. The surface she is so busily buffing becomes a watery fog. She blinks hot dampness from her eyes, desperate not to let go yet. Carl has, as she is all too aware, much more in store for her yet before she allows herself the luxury and release of tears.

She is looking up at him. What was that he said? ‘My boots as well — I want them gleaming. Work! My word, do you need sorting out!’ She crawls and crouches at his feet, sheening each already glistening toecap, feeling tiny and fragile yet strangely protected under the shield of his command.

As Dulcie wipes the duster over the leather she sees herself reflected, black, distorted, in the black mirror-surfaces. It is a self that only she — and, by merciful providence, he alone else — can recognise: self-despised and untogether, the negative of the normally positive person that she is. This distorted version of herself is just as real as the other, yet sinister and threatening, to be faced and feared by her. And dealt with summarily and sternly, as he is dealing with it now! It is as if she tries and tries but never gets it quite right — and yet, with him, that very fact transmutes itself into a virtue, a deep and intricate pleasure they can explore together, putting those negative feminine elements most firmly in their place.

‘Rub, rub, rub, rub, rub!’

Dulcie is panting. Her face feels even hotter, her knees throb, she is limp with fatigue. ‘All right, stand up!’ Carl’s voice is scathing — as it should be. She has performed her tasks badly. Has failed, in her dismal workaday smock and scruffy trainers. She quails before his baleful glare.

His next command, equally tersely flung, might have puzzled some. But not Dulcie: for her it is a doorway opened deeper into a labyrinth, magical and dangerous and wholly irresistible: the next phase of the spell they weave.

‘Transform!’

She allows herself to subside tiredly to the floor, yet is fast becoming charged with new energies. Fear lances deliciously through her, for the fear is finite and familiar. The sad Cinderella sick of her skivvying self rebels. Slowly, tingle-deep, she is rousing. She pushes off the trainers, knowing that the awakening will be sharp and hard and painful; yet profoundly aware of her need and desire for it.

Transform. She rises to her black-stockinged feet, and Carl watches impassively while she unknots the scrappy ribbon to free her hair — which tumbles in golden cascades about her shoulders. Transform. Dulcie unbuttons the overall — and, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, opens it and takes it off.

Beneath it, now revealed, is a sensational figure clad in scanty lacy black bra, stockings and suspenders. Backless micro-panties scarcely conceal her charms. She turns, proudly aware of her allure; a beautiful woman stepping with breathcatching grace into high-heeled shoes: slim-waisted and full-breasted, buttocks lavishly rounded and excitingly naked to his gaze.

‘Transformation complete.’ Her voice echoes, bell-clear in the naked room. Now bring me on like no one else can…

Carl is behind her, very close. ‘Shoulders back! Head up! Brace yourself, woman! God, I’m going to have to lick you into shape.’ He seems to be all around her, urging, commanding. ‘Hands to your side, arms completely straight. Stand to attention, girl!’

From his own hand she now sees there hangs a lengthy black strap, twin-tailed and fearsome. He shifts its position, holding it as a drill instructor would hold his stick. Standing erect, Carl announces, ‘Your conduct has been slovenly and disgraceful. I intend to smarten you up first of all with some foot-drill. Stand up straight! Head up! Eyes to the front. Quick… MARCH.’

Dulcie’s limbs jerk into motion, strut-stepping with precision over the floorboards she has swept and buffeted with such exacting care. ‘Left-right, left-right! Pick those knees up, swing those arms! Elbows straight!’ She approaches the opposite wall, yet dare not slacken step nor change direction till told to do so. Almost he lets her think she might slam into it, forbidden to diminish pace.

Then, at the very last second, ‘About TURN!’ he commands, watching her knees rise, feet stamp and spin round. ‘Left-right, left-right…’ she marches: a wholly gorgeous parody of a soldier on parade, step-step-stepping in perfect time to his rapped commands: breasts and buttocks aquiver, her rich tresses bobbing and tossing to the metronome movements of her limbs. ‘About TURN!’, and again…

Back and forth she marches down the length of the room, stung to stricter tempo by his whipcrack tones as he stalks about before her, beside her, behind her, controlling her responses till perspiration sheens her shoulders and she begins to gasp. Is it good enough? Can it be good enough, ever, to satisfy his demands?

He has seated himself on the tall stool. The denuded walls continue to resound to his terse, intimidating instructions and the frantic hammer-beat of her tiny marching heels.

‘Halt!’ Dulcie stops rigid, teetering on her toes. ‘Right TURN! To attention, girl! Stand to attention!’ Carl is on his feet again. His gaze, avid rather than icy now, scans the glorious crown of hair, the slender supple back, then comes to rest on the luscious moony outswells of her bottom. With a suggestion of reverence which betrays his immense appreciation of what he sees Carl places the heavy strap against the quivery globes, and she shudders at the feel of its coolness and weight against her silky skin. Almost dreamily he draws the leather back — and swipes it snappily in!

Smackk! The contact is crisp, concussive. ‘Aaahh!’ Dulcie sighs harshly as her buttocks judder and jounce, seethe with sudden fire, relax.

‘Hands to your sides! Very still, now!’ The twin-tailed tawse quickly climbs behind her bare, stinging bottom, hovers as if savouring the supreme quality of its prey, then hisses in again to land with a second loud, clouting slap. Crracckk!

‘Oooff!’ Dulcie coughs air, clenching and squirming her buttocks as bottom-burn flames deep. The power of his presence, his demand that she accept this punishment and her soul-deep need to receive it hold her staunchly there, fingers indenting the sides of her thighs while she stays stiffly to attention, the flash-heat in her rear diminishing to a smoulder.

‘Bend over!’ comes his next command. ‘Legs straight, touch your toes!’

Dulcie obeys, leaning steeply forward from the waist till her outstretched fingers touch her toes; legs braced back and bottom jutting. She feels the soft skin stretch, tautening the target. Her buttocks feel glaringly exposed, rudely vulnerable, still tingling from the tawse and seething as from a thirst that has by no means been quenched.

To Carl the sight is taunting, tempting, rousingly beautiful. Her rigidly bending posture signals a total yielding. He totes the strap high, swings exultingly in. The leaping leather smacks home with an echoing crack, imprinting its shape on the luscious flesh, causing the buttocks to flatten, ripple and reform with a deepening hue. Dulcie expels a yelp as the pain burns in, and the awakening wanted surge intensifies.

He warms to his work. Lifts high, takes careful sighting, swipes in. Crack! The thunderclap slap as the tawse-tails curl around the outjutting bottom is sheer delight. Dulcie’s cry as the blaze flares up again in her buttocks is gut-deep and urgent. The tawse sings as it flies back, pauses tauntingly, slams in.

Smmacckk! ’Aaahh. Ohhhh. Uhhhm!’ The tensely-bent body rocks at the fiery impact; steadies. Dulcie’s bottom-cheeks, ripely robust, are flushed and hot-looking, and her cries and sighs and groans are not so much of torment as of one in the throes of an urgent and exciting transformation to a heightened state of awareness.

The leather lashes air on the backswing and again Carl pauses, seeing how she trembled, waiting, making little whimpers of scarcely-to-be-borne anticipation. As the stinging in her bottom seethes to its crescendo he speeds the leather in again. Thwaappp! Another rousing slap as leather impacts on flesh; another echoing squeal and hiss of indrawn breath.

Dulcie shakes her hips as though to shake off sparks. The burning in her bottom is becoming intolerable now, swarming with fires which inspire paradoxical thrillings that possess her body like busy demons of delight. Again the leather hisses back, speeds forward. Crrrackk! Again the leather kisses hard and loud, loving the softness and rotund ripeness of the hot bottom-curves it caresses. Dulcie grunts, keening and urgent, the heat in her behind at flashpoint. It is enough…

‘Stand!’ Dulcie sighs, straightens her body upright. She is all a-shudder, composure fled. Her hands squirm together in entreaty, face hot, breath panting. Carl is back on the stool and their faces are suddenly close. The words they say to each other now are more like an extended mantra than a conversation — yet necessary, so necessary to Dulcie in the fervour of her mounting agitation. ‘You’ve been naughty —’ … ‘yes’ … ‘Wickedly naughty —’ … ‘oh, yes’ … ‘Disrespectful, forgetful, lazy, deceitful —’ … ‘Yes, yes, YES!’ …

‘And what happens, to naughty, lazy, wicked, deceitful girls?’

‘Th-they get their bottoms strapped… and spanked.’

‘Come here! Over my knees! Over!’

Dulcie half-scrambles, is half-hauled across Carl’s thighs. Her bare, beautiful bottom, hoisted upright to glare at the ceiling, squirms. His palm swoops, strikes with a heavy smack against the shuddering, pinkened buttocks. She hangs there, tummy down and thighs writhing, stockinged legs scissoring and kicking.

‘Ow-ow-ow-ow OW!’ He sets up a lively staccato slap-smack-spank on the delectable wobbling globes, building to such energy and pace that the luscious rosied bottom is in ceaseless movement over every inch of its surfaces, juddered and jolted by the torrent of lusty smacks. At each eager detonation Dulcie’s buttocks pancake and ripple, redden more deeply, spring back to perfect roundness. They wobble, bounce, shiver, seethe.

She begins to gasp, thrusting against him in the high heat of the barrage of smacks. The speed and weight of his spanks act like messages to her reeling, intoxicated senses; a stinging, blazing melange of liquid pepper, acid, fire, ice, jetting deep and with concussive force into the heart of her bottom. He loves her bottom, has often said so. She loves it, therefore, too — the roasty-toasty sparkling-burning, prickling sharp and sweet and deep in her seat; a wild, wonderful impression of vivid brightness and heavenly heat which freezes, burns, throbs, glows…

Smack, spank, slap! Dulcie’s high, plaintive cries change to an urgent groaning, as if in the throes of love. Then a whimpering; a shout, a keening sigh. Clap! Smack-smack-slap-smack! In the transport of what seems like delirium she wrenches her hips from side to side, clenches her tormented buttocks, relaxes them, clenches them. She enters a timeless state in which that leaping, blazing hand is king: it rises and falls, rises and falls, scattering her senses and defences; causing the urgent surgings within her to heighten, muscles clenching, wrenching honeyed sweetness from the hotbed of pain — building, coalescing, intensifying, crystallising…

‘Oh-ohh-ohhh. Oh!… aHHHH…!’ Carl knows, as her thighs and pelvis shudder and thrust against him; and he at once rains a torrent of even heavier spanks on that heavenly bottom, a frenzy of thunderous smacks to match the mounting crescendo within her. The soft, exquisitely rounded flesh is hot and palpitating; she is shuddering, shuddering, crying out — till a last extended wail, primitive and abandoned, breaks from her throat as the pinnacle of sensation is achieved, exploding in spasms of joy…

And then, at long last, come the tears. Shaking, Dulcie is helped to her feet, scarcely able to stand, so intense has been her release. Carl hands her a handkerchief to stem the welcome flood; and in time her shivers and sobs subside, and a smile gleams through.

And still his iron presence is there, protective and secure. ‘Happy sixth of the month, darling,’ he murmurs. ‘Remember our first time?’

‘Yes, oh yes!’ Again the smile. Her wet eyes are alight.

‘Same time next month?’ His grin is almost there, too.

‘Do we have to wait that long?’ Her gasp is purely sexual.

‘Same time next week, then?’

Dulcie does not reply. She doesn’t need to.