Will came home from work slightly early one Friday. As he pulled into his driveway, he tightened up his tie and re-buttoned the top button of his business-casual dress T-shirt. He steped out of the car, steped up the front steps, paused, and opened his front door.
His wife, Sandra, was frantically vacuuming the living room rug. The first thing that caught Will's eye was her black high heels. His eye trailed up her shapely leg to her short, tight pleather skirt, through which he could see the faint outline of her plastic chastity belt. She was wearing a red leather corset which he had picked out for her this morning, and her long red hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. Around her porcelain neck was a tight leather collar with a metal ring in the front. As Will opened the door, Sandra looked up, eyes wide, like a deer in headlights. As he said her name, she shut off the vaccuum.
There was a scolding tone in his voice. "Sandra," he said.
"I'm sorry, Sir!" she said, walking quickly up to the door. She kissed him on the lips and took his briefcase.
"You know the rules," he replied. "You are supposed to be waiting at the door for me when I come in," he paused, her head lowered. "That's one check already," he said.
Head still lowered, Sandra replied, "I'm sorry, Sir. I didn't hear you pull in. You're home early today."
He smiled at her and kissed her back. "Well, it's Friday and I decided to cut out early. I know it's your day off, and I wanted to make sure you used that time to do all the things I asked you to."
"I did, Sir!" she said, smiling.
"We'll see about that," he responded, smirking slightly.
The two of them sat down and had tea and made small talk. Will sensed that Sandra was nervous, and wanted to drag it out as long as possible, building up tension. He had asked her to clean the house from top to bottom, and soon he would go 'inspect' it. Every failure on her part would result in a checkmark. Every checkmark would result in a worse punishment for her tonight.
Will and Sandra had been married for about a year. Will was 26, and worked at a small up-and-coming web company that had afforded him a good degree of affluence. Sandra was a high school teacher right out of grad-school. She was 24, but was a small girl with a very cute face. She looked barely 21. On her first day of teaching, people mistook her for a student.
Sandra loved kids and had a very innocent way about her. Despite having an intense BDSM relationship with her husband, she came from a very conservative household, and felt very embarassed when she was forced to do dirty things. She barely ever said curse words, and couldn't bring herself to say unladylike words like "fuck" or "cock". She was one of those girls that blushed and looked away when exposed to pornography, used cute euphanisms for sex like "Making whoopie", and never, in the world, would ever audibly fart. But the seemingly clear waters betrayed her depth - Sandra had intense sexual fantasies that she could never bring herself to actually tell anyone, but Will was slowly learning...
"It's time to Inspect," he said, putting his tea-cup down on the table with a resolute clunk.
"Yes Sir," Sandra said, rising from the short stool on her side of the table.
Will wandered through the house, Sandra followed nearby with her hands behind her back. First, Will checked the bathrooms, looking to make sure the toilet had been scrubbed, the sink cleaned, and the floor mopped. Stepping into the shower, he looked at the tiles.
"Here," he said, pulling out his metal pointer. He extented it and pointed at a section of tile at his eye level, about nine inches above Sandra's eye level. There was some brown mildew between two tiles. Sandra appologized and Will replied sternly, "That's another check."
The kitchen was clean, and the cat was fed. The living room looked fine, except for that Sandra didn't have time to vaccuum under the couches. She bit her lip and scrunched up her nose as Will tipped the couch back, noting the dust. "Three checks."
She had also forgotten to water the plants.
"Four checks."
There was still a load of laundry in the dryer.
"That makes five," Will said. Sandra's brow furrowed in worry. "A new record."
Entering their bedroom, one of the pillows was on the floor next to the bed. Sandra had put it down there while changing the sheets, and had intentionally "forgotten" to put it back. She hadn't counted on getting five other checks though...
"I'm dissapointed, Sandra. After the last time you got five checks, I thought you said you had learned your lesson. Now you have six checks. I can see I'm going to have to teach you that lesson all over again. This time, I'm going to make it stick."
"Yes Sir," she said quietly.
"I know you're not going to like it, but it's something we have to do."
"Yes Sir," Sandra said again. It felt like she was a little girl again, sitting in the waiting room of the doctor's office before getting a big shot. The only difference was that deep down, she was looking forward to it.