Initial Exploration

There was a really odd, unofficial tradition at our high school that on the last day of classes, when the final bell rang, students would empty the contents of their lockers onto the floor of the hallways, somewhat of a "school's out for summer" act as summer vacation finally began. It was a tradition I had never understood, and still do not understand, and certainly the janitors must have hated the tradition, but it also brought Mary and me much closer together than I could have ever thought possible.

Mary and I were best friends, living about a block apart in a quiet neighborhood a twenty-minute walk from the high school. For us, school was essentially a "distant memory," as we had graduated earlier in the week. We sat of the sofa in my family's living room, and as the ending credits of Return of the Jedi began to roll, we stood and stretched.

Once again, I discreetly admired Mary's body. Her t-shirt rose just enough to provide me with a nice peek of her taut stomach. As she arched her back, her breasts seemed more prominent as her black PlayStation2 t-shirt moved over them. But I quickly averted my gaze, before she opened her eyes again.

"I have an idea," Mary announced. "Let's go back to the school and see the aftermath of the tradition."

"Huh?" I said stupidly, not having had any intention of returning there for a long, long time – if ever.

"I just wonder what it looks like," she replied. "Besides, who knows what goodies we might find?"

So I went upstairs to retrieve my backpack. We stopped briefly at her house so Mary could retrieve her own backpack, then continued on through the neighborhood and through the woods to the building where we had spent four years of our lives.

By the time we arrived, the parking lots were virtually empty. Not a single car remained in the student lot, and only three cars were in the faculty lot. The three cars I recognized as belonging to the principal, the head secretary, and one of the janitors.

Descending the hill, we approached one of the back doors of our now-former high school, and found it was still unlocked. The hallway lights were off, so it took a few seconds for our eyes to adjust to the dimness after having been out in the bright early-June sunshine, and the situation before us was nearly indescribable.

Virtually all the lockers were open, with most of their contents spilled onto the floor. All sorts of papers and school supplies littered the hallway, as did various types of snacks, books, magazines, and more. It would certainly take both janitors several hours just to clean up this particular lengthy hallway.

"I'll take the left side," Mary suggested, "and you take the right side."

Not everything had been thrown onto the floor. The first locker I approached definitely belonged to a girl, with a few sticks of make-up on the upper shelf, a magnetic-backed mirror on the back wall of the metal locker, and pictures of various guys, from Matt Damon to members of the school's football and wrestling teams.

It turned out that there was still plenty of "goodies" in the lockers. I came across a number of magazines, including old issues of everything from Seventeen to Gallery to ESPN: The Magazine to Hustler. Someone had even left behind the books of Douglas Adams' famous Hitchhiker series – the entire series – and I definitely put those in my backpack. There were numerous CDs, a few DVDs and videotapes (some not labeled in any way), fairly expensive calculators, watches, and even a leather Bon Jovi tour jacket. Except for the tour jacket, I loaded my backpack with the items I wanted or felt I should be able to sell on eBay. An occasional glance over at Mary showed that she was doing the same.

"Oh my..." Mary said softly, attracting my attention. I went over to her and saw the object of her outburst: a black leather whip hanging from a coat hook in a locker.

Mary removed the whip from the coat hook and held it with a profound reverence. An eerie silence befell her, similar to the days following her grandfather's death during our last year in middle school, but there was no sadness surrounding her this time. I put a hand on her shoulder. "Perhaps this is a sign," she said softly, then turned to face me, her eyes wavering as if she was about to cry.

"Take this, please," Mary whispered. "I'll explain later."

We continued exploring the lockers in the hallway, but something had definitely changed in Mary, all because of the whip I now kept in my backpack.

Well before we reached the end of the hallway, my backpack was nearly filled. Mary zipped her backpack closed and seemed to have a little trouble with it, so I helped her put it on. "Let's go," she finally whispered, the first thing either of us had said since she had given me the black leather whip.

We strolled slowly through the woods, using the well-work trail. Neither of us said anything at first, then Mary surprised me:

"What do you know about bondage?"

I thought for a moment. "That's where people tie each other up, right?"

Mary actually smiled and seemed to relax at my response. "It's more than that, but it's a start." She related about how she had stumbled across some bondage stories a few months before while online one night. Curiosity caused her to do some "research," and she came upon how-to articles, all sorts of images and video clips, BDSM stories, and the like. Seeing and reading about the punishment of so many young women had caused her to recognize an "emptiness," since her parents had never used corporal punishment with her.

"And," she added, "with the right person controlling me, I would gladly submit myself for whatever pain or pleasure or humiliation would please him, so long as he was someone I trusted completely."

I wondered if Mary was making a cryptic reference to me. We had known each other for nearly eleven years, and had considered ourselves to be best friends for four years. We had been closer as best friends than most high school students are as couples, yet there had always been an unspoken "pact" to not try to push our own relationship to the next level, for fear of ruining our extremely close bond.

Perhaps that was now changing.

"Let's go to my house," Mary suggested as we emerged from the woods. "I have a few things to show you."

As expected, Mary's parents were both at work, so we had the house to ourselves. "Come up to my room in, say, ten minutes," she instructed, then disappeared up the staircase.

I sat on the sofa, removed and opened my backpack, and took out the whip. It appeared to be somewhat used, but still retained an intoxicating leather scent. As I inhaled deeply, I suddenly understood why some people like to wear leather outfits.

I had a quick vision of Mary wearing a low-cut, form-fitting black leather dress, and smiled, feeling a twitch in my loins.

The whip's many leather tails were long and thin. I gave the whip a testing swing in the air, noting the sound as the tails split the air. The whip felt a little heavy; logic told me that it would produce a serious wallop of pain if used with enough force.

And Mary wanted me to use this on her?

I noted an end pillow on the sofa and stood. I took a few practice strikes at the pillow, and was slightly surprised at the sound of impact with the small pillow. The sound was sharper and louder than I had expected, and would certainly indicate a rather painful strike to human flesh.

And Mary really wanted me to use this on her?

I practiced with the pillow, varying the power of each strike. In short order, I felt like I had a good sense of control over the whip, and I certainly enjoyed its feel in my hand. Closing the backpack and donning it once again, I mounted the staircase with the heavy leather whip held firmly in my hand.

The door to Mary's bedroom was closed. I knocked softly, and the door opened a few moments later.

Mary had often work a thin black satin choker to school. Now, that was all she wore. No rings, no necklace, no earrings, not even any panties. I suddenly felt quite warm and knew I was blushing profusely, even as I drank in my best friend's natural beauty for the very first time.

Mary slowly backed away, not bothering to cover herself; in fact, her hands seemed to be clasped together behind her. I stepped into the pink-dominated bedroom and closed the door behind me, my eyes never leaving Mary's exposed body. She blushed a little at my open admiration of her, and smiled sweetly at me with both her lips and her eyes.

"Maybe this will help you to understand," she said softly. She led me by the hand to her desk where her laptop's screen showed a file selection dialog box on an all-black background. She sat in the cushioned chair as I set the whip on her bed and put my backpack beside hers on the floor. Then I stood behind the chair with my hands on her shoulders as we had often done when she needed to show me something on the computer.

A series of video clips began to play, most of them at full-screen size. They all showed women in various stages of undress, restrained in some manner as they were beaten with various implements. Although the volume was quite low, the women's screams and cries and grunts and pleas were unmistakable, especially the clip of a woman's breasts being repeatedly battered by a bullwhip as she pleaded in what sounded to me like highly-pained German.

But I was most surprised that these most unusual, nearly-bizarre situations aroused me, as Mary discovered when she leaned her head back and into my growing erection.

I sat on the bed, considering what I had just seen and heard, as well as the fact that the leather whip had rolled against my thigh and Mary was just a few feet away and completely, unabashedly naked. I was attempting to mentally process everything when I suddenly realized that Mary stood before me, and looked up at her angelic face framed by her long light-brown hair.

"Can you punish me?" she asked softly, almost pleading with me. "Can you ever truly hurt me?"

The seriousness in Mary's voice pulled at my emotions. If anything, I had long thought of Mary as a "little sister," despite her being nineteen and almost exactly one year older than me. Now, she was showing me her sexual side, and a side of her which begged for pain. It did not make any sense to me. Yet I could not deny the affect of the video clips on me... combined with the affect of her wonderful nudity in my presence.

My eyes met hers and locked. "Yes," I answered softly, "but only if this is what you really, truly want."

A few minutes later, Mary lay on the bed, one of the pillows underneath her to raise her shapely buns to an optimal targeting position. But before I began to whip her, however, I sat beside my best friend and stroked her head. "Are you absolutely certain that this is what you want?"

"Definitely," Mary replied with a nod and a nervous smile. "And I definitely want you to be the one to hurt me. I trust you completely. You know me well enough that you'll certainly know when to stop. And I know you'd never think bad of me because of this."

I nodded my understanding, and placed a soft kiss to her temple. Then I stood and took my position beside the bed.

As the whipping progressed, I started as gently as I could and increased the amount of force. Mary used another, larger pillow to muffle her grunts and her cries – and, toward the end, her screams. Her hands grabbed fistfuls of the light-pink bedspread, and her body often squirmed from the accelerating onslaught, yet her few pleas were not for mercy, but for a harder pummeling. Yet never did she try to move away, and never did she ask me to back off or stop.

Ultimately, I knew Mary was nearing her breaking point. I am not sure how I knew; I simply felt deep inside that it was time for this strange scenario to end. Perhaps more importantly, I simply wanted to hold her.

I set the whip aside and laid beside my best friend, something I had never done before. As I reached out for her, Mary suddenly clutched me fiercely, rolling me to my back as she lay upon me, my heart breaking as it always did whenever I saw Mary crying.

Eventually, the tears ended. Then Mary truly shocked me: She kissed me – not on the cheek or forehead as we sometimes did, but on the lips. I responded instantly, and I no longer saw Mary as a "little sister," but as a potential lover.

Now, ten years later, we are husband and wife; occasionally, we are also Master and slave. Neither of us expected that our initial exploration with S&M play would be the key that transformed a tight, close-knit friendship into a tight, close-knit love.