Red Notice

As I sweated my way up the stairs -- the lift, according to the technician attending to it, was out of order since somebody poured Fanta into the controls -- I sensed the presence of someone else up here long before I saw them. Perhaps I'd already, after one single day, become so used to the lonely corridor that the vaguest change in temperature from another body had become perceptible. That would be a pretty lame superpower.

I turned the corner and found my hunch to be correct -- stood outside my office door, leaning against the wall and glaring at her phone, was a short, curvy student with rich caramel-coloured skin and carefully curled brown hair, her face soft and smooth and bursting with attitude. She wore a denim jacket over a white t-shirt emblazoned with that Japanese painting of a wave whose name I didn't know. Not all of us took art at GCSE. Though her jacket made it hard to tell, her breasts seemed relatively small compared to the rest of her body. She also wore baggy, high-waisted trousers, not that far off in style and form from pyjama bottoms, with an orange-white texture reminding me of lava, and bright white trainers. At once, she struck me as someone who knew, or thought she knew, fashion. My immediate guess, having spent enough time in London to get good at it, was that she was from somewhere on the Gulf coast. The Middle Eastern one, not the American one.

"Hello?" I asked, and she looked, slowly, from her phone and to me.

"Hi. I got a red notice." She had a musical London accent, the type you get when a dozen different cultures swirl together with what's left of the Cockney twang. Ah, so her parents were from somewhere on the Gulf coast. I found myself more than a little excited. This seemed, to me, someone quite unlike anybody else who'd come here before -- like someone I'd never have a chance of getting along with when I was at university. She'd have never looked at me once, let alone twice.

"Oh, okay," I said, quickly, trying not to betray my delight, digging into my coat pocket to find my keys, which jangled as I retrieved them. "I would have expected more warning."

"Yeah, well, sorry," she muttered, looking away as I unlocked the door and stepped in.

"Well, come on in," I said, the excitement fizzing in my stomach, and I felt her follow.

"How small do you want your office?" she muttered, looking around, as I put my jacket on the back of my chair.

"I'll try to upgrade," I joked, then realised she wasn't in any mood for jokes, and sat down. "Do you mind just waiting a second while I power up?"

"Yeah, whatever," she muttered, going back to her phone as I turned on my computer and tried to pretend I wasn't becoming more anxious by the second to get on the Excel sheet. There wasn't a chance I'd go through with a red notice before verifying her on the database. After a couple of minutes, once the system finally deigned to respond, I loaded it up and there, scheduled for 8.30 on the dot, was a name: Zara Khan. "Rude behaviour towards staff," read the justification for this Law student's punishment.

"Zara Khan?" I asked, checking.

"Yeah?" She glared at me with sparkling eyes, on the edge of a pout, and then, quickly, her expression shifted to something more suspicious. "Did you get some last night, miss?"

"What?" I asked, startled. "What're you talking about?"

"You did as well," Zara sniggered, pleased at her accuracy. "You've got a glow on."

"I do not have a glow on," I mumbled, then pointing out the window, at the Sun which peeked from over the trees. "That's got a glow."

"Sure, miss, sure."

"You don't have to call me 'miss,' either," I said, almost mumbled. "I'm not a teacher."

"Alright, well..." Zara squinted, leaning in to look at my lanyard. "Kelly, then. That's my sister's name."

"That's cool."

"Are you a lesbian, Kelly?" she asked, suddenly. I stared at her, feeling the blood leave my face.

"What?"

"Well, it's just your ID straps are all rainbow-y, and your job's to spank helpless girls, so I thought-"

"That's none of your business," I hissed, surprised at my poisonous reply, quite excited that I could manage something like that. Maybe I had a lot of pent-up anger to take out in girls like Zara who never wronged me at uni but always seemed better in some indefinable kind of way.

"Whatever," she said, shaking her head, looking away, seeming pleased to have rattled me. I sensed that this was how she planned to get through this experience -- challenging me every chance she could get. "Let's see her do that over your lap," said a voice.

"Anyway," I said, trembling, keeping my hands as tight fists in an effort to fight it off, "you know how a red notice works, right?"

"Yes," sighed Zara, exasperated, rolling her eyes -- but, with her fingers toying absent-mindedly with each other, she couldn't quite hide her fear. No matter how much she tried to cover it up with her attitude. "I signed up for it, I guess. I don't care. You can't scare me."

"Are you sure?" She looked at me, oddly.

"It's just a few taps on the bum, right?" she asked, voice quieter.

"Something like that."

"My friend had it done last year," Zara then said. "She said it's fine. It won't take long, right?"

"We'll have to see," I said, pushing myself off the chair and to my feet, my butt stinging as I did, and I hoped Zara didn't see me wince.

"It's weird, though," she said, regarding me nervously, taking half a step back.

"Weird or not, it's the rules." I felt strange -- like I was opening my mouth but someone else's voice was coming out.

"And I can just say no. You can't do nothing then."

"You'd only get in a lot more trouble."

"More trouble?" laughed Zara. " How could I be in more trouble?"

"Do you really want to find out?" Something was changing. My voice and thoughts didn't feel entirely like mine, as if I'd been rewired somehow, like someone had hacked into me and rewritten my code. This wasn't how I talked to people. Zara, not noticing my discomfort, being too distracted by her own, looked about the room.

"How does this work?" she asked.

"Well..." I thought. Did I want her over my lap -- or something else? Still, all the images of last night dominated my mind -- I found inside me a yearning to recreate them and, with that glow which Zara noticed pushing me forward, I even felt an almost alien confidence to do it. "Bend over the desk, please." Zara looked from me to the desk, squeezing her hands together, then back at me, her eyes wider, more pleading.

"Do we absolutely have to do all this?"

"Sorry," I said, shrugging, putting on the most sympathetic face I could, and Zara squeezed her eyes shut in frustration.

"You're loving this," she said, accusingly, and I smiled in a way I couldn't remember ever smiling before.

"You should have been more polite. Now, then -- bend over, please." Zara stepped towards the desk and took a deep, hard breath.

"You're really gonna spank me?"

"Really."

"But I'm not a kid." I shrugged.

"And here you are. Now then, shall we?"

"Okay, I... I can do it." Zara put her hands on the desk's edges and bent over, lightly, barely stooping, her shirt and jacket riding up her bottoms which creased and better displayed the shape of her plump rear, her knees bending. "Is that good?" she asked, in a hopeful tone which told me she'd heard rumours of far worse.

"Put your face against the desk and keep your knees straight." Zara whined in reply, obeying, as I tried to figure out where on Earth all this was coming from. Had I been changed by the events of last night? I felt as though some new ability had been unlocked -- to be able to talk like this to another person, to be forceful and demanding, was utterly beyond me. And yet I was doing it.

"Do I have to..." Zara paused. "...you know?"

"What?" I asked, watching her round bottom pointing at me, rather enjoying her sudden helplessness. Zara didn't reply and so, with a quick movement, I tugged her bottoms down -- they didn't come down as obediently as I had expected, the waistband tight on Zara's waist to the point of almost fighting me, but they came down nonetheless, collecting in an orange pile at Zara's ankles. I didn't detect any response from Zara as her shapely, peach-like rear was revealed, her thighs chubby and criss-crossed with pretty tiger print stretch marks. Her butt was covered by lemon-yellow boxers, their upper half covered by her shirt, which I lifted up her back to fully expose her and find 'Calvin Klein' printed across a white waistband.

"Don't look at my bum," Zara growled, still not resisting, gripping the desk forcefully, staring ahead, almost dutiful in her stillness.

"Pull down your underwear," I commanded. Commanded!

"What?!" she squawked, looking back at me over her shoulder. "No!" In reply, I threw a smack at her butt, which cracked through the room, as her cheek wobbled and Zara yelped in surprise.

"Do it or you'll have to take off everything." Did I really mean it when I said it? I didn't know -- and that scared me, just a little.

"But..." Zara's eyes were wide. There was no defiance in them anymore. "...you can't. That's private. I don't want you to see my bum..."

"It's not up to you. Unless you want to be expelled?" Zara's bottom lip trembled.

"Oh, God, okay, fine..." She stood up straight, her hands going to the sides of her boxers and slipping under the waistband, only to come out again and fidget, as she tried to fight one way and the other, until, finally, with a whimper she peeled them off and they fell to her thighs.

"Now, bend back over," I said, and she did without a word, still keeping her legs straight, sticking out her perfect peach of a rear and I could only stare as this proud, almost snooty girl was exposed and humiliated before me.

"Please hurry up," she mumbled against the desk, a sob already riding on her voice. "Please? I'm sorry." I consented -- placing one hand on her back, I stood to compromised Zara's side and began striking her, cheek by cheek, and with each hit she whined and mumbled through her teeth, her cheeks wobbling pleasantly with each spank. "Ah, ah, ah," she moaned, until, suddenly, her hands left the desk and to her cheeks, trying to cover her rear. "Okay, okay, that's enough!"

"Put your hands back on the desk," I said, but, already, that sense of confidence was fading fast, like candyfloss in water, and I felt a stammer break through on the final word. It was as if a spell had come over me, only for a second, now to be lifted. My trembling returned. My face grew hot.

"No!" she protested, standing up straight, reaching for her boxers and hurrying them back up her legs and over her rear. I took a step back, not willing to fight her -- I imagined myself grabbing her by the hair, pushing her face against the wooden desk, yanking her boxers back down, and going to town, even ordering her to spread her legs apart to properly expose her. But I didn't -- just watched as her bottoms came up, too, and she whipped round to glare at me, hands on her butt. Her eyes were watery and her cheeks pink.

"You're a fucking arsehole," she whimpered, and she then paused, as if considering whether to punch me, before hurrying to the door, unlocking it, and running from the room.

I stood there, cold and hot at the same time, not knowing where to look. My hand still stung from the spanks and I looked at it, the skin of my palm beet-red after the past twenty-four hours, imagining it not as my hand but as someone else's, the same someone whose voice had come from my mouth for that brief moment. Why had I become that person? Was it possible, I thought as remorse flooded through my system and I half-believed I'd start retching with the shock of it all, that I had always been that person?

"It won't make you into anything you're not already," Cherry had said. "It'll just show you what you are."

My mind was a whirr. For the few moments of the day in which Zara had been in my office, I felt like a different person altogether -- the kind of person who could do the things I'd just done. Commands had rolled off my tongue so freely, so easily, like I'd rehearsed them a hundred times before. I recognised neither my voice nor the feelings which, only now, I saw had simmered inside me for longer than I'd ever realised.

Sitting at my desk, I stared at the Excel document for quite some time -- changing Zara's status to green, indicating that she'd been done, I found myself relieved that nobody else was lined up to see me. Nervous, I wanted to let this feeling dissipate, to cast it away and not touch it again, as the guilt burned inside me at such a heat that it came to feel almost like physical pain. I really hoped I'd never see Zara again -- outside the safe confines of this office, she could probably take me quite easily. Naturally, as I had all these thoughts, a new girl popped up on the Excel sheet -- and she was only half an hour away.

Her name was Christabel Cheyne, a first-year History student from Dublin, whose punishment was warranted by "failure to attend first seminar of the term and unsatisfactory justification." It didn't specify the justification -- I knew then that I would ask her, to determine the severity of what she got. However, deep down, and then increasingly close to the surface, I knew that her punishment would be as mild as it could be. After Zara, I simply didn't have the energy or strength of will to go through with anything so intense again. The desire to do more, to go further, to really punish had been a blip, a glitch in my system, and I wanted only to push it back down and ignore it. That creature which had bared its fangs wasn't me, the girl who never raised her voice nor her hand, who did as she was told and not the other way round, and I wouldn't unlock that cage again. Not ever.

T he half hour ticked by fast -- as it did, Kam and I texted back and forth, and I admitted my nerves.

"After last night u shld be ready for anything lol" they replied, which I didn't find entirely helpful.

"That was different," I replied. "We were both into it. It's not the same when it's a real punishment you know?"

"I guess so," they sent back, followed by a shrugging emoji. Crucially, I said nothing about Zara -- but when Kam inevitably asked how it went, I lied, pretending she'd kept her underwear on. I didn't want to reveal that I'd gone as far as I had and have Kam making presumptions about what "progress" I was making when even I didn't yet know what it meant. The moment I told the lie, of course, I regretted it -- if word got round that something different had happened, and Zara was as likely to blab as not, then I could be in a world of trouble. I didn't want to alienate Kam after just a few days -- and we were only just starting whatever our weird little thing was. Probably just a friendship, I told myself, given their whole being ace. A friendship where we spank each other. Well, I've had worse.

E ventually, with my heart in my mouth (a place I found it so often it'd need to start paying rent soon ) and my nerves in tatters, the time of being a confident disciplinarian already a long-gone memory, there came a knock at the door.

"Come in," I said, fast and almost high-pitched, gritting my teeth in annoyance at myself. When it came to not coming across as a nervous wreck, at least, I missed the other me which Zara had got to know.

The door creaked open, slowly at first, and in stepped Christabel. Being Irish, I hadn't expected her to be black, which didn't reflect all that well on me. She would have looked out of place anywhere except the library - h er curly dark hair sprang in all directions, her face was dominated by thick glasses, s he wore a fuzzy pink-black striped jumper and knee-length tartan skirt over a plump frame, her legs bare and dark and soft, and she was staring at me from the moment she walked in. An almost unbearable tenseness followed in her wake, and we both looked at each other as if daring the other to make the first move.

"Hi," I said, breaking first, of course.

"Hi," Christabel replied suspiciously, closing the door behind her, her Irish accent soft and bouncy. "Am I in the right place?"

"Well, what're you here for?" She looked around the little office.

"I got a red notice? So..."

"Yeah, you're in the right place," I said, blankly. My mind, too, was blank. I didn't feel ready for this at all -- take one step towards following through with the red notice and I'd let that out again. I wanted to spank this pretty girl. I wanted her over my lap, struggling and fighting, her underwear round her knees and her butt bared, but I wanted to hold myself back more.

"Why?" asked a voice. "Why hold back? There's nothing you can do to her that you're not allowed to do. It's them who should fear this place, not you."

"Can't I just go?" Christabel asked, pulling me back to reality. Her hands, as often happened, played with each other absent-mindedly. "I didn't do anything and I'm a grown adult. You can't do corporal punishment on me."

"It says here..." I glanced back at the Excel sheet, and Christabel sighed, "that you didn't provide a good reason for missing your seminar?"

"I didn't know where the room was," she argued. "The map they gave us sucks. It doesn't label all the rooms so course I got lost!"

"Well, if you get a red notice then you get a red notice," I replied, shrugging, pulling a vaguely apologetic face.

"But why?" she whined, almost stamping a foot in her anger. "And why you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, look at you!" she said, shooting me a poisonous stare. "I'm meant to let you put your hands on me?"

"It's what you signed up for."

"Like I care."

"If you refuse, then you'll just get expelled." That, it proved, was a bomb in the conversation. Christabel went silent and, though she still stared at me, her face tensed and her eyes went from sharp to pleading.

"I... " She stumbled on her words. "If I agree to it, can you promise to go easy on me?"

"What's easy?"

"You don't use a cane or nothing, do you?"

"No." I almost laughed. "It's just my hand." Her stare went from my face to my hand -- and, as her eyes widened and I saw her sudden intake of breath, I knew she'd realised how red-raw it was. If only she knew it was that way, mostly, out of more recreational activities.

"And you legit, like, spank? Like, that's real?"

"That's real." Christabel's hands went to her rear, holding it, and she stood up straighter, like an animal in the wild trying to look more intimidating.

"Will it hurt a lot?"

"Depends." She sniffed. " Have you ever been spanked before?"

"When I was a kid, a few times," she mumbled. "My mum hit me with a shoe, sometimes. And I don't want it again."

"It'll be over before you know it," I said, soft as I could, but all the time I spoke I could tell there was something off with my words. It wasn't that the Other Me was saying them -- it was that I didn't feel as though I was saying them, either. It felt like going through the motions. Day two and I was already this disenchanted?

"Oh, Christ, alright, fine," Christabel said, after a long pause. "Just... don't pull up my skirt, okay?"

"Why not?" She looked at me like I was an idiot.

"I don't want you to see my underwear!" she said, nearly shouted, forcing herself to keep her voice down. "It's all so unfair." I stood up, finally, uneasy on my feet, my hand still throbbing, and tried to look as sympathetic as I could.

"Let's just get it over with," I said, "and then you can go."

"Fine," Christabel hissed. "What do I do?"

"Just bend over the desk for me."

"I'm not doing nothing for you," she sneered, glancing at the desk. "I'm doing it cause I have to." Nonetheless, she did as she was told, bending over the desk and sticking out her plump bottom safely hidden behind her skirt, supported by her elbows, mumbling about how she couldn't believe this was happening to her. I stood there behind her, ready, my hand trembling, eager and itching for me to start.