As a math major, I am used to thinking logically, concentrating long and hard on abstract, abstruse concepts, and following long chains of reasoning. But after a while, once I reported for pledge duty at the sorority house, I found it more and more difficult to think clearly. We were always chanting something or doing something repetitive or running ourselves ragged fulfilling the sisters' various whims. And always the petty punishments over trumped-up "offenses" like looking a sister in the eye, or failing to compliment a sister, or for not cleaning something thoroughly or not saluting the Alpha seal with a curtsy.
The sisters kept a tally of all our offenses in a night, and at some utterly random time, the five of us would be ushered into a basement room to be spanked. We never saw which of the sisters did the spanking, because she'd always be wearing a veil, or sometimes a creepy Asiatic mask. And we would never see the people who were laughing in the shadows in a little loft up above, where spectators could sit and watch. They seemed to be masked as well, because every time I caught a glimpse of them their features would seem horrifically distorted. While our pledge sisters stood by, we would be called forward one by one and bend over the sister in the veil's knees. The sister would lift up our skirt and sometimes she would even pull down our panties -- that seemed to be at the spanker's discretion. Some sisters like to hit hard, others like to sort of tickle you and make you squirm, some varied hard and soft blows. Sometimes they used a paddle, sometimes a bare hand. It didn't always hurt, but it was always embarrassing, and my face would usually be as red as my behind would be when they were done. I tried not to cry from it, but sometimes a blow would extract an involuntary groan from me.
Sometimes when I was being beaten I would start to count how many times my bare bottom was struck and try to place it in a Fibonacci sequence to predict when she would stop hitting me. Or I would deduce what the next prime number would be, or I'd try to relate it to the counts I'd kept for my sisters and how many times they had been hit. I'd try anything to take my mind of the humiliation, which was strangely exciting, which in turn only made me more ashamed. I hated the whimpers and squeals I made, yet when I heard my pledge sisters make them, it made me feel hot and turned on, and I knew they were feeling the same about me, that my being beaten was at some level exciting them, and that thought, too, excited and humiliated me. As I was being beaten, and I couldn't discipline my mind with numbers I would find it drifting into fantasies of one of my sisters, usually Paige or Eva, holding me, nurturing me, tending to my sore bottom with soft caresses. I would dream of them even kissing my bright red cheeks with ruby-red lips and leaving little kiss prints there. I never had thoughts like that ordinarily; I didn't think of girls that way at all, usually. It was absurd, but it made me feel better and help keep me from crying too much.
In some ways getting spanked was the easy part. You would be at the center of attention, sure, but you didn't have to do anything. All the work was done for you, and you just needed to deal with the attention, which you eventually begin to enjoy in a strange way. It was the one moment -- apart from those private moments with my pledge sisters -- when I knew I was doing what I was supposed to, when I wasn't on tenterhooks afraid of making mistakes. We were told repeatedly that we should yearn for punishment, because it meant we were being made into better Alphas, that we were being brought closer to the ideal. I'm not sure what the idea was supposed to be, despite all the repetition of the creeds and all the training and all that. I just thought of Pauline, who had come to seem like a god to me, so beautiful and articulate and perfect and graceful. After a few weeks of pledging I felt almost retarded in her presence. I knew that everything I was going through was worth it if I were to become more like her.
It was much harder to watch my pledge sisters being punished. It made me want to watch out for them more, and it even had me taking the blame for things I knew they had done. Watching Eva's ass turn all red from a thrashing was hard to bear, because she tended to whimper and cry, which would start my eyes tearing as well. Monica would start bawling sometimes like a little baby, full on sobs, and this made me extremely uncomfortable. But worst was Paige, whose quiet demeanor seemed to bring out the sadism in whoever was doing the punishing.
Sometimes I swore I heard male laughter, but it was hard to tell, and I could have easily hallucinated it. All kinds of crazy ideas would be flowing through my addled brain. That was another thing, I was so sensitive to everything during that period. I would break out in tears over nothing at all, at the sight of a dead fly in a lampshade. And I would feel the deepest and warmest gratitude over the slightest sign of friendliness from one of the sisters. Pauline, who was assigned to be my "big sister", part mentor and part governess really, could make me beam with joy just by telling me my hair looked nice. That was because most of the time she was criticizing me mercilessly, comparing me to the other pledges and pointing out how worthless I was compared to them, and how she couldn't believe they tolerated the sight of me. I knew it was a psychological game at first, but it was surprising how soon it began to sink in and how glad I was that my pledge sisters didn't hate me.
The first time this happened, Pauline called Eva and I into her bedroom one night after we had finished polishing the silver -- it hadn't been used, it was just make-work -- and sweeping the kitchen. Pauline closed the door behind us and sat on her bed while we stood there side-by-side, waiting to find out what she wanted. "Okay," she said. "You girls aren't so bad looking, even after you've worked up a lather. Show me your tits."
Eva and I looked at each other uncomfortably. "Come on," Pauline said flatly, "Pull up your shirts, I want to see your tits. Eva was a fairly conservative girl. She was coy, almost bashful, and she tended to wear loose-fitting clothes that concealed her figure. I don't think she liked being in the spotlight at all; she seemed to assiduously avoid garnering attention. She was from somewhere in Texas, and her parents belonged to one of those megachurches down there and were really active with it. I often heard her talk about how she missed her church, herself, and how she had no recourse to pray alone, which made her feel lonely sometimes. Sometimes she hoped we would pray with her. I wondered if she was praying now, with Pauline glaring down on us, asking us to expose ourselves, to reveal our private flesh.
Eva blushed and then lifted the T-shirt she was wearing to show her bra, a yellowed, lacy thing that looked like it had been washed too many times. It seemed like it was too small for her too, since the flesh of her breasts seemed to be busting out. I lifted my shirt too and pulled it over my head and took it off.
"That's right, just take the shirts off," Pauline said, "and the bras too. I want to see your tits, not your questionable taste in lingerie, understand?"
We did as we were told; Eva slipped her arm through a strap and unhooked her bra and her breasts positively spilled out, jiggling in her hands as she dropped the bra to the floor. I felt a little inadequate with my modest boobs, but most of all I felt embarrassed at having to show myself to Pauline like this in front of Eva.
"That's better," Pauline said. Looking at Eva, she said, "Those things are out of control. You're going to be a fat sagging cow if you ever have kids. Or have you already had them? Only way tits get that big is from a little rug rat sucking on them. Or maybe not. Maybe you've been sucking on them. I bet you can. Show me." Eva's blush deepened even further.
