Rita's Bet

Here is a little story for your enjoyment. The story is presented in three chapters, and all have been submitted.

Obviously it's not the third part of

Emily & Ellen

. I'm still working on that.

E & E 3

is a long tale (similar in length to the first two parts) and may take some time yet to complete.

However, hopefully you will find this little tale interesting. It is a bit different from my previous stories in that there is no actual sex in the story. I hope that won't disappoint. But I have formed some ideas to submit an additional version of this story, but one in which the plot goes in the direction of reluctant sex.

This is usually where I encourage my readers to post their comments and observations about the present story. I've discovered through experience that making a general and open invitation of that nature is not the best way to handle the matter. I very much and very genuinely enjoy comments related to the literary elements of my stories.

BUT, really, if you are a budding junior attorney and just have to post to let everyone know about the dire legal ramifications of the actions in the story, or the potential divorces and child custody battles that will arise from the tale's plot line -- well, I'm really not interested in reading about that (and I'd surmise that very few others are either). This is an erotic literature site: just enjoy the story (or don't, and click on some other story and bother some other author with your pseudo-legal babblings).

AND if you just have to post a comment that is really nothing more than you venting your anger at women in general, who in your estimation are all skanks and whores because they might occasionally have less than entirely morally upright sex, and you just have to lash out at women (even, and most pathetically, fictional women) because somewhere in your past some woman done ya wrong, well I'm not at all interested in reading your rant in that regard.

AND there is a permanent marker mentioned in this story. If you feel moved to post to give me the unabridged history of permanent markers and their antecedents: sorry, not interested in that either.

ALSO, if you're posting with the hope of influencing the story line, there is no need to do that either. My stories are in final form when I submit them and before you see the first chapter.

OH, YEAH. And I really don't need any opinions on whether or not anyone feels I've submitted this story in the wrong category.

HOWEVER, ALL THAT ASIDE: if you have comments or observations on the literary aspects of the story (characters, plot, plot progression, settings, writing, imagery, etc.) those are very welcome and eagerly read and responded to.

I finally found the button to turn off anonymous comments to my stories, and that's bound to block at least 90% of the most lame-brained comments.

Anyway, thank you for your interest and please enjoy the story.

bb

Rita's Bet -- Chapter Three

A loud cheer filled the room, mixed with laughter so loud and raucous it was almost a collective scream. Again my eyes found the mirror. I have no idea why -- it would have been a humiliation to do so -- but I had the desire for free hands. I saw my imagined free hands as they tentatively touched at the tiny stubble my head of luxurious hair had become. In the mirror my eyes widened and brimmed anew with tears as I saw with my mind's eye my hands fluttering over the humiliating wreck my head had become. Finally my illusory hands lighted firmly on my head. On the palms of my actual hands, lashed firmly to the sides of the chair back, I clearly felt the short, sharp, and pliable stubble I saw in the mirror.

I desperately wanted to rise to my feet: to somehow escape this embarrassing, shaming, humiliating horror. I began to struggle against my bonds, to try to rise to my feet, needing movement to escape this nightmare, but Rhiannon's hands were on my shoulders in an instant, stilling my entirely futile struggles.

The next thing I knew Rhiannon was in front of me, leaning down, and her face a foot from mine. She picked up a handful of the hair in my lap and slapped my face back and forth with it and then shoved it at my nose. The sweet scent of my hair that I have loved so well filled my senses again, but this time with the strands I smelled no longer attached to my head.

"We're not quite done yet, now are we, Rita?" Rhiannon asked, again rubbing my own hair in my face.

I again went through the futile effort of trying to make words understood through my gag, but Rhi was no longer there. I heard a noise behind me like an egg being whisked in a bowl before being put on the griddle to make scrambled eggs. Then there was what looked like a large coffee mug in front of my face. It took me a moment to register that it was an old fashioned shaving mug, a cake of soap at the bottom and Rhiannon swishing a shaving brush around in the cup to build a head of suds.

Then the cup was gone and coolness was on my nearly bare head as Rhiannon slowly and deliberately slathered the soap across and around my head and down onto the back of my neck. The brush tickled a little as she soaped above and behind my ears. I had that same reaction to tilt my head back as I felt the cool suds applied to the back of my head and neck.

Rhiannon put her head next to mine, leaning over me slightly.

"Dear old dad had these sitting around. Got handed down from his grandfather. Isn't that right, Dad?" Rhiannon asked, her voice louder to reach her father at the side of the room. To my left I saw Rhi's dad smile, laughing and putting up both thumbs.

The next sight was scary. An open straight razor was before my terrified eye.

"Oh, don't worry. I shaved my dad and brother the last few days with this. You know. Practice makes perfect. And I think I'm pretty good at it," Rhiannon said. "But I suggest you keep really, really still. Or who knows what could happen."

The impulse to struggle washed over me, but I was too scared to move a muscle. I had to try to calm my still insistent sobs and sniffles. Then I felt the blade as it began to tug at the stubble at my hair line. Rhiannon took off the stubble in little patches of an inch or two, stopping after each three or four swipes to wipe the suds and stubble off the razor.

The noise from the audience died down some as this shaving took some time. But soon enough Rhiannon was saying how satisfied she was and how the straight razor had done so much better a job than 'one of those dinky little plastic things' could have.

The level of excitement in the room began to rise along with the number of derisive and mocking comments. I felt Rhiannon's hand again across the top of my head. She moved the smooth skin around and then drummed the end of her fingers on my head. One of her squad mates must have handed her something.

"Why what ever are these?" Rhiannon exclaimed with feigned curiosity in her voice. Her hands were again before my face holding several tubes. "Why what does it say here?" She turned one tube so that I was able to read the label. "Why it says 'permanent marker', doesn't it, Rita? And look, they are one of our school colors: gold." The marker's cap indicated a darker shade of yellow, almost an orange, rather than a rich gold, but the distinction hardly mattered to me.

Before my eyes Rhiannon uncapped one of the markers. As the odor suffused my sense of smell my sense of touch registered the feel of the fibrous tip on the top of my head. Rhiannon hummed as she wrote, ending with a short laugh as she finished.

"I'd like to offer my squad mates the opportunity to add their sentiments," Rhiannon said with a flourish. Soon both sides and the back my head was the medium for I knew not yet what sentiments. After all dozen or so members of the varsity cheer squad had taken a turn things seemed to settle down. At least I could not imagine what other indignities Rhiannon could imagine to visit on me.

Rhi's mom was then in front of me, leaning so her face was just a few inches from mine, my face and cheeks now squeezed between the palms of her hands.

"Oh, don't you look so precious now, Princess Rita," she said in a mocking tone. "Don't you just look so, so precious." As she said this second sentence she was using one hand to rub more of my hair in my face while she used the other hand to pinch my tape covered mouth between her thumb on one side and the rest of her fingers on the other. "I can't tell you how glad I am to see you here just exactly like this little girl. Little Princess Cheerleader Rita."

She laughed again and was gone from my face. And the truth suddenly hit me then. I think my eyes must have gone wide. I thought, 'How many times did Rhiannon cry in her mother's arms after I betrayed her freshman year? How many times had Rhiannon's mother held her fourteen year old daughter as she wailed out her inconsolable misery and hurt? How many times did Rhiannon cry herself to sleep that freshman year, her teeth clenched, holding a fistful of the pillow her face was buried in cursing me for my betrayal.

Now I understood why there had been no little good humored, silly shaving in front of a few friends, and then Rhi and I off to her room to laugh about the goofiness of it all. I understood why I was sitting there tied to a chair in front of a throng of her laughing squad mates and friends, clipped and shaved bald in the most humiliating way possible, my loose hair piled ignominiously in my lap, rubbed in my face. How, do you suppose, did she describe to them the show they would be witness to when she invited them over for this evening?

Rhiannon made another appearance before me. I had no idea what else she could possibly do to me. But my realizations about why she was doing this to me had taken the fear from me. I felt apathetic and hollow and didn't move at all.

"You know what?" Rhiannon asked in that same voice she had been using to ask all her mocking rhetorical questions. "I just noticed that I missed some hair on your head!" Rhiannon asked with feigned alarm.

I heard the clippers begin to buzz again and saw them move upward, but they stopped long before they reached the top of my head. Rhiannon held my red and tear-streaked face by pinching my chin tightly between her fingers.

The clippers stopped their upward progress and moved toward my forehead. This got me moving and I tried to back my head away. Rhiannon held fast and put the head of the clippers above my nose at the inside edge of my left eyebrow. She flicked the clipper rapidly along the brow and I knew it was gone. Then the clipper was at the inside edge of my right brow. Flick. And it too was gone.

"Oh, now that's so much better, don't you think girls?" Rhiannon asked her squad mates. They had gathered around Rhiannon to witness at close hand this last indignity, this final mutilation of my appearance, and they all now enthusiastically voiced their agreement.

As Rhiannon stepped behind the chair I heard her say, all phoniness gone from her voice, only bitterness remaining, "Let the bitch loose."

It took a little while as the girls tried to pick their knots open, and finally called for someone's leatherman knife to cut the ropes. One by one the bonds came loose. As soon as I was able to I stood, the mountain of my severed hair falling to the floor forgotten. I turned to face Rhiannon.

Her eyes were glazed and shiny: tears I knew she would not let fall. But aside from the tears her face was filled with some combination of mockery, contempt, and triumph. She reached out and picked at a corner of the tape that was still across my face. When she had a good grip on the tape she put her other hand behind my head to hold it firmly in position. Then she ripped the tape slowly and deliberately across my face and off, the strong adhesive pulling agonizingly at my skin and lips every inch of the way.

"Rhi, oh God, Rhi, I'm so sorry," I stammered when the tape was off and I had spent a moment mastering the agonizing pain. "This is about freshman ye..."

No more words left my mouth. Rhiannon slapped me across the face harder than I have ever been slapped. A loud smack filled the room, quieting the spectators.

"I am so glad you lost this bet, Bitch," Rhiannon said, seething. "I'm so glad I didn't have to go to your house and pretend everything was all right and play a little game of 'friends' while I had this done to me." She was beginning to lose it, almost hyperventilating in her anger. "You look fucking ridiculous, Bitch."

"Rhi," I started.

The slap this time came from the other side, harder, making me senseless for a second and getting that cheek burning as hot as the first.

"Go on," she sneered, "get out of here. Have fun explaining to all your cheerleader buddies and school friends why your head is so shiny and how it got that way. And don't try to lie because you can bet everyone in this room will be spreading the word."

This happened seventeen years ago, in the days long before a video of this would have found its way onto YouTube, with a few hundred thousand hits in the first week; in the days before there were compact video recording units. Some of my audience had taken pictures with little snippy cameras. Pictures would exist and get shown around (and be laughed at heartily I'm sure), but I couldn't know then how fortunate I was that there was only the beginnings of the internet then, and that the pictures could not then fly around the world at the speed of light.

I backed away from Rhiannon and almost fell in turning. Suddenly Rhiannon grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

"Oh, I almost forgot," she said, "They only had yellow markers, so we couldn't use both our school colors on your head. But here's a little white and gold for a going away present." Her hand came up and I thought she was going to slap me again, but her hand continued to the top of my head and landed there with something between a crack and a splat. I felt something creeping down on all sides of my head. A viscous liquid was flowing over the ridges above my eyes, where my eyebrows no longer were to slow it down, before I realized she had cracked an egg on my bald head. She turned me then and shoved me into the crowd of spectators.

It must have taken me five minutes to cross that room. I had to press through the throng, now packed tightly to get close to me, my progress often at a complete halt, I forced to stand still and endure until I could again manage to make a few steps' forward progress. And what I had to endure to escape that place of shame and humiliation!

My skirt was to my waist the whole time and within seconds my uniform panties and thong were around the middle of my thighs. Hands squeezed my ass cheeks and invaded my ass crack, and fingers probed my backdoor. Hands cupped my mound and a few kids tried to pull out little tufts of pubic hair. I think some of them were successful. My eyes watered anew at the intense pain. Fingers from both back and front found their way to my vagina.

Hands found their way under my sweater. My bra was unhooked in back and both my sweater and bra were pushed high, just under my chin in front and hunched up on my shoulders in back, freeing and exposing my boobs. My naked breasts were groped and squeezed continuously, my nipples pinched. Sometimes the squeezing and pinching were hard enough that the pain competed with that from the tugs at my pubic patch for my attention. The hands and fingers belonged to both boys and girls, and they explored and invaded my body with equal opportunity enthusiasm.

As I finally reached the halfway point to the stairs, that malevolent collective mind conjured a new way to humiliate me. I felt my sweater pulled up anew, my arms were held up, and the sweater was gone. Then my bra was pushed down my arms and was off me. I felt hands at the waistband of my skirt and it, my panties, and my thong went down my legs. As they were pulled under and away from my feet I lost my balance. But tightly packed in that sea of bodies I didn't even begin to fall.

Those kids had ruthlessly and gleefully stripped me naked, and my body was now nude except for my knee socks and shoes, and all the hands and fingers had unrestricted access to my body. I began to push more insistently through my tormentors and that helped to slightly speed my progress, although the attacks and invasions of my body never slackened.

And apparently eggs had been passed out and what seemed a constant barrage of them were cracked on the top and sides of my head, or pushed against my breasts. Many were cracked between my legs or my ass cheeks.

I was crying bitterly again at the magnitude of my pain, indignity, and humiliation long before I finally reached the stairs. When I had finally attained that goal I tried to quickly scurry up, but stumbled several times and crawled up a few of the treads. Rhiannon and the rest roared their amusement and approval. I looked several times into the room as I lurched up the stairs and saw my skirt and sweater, my panties and thong and bra held up and waved in the air as trophies.

Finally up the stairs I made my way through the house and out the front door.

I stumbled down the black street as I wiped egg white and yolks from my eyes, felt the gooiness of the same substance on my back and stomach and between and on my boobs. The gelatinous substance ran down the insides of my thighs and I could feel my pubic hair matted with it. Bald, slimy, and shamed I made my way back around the corner, my arms around my breasts.

No one was out and I trotted back to the corner in blessed solitude. I rounded the corner and the highway intersection was a block ahead. I approached the crossroad cautiously. But because of so many trees and so much brush on the corners of the intersection there was really no way to know for sure what cars were or weren't approaching the crossing.

I hesitated for long moments undecided. I was essentially nude. The neighborhood was quiet, but was never really all that unbusy in the middle of the evening.

I knew the longer I stood there the more certain became the prospect that a car would come from behind me leaving the neighborhood, my bare ass bidding them a safe journey, or that a car would suddenly turn the corner off the highway greeted by the site of a shapely young woman in nothing but knee socks and shoes, her dark blonde pubic patch on display and arms across her chest hiding her naked boobs.

Finally I set aside my fear and hesitation. There was another twenty feet to the intersection. No headlight beams lit the road surface. But how far did they really reach? And the two bright street lights at the corner would have made the detection of headlight beams less likely. I began to trot and then run. I cleared the trees and foliage and slowed just a bit as I checked the roadway with a glance in both directions. A car was approaching the intersection in the far lane from my right, still about a hundred feet away. Another car was approaching from my left at about the same distance, its right turn signal blinking.

Past the point of no return, I got my legs moving faster and crossed the intersection at something between a jog and a sprint. I was across the highway and a few feet down my road when one car flashed past behind me. A horn blared and something unintelligible was shouted at my naked buttocks. I glanced back over my shoulder in time to see the other car turning into the street where I had been standing just seconds previous.

Less than a minute later, beginning to shiver a little, I crept silently into my house. I ended the worst night of my life in the shower, trying to clean my body and to cry out my misery, shame, and humiliation.

I was glad and relieved to discover that the 'permanent' in 'permanent marker' is more marketing than reality. I spent the next few days out of school and discovered that rubbing alcohol, used enough times, removes most of the ink, leaving just a faint reminder. Twice daily hard scrubbing for a week with ordinary soap removes the last traces. But I studied my head in the mirror as I scrubbed for the first time, the pain of the alcohol on my freshly shaved scalp stinging and never dulled with repeated application. Rhiannon had written 'WEST IS BEST!' on the crown of my head. Her squad mates had added on the top and around the sides 'WEST!', 'WE WON!', 'STUPID BITCH', 'LOSER', 'IM A BALD FREAK!' and other ripe sentiments.