"Clark, why is there a naked boy standing in my kitchen?"
Mandi had just rushed in from the bedroom after "putting her face on." She was certainly all dolled up. She carried a large knock-off designer purse in one hand and an almost equally large zipper-cased book in the other. A Holy Bible the gold foil said.
"Mandi, this is Justin. I ran into him like this at the Safeway just now. Another one of these fraternity pledges gone wrong."
"I would say," Mandi said, looking Justin up and down. Clark had handed Justin a striped dish towel with which to cover his genitals. Mandi made a face: "Make sure you throw that towel in the wash afterwards. And were you able to pick up those things at the grocery I asked you to?"
Clark nodded. A less patient man would have rolled his eyes. Or sighed. "Yes, Mandi. They're in the front seat of my patrol car. I'll get 'em in a minute. I thought you and I could sit down with Justin here and talk to him about a few things and maybe share some appropriate Bible verses."
"I'm late as it is, Clark!"
"For what?"
"Bible study!"
"On a Saturday afternoon?" Clark asked, glancing at his cheap watch. "Can't you skip it today?"
"I'm teaching the class, Clark. No, in a word!" Adding, as she resumed her rush to kitchen's garage door: "Now put this boy in some clothes. I don't want him sitting on our furniture like that."
"I will."
"And...," turning back in the open doorway, "don't go too hard on him, Clark."
"I won't."
"Promise?"
"I promise. Just the usual."
Mandi smiled, hurriedly, confusingly: "You boys have fun!"
The side door slammed as seconds later the double garage door rumbled open again. Clark's roundish, patient, rather blank face cracking in unexpected smile as he exchanged looks with his naked charge. "Well I guess I don't have to tell you who's boss in this house."
The prank, the pledge, had been simple enough. Streak naked from one end of the Safeway parking lot to the other, the store entrance end, turn around and streak back to where a few of his prospective frat buddies would be waiting, car idling, door open, laughter exiting it along with clouds of pot smoke.
Justin had been lucky his entire 19 years. When he turned 18 he received a high wartime draft number. Three hundred-something. Around the same time he got accepted into a college he had no business attending. His SAT score had sucked. One time he'd been in a car accident with his parents. Both his mother and father had to be hospitalized while Justin walked away without a scratch. Justin and five of his buddies could commit some kind of petty crime, such as stealing gum and candy, and five of the six would get caught. Only Justin would walk away scot-free. But today his teflon-like luck seemed to have at long last run out.
As he approached the Safeway entrance at full tilt, his exposed penis wagging all the while, he'd run smack into Officer Steadman exiting the grocery through the automatic doors. Steadman, a bag of groceries in his left arm, ordered Justin to halt, walked over to the boy, took hold of him forcefully by the skinny arm and led him to the far side of his patrol car. While a small crowd of gawkers gathered officer Steadman cuffed Justin and loaded him into the back of his car. Justin, not used to getting in trouble, was near tears. He saw his life going up in smoke. A criminal record, expelled from college...he'd be lucky to get his old job back bagging groceries at another Safeway in his home town. He would be a laughingstock. He'd never live the embarrassment of this down, not if he lived to be 90. Worst of all he'd lose his college exemption and have to roll the dice in the draft again. Just as his luck was turning...
As they reached the exit of the parking lot in the patrol car Steadman pointed off to the left, at three college-age boys standing open-mouthed next to a late-model Malibu and said, "Those your buddies? The ones put you up to this?"
Justin, head already bowed, nodded.
"Well...," steering right, out of the lot and onto the street, "now they can bail you out."
At these words Justin's heart sank even lower. He shuddered. He was in deep, deep shit.
Steadman slowly drove two-and-a-half blocks before pulling over to the curb. He put the cruiser in Park, left the big V8 running. He didn't turn his overhead flashers on however, the red and the blue. The middle-aged man rotated slightly to his right, put his arm across the bench seat and looked through the metal protective grate at his young, naked prisoner.
"There are two ways we can do this, son," he said. "As you could probably tell, I went off-duty about thirty minutes ago. And I'm not looking to pull any more OT after all these riots and all we've been having. So...I can call in and have another unit sent out, and they'll put you in their car and take you in for booking. The good news is public indecency is not necessarily a felony, especially in a case like this. But you'll probably still spend the night in jail—or until your buddies bail you out. If they're feeling generous. You know them well?"
Justin looked up. "No sir."
"Well..."
Justin's hands were cuffed behind his naked back, against his sweaty ass-crack actually, so the only way he had to wipe his tears away was to raise a shoulder while dipping his head. It was awkward; futile.
"The alternative is, son, we go to my house and deal with things privately, my way. Eventually I'll put you in some loaner clothes—they won't fit—and drive you back to the frat house, or wherever you live."
"The dorm," Justin sniffed.
"The dorm then. My wife Mandi and I are devout Christians. We believe in giving people, especially young people, second chances. If you go with me to my house the three of us might sit down and share some common experiences and Mandi will probably want to read some verses from the Bible. Mandi is the most devoutly religious person I know. She teaches Sunday School at our church and is head of our Women's Group aged 30 and up. She's a saint. I'm a deacon. Are you a Christian, son?"
Justin, experiencing a slight glimmer of hope, nodded. "I was raised as a Christian," he lied, "yes. Yes sir."
"That's excellent. So which is it, son?"
"Sir?"
"Do I call this in or do we go to my house and we do it my way?"
"Oh, definitely sir. Your way."
"Good. This will be good for you, son. Guaranteed," facing forward now and dropping the lever into Drive.
Justin had traded in the cuffs behind his back for the pair dangling from the spare bedroom's ceiling. He was still naked, of course, and Clark Steadman, out of uniform now, out of everything save his cheap watch, was standing a short distance behind the frat pledge, tapping his palm with something. He had the makings of a thick erection. But it wasn't quite there yet.
"Some use paddles," the off-duty policeman said. "Some whips. Cat-of-nine-tails...that sort of thing. But for my money I don't think you can beat a switch. Look..."
Clark now stood so close that Justin could feel the man's breath against his neck. And his partial erection against Justin's pale, unblemished left buttock, which lifted it vertically, the older man's swell. Even at its thickest the stick was perhaps only two millimeters in diameter. From there tapering three feet or so into a mere curved whisp.
"See this? I cut 'em off a cherry bush in my backyard, the choice ones, when they're still green. I strip them of leaves and any little, you know, twigs. When they're long and naked like this, no knots, they literally zing through the air. You'll hear it. Mandi calls it a song. She sings in the choir by the way. Has a lovely soprano voice. Does solos. Are you ready?"
Justin's voice quavered: "For what, sir?"
"Corporal punishment. You deserve something, yes? And not just a few of Mandi's Bible readings?"
"Yes—yes sir."
"Good. We're in agreement. I use three, three at a time. Switches of more-or-less equal length. Back in my day this is how—something like this—a fraternity pledged its new members. Not some horse manure running naked in public. Who dreamed that up? We pledged our members in public. Private I mean. Our fraternity had this big, varnished paddle with three holes drilled in it. Wham! But this is subtle, son, more refined. You'll see..."
The trio of "switches" sang. A relatively gentle chorus at first. Before, as minute trumped minute, the song, the sound, became as urgent, as discordant, as something by Penderecki. His Threnody?
It was odd. For Justin. A novice for punishment. At first the triple blows were almost pleasurable; but his cock hung limp. Then as the pain increased, became searing—left buttock, right—right buttock, left—his penis swelled and grew; stood upright; bobbed with the forward-and-back motion of his prone, handcuffed body, receiving the stripe-raising punishment. The pink; the red; the welts. Tears fell from Justin's eyes and ran down his cheeks as the session went on and on. Neverending? Justin thought he might cum; auto-ejaculate. What kind of message would that send to Officer Steadfast. No, man. Steadman.
"Please!" Justin finally cried.
"Please what?" the cop said, out of breath.
"Why are you...?"
"Why hast thou forsaken me?"
"Huh?" grateful for the whipless respite.
"Who do you think you are? Our Lord? On the cross?"
