"Bernard, you know the position." She said calmly.
I hated it when she was this methodical, machine-like, no feelings.
Resigned to my fate, I planted my palms to the kitchen table and waited for the first blow. She revelled in the time she took to land it, I could hear her breathing getting heavier in the silence before the searing pain would bring the tears to my eyes. I would not give her the satisfaction of crying out, I promised myself that this time I would bite my lip and just take it.
My nails gripped into the tablecloth dragging and bunching it under my hands in anticipation of the fire that was surely to come any second now. I could hear the rustle of her clothing but I dared not look, I knew better than to look. The sound that I dreaded filled the room as the air swished around the cane as she took her practice stroke, I involuntarily tensed and took a deep breath expecting the pain. The watched tablecloth as it gathered under my palms then I closed my eyes holding the breath.
'Whack!"
I couldn't hold on to the breath as much as I had tried, it was starting to burn and I had to let it go. She had been waiting patiently and the second she heard the breath escaping my lips she struck inciting a scream of piercing agony, it echoed as it bounced off the walls around the room.
"Nice," she hissed beside me through clenched teeth, "Three more."
I shuffled in my bunched jeans gathered around my ankles, shaking on the balls of my feet trying to somehow get rid of the searing heat that ripped through my body. The next blow I was not ready for, it felt like she had broken the skin and I howled like a dog, tears were falling from my cheeks and dripping onto the cloth between my clenched fists. I had promised that this time I wouldn't cry, I would not let her see me sob but my whole body was convulsing and I still had two to come. I felt the desperation, the need to get out of the way but I knew that if I did, it would only get worse.
***************************************************
My Aunt Susan had taken myself and my sister in when my father had died, he died in a freak accident in the bad storms of 2019. That was nearly five years ago and I was seventeen at the time. It was a month before my eighteenth birthday and Angela was fifteen, coming on twenty-five. She had always been the confident one between the two of us, I was the more nerdy type where as she was out at every opportunity she had.
A lightning strike had hit a tree as he was driving down from Aldershot on leave from his regiment, it crushed his car killing him instantly.
Myself and Angie were under age and our Aunt Susan, my dad's older sister stepped up to be our guardian until we were of legal age. Our family home was sold and we were both moved into her big house in Kensington, London.
My Aunt was rich, seriously wealthy, her house backed on to Kensington Park. She was a stunningly beautiful woman in her late forties and was my father's eldest sister of three, she always looked immaculate wearing made to fit tailored suits and heels. Her hair would always be in either a high pony-tail or a bun and she wore little make-up, she didn't need to. As I grew up she always reminded me of an old style school ma-am of the fifties that you saw in the movies.
We had two other Aunts, Karen and Lucy, they were twins and six years younger than Susan. Both obeyed her without question and did anything she told them to do the instant she told them to do it. They both lived on the upper floor of my Aunts townhouse and loved having us live with them.
The first few months were ok-ish, but our father had died so it was understandable that neither of us were in the best of spirits. Aunt Lucy would not let us mope about the house so she made picnics and things to get us out into the park to see the guards horses and feed the ducks, she was the nicest of the three sisters by far.
I didn't realise it at the time but I was as naive as it comes, I had led an incredibly sheltered live up to this point and at the age of seventeen most kids would be rebelling, or out exploring their surrounding world. I was content to please Lucy by feeding ducks.
I had just turned eighteen and having no friends where we lived now, my Aunts took me and my sister out for a birthday treat, a night out shopping and eating in London. Everywhere we went, no matter what shop or street, people seemed to know Aunt Susan. We walked into a fully booked restaurant just off Trafalgar Square and miraculously, they found us the best seats in the place. As people walked by, some would nod their heads in acknowledgement, it was like sitting with the Queen. I even recognised one man from the TV, I was sure he was an MP from the front benches of parliament.
Aunt Susan really took to Angie, whenever we went out she would make sure that she patted the immediate seat next to her and dutifully, my sister would sit there. In turn, Angie idolised Aunt Susan and like Karen and Lucy, she did whatever our Aunt asked, whenever she asked. Angie and I had a love hate relationship like most siblings but if the truth were know, I absolutely adored her. She was gorgeous, witty, outgoing, smart, everything that I wasn't and I envied her ability to blend in to any setting. I stood out like a sore thumb and the more self-conscious I became of it, the worse I got.
Having to live in a strange city and not knowing anyone just made things worse but Angie seemed to thrive. What made things even harder was being a permanently horny eighteen year old and moving into a house full of only women. I had to get used to girlie things such as hosiery laying around and even worse, seeing those same women walking around wearing the stuff. Some days it was pure torture and I am pretty certain that Angie flaunted herself to me in her frillies on purpose.
Being solely brought up by only my father because my mother had left us when we were young, things like tights and stockings were new to me. I found that I loved the texture and the smell of the many different coloured nylons as they hung over the middle floor bath to dry. That room was used solely as a drying room for my Aunts undies, apparently their stockings had to drip dry so as not to stretch. I made many an excuse to visit that bathroom on as many occasions as I could get away with, I would spend many happy moments savouring the silkiness between my fingers and burying my face into the welts imagining where they had been.
It was on one of these occasions that Aunt Susan found me touching her under garments. She caught me red-handed with my nose buried into one of her stockings and she was furious, I had never seen her so angry. This was to be my first visit to her basement room for a punishment.
I knew of the basement room, but it was strictly off limits. Both myself and Angie had asked Lucy about it when we moved in only to be told never to go down there. Of course telling that to a seventeen year old curious boy is like a red flag to a bull but the door was always locked. Try as I might, I could never discover where Aunt Susan hid the key.
Luckily it happened to be a Tuesday morning when Aunt Susan caught me, Tuesdays was when Lucy took us out for the day. For some reason every Tuesday and Friday, Aunt Susan wanted the house to herself between the hours of 1pm-7pm.
It was the school holidays and today Aunt Lucy had planned a trip to the cinema, Aunt Susan would be busy and not have time to carry out her threat of punishment.
As we walked in later that evening my Aunt called out,
"Bernard, you owe me ten minutes of your time. Angela, you go upstairs with Lucy and Bernard will be up shortly."
"Yes Aunty," my sister replied.
My sister and I were not your typical mouthy, stroppy teenagers. Having an army dad kept us in line, well it kept me in line anyway, Angie was more of a free spirit. She would never go against our dad but she pushed as far as he would let her. He always used to say that she was too much like her mother for her own good.
Dad had been quite authoritarian and kept us both grounded as best he could, I spent most of my time on the base so didn't get the distractions like other kids of our ages did. Angie got out much more than I did and was far more outgoing than I was, I had only ever had one girlfriend and only got to first base the one time, I think she wanted more but I was too inexperienced and shy to move it on further, in the end after a couple of weeks she dumped me.
My sister was far more adventurous than I was, she went through boys behind our fathers back like wild-fire, she had a new boyfriend every few weeks. On more than one occasion and if dad was working, I would sneak into her room when she was out on a date and go through her things. Her panty draw drew me like a moth to a flame and I vividly remember this one time I found a small silver bullet vibrator, it was gone the next time I looked and I was distraught. The more my little sister grew up, the more sexual I started to think of her.
************************************************
I sat thinking what was going to happen to me as Lucy and Angie's footsteps disappeared down the hall.
"Well young man?" My Aunt asked as she looked up from her favourite chair.
"Well?" she said again, only this time a bit more impatiently.
I didn't know what to say and kept quiet.
"Ok, have it your way. follow me." She said and stood.
She smoothed her pencil skirt so it hugged her shapely thighs and beckoned me to follow her. Picking up the old teapot from the mantlepiece, she turned it upside down shook an old key from it, so that's where she hid it. Her eyes never left mine as she shook it from its hiding place as if she knew I had been looking for it for the last four months.
"You have to be punished Bernard, you know that don't you? you should never touch a ladies special things unless she gives her express permission."
I followed behind her out of the room and down through the hallway, her pointed heels clicked on the polished wooden hardwood floor as she stepped between the rugs. I couldn't tear my eyes from her behind as it struggled to rip free of the tight material as she sashayed a few feet in front of me. She had this way of twisting an ankle as she walked causing a wiggle in her hips sending my mind into a frenzy.
As she turned the key in the lock she glanced over her shoulder, I instinctively lowered my head and looked down. The door creaked open to reveal a plush red carpet on a staircase leading downward, I wondered why it was always locked to us, I would soon find out.
Aunt Susan clicked a light switch at the top of the staircase just inside the door leading down to the basement, I think I was expecting a dark dingey and maybe even damp place, but it could not be more different than I imagined.
As the light flickered and filled the room, I saw that it was huge. The room covered the area of the whole ground floor of the house, only underground.
What I saw shocked me, there were heavy chains hanging from metal rings in the ceiling. Five wooden racks behind glass were fixed to the walls with what looked like sex-toys with various masks and costumes. One held floggers and canes of varying thicknesses and sizes, in a glass case in the centre of the room lit up by an overhead lamp, was a bullwhip rolled up like the one Indiana Jones uses in the films.
Around the external walls were three huge black wooden crosses in the shape of X's attached and fixed to the walls, they had cuffs and leather restraints at the points of each. A pommel horse sat next to the glass case with ropes and another set of handcuffs on hooks attached to the end of it.
"What the fuck!" I hissed under my breath, this was like a medieval dungeon.
Aunt Susan walked to the rack on the side wall, opened the glass door and fingered one of the garden canes. It was then that it really dawned on me, she was quite serious about a punishment, she was going to cane me!
I started to back up, trying my best to feel for the bottom of the stairs with my heels when she looked back.
"Where do you think you are going young man?"
She took a three foot cane from the wall and tested the tension of it in her hands, all the time her eyes never deviated from the death stare at me. I noticed that her lips almost twisted into a smile as she saw the panic that had overtaken me. At last I felt the bottom stair at the back of my shoe and almost fell backwards, I was about to turn when she spoke again.
"Bernard this is a crossroad in your life, you have a choice to make. Accept your punishment like a man or leave, and by leave, I mean the house."
