From the Top Shelf - Trial and Error

This extract is from Louise Malatesta's book Queen of the Grove, an excellent collection of spanking stories. It involves three lovely schoolgirls, but it's not what you think! The girls have been bullied by a boy and have decided to put a stop to it once and for all by giving him a well-deserved thrashing. The trouble is, they have never experienced corporal punishment themselves and have no idea how to go about it. They don't want to hurt him too much, but how much is enough?

None of them had ever seen a birch rod, of course, but they had Coral's brother's acquaintance's description to go by. Four feet long, six or seven switches. They cut the necessary twigs and bound them together at the base. Coral swished the rod experimentally, using a great deal of her strength of arm. It made a noise like wind in the trees and Coral immediately complained that it would never do.

"It moves too slowly through the air," she said, "and it spreads too much. It will never do the job!" So the girls shortened it, removed all the leaves and most of the side twigs, then Coral pronounced it "better, but still too spready." So they made the handle at least two feet in length, so that the spray at the business end of the birch was only about 4 inches across. "That's too narrow!" said Belinda.

"No," said Coral "I don't think so." She slashed the rod through the air. It made an angry whining hiss and all three of them blinked and flinched.

"See how it opens out in flight?" said Coral, followed by another ominous swish. "I think that's about right!"

But there was only one way to be sure, and they all knew it.

"Shall we draw lots?" asked Coral. "Won't be fair otherwise."

"I'll do it," volunteered Felicity bravely. "I haven't made much of the running so far. This can be my contribution. Just one though, as hard as you plan to use it on Teddy, otherwise it will be a waste of time...but be quick!"

Without further ado, she hoisted her skirt to her waist, slipped her knickers down, and bent over to touch her toes.

"Do hurry," came a voice from below. "I feel such a clot standing like this!"

"Oh, Felicity!" said Belinda admiringly.

"Well done, Fliss!" said Coral, taking careful aim. There was a swish and a thwack, followed by a terrifying howl as Felicity shot bolt upright, clutching her rear with both hands, her face red, her eyes huge with shock and surprise, and already swimming with tears.

"Oh!" she gasped, dancing from foot to foot and rubbing her bottom frantically. 'Oh, that really HURT! Oh oh!!"

"Poor old Fliss!" said Coral sympathetically though her pulse was racing. "Jolly brave I call it! Let's have a look."

Coral and Belinda bent and peered closely as Felicity, still gasping, gamely pulled up her skirt at the back to allow them to observe, at close range, the results of Coral's endeavours.

"Golly!" said Belinda, her hand to her mouth.

"I call that pretty good!" remarked Coral.

The single cut had raised a huge flush across Felicity's roundest part, with three or four deep red lines where heavier twigs had got home. There were also ominous blue and yellow speckles on her right flank.

"That's where the ends curled round" said Coral, touching the blue marks lightly with her forefinger. "We'll have to try and compensate. Aim short and it should be all right."

Felicity gingerly adjusted her clothing. "I can tell you it hurts like anything," she said "though it's wearing off a bit now."

"What does it feel like?" asked Coral, fascinated.

"Like...like I've sat in a clump of nettles. Stinging and tingling. A sort of sharp glow. There's one place it really hurts," added Felicity, exploring her nether regions gingerly. "Yes...ouch! Here. One or two of those twigs must be thicker than the others, or whippier or something."

"Put some cold cream on it when you get home" suggested Belinda.

"Right. We have our prototype," said Coral, turning the birch in her hand and examining it. "Now we need to get busy and make one more like it."

"More? Why?"

For answer, Coral pointed to the tips of the birch. "It's already begun to fray. If we give him, say, half a dozen like that, we may well find ourselves with only a stump left to whack him with, in case he needs more. So we need a spare."

"How many are we going to give him, Coral?" asked Belinda, awed by the spectacular birch weals on Felicity's bottom and somewhat daunted by her friend's rather chilling ability to foresee such a contingency. "So what's his sentence? It won't need to be many if they're all like that!"

"As many as he needs," said Coral, coldly. "If he marks up like Fliss then I should think a dozen ought to be ample. But we'll have to play it by ear."

The book was once available on Amazon, but sadly is currently out of stock. It must be popular.