From the Top Shelf - The Cold, Cruel World, part 2

Last week we met Alison, a young wife entering the workforce after she and her husband separated. Her new boss, Mr. Kirkham, is a tyrant, a bully, and a stickler for punctuality. Unfortunately, Alison arrived late on her first day; she was warned that any further tardiness would lead to a good, sound caning. Let's see if Alison is on time today, in part two of R.T. Mason's story.

The opportunity arrived the very next morning. Alison caught the earlier train again but ten minutes before its destination it ground to a halt. Some fault or other. There was a 20 minute delay. She was almost hysterical by the time the train pulled in. Then the tube seemed to wait forever at every stop and, to cap it all, there was finally a several-minute stoppage along the line just before her station. Alison didn't dare look at her watch as she ran along the street as best she could on her high heels.

She did look at her watch as the elevator made its leisurely ascent to the fifth floor. It was 9:12 and she felt sick to the stomach.

Alison had her explanation ready but the words just wouldn't come out. She was struck dumb with fright.

He was standing behind his desk as he had stood on that first morning, his face set and hard. But now there was a look of gloating anticipation as well.

He said, "You heard my instructions about punctuality, Mrs Clements. Yet here you are, a quarter of an hour late on two of your three mornings. I should dismiss you immediately but what would you do then, eh?"

Alison could feel the world closing in on her. She was shaking with terror.

"I think you're trying it on with me, Mrs Clements. I think you are testing me to see if I am bluffing. Well, I shall show you that I'm not. I'm going to give you a taste of the cane."

Alison heard herself whisper, "But you can't." It seemed like someone else's voice. For the truth was, she knew he could.

"Are you arguing with me?" The cold force of Mr Kirkham's voice made Alison shiver. His chin was aggressively thrust under her nose, his jowls quivering. No, no she wasn't going to argue. Plead, perhaps...

"Oh pleeeease..." more like a squeak from a mouse than the remonstration of a mature woman.

Mr Kirkham handed her a shiny key. "Go and lock the outer door, then get in your room and take your skirt off. And then get your knickers down. Stand at your desk like that and wait there until I come in. I warned you what I would do and you've chosen to deliberately disobey my warning. Now you'll find out what the consequences are!"

Alison stood still, in shock, wondering if she dared refuse. Surely he couldn't really...

"Get in there." And Alison found herself walking, stumbling...

"And if you're not how I want you when I come in..."

She put down her handbag and looked helplessly around. It was outrageous but there was no way she could stand up to him. Tears brimming in her eyes, tears of helpless shameful impotence, Alison's shaking hands went to the zip of her skirt. She was shaking all over.

Frank Kirkham was trembling too, with lustful excitement. He had sensed his dominance over this young woman at the outset but, nonetheless, you could never be certain how these girls would react. They weren't logical, their minds worked in funny ways. But he had been pretty certain about this frightened mouse. He went to the bookshelf and took out his cane. Eyes gleaming, he slammed it down across the top of his desk with a fearsome CRACK!

Alison, in the other room, almost jumped out of her skin. She had taken her skirt off. Now, with a tearful whimper, she slid her knickers down. And then stood wringing her hands in mental anguish.

Frank Kirkham walked over and glanced through the half opened door of Alison's office. The blood pounded in his ears. Christ! He felt a furious urge to stride straight in there, but he restrained himself. Let her sweat for a bit. He went back and sat at his desk, his head full of what he had seen. The pretty little mouse standing submissively at her desk, her back towards him, with her skirt off and her pale blue knickers nestling around the tops of her thighs. A ripe pale vulnerable rump softly gleaming.

He looked at his watch. He would let her have a good ten minutes to stew. And then he would give her a good dose of what that Egyptian girl had got.

Alison stood shivering. She had expected him to come straight in, cane in hand. She blinked away more tears. It was quite unbearably humiliating standing there in front of her desk with her skirt off and her knickers down. In her suit jacket and blouse above the waist but below just her suspender belt and nylons - and her knickers humiliatingly posed around her thighs. Everything since Mark had left had been a nightmare and now she was in the worst nightmare of all. She started to sob.

It seemed to go on forever. Alison's mind began playing tricks, making her think her legs were giving way and she was about to collapse on the floor. Why am I doing this, she asked herself, why don't I simply refuse? Put my clothes back on and walk out? But Alison knew she wouldn't. She would remain standing until she literally collapsed - because she was petrified of disobeying him.

Then at last...

"Right, let's deal with you then. You're getting six strokes. Six for unpunctuality."

The harsh voice, the hypnotically intimidating presence.

"Clear your desk and lay right across it."

Alison wanted to scream, shriek - and she desperately wanted to hide her nude bottom and everything else on show from Mr Kirkham's steely gaze. Her hands came protectively behind her. Then she yelped as the cane struck stingingly across the backs of her hands.

"Cut that out and do exactly as I say!"

Alison did it - hands clumsily responding, pushing things aside, clearing a space. So that she could lie across her desk and be caned. She was crying again, tears falling on the desk. Mr Kirkham telling her to grip the far side.

"And keep still. Stick that bottom out a bit more."

Alison now sobbing with sheer fright. Her soft defenceless bottom exposed, thrust up over the edge of her desk. This couldn't be happening.

CRACK!

A red haze before her closed eyes. And the pain! It felt as if she had been cut in two. Alison held on for dear life as the pain welled, pulsed through her. It was maddening, fiendish, utterly ferocious. She hung on as, with a second ear splitting CRACK! the thin bamboo, once used in Egypt for caning naughty wives, sliced in again.

Alison heard herself shriek. Six, he had said. No it was impossible to take six... NO, she couldn't... four more like that was not poss...

CRACK!

* * *

She was feeling sort of numb. She had been feeling that way all day, ever since Mr Kirkham had done it, or at least ever since the initial biting sting had worn off. She had taken a bath earlier in the evening, a long soaking bath, and apart from that numb feeling she didn't feel as bad, strangely, as she had the previous evening. She seemed to have lost her hysterical panicky fear. It was almost as if, now the caning had happened, it had produced a kind of calmness.

Alison wasn't really feeling tired, but she did want very much to go to bed. She went much earlier than usual and then lay there awake for a long time feeling alone and scared. And something else. She felt strange. Oddly vibrant. Thinking. Wondering. Maybe her train would be late again in the morning. If it was... well there was nothing she could do about it. Mr Kirkham would presumably cane her again for lateness. It hurt terribly and it was terribly humiliating... but there were other feelings too. Alison could see how some women liked being dominated, liked being forced to submit.

He was going to cane her bare bottom again anyway, whether her train was late or not. He had told her, just before she left, that she wasn't filing things properly. And he thought he better deal with that in the morning. Alison had given him a quick, darting, nervous look and then looked away in embarrassment. Then Mr Kirkham's hand had slapped smartly across her bottom as she left the office.

Lying in the big double bed all by herself, Alison softly and continuously stroked the lumpy corrugated grid of cane welts covering both her bottom cheeks. They were sore and felt hot to her touch. She lay trembling, nude between the sheets, though she was not cold. She normally slept in a nightie but tonight she had wanted to be naked. Her mind was filled with an overwhelming sense of being alone, and torn by shocking images of what Mr Kirkham, with his paralysing dominance, had done to her.

The stripes still glowing across her bottom constantly reminded her of how easily she had submitted.

With her right hand, Alison caressed them. The tingling seemed to throb through every nerve of her body eliciting sensations everywhere. With a fresh shock - this time of guilt - she found that the fingertips of her left hand were straying down to the moistness at the base of her belly, just the way she had always wanted Mark to touch her. He was gone now, out of her life forever, and she was so in need of comfort. She made no effort to stop the teardrops dripping silently down her cheeks, thus dampening her pillow. Now there was no one to understand what she was going through.

Well now, that seems to have done the trick for Alison. Perhaps working for a tyrant would prove to be good for her.