From the Top Shelf - Which One?

This story is one that my friend GeorgieC sent to me some time ago. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

The Headmaster sighed.  "Which one of you stole the ice cream?  This is ridiculous.  Only one of you needs to be in trouble.  The other can go"

Two pairs of eyes gazed back unflinchingly.  Their mouths remained shut.

"Mr Brown.  Have you any idea which one of these girls it was who stole the ice cream from your shop?"

The shopkeeper looked bewildered.  He looked from one to the other.  Blue eyes looked back.  Blonde hair reached their shoulders.  Lips were unmoved.  They stood in their white blouses, short navy skirts, white socks, black shoes, and gave no hint.  He looked from one to the other, and back again.  They were identical.  Identical twins.  He had no idea at all which girl had stolen the ice cream.  He was beginning to wish he'd never complained to the school.

They stood silently.  The Headmaster and the shopkeeper could never understand.  The girls just couldn't tell who had done it.  It had always been them against the world.  Together.  For one to take the sole blame, for the other to allow it to happen, unless it was crystal clear, would be unthinkable.  If attacked together, they stood together against all.  They had grown up together, almost as one person, even developing their own secret language.  But usually didn't even need that.  They sensed what the other was thinking.  No.  One was guilty.  One was innocent.  But they wouldn't, they couldn't, tell someone else who it was.

"In that case I shall have to cane you both"

Mr Brown gave a little start and looked uncomfortable.  He had been caned many times himself at school.  The old hints of warming your hands first on the radiators never worked, but he still used to do it.  The words "I shall have to cane you" jarred in his memory like a bolt of lightning.  But in his school girls had never been caned.

He remembered the little frisson when, one Christmas, after a sherry too many, Mrs Brown had mentioned to some friends that she had once been caned at her school.  But when he sought more detail he was shut up sharply.  She had given him one of her withering looks.  It excited him to think of her having to hold her hand out while her Headmaster swung his cane down, for once her not being the one in charge.  He liked that thought.  It was comforting that someone had once made her suffer anguish.  Her current specialist subject was 'causing anguish'.

But now these girls were to be caned.  Because of him.  He pushed his chair backwards and stood. 

"Well, I'll leave you to deal..."

The Headmaster waved him to sit down.  Mr Brown was never one to disobey a command and sat down reluctantly.

"No, no, Mr Brown.  One of these girls is a thief and has wronged you badly.  It is only fair that she is punished, and that not only should justice be done, but you should as the victim see it being done.  It's just a shame that an innocent girl will be punished too, but if they refuse to co-operate then I have no choice."

He strode over to his cupboard and drew out a cane.  Just like the ones Mr Brown remembered.  Long, yellow with a curved handle.  He gave a slight shudder.  He looked at the girls' hands.  Pure and unmarked, but soon to be hurt.  He should say something.  But as so many times in his life in so many situations he felt unable to speak up.

"Right, Paula, stand over there".  The girl to the right turned, walked over to stand next to the shopkeeper's chair, and turned and faced her sister and the Headmaster.

"Melanie - here!" and he pointed to a spot next to him.  The girl moved to the appointed place, her back to the increasingly agitated visitor.

"You know what to do"

With his mouth falling open, his eyes widening, and his hands starting to tremble, Mr Brown watched as the girl grabbed the hem of her short skirt and lifted it right up to her waist.  Her little pink knickers were fully on show, with her round buttocks spilling out.  Mr Brown gazed on, astounded.

His astonishment turned to shock, as the girl slipped her fingers into the elastic of the waistband of her pants, and gently slid them down to her knees.  In one movement she bent forward, gently touching her toes.  Her bare bottom stuck up into the air.  He was seated right behind her, just a couple of yards away, on a level with the view in front of him.  Literally everything was on show, he noticed.

Suddenly the thought came flooding into his mind of why Mrs Brown had been so reticent about what had happened to her in school.  He had always assumed that she had received the same as he had.  He had imagined her holding out her hand.  He had never thought of an alternative.  An alternative that was now being played out in front of him.

His eyes were glued to the sight in front of him to such an extent that the first whoosh of the cane took him by surprise.  He jumped, but the girl gave no reaction as the cane landed, and then rose and fell six times in all, leaving six red parallel lines evenly spaced across her pink naked backside.

The shopkeeper realised he had stopped breathing, and gulped air into his lungs.

"Right, swap places with your sister".  Melanie stood up, pulled her pants up over her now stinging and glowing cheeks and took her sister's place next to the quivering onlooker.  She remained silent and expressionless.

Paula walked to the appointed place, and as though rerunning a video, she hitched up her skirt to show her identical pink pants, swept them to her knees, and bent forward, raising her pretty bottom to the skies in readiness for her caning.  It was identical to her sister's.

Or was it?  Suddenly Mr Brown knew that Paula was the one.  She was the thief.  In his mind he ran through the incident again.

He had been standing at the counter when the girl, blonde and pretty had come in.  She had gone to the freezer cabinet near the door, reached in, grabbed an ice cream, and quickly ran out of the door. 

Rewind.  She had reached into the cabinet, but the ice creams were quite deeply in.  She had to reach far down.  She struggled to reach them.

Rewind.  She had bent right over.  So far over that her tiny skirt had ridden up showing her little pink briefs.  He had watched mesmerised.

Rewind.  Peeping out from the brief knickers he had seen the red lines across the exposed part of the cheeks, the cheeks that were now being fully displayed in front of him.  The red lines from the caning she had received yesterday for swearing at her History teacher.  The red lines she had received when she had had to take her pants down and bend over for the Headmaster once again to give her six of the best, not for the first time by any means.

And afterwards she had felt like an ice cream to cheer herself up.  But having no money she decided she would just take one from the dozy shopkeeper next door to the school.

There was nothing he could now say that would prevent the innocent sister being punished.  She already had been.  So he watched in silence justice being dealt to the twin he now knew to be the guilty party.  He watched six more stripes being added to the six already on the bare bottom displayed in its full glory in front of him.  And he determined he would literally get to the bottom of Mrs Brown's experience.  Some way or other.

Lucky Mrs Brown! Thank you, GeorgieC, for another fine story with an unexpected twist.