by Hall, Denise
There was a note of amusement in the guard’s voice as he replied, “Not a problem. Your barracks’ master will need to sign it.”
Then he went to the table. There was a chorus of groans and pleading as he began to pass slips out to each of them.
“But we weren’t talking to her!”
“She talked to us!”
“Oh no, please! I’ve already got a demerit! Please, sir!”
“Now you’ll have two,” was all the guard said, and he calmly walked away.
That put an end to the whispers. In fact, as Mercy sat frozen on her stool, she heard the stiff scrape of chair legs on the stone floor and the group moved off to another table.
She shook all over, holding the slip in her fingers, staring at it until the words blurred. She barely even heard the bell ring, calling the Lessers back to their skill rooms. Though she didn’t turn around until after they all were gone, she knew they stared at her as they left. She could feel their eyes burning vengeful holes into her back.
She slid slowly off the stool. She barely felt the battered muscles of her buttocks protesting at the slightest involuntary touch of the seat against her tender flesh. By the end of the day, she knew it would be a whole lot worse. She still had the twelve strokes she’d earned yesterday, a Demerit caning and—if Shipe signed the slip as she knew he would, she swallowed hard—the worst thrashing of her life to bear before Lights Out.
Mercy picked up the pad of paper and pencil from where she’d left it on her desk and went back to the shelf she’d been in the process of cataloging before the mid-morning break had sent her to the corner. Tears blurred her eyes making it difficult to read each title and the names of the authors. For the rest of the time until eleven, when she straightened her desk and left for the exercise track, she barely got anything done.
Because she didn’t know what else to do, she took the disciplinary slip with her. In the shower room, she left the white note lying on the bench, shamefully tucked underneath her neatly folded tunic, before donning her windbreaker and shoes and jogging outside into the cold. She did fifty jumping jacks and twenty push-ups, and since she had no way of telling what time it was out here, only took three of her regular laps.
Afraid that she might be late to lunch, she rushed through her shower and only partially dried her hair before running a hasty comb through the tangles. With the slip in hand, as she made her way to the dining hall she tried to think of what she could tell Shipe about the incident that might soften his hand toward her. Every excuse, including the stark truth, she ended up discarding. Shipe wasn’t a man to be softened, and the realization that nothing she said was likely to make a difference was a bitter one to have to swallow.
Mercy arrived for lunch ten minutes early. The hall was empty but for two masters quietly conversing on the dais. Neither said a word to her as she crept down the aisle to stand silently by her chair. Head bowed, she stared down at the sandwich on her plate, holding the slip in nervous hands as she waited.
Lessers began arriving in groups by the skill class. The masters followed one or two at a time, and some came through the door with sniffling, red-eyed Lessers, who ruefully rubbed their bottoms before slinking away to their assigned tables.
“I’ll be damned,” she heard the Master Doctor Moulton say as he climbed the dais steps. “Would you look at that. He’s early for a change!”
Mercy bowed her head even more as she heard the familiar limping gait of Shipe coming down the aisle towards her.
“You made it,” he said to her, as he rounded the side of the dais.
With her eyes locked on her plate, she didn’t answer, but held up the disciplinary slip. At first, as his heavy tromp climbed the dais’ steps, she was afraid he hadn’t seen it. She swallowed hard, not sure if she should call out to him or not. Was it permissible to speak at all in the presence of the Lessers, or should she remain silent at her table of public exile, pretending not to exist?
But then Shipe said, “Put it down. I’ll take a look after lunch.”
It was an odd feeling, to be so relieved and yet scared at the same time. She quietly placed the slip beside her plate and clasped her hands before her again, her palms beginning to sweat as she pressed them nervously together.
Tane did not preside over the lunch hour, and it was Master Deaton who gave the command to sit. The Lessers probably got something better, but her meal was a ham sandwich without cheese and no mayonnaise to moisten the bread. Even with the glass of room temperature water that she’d been given to drink, Mercy could barely choke it down. She sat there for the rest of the hour, waiting for the bell to ring and for Shipe to pronounce her punishment.
She wished she’d held her tongue. Tears welled in her eyes and coursed unhindered down her cheeks. This was probably why Richard had bought the Interlopers in the first place; because she couldn’t be depended upon to obey even the simplest commands. She was a horrible submissive, a nuisance. She swiped at her cheek with one hand and sniffed as quietly as she could.
The lunch bell sounded, and still Mercy remained at her seat until all the Lessers had filed from the room. The masters came down off the dais last, laughing and talking amongst themselves. Master Deaton stretched his back and said to Boyden, “This is a complacent bunch. It’s been months since we called an assembly. A thorough whipping all around would shape some of these girls up nicely.”
“I’ll do you one better,” Boyden laughed. “You bring Desire, I’ll bring Harvest, and we’ll trade Personals. I’ll bet my new, studded harness for a ruby comb that I can make your Personal cry out long before you get so much as a squeak out of mine.”
Deaton snorted. “Deal.”
Then she heard the stilted ‘thump-step’ of Shipe coming off the dais and all of Mercy’s senses zeroed in on his approach. She clasped her hands in her lap and held tightly to her own fingers. Her breaths grew hurried and she began to tremble as he picked up the note. He read it silently, then lay it flat on the table beside her plate. She bowed her head, feeling his hot stare burning down on her as he took a pen from his uniform pocket and signed the bottom.
“Let’s go,” he said, and turned around to leave.
Without a word, she followed him from the dining hall back to the library. Halfway there, Shipe left her to wait in the hall while he stepped into one of the skill rooms.
“Anytime,” she heard the reigning master say, and a moment later, Shipe reemerged with a long and whippy cane in his hand. Her eyes fell to it, and then to the floor.
“Well?” He indicated with a wave of that cane that she should proceed him down the hall. “No point dawdling now. You’ve got this coming and you know it. Let’s go.”
As she walked, her hands couldn’t help but ease back to cup the base of her bottom cheeks, so sore already and bound in a moment or two to be even sorer. But he was right, she did deserve it. And at least he wasn’t going to send her away.
Unless he was going to beat her first, then send her away. Mercy swallow the sudden panic that nearly blinded her. She walked straight past the library, her head down, the frightening prospect of being asked to leave consuming her mind. She was making too many mistakes, and she knew it. Tane wouldn’t tolerate it. Certainly Shipe wouldn’t. She had to do better! She had to be good!
“Hey,” Shipe called after her, and Mercy glanced sadly back at him. He gestured to the library door with the cane. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
One more mistake to add to the list. Her cheeks burned. “Sorry,” she whispered, and ducked through the door that he held open for her.
The cane whistled through the air as he indicated her desk. “Over there.”
She wrung her hands the whole way. Her chest hurt it felt so tight, and she couldn’t breathe right.
“Clothes off,” he directed.
Her fingers fumbled to pull the tunic up over her head. Standing naked before him, she paused long enough to fold the pea-green dress and laid it neatly to one side
of her desk.
“I’m sorry,” she quavered. “I’ll try to do better.”
“Am I supposed to let you off the hook because you’re sorry?” he asked.
Mercy shook her head. “No, sir.” She took a deep breath before laying herself over the top of the desk. The surface was cold against her belly. It squashed her breasts uncomfortably and the sharp edge bit into the cradle of her pelvis as she stepped her feet apart and reached for the opposite side. Struggling to relax her bottom for the bite of the cane, she lay her forehead on the wood between her arms. “I promise, Master Shipe, I will do better. I will be obedient.” She took another deep breath. “I-I am ready for my correction.”
Shipe studied her, the end of the cane bobbing in the air as he alternately tightened and loosened his grip on the wrapped handle. “You think so, huh?”
Her breath steamed the table with each shaky exhale, and she closed her eyes in an attempt to hold back her tears.
He came around the desk to sit down in her chair. Laying the cane over his lap, he rapped on the top of her head with two knuckles until she looked up at him. His eyes were cold and hard as he stared at her. “Do you like being whipped? Is that why you came here?”
Mercy slowly shook her head. “No, sir.”
“Why did you come here?” He waited, not moving while she struggled to come up with an answer.
“I-I don’t—”
“If you say you don’t know, I’ll have you put to the assembly block. I’m half tempted to do that anyway.” He tipped his head to one side, the only display of curiosity that he allowed himself to show. “What made you give up your wealth and your house, come halfway around the world, walk up the mountain side in a snowstorm, and stand at our front gate on the off-chance that we might let you in as opposed to simply watching you to freeze to death? You don’t like having your ass smacked? Bullshit! I think you must love it.”
It was no use looking to him for understanding, but Mercy couldn’t help it. She whispered, “I wanted to be what they were.”
“Who?”
“Mahogany and China. He needed them,” she said. She shook her head, as much bewildered with herself as with her need for him to understand. “He didn’t need me like that, not after they came anyway. I wanted to know why.”
Master Shipe leaned forward to rest his powerful forearms on the table. Some of the coldness left his face as he considered her. “Have you figured it out yet?”
Slowly, she shook her head again. “No. They are better somehow, but I don’t know why.”
He sat so close, his warm breath caressed her face. “Why did you disobey me by talking to the Lessers?”
Mercy bowed her head as she thickly admitted, “They made me angry.”
“Quite a feat, especially since you weren’t supposed to be talking to them long enough for them to make you angry.”
“They said terrible things about you.”
“Did I ask you to defend me?” he snapped, his eyes narrowing sharply.
“They said you were mean and hateful!”
“I am!”
“You’re not either!” Mercy argued. “You’re just angry because you lost your leg!”
His face darkened. He lifted the cane out of his lap and held it up to her. “Kiss the rod of your correction and hang on tight to that desk. You’re damn well going to need to hang onto something!”
No sooner had Mercy pressed her lips to the thin bamboo, than did he stand up. He grabbed his crutch and swung around behind her again.
“Get your legs farther apart.”
It stung when he slapped the cane between her knees and she hastened to obey, spreading her feet wide enough apart that she hooked them around the legs of the desk to help hold them there. Being splayed that way made it much harder to clench, as she discovered when he touched the length of that bamboo to the fleshiest part of her rounded bottom.
“I am going to give you the twelve you accrued last night,” he said stiffly. “You deserve a hell of a lot more, but I’m sure the Demerit caning you’ve got coming after supper will more than make up for it.”
Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the edge of the desk. In a barely audible voice, Mercy said “Yes, sir.”
“When the Black Master’s done with you, I want your skinny ass back in your closet, in bed with the lights out. I’m still going to blister your backside for disobeying me,” he seethed, “but you’ll be healed up before I begin. You’ll lose your voice screaming under my whip and wear the marks for a month. Now tell me how kind I am.”
She swallowed hard. “Thank you, sir.”
“Damn if you’re not a piece of work,” he snarled as he moved into position.
Mercy didn’t notice his shadow on the library wall until Ship raised that cane high over his shoulder. He gave her ample time to dread its descent, before his arm swung down in a sharp, quick arc and the cane cut through the air with a sound like paper tearing. The rod was so thin and wiry that it wrapped across her buttocks, the tip curling around her right hip, leaving an instant crimson welt.
The sound of that first awful crack reached Mercy’s ears a fraction of a second before her bottom exploded in agony. She screeched, her legs snapping sharply together, buckling at the knees as she raised her feet to cover the hurt. Pain swept through her consciousness, making coherent thought impossible. It took everything she had just to keep her hands from flying back to grab and cover her throbbing buttocks.
Dimly, she saw his shadow move as he raised the cane again. She scrambled to hook her feet around the legs of the desk again, pushing her bottom out and back for the correction she deserved. Then she grit her teeth and cringed from the pain, mewing her fear.
The cane whipped down and across the wide base of her hips, landing just below the first mark across the lower slopes where her bare bottom joined her thighs. The new pain, coming so close to the first, took her breath away and she lay there gasping, filling her lungs with inverted shrieks. She was never going to make it to twelve! She just couldn’t bear this!
Mercy barely saw the cane’s shadow rising on the wall, and she snapped a hand back to clutch her right buttock where the fiery lines were rising into painful weals.
He flicked the cane across her knuckles. “Get that back where it belongs!”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, please! Ow!” Though he hadn’t struck her hand anywhere near as hard as her bottom, when she grabbed onto the edge of the desk again, there was a long red line swelling over her fingers. She bit her bottom lip and buried her head in her arms, not wanting to see the next stroke coming.
Stepping back a bit, he measured the cane across the cringing crease were her well-thrashed bottom met the tops of her black-and-blue thighs. His next cut licked into her vulnerable flesh there, the flexible tip wrapping full around her hip to sink into soft, tender, unmarred skin.
“HAOW!” With an involuntary jerk, Mercy heaved herself up over the desk, her feet flying up again, toes curled, to protect her bottom. Her legs scissored, and she burst into lusty sobs when the cane smacked the soles of her feet.
“Get back in position!” he barked.
The fire in her bottom made the air swelter all around her. She began to sweat, and her belly squeaked as she slid backwards off the desk. Her legs kept trying to snap together again as she spread her feet apart.
“If you twist your ass away from me again,” Shipe warned, “I’ll add another five cuts to your sentence and I’ll lay them all the way down to your knees. You keep your skinny ass still.”
“Y-yessss, s-sir! Oh!” She grabbed hold of the edge of the desk and braced herself to hold as still as possible. Tears overflowed her eyes. They ran down her cheeks and splashed from her chin to the warm surface of the desk, heated and moist from her panting.
The awful cane rose and fell five times as rapid as the flicking of a serpent’s tongue, each blow slightly overlapping the previous one, making one thick and throbbing welt that extended down over the crease to a g
ood inch over the tops of her shaking thighs. The last stroke sent her scrambling against the desk again, arching her back and kicking her feet wildly, her shrieks like the loud, wounded cries of a tortured animal. She wept hysterically, barely able to draw a breath.
Her sobs were punctuated by hoarse shouts as Shipe landed two more full-armed blows directly to the center of her backside, burrowing the cane into the worst of her bruises. He whipped into her pitilessly, making her entire body jolt with the force of the impacts, before pausing to adjust his balance.
“So I’m not mean and hateful, huh?” He cocked his head as he examined his target. He lay his palm against the hot surface of one cheek, feeling the heat and the trembling of her body. A trickle of blood where the edge of the cane had cut her was winding its way down the back of her thigh, but he ignored that, preferring instead to run his fingers over the blisters the bamboo knots had raised in seven distinct places. He allowed her to rest for a moment as she once again found her breath and her crying became a little less hysterical.
“Two more.”
Mercy’s frantic, “Oh no, please, master! Oh please please, master!” was cut short by the eleventh stroke of the cane, which cut diagonally across her naked bottom, full across each of previous strokes, with the tip flicking full across her wobbly thigh. It immediately sent her back into screams of agony as her hips twisted and her feet drummed the stone floor.
He limped around her to deliver the final blow, the cross of the ‘x’, raising a livid blood welt down the back of her left thigh as well. Even though somewhere in her pain-clouded mind Mercy knew her ordeal was over, it was almost ten minutes before she could bring her cries under control.
“What do you say?” Shipe asked, his low voice washing through the waves of pain, enveloping her and bringing her back from agony’s abyss.
Mercy raised her head, shivering she hurt so much. Crawling off the desk, her limbs so weak and rubbery that she could barely stand, she lowered herself to the floor. She clasped her hands behind her back, locking the fingers to keep them from rubbing where they shouldn’t, and bowed low before him. Her tears dropped onto his black boot. Gasping and hiccupping, her sobs distorting her words, she wept, “Th-thank y-y-you.”
