Alice Under Discipline, Part 1

by Garth ToynTanen

  Karen Lamberton-Marchment hesitated, frowning, before answering. She knew of the Martinet right enough through what she, herself had long recognised as a somewhat unhealthy, not to mention unseemly, interest with corporal punishment that she had developed over the years. The latter was an obsession born of too many long and lonely nights spent ‘web surfing’ with Alice’s father away on his frequent and frequently protracted ‘business trips’ coupled with the intermittent temptation of the low-hanging fruit exemplified by his teenaged daughter’s succulent pear-shaped rear and more than ample bosom.

  Given a free rein she would have had his daughter transferred there and then, when first she had been introduced to the girl, to the sort of strict finishing school that might have employed such a disciplinary measure, had such an establishment survived much beyond the demise of the nineteenth centaury. An overly self assured, chatty, vivacious and spirited young thing, she would have loved to have seen Alice confined in a secure convent high up in the French Alps somewhere, stifled in a strict regimented school uniform and curbed by even stricter ‘no-talking’ rules enforced by cane and martinet-wielding nuns. In her mind’s eye this had always been the kind of establishment where one could cross certain palms with silver to ensure that what was returned would be a tractable, compliant, submissive domesticated sop, a husk of a girl emptied of spirit and cleansed of even the notion of defiance.

  Now she had been given a clearer picture of that fuzzily imagined endpoint. Now she saw that returning girl as one readied to swap one uniform for another, one more suited to the kind of domesticated servitude she had seen Daphne Larkspear’s girl reduced to. Her mind flitted back to the ‘domestic training’ uniform that had been delivered along with the rest of her stepdaughter’s new school uniform attire - the severe button-through dress with its contrasting stiff high collar and equally stiff cuffs, the matching cap and apron that went with it and the uncompromisingly tight rubber girdle and tan stockings that went beneath it - and her eyes instinctively flicked across to where her tall, glossed-green designer rubber Wellingtons waited muddied on the mat beside the door.

  In the blink of an eye the redoubtable Ms Lamberton-Marchment found herself yet again reflecting on that visit she had made to Daphne Larkspear’s home some weeks previously. Her mind whisked back to what she had been told about young Angel Larkspear’s duties as regards cleaning and polishing her mistress’s near identical fashion boots and how the girl was obliged to use her velvety young tongue for the task. Then her eyes fell once again on the fine mesh of raised red lines decorating Mrs Larkspear’s girl’s delectable heart-shaped backside and her mind was brought back to the surreal fantasy that was in actuality the present. Some of the more historic-looking, faded, slightly pinkish-brown, tracks looked to be permanent; a permanent branding of shame.

  In inexpert hands - depending on its construction - the martinet could do that, mark a girl permanently; she had heard of such things happening. But she suspected that Daphne Larkspear would be anything but naive when it came to the use of the martinet, nor when it came to its construction. Indeed she had little doubt that the woman would have custom specified the construction of her implement or implements - there was no doubt she would have more than one, each designed for different purposes - down to the most tedious of minutiae.

  Having the appearance of a short, stiff, though occasionally flexible baton with a loop for one’s wrist at one end and a host of leather fronds gathered at the other the martinet could be a fearsome beast. In the right hands - and those of Daphne Larkspear were definitely the right hands - the martinet or one of its variants could be the ultimate threat. And she had seen many variants in her virtual travels: The French Domestic Martinet sprung from the flagellarium, beloved of the Roman Empire, as a more manageable short-handled version, and just as the latter may have utilised supple bull hide, harness leather or, much more frequently, knotted hemp or flax cords to form the tails of the flogger so the martinet too could be found, or could be made to order, utilising a variety of materials of different cross sections to form the half-dozen or so thongs depending on one’s intent.

  Ordinarily whatever the material, but especially if of traditional leather, the thongs would be rounded to avoid breaking the skin but she knew, too, that variants existed possessing square section, hexagonal or even triangular cut-leather thongs, the naturally sharp edges of which could hardly fail to leave some trace of their kiss on the miscreant’s flesh. She had heard tell of the use of tails made from long slender fronds of a particularly pliant and flexible moulded plastic of square, triangular or even star-shaped cross-section, the whole raison d’etre of which - reading between the lines - had seemed to be that the edges of the thongs did not ‘dull’ over time with usage.

  The latter she had come across as part of an intranet search result which had caused her to blunder on to what had quickly become apparent as some sort of religious fundamentalist website ranting on about godly modesty and pious decency what it described as ‘proper and correct feminine shame’. The aforementioned implement of the ‘righteous scourging of the soul’ was recommended where chasing the ‘devilment’ from the more ‘flighty’ modern young miss was the task at hand and where enforcing a suitable ‘modesty of dress’ was the aim. In particular the instrument was recommended for use in conjunction with what the website described as ‘dress discipline’ and more particularly in breaking a girl’s reliance on, and preference for, ‘modern obscenely brief panties’, thongs and other ‘ frills and fripperies of immodesty’. It was suggested the instrument be put to use wherever and whenever an objection might be raised against the wearing of the full-bodied style ‘modesty-knickers’ prescribed - a style that from the illustrations no self-respecting teenage girl or young woman would want to be seen dead in; an all-encompassing waist to near mid-thigh garment with elasticated sides, tummy panel and deep leg cuffs that seemed to share, as she remembered it, a remarkable homology with the school-style knickers that young Angel had been kitted out with.

  The technique apparently involved the implement being judiciously applied around and about the rear of a girl’s thighs, well below what the website clumsily described as the ‘bikini point’, by which it clearly inferred any point below that area of flesh ordinarily covered by modern briefs or bikini style knickers but that would be covered by the prescribed form of underwear. This approach was said to be particularly efficacious in conjunction with the wearing of a suitably abbreviated skirt and particularly so if it might be arranged that the girl ‘overhear’ one of two embarrassing or hurtful remarks.

  Testimonials abounded showing just that; blonde haired, gum-chewing, denim-clad delinquent mall-rat types in one set of photographs - all freckle-bridged upturned noses, some with well tanned thighs on show below skin-tight shorts, one of two wearing roller skates. The other set of shots, she remembered, the success stories, featured malleable prim and proper young misses with downcast eyes and bowed heads each decorously attired in identical grey frocks- a couple of shades or so up from slate. The latter, possessing long plain white button cuffs at the wrists, high-buttoning white, shirt-style collars, fully enclosing tailored bodices fastened by ugly looking but functional dark buttons that ran all the way up the front to the collar and ‘puffed’ or pleated shoulders, looked suitably archaically modest and chaste in every way imaginable and what with the heavy-looking fabric with its almost satin-like sheen, nipped-in, stiff looking ‘boned’ bodice and unnaturally elevated but well covered bustline would not have looked out of place in a late Victorian parlour.

  Modest and chaste in every way imaginable indeed, save for one aspect; although in every appearance from the waist up a restrained, repressive, almost puritanical Victorian frock - an impression enhanced in the head-and-shoulders-only shots by the ubiquitous matching Victorian style bonnet and plain open fronted bolero jacket - from the waist down was where all that puritanical modesty came grinding to a grating, almost
disorientating halt. Where one might have expected, based on those head and shoulder shots, a billowing if plain floor-sweeping arrangement of petticoats, skirts and overskirts there was nothing other than shapely legs encased in grey stockings teetering on feet encased in perilously high-heeled little black Victorian style, button fastening, ankle boots below around the mid-thigh point whereupon the frock came to an abrupt incongruously abbreviated hem, albeit suitably billowing as if stiffened in some manner and looking as if a genuine Victorian frock had merely had the lower part of its skirt chopped off.

  It had been a remarkable website but puzzling; all that stuff about modesty in dress and decency had seemed to exist in an awkward uneasy balance alongside all that stuff about skirts with abbreviated hemlines and the rest. The addition of a frilled white pinafore in one or two of the pictures with a mob cap replacing the bonnet had seem to tell what it was really all about - that one simple change converted what seemed to be some form of disciplinary humiliation into an image of simple and degrading servitude.

  But then again, despite the obvious hypocrisy being bandied around she knew she would be visiting that site again - and soon now that Daphne Larkspear was about to come into Alice’s life. Since the woman was such an expert with the martinet it seemed only right she be equipped with the best. And that particular website undoubtedly had the best. It was also where she had encountered a martinet that used fronds of fine glass fibres, each with its own even finer thread like core of lead to add weight. That plastic fronded martinet they made could also be supplied with a very thin lead core in every strand. There were leather stranded ones having a little bead of lead shot embedded at the tip of each strand and specialised heavier stranded martinets designed for use on the soles of a girl’s feet.

  There were also certain designs she had come across elsewhere that were specifically designed to be applied to the breasts and martinets with especially light weight fronds that had been formulated to be applied to the genitals in such a way as to sting and burn without creating bruising of any kind. Created apparently to ‘treat’ masturbation or sexual wantonness, focusing the punishment in such a manner at the seat of the problem, so to speak, along with uttering the right comments at the time and in conjunction with certain other psychosexual approaches was said to induce sexual repression if carried out correctly (or incorrectly most would say) potentially leaving a young woman, over time, emotionally and psychologically blocked from achieving ultimate satisfaction.

  It had read like a form of psychological neutering, leaving a girl sexually crippled through the deliberate induction of some sort of psychosexual trauma - it seemed cruel, but with Alice in mind, deliciously so, though she doubted such an approach would ever work. She was wrong in that assumption, as it was to turn out, although as yet didn’t know that fact. She wasn’t even sure where she would go with the idea if it did turn out to have a basis in fact. As for the idea of leaving Alice’s bottom and thighs permanently marked, though; in that she had no doubt whatsoever. And there was something even more deeply and dubiously sexual about the idea of punishing a girl’s breasts, especially if it left the subject with a shaming crisscrossing patterned reminder of that chastisement for life.

  No, she knew all about the martinet, all right, practically everything that was to be known. Her frown had been for a different reason, one that had more to do with her relationship with her ex-teacher, more specifically with that woman’s growing familiarity. She held the upper hand and intended to keep things that way. If she was to firmly re-stamp her authority on the proceedings then this was the moment she had been waiting for. At the same time, though, she felt strangely ill at ease, uncertain of herself. Partly it was something hung over from the awe she had felt as a young girl standing in front of this woman in her classroom. Partly it was the sense of awe she felt now, albeit in denial, as to the way in which this physically unimposing austere looking tweedy matriarch had come to dominate this wonderfully, delightfully, pretty young thing to the point at which she had been able to take absolutely everything from her, even her name. To think that this woman might be able to achieve similar with her stepdaughter, her Alice...

  “I think I would rather we kept our working relationship on a more formal basis for the time being...” She paused for thought for a moment before adding: “At least in so far as the girls are concerned.” She winced inwardly at the weakness betrayed by the last part of her assertion, scolding herself as she saw the knowing smile twitching around the corners of her ex-teacher’s mouth and telling of that woman’s all too correct reading of the situation. She drew in a deep breath before continuing - she had to correct this; and now! “...And it’s Lady Lamberton-Marchment by the way. I don’t want to labour the point but I feel that the title underlines my authority in Alice’s eyes. In any case I am thinking of reverting to my old maiden name in the near future and so, if you find the double-barrelled thing cumbersome, Lady Marchment will do just fine.” There, she’d said it - that hadn’t been so difficult... had it?

  And yet, in truth it had. Now reading the displeasure in her ex-teachers expression - albeit well camouflaged - and sensing Mrs Daphne Larkspear’s cold, appraising eyes sweeping her up and down, she became aware of her chin dropping and her gaze averting as if a chastised child. Indeed under the woman’s steely stare it was all she could do to stop herself from apologising and her hands from drifting in front of her skirt and crossing at the wrist in the classic pose of contrition that Daphne Larkspear had always demanded of ‘her girls’ when a teacher.

  It was a measure of the woman’s sheer power of will - she had not even been one of ‘her girls’, at least not one of those who had been subjected to Daphne Larkspear’s approach. A cold shower one morning, a caning the next, a cold shower the day after and so on and so on - that’s how it went, day after day after day. She always preferred straight heterosexual girls. Her claim had been that she could ‘turn’ any girl. But more than that; she used to say that given sufficient time not only could she ‘turn’ a girl but that she could make that change permanent and that furthermore the girl would come to love her with a devotion beyond measure, like a puppy dog for its mistress. Of course in the school environment she had never had ‘sufficient’ time - she had been talking of a timescale of years. But of course at this point she had had a girl under her wing over a timescale of years and Karen Lamberton-Marchment couldn’t help but wonder what that had done to this ‘Angel’ of hers sexuality. And what could she do with Alice’s sexual identity given that ‘sufficient time’ of hers? She was about to find out.

  “Face front, Angel, dear.” Mrs Larkspear had turned her attention back to her cringing charge - much to the relief of the rapidly weakening Karen Lamberton-Marchment. Despite having been drawn down at the rear the girl’s knickers steadfastly remained in place at the crotch. Indeed, there was a pronounced intimate ‘dimple’ at the crotch even though the now unfastened waistband drooped deeply, revealing much of the girl’s pleasantly rounded lower belly. Mrs Larkspear stood to one side, bending at the waist like a store demonstrator showing off some new product. She slowly peeled the clinging fabric down the girl’s plump milky thighs until only that inwardly folded portion of the gusset remained in place, the fact that the girl was kept thoroughly depilated being made patently clear. Then she eased the slightly tented fabric away from the girl’s most intimate region and the dimple remained. The fabric came away from the girl’s glistening lips with gooey silvery strings of arousal hanging momentarily like spidery threads as the gusset reluctantly pulled away, reviling the ‘dimple’ to be the external manifestation of an inwardly penetrating wedge of soft, silky rubbery plastic.

  This latter hillock was festooned all over its surface with fine filaments interspersed by little rubbery bumps. It had at its centre a long protrusion about the width of a slender finger that slowly slid out of the depths of the girl’s body to then droop forward under its own weight. This latter appeared t
o possess a notably springy character and had a slightly bulbous tip that appeared to be weighted in some manner and that swung and sprung to and thro.

  “I call it my little teaser.” Daphne Larkspear smiled back at her ex-pupil as she offered her words of explanation. “There is another little rubbery bobble thingy here at the rear that I am sure feels quite disconcertingly pleasant once it nestles its way up against her anus.” Squatting slightly now, Daphne Larkspear tilted the gusset of the girls knickers, the greyish polythene interior contrasting starkly with the more conventional bottle-green fabric exterior and glistening with sweat and stringy feminine secretions - evidence of the girl’s undoubted arousal. “It just sort of jiggles and tickles - doesn’t it dear?”

  “Yes Miss Daphne.” The girl looked now like she wanted to die, her cheeks burning more than ever - if that was humanly possible.

  “...Against that little bum-hole of yours - isn’t that right, Angel?”

  “Yes Miss Daphne.”

  “It tickles against your... what? Your what, Angel?” Daphne Larkspear seemed determined to drag every last vestige of pride out of the girl. But then Karen Lamberton-Marchment had begun to understand now: The whole point of all this was to pull the girl down in front of her as soon as possible to underline in the girl’s mind that from this moment forth she was to be as much at the beck and call of Karen Lamberton-Marchment - and indeed that of her house keeper - as Daphne Larkspear herself.

  “My, my... b,bbum-hole... Miss Daphne... It, it, it tickles my little bum-hole.... Miss Daphne.” The girl was obviously very well rehearsed but clearly was struggling with this particularly cleverly formed insult to her dignity.

  “Then of course there is this...” Moving on from that particular thread of torment for a moment Mrs Larkspear drew a finger along a beard of fine polythene filaments that ran like a silky soft comb-like structure through the centre of the gusset, from the little conical ‘bobble’ at the rear to the early slopes of the wedge-like structure at the front. “Quite maddeningly soft; just barely brushes the sensitive flesh along this region here.” In demonstration she drew a slender finger along the girl’s crutch, the long nail barely brushing the girl’s skin. In response the girl gave out, not a little shivery sigh, but rather a full-blooded, passionately open-mouthed gasp.