Twin Pleasures

by Josephine Scott

  In the meantime -

  She hurried home and called Niall, ordered him to call for her, took him to a local wood and whipped him until he bled.

  Only then did her anger subside and she allow genuine thoughts of revenge to take over.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Q. Did you go and visit your real parents?

  A. Yes. About a week later, Annie phoned, made the arrangements, and we went. We deliberately dressed in identical clothes, shoes, bags, coats, everything, we do that sometimes - sorry, we did that sometimes - to confound people. Only those who know Annie is taller and bigger than me can tell us apart when we do that. Mr. Gibling stood with his mouth open. Danny had such a look of lust when he saw the two of us it just wasn’t true.

  Q. Did you get to meet other relatives then?

  A. Did we! We’d only been there five minutes when some younger kids came in, our brothers, no less! Horrid little brats. No girls. And then two sets of grandparents! Oh God, you should have seen Annie, charming the birds out of their nests for these old people! Smelly old people, nasty old people, except for one grandmother who looked very much like Gran Webster, I almost broke down and cried. Only a sharp mental jolt from Annie kept me from crying, and I knew I’d pay for that later. And I did. For the first and last time Annie punished me, pushed me down on the bed and spanked me with her plastic backed hairbrush. Told Mother we were playing, when she asked what the noise was. Playing! If she was playing I don’t want to be on the receiving end of an angry session! God she hurt!

  Q. Why didn’t Annie want you to display any emotion?

  A. She said we had to show the Giblings how we upper class people really live, can take anything, stiff upper lip, control our emotions and out thoughts, you know the kind of thing. Being very English and all that. I was doing all right till I saw a Gran Webster look alike. But I have to admit, the old people, the kids, the house, smelled as bad as Annie said they did, and it was all we could do to pick at the sandwiches and drink the foul stewed tea.

  Q. What did you think of your parents?

  A. Hated them on sight. Simple as that. No bonding there!

  Q. But you stayed for a while?

  A. Oh yes. Got Annie wound up creating huge spiders, making Danny and the other boys run to kill it, then a mouse and Mrs - Mother - said ‘that happened last time you were here, I’m so embarrassed!’ and the mouse disappeared. I thought she’d do the snake but she didn’t. On the way home she said.

  “Aren’t they the most awful people you’ve ever met in your life? and they were. Then she said, “you nearly broke down, you nearly gave way in front of them, I don’t allow that, you’ll pay for that,” and like I told you I did, flat on my bed, face buried in the pillow, hairbrush coming down again and again. I was scared, Annie had never punished me before and I didn’t know whether this was the start of a new regime of pain for me. It wasn’t, it was a one off, but I can remember still the feel of that hairbrush and the look on her face and the sheer anger radiating out of her to blast my mind while she blasted my bottom.

  Q. What happened next?

  A. Uncle Phil started driving lessons for both of us. And Annie pulled her master card, got Mr. Wrayland to go round to the Giblings and pretend to be from the Council, made them clear up the garden and get rid of their junk cars. He hated doing it, she loved it, stood on the corner out of sight and took it all in. His reluctance and embarrassment as he went storming around pretending to be hard, and their fear at Authority coming down on them. Me? I waited at his house for him to come back and cane me.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  “Darling -” Mother seemed very embarrassed, almost afraid to speak. Tammy waited patiently, tapping a spoon handle on the worktop in time to the dance rhythm coming from the small portable radio in the corner. “Darling - I’ve been meaning to ask you, what Anastasia said about Aids tests and that -”

  “Just a joke, Mother.”

  “I know that, there’s no way my darling girls would have AIDS or any other such horrid disease!” she shuddered theatically. But - you are - are you - still -”

  “Mother, don’t ask!” Tammy smiled, dropped the spoon and came round the worktop to hug her mother. “Don’t ask, and you won’t ever be hurt, will you?”

  “I know, but -” Mother held her arm’s length. “I would so like to know if my girls are pure and clean still -”

  “We live in the 20th Century, Mother, and it is usual for girls to do that kind of thing, you know.”

  Disappointment, almost hurt, swept over her mother’s face, and Tammy felt as if she had committed murder of some kind. But better that than let her mother go on thinking they were innocents, and so needed protection. Who knows? They might take it into their heads to start locking them up at weekends and at night, then what would she do for a regular session of the sting of the cane, so desired, so hated, so feared and yet so loved and longed for?

  Tammy slipped away, knowing there was nothing else to say, it was best to leave Mother to get on with her thoughts. Annie was sitting on the top of the stairs, hands around her knees, looking very young and very innocent. No one would believe that inside that head were schemes and devilish plans, thought Tammy. No one would believe she had not been eavesdropping. Mother’s current feelings were all part of the Master Plan, put them through hell, as Annie said. Pay them back for not telling us.

  But really, having seen that awful house and that awful family, would she have preferred to have been brought up among the Giblings?

  “The screw’s turning,” Annie grinned, whispering as Tammy went by her. “Now I’ll have to think of something else to drop into the quagmire of emotions!”

  “Got to go,” Tammy reached her bedroom and gripped the handle. “I’ve a driving lesson in fifteen minutes.”

  “Good, stir old Phil up a bit for me, kiddo. It’s my turn later.”

  “You girls are driving me mad!” Phil groaned, as Tammy expertly swung the car out into the street and headed toward the woods. Somehow she knew that was somewhere he wanted to go, or perhaps it was just her own mind which wanted it. Wrayland was all right, Wrayland was more than all right, he caned good and he caned hard and expertly, but he concealed his emotions too well. It was almost clinical. Phil on the other hand showed all his feelings.

  “Why don’t you give Aunt Phyl a good spanking, Uncle Phil?” Tammy indicated, turned right without being told, pushed the car through the gears and ignored the agonised look she glimpsed from the corner of her left eye.

  “She’d leave me, kid, that she would.”

  “But wouldn’t you just love it?”

  “Sure I would. She had a big arse, well rounded, plenty of it, no doubt it could take a rare lot -” He groaned, leaned forward, pretended to look for something in the glove compartment. “You girls are driving me mad!”

  “Are we, Uncle Phil? I wonder why!”

  “You know why. You and that Annie, you’re up to some fiendish trick. You got me to get the old girl into a home, didn’t you? God, it took some arguments, but I did it, and I did it for you!”

  “Not me, for Annie. She was the one who wanted it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of our birthday party. Remember that? Gran Webster spilled the beans about us being adopted.”

  “She thought you knew.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that, but we didn’t and it was one hell of a bomb to drop into the middle of a party. Annie resented that, you see.”

  “Annie is a strange and complex young lady.” He lit a cigarette, blew smoke out of the half opened window. “Go for the woods, Tam.”

  “I was.”

  “I know, just thought I’d say it anyway. What do you want of me, Tamasine?”

  Tammy didn’t speak until she had the car half hidden in a small track in the woods.
Then she killed the engine, turned in the seat and put a hand directly on his groin. He gave another groan.

  “I want you to give me a hiding, Phil, because you do it with passion.”

  “Get in the back,” said through clenched teeth, as if in pain.

  Tammy slid out of the door and climbed into the back seat. Phil followed her, and had her over his knee in seconds. He peeled down the briefs and gasped as he saw the cane weals, vividly red and leering at him. Tammy felt him harden even as he gasped.

  “Who in heaven’s name did that?”

  “An ex Head Master. I go there sometimes for a caning,” muffled voice, coming from the depths of the seat.

  “You want me to spank you over that?” But she knew he had no option, once she was sprawled across his knees he could no more not spank her than he could of his own accord stop breathing. Phil was a sadist, through and through. Not dominant, he knew nothing about dominating women whatsoever, if he did, he would have Phyl where he wanted her, but sadism, that came naturally to him.

  Tammy wriggled happily as he began to spank her, his hand finding every single cane weal, every line, bringing a double intensity to the pain that thrilled her through to her deepest soul.

  She sent a message - Annie, enjoy this - and felt an answering chuckle.

  Phil was lost to them, completely and forever.

  Even as she writhed under the hard relentless hand, she wondered - what would Annie ask him to do next?

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Q. Did you place the advertisement in the magazine?

  A. Oh yes. Annie worded it so carefully, ‘submissive lady (over 18) wishes to find a Master, provide details of training on offer with photo. ALA’ which of course was a lie, she had no intention of answering all the letters. But in the end we did answer them, because of the ridiculous letters we had gave us so much amusement - we spent hours concocting replies!

  Q. What sort of letters were they?

  A. Oh, slagging us off, or rather, ‘she’ - she wasn’t a lady, but a slag or a whore for offering herself in that way, someone else wrote saying how he would never touch her but direct someone to do it - sheer nonsense. They thought they were being big tough dominant men, but all they did was make us laugh.

  Q. Where there any Annie was really interest in?

  A. An odd way of phrasing the question, we were supposed to be doing this together, and yet - you’re right, it was Annie who read the replies first, and who picked out the ones we would later respond to positively. Have I come over that weak?

  Q. Not really, but how did you feel about that?

  A. About Annie doing all the choosing? I’ve got so used to that over the years I hardly notice any more. Why do I keep using the present tense about my sister?

  Q. What was happening in the family at this time?

  A. Mother and Father were spending more and more time away from home. Not sure if it was us, might have been, Mother was really bothered by our attitude to sex and AIDS and everything, hated being made to think about us as women. I’m sure she was jealous, she began to spend more time at beauty salons having facials, wax treatments, she played less golf and spent more time in a gym working out, improving her health, she said. A new wardrobe of clothes arrived, younger looking than before, and to be honest, too young for her age and figure. She began to look slightly ridiculous wearing short skirts and higher heels.

  I must tell you about this. There was a dinner party one night for some clients of Father’s, real posh guys. Mother laid on the whole bit, the candles and the best food, best wine from the cellar, the whole lot as I said. Annie and I were asked to please wear our best cocktail dresses, and Annie, out of some kind of spite, put our hair up in great curls and we put on our make-up, just that tiny bit too much that makes the difference between being demure and being startling. You know where the line is, you must have seen it! and neither of us showed our faces until the guests arrived.

  Then we walked down the stairs together. The look on everyone’s faces was a treat - it was all we could do not to giggle, Annie nearly burst with suppressed hysteria. We had matching red dresses, silky, very sleek, very tight, our hair up in swirls and curls, our make-up was moss green eye shadow, blusher and vivid red lipstick and we both painted our nails an identical shade of red. Add black high heeled shoes and seamed stockings and the men nearly burst out of their trousers just looking at us. It was no surprise to us to know Father scored a direct hit with the company after that, and got all sorts of commissions and cash out of it, but it was down to us. All through dinner they could hardly take their eyes off us. Mother, delicate in her pale blue and silver couldn’t hold a candle to us. And she knew it and she resented it. It was also no surprise to find it was the last of the dinner parties at home with us present. It was like an open declaration of war, but nothing was ever said.

  Q. This must have pleased Annie.

  A. It did. Since we had been told they weren’t our natural parents, I realised she was fast falling out of love with them, if ever she loved our parents in the first place, which I doubt. She somehow went from perhaps just living with them as you do, ‘oh that’s our parents’ sort of attitude to actively stirring them up. But she wasn’t entirely satisfied even with them.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Are you going to let me see any of these letters?” Alfred Wrayland handed over another packet to Annie, who slipped them unopened into her bag. She smiled at him and walked around his room, touching the bobbled tablecloth, the fraying edges to the chairs, the dropped hem of the curtains.

  “You ought to tidy this place up, Alfred, get someone in, get yourself a woman to do some mending around here.”

  He fowned at her. “I like it the way it is.”

  “I don’t. And as I have come here -”

  “No one asks you to come.”

  “Oh but they do, Alfred,” she walked over to him, stood close enough to see his face go red with suppressed feeling, knew she had him where she wanted him. “You ask me to come, every time I’m here, you ask me to come back, with your gestures, you stance, the way you look at me, your whole body language cries out for me to come back. Admit it, go on.” She moved closer, knew her perfume was filling his senses, knew her personal musk was penetrating to his basic instincts.

  “God, I’d give a lot to have you under my cane!” He turned away with visible effort, sat down in a chair, put his head in his hands. “However did I get mixed up with a woman like you?”

  “By being weak.” She strode to the radio, turned it on, changed stations, turned it off again, touch a sepia photograph of a stern looking couple, and turned back.

  “And because you’re weak, you do what I say, not what you want to do, Alfred Wrayland.” He moaned slightly, just enough for her to hear. “Incidentally, you did a first class job on the Giblings, thank you. They’ve cleaned up their act something wonderful.”

  “I hated doing it.”

  “I know that. It made it all the more enjoyable for me.”

  The doorbell rang, stopping Annie from saying anything else. She slipped quietly into the kitchen, turning up her nose in distaste. I’ll have to do something about this, she thought, get him to spend some money on the place or something. Perhaps even find somewhere else, this is awful.

  But with an ear pressed to the door, and the sound of a cane falling hard on an upturned backside, Annie forgot her distaste. There was something about the sound of punishment, the sound of cane or strap coming down on flesh, the solid THWACK of punishment instrument on living skin. The sound of a voice crying out in pain, in suffering, in terror at more to come, that underlying fear that there would be more, that the recipient would not be able to stand it, it would be terrible, fear and longing and sheer surges of need combined to make the most evocative sound in the world. For a dominant.

  And for a subm
issive too, she thought. I’ll have Tammy here next time, see how she reacts to the sounds of a caning, a good solid caning. Instead of her being under the cane I’ll get her to listen to it, and feed on her feelings. She leaned against the door. It was a man being caned, not as interesting as a woman. Annie knew in her own heart she preferred the women being punished, they cried more, they begged for mercy more, they gave more under punishment than the stoical men.

  A devil-may-care mood swept over Annie, and she giggled. She heard the man cry out as the cane whacked down again. She smiled, hitched her skirt a little higher and walked boldly into the room.

  “Alfred - oh I’m sorry, were you busy?” Alfred stood, cane raised, eyes wide in shock and sheer annoyance, the man looked round and groaned. “Yes, I am busy as it happens,” Alfred Wrayland snapped. “Would you leave?”

  “Well, no, I’ll just stay and watch - now I’m here,” and Annie sat on the arm of the chair, crossed her legs, letting her foot swing idly backwards and forwards.

  “Excuse me!” Alfred snorted, and went on caning the man, slowly and hard. Annie watched, saw the lines being created, felt the thrill of domination. That could be me! She thought, why don’t I do that? A stranger. Yes, I’d like to do it to strangers.

  The man got up, pulled up his trousers, glanced at Annie again and mumbled something as he left, leaving the usual money on the table. Alfred saw him to the door, and stormed back in, face red, eyes wild.

  “Damn you! Why did you have to come in?”

  “Why not? I have as much right as you to be here, don’t I?”

  “Well no -” Then the anger began to drain and he smiled. “You did an excellent job on humiliating him, he’s pleading to come back and do it again!”

  “We could make a good pair, Alfred, you and I together.” Annie moved close to him again, sensing his emotions as she did before. She straightened his tie, smoothed his hair, ran a finger down the side of his face. It was the first time she had ever touched him, and he reacted violently. His arms shook and his lips trembled with suppressed feelings.