Mistress, she heard the maid inquire in a new and anxious tone, “Is there anything else you require of me, Frau Direktrice?”
“Well, since you're here,” they heard the reply before the door closed behind them, “it might be as well… you could profit from a little switching, Resi, that is… if we have anyone here… who…”
The two mistresses paced the corridors hand in excited hand, Inge carrying the big black Book under her right arm. Before they rounded the last bend, however, Ingeborg stopped and looked at her new-found friend.
“What were you doing in there tonight?” Then, without waiting for reply, she hurried on in a whisper, “It is thrilling, isn't it? Oh admit it, Maria. You've never seen a 'Duty' before, and you must realize it's intended to be absolutely deterrent. No pity at all. You do understand that? I hit for all I'm worth and if I didn't, they wouldn't respect me a jot. If that Nagel doesn't get up by nine, my right arm isn't what it used to be.”
“And if she does,” said Maria Daunitz, sinking into the same accomplice's whisper, “she goes back to the end of the line and gets them over, plus what she didn't take first time round.”
“If I could get her to stand by seven,” mused Ingeborg with a sensual shudder, “then it'd be eleven over the desk, after. It doesn't do to think about it, does it?”
It was indeed a wretched rank lined up one side of the Duty Room door that greeted the two on arrival there. Facing them, on the other side, stood the Duty Maid of the day, who had assembled the culprits and who, judging by the sly smile on her face as she curtseyed, had been indulging in the favorite pastime of such, namely terrifying the troop verbally. The girls bobbed in unison as Ingeborg and Maria strode in past them without a word.
The room was well lit this time, a flag presiding behind the Duty Mistress's table desk on which Inge plonked the great book, and on which lay two long penal canes. One of these she took up and flexed between her fingers with a dreamy smile.
“Lovely. They put out the number three that I wanted. A little thinner than the others. Some of us like to use the thicker ones, but I find that sometimes they just bruise. Ugh. These bendy beauties sting like fiends.”
“I know,” said Maria. “You seem to forget that I got ten with one.”
Inge's face went solemn. She gave her friend a baleful look.
“I'd love to thrash you, darling,” she said gently.
Maria gave a nervous laugh. “Fortunately you're not going to be able to do that.”
“I wouldn't be so sure,” said the other steadily, then went on quickly-“I'll take Nagel last, when my eye is in. The first girl, Hannelore Weg, is a Senior and pretty experienced. Shouldn't worry too much over six. The other sixer is a Junior called von Brandt.”
“I know her,” said Maria, remembering the pert blonde from a Science class.
Ingeborg Untermacher swept the stick through the air with a voluptuous slice. “God, these things were made to cut young girl-flesh, weren't they just? Most efficient instruments.” She bent elastically and thumbed off her underpants. Catching Maria's eye she explained with a loose grin, “More ease of movement like that. And… and… by the way, if you catch one of them lowering her eyes, for a look, don't hesitate to… Mary darling, I suggest you stand over there… yes, by the bars, that way you can see their faces as well… do you want to masturbate, by the way? We don't usually, during.”
“No, of course not,” Maria Daunitz replied with a quick flush.
Ingeborg gave her a rather roguish wink and with a twirl that lifted the skimpy silk off the slab of one sulcus, turned to the door with her stick- “Let's just go out and frighten them a bit first, shall we, I always like to.”
They went out. The three girls waiting their turn for punishment looked extremely solemn. The first, directly across from the door facing the maid, was Hannelore Weg, a tall, slim, rather short-sighted brunette with silky straight hair. She stared straight ahead of her. Helen von Brandt, next in line, was visibly trembling, with traces of tears on her long lashes. The last, as arranged now by the maid on Ingeborg's order, was the “niner,” Steffi Nagel, a rather ordinary-looking brownette with an expressionless face. The first wore gold, the two others green.
Ingeborg Untermacher stood back with feet astride, flexing her cane across her sturdy thighs, and looked at the trio with a well-stimulated dislike.
“You three are going to be caned as hard as possible across the bottom, so you might as well make up your mind to it,” she said sternly. “Let's see good comportment under the rod. Bend tight and hold on hard to the bar. Tell yourselves what silly idiots you've been to get into the Book in the first place. It's still early in the term and there's plenty more of this waiting for you if you want it. You,” and she tapped under Steffi Nagel's broad rump with her rod, “it's only Thursday and if you get put in the Book again this week, it's twelve, remember?”
She turned and led the way back in, the maid smilingly closing the door on Maria, following. She felt wrought-up, tense, dry-throated. Once inside the room again Ingeborg sat down behind her table and said calmly, “Send in Hannelore.”
Maria went to the door, opened it, and called out loudly, “Weg.” She closed the door on the rapidly marching girl. Her heels make a lot of noise on the black floor. Hannelore Weg stood in front of the desk, her eyes straight in front of her.
“Hannelore Weg?” she was asked, after having taken her oath to the flag.
“Fraulein.”
“Accused of being Idle in class. Report of Fraulein Rombau. You plead?”
“Guilty, please.”
“Have you anything to say?”
“Nothing to say.”
“Do you wish to appeal?”
“No.”
“First Order. Six strokes,” said Ingeborg Untermacher, writing in the Book. “Thank you, Fraulein.”
“Strip.”
The girl's fingers fled. Off came her knickers, to be folded neatly and placed on the desk, just by the dreaded Duty Book. Then her skirt was tucked into her belt, which was ordered higher, almost under her ribs. Ingeborg knowingly inspected the sleek, liquid little bottoms thus put on alluring display, fingering them for old bruises. But the girl had not been beaten this term.
“Do twenty squat-bends,” she was told coldly. After which she had to touch her toes as many times. “Now bend over. I'm going to give you them nice and low, so you can look forward to a good lesson in self-control.”
The well-practised girl went to a set of bars, horizontally set about three foot high, in front of the yawning, though empty, fireplace of the room. Placing her toes under a small brass bar, she had another rail along her ankles behind, while yet another pressed at the top of her shins, and another thighs, in front. She bent over in a lissome arch and grasped the bar at her toes, holding it tightly in her fingers.
Maria could see what an admirably disciplined position it was. The girl could not kick back; the knees and legs were maintained wholly braced and no slightest relaxation of their rigidity could be permitted without leaving hold of the bar with her hands-which constituted getting up. If an offender did this she had to “come again.” It was what made “Duty” (as the girls called it) so dreaded.
First “order” in a week was six, second nine, and third twelve-but it had been a long time since any twelve had been inflicted. Nine was usually more than enough, administered in the manner it was. The system was such, too, that it discouraged any girl giving up should she know early on in her correction that she could not take her dose. A count of nine, for instance, a truly fearsome score for a youngster, abandoned at, say, five good swipes would mean taking over the nine plus the four not received the first time-thirteen in all, fastened over the infamous Punishment Desk. No wonder Hannelore's hemispheres were shivering.
But Maria Daunitz felt the same heat behind her eyes again, as she saw yet another bottom bared, bent, and waiting to be thrashed, cut into by the pitiless length of yellow cane, now held in Ingeborg's hand several paces away from its eventual target. The fluid texture of the flesh promised extreme vulnerability. The smoky stockings were gartered high, in red, and a thick dry slot of bush showed back, at the top of the thighs. The silence was practically deafening.
“I'm going to thrash your behind,” said Ingeborg thoughtfully, if unnecessarily, as she stared judgingly at the well-divided flesh.
Whrrrppp!
As always, the first thudding cut, given with a run, seem to strike like lightning, writing its inky weal across the fruity flesh. It did so low down, wobbling the bottoms. But the girl said nothing.
A long pause. Two… three… there was a gasping pant, the silken knees fretted at the bar.
