She laid down a flurry of withering slashes, not only undeterred by Josh’s squirming and squealing, but actually goaded on by it. She felt as though every time he let out a howl of pain, her message was getting through that thick skull of his.
Although she wasn’t keeping count, it was on the eighteenth pass that the bundle shattered, the sticks snapping, tips spinning off his striped rear end. She stopped, realizing with disgust that they were too short now to be effectively employed any further. She looked down at Josh’s heaving body, the muscles of his back quivering against the pain as he clutched the table edge. His buttocks were red and combed with thin welts from the little knots in the branches. Gasps escaped through his clenched teeth.
The pain was excruciating, like hot little flames that danced and skittered over his Josh’s flesh. He knew he was near to tears, but was determined not to let her see it. But he could not stop the reflexive twitching that each fresh pang elicited. Was it over? Or was she just taking a breather?
“Josh. Can we stop now? Have you learned your lesson?”
“Yes…” he burbled back.
“And what lesson is that?”
“That I’m to do my chores when I’m told to.”
“Very well. You won’t forget, now, will you?”
“Unh-uh. I promise!”
“All right, then. You can get up now. “
Josh remained right where he was.
“Oh, come on. It can’t be all that bad. You can’t lie there all day.” She reached down to lift him up by the arm. “You can’t not do your chores just ‘cause of a whupping –“ her voice caught in her throat. Although she’d not intended it, it was impossible to not notice that Josh was sporting a full erection, throbbing and starting to drool.
“Omigod!” Tammy Sue exclaimed, letting him go and recoiling in shock. She turned away, dropping the switches and covering her eyes.
Josh’s upper cheeks flushed almost as red as his lower ones already were. If he’d felt ashamed earlier, now he was mortified. He blubbered a series of ‘ sorry’s and ‘I couldn’t help it’s and ‘it just happened’ s, all of which failed to forestall the reprise of Tammy Sue’s ire. When she turned back on him, her eyes blazed with the same fury as before.
“I can’t believe you !! What is the matter with you, anyway?! After all that and you still think this is some sort of a – a turn-on? Is that it? You enjoy getting your bottom tanned?”
“No! I, I –“
“Well, you could have fooled me! What else am I supposed to think? Get – get back down on that table! We are not through here yet!”
Josh’s red face quickly went white. “No! Tammy Sue, no-“ But she pushed him back down over the table. He didn’t have the strength to resist, especially when her strength was fueled by uncontrolled anger. “You like getting your butt thrashed, do you? Well, I can keep this up as long as you want! Stay there!”
She looked down at the spent switches. Useless. She could go cut fresh ones herself, but she didn’t want to take the time. She paced back and forth, unable to contain her outrage. How could he get turned on over that?? It must have hurt like hell. What could she use that was at hand?
Josh lay there, trembling, hurting, frightened and mortified and still hard as a rock. Was she right? Did he like this? If not, why didn’t he just get up and run? She might well throw him back down on the table, but at least putting up a fight would argue against her accusations. Instead he was lying here, passively awaiting further punishment. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the broken switches and sighed in relief. Tammy Sue was picking apart the stacked wood, supposedly looking for some new implement to use on his burning backside. Finally, she produced a flat strand of wood, about a foot and a half long. She eyed it a moment, then strode back to him.
“This ought to do the job!” she declared, and wasted no time landing a hard swat to his tenderized rear. It delivered a shock wave over his buttocks, appallingly painful. Josh choked down a cry, but Tammy Sue was not to be denied. She walloped and walloped, and walloped some more; Josh was crying now, in real distress and and past caring about hiding it. Several times he tried to escape, but she shoved him back down and swung relentlessly until both of them were covered in sweat and her shoulder ached. She stood over him, bosom rising and falling with spent effort. “Up,” she said. “Come on. Let’s have a look see.”
Josh rolled, just enough to reveal a now flaccid member lolling limply on the table. He’d not climaxed, so she was at last mollified. She tossed her weapon onto the table with a clatter. “All right. Enough.” She wiped her brow. “Are you ever going to make me do this again, Josh?’
“No,” Josh sobbed. “Promise.”
She shook her head at him. “You had better not. Clean up this mess when you’re able. I want it to look like this never happened. And then do your chores. Just stay away from me the rest of the day.”
She clomped out, and Josh let himself sag on the table, his knees still trembling too much to try to stand. He wanted to go soak his burning buns in the coolness of the Pond, but he knew he dared not, at least not until he’d done the chores Tammy Sue gave him. How the heck was he ever going to get through those with his backside on fire? He lay there for almost an hour, quietly crying as the pain and humiliation continued to sink in. His mind reran the episode, and he found himself occasionally flinching as the memory of a particular slash of the switches flashed in his brain. How long would he relive the past hour? Days, certainly. Weeks? Months? Years?
Finally, ever so carefully, he pushed himself up. Just standing made his buttocks protest with fresh stings. He ought to pull up his britches, but he feared even the soft scrape of the denim on his rear. But he couldn’t just stand here all day with his britches around his ankles. Wriggling back into his clothes was as painful as he imagined it would be. He stumbled to the window. Outside, the afternoon was lambent with green-golds and fleecy blue skies. His friends would be laughing and joking having a grand time downtown, perhaps wondering where he was, why he was not with them. They could hardly have guessed that he was in a cramped little shed, sobbing from an ass-whupping that would have done a slave trader proud.
Over by the house, he could see Tammy Sue leaning on the back porch railing, staring off into space, no doubt thinking about him, perhaps wondering if he really was the type who enjoyed being walloped like an errant schoolboy. Feeling a sudden fresh flush of hot stinging, Josh winced and stared at Tammy Sue with something akin to awe, that she was capable of doing this to him. She never looked more beautiful to him than at this moment.
It might have surprised, and perhaps thrilled Josh to know that Tammy Sue was not thinking specifically about him and his tastes, but about herself, and why having whipped the daylights out of her cousin should make her feel so alive and tingly all over.
