by DJ Black
Caitlin Rand sat at her desk with an anxious pout as if she were kissing the air. Her royal blue eyes scanned the print out: eight traffic violations no less, and now it seemed she was two months in arrears with her local taxes. A strand of blue-black hair escaped her otherwise immaculate pudding-basin bob and she idly combed it back with her thumb.
Most people knew her as Cait, at least back at the capital they had. Out here in the boondocks hardly anyone knew her at all. Here she was an outsider and she suspected most of her new colleagues thought she looked down on them. After all, sometimes it was hard not to. She looked again at the petty local bureaucratic notices stacked on her desk.
The relocation was playing havoc with her accounts and it looked like her standing orders must have been suspended. The pro forma notice that accompanied the tax demands mentioned 28 days and a risk of community demerits, she barely read the standard blurb. Cait sighed and tossed the documents aside. It looked like on top of her shaky finances she would have to pay the fine. Human Resources would have to take care of it, she was far too busy organising her new department.
She hit the communicator. "Tomas," she said wearily.
"State desk code," the AI said tunefully.
Damn she thought, these damn provincials still ran on factory settings. Oh well, she was a long way from the colony's capital now, she thought ruefully.
"They are a bit old-fashioned out there you will find," Sanders had told her back at the city. "They tend to do things by the book."
Sanders had been her old boss, still was, she supposed, after all he was the General Director for Planetary Resettlement. She had always looked up to him as a bit of a father figure.
"Don't they have that whole 'old Earth' thing going on?" she had asked him.
"Neo Terran," he snorted. "They see themselves as hard core and forward thinking."
"Aren't they the lot with public pillory and public floggings?" she asked, remembering a docu-vid on the subject.
Colonial Law had adopted and still relied on old Earth corporal punishment, an important concession to a society cut off from the central galactic powers. There were few resources for prisons, and anyway people were the main resource and justice had to be turned around relatively quickly.
"Not much more than here," Sanders had shrugged, "but I suppose less people can afford the fines, and being a smaller colony their punishment centres are less discreet. It is more in your face I suppose."
Cait remembered the conversation now. It wasn't just the community that had CP in 'your face'... here at the Exit Bureau corporal punishment was part of daily life she had found.
"506," she said to the communicator.
"Connecting you to Tomas Lighter," the AI droned.
Cait drummed her fingers on the desk as she waited.
"Connecting you," the AI said again.
"Forget it," she sighed and decided to call on Tomas in person.
The long walk to Resource Allocation where Tomas worked took her back down to the front desk from where she could access the western wing of the Bureau. High narrow windows cut into the local grey stone wall casting angled panels of light across the grey carpet. The local climate was warm year-round and the high ceilings kept it cool. It was a pity the lower sills of the windows were too high to see out of, she thought; it made the whole building feel like a jail. But at least here and there were large plants, softening the grey walls and lightly scenting the environment.
The reception area always unsettled her. In fact she hadn't gotten over the shock of her first day when she had seen how the Bureau handled the disciplining of the more junior office staff. Pretty much entirely women, she thought wryly; that had to be no coincidence.
Today was no exception.
As she reached the foot of the stairs she saw the padded bench, backed as it was by a shoulder-height frame. The panel at the top of the furniture served as 10 sets of pillories, where those punished could kneel on the bench and have their heads and hands put through padded holes in the frame. As the suffering miscreants were usually naked from the waist down, their bare bottoms were presented to anyone going up and down the stairs while their mortified faces could be seen by anyone entering the reception area through the main doors.
Not only was it just their faces that blushed, as before being set in the pillory each woman had had to report to HR for extensive CP in line with their offence, then their exposed bottoms were rendered various shades of red right through to a decided purple.
Today there were three women kneeling on the bench with their bottoms jutting out towards her. The first was a pale-skinned petite girl with a vivid tomato stain on both cheeks. The fuller-figured woman next to her had a heavily welted bottom and from the gentle motion of the woman's shoulders, Cait fancied that she was still crying from her punishment.
But it was the woman on the end that made Cait gasp. She was tall and fabulously proportioned. Even a mainly hetero girl like Cait had to gape at the curves of the girl's bottom. But this bottom was dark red with a polished sheen. As if this wasn't enough, there were perhaps two dozen or more heavy scored welts where the woman had obviously been caned.
Cait paused and glanced around in case anyone was watching her. Then she took a closer look.
The small girl had felt some serious leather, Cait judged. She compared the soreness with the more ravaged curves of her darker friend. That is a stout paddle, and well-laid on would be my guess, she thought. The beauty on the end had had multiple attentions even before the cane, Cait decided. She wondered what the woman had done.
A footfall from nearby caused Cait to straighten up and nonchalantly move on, but she could not resist glancing back as she entered the reception area. Despite some recent serious crying, the beauty from behind was as attractive from the front. Then Cait recognised her and gasped. She was a junior manager, no more than a grade or two below her own. She worked with Tomas. Cait blushed for her.
The other two she thought she had seen on the main admin floor. General staff or perhaps the older woman was a PA. Cait shrugged and turned away: a daily occurrence here. She moved on to the other stairwell.
During her first week Cait had reprimanded one of the assistants, a pretty blonde that Tomas had sent to help her set up her office. An hour later Cait had seen the girl red-bottomed and displayed in this very pillory. She had resolved to be more careful with her juniors after that; not that the girl hadn't deserved it, not by the Community's standards anyway.
Shaking off the memory she looked around. There were four girls facing her on the other side. No one Cait knew, but she had seen most of them somewhere or other. As she mounted the opposite staircase she could see that none of them had fared any better than their colleagues on the previous side. She paused again to study the row of punished bottoms, but a mail girl raced down past her, so she quickly moved on before she looked like a voyeur.
Tomas was busy when she arrived. He was sitting in the outer office with Ginny, his PA, stretched out across his lap with her pants and panties dangling around her ankles. The dome of her bare bottom was already quite red and the girl looked utterly embarrassed.
"Please Mr Lighter, I won't forget again, really I won't," Ginny wailed.
Tomas spanked her hard with an improvised paddle, something that usually served as a single-handed coffee tray, the kind with a stout ceramic face and a stiff nylon handle.
"No I bet you won't," Tomas chuckled.
"Ah, God, hmmm," Ginny hissed, responding to his efforts.
Cait gaped for a moment, her own feelings in a tumble. Then she saw Jan, the office junior facing the side wall in a flood of tears. She had obviously already been well spanked judging from the heavy red hue staining her bare bottom; she had good reason to cry.
"Perhaps you would prefer to go to Human Resources?" Tomas growled. "I have already sent Austin for some serious handling and she is much more senior than you... but there is always room for two more?"
"N-no sir," Ginny said quickly.
"You?" Tomas barked at Jan.
"Oh please, no Sir," she sniffed.
"Good then you can take your spankings like good girls," Tomas said.
"Yes," Ginny gasped as she was spanked again even harder than before.
Cait was embarrassed for the girls, but tried not to show it. "No wonder I couldn't reach you," she said. "Maybe I should come back?"
Tomas looked up and grinned. "I shan't be long, pull up a pew, you may find this instructive."
The heat rose in Cait's face and she was torn between retreat and settling down to watch the action. Her prurient side won out.
"What have they done?" Cait asked as she sat down. She couldn't help smirking.
"We worked late yesterday to complete the inventory reports. I mean three hours. I called it in before we left to tell upstairs that the report would be waiting when they arrived this morning... only it wasn't, was it girls?" Tomas snarled. "It was on Jan's desk in her out tray still awaiting routine collection."
"Ah," Cait rolled her eyes.
"So they haven't got back to you about our..." Cait sighed.
"No," Tomas said sharply.
"Then as far as I am concerned they deserve all they get," Cait groaned.
"That and more," Tomas agreed and began spanking Ginny again with a heavy hand.
"Oh, oh, oh please," Ginny sobbed.
"Please what, please give me more?" Tomas snarled. "I tell you what, if you can look me in the eye and tell me this isn't deserved then I will let you off."
Ginny sucked air, her mouth a perfect O under a pair of sad eyes looking up at him over her shoulder. Maybe she feared provoking him, or maybe she genuinely had a guilty conscience, but after a pause she averted her gaze and almost imperceptivity shook her head.
"You girls..." Tomas sighed and resumed the spanking. Then to Cait he added, "Remind you of your days as a junior eh?"
She blushed and shifted awkwardly in her seat. She had never been officially reprimanded, but Deighton Sanders had put her across his knee more than once. At the time it had been beyond embarrassing, but she guessed she deserved it and later she had been more or less grateful for his guidance.
"Maybe we could discuss the new..." Cait said sharply to cover herself.
Tomas stopped and studied Ginny's very red bare bottom. Then he gave a perfunctory nod and set Ginny on her feet. "We're done, now go and face that wall next to Jan."
"Yes Sir," Ginny sniffed and moved to obey.
"How are you getting on?" Tomas said pleasantly.
"I am a bit short-handed." Cait pulled a face. It was hard not to stare at her two colleagues facing the wall with their well-spanked bare bottom on display.
"Lady boss syndrome," he groaned sympathetically.
"Oh come on," Cait shot back.
"No really, girls around here don't always like lady bosses. Or more to the point they hate being spanked by them," Tomas told her.
"I wouldn't..." Cait began.
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