by Susan Thomas
The Church in the small, and arrogantly named, town of New Jerusalem was built of brick reclaimed from old buildings. The walls inside were not plastered, but the rough surface was whitewashed. Tapestries hung in regular intervals around the walls bearing exhortations and dogma for the congregation.
"The Master was God's appointed prophet to lead us from the darkness."
"Root out all Sin from your life."
"Beware that your neighbour's Sin does not become your own."
"The Riving was God's punishment for the sin of mankind."
"Those who Sin will not inherit God's kingdom."
Her husband, as was his right, would sit first on the hard, wooden bench, then came the two children, and finally she might sit. This way the children were trapped between them and their behaviour could be closely monitored. She quickly checked over the children's clothes. Esau looked tidy. His brown suit and rough linen shirt were clean and correctly worn. Naomi's brown dress and linen pinafore looked very neat. The small, plain white headscarf that all women and girls must wear, was correctly in place and her long hair looked neat. No one could criticise the children. She knew her own attire and hair also matched the expected appearance as did that of her husband.
The service started and it was, as usual, a joyless sermon about hellfire and damnation; there were songs or hymns but without music. Music, she had discovered, is sinful and so was dancing. Or rather public music and dancing was sinful. The Master's Disciple, often known just as The Disciple, led the service and it was he who ruled the town. Ruled with an iron fist. Ruled with a fanatical belief that The Master had given them the correct guidance for life and to deviate from that guidance would lead to disaster on earth followed by hell for eternity.
For a man, a sin such as being drunk or missing church would lead inexorably to the public whipping post. For a woman, the vague sin of 'immodesty' would lead to the public birching block. The Disciple was not stupid. No one died or was injured during these public punishments but they would be very painful, embarrassing experiences which would lead to back or bottom being exceptionally sore for a good week or more after the punishment.
As she sat tuning out the ranting sermon she thought that no one wanted to be publicly chastised, which accounted for the climate of spying. It was much safer to report someone else which took attention away from the person doing the reporting. It was a joyless and fearful town where everyone watched what they said and did with great care. No one spoke their mind. Everyone conformed, at least outwardly they did. In the home... well that was a different matter.
In her home it was very different. She sang while she worked and the children sang too. Her husband knew but made no attempt to discipline her for doing so. She knew that he hated this town as much as she did. When she twirled the children around in a mad dance he did not, when the children were in bed, put her over his knee and spank her nor did he take the switch and march her to the woodshed. He most certainly had the right and had spanked her for other reasons. Women had to be obedient to their husbands and if a man did not chastise his disobedient or nagging wife then The Disciple would certainly do so.
Maybe it was their shared secret that protected her rear end. The loft over the stable could not be seen by anyone else in New Jerusalem and concealed something very dangerous for them both. She knew it was only a matter of time before they had to flee the town. The only question was... did her husband know that too?
In history people stayed pretty much where they lived because travel was so hard and so dangerous. The distance people could travel safely and easily has grown and grown until now we can cross the Atlantic in just a few hours. Brave astronauts have already set foot on the moon and in time it will be other planets, maybe even to other galaxies. That is all to do with physical distance, but what if people could travel through time? Journal of Ruth Watson
Elizabeth finished the ebook with a satisfied sigh. What a lovely story. The heroine had escaped the evil man she was supposed to marry and, by her own agency, escaped to a better life in the old West of America where she married the sheriff. Even when she'd been abducted by her former suitor she had escaped leaving her mark upon her vile abductor. Finally the sheriff had shot the man dead and all ended happily. True, the heroine's bottom had been well and truly spanked by the sheriff many times but, as she acknowledged in the book, it was always for her own good.
Elizabeth checked her aunt's old tablet to see how many more books like this were on it. Still another six she'd not read, but when she had done so, what was she going to do then? Elizabeth didn't really want to buy this type of book in case anyone found out. What would her friends and colleagues say if they knew she was buying and reading books with spanking, corporal punishment and even mild BDSM in them? What would her oh so very proper parents say? Her father was a highly respected surgeon known around the world for his innovative surgical techniques. Her mother was a doctor with her own general practice. They already thought she was rebellious and foolish.
Her parents, who never seemed to have much time for her as she grew up, wanted her to follow them into medicine. She had rebelled and become a teacher. Not just a teacher in a good private school which would have been acceptable... just. Not Elizabeth! She had chosen to teach in a school on the very difficult Prince Henry estate. Her parents kept their distance from her father's very much younger sister, Ruth. She, Elizabeth Watson, loved her aunt and spent as much time with her as possible. Ruth Watson, the mistake! Her grandparents were always brutally honest that Ruth had been a mistake.
Over twenty years between their only son and Ruth. Ruth, who was never exactly respectable. Ruth, who smoked pot, danced naked on the lawn at midnight, dropped out of university to enrol in an art college and then begun a career as a professional artist. Even Ruth as an artist might have been acceptable to the family. After all some artists are terribly respectable, but not Ruth. All her work was controversial. Whatever money she made she seemed to spend, so her financial position was always precarious. She rented a battered old house which was furnished as she had no furniture of her own. Then in early spring Ruth did the ultimate in being disreputable: she disappeared.
When Ruth disappeared the police took it very seriously indeed. Truthfully, that was because Elizabeth's dad was a close friend of the Chief Constable and although Timothy Watson despaired of his sister, she was after all his sister. There was no sign of foul play, no suspicious circumstances, and no evidence that she had just run off... in fact rather the reverse, because all her money and bank cards were still in the house along with her passport. It was extremely mysterious.
As time went by Timothy Watson had paid off the rent and taken all of his sister's possessions and paintings to protect them. To his surprise a gallery offered a good sum for the paintings. After all, a mysteriously disappeared artist has increased market value. The money had been put in a trust fund for her return, if that should ever happen.
Elizabeth had ended up with the boxes of her aunt's possessions stored in the small room laughingly described by the estate agent as 'Bedroom Two'. Had she actually put a bed in it there would have been no room for much else. Missing her aunt, she had immediately taken some of her aunt's clothes to wear to school when teaching. Her aunt went for cheerful and unusual clothes not really suitable for teaching. However, the headteacher was so nervous of being politically incorrect and offensive he said nothing. The eight-year-olds in her class thought them wonderful. Then she had discovered her aunt's tablet.
The tablet was filled with a variety of ebooks, all with a discipline, corporal punishment or spanking theme. Some were serious books about domestic discipline and how to begin it. Some were merely fiction. On the Internet browser there were links to organisations running spanking parties. Elizabeth realised, with a shock, that her aunt was a spanking fetishist.
It seemed to Elizabeth that the tablet had a virus that could be transmitted by touch. No sooner had she discovered her aunt's spanking fetish than she began to think constantly about being spanked herself! It started to become an obsession with her. She wondered just how it would feel to be really spanked, and spanked good and hard. She'd be cooking a meal and suddenly find her mind had wandered off and she was rubbing her bottom because, in her imagination, she had just been punished with a sound spanking. It was then she began to read the books.
Although her aunt read many different types of book, all around the same themes, her favourites were clearly the westerns. Alpha male heroes, usually a sheriff, rancher or some other 'manly' type, sought mail order brides or rescued young women from outlaws or other bad guys. The women were in the main, alpha women who knew their place, which frequently was over the knees of their men while having their bottoms spanked good and hard. Her aunt wrote comments, under the name of 'Artygirl', for every book she read. It wasn't difficult for Elizabeth to discover what her aunt really liked.
Ruth Watson saw a huge difference between domination and leadership. Her alpha males were leaders who didn't bully or boss for the sake of it; they led by strength of character and the women were happy to follow. The alpha males Ruth liked did not expect their women to be silly milksops who had no initiative, but they did have to be obedient and respectful. When the women were disciplined it was for their benefit either to keep them safe or to deal with character faults. It was also clear to Elizabeth that her aunt's heroines always, absolutely always, consented to their discipline - not necessarily when they were getting it, but at some point previously. They knew when they entered the relationship, that it would mean they would be disciplined as and when necessary.
The spanking virus that Elizabeth picked up from her aunt's tablet tore through her body. She loved reading her aunt's books. She experimented with spanking herself but found it difficult to do more than get a good sting. She knew that a real spanking would be far more painful but it had an attraction in her mind which grew and grew. Finally she began to consider going to a spanking party. She began to check the links on her aunt's Internet browser and did not like them at all. One in Britain was just for an evening and was very expensive or so Elizabeth thought. As she read about what to expect it was clear that all the women were professional spankees who went along to be spanked by the men who paid heavily for the pleasure of doing so.
There were several that were for three day spanking parties all set in large hotels and all in the USA. Elizabeth was not in the least keen on those.
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