by LSF Publications
by Alan Barr
It was 11:00 am and Mark was watching the news channel on the TV in his office while he enjoyed his mid-morning coffee. The same old news! Another disastrous quarter for growth, more cuts, more job losses. Who would have thought when the recessions first started that it would have come to this? Public services cut to the very bone, everyone expected to be more self-reliant in all sorts of ways. Why, just a few years before, it was not at all unusual to see a dustcart doing house-to-house rubbish collection, or two police officers strolling amiably down the High Street. Nobody gave it a second thought. Everyone thought such a state of affairs was 'normal', nobody felt particularly privileged.
But now, such things seemed to belong to a different age. Now, everyone had to take their own rubbish to the incinerator, and to some extent, they had to provide their own law too. With gun sales spiralling, everything had become more territorial. On your own property, you were the law. Of course, the police still took an interest in the serious crimes like rioting, or benefit fraud, but when it came to murder, rape, theft and the like, they weren't particularly interested. They would rather people sorted things out for themselves. Needless to say, there were plenty like Mark who actually preferred the new arrangement. An Englishman's home was always reputed to be his castle, after all, and now it really felt like one. And the same went for his business too. Mark's less than happy life experiences had given him a low opinion of humanity in general. He didn't trust them. He was convinced the vast majority were out to cheat him and to rob him, given half a chance. But just let him catch them in the act, and then it was a very different story! Then he made them pay in full, they were forced to drink the cup of his vengeance to the bitter dregs! Like Shylock, he never flinched from exacting his pound of flesh!
At 11:10 am precisely, Mark put down his mug and switched off the TV. There was no need for haste. In fact, he was a great believer in letting the offender 'stew' for a while! But now the time had come. He pressed the button on his radio and uttered the single syllable necessary to set things in motion:
"Pete!"
A few seconds later, uniformed Pete appeared at his door with the woman in tow. He was holding her securely by the arm, which made her look uncomfortably lop-sided.
"Well, well! What have we here?"
"First one of the day!" Pete announced proudly. "Caught her hiding a pair of knickers under her jumper."
"A pair of knickers?" Mark queried incredulously, as if the duplicity of the human race was a continual source of amazement to him. "Do you have the evidence?"
Pete held up the flimsy, lacy, black, designer-label undergarment, causing the woman to lower her gaze to the floor with embarrassment.
"Well, she's got expensive tastes, I'll say that for her," Mark commented. "Must have been planning to wear them later for some lucky guy! And yet she doesn't look like your typical underwear thief does she?"
It was true. Although Mark had long ago discovered that there was no such thing as a 'typical' shop-lifter, the woman wasn't one who would normally have aroused his suspicions. Pete had done well to spot her. Late thirties, average build, smartly but not extravagantly dressed, she had a definite aura of respectability. University educated too, if he wasn't mistaken, and a wedding ring on her finger. But these days all sorts of people were feeling the financial squeeze. It showed just how vigilant you had to be! Now, for the first time, the woman found her voice.
"This has all been a terrible mistake. I was only..."
"Name?" Mark interrupted impatiently.
"Kate Parfitt. This has all been a terrible mistake..."
"A terrible mistake, Mrs Parfitt? You can say that again! It's a terrible mistake to try to steal from my store, as anyone will tell you. Didn't you see the signs by the entrances? They're large enough! You can't say you weren't warned, can you?"
"But I wasn't trying to steal!" the woman protested.
"What? Are you calling my security guard a liar?"
"No! Of course not. It was just a misunderstanding - an innocent mistake. Look, I'll happily pay for the underwear - I've got the money in my purse..."
Mark smiled, but it was a cold, cruel smile. There was no denying he always enjoyed the interrogation, just as a cat enjoys playing with a doomed mouse. "Come, come, Mrs Parfitt!" he chided. "You know perfectly well it doesn't work like that. What would become of the store if word got around that I let people pay after they were caught? I'll tell you exactly what would happen - the shelves would be stripped bare within a week and scarcely a penny in the tills. Stripped bare! No, the only way to deal with a thief like you is to make an example of you. It's only fair. This store is my livelihood, after all. That's why the law gives me plenty of leeway in these cases."
The woman opened her mouth to protest again, but then thought better of it. She was intelligent enough to realise that her situation was hopeless. Once more, she lowered her eyes to the floor, and when she raised them again they were full of tears. "What's going to happen to me now?" she asked quietly.
"Well, the fact is you've been a very naughty girl, Mrs Parfitt," he replied patronisingly. He was pleased to see how his words made her blush. She'd be blushing a good deal more before he was through with her! "And now you're going to face the music!"
"Shall I fetch the board, Mark?" Pete offered obligingly.
Mark sighed. "I tell you what, Pete, why don't you get back onto the shop floor and leave me to deal with this. I'll call you if I need you, but I don't think Mrs Parfitt's the type to do a runner."
As Pete left reluctantly, Mark nodded towards the chair in front of his desk, and his prisoner sat down gratefully. "What's going to happen to me?" she repeated.
"Well, generally speaking, there are three options open to me in cases like this. The first is to hand you over to the authorities, but as you probably know, the authorities are reluctant to get involved in small-time theft these days. They wouldn't thank me for taking up their time."
She nodded her understanding.
"That's why we normally take the second option and deal with the matter ourselves. You'll have the board hung from your neck - the one Pete referred to, the one which says 'I AM A THIEF' - then you'll be made to stand in our shop window for the rest of the day, in full view of passers-by."
"But my husband mustn't find out!" the woman objected. "He'd never cope with it. It could even cost him his job."
"Well you should have thought of that before, shouldn't you? Before you went off on your little thieving spree. Anyway, I can't see why your husband's job would be affected."
"You don't understand," the woman replied. "He's a minister of religion - very outspoken about moral decline. If his own wife..."
"As I said, you should have thought of that before!"
"But what about the third option?"
"What?"
"The third option. Didn't you say there was a third option?"
"Ah yes, the third option," Mark smiled. He'd had the third option in mind for Mrs Kate Parfitt from the moment he first clapped eyes on her. The third option was perfect for someone like her - someone who needed taking down a peg or two. But it was part of his strategy to make her ask for it herself. Oh yes, she'd be positively begging for the third option before long! And then, when he finally granted her wish, she'd be all the more grateful and compliant, all the more ready to receive it.
"I'm not sure the third option would be suitable for you, Mrs Parfitt. It's normally reserved for special cases - like teenagers or repeat offenders or adults with low social status - those who require a less subtle approach."
"I don't care - so long as it's private, so long as my husband doesn't need to know about it..."
"But you're a woman with some social standing. Wearing the board would be the perfect punishment for you."
"No, please! It has to be the third option! I'm BEGGING you!"
"Alright."
"Pardon?"
"Alright, you can have the third option. Since you asked for it so nicely."
There were a few moments silence then, a slightly confused look from the accused, until finally she couldn't resist asking the obvious question:
"What exactly is the third option?"
Some of the events which followed became a bit of a blur in Kate's memory. It was as if she had suddenly left the real world and stepped into some strange realm of fantasy, or maybe it was the realm of nightmare. Things happened quite quickly, too. One second, the storekeeper was seated in his chair, the next he was standing beside her. Without being told, she found herself rising from her chair, rising respectfully like she used to do at school when the headmaster approached. 'I'm going to take down your knickers and give you a damn good hiding.' His shocking words were still ringing in her head. She felt the years falling from her, felt her womanly self-possession draining away, leaving in its wake a girlish awkwardness she had almost forgotten. Yes, she became a foolish girl again - a girl who had been caught red-handed and was about to pay the price.
The first thing he did was to take her place on the chair, then he ordered her to bend over his knee. It was a posture which was guaranteed to remove any last vestige of self-respect, and make her feel even more like a juvenile, but faced with the terrible alternative of wearing the board, she had no choice but to obey. It was an awkward manoeuvre, but eventually she got herself into the required position, dangling from his knee like a naughty ten-year-old, staring at the carpet. She realised she wouldn't be able to see his face, nor he hers, but she was aware of his eyes on her bottom, almost like a physical pressure. She blushed anew at the thought of him sizing up that part of her anatomy as he prepared to exact the penalty.
The office suddenly seemed quieter. She could hear the ticking of the clock now, the ticking of the clock and his breathing. What would her husband's parishioners think if they could see her now? The minister's wife, tightly bent over with her bottom sticking up in the air! The minister's wife, about to be spanked like a naughty child! A tingle of cool air told her that her skirt was being raised from the backs of her legs. Once more, she could almost feel his eyes upon her as he lifted it up her thighs and over her buttocks, until finally it was left hanging inside-out over her back. Then she felt his hands on her knickers. The simple white underwear she had on was nothing like the sexy lingerie she'd been caught with. Her husband abhorred extravagance; it was her lover who had more exotic tastes. In less time than it takes to tell, her pants were roughly yanked down clear of her bottom, and left hanging loosely around her legs. She was reminded of childhood punishments of long ago. She remembered how much better she'd felt when her misdeeds were out in the open and she'd been properly chastised for them.
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