by Norland Hughes
The tapping at Zoe's left ankle grew more insistent. "Further, further, a bit more..." Aunt Anne's voice had a note of increasing impatience, as if she was keen to get on with things. Zoe would far rather put off the impending experience permanently, but it wasn't an option. Her foot reluctantly shuffled in the required direction, and her white cotton school knickers stretched into a figure-of-eight around the middle of her thighs.
Aunt Anne's soft, warm palm pressed to the small of Zoe's back; another sensation, cold and menacing, touched the centre of her bottom cheeks. Her breath caught, and she twitched.
"Keep very still for me, girl!" snapped Aunt Anne.
Zoe stifled a groan. What rotten luck to be mistaken for the girl pinching lipstick in the shopping centre, and bizarrely, her very good fortune to pick the one day in the month to bunk off when her aunt happened to be on the prowl looking for truants.
The pressure on her back vanished. Zoe sensed a rapid movement behind her and tensed, but it didn't do any good. A swish swiftly followed by a sharp crack reached her ear, and an instant later a burning streak lanced across her bare backside, causing her to yelp.
Zoe's knees flexed as she whimpered whilst attempting to shake her bottom free from a crackling line of flame. Long seconds passed as she exhaled, but the awful burning pain persisted.
"I'm waiting, girl. Unless you want me to start again?"
Aunt Anne's mocking tone broke through the stabs of pain swamping Zoe's thoughts. "One! One, th-thank you, Aunt."
A series of low 'whooshes' started up behind her, and she held herself rigid. It was just her aunt loosening up her arm in readiness, or perhaps adding to the punishment by teasing her. But then the noise stopped, and the cool press of rattan returned across her rear in a hideous contrast to the sensation it had already delivered once, and would do so again - five more times.
"Still, now... bottom well up," Aunt Anne said in her no-nonsense, chiding tone. Her palm pressed harder, and Zoe stiffened her legs and pressed the crown of her head deeper into the sofa seat pad. Where was her aunt's cane touching? Was it above or below the stinging streak of fire it had already laid across her bottom? The throbbing made it so hard to tell. Gritting her teeth, Zoe pushed even harder into the comforting softness of the sofa.
Swoooooosh... Thwack!
The jolt momentarily lifted her heels clear of the Timberwolf rug that was Mum's pride and joy. The split-second sharp crack of rattan died away, leaving only Zoe's yelps of pain, muffled and muted by a face full of plush velour.
Aunt Anne cleared her throat. "Well...?"
"T-two! Two, thank you, Aunt," Zoe blurted. The whooshes started up again, more irritated and impatient sounding.
"There'll be no more reminders, my girl. Next time we shall repeat the stroke."
Zoe whimpered and squeezed the edge of the cushion harder. Rattan pressed to her rear again, exactly where she didn't care anymore, she just wanted to get it over with.
Swoooooshhhh... Thwhackk!
"Ouch! Ow! Three!" squealed Zoe. "Th-thank you, Aunt."
"Better."
Aunt Anne's hand lifted from her back. Zoe flinched when a not so gentle probing finger traced along the most recent throbbing streak engulfing her bottom. "Hmm, quite sore, I should think... but it's no more than you deserve, my girl, is it?"
Zoe choked off her gasps. "N-no, Auntie."
Her aunt's finger departed, and the pressing hand returned. Behind her, an ominous whooshing resumed.
"Good, let's get on. Don't lose count, will you?"
The cane whistled down and cracked across bare teenage buttocks twice more. Zoe yelped, writhed, and wrestled with the sofa cushion with increasing gusto, but she didn't forget to express her heartfelt gratitude after each fresh stroke, exhaling heavily after the blazing fifth stroke, at which point Aunt Anne's hand lifted from Zoe's back and gave her bottom a sharp slap.
"Stand up. Stand up, girl."
Zoe rose, legs quivering, bottom burning, and hopes rising that her punishment had ended one stroke short of the promised six. The look on Aunt Anne's face quashed that notion. Over the bow of her cane, her soulless dark eyes magnified by her oversized spectacles, shone with a gleam of pure, vengeful glee.
"Now, my girl, this will be the last time I find you absent from school during term time, won't it?" said Aunt Anne.
The tears Zoe had so far suppressed broke free as realisation dawned. Something worse was yet to come. Her shoulders shaking, she choked out the required contrition, "Y-yes, Auntie, I won't..."
The corners of Aunt Anne's mouth turned up to match the black-winged sweep of her spectacles. "Oh, I know you won't, but let's make absolutely sure, shall we." Rattan whooshed down in a scything, hissing blur of pure menace. "One more stroke for you, my girl. One that will help you remember what happens to truant-playing nieces who, through their own foolishness, get accused of shoplifting. Now, stand here, feet together, then bend right over and touch your toes."
Oh God... humiliation piled on humiliation. Those eyes behind impossibly thick frames looked amused, and Zoe knew it was as useless now to plead for clemency as it had been on the way back from the shopping centre. The shopping centre where, on learning the manager had a schoolgirl shoplifter snared in his office, Aunt Anne, like a snarling lioness, came to her rescue.
The manager's hand was hovering over the telephone when the door burst open, and her aunt barged in. Her already magnified eyes grew to the size of flying saucers.
"Zoe?"
Zoe, quivering at the prospect of a trip to the police station, gazed at her aunt in a mixture of shock and relief. "Please, Auntie! I never pinched anything! Honestly, I didn't."
Aunt Anne's astonished look became a wilting glare, but then she switched her venomous gaze on the bewildered-looking manager. "Outrageous! There must be some mistake! My niece is as honest as the day is long. Kindly bring the sales assistant in question here at once."
And indeed, so it proved to be. The girl, not that much older than Zoe, looked her up and down a couple of times, shook her head and said, "Don't think so, Mr Merryfield. The one I saw was from Saint Margaret's, I think. Definitely taller and more shifty looking."
Apologies flowed while Aunt Anne nodded magnanimously, and Zoe opportunistically contemplated really turning on the waterworks in the hope of some ill-deserved compensation, but Aunt Anne soon squashed any notion of that.
Though her closing words were addressed to the manager, her baleful stare was most definitely fixed on Zoe. "We shall overlook the mistaken identity incident, Mr Merryfield, an honest mistake, I'm sure. As for the little matter of truancy, there's no need to trouble yourself informing the school. I shall deal with that."
Zoe gulped. Outside the store manager's door, she shrugged her shoulders and risked an apologetic half-smile at her unlikely saviour. "Thanks, Auntie."
Aunt Anne's thunderous face darkened. "Don't you 'Thanks Auntie' me! You won't be thanking me when we get home." Zoe wilted under the glare which faded to a chilling grin.
"Come on, girl, over you go!" The snapping command jarred Zoe out of her recollection of how this had all come about. What did her aunt have in mind now? She'd find out soon enough.
Zoe groaned and stretched forward. Her knickers decided to underscore her abject surrender to whatever painful retribution her aunt had in store for her and fluttered down to her ankles. She sniffed loudly. She could have been at school, bored out of her tree with her mate, Ellie, instead of trampling all over Mum's best rug and getting the cane.
The absence of preliminary whooshes caught Zoe off guard, but a flicker in the corner of her eye grabbed her attention. She twisted her head around from gazing at the fluff-covered Malteser under the sofa she'd dropped last week watching Top of the Pops just in time to see the cane tip crossing the triangle of sunlight at the top of the drawn curtains.
She didn't want to follow its inevitable path but couldn't look away. Compelled to watch as her aunt, intense dark eyes locked to her upthrust rounded bottom, concluded her windup and unleashed that last, extra special stroke.
Th-Whackkk!
"Ow!" screeched Zoe. "Ow! Owww! Six!"
The thudding impact rocked Zoe forward. A poker-like brand flashed across her backside and simultaneously flared all the previous strokes back into full fiery life. She creased at the knees and, with both hands clutched to a rear covered in smarting ridges, proceeded to trample her mum's rug all the more.
Ten minutes later, up in the sanctum of her room, a contrite girl with a chastening post-caning lecture burning her ears and a passable facsimile of a farmyard gate sizzling across her backside, watched a puff of blue smoke come from the car. It roared off towards St Margaret's, with its occupant on a mission. Despite the gnawing throb, Zoe's mouth lifted into a brief, rueful grin. No doubt Aunt Anne would soon find out which tall girl with a shifty look was absent and, equally without doubt, would be paying her a visit in due course.
She let the curtain fall back into place and, wearing only her school shirt and fashionably askew tie, curled up on her bed. Cane weals tightened over her rounded curves and throbbed in protest, bringing a sharp wince to her features.
A tear trickled down Zoe's flushed cheek as softly caressing fingers, mollified the spike to a smouldering ache. Oh, she'd never forget today, or the other time for that matter. That day when her and her best mate, Ellie, first discovered the disciplinary measures Miss Anne Lockhart, Aunt in name only and martinet school inspector by profession, was capable of when dealing with naughty, truant playing schoolgirls.
Zoe's eyelids fluttered, momentarily batting out of sight her shining hazel eyes. Just off the phone, her left ear still buzzed with Ellie's deafening squeal when she informed her she'd actually got through to the local radio phone-in competition and correctly answered the tiebreaker: what other movie did John Travolta star in?
She ignored Mum's whingeing about the cost of yet another call to Zoe's dizzy mate, and returned to her room to gaze starry-eyed at the object of her affection. A pair of complimentary tickets to the advance showing of Grease were on their way.
Unfortunately, the euphoria didn't last. When Zoe's feet eventually reached the ground again, and she checked her diary, she realised that the 14th of September 1978, was a Thursday afternoon - a school afternoon! What's more, a school that had already ensured Zoe and Ellie's palms smarted with the application of the strap on more than one occasion for truancy, and reported their woeful attendance records to their parents.
Ellie had been okay; she'd just got a chewing out and a warning she'd feel the flat of her dad's hand if she didn't buck her ideas up; but Zoe's mum had gone nuts when she'd found out, said she'd keep her grounded forever if she didn't mend her ways, and worse still, threatened to set Aunt Anne on her.
Mum's bark didn't worry Zoe. She'd gone off on one a few times, ranting on about slaving away to keep a roof over their heads, and Zoe chucking away the chances she never got. But Aunt Anne was something else. She wasn't even her aunt really... she was Dad's busybody sister who'd made it her personal mission to look after them after he did a bunk when she was ten.
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