Distance Learning: Halloween Detention

Co-Authored with Joost of Bad Girls Need Good Spankings

Sarah and David’s story began here

Sarah looked over the items assembled on the table before her: one notebook, one spatula, six coloured pencils, one pencil sharpener, one tape measure, one plastic ghost, one real jack-o-lantern, and an array of candles. Everything a girl needs for Halloween detention.  Or, at least, close enough. Technically, there was supposed to be a ruler present as well, though that had proven a lost cause.

 

She had read her instructions eagerly upon arriving home.  She had been told to expect a punishment, or rather a half-punishment, half-reminder, to conduct that evening.  It had been a long and frustrating week- weeks- at work and even after working overtime every day she felt she had accomplished nothing as she headed home Friday night. She had tried to keep her frustration at all the red tape in check, but knew that her co-workers had sensed her true feelings.

 

She had behaved professionally through every setback and inane meeting, but still felt disappointed in herself. She had taken no joy in her interactions with her coworkers, even when they had tried to cheer her up. She felt she deserved some sort of punishment for this, and although her disciplinarian did not quite agree, David did oblige in agreeing to provide a reminder to her of what was expected in her attitude while she was under his mentorship.

 

David had told her not to make any plans that night. Although Halloween was her favourite holiday, she had no regrets about spending the night in. Memories of her last evening of “detention” a few weeks ago had, perhaps oddly, buoyed her thoughts for days, and she eagerly anticipated the next in a way she was beyond thinking of as perverse.

 

Besides, the previous night at the pub had turned her off crowds and drink for probably the next century. She had arrived late, coming straight from work, but had stayed late to compensate. Tired as she was from the long working hours, a few extra hours at the pub weren’t likely to make much of a difference.

 

In hindsight, she had absolutely made the right decision, ludicrous though it would have seemed if she tried to describe it to any of her colleagues. All the regulars had been out, and the music had continued past several attempts at last call, winding down to a series of slow, mournful ballads that had calmed and soothed her more than any amount of sleep possibly could.

 

The next morning she had awoken with a heavy head but a light heart that had seen her through the working day in good spirits.  Anticipation of the evening’s events had helped as well.

 

As promised, the email was waiting for her when she got home from work.  Lines and detention were the order of the day, with a thigh-smacking spatula in view to encourage adherence to the evening’s rules.  A lot of lines, she thought as she tried to calculate how long it would take to transcribe the specified phrase 150 times. Sarah briefly contemplated starting right away, though dismissed the idea as counter-productive. No sense in rushing into the reminder only to court a later punishment for failing in her cooking and exercise goals for the week.  Reading over the instructions once more, she packed her swimming bag and headed out.  There would be time enough later, and besides, she would need to head out anyway to pick up the ruler he had asked her to keep handy. Might as well go for a swim and pick up something to cook while she was at it.

 

The swim was relaxing, what with the pool all but deserted for the holiday. The shopping however, was somewhat less so.

 

The local shop had been a wonderful find- a small, out-of-the way place that seemed to have everything she needed in a pinch. And it was open late. Unfortunately it let her down this time. Despite the extensive office-supply shelf, selling everything from glue-sticks to padded envelopes, there was not a ruler to be found.

 

As she made her way to the door, running her limited just-moved inventory of stuff through her mind in hopes of identifying a suitable replacement straight-edge, the DIY aisle caught her eye.  There, beneath a display of mis-matched hammers, was a bright yellow tape measure.  Not a ruler, per se, but it could serve the same function. Plus, she really should have a tape measure- it was just one of those things that one should have around.

 

“Probably for the best,” she thought. She had already made several questionable purchases in this particular shop, and was beginning to worry- hopefully unnecessarily- that someone might guess the non-traditional uses she had in mind for some of these things. Being called out on purchasing pervertables was a persistent fantasy, but she had no desire to see it become reality.

 

Turning her attention to the “what to cook” question, she glumly surveyed the options. Between the late hour and her sopping-wet hair from the swim, a trip out to a proper grocery was out of the question.  While she could usually pick up enough to scrape together something resembling a real meal, tonight it seemed as if she were out of luck.  None of the typical fresh meats or vegetables were in stock, save for a carton of mushrooms which her meagre culinary skills had no hope of turning into a satisfying meal on their own.  Of the frozen options, she settled on a pack of fish sticks. Not the most nutritious meal she’d eaten in a while, but better than the pizza which was the only other option.

 

And at least it was quick. A mere half hour later, she had “cooked,” eaten, changed into uniform, and sat ready to begin her task.  She shivered in the short skirt, and briefly contemplated turning on the heater before deciding that the chill would better focus her mind on the assigned task.

 

She perched on her chair as instructed, back straight, knees bent at a 90-degree angle, feet flat and together, and struggled to keep her legs together as he had indicated.

 

She had never quite mastered this particular pose. Memories of childhood frustration came rushing back, her mother scolding her for sitting like a man, trying desperately to instil some measure of grace in her. Her mother had long since given up on on her daughter mastering anything involving graceful movement, but had held onto some hope that the art of sitting could be managed.  It couldn’t. Sarah had been “blessed” with wide thighs and muscular calves that only got larger with exercise and made such a posture  all but impossible to hold for more than a few moments. She had also, however, been blessed with a reasonably creative mind, and had worked out her own set of tricks to get around her predicament. Sarah had therefore spent years sitting with her ankles crossed, or hooked around the leg of her chair, or , all else failing, with the handles of her purse looped over her knees. Not quite the posture intended, but close enough to satisfy any of her would-be tutors in the art of being lady-like.

 

Her instructions tonight, however, implicitly prohibited any of her usual tricks.

 

She tried, she really did.  She didn’t even make it through one line before her legs slipped apart, muscles throbbing. This little failure, at the end of a long and stressful week, proved sufficient to push her over the edge and she dissolved into tears. She was tempted to disregard that particular instruction, to write back explaining that it wouldn’t work, but felt like that was cheating somehow.  She knew he would understand and wouldn’t push the issue. It wouldn’t even be the first time something like this failed, she thought, remembering the awful experience a few weeks back with orgasm restriction. He had been patient and understanding, and had explained that such things were unavoidable in this sort of long-distance, semi-anonymous setup. Still, at least that time she had given it a fair try.

 

As always, her bout of crying ended as it usually did with a sudden feeling of silliness at the disproportionate reaction to the trivial matter that had set her off.   This wasn’t an abject failure, just a problem to solve.   Sarah giggled tentatively as she wiped her tears off onto the back of her hand and dried it on her skirt. Her skirt!

 

Smiling, she reached down and tucked the edges under her legs.  It provided a bit of pressure- just enough to take the edge off her screaming muscles and allowed her to maintain the posture requested.

 

Pleased with herself, she had turned back to the lines and nearly began writing again when her gaze fell on the spatula and the penalties of which it was there to remind her. Sighing, she stood up and hefted the implement. It was supposed to be one cumulative swat for each time she broke position.  How many times had she moved? Technically only once, as she had been unable to retain the position after it was broken. Still, that seemed insufficient for the amount of time she had been slouched and moping.  Settling on three, she bent over to begin. She flipped up her skirt and giggled a bit at the lack of necessity of the movement.  It barely covered her bottom, let alone her thighs, and lifting it was clearly not warranted in this situation.

 

It seemed that no matter how committed she was to administering the punishment, she would still try to flinch away from it, prolonging the experience and rising her own frustration.  For the first infraction, it took three swats to one leg and two to the other before she managed on solid hit to each. For the second, four and five swats on her right and left thighs respectively were attempted before two reasonable stingers landed. She took a moment to process the pain before quickly applying three more to each leg, hoping the speed would help the strokes land as intended before her flinch-reflex kicked in. It almost worked- only the sixth had to be repeated before she sat back down and re-tucked her skirt beneath her.

 

So situated, she returned her attention to her lines.

 

“I will do my best to interact and be sociable at work even when things are busy or stressful.”   How long had that taken? she wondered as she looked back over her first line and circled the number in a different colour as instructed.  “I will do my best to interact and be sociable at work even when things are busy or stressful,” she wrote out again, trying to count the seconds slipping by and yearning for the phone which she had been forbidden to look at.  “I should have done a trial beforehand,” she muttered to herself, “or at least moved a clock somewhere in view.”  She wrote on, trying to ignore the persistent voice in the back of her mind that continued to question her pace and timing.

 

Her stomach lurched up into her throat after the eighth line.  Stressful. . one L or two? She closed her eyes, trying in vain to bring up the image of the line on the screen of her phone, now out of sight and reach in the bedroom.  Try as she might, the proper spelling eluded her. Why is it that as one can writes out a word over and over again the spelling seems odder and odder? Was it really misspelled? Or was it just her mind playing tricks on her?

 

She huffed at the dilemma- to continue writing in hopes of choosing the correct spelling and risk having to rewrite the whole thing, or to break the rules and dig out her phone?

 

The break!  She leapt up at the thought. She was allowed one break, and although it seemed silly to use it so soon, it was doubtless better than writing out pages of incorrect lines.  So decided, she scampered off to her bedroom to confirm the proper spelling, sighing in relief that it was the one L she had been writing thus far. Scolding herself for her silliness, she returned to her seat and resumed writing.

 

Half a line later, she remembered the other allowances for the break, and wistfully glanced at the glass of water on the counter across the room, well out of reach.  Writing lines is thirsty work, she realised, as the glass taunted her even now, so early in her task.

 

It was the taunting, she decided, that led to her first mistake.  She had nearly finished the page before it happened, before she had confused the “or” and the “and” and had to cross out her work. She grabbed the tape measure to cross out the line, feeling silly for the mistake and even sillier as she tried to use the tape as a straight-edge. In the shop, it had seemed a brilliant idea. After all, the tape was made to keep itself straight. However, it was not designed to lay flat on the page, and the same curvature that kept the tape upright when extended made it all but impossible to use the edge for line-drawing. Between the body of the reel, the metal nip at the end, and the spiral of her notebook, something always seemed to push something else out of place.  She settled for a semi-straight line and moved on. Clearly not drawn with a ruler as she had been instructed, but still straighter than anything she could have managed unaided. “Let it go,” she told her perfectionist side as she rewrote the offending line.

 

She glanced over at the spatula, wondering if she should use it to aid in the correction process. No, she decided, he had indicated that the spatula was for position-breaking only. Still she remained torn on another issue- part of her wanted to hold position, to see this as a challenge to be conquered, while another part was tempted to fidget a bit just to earn the spanking. As she re-wrote the line correctly, she decided that there was no need to decide just yet; at only ten lines into a 150-line assignment, there was plenty of time to fidget- on purpose or otherwise- and no need to court physical punishment so early.

 

At the end of the first page, she reviewed her work.  It looked decidedly odd for something meant as an imposition. With each line in a different colour, as instructed, and the line numbers circled in a similar colourful pattern, the page looked both juvenile and cheerful.   Sarah shrugged as she turned the page.  The whole point of this exercise was to remind her to be pleasant, and from that perspective the overall feel of her output was rather fitting.

 

And so she continued, rainbows spilling down the pages and her mind slipping into a meditative state as it settled into the repetitive task until. . .

 

The itch.  It was fight in the middle of the top of her left foot and it would not go away.  She tried to ignore it. Wasn’t that what her meditation teacher had advised all those years ago?  Itches are just tests of focus, ignore them and they will go away.

 

Except it didn’t.  Deciding that four whacks on each thigh with the spatula was well worth a quick scratch, Sarah pushed back her chair and addressed the nagging problem.

 

After administering nearly twenty whacks in an effort to get four good ones on each leg, Sarah sat back down and ruefully wished that she had found a local disciplinarian rather than a long-distance one. Surely the cumulative pain in her half-sufficient and hence uncounted strokes added up to something significant.  Then again, perhaps her judgement of a significantly stinging stroke was far less than what he would administer in person.  With that unpleasantly exciting thought, she forced her mind back to her lines.  A few minutes later the itch returned, and after another frustrating round of too-many or perhaps not enough swats to reach the equivalent of five swats on each leg, she began to wonder why she had thought that this sort of thing would be worthwhile- either on her own or with a partner.  As the chair trapped the heat on the back of her now-pink thighs, she had at least part of her answer. She tried to keep this answer in mind when attempting to administer six strokes to each thigh after another itch moments later, but even that didn’t quite keep her from flinching. Nor did it help when she had to administer seven swats each after catching herself in a small foot-tapping celebration after her hundredth line.

 

The final fifty lines flew by, her mind made up to the task offered little distraction, and the monotony became soothing. Even the itch failed to bother her, and was easily quenched by absent-mindedly reaching down with the tip of the pencil to scratch it.  Sarah chuckled as she caught herself doing this- why had that strategy not occurred to her earlier?

 

It felt like no time at all until the lines were finished, but a glance at her phone when she went to retrieve it to photograph the lines informed her that she had been at the task for nearly three hours. Time well spent, she decided as she flipped through the colourful pages. Even in her somewhat-sloppy best handwriting (she wondered if he would call her out on that- she hadn’t mentioned that her normal scrawl was almost unreadable, and this uneven lettering truly was the best she could do), the colours cheered her.

 

She flipped back through the notebook, taking the required photographs of each page, a warm glow of accomplishment spread through her.  Regardless of what had or hadn’t happened at work this week, she had finished something significant- even if it’s significance would only ever be known to her, and, of course, to her disciplinarian.

Continued