Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Sound of Silence

"Speak No Evil" by Tina Blondell. View her artwork here.


I'm noisy. If you've watched any of the Naughty Abby movies or even the short bits I've posted here on the blog, you know I react vocally to pretty much everything. I don't think about it, I just let my body respond naturally, and I am naturally, well, a bit loud.

In some ways, I think my vocalizations are a way of releasing pain. That's not to say that I am free of pain once I make a sound, it's just the way the pain travels through my body. Imagine the cane striking my backside. That stinging stroke doesn't remain where it lands. It courses up my spine, breaking the arch of my back and causing me to buck out of position. It continues upwards, reaching my neck and causing me to throw my head back. The pain then travels forward, along my jawline. My mouth opens. The force of the blow is released in breath, in whimper, in scream. Even as I write this and imagine the path of that single cane stroke, my lips twitch. I cannot imagine receiving any form of corporal punishment without my mouth reacting in some way.

Recently, this innate reaction was tested. I'd had a long and difficult day at work, and Mr. W and I had been texting back and forth for hours about just how he would distract me from stressing about the day when I got home. My favorite text from him was when I still had six hours left to the day and he wrote, "Only six more strokes of the cane, I mean clock, til you are off!"

At home that night, he warmed me with an over the knee hand spanking and then a strapping with the belt before he wielded the object we'd both fantasized about all day. He made me kneel on the edge of the bed with my back arched. He reached forward and took a throw blanket and pressed it to my lips. I opened my mouth and he tucked the makeshift but intimate gag inside. "Bite down," he told me quietly, perversely gentle. That gentleness always indicates a focused, steady violence to come.

I cried out, muffled, into the blanket at the first two strokes. "Quietly," he reminded me. I whimpered at the next stroke, tried to be quiet at the next, and screamed as quiely as I could against my gag at the stroke after that.

He tapped my lower thighs with the cane. "You will be quiet or I will start from the beginning, from much lower." He rubbed the cane, sawlike, just an inch or two above the backs of my knees.

At the next stroke, I opened my mouth but kept the scream in the back of my throat. A trapped scream is like a gag in and of itself. The air catches; for a moment it is impossible to breathe in or out. I managed the same thing at the next stroke as well.

This forced quiet sent me into a strangely conscious headspace. Usually, this type of punishment is about letting go. I can lose myself in tears and pain, and my vocal cries carry my anguish out of my body until I am left empty and cleansed of angst. Maintaining silence required an extreme presence.

At first, I was angry, frustrated that I couldn't scream and find that release, frustrated that I had to remain so much in my own head. As the caning continued, I began to feel alone, as if it was just me and the cane strokes. Losing volume had made me lose connection to Mr. W as well. Realizing this, as I was so very conscious of each thought, I began to scream internally with each stroke. Mouth strained and open but emitting no sound, the screams echoed inside my skull. Rather than taking pain and releasing it in cries, I took pain and released it as energy, killing the things that were frustrating me.

My first focused internal scream was directed at Mr. W, for the imposed silence. Having released that, I was able to focus on the things that had influenced my bad day. Two strokes meant an internal scream for two bosses who had especially aggravated me that day. Another stroke released a focused stream of banishing energy at the customers who had frustrated me. Another stroke let me howl, in silence, over having had to work that day at all. After all, it was a Saturday.

Then, the silence filled me. My release must have been visible, as the caning only continued for a few more strokes, which I rode in a detached calm. When it was over, wrapped in Mr. W's arms, I sobbed a little, but it was good crying, "happy tears" although still the result of pain rather than joy. I also felt amazingly in control, having mastered my instinctual reactions. I don't think I could do it all the time. I don't think I would want to. In this case, though, when the session was more about psychology than punishment or play, I am amazed at how Mr. W knew exactly what I needed - to feel in charge, to feel like I wasn't at the whim of my employers, to feel like I could let them go and just be myself for the rest of the weekend.

I don't know if I could do it again, if I didn't have anything to be angry about. If I didn't have a focus and a direction for those internal screams, how would I deal with them? Would I lose the challenge and be punished with a dreaded thigh caning? Would I find a way of controlling myself on a day when all I want to do is give up control? If I did manage, I can't help but think I would need a second caning afterwards, one in which I could cry outloud, so as to release myself of the silent intensity of the first session.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

FFF: Even White Boys Got to Shout

I failed at 250 words this week. Is anyone surprised? Lots of house and yardwork to do today, so I decided to post a too long story rather than try to edit it back or write a new shorter one. I managed to include 4 out of 6 wildcards.



Paul was still in the shower when his cell phone began to ring. I was lying in bed, watching grey wisps of early morning cloud part to reveal pure blue sky. Any New Englander, born and raised, knew what that sky meant. Summer had arrived in full force, and with it, humidity. In two days, that sky would be clouded over again, pregnant with the season's first thunderstorm. I had already begun to feel the tickle of summer sweat on the backs of my knees and the insides of my elbows. Paul's thin cotton sheet clung to me as I grabbed his phone from the nightstand and looked at the caller ID.

"Becky calling," the screen announced. I collapsed back onto the bed and fumed, mentally reviewing every woman I knew Paul talked to. By the time Paul walked into the bedroom, hair wet and dressed only in a towel around his waist, I had worked myself into a jealous panic. "Who the hell is Becky?" I demanded. "Why is she calling you so early? Why don't I know about her?"

Paul cocked his head and raised an eyebrow at me, frowning. "Seriously?"

"Of course seriously! Who is she?"

"I don't believe this," Paul muttered, reaching for the rough leather belt he kept looped through a dresser drawer handle. "Roll over. You are being ridiculous."

The sight of him nearly naked, belt in hand, had made me more wet than the onset of humidity, so I did as I was told. Immediately, the belt whipped across my bare bottom. I clutched my pillow but didn't cry out. The belt struck again and it stung like hell, but I was still upset and didn't want to give him the satisfaction of my pain. He continued to punish me, belting harder, trying to make me react. By the end of two dozen strokes, I was quietly sobbing against the pillow. My backside burned but I resisted reaching back to rub it. I sobbed louder, out of relief, when he rubbed my sore flesh for me.

"Baby," he began soothingly, sitting next to me on the edge of the bed. "I love this ass." He squeezed my right cheek, making me squirm. "But you know I can't help but check out other asses when they pass me on the street. It's my nature." I nodded my head. That had never bothered me. I did the same thing. "Well, Tom likes asses too. We have a code when we're out and want to tell the other one to take a look at someone's butt. You know what it is?"

"No," I grumbled, not sure what Paul's best friend had to know with some random girl calling at seven in the morning.

"We say to each other, 'Oh my God, Becky.' Do you know why?"

The phrase was familiar. He smacked my tender backside twice, once on each cheek. "Come on. You know why."

All my anger dissipated into laughter as I realized what was going on. Becky wasn't a random girl, it was Tom, programmed into Paul's cell phone as an homage to Sir Mix A Lot's classic 1992 hip-hop ode to big butts everywhere, "Baby Got Back."

Paul and I looked at each other and simultaneously quoted the opening line of the song. "Oh my God, Becky. Look at her butt." He stood up, grabbing belt again and folding it into a loop as he did so. "Well, what do you say? Do you want another dozen before I hit the road?"

I wiggled my own big butt and grinned. "You know I do."

A still from the video for Sir Mix A Lot's "Baby Got Back"

Flash Fiction Friday #3

I missed Flash Fiction Friday #2, but here's this week's edition. What is Flash Fiction Friday? Here's the description, from Flash Fiction Friday creator Casey Morgan:
Welcome to Flash Fiction Friday #3. Come write a 250-word story. Start any time Friday, finish by 6pm PDT Saturday. Post the link to your story below or on Twitter. Try to include the wildcards.


This week’s wildcards:
shower
ring
in pricipio
lemon meringue
rough leather
blue sky

Spread the word, and have fun!

Saturday, May 2, 2009

250 Word Story Challenge



Yesterday on Twitter, @CaseyDamnMorgan, @SpankinResource, and I decided to challenge each other to write a 250 word story. There were only two rules:

1) Post the story by 6pm PST Saturday night. (That gave us approximately 25 hours.)
2) Try to include the wildcard words or phrases that we each submitted. The words chose were as follows: "green willow," "loose thread," and "hairbrush."

The rest was up to us. A few others got in on the challenge as we created it. I'll post links to them as I learn of the postings. Visit the blogs listed at the end of this post to see other challenge submissions.

The following is my own submission, based on a dream I had a year ago about Pandora telling me she'd "dreamed about the linden tree again." The story, as stories do, took a different direction than I was expecting, and it's quite difficult to tell a whole story in 250 words. It's more like trying to write a poem in sentences. Still, I think I'm happy with the result, and am interested to see how the others do, and whether we make this a regular event.



Liese told me her dream as soon as she woke beside me, even though I was still half asleep. She pressed against me, stroking my night-matted hair, one bare leg draped over my thighs, her foot tucked under my calf. She whispered:

"It was the linden tree in bloom again, Marie. The flowers should have been white, but they were violet, like this," she touched the amethyst birthstone I always wore on a silver chain around my neck, "or like this." She reached back to touch the backs of her thighs, which I knew still bore plum stripes from the caning she'd received at the hands of her other lover.

The first time I saw her marked like that, I felt sick to my stomach. Her obvious pain tugged at the strings of my heart and found a loose thread. I unraveled, that first time she stood naked and truly bared before me.

"Your hair," she said then, grabbing a hairbrush from the bedside table and beginning to brush the knots from my tangled mess. "Anyway, I was lying under it, holding tendrils of green willow, waiting for you and Aaron to join me. Aaron had promised to whip me with them. You'd promised to braid them into my hair. Wind rushed the tree, raining me with petals. I knew neither of you were coming."

I wondered how long I had before she told me she was leaving us both. One more dream? I remained silent and prayed for two.



Visit these writers' blogs for more 240-250 word story challenge entries. (I think a Twitter typo somewhere along the way turned it into 240 words for half the participants, but that's ok.)