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.