Thongs

— 7-

My father was waiting for me. The lights were on. He was sitting at the table with a whiskey-bottle in front of him. He had obviously been drinking heavily. Hazel was reading a comic, sitting up in bed. My father looked up at me with dull red eyes as I came in.

"Where the bliddy hell have you been!" he said quietly and menacingly.

I was shaking with fright. I knew I couldn't take off my coat without him seeing that my skirt was torn away at the back. And just before I entered, I had touched my fingers to the weal across my buttocks. I suppose he used a belt. It would be red.

My father was looking me up and down, at my shoes, at my bleeding knees, at my face.

"Ye filthy little whore!" he snarled. "D'ye no think ah know where ye've been?" He poured himself another glass of whiskey.

"Take yer bliddy coat off!" he said.

There was nothing else for it. I did so, trembling. At once his eyes alighted on my naked thighs.

"Turn round!" he said. And when he saw the weal: "Ohoo! So he stropped yer erse fer ye too, did he?

In the background I was aware of Hazel watching me speculatively.

"Who was it, ye filthy bitch!"

I cowered away from him. "I don't know!" I said desperately. It was the truth. I hadn't recognized the man.

"So ye don't know! Well ye'll know who gives it tae ye noo!"

He got up and lurched over to the nail on the door where his black leather belt hung. I watched him in fearful fascination. If he had gone for the belt a week ago — both Johnnie and I had been belted regularly since we were little children — I would have experienced nothing but fear. But the whole situation that night had the acute color of sex. As he reached up for the thonged leather, I experienced a vivid thrill of anticipation. It held my fear at bay, as something which hung threateningly outside of me.

"Get yer clothes aff!"

I obeyed at once. There flashed through my mind the memory of Hazel's position the evening before. She had been forced to strip in front of me. She had a strange smile on her face now. I stepped out of my torn skirt and slipped off my pullover. I stood naked in front of him.

That made him hesitate. He stood staring at me uncertainly. My breasts had grown over the last year. I was nearly a woman.

I moved before him. I lifted myself face downwards over the wooden table. The wood was cold against my naked belly and breasts. I felt my flesh quiver with excitement at the thought that there on the wood Hazel was going to be witness to my humiliation.

Perhaps it was my willingness to be thrashed that made his first strokes light. They stung but were almost purely pleasant. I gasped each time the leather belt fell. My legs had slipped apart at the crotch. Suddenly he stopped and I heard him say: "What the bliddy hell's that!" I felt his fingers between my thighs and then I had the sensation of having something ripped out of me. Only then I realized. It was the condom! I had forgotten all about it.

"Jesus Christ!" I heard him yell. "Ye bring his bliddy dirt back wi'ye! Stuck between yer stinking little legs was it!"

I knew then that I was going to be thrashed without mercy. Hazel let out a gasp. And then the belt fell like cinders on my naked buttocks. I screamed. But it came again. The pain seemed to spread like a sea over my whole shuddering torso. I screamed again, barely conscious of the mumbled reactions of the neighbors beyond the walls. Even yet, there was no tear on my cheeks. I felt I was going to explode. The belt came again and again, but each time the tears welled up in my eyes, they were sucked down again by some invisible whirlpool of lust within me. And then the tension cracked. I screamed with all my might and the tears flowed out in great sobs. Only then did I realize that Razor King had stopped. The door slammed. Somewhere beyond me my pain came back, a long shuddering wail, and it was my own lips slobbering on the wood.

A moment later I was lifted gently off the table and helped over to my cot. Something burning was forced between my lips. I had the swimming vision of Hazel holding a glass there and I realized it was whiskey. I swallowed, and then my body, reacting mechanically to all the cruelty of the last hour, I vomited until I could vomit no more. I lay quivering on the camp bed. Hazel was running her fingers through my hair. That night she said only one word to me, softly, and repeated over and over again. Her head was between my thighs and her tongue darting smoothly against my clitoris. "Come!" she was saying. "Come … come … come…"