Gotterdammerung

The Twilight of the Gods

An Erotic Short Story

Chapter 1

Mr. Augustus Caesar, known to boys and colleagues alike as Sir, had ruled Churton College for Boys, with a rod of iron, since 1885, when at the very young age of 27, he had been appointed Headmaster. Such was the respect – better put, the servility – he demanded from everyone, his teaching colleagues included, that you could practically hear something akin to an oral genuflection in the voices of everyone, when they obsequiously intoned the word, Sir, always with an emphatic sibilance, which indicated that the word, even when spoken, began with a capital letter S.

When I say that Sir ruled Churton with a rod of iron, I am of course, speaking figuratively. The tools of his trade, with which he vigorously disciplined his pupils, were, of course, those classic implements of punishment to be found in every English public school worthy of the name: the rattan cane and the birch, both of which he had regularly applied, with considerable force to the bare bottoms of his pupils, since the day of his arrival as Headmaster in the year 1885. A bare bottom beating from Sir, a regrettably regular occurrence at Churton, was not an occasion which any boy welcomed. After being beaten, boys, without exception, emerged from Sir’s study, often tearfully, but always bearing that public school hallmark: a well-beaten arse, often flecked with blood, where the skin had been broken by the force of the cane.

English public schools can be roughly graded into two categories by the size of fees – normally large – they charge a boy’s parents for their usually first-class educative services: and by the severity of the corporal punishment, which they inflict on the boys, who are fortunate enough to be enrolled by their parents to benefit from what they hope will be a superior education for their offspring within their hallowed walls.

As far as fees are concerned, public school fees are never cheap; their charges range from acceptably expensive, to downright, eye- wateringly outrageous. As far as discipline is concerned, they range from strict to excessive, according to the degree of severity of the beatings they habitually inflict on their pupils’ bare bottoms. Make no mistake; the cane and, to a lesser extent, the birch, form part and parcel of the daily educative tools in every public school worth its salt.

Churton College for Boys was no laggard in the fees it charged; nor did it stint on the discipline it exercised regularly and vigorously on its boys. Churton, under the leadership of Mr. Augustus Caesar as Headmaster, could never be accused of short changing the parents for lack of attention to the backsides of their offspring, whenever, as was quite frequently the case, boys deviated from the straight and narrow path dictated by the school rules.

The good public school does not sniff – no pun intended – at a boy’s arse as a means of inculcating into recalcitrant teenagers, the idea of a ruling class to which they will one day belong and in which they are brought up devoutly believe. Parents should be under illusions, as to the fate of their offspring when they enrol them at a public school; in addition to receiving a superior education, they will, as sure as eggs are eggs, be beaten. Additionally they might also suffer from sexual indignities, frequently considered as par for the course, in establishments where young men are kept cloistered away without any access to female company.

However, under the long leadership of Augustus Caesar as its Headmaster, Churton was in a category of its own; both as far as fees and the severity of punishment of errant boys were concerned. It was generally considered by the cognoscenti – those, who think they are in the know – as the plus grande école hors classe: the greatest educational establishment in the country. It enjoyed a peerless reputation, exceeding that of even the most elite and well-known of English public schools, to which the titled aristocracy sent their male offspring to be educated and, incidentally, to be thoroughly birched.

Whilst Churton did undoubtedly have high educational standards, whether it merited its stellar reputation or not, mattered not one whit to well-heeled parents, intent as they were, in enrolling their offspring in what they perceived to be the finest school in the country. What was, however, certain, was that no school in England was more devoted to the cane for correcting boys for their misdeeds than was Churton, under the stewardship of Mr. Augustus Caesar.

Chapter 2.

The only day of the week, on which boys at Churton were safe from the depredations of Sir’s personal cane, was Saturday. Sir, who in addition to possessing a strong sadistic streak to his character, which showed itself in the frequent and uninhibited way he beat his pupils’ arses, had another obsession which he kept secret from everyone: he was a practising homosexual. Every Saturday, and on the odd late evening during the week, he disappeared from his quarters in the main school building, where he lived the luxurious life of a sybaritic bachelor, pampered by his valet-cum butler and a personal cook-cum-housekeeper, to spend time with the head-gardener of Churton, James Prior, his lover for almost 40 years, in his bothy on the school grounds where he lived the life of an apparently confirmed bachelor.

That Sir had managed to keep this unlikely sexual liaison, which transcended all the rigid class barriers of the time, secret, for almost 40 years, is a remarkable achievement in in itself. But the simple fact of the matter was that he had done so. No one: strictly no one, at Churton or, indeed, elsewhere, had the faintest idea that the Headmaster was himself was a practising homosexual and that his life-long lover was one of his employees: James Prior, the head-gardener.

The dyed-in-the-wool parents, who enrolled their sons at Churton, were, on the whole, members of that aristocratic hunting, shooting and fishing fraternity, which was in favour of flogging and hanging. Their rigid reactionary mindset was, like the Ten Commandments, figuratively, engraved in tablets of solid stone. They would all have been horrified to learn that the Headmaster of the very school, to which they had consigned their offspring, was a practising homosexual; and that his partner in crime was from the lower classes: a man – a gardener – with whom the majority of them would not even have had the courtesy to pass the time of day.

This extraordinary liaison between two men, from very different social classes, had come about and survived for almost 40 years, in an England and indeed in a school, where class distinction was de rigueur and, overtly, most strictly adhered to. The upper classes, including their offspring, considered that it was for them to command and for members of the hoi-polloi to obey.

How Sir ever came even to talk to an assistant gardener, other than to tell him what to do, would have been an anathema to most of the parents of Churton’s pupils and would have made them wrinkle up their noses in disapproval. They were all members of a very much us and them, society: a society in which everyone, including them themselves knew his place and kept to it. To a man, they found it quite normal for themselves to kow-tow to titled members of the aristocracy, whom they considered their social superiors and they expected the same respect from anyone they considered beneath them.

Sir and James Prior, now the head-gardener, had been brought together in 1885, by the fact that Prior, then a lowly assistant gardener, had regularly made the classic, short-lived birches of hazel twigs for use in the school by the Headmaster. He had developed a painfully vicious version of the classic birch, based on the tough, straight, very flexible twigs of a pollarded maple, which he had mentioned to the recently arrived, new Headmaster, as he delivered him a specimen of the conventional birch for his personal use.

Against his better judgment, Sir had accepted an invitation to view this marvellous, new improved version of the most classical implement of punishment ever inflicted on public schoolboys bare arses, and had deigned to visit Prior in his bothy. Sir, then aged 27, was physically an attractive man himself and given his own sexuality, was not immune to the charms of the young gardener. As sex is class- proof, Sir had found himself immediately attracted sexually towards this young man, and had allowed himself to be seduced by the physically attractive and, as it turned out, sexually well-equipped James Prior. The rest is history; the newly developed birch was adopted as the Churton Maple Birch and Sir and James Prior became devoted lovers; a love, which was to last a lifetime, until James Prior died of a heart attack aged 85.

However, there was an unexpected bonus to their sexual relationship; James Prior had a perverse sadomasochistic streak to his character: he liked to have his own bare arse thrashed from time to time. As Sir enjoyed thrashing arse – it turned him on sexually, as it does most men, if they were honest enough to admit it – this complementary fact, drew them still closer together; they fund that they were just made for each other.

Sir having discovered that his attraction to James Prior was reciprocated, propelled by his own sexual desire, threw the conventional prejudices of his class out of the window, to exercise his libido with on his then assistant gardener. Sir’s contemporaries would have been appalled had they known of his liaison with James Prior. You could almost hear them whispering to each other: “He’s a pervert, you know; and to make matters worse, he does it with his gardener.”

In his relationship with James Prior, Sir was flouting the traditionally held values of rigid class distinction, which had been the cornerstone of British society for longer than anyone could remember and they still were: a distinction, in which Sir, other than this one liaison, still hypocritically, fervently believed. In this one thing, it was do as I say and not as I do.

In addition to the opprobrium of his peer group, if his liaison with another man were disclosed to the police, both he and James Prior would also have been exposing themselves to prosecution and potential imprisonment, if caught, as the law put it, performing, unnatural sexual acts with each other. I should perhaps point out that what are called unnatural acts by heterosexual people, are, and always have been considered as completely normal acts of love between homosexual men. It is turning such acts into a spectator sport that renders them unnatural; as it equally does today, when sexual mores are much more relaxed.

Did either of them ever care one whit about the law that what they were doing with each other, in private, was illegal? No, no, of course they did not! They had fallen in love with each other; and as Virgil said nearly 2000 years ago: “Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori: love conquers all; let us too, yield to love!” A passionate declaration that speaks to us across the centuries and is sure to inspire the adventurous today as it then inspired Sir, a classics scholar, and his newly found lover. They were a well-balanced pair as each of them enjoyed equally both fucking and being fucked. To coin a phrase: they were just made for each other; and moreover they both knew it.

To see role models for Sir and James Prior when both aged 27, they first had sex together in Prior’s bothy, please visit:

For sir:

For James Prior

http://ist3-2.filesor.com/pimpandhost.com/1/_/_/_/1/3/p/P/7/3pP71/cla06.jpg

CHAPTER 3.

But the euphoria of the day of their first sexual union is long gone, as we are now at the end of June 1923; Sir and James Prior are both now 65 years old and Sir has found himself being forced by the Board of Governors to accept retirement, after 38 years of faithful service. During that time he has thrashed, on a more-or-less daily basis, the bare bottoms of more boys than anyone, including himself, care to think about. The sexual union between him and James Prior is still as strong, vigorous and regular as it had ever been almost 40 years ago. They are both in hearty good health and like the young men, whom they both still feel themselves to be, they are still having vigorous sex at least three times each week.

Sir, who, with some justification, viewed himself, aged 65, as being in the prime of life, had argued himself blue in the face with the Board of Governors of Churton, trying to persuade them to extend his contract for another five years; However it was all to no avail, as they were adamant that he retire at the age of 65.

Absence it is said, makes the heart grow fonder; never was a truer word said about Sir’s love of beating boys’ bare arses; he would sadly miss, what, had over the years, become almost his daily routine. He secretly derived much pleasure from beating the bare arse of his pupils, especially older boys, who were almost young men. Given his own sexuality, he was often tempted to do more the thrash the arse in front of him. But to his credit, in his 38 tears as Headmaster, he had never given in to the temptation, to sexually importune the boy, whose arse he was flogging.

But all good things eventually come to an end, and he knew he would just have to face up to a very different life in retirement. Thank God that James Prior was retiring with him and that they would be finally able to live together as two elderly gay men, who had loved each other in secret for nigh on 40 years and who were now still as deeply in love with each other as on the day they first met. As the saying has it: theirs was a match made in heaven.

Chapter 4.

Beating boys’ naked arses had become an important integral part of Sir’s life, even before he became Headmaster of Churton. It was like a drug, to which his system had become addicted. Out of term time at Churton, when there were no boys around to supply the requisite arses to be beaten, he suffered from what can be best described as the nearest thing to withdrawal symptoms from an addictive drug. Of course, figuratively speaking, his spirit was kept alive by the odd occasional birching, which he gave to his mildly sadomasochistic lover, James Prior, whose arse, in the absence of boys’ bottoms, he was still able to beat. Such birchings were normally followed by what had become his second great passion: anal sex with the very arse, which he had just thrashed.

Augustus Caesar was himself the product of another public school, in its way, almost as strict as Churton, but not quite. The school in question, Rigby Public School for Boys, was located in Lincoln, on the other side of the country from Churton, Rigby Rigour, had become a byword for the strict corporal retribution, which the school exacted inflicted on its boys, whenever they committed even the slightest of a misdemeanour. In his youth, shortly after his arrival at Rigby, when he was still a new boy in the first form, Gus Caesar’s bare arse had, like the vast majority of his fellow schoolmates at Rigby, soon made its first, painful acquaintance with the bite of the cane and the birch, which were in liberal daily use at the school. The repeated application to his bare bottom of both implements had served to correct, his frequent deviations from the straight and narrow path, which all boys at Rigby were required, or perhaps better put: forced, strictly to follow.

From the age of sixteen, Gus had gained a reputation of being the one of the most active buggers of his year, in a school, where buggery, brought about by a total lack of access to female company, was rife among senior boys,. It was not that he was a predator, but Gus was an attractive young stud with a large cock. It is not at all difficult to see from the sexually well equipped role model in the photo, why Gus Caesar’s large cock had been in constant demand by his sex-starved schoolmates since the age of sixteen.

Gus remembered his introduction to anal sex, as if it had happened just yesterday. It had occurred when he was sixteen and had just commenced his pre-penultimate year in the lower sixth at Rigby. What was to prove a life changing event for Gus, in which he lost his anal virginity, had taken place in the showers after a rugby match. Gus forfeited his virginity to the rigid cock of one of his team mates, Anthony Little; a name, which belies the boy’s impressive sexual endowment.

Gus had sort of divined that it would happen to him one day, although he had not expected it to happen on that specific day, unprepared as he was, in the shower. But the two of them were alone when the first penetration of his anus took place; and although Gus did not exactly encourage Anthony Little in his endeavour, neither did he resist him.

Not surprisingly, Anthony Little took Gus’s tacit consent as willingness to continue. In the days following Gus’s fall from sexual innocence: his first bite of the forbidden apple, so to speak, he and Anthony had many sexual encounters, leading, inevitably, to Gus losing what was left of his virginity, se two weeks later, when he first penetrated Anthony’ anus with his own sizeable member.

At the end of the day, he realised that, in fact, he had thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being buggered by one of his school mates. What he did not realise at the time, was that this was a unique occasion; once it had happened, which it had that one day in the showers, it could never could never be repeated; his anal virginity was gone forever!

What Gus had done that day, was to surrender his anal virginity to Anthony Little, who was, by chance, the only other totally homosexual boy among his classmates; it was almost as if providence had brought them together. At any public school, most of the acts of buggery between boys are performed by young guys, who are not homosexual by nature, but who, driven by the the hormones coursing through their bodies, cannot stop themselves having sex with another warm body, who, perforce, due to a complete lack of access to female company, is another male.

That first sexual relationship, which he established with Anthony, was to prove the template for his future sex-life. This first youthful relationship with Anthony Little was to last until they both left Rigby two years later, which made Gus realise that not only was he attracted to members of his own sex, but that he desperately wanted and needed a stable and permanent, sexual relationship with another man. He had always known, since the age of twelve or thirteen that he had been strongly attracted to members of his own sex rather than females, and now, aged 16, he acknowledged to himself that he was a homosexual and that he needed another man permanently in his life.

Gus Caesar, at the time of his first sexual adventure with Anthony Little, although he did not then know it, was that he and Anthony, were the only true homosexual boys in his year at Rigby. Even though, many of his school fellows indulged in acts of homosexuality; known among themselves as fucking butt, none of them were homosexual by nature; they were just temporary buggers: a phenomenon induced by a combination of the hormonal driving forces beyond their control and the unique male environment, in which they were confined. When they left school and entered normal heterosexual society, they would, for the most part, find wives and create the male offspring to send to public schools, such as Rigby, to perpetuate the tradition.

Chapter 5.

When he was nominated as head-boy of Rigby, at the age of 17, Gus Caesar was, unbeknown to the Headmaster, who had appointed him, already a practising, gay young-man, with one year’s experience of regular sex, both active and passive, with Antony Little and, sporadically, with many other boys under his belt. The fact that during his final year, he abandoned his promiscuity in favour of sex only with Anthony Little, probably saved him from importuning the tempting, sexually attractive, bare arses of his fellow schoolmates, whom, as head-boy of Rigby, he was regularly to beat.

No one was more surprised than he was himself, when, in his final year at Rigby, Gus Caesar, as he was then known to all and sundry, was appointed head-boy. Gus had always been popular among his schoolmates. However on his appointment, he made an important discovery as to his true character; he found that he himself had a hitherto, latent sadistic streak, which he had never suspected, to be lurking there in his psyche, just waiting to be let out.

Now that the was head-boy and could beat his schoolmates, he quickly discovered that he was, in fact, an epicaricasist: a person, usually a man, who enjoys not only inflicting pain on someone, but also in observing the subsequent discomfort he has himself wrought by his actions.

Once he became head-boy, with a mandate to beat his erstwhile schoolmates for their misdemeanours, he had had the good sense to see that in accepting the position, in the eyes of his schoolmates; he had automatically changed sides; in their eyes, he was no longer seen, as he had been formerly, as one of us, but had become one of them. He had quickly realised that as head-boy he had to distance himself from his erstwhile friends, all of whom rapidly became just that: erstwhile friends. He had grasped the fact that as head-boy, his loyalties would have to change; that he could no longer run with the hares, when, he had, in fact, not only joined the hounds, but as head-boy, he was leader of the pack.

The third event, which, together with his dual initiation into the joys of anal sex with Anthony Little, both as a bottom and a top, changed his life forever, was the first beating as head-boy, which he gave to not only one of his schoolmates, but also his classmate in the upper sixth at Rigby. Gus had himself been beaten many times by various masters and prefects and, on four occasions, by the then head-boy of the day. He was therefore therefore familiar with the head-boy’s study, now his study, in which he was expected to dispense traditional justice with the cane.

As head-boy, in what was now his study, he shuddered inwardly at the sight of the old armchair, with the tear-stained velvet cushion, over the back of which, he had several times in his earlier years at Rigby, been forced to bend, to allow the then incumbent head-boy of the day to beat his bare arse for some misdemeanour or other.

On his appointment as head-boy at the end of the previous school year, the Headmaster had presented him with two canes: one junior, and one senior, which he had exhorted him not to hesitate to use during the coming year.

The Headmaster had said to Gus: “During the coming school year, I shall be relying on you Caesar, as head-boy, to direct your co-prefects in their duties, which are principally to keep order at Rigby, whenever the boys are not in class. As you know full well, having come up through the system yourself, Rigby is a school where discipline is strictly enforced and where the cane is in daily use. Do not hesitate to use your power to beat any boy who steps out of line. Prefects at Rigby can only give boy twelve strokes of the cane on the bare. However, as head-boy you have a right to inflict a maximum of eighteen strokes of the cane on the bare buttocks of any boy who deserves to be beaten; and in my experience, many boys do.”

“I suggest that you take immediate steps, in the first few days of the new school year, to establish a reputation among the boys, as being a right bastard, which I believe is the unflatteringly vulgar expression used by the boys to describe a prefect, whom they hate, but, who is to my mind, a very successful head-boy, just performing the duties, for which he was appointed,. As the saying has it: one man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

“You cannot, as a successful head-boy, please everyone, least of all, the boys, many of whom are your personal friends, many of whom, will inevitably find yourself obliged to beat, if the occasion arises, as it surely will! My advice to you, young man, now that you are head-boy, is to know where your allegiance now should lie. I know that it is difficult for any boy suddenly to change his allegiance from being one of the boys to being one of them; by them, I mean the elite group of boys, the prefects, who are mandated by me, as Headmaster, to inflict physical pain with the cane, on members of the very group, to which they previously belonged. However, to be successful in the onerous task with which they are entrusted – to keep order within the school – they must.”

Gus took the Headmaster’s comments to heart and determined to make his mark as a head-boy to be reckoned with as quickly as possible in the new term. Looking at the old armchair that he knew so well; it had taken on a total different aura, now that he, as head-boy, would be beating the bare arse bent across its back, rather than, as had always been the case in the past, offering his own arse to the TLC of of the incumbent head-boy of the moment. Repayment time had arrived with a vengeance and Gus intended to ensure that he was repaid in full for his past sufferings.

The boys, who had been promoted to the level of prefect at Rigby, and were allowed – even encouraged, by the Headmaster – to beat their schoolfellows, often subscribed to a code which turned the so-called biblical Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have others do unto you, completely on its head; to read: do unto others as others have done unto you.

With this miss-quotation as their inspiration as to their behaviour, successive generations of prefects, house-captains and head-boys included, perpetuated a system of payment in kind from their unsuspecting school-fellows, in compensation for their own past sufferings at the hands of the previous year’s prefect class. They were, to a man, much harder caners of their schoolmates than the majority of the masters at Rigby. Each year, with each new crop of prefect, the maximum of twelve strokes rapidly became the norm for all prefects’ beatings. However, given that there was a strong tradition of buggery among sexually frustrated sixth formers at Rigby as at all public schools, many prefects were more than willing to negotiate quid pro-quo deals with their schoolmates for fewer strokes of the cane in exchange for sexual favours redeemable immediately from the very arse they were beating.

The Headmaster need not have feared that the annual prefect group, with head-boy, Gus Caesar, leading it would fail to keep order. They were to prove police, judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one. Their main objective in life was to thrash as many bare arses as possible; and as they normally met their objective, their effort with the cane kept Rigby as one of the leaders in public school discipline. With this great continuous effort from the prefects, the infamous Rigby Rigour was kept alive and well for generations of boys.

Gus Caesar himself was keen as mustard to establish his credentials as an utter bastard but found himself in the position of the cook, intending to prepare jugged hare, a dish beloved by the British aristocracy, to whom Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, published in 1861, apocryphally gave the pithy instruction: First catch your hare. Gus Caesar found himself in exactly the same position as the hapless cook. He first had to find a boy – any boy – misbehaving whose arse he could justifiably, not jug, but beat.

Fortune smiled on Gus, when the second day of the new school year, he saw one of his direct classmates in the upper sixth, Simon Sessions by name, whom he personally did not much care for, quite violently cuffing a new boy, a first former, around the head, during the morning break.. By the time Gus found them at it, Sessions’s actions had already reduced the junior boy, who was half the size of his assailant, to tears.

Gus Caesar separated the two and standing on his authority as head- boy, said simply: “Sessions, you will present yourself at my study at 4:30 his afternoon precisely, to face retribution for your bullying actions of a boy half your size.”

Gus was about to make his maiden beating as head-boy of Rigby, on a boy of the same age as himself: an upper sixth former, with whom he sat together in class daily. He marvelled at his own new authority to be able to his classmate that he was going to beat him for bullying a younger boy. He just hoped that when push came to shove, as it would that afternoon, and he was faced with the Sessions’s bare buttocks to stripe, that he would actually had the courage to wield the cane for the very first time and leave his classmate with a well-beaten arse. He knew that beating one of his classmates, a member of the upper sixth form, the same age as himself that he would ensure his reputation as a head-boy, who it was inadvisable to cross. By his first act, he would be well on the way to achieving the status of a right bastard, a quality so admired by the Headmaster and hated by his schoolfellows; he would already have signalled that he was no longer just one of the boys, but had become one of them.

Like many young-men of his ilk, knowing full well that he had been caught, red-handed, breaking one of the most stringently enforced rules of the school, which would inevitably lead to dire punishment, Sessions, intent on saving his own skin, suddenly turned verbally abusive. He said, blusteringly to the head-boy, whose word carried the same authority as that of a master “If you think, for a moment, Caesar, that now that because you are wearing the head-boy’s star on your tit, you can pull rank on me; you can bloody well fuck off and think again. There is no way I am coming to your study this afternoon or any other time, for that matter. And if you think that you are going to thrash me, you can fucking well stuff that idea up your bum: there is no way that I am going to let a poofter like you anywhere near my arse with a cane or with your own hot-rod.”

Gus remained composed during this abusive tirade. Then he calmly said: “Sesssions, you find yourself facing a beating entirely of your own making, which you have, moreover, just made worse, by swearing abusively at me. Allow me to assure you that as head-boy of this school, I do have the power to order you to come to my study for punishment: so I expect to see you in my study at 4:30 this afternoon, However, if you choose to ignore my order, I will have no alternative but to refer you to the Headmaster for bullying and swearing. This is not an idle threat; do not test me, me Sesssions; I am a man of my word and I will do as I say.”

As Gus had foreseen, Sesssions did present himself that afternoon, as ordered, at the head-boy’s study, rather than face the legendary wrath of the Headmaster, who was not limited to 18 cuts of the cane. So some ten minutes after his arrival in the head-boy’s study, Sesssions found himself arse naked, bent across the back of that famous, old armchair, gazing fearfully at the stain on the velvet cushion under his nose, to which Gus had silently vowed to himself, he would make Sessions add his own generous lachrymose contribution.

It was a completely different Sessions, who had presented himself to the head-boy for punishment at 4:30 that afternoon. Gone was the noli me tangere –touich me not – braggadocio attitude he had adopted when caught in the act by Gus that morning, to be replaced by a cowardly plea to mitigate what he knew was the painful fate coming to him. Having referred to Gus as a poofter and referring to his own hot-rod that morning, he now had the gall, in a roundabout way, to offer Gus access to his anus in return for a reduced thrashing, which he, like so many bullies, coward that he was, obviously feared.

However, Gus was made of sterner stuff and had not allowed himself to be moved Sessions’s plea for clemency or offer of sexual favours. As he now looked down on the unblemished mound of Sessions’s arse, which he quite justifiably intended to take to hell, he was, for a brief moment, ashamed of the fact that he was looking forward to his first act ever of flagellation and making his classmate suffer. But after the first stroke of his maiden beating, he found the act of beating Sessions’s arse so utterly exhilarating, that any scruples or feelings of shame he had had about beating a classmate were forgotten in the immediate euphoria of the new experience of wielding the cane on someone else’s arse, rather than feeling, as he had done many times in the past, the cane biting into his own bare flesh.

In view of his truculent, insulting behaviour towards him, Gus had no inhibition in laying on his maximum, allowable 18 strokes of the cane to Sessions’s arse with the all the force he could muster. Was he spurred on to make Sessions suffer, because he had called him a poofter earlier that day? He liked to think not; that he was just dispassionately carrying out his duties as head-boy; thrashing a boy who had broken one of the cardinal and most strictly enforced rules of the school. But in his heart of hearts he knew that he had attacked Session’s arse with a certain degree of malice. Like many boys of his age, this was by no means the first beating that Sessions had received at Rigby; but by the time Gus Caesar had finished venting his spleen on him, it was by far the worst.

Gus Caesar, who had been beaten many times himself, was well aware of the steps, which ensured that the recipient of the cane arose from his ordeal, not only with a well-beaten, agonisingly painful arse but one of considerable, albeit transitory, artistic merit. It was not given to all prefects or masters, all of whom beat arse regularly at Rigby, to imbue their handiwork with artistry, for which, quite frankly, the victims of their efforts could not have cared less. But there was always what is perhaps best described as the post beating wake to consider: the ritual viewing by his schoolmates of a victim’s freshly beaten arse, And it was in this post beating viewing of the damages, wrought that the reputation of the individual wielding the cane was made. Come what may, all prefect were, de facto, labelled utter bastards for beating boys, (an example of the us versus them mentality) when, as was usually the case, most boys deserved to be beaten; but there was kudos in being known as an artistic, utter bastard rather than just an utter bastard.

To say that it was Gus’s maiden beating as head-boy, he acquitted himself superbly well; better than many more experienced masters. Over his years at Rigby, Gus’s own arse had benefitted from considerable, practical, beating experience, generously supplied by the Headmaster, his house master, numerous head-boys and prefects. But Gus modelled his technique on that of the Headmaster, who had on numerous occasions addressed his arse with both cane and birch. He made haste slowly, leaving the all important pause between every stroke, to allow Sesssions to appreciate the searing pain delivered by the slender rattan cane, biting time after time, into the naked flesh of his arse.

He laid on the first twelve strokes strictly parallel to each other, from the bottom of Sessions’s back to the top of his legs, before completing the excruciatingly painful, 18-cut beating with six diagonal, crossing strokes. By the third stroke, Gus had already reduced Sesssions to tears by the ferocity of his attack; by the sixth stroke Sessions was begging him to stop, claiming he could take no more and that he had learned his lesson. However, his plea went unnoticed by Gus, as he, ploughed on regardless, giving Sesssions the truly painful, well-beaten arse, which he deserved. Although Gus and Sesssions sat together in class for the rest of their final year at Rigby, they never again exchanged a single word.

In the eyes of the whole school, the very fact that Gus had made an upper sixth-former and a classmate to boot, rather than a younger boy, the subject of his maiden beating as head-boy, established him as no-nonsense force both to be reckoned with and feared. On only his second day as head-boy, due to the hitherto unheard of action of the head-boy actually beating an upper sixth-former rather than a younger boy, he had catapulted himself into legendary status. He was immediately perceived by the whole school as an implacable head-boy: someone who meant business: someone not to be messed with, unless one wanted a sore backside. He had immediately changed in everyone’s eyes from being one of us into being one of them: Them being any person mandated to beat, of whom there were plenty available at Rigby.

But in addition to attaining the status of being seen a right bastard, on only his second day in office, not only by members of the upper sixth, in which beater and beaten sat together in class, but also across the entire school. Such was the efficiency and speed of the whispered-word-telegraph at Rigby that the news that Augustus Caesar, the new head-boy had thrashed one of his classmates in the upper-sixth, flashed round the school like greased lightning.

Gus’s reputation as a head boy to handle with extreme care, preferably wearing kid gloves, was made almost before he had laid down the cane after addressing Sessions’s arse. By his maiden caning of one senior boy, on what was only the second day of the new term, Gus had inadvertently inculcated into the entire school, both a factor of fear and a sense of respect for his position as head-boy, almost as much as the Headmaster himself enjoyed, both of which were to serve him well during his final year at Rigby, as head-boy.

Gus had already found that he not only enjoyed, but had revelled in the act of beating a classmate, particularly one who was bully and a coward and who had used abusive language when he had been caught in the act of laying into a first former. In beating Sessions, he had discovered a side to his character, which, until the moment when he was actually wielding the cane on Sessions’s bare arse, he had, hitherto, not known existed; he had a sadistic streak in his makeup and enjoyed inflicting pain on others, who had broken the rule and then watching them suffer the agony of a well beaten arse.

Although Gus did not realise it then, that first revelatory beating of Sesssions – frankly, it could have been anyone – revealing to himself his true character, was by way of being his Damascene Conversion to joys of beating boys’ areas. That one act alone led, to his later decision to become a public schoolmaster, first as a housemaster Rigby, but ultimately the Headmaster of Churton College for Boys, which he held from the remarkably young age of 27 for a period of 38 years.

In beating Sesssions, Gus became, for the first time, acutely aware of the well-known and well-documented relationship between corporal punishment and sexual arousal. He had been aware for many years that whenever he was beaten at Rigby he became sexually aroused. But he had never experienced anything remotely like his massive erection, which had been produced by his beating of Sesssions. By the time he had finished his 18 stroke beating of Sessions, his cock seemed bigger and more rigid than it had ever previously been and, like a gun pointing at a target, was menacingly tenting the crotch of his trousers. More to the point, it was leaking precum like a tap in need of a new washer and needed immediate attention itself.

Although Gus was enjoying enormously the physical act of caning Sessions and making him squirm with pain, he was relieved when he had delivered the last of his 18 swingeing strokes to Sessions and had been able to allow his classmate to leave and go tend to his painfully wounded arse. If Gus had had to hold himself back for a minute longer, he would surely have climaxed into orgasm fully dressed, as he was, in process of beating Sessions. Luckily the head-boy’s study at Rigby had its own bathroom and lavatory, to which he was able to repair as soon as Sessions had departed.

Gus rapidly shed his trousers and underpants, the latter, by now, dripping wet with his own generous emission of precum. His cock, released from its confinement, sprang instantly to attention, indicating not only its readiness, but also its desire, for sex. He looked down at his massive, pulsating erection and took it in his right hand to assuage its obvious demands for immediate attention. He had barely grabbed his member to attempt to jerk himself off to jerk himself off to completion, when found he could no longer hold his climax back and exploded into the most profoundly intense orgasm he had ever experienced in his young sex life to date. As he had often had sex with Anthony Little during the previous school year, he was something of a connoisseur when it came to judging the intensity of an orgasm.

But this orgasm exceeded anything he had hitherto experienced. It was an orgasm of seismic proportions, accompanied simultaneously by a massive, uncontrolled eruption of viscous sperm, great gobbets of which were ejaculated with considerable force onto the bathroom mirror. It was the experience of a lifetime, which Gus would not have missed for the world. However, in retrospect, he hoped that it would not be repeated every time he beat a boy, which as head-boy, was his sworn duty to do.

As he changed into dry underwear, Gus reflected on the events of the day on which he had made his maiden beating as head-boy of Rigby. He had made a marked impression on Sessions, both figuratively on his future behaviour and, physically on his arse. It was, for Gus, in its own way, as memorable as the day he had surrendered his anal virginity to Anthony Little. Both events were unique moments in time; both could happen only once in a man’s lifetime; once they had occurred, they were gone forever and could never be repeated:

But what Gus also recognised, and was, at the same time, disturbed by the fact that if he had not been overtaken by his own inability to control his sexual arousal, brought on by what he was doing, he might well have been tempted to penetrate the very arse which he was in process of thrashing, urged on by his dick ever-ready for sex. He also suddenly realised that he had enjoyed the act of inflicting pain on Session’s arse. In his first ever beating, his hitherto hidden sadistic streak had suddenly been suddenly revealed to him: a fact, which at first disturbed him. But as a leopard cannot change its spots, he saw that he would have to get used to the unpalatable fact, that he actually enjoyed wielding the cane and inflicting pain on boys’ bare arses.

He thought back to the Headmaster’s remarks when he had told him he was to be head-boy for his final year at Rigby.

“My advice to you, young man, is to know where your allegiance should lie.”

He was lucky to have recognised his own shortcomings in character, so soon and; he, there and then, vowed to himself that in his year as head-boy, he would be seen as pure as Caesar’s wife, as the aphorism has it. (No pun on his own surname either intended or implied) During his final year at Rigby, his active sex life, which had become too important for him to ignore, had to be put on hold for a year. He knew that he could no longer live without out active sex but his sex life, during his final year at Churton, would be restricted to Anthony Little, who was both gay and a good passive and active fuck..Gone would be his former, dilettante approach to sex with whomever was willing; as many were.

As for the pleasure he derived from whacking the arses of his schoolmates, which was part of his duties as head-boy, he would just have to learn to live with the unpalatable fact that he had a sadistic streak in his character and acknowledge to himself that he was enjoying what he was doing. After all, what was the point of wearing sack-cloth and ashes for doing something, which gave him great pleasure? At least, that way, he would be being intellectually honest with himself, accepting the fact when it came to beating boys’ arses, he was a sadist. However, he faithfully vowed to himself that, however much he was tempted, he would never give into his desire to fuck the arse a boy whom he was thrashing. He fervently hoped that the next time he beat a boy, he would manage to control his sexual arousal better, as that could cause him problem.

And so he beat his way through his final year at Rigby and finally left with the reputation among his schoolmates as being the worst head-boy ever. He then went on to read classics at Gresham College at Oxford University, where three years later he graduated top of his year with a first class honours degree in classics. As its star pupil of the year, the college offered him a research fellowship, which he turned down, as he had already decided that he wished to pursue a career as a public schoolmaster, where he could professionally exercise his sadistic streak on boys’ bare arses.

Chapter 6.

His old Headmaster at Rigby, himself a great believer in the beneficial threat of corporal punishment on the behaviour of his flock, welcomed back his old head-boy with open arms, without any teaching qualifications whatsoever. He saw in Gus, as fervent a believer as himself, in the benefits of the cane and accordingly made him immediately Assistant Housemaster to the ailing Mr. Claude Wheeting, housemaster of Derby House (The houses at Rigby were named after six of the northern counties of England.) Mr. Wheeting had requested the help of a younger man to keep order in his house, which, due to his progressively worsening health, he felt no longer to be able to control single handed.

In Augustus Caesar, Mr. Wheeting, although he did not himself actually choose him as his new assistant, could not have found a better man for the job. All three of them: Headmaster, Housemaster and Gus, as new Assistant Housemaster, were singing in harmony from the same hymn sheet. The Headmaster and Mr Wheeting, both fervently believed in the frequent use of the cane to maintain order. Gus. On the other hand, saw in his new post, a means of satisfying his his sadistic streak. He was thus the ideal person to whom to hand over the disciplinary function of the house, as he would allow no misdemeanour, however small, if detected, to go unpunished.

It must be remembered that Gus himself, as new assistant housemaster, was only three years older than the boys in the sixth form and that there were thus three classes of older boys who had lived though his year as head-boy of Rigby three years previously, some of whom had felt the bite of his cane across their bare arses and had memories of him as the strictest head-boy ever, in their time at Rigby. Not surprisingly, therefore, his arrival as assistant housemaster was not exactly greeted with enthusiasm by the older boys of Derby House.

In the eyes of the boys, things soon changed for the worse, when Mr. Wheeting announced to an assembly of the entire house that all discipline, which for the past few years everyone knew had been allowed to slide due to his personal, ever increasing feebleness, would, henceforth, be administered by the new assistant housemaster. You could almost hear the deafening silence of dismay of the entire house at this news. Gus’s reputation as a man, who enjoyed thrashing arse, had already trickled down even the younger boys, who had not known him in his previous incarnation as the worst head-boy ever. The whole house knew that three years of relative freedom from that scourge of public school boys, the rattan cane, applied to their bare buttocks, was over.

Gus was provided with an apartment and a study located within Derby House, which quickly became one of the most dreaded places for boys to be invited visit in the entire house. He quickly established a relentless punishment routine, which ran seven days a week. Boys who had been told by the assistant housemaster to see him in his study that evening before bed, wearing only their pyjamas, knew instantly that they were going to be beaten; that their arses would be toast, and that they would have a very uncomfortable night in bed immediately thereafter.

To say that Gus was a popular addition to the staff at Rigby would be stretching the truth to its limit. The fact was that, due to his rigid enforcement of discipline, he quickly became both loathed and feared by the boys of Derby House. But also in his teaching duties – he taught Latin and Greek to the boys in the two lowest forms – he was not a popular teacher. He was seen by the boys as someone to be feared, rather than respected; a master, who, for even the slightest misdeed, would send any boy to the caning room to be beaten.

Oh yes, I had forgotten to mention there was indeed a room in the main school-building, where most classes were held, set apart; to which boys were sent during the day to be punished in the traditional way by application of the cane to their bare bottoms. Caveat Magistri – beware of the master – quickly became the byword whenever boys were being taught by Mr. Augustus Caesar.

Of course, the Headmaster totally approved of the rigid discipline which his protégée was enforcing. Not surprisingly, therefore, when three months later, Mr. Wheeting died, Gus Caesar, the Headmaster’s Golden Boy, so to speak, was automatically promoted to the post of Housemaster of Derby House, when he had just reached the ripe old age of 22! His promotion was viewed with much astonishment and jealousy by his staff colleagues, many of whom felt, with some justification that they had been passed over – which they had!

For the next five years Gus exerted his own version of a Reign of Terror, not only over the denizens of Derby House, but also over the boys in the classes he taught. He effortlessly became the most unpopular master ever at Rigby It would be fair to say that not only the whole complement of boys at Rigby School, but almost all of his teaching colleagues, heaved a massive sigh of relief, when Augustus Caesar, aged only 27, was appointed Headmaster of Churton College for Boys located near Hereford.

As a sign of the depth of the deep unpopularity and universal resentment generally felt about Gus, his colleagues allowed him to depart without any final farewell ceremony, foregoing the customary, polite, if insincere, good wishes for his future career, which was accorded as a sign a of civility whenever even an unpopular colleague left for greener pastures elsewhere. The Headmaster alone, invited him to a dinner, given his honour, which even his close colleagues invited, all made their feeble excuses not to attend, such was his unpopularity.

Chapter 7.

So much for the background of Augustus Caesar before he arrived at Headmaster at Churton in the year 1885, as we now go back to the beginning of this story which takes place, 38 years later, in June 1923, when Sir was on the point of retirement: a retirement, which he personally had not wished to accept, but which had, at the age of 65, been forced upon him, by the new Chairman of the Board of Governors,. In the grip of that new broom sweeps clean syndrome the new Chairman had decided he must make his presence felt; and what better way to achieve that aim than to appoint a new Headmaster?

Not surprisingly, we find Sir in a foul frame of mind. He had banked on the success of his request for his contract to be extended for five years, until he reached the age 70. But the new Chairman had had other ideas; and, as his word was law, Sir’s contract had not been extended. To add insult to injury, during the last two weeks of the summer term at the end of June, he was to retire, his stock in trade, in the form of a regular flow of boys, whose arses fed Sir’s insatiable need to administer the stinging bite of the cane, had dwindled to practically nothing.

After 38 years of regular supply, the daily flow of boys, bearing punishment notes issued by masters in the classroom had decreased to zero. Masters were not allowed to beat boys for their disobedience in the classroom, a privilege, or rather, a pleasure, which Sir, had reserved for himself from the start of his career as Headmaster in 1885 . Instead they were obliged to give any offending boy a punishment note for a beating, which the unlucky lad redeemed in Sir’s study at 4:30 in the afternoon the same day, when he would feel the full force of twelve strokes of Sir’s cane across his naked arse. For the past two weeks Sir had not beaten a single boy bearing a punishment note.

In the past two weeks, Sir had beaten only two boys, whom he had found himself bullying a first former. Both lads were to be reminded, every time they sat down for a full week after their beatings, that the wages of sin were always generous to a fault at Churton: a minimum of twelve strokes of the rattan cane, applied vigorously to the bare bottom of the offending boy.

The concept of making the punishment proportional to the offence was non-existent at Churton. During Sir’s tenure as Headmaster, any boy unfortunate to receive an invitation to visit Sir in his study, was assured of a minimum, twelve- cut beating, which was the standard tariff,, no matter what the offence. Sir then decided, on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis, on the beating that a boy could stand and then inflicted that upon him. Boys’ buttocks, being devoid of any vital organs, were viewed, at that time by public schoolmasters as designed by nature to be beaten and could stand, and often, therefore, received, a lot more than they deserved.

In view of the present dearth of enough boys to flog to satisfy his voracious appetite for the cane, Sir had gone to town on both lads, laying on excessively thorough beatings across their bare arses. Today, Sir would almost certainly have been prosecuted for inflicting grievous bodily harm on the two lads. But back then, in the 1920s, such over the top beatings were seen as par for the course and boys accepted them as an indissociable part of their education at a public school. The idea of complaining never crossed their minds; they accepted their punishment for their misdeeds, as necessary steps to the aspiring heights of the young gentlemen they were supposed to become by being educated at an English public school; at least, that was the theory.

Sir had seen the last two weeks before his departure into retirement as the last period during which he could exercise, to the full –even perhaps to excess – the authority which had been his for 38 years. He had hoped to retire in blaze of glory, marked by an unprecedented series of beatings, showing that he had maintained his vice-like grip on the school until his very last day. As it was, the way thing were shaping up, it looked as if he would be obliged to fade away like a nobody; slinking away from a school, to which he had dedicated his life to raising it to its present prestigious level. He felt like some mangy dog, tail between its legs, aware, as dogs often are, that it was in disgrace, trying to hide itself away from its master’s view.

There was no doubt, that love him or loathe him, as many of his colleagues, in fact, did, thanks to Sir’s leadership over almost 40 years, Churton College for Boys, enjoyed the reputation, which it then did, of a stellar educational establishment. Year after year, a combination of stricter than strict discipline and brilliant teaching, turned out a series of well educated, young gentlemen; many, of whom would take their places in the administration of the then British Empire, or become leaders in politics and the legal profession; or yes, thinking even the unthinkable for gentlemen, become leaders of industry or trade, which, by that time, were just about beginning to become acceptable occupations for a gentleman. England of the early 1920s was still a country where class-distinction remained very much to the fore; and in which gentleman had hitherto turned up their noses at the very mention of trade; and many still did.

To allow Sir to retire without one last opportunity to exercise his right to beat arse, which being realistic was one of the pillars on which the present fame and success of Churton was based, would have been tantamount to denying Sir what he himself had come to think of his as God-given right. But that is exactly what Sir himself had done 38 years ago, when he took over as Headmaster at Churton. He had promptly introduced the system of punishment notes, which provided him personally with regular flow boys on whose backside he could exercise his passion for the cane. He had thereby figuratively emasculated the teaching staff, some members of which were old enough to be his father, by forbidding them to use the cane in the classroom; an act, which every self-respecting, late Victorian public school master then took as his birthright.

Sir was not interested in an approach aimed at making friends and influencing people; he was a self-centred, autocratic man, who cared little for what his colleagues thought of him. His creed could be summed up in a paraphrase of one line from the Lord’s Prayer: Sir’s will be done; and in general, it was! Still today, almost two generations later when Sir was on the point of retiring, the present staff resented the fact that as public schoolmasters, they were not themselves allowed to use the cane in the classroom, but were obliged to issue errant boys with punishment note, condemning the unlucky recipient to a bare arse beating by Sir that same day, at 4:30 in the afternoon in his study. In vulgar terms Sir, by his introduction of the punishment note system, had creamed off for himself all the arses of the boys who misbehaved in class.

Why, might you well ask, did the teaching staff put up with such authoritarian conditions? The answer is money; salaries were very generous at Churton enabling the school was to attract – and, more importantly – to keep, the brightest teaching talent available. It was this financial generosity that made teachers bite their lips, keep their counsel and knuckle down under the autocrat who was the Headmaster.

Some observers might have said that the drying up of punishment notes and the concomitant flow of boys to Sir’s study to be beaten was a result of a combination of factors: the conclusion of the summer exams, the approaching end of term and the prospect of the long summer holiday which had rendered the situation calmer than normal. Other, more cynical observers might have suspected that the teaching staff had conspired together and had decided that no punishment notes would be written during the last two weeks of term, thereby depriving Sir of his daily quota of boys to thrash. There may have been an element of truth in this theory, for Sir was not exactly popular with the vast majority of his colleagues.

One thing was sure: the two boys, whom Sir had beaten, he had lighted upon himself, and had not been referred to him via the punishment note system. From his study window, he had chanced to see the one, a fifth former, bullying a smaller boy and had thrashed him soundly for his action, Bullying was not tolerated at Churton; and Sir had made this fact abundantly clear to the boy, by sending him away way with a very sore bottom.. The other boy, he had caught himself in the village, not wearing his school cap, for which the lad had been a made aware that rules were there to be obeyed, and had, accordingly, received that cure-all for forgetfulness; a well beaten arse.

School was scheduled to finish on Tuesday morning, and it was almost at the eleventh hour before before Sir was saved from retiring in silent ignominy. As his last public act before his retirement, Sir was scheduled to preside, as he had done each Sunday for the past 38 years, over the assembly of the entire school, boys and staff included in the school chapel. Such assemblies always ended on a tense note for the boys, Sir, announced the names of those boys, whom he wished to see – was the way he put it – in study before lunch, with the spine-chilling order to come appropriately attired for the occasion, which phrase said it all. The lucky, or better put, unlucky lads to have received the invitation to what had become cynically known to the boys as Sir’s pre-Sunday lunch aperitif, were obliged to present themselves, at the appointed hour at Sir’s study, wearing only shorts and gym vests, to be beaten.

Boys could be honoured with such a pre-Sunday lunch invitation to bare their arses to the bite of Sir’s cane, for a variety of reasons. No one knew before Sir’s announcement, who would be invited, which rendered the announcement of the names of invitees even more shiveringly intense. Needless to say, such invitations were not particularly sought after. But on his last Saturday evening before retirement, reviewing his list of potential candidates, Sir had not found one single boy, who had blotted his copybook enough to justify inviting him to have his arse beaten prior to Sunday lunch. And you can criticise Sir as much as you wish as hard and died-in-the-wool, unrepentant caner, but, during his entire career, he never once beat a boy without just cause.

Sir now faced for himself, the bleak prospect of retiring with his tail between his legs, rather than glorying in an occasion filled with the flogging of numerous, well-deserving boys. Sir was under no illusion at all that his lack of popularity among his colleagues would mean that there would be many a dry eye, among them when he finally left. He did not expect any eulogy, in his favour from anyone; nor did he want it. The fact of the matter is that he simply did not care!

But surprisingly, all was not yet lost; and Sir’s salvation from fading away in the obloquy as spent force in the eyes of the entire school came from out out of the blue from a very unexpected source: the youngest and extremely timid member of staff, Stephen Bickerstaff, who had joined Churton at the beginning of the summer term as junior English literature master and assistant housemaster in Walpole House, where he presently resided as a bachelor. Stephen Bickerstaff was a self effacing young man, who could barely have brought himself, to say boo to a goose, let alone thrash a lad’s arse, either clothed or bare; it was a problem, which he knew, as assistant housemaster, he must one day soon face up to and conquer, as he would, one day soon find himself obliged to thrash some boy or other. Bickerstaff was a local; he had been born in Hereford, where his windowed mother still lived.

It just so happened that on that very Saturday before the end of term, he had gone into Hereford by train to see his mother. On his way back that evening, he alighted at great Churton Station and was making his way on foot along the High Street towards the school, when he passed by the King’s Arms Public House. As the evening was exceptionally warm, he went in to wet his whistle. Timid though he might be, Stephen Bickerstaff loved his pint of beer; a habit difficult to shake off, which he had acquired with his drinking chums in his Oxford days.

He had settled himself at the saloon bar with his first pint, when saw across the bar itself, in the public bar opposite, all six house-captains of Churton, together the Alexander Cunningham, the school’s head-boy, all as bold as brass, propping up the public bar, making merry, smoking and drinking. He fixed his eye on Cunningham, who finally looked up, blanching visibly as he saw Bickerstaff staring at him with evident disapproval written all over his face. Bickerstaff motioned to Cunningham to leave. On the pavement outside, Cunningham blustered and maintained that the seven of them were all 18 years of age and were, therefore of legal age to drink and were breaking no laws.

Marched back to the school by Bickerstaff, the six house captains stood somewhat humbly in front of the Headmaster. Head-boy Cunningham, meanwhile, maintained his position and attempted vociferously to defend their action. On and he blustered; in his view they had done nothing wrong; they were all 18 and not breaking any law; and, anyway, they would all be leaving Churton forever on Tuesday morning, in three days time; so why should not the seven senior prefects, seven young gentlemen in his view, not celebrate the end of their schooldays by an evening in the pub?

He ended up by making a cardinal mistake, of accusing Bickerstaff of making a mountain out of a molehill, when the young man was just doing his duty. What he had not realised is that the lot of them were in a hole of their own making, and as he was now to learn from the Headmaster, in defending, what was an indefensible position, with every word he said, he was digging it still deeper. Had he glanced at his companions’ faces he would have realised from their look of dismay that he was making matters worse rather than better.

Sir allowed Cunningham to blather on interrupted, a look of growing disbelieve on his face, that the head-boy, the very person, whom he had personally chosen, could be so stupid as to believe that the breaking of two, if not three cardinal rules of the school could be disregarded. Sir generously attributed Cunningham’s behaviour to an over consumption of beer. He eventually contended himself by saying that although the seven of them had not broken the law of the land, they had broken a number important rules of the school, which until the official end of term they were obliged to obey.

“Until Tuesday morning, this school, is in loco parentis and, responsible for the well-being of all boys in its charge, irrespective of age: a responsibility which we at Churton and I, as Headmaster in particular, take very seriously indeed. If any you seven boys had had an accident in the public house or coming from or going to it, the school would. quite rightly, have been held legally responsible. Luckily nothing untoward happened: but it could have. You seven young men will be severely punished for your misdeeds and disregard for the rules of this school. However, you will have to wait until tomorrow’s assembly, where your names will be announced, to hear what I have decided for you. That is all for the moment; yon are all free to go and contemplate your fate and I wish you all goodnight.”

Sunday morning arrived and the entire school assembled for the last time, in the chapel, under their Headmaster, Mr. Augustus, Caesar, expecting to to hear words of farewell, in his final didactic allocution. Instead, after the hymn and the usual announcements, of which there were few, with the end of term only two days away, Sir began:

“I would like to see the following gentlemen in my study tomorrow afternoon, at 2:30 pm.; of course, appropriately attired for the occasion.”

This caused an immediate stir in the congregation; to coin a phrase: something was obviously up. This was the first time ever that Sir had deviated from his normal custom of announcing the names of the boys, who, as everyone had hitherto known, were to be beaten, prior to Sunday lunch. It was the sting in the tail of every Sunday morning assembly and was considered by the boys as a regrettably painful part of the regular, weekly events at Churton.

But the fact that the boys about to be named were to be beaten on the Monday afternoon had aroused the curiosity of the entire school. There was no doubt that the boys were to be beaten; the mention of the need to wear appropriate attire had confirmed that. But why were they to be beaten on Monday afternoon instead of, as was customary, before lunch on Sunday, when next day, on Tuesday morning, straight after breakfast, the term was to end and the school was to break-up for the long summer holiday?

As Sir began to announce the names of the gentlemen, as he referred to them, who would have the privilege of submitting their bare arses to his tender, loving care on Monday afternoon, So total was the silence that you could have heard a pin drop in the chapel; it was almost as if the entire congregation, boys and masters alike, had stopped breathing for a few moments. Sir slowly read out alphabetically, from a pre-prepared list, the names of the boys, whom he wished to see and, quite unusually, added the name of the house to which each belonged, thereby arousing even further the curiosity of his audience:

“Addison – Walpole House; Bellamy – Compton House; Brotherton – Pelham House.”

Before continuing, he paused for a moment, to allow the significance of the three names he had just announced to sink in.

He then continued: “Cousins – Cavendish House; Farley – Grenville House; Vaughan – School House.”

A ripple of a whisper flashed around the chapel as the penny finally dropped. Sir had just announced the names of the six senior prefects: the house captains of all six houses at Churton, all of whom demanded and were accustomed to be treated like Gods by their lesser brethren. Well, Gods or not, they were evidently to get their comeuppance for some unspecified reason or other. Tomorrow afternoon, the day before the end of term, all six house-captains were to be beaten on the bare by Sir; the mention of appropriate attire had confirmed that this was not a social visit to Sir’s study. Evidently, all six house-captains had committed some heinous crime together, for which they were all going to be flogged tomorrow afternoon. The question on everyone’s tongue in the assembly was: what had they done to incur the Headmaster’s wrath?

As Gods they may have considered themselves; and, until now, like Gods they may have been treated by their lesser brethren, who feared them. But the twilight was fast closing in on them and their downfall into utter obscurity would be complete by Monday afternoon. But why delay the beating until Monday afternoon. Well, there was method in Sir’s apparent madness in putting off their beating as late as possible. With vindictiveness aforethought, Sir wished to send the seven senior prefects on their way with backsides so painful that they would have an extremely uncomfortable journey home and, thereafter spend the first few days of their summer vacation repenting for the error of their ways each time they sat down.

But Sir had not yet finished with his announcements; he held up his hand to quieten the hubbub of whispering, which had resulted from the amazing realisation that the six house-captions were all to be thrashed by on Monday afternoon, and said:

“In addition to the six gentlemen already named, I would also like to see the present head-boy of Churton, Alexander Cunningham; he too would oblige me by presenting himself, also appropriately attired for the occasion, along with the six house captains.”

This was a staggering announcement, in its way as shatteringly significant to the assembly as is physically a size 10 earthquake on the then yet to be invented Richter Scale to seismologists. It shook the hearers, boys and masters alike, to the core. They had just been informed that the six senior prefects of the school, all of whom would be finally leaving Churton on Tuesday, aged 18, never to return, were to be given a bare arse beating by the Headmaster on Monday afternoon. Now they had just learned that the head-boy too was to be thrashed! It was almost unthinkable that such a fantastic scenario could ever take place; but on all evidence so far, it looked certain that it would.

The six housemasters were, of course, furious to learn, in an announcement at the last school assembly of the term, that Sir, without prior reference to them, intended to thrash all six house–captains for some unspecified offence; that the head-boy himself was also involved in the evident delinquency and that he too was also to be sanctioned. It really was a prime example of Sir at his worst, riding rough-shod over his colleagues; and in their uncharitable view, even Sir at his best was pretty bad news!

The vast majority of the boys wallowed in epicaricacy of the moment, afforded them by the extremely unpleasant predicament in which the seven senior prefects of the school now found themselves. They had thought themselves untouchable; above the the school rules, which they evidently had seen as applying to others but not to themselves. They had, each in his own house, invoked the most pettifogging breaking of even minor rules to justify the excessive beatings, which throughout the year, they had regularly inflicted on many of their schoolfellows; oh yes, the prefects’ canes at Churton were seldom silent for long.

It was, therefore not surprising, now that the boot was on the other foot, so to speak, and the prefects themselves were to feel the bite of the cane across their bare buttocks, that there was little sympathy among their erstwhile school-friends for their plight. With some justification, most boys were enjoying the Schadenfreude moment of the mental torture which the group of senior prefects wood endure for one full day and night. It would reach its painful conclusion tomorrow afternoon, when it would be converted into into physical pain by the senior rattan cane biting into the unblemished flesh of their bare buttocks: a cane wielded by Sir’s sure hand, which they had all, at some time in the past experienced at least once in their career as boys at Churton.

It was an exquisite turn of events for the boys; less so for the prefects, who all, in the past year, had become accustomed to wielding, rather than receiving, the cane. The boys, on the other hand, were overjoyed, with boundless epicaricacy, at the prospect that the universally hated house-captains and head-boy, all of whom had, during the past year not hesitated to thrash their schoolmates at every opportunity, were finally to receive their just desserts in the form of a taste of their own medicine; a medicine, which did not leave a bitter taste in the mouths of its recipients, but left them with something much worse: excruciatingly painful, well-beaten arses, which, every time they sat down for at least a week, would painfully remind them of the error of their ways; such was the longevity of Sir’s beatings.

Chapter 8.

2:30 on Monday afternoon saw the six house-captains waiting nervously in the corridor, outside Sir’s study. They were each wearing the appropriate attire for the occasion, which said it all to any causal boy, who happened to pass by, as many fortuitously did, wishing to witness, first-hand, the nervous discomfort of the six hated, senior prefects. Of the head-boy, Alexander Cunningham, there was as yet no sign. But he suddenly appeared, dressed to the nines in his best tailcoat and all his school regalia. His co-prefects all looked askance at him, thinking that he had gone out of his mind to defy Sir so blatantly.

Seeing the askance look on the faces of his co-prefects, he said: “This, my friends, is what I consider the appropriate attire for a head-boy to wear for a formal visit to his Headmaster in his study. None of us did anything wrong on Saturday evening. We are all eighteen years of age and we all have the legal right to enter a public house to drink beer and smoke cigarettes if we wish, a freedom which I personally propose, forthwith, to exercise. If Sir thinks he is going to beat me for exercising my rights as an adult at the end of term, a few days before we are finally to leave Churton forever, then he is wrong and can think again.”

From the looks on the faces of his co-prefects, Cunningham realised that he had not convinced them.

The study door was suddenly flung wide open and Sir appeared. He glanced at the assembled group of prefects He cast a baleful eye on the head-boy and said; “Cunningham, get in here immediately.”

Sir settled himself behind his desk and looked unblinkingly at Cunningham, staring him directly in the eye. Cunningham became unnerved and less sure of himself and avoided the glacially penetrating gaze of his Headmaster, who now said: “Perhaps, Cunningham you would care to explain to me why are standing in front of me, decked out in all your finery, as if you were attending a wedding, not waiting to be beaten, as you are about to be.”

“You, young man, have broken not one, but three of the most strictly enforced rules of this school. I told you specifically to present yourself to me appropriately attired, which, as you know, in this school means wearing only your gym shorts and vest, preparatory to being beaten. Allow me to dispel any illusions you might have had, that in spite of your flagrant disregard of three of the most stringently enforced, cardinal rules of this school, because of your status as head-boy of Churton, you are somehow exempt from punishment. You, boy, will be beaten hard for the error of your ways.”

“Let me just say that, you, Cunningham, as head-boy, the senior prefect in this school, are supposed to be a beacon of light for your schoolfellows, showing them how to behave. Instead of stopping your co-prefects from going to the King’s Arms to make merry, I find that it was you, who arranged the whole affair. You, Cunningham, have a great deal to answer for; and answer for it you will, right royally before the day is out. I can but say, Cunningham, that I am extremely disappointed in you.”

Cunningham began, yet again, to try to justify his actions: “Sir, in the strongest possible terms, I feel I must protest on behalf of my co-prefects and myself, at the way…”

He was here cut off in mid sentence by Sir, who said: “I have heard already heard your justification for your actions, on Saturday night when Mr, Bickerstaff brought you all before me. They were wrong then and they are still wrong today; so I see no point in allowing you to rake over the old coals again. This document lying here in front of me is your original inscription as a pupil at this school; it is signed by your father and is valid until tomorrow morning, when you will leave Churton for last time, I regret to say, taking with you a very painful souvenir of your latest misdeeds.”

Sir, then read out aloud to Cunningham the relevant sentence of the school’s pledges towards its pupils: “The school pledges to look after its pupils in loco parentis, during term time. The school has a strict set of rules, which it expects its pupils to obey without exception. Parents’ attention is drawn to the fact that the school does use corporal punishment to correct erring boys. Any boy breaking the rules exposes himself to correction with the birch or cane; and in some extreme cases of bad behaviour, even both, applied sequentially, to his bare buttocks. There is no opt-out from beating clause in this contract. Therefore, parents must accept that if their son misbehaves, his bottom will beaten on the bare.”

“As you see, Cunningham, the school, represented by me as Headmaster, remains in loco parentis until term ends which is tomorrow morning. Until that time all boys, including you, Cunningham, as head-boy, and all prefects, will obey the rules; or, as you are all shortly to find out, face very painful consequences.”|

Listening to the Headmaster read, with considerable relish, chapter and verse of the contract between his father and the school, Cunningham saw that he would be potentially wasting his breath, talking to deaf ears, even to attempt to argue the toss with Sir. He saw all his arguments crumble away, as he recognised that he had been wrong and would have to suffer the painful sequel to his actions. Just how severe the consequences would be was about to be revealed to him by Sir, who had no sympathy with the head-boy, who, he decided, had let the side down badly. It was the same with the six house-captains, all of whom had debased the dignity of the office, to which they had been promoted.

Chapter 9.

Sir was not one to let pass this opportunity, which had been handed to him like gift from heaven, allowing him to leave Churton for his retirement in a blaze of flagellative glory, an act which he had acutely missed during the past few weeks. He had already decided that the offence committed by all seven senior prefects was serious enough to justify that most severe of punishments: the so-called Churton Double Whammy. Conceived by Sir as the nec plus ultra, the most painful ever, of public school beatings, it owed its name to its first victim, an inventive sixteen-year-old lad, whom Sir himself had caught drinking and smoking, late in the evening, in an alcove in the school library: when he had stupidly thought that the coast was clear; he had suffered the punishment for the selfsame offence, for which the seven prefects were now appositely about to be flogged..

The Double Whammy – the name had endured, while no one today, not even Sir himself, remembered the name of its first victim, who had named it – consists of a number of birch strokes, followed almost immediately by the same number of strokes of the cane. It combines the exquisitely, diffuse , but nevertheless excruciatingly painful effect of a good birching, with the eye-watering bite of the cane; although less feared than the birch by most boys, in the right hands, the cane can do much more damage and deliver more lasting pain to a boy’s arse than can the birch.

When Sir, first told Cunningham what he had mind as punishment for him and his six co-prefects and the part that he expected the head-boy to play in it. Cunningham had at first demurred; however, Sir had exerted a very persuasive argument to make his head-boy agree to do his bidding. He did not actually promise his head-boy, that his own fate might be less severe if he cooperated with his Headmaster and did as asked. However, from the gist of the conversation, he let Cunningham believe that his punishment might just possibly be less severe if he cooperated.

Needless to say, to save his arse from worse depredations from the Headmaster’s cane, of which he had considerable prior, personal experience, the young man agreed to go along with Sir’s proposal which, to say the very least, were surprising. Precisely what Sir proposed to Cunningham will be revealed later; but when push finally came to shove and the head-boy, who had kept his end of what he had thought was a bargain, was to be sorely disappointed, with the emphasis on the word sore.

During the lengthy time that Cunningham was in conclave with Sir behind the closed door of his study, the six house-captains had been left waiting in the corridor contemplating their navels, or, more realistically, nervously pondering their fate. Not surprisingly, as time passed, they grew ever more nervous, listening to the drone of the voices of Sir and the head-boy, through the closed door. The door eventually opened to reveal the head-boy, who was now clearly acting as proxy for Sir. He authoritatively told his co-prefects to stand in front of Sir, who, with his face arranged as black as thunder, was sitting behind his enormous desk.

Sir was strong on rhetoric, as he verbally tore a strip off the six young men in front of him. They all knew from past personal experience, garnered in that very same room, precisely what Sir was capable of with the cane. They had feared the worst and Sir did not disappoint them with his abundant generosity; for the beating to which they were finally subjected was much worse than the worst they had ever imagined. Sir said:

“Never, did I think that I would live to see the day, when, as Headmaster of Churton for the past 38 years, just days before my own retirement, I would experience such mass disobedience from the entire complement of the most senior prefects of this school. In breaking two of the most sacred rules of this school: no smoking and no drinking, you have disgraced yourselves, dishonoured the school and your own house, where you are meant to uphold the very rules which you have broken. You are all, as house-captains, supposed to set an example to your schoolfellows, not lead them astray; and to make matters worse, you did what you did in that most public of places: a public house, into which the school rules forbid you to enter.”

On and on, he ranted, in much the same vein, until eventually having exhausted all the pejorative epithets he could throw at them, he stood up behind his desk and said: “Well, we had better get this show on the road, as you young gentlemen are probably, by now, seriously regretting your actions and wishing to face retribution for your misdeeds and thereby partially – and I stress the word, partially –absolve yourselves, in some small way, from your sins.”

“As your Headmaster, it is my duty to help each of you exculpate yourself for your outrageously unseemly behaviour on Saturday evening. which I propose do by giving each of you a severe birching with a spanking new maple birch, made by the head-gardener, this very morning, expressly for this special occasion. I would be lying to you if I said other than that the birching will be agonisingly painful: pain; but which you all richly deserve for your offences; which, at the risk of repeating myself, I stress, are very, very serious indeed.”

“You gentlemen will suffer your penance in alphabetical order of your names. Unless I am mistaken, I believe it falls to you, Addison, house-captain of Walpole House, to lead the way and be the first to submit your bare bottom to the absolving caress of the birch. So, Addison, kindly step out of your shorts to allow access of the birch to your bare bottom; fold your shorts up neatly and place them on the table over there; then follow me into the birching room next door, where I assure you that I will my very best to help you unburden yourself of the shame which you must be weighing heavily on your conscience, after your appalling behaviour on Saturday evening.”

“Meanwhile, the rest of you, take off your shorts too and place them also neatly on the table in preparation of your bottoms for their appointments with the birch. Then all of you go and stand with your hands on your heads and noses pressed against the wall over there, until I call you, one by one, into the other room to keep your, I regret to say, painful appointment with the birch. After which you will each resume your former position, noses against the wall, again with your hands on your head. You will all refrain from touching your freshly birched bottoms, which, if I have done my job correctly, I do not pretend will be other than extremely painful, and enjoy, if that is the word, the pain which is the well-deserved retribution for your actions.”

The astute reader will have noticed that Sir had avoided telling the boys, exactly how many strokes of the birch each of them would receive. He had used the word partially in reference to the birchings, which implied that there was more to come; but he had left his six victims in a state of nervous anticipation, guessing as to what their final fate would be. Knowing Sir well, as they all did, they were in no doubt that Sir was playing with them, as a cat plays with a mouse, before despatching the poor creature to the hereafter, with a final blow of its paw.

What they feared was that Sir would prove himself as ever, the personification of generosity itself and make every effort to help them fully expiate their sins, by endowing them with that hallmark of any public school worth its salt: a truly well-birched arse. They were left in no doubt, after the long, verbal harangue, to which Sir had just subjected them, that their arses would be given absolute hell and that they would finally be given permission to leave and lick their wounds, in what, as ever, would be a quasi-futile attempt to relieve the excruciatingly searing pain pulsating through their buttocks; pain which would be with them every time they sat down for quite a few days into their summer holidays.

The whole macabre situation was just too much to stomach for Michael Vaughan the captain of School-House, Churton’s oldest house. So as self-appointed port-parole for himself and his co-captains, all of whom, when he began to speak, wished he had remained silent. Given Sir’s obvious displeasure at their behaviour, they fear that Vaughan’s intervention might make an already bad situation worse. As young gentlemen, for that is what, in spite of their fall from grace, they all still considered themselves to be, they were all ready to acknowledge the error of their ways and accept the inevitable, painful retribution which followed, as their just desserts

But Vaughan was not to be silenced, as he threw caution to the winds and roundly criticised Sir for his treatment of what he described as his senior prefect group, the captains of the six houses of Churton. Certainly, they all deserved to be punished, and punished severely, for their rash actions on Saturday evening, which Vaughan claimed was an aberration fuelled by the exuberance of youth, for which they were all prepared to pay. But he went on to vigorously criticise Sir for treating them as junior boys; humiliating them by making them stand, half naked, with their genitals exposed, their noses pressed to the wall, their hands on their heads, as if they were first formers. He summed up his his view, in one strongly damning phrase, telling Sir that his behaviour towards them was simply not cricket!

Sir allowed him to go until he had had his say and run out of steam and then said quite simply: “Well, Vaughan, I am pleased to hear from your remarks that my nothing-succeeds-like-excess approach has resonated with at least one of you. Now that you have have got that lot off your chest, young man, might I suggest that we resume where we were before we were interrupted by your litany of complaints? As I recollect, I was just about to birch the buttocks of house-captain Addison, who, from the look on his face, I see is as eager as I myself am to get on with his punishment as soon as possible.”

“As we have kept him waiting for so long, it would be impolite to make him wait any longer. And so, gentlemen, if you would all adopt the penitent, waiting position against the wall, to which your co-prefect and co-defendant, Vaughan, has just so eloquently objected, I will attempt to satisfy Addison’s desire to be have his naked buttocks birched, which I will be only too glad to fulfil.”

He then placed a fatherly hand in the middle of the back of the trembling, woeful-looking Addison and propelled him through the open door, into the adjacent birching room where he was to meet his fate. As he did so, Sir noticed a look of enquiring mystery on the faces of all six prefects, as they gazed enviously across at Cunningham, who had stood silently there through the whole humiliating procedure, ever since they had been summoned into his study to learn of their fate.

He divined that they were all thinking: “Why is the head-boy still in his school uniform, when we are being humiliated and are now being made to stand around half-naked, waiting to be birched. For what reason is he being treated differently from us? After all, it was he, who first suggested an evening out at the pub, to celebrate our forthcoming freedom from the strictures of life at Churton, and, therefore, he should receive the same treatment as us.”

Only Sir and the head-boy himself knew that he would ultimately receive a comeuppance commensurate with his leading role in the affair; and, at that moment, only Sir himself knew that at the end of that very afternoon, Cunningham would be forced to eat an even bigger helping of the same humble pie that his co-prefects were currently finding difficult to swallow. Sir also noticed that, in his tirade against his actions, house-captain Vaughan had not alluded at all, to the continued presence of the head-boy, still attired in the finery of his full, school uniform, complete with his full tail-coat, usually worn only at the most formal of school assemblies in the chapel.

In the birching room, the heart of the unfortunate Addison missed a beat, as he saw the freshly made Churton maple birch, lying there, ready for its maiden outing, in which it would kiss his naked arse, God knows how many times, as Sir had been very unspecific. He was justifiably afraid, as he had never been birched before: caned many times, but never subjected to that legendary, reputedly most agonisingly painful of all public school punishments: the birch! But now only a few hours before he left Churton nevermore to return, he was to make up for that omission in his flagellative experience: he was to be birched!

However Addison was not to have his first birching, which would probably also be his last, with the conventional public school birch, but with the storied Churton birch. Invented by the school’s present head-gardener, almost 40 years ago and made exclusively by him ever since, the Churton Birch, was made from the lignified, current year’s, thin, whippy shoots of a certain species of pollarded maple. Anyone who had felt its venomous bite, across is naked arse, would confirm that it was, without a shadow of doubt, the most diabolically painful of all public school implements of correction.

Not surprisingly the poor lad, faced with the Churton Birch, was, as the succinct, but vulgar expression puts it perfectly: shitting bricks. But to his great surprise, given the ferocious reputation of the birch in general and of the Churton Birch in particular, when the first stroke landed on is bare arse, although it was painful, it was not too bad: quite bearable, in fact.. And it has to be said that Sir, a devout believer in the maxim: pain is the name of the game, did not hold back on the force of his blows.

As is often the case, first appearances can be deceptive; and as stroke followed stroke, the pain quickly built up to the unbearable levels, which gave the birch its formidable reputation. By the fourth stroke, Sir had reduced Addison to a flood of tears and he was already crying out for mercy. By the time the final, twelfth stroke fell and he was told by Sir that he could get up and rejoin his co-prefects next door, he thought, for one brief moment, that he would rather die than continue to support the excruciating pain he was was suffering.

He limped painfully back to rejoin his co-prefects, where he was told to assume the same position as them against the wall, however, with the added warning not to allow his hands to stray from his head towards his bottom. Addison made a meek request to be allowed to put his shorts, back on, which was refused. The refusal indicated to the waiting boys what they had all along feared: that the birching was merely an introductory step to an even more severe punishment. Sir, ever the expert at racketing up the mental tension, as well as being an expert in delivering the maximum pain to his victim, left them in no doubt that the birching was just a preliminary to what he next had in mind for them.

It was Bellamy, who the next in line to submit his bare arse to the joys of the birch. As the only one of the six able to see the full horror Sir had wreaked with the maple birch on Addison’s arse, Bellamy’s face was, not surprisingly, white as a sheet, as he reluctantly went into the birching room, from which he was to emerge a few minutes later to rejoin the group against the wall, his nether anatomy still naked, but now, with an agonisingly painful, well-birched arse to his name.

As for the prefects, who, noses still to wall, had not yet had the privilege of seeing the results of Sir’s handiwork, they were forced to listen to the disturbingly frightening, swishing] sound of twelve cuts of the birch mating painfully with bare buttocks of the present victim; evocative of the unpleasant prospect of pain to come shortly for all of them,: a thought, which knowing Sir’s expertise with the rod, filled them all with justifiable dread.

Finally, Sir and Cunningham, the head-boy, enjoyed a few moments of epicaricacy together, as they viewed with pleasure the livid, raw, blood-flecked backsides of the six house-captains. Cunningham was quite nervous himself, as he knew that the moment would soon come when he too would have the doubtful pleasure of submitting his own naked backside to Sir’s legendary, not-so-tender loving care. But he managed to banish that extremely unpleasant thought from his mind for the moment and to enjoy the unique, erotic, sexually-arousing sight of the six, well-birched arses of his co-prefects, all of whom were no longer schoolboys, but young men aged 18, with their genitalia exposed.

It is doubtful if such a cock-arousing, erotic scene as six young men, simultaneously displaying their well-birched buttocks had ever before been seen. Both Sir, and Cunningham wallowed in the utter eroticism of the scene, which Sir had created single handed with a total of 72 strokes of the Churton Birch., Not surprisingly given the well-documented relationship between corporal punishment and sexual arousal, they both developed massive, uncontrollable erections, which they did not attempt to conceal from each other. Luckily for them, the six young men, with their noses pressed to the wall, with their hands on their heads, who were displaying their well-birched, blood-flecked arses, could not see the obvious pleasure, which Sir, the prime source of their pain, and the head-boy who, by all rights should have been birched with them, were enjoying in observing their misery. For Sir and head-boy, Cunningham, it was a moment of total Schadenfreude.

Due to his forced abstinence from the not-so-gentle act of flagellation during the past two weeks, because of a complete dearth of boys with punishment notes presenting themselves to be beaten at the fateful hour of 4:30 each day, Sir had become unusually sexually aroused by performing the six birchings.. Looking now at the fruits of his handiwork in the form of six well-birched arses, he knew he was himself on the point of orgasm. Not concealing his erection from Cunningham was one thing; however, allowing his cock to erupt into orgasm in front of his head-boy, with its inevitable flood of semen into his pants, was quite another.

Knowing that he could not hold himself back much longer, he mumbled some feeble excuse to Cunningham about feeling faint, as he rushed to the privacy of his bathroom, leaving Cunningham alone to continue his enjoyment at the painful misfortunes of his co-prefects. Sir dropped his pants allowing his throbbing erection, which freed from of the encumbrance of clothing, promptly sprang to attention, demanding immediate relief, Taking his cock in his right-hand, Sir had barely commenced to relieve the sexual tension which was racking his body, when he climaxed uncontrollably, into an intense orgasm, in which he forcefully ejaculated seemingly endless gobbets of his semen, all of which, thankfully, landed on the bathroom mirror.

Some fifteen minutes later, by then again completely composed, he returned to his study to complete the act of retribution being visited on the seven prefects. But it was now the time for head-boy, Cunningham to pay for his involvement in the affair. Sir had no intention of allowing the head-boy to escape unscathed, for he had played the major role in arranging the King’s Arms affair. Cunningham had also had the effrontery to ignore Sir’s order to present himself, along with the others, appropriately attired for punishment, arguing that as they were all 18 years of age, they were breaking no law and were merely exercising their right as adults to frequent a public house and to drink and smoke. In his view, the appropriate attire for a head-boy to wear to present himself formally to his Headmaster, was in full school uniform including the head-boy’s tail-coat which he alone usually wore only for Sunday chapel and very formal occasions.

Sir then motioned to the head-boy to go into the birching room, out of earshot of the others, whom he left to luxuriate in their agony, noses pressed to the wall in his study. He simply asked the head-boy what he would have done if he himself had found a group of boys drinking and smoking in the King’s Arms, to which Cunningham replied immediately, that he would have beaten them, for breaking not only one, but three of the most sacrosanct rules of the school. From that moment on, the head-boy knew he was skating on thin ice. Sir then probed further, to understand why Cunningham, knowing that his co-prefects would be breaking the rules, had not stopped, but joined them himself, in their nefariously illicit project.

To his utter amazement, Sir then discovered that Cunningham himself, with a virtuoso display of braggadocio confidence, which he had gained in his office as head-boy, had assured even the two most reluctant of the six house captains that, as they were all 18 years of age, they would not be breaking any law by entering into the King’s Arms public house. What he had failed to realise, until brought home to him now with a vengeance by Sir, was that they were all subject to the school rules until term ended on Tuesday morning, when they would all cease to be pupils of at Churton College and free to do as they wished.

Sir said: “Cunningham, I am both appalled and disappointed that, in your position as the most senior prefect in the school, you suggested that the seven of you celebrate your leaving Churton last time at the end of term, by a night out, drinking and smoking in the King’s Arms. You, young man, personally bear the greatest responsibility for what happened in on Saturday evening.”

“All seven of you will be severely punished for having participated in such a flagrant act of disobedience. However, you, Cunningham, as head-boy and instigator of the incident, must realise that you bear the major responsibility for what happened; and therefore, your own punishment will be exemplary. You must learn that with high office, goes responsibility, which, in your case, has, lamentably, been singularly lacking. I have no alternative, given the seriousness of your actions, but to subject all of you to the most severe punishment, which, in this school, is reserved for just such cases of gross disobedience as the present. Believe me when I say that I take no pleasure in informing you that you and your co-prefects will all be subjected to the Double Whammy.”

“As I am sure you are probably aware, that the rarely used Double Whammy, the most severe and painful of all punishments at Churton, involves first a thorough birching, which your co-prefects have already experienced, reinforced immediately afterwards by a severe caning; applied, of course, to the offender’s bare buttocks. In your particular case, as head-boy, to spare you the indignity of being forced to bare your buttocks in front of your peers, I will myself, with some reluctance, perform the distasteful task of both birching and beating you in private.”

Knowing Sir as he did, and having several times, in the past, experienced his expertise with the birch and the cane on his own bare arse, Cunningham dismissed Sir’s use of the words; with some reluctance and the distasteful task; as complete and utter balderdash; the man had to be joking; Cunningham did not doubt for one moment that Sir would get the greatest pleasure from thrashing him, his head-boy. He knew from his own considerable experience as a head-boy, who had never been reluctant to use the cane on his schoolfellows, even for the most minor of misdemeanours, that his degree of satisfaction and sexual arousal increased exponentially with the age of the boy being beaten.

For Sir, to beat even one sixth-former was an event rare enough; but to birch and beat and then to go on to birch and then beat with a cane the head-boy of the school was unprecedented; it was the stuff which gave rise to legends. At that precise moment, Cunningham dreaded even to think about what Sir had in store for him; and yet he knew objectively that he and his partners in crime merited every swingeingly painful stroke that was coming to them

But Sir had not yet finished: “However, Cunningham, as you have just said that you would have no hesitation in beating any boy whom you caught entering a public house, doing exactly what you and the others did on Saturday evening, you might be interested in the following suggestion: In a last ditch attempt to allow you to regain some of the respect as head-boy which you have hitherto enjoyed in the eyes of your schoolfellows, and redeem yourself from the ignominy of your momentary aberration, leading to your dereliction of your duties,. I suggest you now pick up your duty from where you left it lying before your Saturday evening escapade and assist me in giving the six house-captains the second phase of heir richly deserved punishment.”

“I have already given each of them twelve strokes of the Churton birch, as first half of their Double Whammy. What I am proposing is that I now hand them over to you, to complete their punishment by you giving each of them the complementary twelve cuts of the cane across their already well-birched arses; I think that is the vulgar term, which you boys use to refer to that very important part of your lower, rear anatomy.”

The subtle double sexual significance of the word, important, did not escape the attention of the head-boy whose mind at the moment was, not unreasonably, concentrated not on potential sex, but on how to salvage the best deal for himself out of what was a very messy and unavoidably painful situation. He wanted to come out of this affair, which to his credit, being a realist, he acknowledged to himself, was entirely of his own making, smelling like a rose rather than like a heap of horse dung.

Sir continued: “I know that it sounds like a half baked attempt to solve a basically intractable problem; in effect attempting to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted. But you, Cunningham, find yourself in an invidious position, by the nature of your actions on Saturday evening, which can be succinctly summed up by the proposition: do as I say, not as I do, which contradicts everything you stand for as head-boy of Churton. On Saturday, you made the bad decision to run with the hare, when you were not only still a hound but also head of the pack: two activities that are totally incompatible. My suggestion that you take over the second half of your co-prefects’ punishment, would at least enable you partially to regain the dignity of the position of head-boy of Churton which you still hold until tomorrow morning, when term ends and all seven of you will leave Churton for the very last time.”

Cunningham thought about what had been proposed to him in an attempt to solve his dilemma, before saying: “Sir, I don’t think I could bring myself to beat my co-prefects, they would see me as selling them down the river; thinking only of saving my own skin, which would make me a turncoat and a coward, which I would have to live with for the rest of my life. After all, Sir I was the one, who, in the first place persuaded them to take part in Saturday night’s escapade. The looks they have given me, wearing my normal school clothes, as I still am, has already singled me out, in their eyes, as being treated differently, due to my status as head-boy. So, Sir, I must regrettable decline your offer, for even though I might never see any of them again, I would have to live with the thought that I betrayed them.”

“Noble thoughts, Cunningham; noble thoughts, indeed; but I would urge you to think again. I accept the fact that Saturday night was a youthful aberration: an escapade indulged in with no thought of the consequences. As your Headmaster, I have no desire to blight the future careers of seven of my pupils, due to one youthful indiscretion. But as Headmaster of this school, I also have a duty to hold you to account for the seriousness of your disobedience, which if ignored, undermines the very foundation of discipline, one of the cornerstones on which the success of Churton is based”

“To ignore what you did and dismiss it as an end of term jape by seven senior boys aged 18, who were about to leave the school anyway, would be to ignore my duty and contractual obligations as Headmaster. That is why I have decided that, even on the day before you leave Churton for the very last time, you must all suffer the severest punishment ever imposed on a group of senior prefects at Churton, as warning to others that rules must be obeyed.”

“I cannot erase from the memories of your present schoolfellows that the head-boy and the six house-captains, the seven most senior prefects in the school, all aged 18, were flogged for reasons which will never officially be made known, in the afternoon of the day before they would leave Churton forever,. You Cunningham and your six most senior side-kicks will be spoken of in bated breath for years to come, if not in name, but as a cautionary example that even the most senior members of the school are subject to the same rules as everyone else until the day they leave.”

“However, what I can do is to promise you and the others that after having taken your punishment, which I do not pretend will be anything other than excruciatingly painful, the slate will be wiped clean. No mention of this incident will be entered in the school records; it will be as if the escapade and the subsequent punishment had never occurred.”

“That is why I advise you to think again, Cunningham, and do as I requested; re-grasp your duties as head-boy, and thrash your co-prefects for their disobedience, to which, even if encouraged by you, they could have and, more importantly, should haves said no. I will make it clear to them that you are beating them at my instigation, and that I have encouraged you to take up again the principal functions of the head-boy of this school, which you had abandoned in a moment of aberration. I will also tell them, that whatever conclusions they might draw from your appearance, fully dressed as you are, you will be birched and beaten by my hand, in exactly the same manner as them.”

“If you persist in your refusal, Cunningham, then I am afraid I must ask you to go and change into the appropriate attire for a beating and return here within fifteen minutes, when you will have the pleasure of being birched by me and forced to stand alongside your peers against the wall, waiting our turn to be beaten to complete your Double Whammy. Whatever you decide, Cunningham, you cannot escape the fact that the needs of your buttocks will be addressed first with the birch and then with the cane, both wielded by the experienced hand of your Headmaster.”

What Sir had purposely neglected to tell Cunningham in his final, remarks, was that, as head-boy and instigator of the entire affair, his punishment would be much, much, more severe than that of the others.

Needless to say, in the face of the indignity of the alternative if he refused, Cunningham finally decided that he would beat his six co-prefects. Additionally, the opportunity to address the arses of six, 18 year-old studs with the senior cane was just too attractive a prospect to miss. The only cloud on the horizon to detract from the enjoyment he would have in beating the hell out of six of his schoolfellows pre-birched arses was that his own backside was also on the line, to be first birched and then caned by Sir himself. But as he could do nothing to avoid that eventuality, his carpe diem – seize the moment, enjoy life while you can – mentality switched on and he pushed out of his mind the terrible thought of what his own arse would look like after Sir had worked his inimitable magic on it. He resolved to enjoy the unique opportunity, offered to him by Sir’s suggestion, to beat six of his contemporaries.

Sir, accompanied by Cunningham, went back into his study where the six house-captains were still lined up with their noses pressed to the wall, forbidden even to touch their arses to mitigate the intense pain they were suffering, They were all nervously awaiting to hear what the future held for their already pain-racked arses; the long wait had indicated intuitively to them that their punishment was not yet over and that there was more to come. They were quickly to find out the horrific sequel to their birching, as for the first time, Sir unequivocally told them the bad news; they would now each receive twelve cuts of the senior cane, applied by the head-boy to their already birched arses.

Sir told them that he had cajoled the head-boy, with some difficulty, into agreeing to beat his contemporaries, in what he now admitted was the second phase of the dreaded Double Whammy. The head-boy had finally come to his senses and acknowledged the error of his ways and had agreed to resume the functions of his office, one of which was to beat boys, who broke the school’s rules. Sir went on to assure the house-captains that the head-boy, as prime- mover in the whole incident, would not escape unscathed from, what he described, as his momentary lapse in judgment. He too would be punished, by Sir himself, in an exemplary way, commensurate with his behaviour. He also went on to tell the boys that once the beatings were over and done with, the slate would be wiped clean; there would be no written record kept about the King’s Arms affair; it would be as if it had never happened.

Cunningham’s blood ran cold, as he heard Sir intone the words: in an exemplary way, in reference to his own punishment. Knowing Sir’s prowess at delivering pain whenever he beat anyone, he wondered fearfully, what horror Sir would visit on his arse. As the fullness of time would tell, he was right to fear the worst, for Sir surprised not only Cunningham but also himself.

Sir handed head-boy Cunningham a highly flexible, senior cane and told Addison to assume the position over the Victorian beating stool, which was the centre piece of his study. Addison, in obvious pain, limped across and reluctantly did as he had been ordered. As Cunningham looked down on Addison’s inflamed buttocks, flecked with blood where the twigs of the birch had broken his skin, he knew that Sir, would be tough act to follow. For a moment he did not know why he had agreed to Sir’s proposal, other than the fact that he derived great pleasure and sexual arousal from inflicting pain on any of his schoolfellows.

But today was something special. Even to beat just one of his contemporaries would have been a chance just too good to miss; but here he was being offered the opportunity to thrash not one, but all six house-captains: the six senior prefects of the school! If this was not manna from heaven, then what was? It was an opportunity, offered to him on a plate, just too good to miss. Trying mentally to square the abominably painful circle in which he found himself, he tried, quite unsuccessfully to convince himself that beating his six co-prefects might just compensate him for what his own backside was later to experience at the hands of his Headmaster. Knowing Sir’s experience at beating arse, he knew that he was dreaming; that he was in for a very painful Double Whammy himself; it was pie in the sky to think otherwise.

Sir had convinced of the idea of him administering the second half of the Double Whammy to his contemporaries as a mean of rehabilitating his credibility as head-boy, which he had thrown out of the window in organising and participating in the affair at the King’s Arms.. But now, in the cold light of reality, he saw that his tenure as head-boy had less than a day to run, as it would end the following morning, when he and his contemporaries would leave Churton for the very last time. It now seemed to him a waste of time to pretend that he was rehabilitating himself, as he would probably not see most of his contemporary of his schoolfellows ever again.

However, he knew that to satisfy his own sadistic urge to inflict pain on any of his schoolfellows, a flaw in his character which he had successfully kept hidden from everyone, that he would take great pleasure in beating his contemporaries. He could not even bring himself to look one gift horse in the mouth; and here was being offered six! Looking down Addison bare arse, which had been – to coin a phrase, birched to a turn by Sir, like a well-roasted chicken. Cunningham realised immediately that Sir would be a difficult act even to follow, let alone equal; but he decided that he would make a valiant attempt to show himself worthy of the task that he had agreed to undertake, before being forced to submit his own arse to Sir’s undoubted skill with both birch and cane; an event which he was definitely not at all looking forward to.

Cunningham looked down at Addison’s arse, which had been left sizzling hot by Sir’s birching; the ideal candidate pair of muscular buttocks, just crying out for a dose of the cane to complete the Double Whammy. Inspired by the adage: strike whilst the iron is hot, Cunningham prepared to give poor Addison’s arse the first of twelve strokes of the senior cane. As the first cut landed on his raw, inflamed flesh, still racked with pain from the birching, Addison, not surprisingly, cried out due to the severity of the blow, which Cunningham, under Sir’s critical eye, had not dared to attenuate. The senior cane is painful enough, even when applied to the bare flesh of an unsullied arse. However, for Addison, whose arse was already suffering from a bee’s knees of a birching, that first stroke, combined with knowledge that it was the first of twelve, must have been absolute hell.

But pain was the name of the game; so no matter how loudly Addison cried out, stroke followed unremitting stroke, until all twelve strokes of the Double Whammy had been administered by Cunningham, who prided himself on his ability with the cane. He considered himself an artist, with the cane as a percussive substitute for an artist’s paint brush, with which he etched a tasteful, abstract picture of stripes on the canvas of his victim’s bare arse. So Addison finished up with ten strictly parallel, extremely painful, livid red furrows from the bottom of his back to the top of his legs, each well-defined by two raised welts, due to the force of the blow of the cane. This tasteful picture was then completed by two intersecting, diagonal cross-cuts. When Addison was finally told by Sir that he could get up and also ordered to resume his former position alongside his partners in crime against the wall, he was the possessor, proud or not – probably the latter – of a truly well-beaten arse, from the likes of which, legends are born.

The other five house-captains had been forced to listen to, but had not actually seen Addison being beaten by the head-boy: the very person who had, in the first place, got them into the terrible, painful situation, in which they now found themselves. For a while they had all thought that Cunningham, the prime mover behind the affair, might escape scot-free and go unpunished. But they had Sir’s assurance that this would not be the case and that he too would ultimately punished quite severely. This was, of course, of little consolation to them, in view of what the caning they were themselves just about to undergo.

Over the next half hour, at least in Sir’s eyes, Cunningham really did redeem himself as head-boy, as he thrashed the bare arses of the other five house-captains as if there was to be no tomorrow. So great was his personal pleasure at the unprecedented opportunity of being able to beat on the bare, not just one, but six of his schoolfellows, with whom he sat together daily in class, that he almost – but not quite – forgot, that once his present services as curate at the high altar of the Double Whammy were complete, his arse too, would be subject to the painful agony of the birch and the selfsame cane, wielded by Sir himself: a thought, which, knowing Sir as he did, filled him with utter dread.

Now that the dreaded moment had arrived and he had to face up to his own painful retribution for his actions, if he had hoped – given his sterling performance – Sir’s own words of congratulation to him on a job well done, that he might received a less severe beating, he was to be sorely disappointed. Sir, who had finally allowed the six house-captains to escape to the somewhat futile task of attempting to sooth their wounded arses as best they could, now turned to Cunningham and said:

“Well, young-man, the moment has finally arrived, as it inevitably would, for you to face retribution for your part in this sad affair.” He then got Cunningham tacitly to agree with him, in words, which were tantamount to a turkey voting for Christmas, that as the senior prefect, instigator of and prime participator in the so-called King’s Arms Affair, he deserved to be treated more severely than his co-prefects.

Sir continued: “Cunningham, I knew that as the fair-minded young gentleman, which you have just shown yourself to be, in agreeing with my suggestion that your own punishment should be exemplary. I take great pleasure in the fact that I, your Headmaster, who elevated you to the highest office, to which any boy, in any school, can ever aspire, will also be the very person to help you relieve yourself of the heavy burden of guilt, which you must still feel hanging over you for your leading part in this sad affair. I cannot pretend that your punishment will be other than very painful; indeed, it is my duty as your Headmaster to make it excruciatingly so.”

“However, once you have lived through the pain of retribution, which will remind you of your fall from grace, for several days after you leaved this school tomorrow, you will suddenly realise, each time you sit down that your moment of aberration, which gave rise to this unfortunate affair, was, in fact, just that: an aberration. You will suddenly feel a better man; a man who has no past secrets to hide: a man, who can look any other person straight in the eye without flinching, and above all, an honourable man, able to make his way in life, with his head held high.”

Cunningham listened to Sir’s words and dismissed them, in his own mind, as a load of mawkish, self-serving, persiflageous hogwash, which, as he was shortly to learn, was all perfectly true. He accompanied Sir into the birching room, where his backside was shortly destined to renew its acquaintance with the Churton maple birch, which, although it had taken place several years earlier, was etched indelibly on his memory as very painful experience which he had avoided repeating until now. As Sir told him to take off his cumbersome, formal school clothes, he realised that Sir had not yet told him, of what the exemplary punishment, he was to receive, would be comprised. It was not until he had shed his clothes that he learned with horror of what Sir intended to do to him.

As they entered the birching room, Sir told Cunningham to take off all his clothes, other than his vest. This was not unusual; boys at Churton waiting to be birched or beaten, or sometimes both, as in the present case, were required to wear the so-called appropriate attire, consisting only of shorts and vest. When called in to meet their fate, boys were required to step out of their shorts, leaving their nether anatomy naked and in particular, their bare buttocks accessible to the cane.

When he heard Sir’s order to strip, Cunningham suddenly realised that he had neglected to wear a vest under his shirt. Thus, if he removed his shirt, he would be naked. Drawing Sir’s attention to the fact that if he acceded to this order, he would be stark naked, he received the laconic reply: “Then, so be it!” Evidently, Sir saw no problem in beating Cunningham naked, even though it was to be an added humiliation for the young man, who was now to learn, with justifiable disbelief, what his so-called exemplary punishment was to embrace.

Cunningham stood naked in front of Sir, who was utterly blown away by the perfect, physical specimen of the young man, who stood before him and whom he was about to take to hell and back with the birch and the cane,. His ever ready sexual libido was already taking over his senses. He knew, just looking at the naked, lusciously sexually inviting Cunningham, who too was obviously also sexually aroused, as his erect cock testified, that he would have to exercise extreme self-restraint to stop himself from sexually importuning the young man, after just having beaten the hell out of his arse.

Sir now pulled himself together and continued in his never-ending, round-about way, to say what he had in mind for his head-boy. He framed his remarks in such a way as to imply that they had both already agreed on the outlines of what would constitute an exemplary punishment, to which he was simply adding the finishing touches; he was, in fact, doing Cunningham a favour in beating him, thereby aiding him to retrieve his lost prestige. There was no need for any further discussion; as far as he was concerned; what he now told Cunningham was final.

He said: “Cunningham, I am delighted that you have agreed with me that your punishment should be somewhat more severe than that which your co-prefects have just received for their part in this sad affair. And so to help you redeem your self-esteem, I am prepared to exert myself exceptionally on your behalf, to ensure you that you feel the beating, which I personally now propose to give you, will provide you with adequate retribution. It will enable you mentally to regain the prestige, which you lost, when, in moment of aberration, you persuaded the six most senior prefects of this school to participate in an orgy of drinking and smoking in the King’s Arms.”

On and on he droned, in an irritatingly moralising tone of voice, without ever coming to the point and telling Cunningham, what he had in mind to visit on his stark-naked head-boy’s awaiting arse. Cunningham, totally fed up with what he saw as verbal diarrhoea, from a preachy old windbag, was thinking: “Enough off this bullshit. Let’s cut to the chase.” which had he voiced it aloud, would have sealed his fate with a vengeance, when Sir, suddenly came to the point and said:

“I would not want you to think, Cunningham, that I was being ungenerous in my offer to help you to feel, in your own mind, that you had suffered inadequate pain to achieve the degree of retribution sufficient to assuage your conscience and rehabilitate yourself after the unfortunate lapse in your judgement which which led to this distressing affair. Thus, although I know that, in your desire to make amends, we both agreed that your punishment should, perforce, be more severe than that of your co-prefects, I feel that I must limit myself to giving you 18 strokes of the birch, followed immediately by 18 strokes of the senior cane, across your bare buttocks.”

Sir was, in fact, about to give Cunningham a total of 36 strokes across his bare bottom, which was the maximum number of strokes that even the Headmaster of Churton was allowed to to inflict on any one boy at any one time. He was being economical with the truth, by pretending that he had personally decided that 36 strokes would allow Cunningham to gain back his self-respect; the reality was that he was about to throw the book at the head-boy.

Not surprisingly, Cunningham shivered with fright and went into a cold sweat on hearing his quite draconian fate. In his mind, there was no doubt whatsoever that this would be the most severe beating: the mother of all floggings, so to speak, ever inflicted on a boy at Churton; or indeed on any schoolboy in England.

Sir prated on, rubbing salt into what he must have known was the severe wound he had just verbally inflicted on his head-boy: “I know you must be disappointed that I find myself restrained from helping you to rehabilitate yourself further than I now propose. However, I would draw your attention to the fact that what I now propose is a 50% increase on what your co-prefects received, which, I think will be adequate for the purpose. So, Cunningham, as you are already stripped for action and raring to go, might I suggest that you assume the position by kneeling on the birching stool when, I will do my very best to assist you on the painful road to absolution.”

After listening to Sir’s lamentable misrepresentation of the facts, to say that Cunningham was practically shitting bricks, was to say the very least. He was furious that Sir should have strayed so far from reality in his monologue, as to pretend that he was doing Cunningham a favour, by giving him what he knew was the most viciously painful bare-arse beating ever: the 36 stroke Double Whammy. Not only was Cunningham furious with Sir for pretending that it was he himself who had wanted to be beaten severely, when nothing was further from the truth. But he was also petrified with fear, as anyone in his right mind would be, at the prospect of a 36 stroke, bare-arse flogging.

And so Cunningham, found himself reluctantly kneeling on the birching stool, presenting his bare arse to Sir for what they both knew was to be the beating of a lifetime, which, according to Sir’s utterly absurd thesis, would provide the head-boy with the retribution necessary to absolve him from his recent sins. However, before he began with the birch, Sir inflicted one last indignity on his head-boy; he strapped the young-man’s wrists and ankles to the frame of the birching stool, thereby implying that his head-boy was not capable of taking his punishment unrestrained. But as will shortly be revealed, there was another reason why Sir wanted his head-boy completely immobilised.

Cunningham had vowed to himself that somehow he would not give Sir the satisfaction of breaking him by his exaggeratedly savage attack on his bare arse. Incredible though it might sound, Cunningham showed that he had sufficient sangfroid to withstand even Sir’s strenuous efforts. When the last stroke of the cane had landed diagonally across his backside, Cunningham had shed neither a single tear, nor had he made any sound during what was quite honestly must number as of one of the most horrifically sadistic beatings ever. But when his punishment was over, he was left strapped to the birching block, where we shall rejoin him later the story.

Fallen with the other Gods, as he had, Cunningham had nevertheless shown his backbone as befits a young gentleman under extreme pressure, in not allowing himself to be broken by Sir’s excessive attack. He deserved to be beaten along with the others for their total disregard of the school rules. But none of them deserved the excessively severe beatings they had just received at Sir’s hands. In fact the beatings had served not only to correct tge seven of them for thoe gross misconduct, but also as much as an antidote for Sir’s withdrawal symptoms, due to a lack of boys to beat over the last two weeks of his tenure before retirement.

Had Cunningham’s suffering been enough for him to rehabilitate himself as head-boy in the eyes of the school, as Sir had implied? Cunningham himself frankly did not care two hoots at that moment. He was to leave Churton the next morning, never to return. Thus, regaining his prestige as head-boy seemed irrelevant to him. It was as if he had been given a leather medal for ineptitude. His reign as head-boy would be soon forgotten by his younger schoolfellows, who had felt the scourge of his cane during the past year; they would, next year, have a new head-boy to contend with. Truth to tell, the majority of his school fellows admired the fact that he and the six house-captains had dared to flout the school rules so flagrantly.

The sterling quality Cunningham had shown when taking the excessive beating, which Sir had sadistically inflicted on him, had indicated his true worth under extreme pressure. It was to stand him in good stead; as a senior officer in the army, when the war with Germany broke out in 1939, he was awarded a DSO – the Distinguished Service Order medal – for gallantry in the face of the enemy. Ranking just below the Victoria Cross, of which only 181 were awarded during the Second World War, Cunningham was able, for the rest of his days, to wear his DSO medal with pride and bask in the admiration, which it suscited in the general public. His role as head-boy at Churton, in the early 1920s, was completely forgotten.

Sir had seized on the error of the head-boy and the six house-captains as a means of fulfilling his own desire to retire in a wave of flagellative self-glory. He had successfully turned what was a molehill into a mountain of sadistic self-satisfaction. Even Sir himself had only occasionally got the chance to beat an older boy in the sixth form; so the opportunity beat not one, but all seven senior prefects, was just too good to miss.

He had concocted this hypothetical, imaginary means of rehabilitation through excessively painful retribution, which had led to excessive beatings of all participants in the King’s Arms affair. The 24 stroke Double Whammy, to which he had subjected the boys, had previously only ever been used in cases of theft and downright dishonesty. The 36 stroke Double Whammy, which the head-boy had suffered was completely beyond the pale. How Cunningham had endured the onslaught on his arse, without making a murmur or shedding a single tear, defies the imagination and demands admiration for his remarkable self control.

But now that his so-called, rehabilitation beating was complete Cunningham was wondering why he had not been released from the straps still holding him place over the birching block and allowed to go and attempt to palliate the excruciating pain raging in his arse. He was aware that Sir had left the room and gone elsewhere, for some unspecified reason, leaving him spread-eagled, in a highly embarrassing position, still strapped immobile to the birching stool. He was soon to find out why!

What neither Cunningham nor Sir knew about each other was that they were each active homosexuals. Sir, who had been having sex with the school’s head-gardener for the entire 38 years of his tenure had been so overwhelmed by the sight of Cunningham naked arse that he had, for the first time in his 38 years as Headmaster of Churton, thrown his customary caution to the winds, and was preparing himself to have sex with the young man, whose arse he had just taken to hell and back with the birch and then with the cane.

Without saying a word to Cunningham, Sir had, left him strapped to the birching stool, whilst he went off to his bedroom to fetch a bottle of the baby oil which he and James Prior used as a lubricant, whenever they has sex together.

Cunningham heard Sir return to the birching room, but stretched, face down, over the birching stool as he was, he did not see that Sir was now completely naked and sporting a rock-hard erection which was shortly destined to stretch his head-boy’s anal sphincters. Sir, of course did not know that he was about to penetrate a young man, who was as active sexually with his own unique lover, a schoolfellow in the sixth form, who was not a prefect, as was Sir himself with James Prior.

Would it have mattered to Sir, that his head-boy, whom he was about to fuck, was at least as highly experienced at anal copulation as he himself was? Not at all! This was not a teaching exercise, but a chance to satisfy his own personal lust by fucking a super-attractive arse, which he had just thrashed. Anyway, given Cunningham’s own vast sexual experience, instructing him in the etiquette of homosexual sex would have been the equivalent of Sir trying to teach his grandmother to suck eggs.

It was motivated purely by his personal lust, to commit an act, which he had so often desired to do, during his 38 years of bare-arse beatings of the boys of Churton. He had often been tempted to fuck the the arse of the boy, whom he had just beaten; but until now, had never given way to temptation. Had always hunted with the hounds and never run with the hare. However, what did it now matter if he sacrificed his principles and gave way to his urge to fuck his head-boy, whom he had just beaten? After all, tomorrow was his last day as Headmaster of Churton; who would care?

The sight of Cunningham’s lusciously fuckable, well-beaten arse, had finally tipped him over the edge of inhibition; he had decided to burn his boats and was about to commit an act, which he knew, given his position as Headmaster of the school, was total inappropriate. But, as he acknowledged that he was human himself and, for the first time in his life gave into his own frailty, he had thought to himself: “What did it matter if, literally, in the last hours of my tenure at Churton, I ditched the principle of treating one pupil, in loco parentis, which had been the guiding light conditioning my behaviour, until now.”

As he surprised Cunningham by sliding his cock into the lad’s anus, he knew that he was committing an act, which, in addition to being illegal under the present law of the land, was an example of the same thinking that Cunningham had himself used in organising the King’s Arms affair: “As it’s the end of an era anyway, what odds does it make?”

At the end of the day, literally all of the Gods: the head-boy, the six house captains and even Sir, himself, had, each in their own way, all fallen to the vagaries of human behaviour.

Thus ended the long reign of Mr. Augustus Caesar, as Headmaster of Churton Academy for Boys.