The Portrait of a Strict Disciplinarian

New readers should start reading this novel at Chapter 1.  The chapters do not stand alone, but are sequential components of an erotic novel in which there are 36 chapters in all, which are intended to be read in numerical order. T

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Early next Monday morning, the fatidic day arrived on which Brad would make his debut as a strict disciplinarian by flogging the first three lads on the list of court-ordered, mandatory birchings. He hoped that the news would flash rapidly around the School on the internal grapevine that the new Warden meant business and the good old days were at an end. Liam showed John Wood, proudly bearing the paddle which he had personally made in the School’s joinery shop into Brad’s study. As he handed it over to Brad for his approval, he said: “I hope, Warden, that you will find this satisfactory and fit for purpose. As you can see the paddle itself is made from 30 mm thick beech-wood, which is tight-grained, dense and very heavy. I have spliced a handle made of ash, which is the wood alleys used for hammer shafts, into the paddle to ensure that it will withstand the shock of repeated blows and I have turned the handle on the wood-working lathe and have covered the end in leather to provide you with a good grip.”

Brad looked at the implement, which, in its own way, had to be considered as minor work of sculptural art. It was just one of those magnificently conceived technical objects, which in the great, alas long abandoned tradition of so many English tools made during the early part of the twentieth century, was not only totally extremely fit for purpose, but was also, in its own right, an object of beauty; so much so that it delighted Brad’s aesthetic sense. The paddle was not only exactly what Brad had wanted, but it was beautifully balanced in the hand and had been sanded to a smooth finish, which gleamed invitingly in the sunlight, with which the day was blessed, as if eager to mate with the first pair buttocks to which it would deliver its inaugural, painful message. At first sight, Brad knew that he had been handed the punishment instrument of his dreams: one which would have delighted his mentor in the art of preparing – preconditioning as he put it – a deserving arse for a thorough flogging.

Brad read through the details of the first three inmates who were the three with the oldest, as yet unfulfilled, mandatory birching orders, whose arses he was to shred that very evening, by away of his maiden innings with the birch and the cane at Highgate. All three were petty criminals with a history of minor crime since the age of about 15 and all of them had, on several occasions, been previously sentenced to judicial canings by the various magistrates in front of whom they had appeared, before being again let loose to continue their nefarious activities on an unsuspecting public. The only thing these three had in common was the fact that they had all eventually been convicted of menacing people – essentially women – with knives and one of them had gone so far as to inflict a flesh wound on the arm of one of his victims as she attempted to resist him. All three  had arrived at Highgate in the space of some 10 days just over six months ago; as their punishments had been in abeyance the longest, they were on the initial list and would receive their comeuppance this evening.

The first two, Kenny and Knight by name, had each arrived with orders for 12 strokes of the birch on arrival, whilst the third, Albert Flynn, had, in view of his violence, received a sentence of an 18 stroke birching on arrival and two further birchings at monthly intervals thereafter. So it appeared that Brad would, in the space of the next two months, have the pleasure of addressing Flynn’s arse with the birch on two more occasions. The situation reminded Brad strongly of his interview for the post of Chief Disciplinarian at Moulton Midmarsh. He saw in the floggings this evening a replay of what had happened over two years ago, when the Headmaster had opened his eyes to what a serious flogging in such institutions involved. He was glad in a way, that his first subjects were all serious criminals, as it gave him justification to exercise his judgment on the adequacy of the court sentences, all of which he considered insufficient for the dangerous crimes that these three individuals had committed. He intended to make an example of all three lads for two reasons. 

Firstly, he decided to increase the severity of the judicial beatings which each lad would receive, as he considered them totally insufficient for the seriousness of the crimes committed. He intended to make all three of them endure the most painful physical retribution for their actions, irrespective of whether or not it would deter them from returning to their lives of crime on their release from Highgate. Their future actions he knew he could not control; but, by God, he could and would make them suffer extreme physical pain for their past actions; pain well beyond their wildest imagination. Secondly, he wanted his return to the use of the cane and the birch to be an example to the rest of the School, of the severe pain anyone who broke the rules would suffer. The regular use of the cane and the birch would again become part and parcel of daily life at Highgate under his direction. The inmates would not even have the choice between lumping it or leaving it; as they could not leave, they would just have to lump it. In their new Warden, the School had acquired a man who firmly believed in making the inmates suffer the pain of corporal punishment in retribution for their misdeeds, whether or not it would have any corrective effect on their future behaviour or not

At 5:30 Brad left his study to return home to an early supper with DD, after which he went to change into the stout padded underpants he had taken to wearing on such occasions in an attempt to conceal the totally uncontrollable erection accompanied by copious emissions of sperm, both of which he always experienced when wielding the cane. Why he should feel embarrassed when 99 % of men also experienced the same sexual arousal, even when they were just watching a flogging, is difficult to explain; but the simple fact of the matter was that Brad did.  Justifiably proud as he was of his own generous sexual endowment, which left most men who saw it envious, he was a firm believer in the appropriateness of both the time and the place to exhibit his physical attributes.

There were horses for courses, and in his view, the punishment room when he was flogging three, naked, young men, was not a course on which his personal stallion would run. As at Moulton Midmarsh, he had already decided that other than DD, who was there to metaphorically hold his hand, all the guards, including even head-guard Gormley, would be excluded from the punishment room whilst he roasted arse. He knew the guards would be disappointed, as they considered watching any inmate having his arse shredded as a perk of their job.  But Brad had decided that they must content themselves with the task of taking care of the subjects when they released them from the beating frames after he himself had left the room. He did not want to enquire too closely into what happened between the lads and the guards once he had left room; but he could well imagine.

Government legislation, bolstered by the school rules, prohibited sexual relations between any staff member of any rank with any of the inmates in such institutions as Highgate. But whereas formulating rules was easy, enforcing them was quite another story. Realistically in establishments such as Highgate, where many young men aged 16 to 19, with hormones coursing through their veins, were confined cheek by jowl with no access to female sex at all, buggery was inevitable. Buggery committed by young men on each other, the vast majority of whom were not homosexuals, but who circumstances had forced, in sheer desperation, into fucking their mates, to satisfy a completely natural urge, was a fact of life in all places like Highgate. Brad was as sure as anyone could be, without actually seeing them commit the act, that the guards too would avail themselves sexually of the young men whom he had just flogged.

The guards all had that hungry, lascivious look in their eyes, confirming Brad’s suspicion that their post-flogging care of the three lads would go much further than delivering them back to their respective dormitories. The three lads, who were all soon to experience its painfully percussive, therapeutic effect on their bare arses, eyed the paddle Brad was holding, with that nervous curiosity, aroused by fear of the unknown. Given the general preference for the cane and birch in England, neither they nor the guards were familiar with implement, originally inspired at Moulton Midmarsh by the now antiquated, long-handled bath-brush, but which in its present incarnation resembled the much-loved – by the deliverers rather than the recipients of its bounty – paddle still in use in many American schools.

It was the headwarder spoke first: “Sir, how do you wish to play it?  In the old days, Mr Whittaker preferred to take the subjects for beating, one by one into the room to be punished and to leave the others waiting outside.”

“No Gormley, I think from now on, as there are three birching frames in the punishment room. I see no reason not to take all three of today’s supplicants at the same time. So, from now on, for the next month at least, subjects awaiting a flogging will be dealt with three at a time.  There is a saying that there is safety in numbers, which is probably inappropriate today. But the three of them may nevertheless find slight comfort in the fact that they are not facing alone what will probably be the most painful experience of their young lives to date.”  Brad then turned to address the three lads whose arses he was about to roast; allowing his slight sadistic streak to surface, he said to them: “Make no mistake any of you; you are about to be flogged in retribution for the serious knife crimes you have all committed; that goes especially for you Flynn, who inflicted grievous bodily harm on the person you were attempting to mug. In view of the heinous nature of your crimes, none of you can expect any mercy from me. I intend to give each of you a flogging, the intense pain of which will be with you for several days: a flogging which you will all remember for the rest of what I suspect will prove to be your miserable lives. I have serious doubts whether the painful few minutes you are each about to experience today will have any effect at all on your future behaviour when you eventually leave this place. But at least I will have the personal satisfaction of having made you suffer for your latest despicable crime.”

Head-Warder Gormley made his feelings about the trio abundantly clear as he said: “Well, you three miserable specimens of humanity, you heard what the Warden has just said; get on your feet, take of your shorts and move yourselves into the punishment room so that we can get your arses ready for the magic to which the Warden is so kindly about to treat you. The three of you should thank God that someone is prepared to take the time and energy in an attempt to beat some sense into an irredeemable lot of losers like you.”

The three of them looked horrified at the order to take of their shorts. Flynn finally plucked up enough courage to speak and said, pleadingly, stating the obvious: “Warden, Sir, if we take off our shorts, Sir, we shall all be naked.” If he had hoped for a reversal of the order they had just been given and that the three of them would be allowed to maintain the skimpy garment which preserved their modesty, his hopes were dashed by Brad’s curt reply: “Exactly! Now step out of your shorts and let’s get this show on the road.  Now Gormley, I would like Kenny and Knight strapped to the first two frames and Master Flynn, whose arse, as he will shortly find out, deserves and will be given special attention in view of the grave nature of his crimes, on the extreme right.”

The three lads were finally strapped in place on the birching frames with their naked arses, prominently evident, just crying out to be shredded. Brad felt that ever faithful, annoyingly uncontrollable monitor of his sexual arousal already stirring in his crotch; and as he looked across at DD, he saw that he too, from the distinct tenting of the crotch of his pants, had already been similarly moved. Just the sight of three muscular sets of buttocks, all figuratively asking for a taste of the cane, followed by a potential intimate encounter with that other, more agreeable rod, had been enough also to arouse his partner.  Although they were unable to control their natural sexual reflexes, both Brad and DD knew that what they were both lasciviously coveting was forbidden fruit for them and that they would have to kerb their immediate sexual thirsts and slake them elsewhere.

The Head-Warder and three guards, who had strapped the lads in place, were still standing there, obviously thinking that they were about to witness the seldom seen, sexually arousing sight of three young men having their naked arses royally roasted by the new Warden. However, they were to be sorely disappointed, as Brad now told them to wait outside until he had finished the floggings, when he would release the by-then-repentant lads into their tender loving care.  As they left, their bitter disappointment at being deprived of the unique pleasure of witnessing the spectacle of a three-man flogging showed clearly on their faces. Brad had started as he meant to continue, and although the guards clearly did not like it, they would just have to lump it.

Brad had every intention of making the three dangerous tearaways suffer as much as possible.  He had brought the original court orders detailing the sentences mandated for each of them, which he now proceeded to read out in full, in a solemn and ponderous tone of voice. “So, as you have just heard, you, Kenny and you, Knight were each sentenced to receive 12 strokes of the birch, whilst you, Flynn, view of the seriousness of your crime, were to get 18. You will all possibly have noticed that I used the word, were, in recapitulating your sentences. As Warden of this School, if I consider the sentences are too severe or too lenient, I have the absolute authority to modify the court orders at my sole discretion, without reference to anyone. Well gentlemen, I regret to inform you that in view of the violent nature of your crimes, all of which involved knives, I consider the original court orders woefully inadequate and that each of you deserves to be punished much more severely.”

“I have decided that it will be instructive to allow you to experience what life in this establishment has in store for you, or more accurately put, for your backsides, if you put one foot wrong in the future, In the next several minutes, I am afraid, gentlemen, that you are each about to experience the most painful moment ever of your lives. Look upon what is about to happen to each you as an instructively practical demonstration of the way in which an at-first-sight, innocuous looking group of implements can be used effectively to teach you a painful lesson: a lesson you will remember for the rest of your lives and which, if you are wise and modify your bad behaviour, you will make sure you never have to repeat.”

DD whispered to Brad: “My God, Brad, don’t you think that you are being a bit too hard on these poor lads?  You have put the fear of God into all three of them; and by telling them you intend to up their original punishment and then leaving them in limbo, not knowing what is about to happen to them, I am sure that you have left all three of them in a state where they are shit scared. I know I would be if I were in their shoes.”

“DD, I know I am being hard on them, but they deserve it. These poor lads, as you just called them, are all hardened young criminals, convicted of knife crimes. All three of them have a history of violent crime; given half a chance, if it suited their purpose each of them would stick a knife into either of us at the drop of a hat – or even sooner.  DD, the punishment they are about to receive is meant to be painful: very painful indeed; and I intend to do my very best to make it so. I want to make them suffer physically in addition to being locked away from the general public. Such corporal punishment has nothing at all to do with any of that high flown, rehabilitation rhetoric, which the do-gooders of this world spout. We have tried that for many years, and it has failed for the likes of our three friends here. Finally the country has come to its senses and seen that there are certain factions of criminal society which are totally irredeemable. Many of the internees here at Highgate, including the present three, fall into that category.”

“Over and above that, we find ourselves, as new men, in charge of place in which discipline has been allowed to run down over the past year. Highgate, at present, is a living example of the maxim: Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile. Other than flogging the inmates, we, the teaching staff, have little means of keeping them in order when they misbehave, and get out of hand. Perceiving that my predecessor’s control over the School was diminishing due his encroaching ill-health, the inmates have gradually seen that they could, figuratively speaking, get away with murder, as the threat of a flogging gradually disappeared.  You now see the results: the establishment we have just joined is run down and discipline has all but disappeared as concept. As the new Warden, it is my duty to rectify matters as soon as possible.”

“Make no mistake, DD; I was recruited and put in charge of men, many of whom have 20 years teaching experience and are twice my age, because the powers-that-be recognised in me, the strict, unflinching, unbending and uncompromising disciplinarian that I had become after two years at Moulton Midmarsh. They have appointed me as a new broom and as such I intend to sweep clean, even if it involves flogging every last one of our inmates. When the others see the results of my handiwork on the arses of the present three dregs of humanity and become aware of the daily, three-man floggings over the next month or so, the beneficial effects on their behaviour will be astounding. Discipline, discipline and more discipline, will become the byword of this School. The threat of a flogging hanging over their heads, like the Sword of Damocles, will have a miraculous effect on their behaviour, worth all the jaw-jaw in the world. Now to some action.”

Brad had every intention of making his maiden innings a truly memorable occasion. He had purposely not spelled out their exact fate to the three supplicants. Their punishments would each be long and drawn-out explorations of the art of producing a well-flogged arse, prolonging both the physical and mental agony of the recipients as they were allowed ample time to appreciate the effect of every single stroke. The individual quality of pain characterising the three different implements, the paddle, the birch and the classic rattan cane, would build up slowly but surely, stroke by individual stroke, until it became unbearable.  And then, after a long pause, which would give the recipient the mistaken illusion that his punishment was over, as if as an afterthought, which it most certainly was not, would come that final coup de grace. The rattan cane would follow the birch, descending at lightning speed, totally unexpected by the recipient, but with ferocious force and intent, incising its final, hideously painful, deep furrows into the already tortured flesh, bring the flogging to an unbelievably painful end.

Brad, paddle in hand, positioned himself to the right of Kenny, his usual stance, with which he began every beating by paddling the subject’s left buttock, He gently laid the sizeable paddle on the naked flesh of the lad’s buttock just below his back, raised it above his head and then brought it down with maximum force where it landed with a resounding clap, thereby giving the maiden stroke of what could be considered as an hour-long master-class in the fine art of administering a severe flogging to the sole observer, his partner, DD.  Originally conceived by Mr. Harvey, the Headmaster of Moulton Midmarsh and shown to Brad as a pre-conditioning step to any flogging, prior to moving to more serious implements of corporal punishment, Brad had quickly seen that the paddle, when applied with force, as he always now did, was itself a formidably painful implement. It was, however, reassuring to Brad to have confirmation of this fact by Kenny, who on taking the first blow of the paddle, let out a loud howl of pain.

Brad then continued at his usual leisurely pace, leaving a thirty second interval between the three strokes which he placed on Kenny’s left buttock. Then, leaving the lad in agonisingly painful limbo, not knowing what was to happen to him next, he moved on to address Knight and Flynn, each of whom received the same treatment as had Kenny. To add to their discomfort, both mental and physical and make matters worse for the three lads, he waited a full minute before moving back to Kenny, whose right buttock then received the same treatment with the paddle. he then moved on to Knight and Flynn, finally leaving all three of them with what Mr Harvey had considered as pre-conditioned arses: backsides already glowing bright red and  ready to benefit fully from what was still to come.

Anyone looking at the three lads, even with half an eye, could see that the so-called pre-conditioning step was itself far from merely a titillating introduction to what was still to come, as the loud sobbing of all three recipients testified. But what made the whole occasion even worse than the undoubted pain they were being forced to endure, was the slowness of the operation coupled with the fact that they were still facing the unknown. Had they been classical educated, they might reasonably have posed Brad the question: Quo vadis Domine? – Whither goest thou, O Lord?  But as they were typical of the sadly badly educated classes of the country, they suffered in silence, broken only by the sound of their sobbing.

Brad now took down one of the 4 mm birches, swished it through the air for a few times for effect to alert Kenny that the next painful onslaught on his buttocks was imminent, before giving him his first swipe. The word, swipe, rather than stroke, somehow describes better the effect of the spreading action of the individual strands of the birch as they mate with the buttocks, which must always be naked if a birching is to be effective. In spite of the birch’s formidable reputation as the most painful implement of corporal punishment, the cane is capable of doing much more physical damage to the naked flesh of a subject’s buttocks by virtue of the fact that it delivers its entire force to a very limited, quasi one-dimensional area: the classic beating stripe. Much admired, albeit fearfully, by generations of public school boys, the traditional post mortem viewing of their classmates stripes was a combination of awe and the prurient curiosity, which is inevitably aroused in the viewers of any form of corporal punishment.

With a cane, it is easily possible to break the skin leaving, as a legacy of its passage, a bleeding mess of well-defined welts.  But the birch is much more subtle, spreading its pain across the entire area of a subject’s arse. The pain gradually and insidiously builds up to agonising levels, which give the birch its fearsome reputation. But as our trio were still as yet ignorant of the Warden’s intentions, Brad had already decided that immediately after their birching all three would benefit from a taste of the cane to allow them an opportunity to contrast the effect of both implements on their own backsides. 

Kenny and Knight had each been sentenced to twelve cuts of the birch; but Flynn, in view of the seriousness of his crime, had been awarded 18 cuts with two further 12 cut birchings to look forward to.

Severe as all three mandatory punishments were, Brad had felt that they were all inadequate in view of the fact that all three lads had been convicted of knife crimes. He had already used his discretion in giving all three of them six swats of the non-traditional paddle, which he mentally discounted as a punishment, even though the howls of appreciation emitted by the recipients indicated otherwise. But, first things first; the mandatory birchings had to be discharge before any additional punishments could be envisaged. Brad positioned himself alongside Kenny, laid the fronds of the birch on his already painfully inflamed buttocks. Then, with no warning, he gave Kenny the first of the long-delayed judicial strokes to which he had been sentenced.

With its myriad of flexible nylon fibres, the synthetic birch was a much more effective instrument of corporal punishment than its traditional, botanical predecessor. When correctly applied with force, as it now was by Brad, this fearsome implement, with its many tough, semi-rigid, 4 mm nylon fibres, bit painfully into the naked flesh of its target from the very first stroke. Brad, who never pulled his punches when it came to thrashing petty criminals, brought down the birch with great force on Kenny’s already painfully inflamed arse; to his great personal satisfaction his efforts were rewarded by a spontaneous howl of anguish.  He then continued at his normal leisurely pace, making haste slowly, treating Kenny to the first six of his mandated twelve cuts, leaving an appreciation interval of some 20 or so agonising seconds between one cut and the next.

After the sixth cut, Brad moved on to Knight, leaving Kenny in a state of suspended agony, stewing in his own bitterly painful juice. Knight too then received the first six strokes of his beating before Brad moved on and delivered the same to Flynn’s meaty arse. Next followed a full five-minute break before Brad turned his attention back to Kenny and gave him his second six judicial strokes, leaving the lad in what was by now excruciating agony. He then moved on and did the same for Knight and Flynn, leaving Flynn with a balance of six more strokes still to come. Brad knew that by proceeding at a snail’s pace and giving no inkling to the three young delinquents of what was still in store for them, he was turning their punishments into a mental nightmare. But as the saying has it: pain is the name of the game and Brad had no qualms of conscience in making things as painful and long-drawn out as possible for the three of them.

After another five-minute break, in which the silence was broken only by the continued sobbing of all three lads, Brad, addressing Kenny and Knight, said: “Well, gentlemen, that concludes the judicial part of your punishment. However, you Flynn, have still another six strokes to go to complete the mandatory part of your punishment. You will, I hope, forgive me, if I now devote my attention to your two companions and put them out of their undoubted misery, after which, rest assured that I will give your arse the additional attention which it deserves. Now all of you listen carefully. I have already told you that I consider the judicial birchings, ordered for the three of you by the various magistrates, totally inadequate levels of punishment for the knife crimes in which you have all been involved. And exercising my discretional authority, I now propose to give you, Kenny and you too, Knight an additional six strokes with the rattan cane. But you, Flynn, in view of the grave nature of your crime and your past record of violence, will, after completion of your birching, suffer 12 strokes of the cane.  I hope that the three of you will finally realise that crime does not pay, and that knife crime will lead to the most severe of physical pain for perpetrators such as you.”

“Now, all of you hear and believe this; if any one of you misbehaves in any way in the future, I shall have no hesitation in skinning your backsides again. And if any of you ever gives me occasion to address your arse again, you will find that what you have undergone today will be like a spring breeze blowing across your backsides compared to what I am capable of when I really try.”

Anyone looking at the state of the three lads’ arses, as they were now, before Brad had treated them to the additional strokes of the cane, would have asked himself how anyone could inflict more pain than he had already done. Brad himself knew in his own heart that in what he had already done to the three of them, plus the strokes of the cane still to come, he had reached the limit of his powers, short of butchering their backsides and leaving them looking as if they had been slaughtered. His words had been designed to put the fear of God into all three of them, in the faint hope that the prospect of yet another, even more excruciatingly painful thrashing would act as a deterrent. He feared in spite of his threats of worse to come, that his words would have no effect on the behaviour of these three young criminals. He just sensed that the three of them were trouble. But for the moment he had every intention of carrying through the supplementary punishment with the cane he had promised them.

Looking at the paddled and well birched arses of Kenny and Knight, exhibiting the multitude of tiny welts left by twelve cuts of the birch, Brad had no need of any invocationof the old adage, strike whilst the iron is hot, as he moved on to give the final coup de grace: six swingeing cuts of the cane to both lads. Both sets of buttocks were already glowing bright cherry red like iron just pulled from the blacksmith’s fire ready to be forged on his anvil and were simply crying out to be caned. Brad had every intention of leaving the two of them with backsides which would be white-hot with pain by the time had had finished with them. As ever, he made the process as long drawn out as possible. Wielding a heavy, senior cane, he gave Kenny the first of six strokes, placing it high on the lad’s buttocks just below his back. The effect was more or less immediate; both orally and visually; Kenny let out a loud cry of pain as the cane mated with his already painful flesh, leaving the deep crimson furrow so characteristic of a well-applied rattan cane. Brad then moved across to Knight and gave him his first stroke of the six which he had been promised. He then waited an interminable 30 seconds before returning to Kenny and giving him his second stroke, which he placed exactly parallel to the first.

And then, at 30 second intervals he proceeded to give Kenny and Knight each a total of six strokes. By the time he had finished his onslaught, some four minutes or so had elapsed and the two lads were writhing under their straps in utter agony. They had both pleaded for mercy as Brad applied the cane. But as we already know, their pleas went unheard; or if not unheard, at least were not acted upon.  By the time Brad had finished with them, their arses, if not visually white hot, they looked and, more importantly, felt, as if a red-hot poker had been forcefully and repeatedly applied to the bare skin. If ever two lads had been made to suffer for their sins, it was Kenny and Knight at that moment. Brad was quite unrelenting; he now left the two of them, strapped there across the birching frames in abject, agonising misery whilst he turned his attention to Flynn.

The reader can easily imagine how Flynn felt. He knew he had six judicial cuts of the birch still to come and then Brad had told him that he would receive not six, as had his companions had done, but a full 12 stroke beating with the cane before his punishment was over. As he had also been left waiting in suspended agony and forced to hear and see his companions being caned, it is not surprising that by the time that Brad approached him with the dreaded birch again he was in a highly nervous state and trembling like a leaf with the fear of what was still to come. Six strokes of the birch followed by 12 strokes of the cane were in themselves a formidable punishment. But on a bare arse which had already suffered 12 swats of the paddle followed by 12 cuts of the birch and was already pulsating with well-nigh unbearable pain, Flynn had no idea how he could bear what was still to come. But bear it he must as by now he had realised exactly what corporal punishment meant for wrongdoers like himself at Highgate.

Brad surveyed Flynn’s buttocks which were a fiery red from the beating he had already received, before delivering the balance of the six mandatory strokes of the birch, each with maximum force, but as always with the long appreciation pause between each stroke, thereby prolonging the agony as long as possible. But to make matters worse for Flynn, he concentrated all six strokes on the so-called sit-spot on the lad’s lower buttocks, always the most sensitive part of a man’s er, posterior. At each stroke, Flynn let out a howl of pain and his gentle sobbing, which he had maintained since the initial part of his punishment, was punctuated by screams of pain, accompanied, after the first two strokes, by an incessant flood of tears. Had Flynn not been such a vicious criminal, one might have felt some sympathy for him; but Brad, long inured to such histrionics from his experience at Moulton Midmarsh, pressed on regardless and laid on the birch with the maximum force he could muster.

But after the birch, Flynn had still the additional 12 strokes to endure. In its own right, a 12 stroke caning was normally sufficient to give the recipient’s arse that well-beaten look. But coming after a severe paddling and an 18 stroke birching, it was not surprising as Brad laid the cane gently across Flynn’s already searingly throbbing buttocks, Flynn, through his tears made a plea for mercy:  “Please Sir, please Sir, no more. I can’t take any more Sir. So please, please, please, Sir, stop.”  Looking at Flynn’s obviously agonisingly painful arse, a less determined man than Brad, might have relented and yielded to Flynn’s plea.  But Brad had become inflexibly hard-skinned; his two years at Moulton Midmarsh had made him an unbending believer in the beneficial effect of severe corporal punishment on men like Flynn, who in his view deserved to suffer extreme torment for their sins. It, therefore, goes without saying that Flynn’s plaintive pleas went unheard.

Brad went on and first delivered six, swingeing, parallel cuts of the cane, from top to bottom of Flynn’s buttocks, each leaving its characteristic, crimson welt with well-defined raised edges. Flynn let out a scream of agony each time the cane mated with his bare flesh. A less determined and less experienced man than Brad in the art of severe fustigation might have been put off his stride by Flynn’s dramatically histrionic accompaniment to his flogging. But Brad totally ignored them as he completed Flynn’s punishment by applying six diagonal strokes, three in one direction and three in the other, thereby creating an orderly criss-crossed pattern of welts, some of which were oozing droplets of blood. 

By the time he had finished, Flynn was sporting a text-book example of an agonisingly painful, well-beaten arse. Flynn, however, was less concerned with the visual aspect of his backside than with coming to terms with the utterly agonising pain he was feeling. As Brad lay down the cane and viewed his handiwork, the 12 stripes he had just delivered were already veering towards the blue, and he felt that Flynn had received his just deserts. Whether he would emerge a reformed character from his ordeal – and make no mistake; it had been an ordeal for all three miscreants and for Flynn in particular– was matter of conjecture. Brad was satisfied that very severe, painful vengeance had been visited on Flynn and that he had suffered agonising retribution for his actions. Vengeance is mine says the Lord; today, in his absence, Brad had deputised for him admirably.

Continued in Chapter 32