Chapter 24: Punished

Three days later, Jacqui was passed by Martha as being fit enough to receive her punishment. Because this was a serious offence, Martha seemed to want to make a big show of the punishment. Half way through the morning, when they would usually have been relaxing, all the staff of the New House of Joy were told to assemble in the Choosing Room, where a whipping bench had been set up. When they were all present Martha gave a brief outline of what happened, although they had all heard the details already.

Then she said to Jacqui, "Your first offence was letting a customer get you drunk; for that you will have six strokes. Then you left the New House of Joy without permission; for that you will have twelve more strokes. After that you let a customer fuck you for free; that should be six strokes per customer, which would be twenty-four because there were four of them and you agreed to let them all have you, but I'll only give you one set of six."

"But, but I didn't give them a free fuck; they forced me. It was practically kidnap and rape," protested Jacqui, "They would have killed me. They nearly did."

Martha's only reaction to this was to add, "And now you argue with me about it; six more strokes. That makes thirty strokes of the cane so far, unless you would like to try for some more?"

Jacqui subsided into a truculent silence as she faced thirty strokes of Martha's long whippy cane which had somehow arrived on Csadia from Earth. Nobody knew how it had turned up in the New House of Joy, but all of the girls feared even a single stroke from it. Thirty strokes promised unimaginable pain.

"You know what to do. Strip and get over the whipping bench," ordered Martha, "You won't be shackled because I'm not a customer. You will count each stroke. You won't move or try to get up until you are told that you may. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Madame," said a very frightened Jacqui, quietly.

She quickly slipped off her overalls and lay over the whipping bench. She closed her eyes in anticipation of the agony to come when she saw the actual birch cane in Martha's hand.

"Yes, this one really hurts," said Martha, "You won't break the rules again in a hurry."

Hiss! CRAACK!!!

The watchers saw the body on the whipping bench convulse as though with an electric shock as a narrow line of bright red with white edges was ruled across the meatiest part of the buttocks. For her part, Jacqui felt such a line of soul-searing pain across her arse that she could not even draw in her breath to scream, let alone count. Never in her life had so much pain been concentrated in a tiny strip of skin. She was sure that she had been cut open by the thin cane, and she was certain that twenty-nine more strokes like that one would kill her. Then she thought that maybe they were painful enough to rouse the dead.

"One," said somebody, "Sorry Madame, but she isn't able to breathe, let alone count."

It was Violetta, risking a punishment herself to help the girl.

Hiss!! CRAACK!!!

By now Jacqui had caught her breath and let out a wild scream as a second line was ruled about an inch above the previous one. With some detached part of her mind she noted that if the strokes were far enough apart the pain was doubled, and not merged as close lines would be. The scream ended in a strangled, "Two."

Martha waited for Jacqui's involuntary twitching to subside and then, with professional pride, she laid the cane on just as hard exactly half way between the first two.

Hiss!! CRAACK!!!

Another wild scream came from Jacqui as the three lines of pain merged into one giant burning agony. This was not an ordinary punishment; Martha really meant to hurt her, maybe even to kill her; she was certain that the flesh of her buttocks had been ripped to shreds.