supplicium post mortem

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility. The motto of Peter Donne’s confessor when he entered the monastery, thirty-nine years old, hot-headed, clever, bereaved.

The Abbot at Lunsford had taken particular interest in him, as perhaps he ought, Peter being his nephew. He had persuaded Peter to come to Lunsford and then assigned him Barnabas for his confessor.

“He’s tried to harm himself,” the Abbot told Barnabas.

“With intent?”

“I fear.”

Barnabas intertwined his fingers and exhaled. “Will you permit the Norwich Discipline?”

The Abbot hesitated, a qualm for his nephew, but then nodded, recognizing what could be the only hope for his novice.

Days for Peter began an hour before anyone else rose. Barnabas woke him and supervised his milking of the cows. In that bleary-eyed hour, Barnabas exacted a kind of confession as he demanded an account of the night’s dreams. Confession and discernment of spirits, combined with milking—the ultimate monastic efficiency, Barnabas claimed.

“I saw her again,” Peter said one dark morning—his third month? thirteenth? what difference, really?

“Yes?”

“Her body warm and unclothed against me in our bed, soft, so alive…”

“Yes.”

“I knew she was dead, that this was a visit from beyond the grave, but her arms wrapped around me so…”

“Did you make love?”

“Not this time. But…I asked her to use her magic eyes, to… bring something good to me. ‘You can’t want me to live my whole long life without you and alone,’ I said.”

“And now?” Barnabas asked. “Mind the bucket!”

Milk sloshed across the dairy floor. Peter winced, knowing his confessor’s answer to inattention at milking.

“We’ll deal with that later,” Barnabas said dryly. “For now, finish, please. Your report, and your cow.”

“There was a later part, in the refectory here. I had just arrived, with the boys.”

“Your boys, or the boys you used to teach?”

“A blending, I think. I was worried over what they would eat and was bustling about trying to find them what they’d like. Then the Abbot reached over my shoulder and dropped two pieces of toast on my plate. They were hot, hot enough to melt the butter between them, and it was toast with the kind of bread she used to make, the best bread, the best toast.”

“Perfect toast.”

“Yes. And I wanted to blub because of the toast, and because of the fact that he’d been watching me all along, when I’d been busy with the boys, and he’d taken it upon himself to drop on my plate–no word, no fuss–the perfect toast.”

Barnabas nodded but said no more until later that morning–after Matins, after morning work, after Peter’s particular exercises–when Peter stood before him in the confessional cell, struggling as usual with the submission his confessor requested. Barnabas waited, as usual, without speaking, without removing the birch from its bucket until Peter had prepared himself. When the time came, he applied it with the force of radical mercy, until the fight left, and a bit beyond.

After saying the absolution and allowing the novice to rearrange himself, Barnabas fished a tin from his habit, an incongruous, luridly colored object containing ginger pastilles. He opened it and held it out to Peter Donne, who seemed to regard it as a sinister trap.

“Go on,” Barnabas said.

Sweets of all kinds were forbidden at Lunsford, and almost every other indulgence forbidden to Peter under the Norwich Discipline.

“No, thank you.”

“You’re afraid, aren’t you? Afraid of what will happen if you have it.”

Peter braced himself to deny it, but then shrugged.

“You aren’t the author of your life,” his confessor said.

“No,” Peter replied, as if he were only just realizing it.

“Someone else is writing your book.”

Peter frowned as if he had received crushing news.

“Someone who watches you. Someone who, unbeknownst to you, has taken time to prepare perfect toast, from perfect bread, and to drop it on your plate.”

The novice fell back to his knees, tears pouring suddenly from his eyes: “Please, Father, change me. Make me a man who no longer asks to have her back.”

Barnabas rested a hand on Peter’s head. “He is changing you. Your book is being written, even now.”

“And what does it say, this page?”

“This page?” Barnabas placed the open tin on the kneeler. “So I did sit, and eat.”

---

What is Bookends?

Note: Bookends will be suspended for the month of November due to NaNoWriMo, as explained here.

Read other folks writing this week:

• PapaTomLA

Here is a story from the archives, as a Lol Day prize. On many levels it is cringe-inducing for me, but I think, towards the end, it gets at the huge force that had me and M in its grips. Keep in mind we had been corresponding for just about three weeks when I wrote it. I had no idea I was in love with him, or he with me; and I don’t think I was able to see it even after writing this story. Now, our fates appear glaringly obvious to me, as if writing can tell us things we can’t see with our minds.

I wrote Vice as revenge for the first story Mark wrote me, The Benefit of the Doubt here. Also mentioned is Mark’s story The Fishing Trip, discussed here. Dixon and Tremlett are his friends in The Fishing Trip, Mr. “Big Tim” Harrison is Housemaster in question, and Dr. Malcolm Headmaster.

This is yet another story written before I had ever experienced the cane or any RL play. Trivia: it appears that this is where I acquire my middle name, ha ha!

Vice

© Casey Morgan 1995

1.

MI6 was getting good. After months of failure, they’d finally begun to crack the Finnish anonymous remailer and thus zero in on some chief offenders in their own green and pleasant. A stray pervo in Birmingham, a hoard of terrorists in London, some Wilde imitators at Oxford. But even Morley, who headed the investigation, was surprised to unearth a user at the School. He was familiar with the place. And he knew the master in charge of its computer systems. So, rather than file the appropriate reports, he got on the train and paid a personal visit, in hopes of resolving the situation on the qt.

Mr. Harrison–housemaster and English scholar–was a man of many talents. After his former student had left him, he went directly to the Media Centre. In no time he had traced the account in question: Mark Hastings. Well, who else would it be? So it was that after Vth form English, Big Tim loped across the playing fields to Dr. Malcolm’s house.

“I might have know it.”

“It would seem he’s quite an accomplished documentarian,” Tim added. “I took the liberty of photocopying one or two examples.”

He dropped on the desk something called ‘The Fishing Trip.’

“And this particularly vulgar waste of good paper…”

‘The Benefit of the Doubt’ fell beside its sibling. The remainder had been tucked away in Mr. Harrison’s very secure filing cabinets.

“I suppose he must be summoned, formal interview and the rest of it.” Dr. Malcolm sounded weary. Ever since booking his summer holiday to Tangier, this all too human headmaster had been having difficulty concentrating. In particular, he was fed up with Mark Hastings and was running out of resources to meet him creatively.

“Ever since Hastings came here, he’s done nothing, it seems, but try to get himself beaten.” Tim looked at his friend obliquely.

“Hmm.” Dr. Malcolm stuffed his pipe between his teeth and bit hard. “Perhaps he hasn’t received a sufficiently strong dose.”

“Hmm.” Irony and understatement seethed on the carpet between them, though to an eavesdropper, the words would have fallen flat. These two men understood one another perfectly.

“I believe,” Dr. Malcolm murmured at last, “I know just the thing. Something to ensure he won’t be rushing back for more.”

read the rest of the story here

w4m – 26/40 – Pen-y-ghent

You pulled me up the last 10 feet of Pen-y-ghent. Me: crazy old rucksack, purple pullover, braids. Weather was closing in, and lots of people were trying to get to the top. The rocks were slippery, and everyone was helping the person behind them. I’m not sure if you remember. It was 14 years ago.

I’ve changed, but not that much. The guy I was with – I married him. I’m widowed now. I remember your lean, suntanned legs, your Irish sweater rolled up to the elbows, and the way your arse looked in those shorts. We talked about you on the way down, discussing what we’d like to see you get. He voted for the cane, as usual, but I rather fancied seeing you grit your teeth over the birching block.

Your weather-blown strawberry blond hair made your eyes look like they were laughing. I can still feel your grip as you hauled me up, rucksack and all. What is it about feeling a man’s strength that raises the pulse, even more than a steep climb in the teeth of a downpour? When I topped that crag, you pulled me into you. Our eyes locked, you grinned, and I thought you would kiss me. All I said was, Thanks. You said, Sure, cheers. I haven’t thought of that day until now. Fourteen years – lifetime – no time. I rather fancy being hauled up something again.

---

Come write your own missed connection – real or fantasy, who will know? Post the link today (Wednesday) here or on Twitter (@caseydamnmorgan). What is Midweek Missed Connections?

Read other missed connections this week:

• PapaTomLA

R old boy,

I simply cannot convey in words (written or oral) the dyed-in-the-wool beastliness of Firestone in complaining to Pater about last term. He’s the most caddish of Housemasters, and I’ve every intention of making his life hell come Michaelmas. Pater has been to Timbuktu and back over it, declaring me a perverse aberration in the annals of the Howells clan, and plenty more besides. The upshot is he’s gone and engaged my old tutor (you may remember me telling you about Singer-the-stinger?) for the whole of the beastly hols. It’s enough to make one contemplate suicide, if there wasn’t yachting with you and your uncle to look forward to at month’s end.

Singer’s been riding hard as ever, only worse. There’s more than one splinter in the affected area and no-one to lend a palliative hand, with Clara in France and you nowhere near. Days invariably begin over the birching block, as Singer’s a great believer in clearing accounts before work begins. Gives rise to rather a Sisyphus effect, I can tell you, which leaves one mystified re. why to try at all, as the following day will only begin in tears (metaphorically speaking, of course!). I confess to having lost heart once, sitting one day with my proverbial boulder at the foot of the hill and refusing to push, but Singer lived up to his sobriquet and, drawing blood before tea, reinstated my zeal.

Speak of the devil, must dash. Vile Virgil, then birch.

Yours, F

---

What is Flash Fiction Friday?

Read other folks writing this week:

• Rafi
• Frenchies
• Rayne
• PapaTomLA
• Nettagyrl

What is it about a day at the seaside that sets the scene for tgi? Is it the baldly Swinburnian experience of being knocked about in the surf, flogged by the wild sea, half-drowned and scraped to bleeding by breakers? Is it the sensuousness of full-body exercise in the water coupled with languid sunbathing, the salt baking into your skin, your hair drying as it will, in twisty, windblown curls? Is it sunburn, the dog’s bite of sunbathing? Or is it simply the lack of clothing?

I can’t remember the last day I spent at the beach. Today – 80 degrees, low humidity, steady breeze, cloudless sky – was the Arcadia of summer sea days. You might not think we have beaches here in Gotham, but they can be found. The beach today reminded me of my seventeenth summer. We had just moved to Gotham, and I was enraptured with Stalky & Co, in particular the descriptions of (nude) bathing off the Pebble Ridge. I longed to swim to exhaustion like those boys, to feel my skin salt-encrusted, to succumb to torpor during afternoon-school, and to suffer the consequences of falling asleep on the wrong master. I had not yet discovered Swinburne, but once I did, my ocean fantasies broadened to include the flagellating sea, and the desperate bravery of one captivated by the wild, living water.

Being fair-skinned, the risk of sunburn pervaded my childhood. My mother was always slathering me in sunscreen and berating me when I got burned. She never did more than scold, but managed to make it sound as though I’d recklessly contracted cancer. I prefer in my mind a more detached approach; as in, little girls who get sunburned can be put across someone’s knee until their bottoms match the offending shade, ha ha.

Today I swam a long time in huge surf, and in struggling to exit found myself knocked upside down and dragged along the shell-studded sand, leaving me with bloody scrapes on my shins and bottom. I felt butch. I felt like Bertie in Lesbia Brandon, the salt water stinging the scrapes in a way that felt salutary. Later, at home, my body ached from the unfamiliar exercise, and I felt dopey in a sun-drunk or post-massage way.

Stretching across my towel after the first swim, rashly allowing the mid-day sun to dry my back and limbs, made me yearn rather for the birch. Not to have just then, but later, perhaps, after returning home, to atone for skiving off to the sea, or getting sunburned, or swimming out too far. Something of that order.

And in the surf I remembered the first time M and I went summer camping in the Virgin Islands. We arrived at Cinnamon Bay (St. John) late one night after a day of travel. The campground was dark. A note had been left directing us to our site. Sweaty and fatigued, we pitched the tent and went down to the beach. The moon hid behind some clouds. We stripped and went into the water. It was mouth warm, clear, calm, and full of phosphorescence. We’d never swum naked together before. We kissed in the water and held each other. The surprise of this beautiful, empty, sparkling water and the primal, sensual pleasure of floating in it together – I’ll never forget it.

I miss him in so many ways. Today, his touch, his mouth, his cock, and the company of his imagination on a made-to-order seaside day.

So, we were dragged (by TL) around the Met today. Guess she thought it would be improving or something. I can say that the newly re-opened American Wing is very nice. Other than that, I can try out the new gallery plugin and show you my pictures and notes, which go to show just how improving the afternoon was.

I wrote this piece in response to a challenge that emerged on  Twitter yesterday: write a 250-word erotic story in 24 hours. Other takers were @naughtyabby and @spankinresource and @sabrinamorgan (no relation, ha ha). To keep it interesting, we each provided a wild card to try to include in the story. They were: willow green, hairbrush, & loose thread. So, mine didn’t turn out a story, exactly, but took its structure from the Facebook meme 25 Random Things About Me. I don’t know if it’s erotic at all, but here it is:

25 Things About Them

1. Her first erotic feeling: dream, age 3?, someone telling her, “Underpants off for a spanking.”
2. She mastered silent wanking in college, in dark, roommate asleep, or in youth hostel dorms.
3. He wanked with a friend in the swimming pool of their African prep-school.
4. He loved to touch her bottom while they lay in bed half-awake in the morning.
5. The-Hairbrush-That’s-Not-For-Kids was the only small implement that could quickly put him over the pain threshold.
6. His cock was large, lovely, and uncut.
7. His cock was the only one that’s ever been inside her.
8. Virginity lost on her mother’s bed, mother out of town, plastic billowing above where the ceiling was being repaired.
9. They wanked beside each other and whispered pervy stories.
10. He got hard at her vowels when she said “Planters peanuts.”
11. The willow switch he liked to use otk was reddish-brown, not willow-green.
12. He pulled the loose thread from the hem of her shorts, then took them down to spank her.
13. She thought she was unfanciable until she met him.
14. She kissed his eyelids.
15. She kissed his thigh.
16. She kissed his cock.
17. She kissed his hand.
18. She learned to kiss from him.
19. His tongue in her ear made her shiver.
20. He tucked his cock back and said he was a girl.
21. Boys getting the cane never failed to excite him.
22. Boys in the YMCA steam room admired his cock.
23. For her, sex was best when they were trying to have a baby.
24. She misses Pervy Hour.
25. Sometimes, now, orgasm triggers sobbing.

I did this once. It must have been the second summer of M living here. My mother had rented a cabin in the woods of Pennsylvania for a month. He and I were up there alone with my dog, isolated and surrounded by trees. Makes you long for the birch, it does. We cut a whole bunch of rods and marky was made to sit on the porch and fashion birch rods out of them (i.e. strip them to an appropriate shape and bunch them together, binding the grip with string, which became duct tape because it held better). It took all afternoon, it seemed. We were both wearing denim overalls and white t-shirts, not from any particular plan, but because it made us happy. Like a lot of cabin-type houses, this one had a double storey “great room” with double fire places. Unfortunately, from an aesthetic point of view, it was carpeted. But there was a cellar. So a scene developed in response to all these birches (there were 12-15 of them, I think), and the house: Orphanage, with me as a mean prefect-type boy in charge of birching marky.

Night falls. Costumes: both of us still in overalls and white t-shirts. Me, boots. Marky, bare feet. At this time I had short hair. I tucked M’s packet of Marlboro’s (he still smoked one or two in those days) in my t-shirt sleeve, matches in my pocket. Before we started, we realized we wanted to get pictures. It was such a great setup in the basement, dark, a long row of birches against the wall. We didn’t have a camera, so I decided to drive to the gas-station 10 minutes away for a disposable camera. Marky went to prepare and wait in the basement. It was dark, remote, mist streaking across the road. I started to get scared, though I can’t remember exactly why now. Axe murderers? What if I had an accident? Ghosts? It was just very dark, misty, creepy, and ominous. I drove as fast as I could, bought the camera, and sped home. The house was deserted (marky in basement). I felt a deep dread – fear from the drive combined with fear about the scene I was about to do. Objectively, there was nothing to fear about the scene. I wasn’t going to harm him, or he me. I guess it was a kind of stage fright, and also the beginnings of the alchemy that elaborate scenes always brought.

We had both worked in the theater, me since I was five. For both of us, scenes (whether in private or on stage) were reality. We both entered the play with a commitment that created the reality. So, in actuality, I was about to become this sadistic guy in an orphanage. I was afraid of the atmosphere, and I think I wished I didn’t actually have to go through with it. Before going downstairs, I took off my overalls and put on the strap-on with the flesh-colored dildo. In my pocket with the matches, I slipped a tube of KY. Tucking my new cock into my white boxer-briefs, I pulled up the overalls, braced myself, and clumped downstairs to the cellar.

Cement floors, lit by a dim overhead light. Along one raw wall stood all the birches, arranged in descending size. Overalls down, marky bent over – what was it? Not an actual A-frame, but something like it? In his hands, I knew he held some keys. We had never played with a safeword, but since he wanted me to pull out the stops with the birches, and as I’d never wielded them, we decided to use the keys as a safeword (if he dropped them, it meant stop).

Why had we not used safewords? They were and are stock-in-trade for the world of playing. Maybe in the first few scenes we did during his first visit to Gotham there was a safeword. But, if there was, I can’t remember it. Neither of us used it. I suppose it felt artificial, like a violation of the playing contract. How can you be inside a created reality and also be evaluating whether you want to stop the creation? Either you trust your partner or you don’t. Maybe that’s the issue – safewords are probably most useful when playing with someone you don’t entirely trust. By the time we met face-to-face, I knew him better than anyone I’d ever met in my life, including my family. So, for us, safewords, though we might have had them, were something external and extraneous. Did we use the keys in this scene because I was uneasy topping? Probably. At any rate, to spare you the suspense, he clutched the keys hard the whole time, desperate not to drop them. Ha ha.

So, in walks my character. There was some short dialogue, and then I picked up one of the birches and started in with it. Slowly, building strength with confidence. He marked well, then, and the little welts started to raise. I tried various birches and then took a break.

I came up behind him and felt his bottom. Then I unzipped the fly of my overalls and tried to take out my cock. It had come loose from the harness, though, and fell down my trouser leg to the floor. Undaunted, I picked it up, turned my back, and put it back in place.

“This is the point,” I said, “when most boys ask me to fuck them.”

“Please will you fuck me?” he said.

“Since you ask.”

It was awkward buggering him with a strap-on through the fly of overalls, but I managed it for a little while. Afterwards, I put it in my pocket and zipped up. Then I lit a cigarette and stage-smoked. I don’t remember if there was much more dialogue. I think the scene was fairly quiet. I’m pretty sure I told him he’d have to be punished further for letting someone bugger him.

I didn’t make it through all of the birches, but I used more of them until I was drawing some blood. By this time, my strength to sustain the character was waning. Marky had had a lot. I wrapped up the scene and went upstairs, leaving him bent over naked in the cellar.

He was ecstatic about the scene. Absolutely loved it. This was a relief, because there had been a scene early in our relationship, a big scene with me topping, that he hadn’t liked so much at the time. Maybe the ghost of that scene was still haunting me, making me anxious about this one. At any rate, I was very relieved that the scene was over and that he was so happy with it. Did it turn me on to do it? No. Did I hate doing it? No. It was interesting using the birches, and it was a theatrical challenge, but I wasn’t doing it because it excited me; I was doing it because it was a cool idea and I loved him.

A couple of moments lived on afterwards. One, the moment of my cock falling off. I wasn’t sure if he’d realized during the scene, but it turned out he had, and had struggled to keep a straight face. We laughed a lot about it afterwards – zip, clunk, o wait… He also adored the line “This is the point where most boys ask me to fuck them.” I don’t know where it had come from. It was spur of the moment. He quoted it for years afterwards, though, and he found it a big turn-on until the day he died.

The birches are still in our [my] basement, in black garbage bags. I said years ago we should throw them out, but he insisted we could just soak them and use them again. In fact, they got used again at another time with another top (this time I was a Victorian governess), another scene that went down in history for us, sans buggery, though.

He would probably hate me telling our secrets like this…

On a tip in the “Book chat” area of the MMSA forums, and after previewing it on Google books, I borrowed from the library Novel Gazing, Queer Readings in Fiction. This ridiculous waste of time considers itself a very serious academic tome, an anthology of “queer” readings of literature. [Politically incorrect opinion #1: Queer, Feminist, Marxist, whatever-ist readings of literature are bullshit, self-absorbed, and entirely miss the point.] The essay of interest, “Flogging is Fundamental: Applications of Birch in Swinburne’s Lesbia Brandon,” was very silly but had good subtitles and quotes and was grappling, I think with a worthy question, namely: if Swinburne’s flogging scenes aren’t dismissible (as many literary critics over the ages have dismissed them), and if they are compelling and somehow powerful, what is that power and how does it work? In other words, why is Swinburne so hot? Now that would be a worthy essay.

I did enjoy the quotes from Swinburne’s letters, particularly the one that “addressed” deSade and explained why Justine was so tediously over done – ha, ha, I agree! So, why is Lesbia Brandon so f-ing hot?

1. The massive pent-up emotion of it all; the heart; the transferred and frustrated love and lust.
2. The heightened tension of talking about it all. The dinner party, for instance, is hot because it is so excruciating for Bertie to have his flogging (and his heroism) discussed and alluded to in public. Reading it, I enjoy seeing the sensitive, pretty Bertie squirm; and, I also relish being him and experiencing that pleasing, burning shame.
3. The relationships are all so intimate and raw, unlike the endlessly-discussed, endlessly-analyzed relationships of today.
4. The birch itself is severe without being brutish. It cuts and draws blood (especially from sensitive Bertie), without wounding or injuring deeply. It’s rather surface. Anyone can recover from a domestic birching. In some contexts (sauna?), the birch can even be stimulating and therapeutic.
5. The bareness required is also hot. The birch nicely combines spanking with caning – sharp, uncounted strokes; necessariliy undressed application; area and point weapons, as Marky used to say.
6. There is also, in Swinburne, the powerful bonding relationship between the one who gives (here the tutor) and the one to whom it’s given (Bertie). It’s a big event between them. Not all big, intimate events involve sex.
7. The lushness of the language also makes it hot (as the queer essay author remarked, the use of flogging language for everything else, the sea, etc).

But the pent-up emotion is the nub of the matter. Imagine, for instance, that Bertie were merely flogged a la Charlie Collingwood (which is sillier and less hot; its only charge, imo, comes from saying forbidden things – bottom, birch, etc.) by someone who didn’t have feelings for him (even displaced feelings like Denham has). Imagine it was like deSade – hundreds of yelling strokes, blood all over, etc. SNORE.

And what if no one spoke of it? Or if they spoke endlessly and directly of it? Oh yes, sister, I was flogged today, on my bare bottom, oh hundreds of strokes well laid on. Did it hurt? dear me yes, how I howled the place down, the blood oh my did it run, and it still hurts most frightfully even now. — Ah, Mr. Denham, tell us all about it. — Certainly, sir. I began with ten firm strokes to the left flank, then I switched sides and gave ten to the right (the ambidextrousness, you know), Bertie howled thrice, “yelped” he would term it, but I gave him a stoke to draw blood at last, that raised the pitch but also likely signaled some release, if only of blood, ho ho. ETC…

Tedious, we say, esp. when you can have this:

The magnetism of the sea drew all fear out of [Bertie], and even had there been any discomfort or peril to face, it was rather desire than courage that attracted and attached him to the rough water. Once in among green and  white seas, Herbert forgot that affliction was possible on land, and in his rapture of perfect satisfaction was glad to make friends with the man [Denham] he feared and hated in school hours. The bright and vigorous delight that broke out at such times nothing could repress or resist; he appealed to his companion as to a school fellow and was answered accordingly. “He was a brick in the water,” Herbert told young Lunsford [a friend]; “like another fellow you know, and chaffs one about getting swished, and I tell him it’s a beastly chouse and he only grins.” This intimacy was broken by one tragic interlude; bathing had been forbidden on all hands one stormy day before the sea had gone down, and Herbert, drawn by the delicious intolerable sound of the waves, had stolen down to them and slipped in; having had about enough in three or four minutes, he came out well buffeted and salted, with sea-water in his throat and nostrils and eyes; and saw his tutor waiting just above watermark between him and his clothes. Finding him gone, Denham had quietly taken a tough and sufficient rod and followed without a superfluous word of alarm. He took well hold of Bertie, still dripping and blinded; grasped him round the waist and shoulders, wet and naked, with the left arm and laid on with the right as long and as hard as he could. Herbert said afterwords that a wet swishing hurt most awfully, a dry swishing was a comparative luxury. He did not care to face again the sharp superfluous torture of these stripes on the still moist flesh; and from that day he was shy of facetious talk in the water or out: thus the second stage of his apprenticeship began.

A. C. Swinburne, Lesbia Brandon, ch. II

*sigh* always wanted a whacking like that…