Frustration

 

The girls had never before seen Arabella so angry.

She returned to the playhouse later that afternoon still clad in her riding gear with a crop in her hand. They didn’t need to ask if her hunt had been successful; the expression on her face told its own story.

For fully ten minutes she paced up and down the tiny garden, muttering under her breath and making vicious swipes at the grass with her crop. The other girls could only watch her in silence, knowing nothing they could say would help.

Eventually Arabella seemed to regain a measure of self-control, and asked sharply: “Have you been treating her as I told you?”

“Yes, Arabella, exactly as you said,” Belinda said quickly.

“Did she make the proper responses?”

“Yes, every time.”

“Has she protested or spoken out of turn?”

“No. She just sits there.”

“Bring her here,” Arabella snapped.

Such was their haste to obey that they simply tipped the old butt onto its side, dirty water spewing from its mouth, and rolled it out onto the lawn before Arabella. They heard gasps and groans as Sue’s body tumbled about the inside, but were too anxious to care for her comfort. They strained to lift the bottom of the butt and Sue’s limp form slithered out onto the grass.

She was a pathetic sight. Pale and shivering and grimy from the slime and mildew that had covered the interior of her prison. Her prolonged immersion had bleached and crinkled the flesh of her legs and buttocks, which were ridged with boardmarks from the bottom of the butt.

Arabella gave Sue a shove with the flat of her boot to roll her over onto her back, then lifted the unfortunate girl’s chin with her boot toe. Sue’s eyes flickered open and she gazed fearfully up at her mistress.

“Well, girl. What has your morning lesson taught you?” Arabella demanded.

“That I’m worth nothing, Mistress... I’m a slave fit only to be pissed on. I live only to serve you... to obey and to suffer for your pleasure.”

The tip of Arabella’s riding crop traced the cane marks that formed a lattice across Sue’s trembling breasts. “We shall see about that, girl.” Arabella turned to the others. “Untie her legs,” she commanded. “Then clean her up. I’ll be back in a minute.”

As Arabella went into the playhouse, the others freed Sue’s legs. She whimpered as she tried to straighten her numbed limbs and they had to half-carry her over to the old garden pump, where they washed the worst of the dirt from her. Jemima brought a comb from her bag and gently ran it through Sue’s tangled and matted hair.

“Are you all right?” Jemima asked Sue fearfully.

“I suffer for my Mistress,” Sue replied mechanically.

“Don’t waste your time talking to her,” Belinda snapped at Jemima. “Let’s get her looking clean before Arabella comes back.”

“Have you ever seen Arabella looking so angry?” Penny asked in hushed tones.

“No,” Belinda admitted. She pinched one of Sue’s abused breasts. “Just be grateful she’s got this one to take it out on.”

They had just finished their task when Arabella emerged from the playhouse. She was carrying a yellowed roll of drawer lining paper, which she unrolled on the grass, forming a rectangle some six feet long.

“See that it stays flat,” she said, and went back into the house again.

The girls quickly found pebbles from the flowerbeds to weigh the paper strip down.

“What’s she doing?” Ernestine asked nervously.

“How should I know?” Belinda said.

Arabella appeared again, this time carrying an old wooden serving tray and an enamelled bucket. She set the items carefully down at each end of the paper sheet.

The girls examined the curious arrangement. The tray was covered with about fifty drawing pins, each resting with its point uppermost.

Arabella was flicking her riding crop across Sue’s back, urging her to shuffle forward on her knees until she was positioned before the tray.

“You will move the drawing pins from the tray to the bucket,” Arabella told her briskly. “Your hands will remain bound and you are not permitted to use your mouth. You will continue until all the pins have been transferred. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Jemima was staring at them in confusion. “But how can she do it without using her hands... oh! No, Arabella, that’s too cruel!”

But Sue was already obeying her Mistress’s command. She spread her knees wide so that her thighs were almost flat and her pubic bush brushed the grass, then dipped her back and thrust out her bottom, opening the cleft of her buttocks and exposing the dark eye of her anus. Bending forward, she deliberately lowered the heavy pale globes of her breasts over the tray. Her nipples were full and erect, as though perversely intent on increasing her suffering to the limit.

Jemima gasped: “No, don’t...” and took a step forward.

Belinda caught her arm. “Don’t be stupid! This is just another lesson.”

The soft balloons of flesh flattened over the tray, impaling themselves onto the points of the drawing pins. Sue’s face contorted with pain. They heard her stifled gasp and saw tears welling about her eyes. But gritting her teeth she pressed harder onto the tray, before carefully raising her torso upright.

Her breasts were grotesquely studded with the shiny heads of at least two dozen pins. Some had only lightly pricked her flesh and hung loosely from her, but several had penetrated for half their length and tiny drops of blood were already forming about their shafts.

With great care Sue shuffled sideways until she was opposite the bucket, and lowered her breasts into it. She wriggled her shoulders, setting her breasts swinging and banging into the bucket sides. Dislodged pins rattled metallically. A few of the more deeply embedded pins remained in place, and Sue had to drag her breasts several times across the rim of the bucket to pull them free.

Finally they were gone and Sue straightened up. Her face was set and tear-streaked. Her breasts, naked once more, were pinpointed with spots of blood, showing livid against their paleness. For a moment her gaze flickered to Arabella, as though hoping for some sign. But Arabella’s face did not waver from its expression of hawkish intent. The other girls watched in silent disbelieving fascination.

Resolutely, Sue went back to the tray and bent over it again.

By her third trip a dozen pins were left lying on their side on the tray, together with a few that had fallen off onto the paper between tray and bucket. Try as she might, Sue could not gather them.

Sue straightened up and asked meekly: “Please, Mistress?”

“Jemima,” Arabella said. “Put the loose pins back on the tray and set them all point up.”

Dumbly Jemima obeyed, arranging the pins in the tightest cluster she could on the very centre of the tray. As she looked up her gaze met Sue’s, and she saw the slave girl mouth a silent: ‘Thank you,’ before bending over the tray again.

Two more agonising trips and it was done.

Sue shuffled over and knelt before Arabella, her face pale, her breasts a bloody testimony to what she had just endured. She looked up at her Mistress in shivering expectation, biting her lip, hoping for the words she longed to hear.

Arabella looked down at her uncertainly, her own face clouded, as though searching for something she herself did not understand. A moment passed heavy with possibility. Arabella suddenly shook her head and her expression set again. “That was quite well done,” she said coldly. Nothing more.

Sue made a little choking noise.

Arabella ignored her, turning her attention to the girls.

“Tomorrow you will begin searching for the Jones girl. That fool Bailey is never going to find her. But if there’s any chance that she’s in hiding, or being kept anywhere in the area, I want to know. Perhaps she’ll provide more of a challenge.”

Sue collapsed onto her side sobbing quietly, not from physical pain but despair. The despair of a slave who can give no more, the despair of knowing that she would never receive the reward for which she had sacrificed so much.

Jemima soaked her own handkerchief under the garden pump and, while the others talked, began gently to wipe from Sue’s breasts the blood that had been shed in vain.