Paris, Salon L’Huître Rose, April 17th 2010

Georgette stood in the centre of the dormitory. In her hand she held a slim, rattan cane, long and smooth, the shaft dark with the sweat of its wielders and victims, at the grip and where it had smacked down across numerous bare, female bottoms. It was late on a Monday morning, with their exercises completed and nothing to do until lunchtime, leaving them to their own devices.

‘This is the game,’ Georgette stated. ‘One of us bends over the end of her bed with a candle in each hole, both lit. The others then cane her, taking turns, three strokes at a time, and she must strike between the two candles. Any girl who misses the target must take a stroke, while if she puts a candle out, breaks it or knocks it out, she takes the victim’s place. The most junior girl must go first, so that is you, Udders.’

Thrift had already guessed that she would be the one to end up with candles stuck up her cunt and bottom hole, so merely made a face. The other girls grabbed her, laughing as they forced her down over the end of a bed. Her dress was pulled up and off, her petticoats lifted and her pantalettes pulled down, leaving her bare bottom sticking up in the air with her cheeks well parted. She began to protest, weakly, but had already stopped struggling as Narcisse took hold of her bottom and spread her cheeks, stretching her anus wide for the insertion of a candle Georgette was prodding into a tub of hand cream.

She felt it touch, the cream cool on her anal skin, then go in, her hole spreading easily to accommodate the slim shaft. A second followed, pushed up her cunt without the need for extra lubricant and she had been penetrated in both holes, her muscles twitching in her apprehension at the thought of Georgette’s cane and very likely hot wax as well.

‘Do keep still, Chastity,’ Georgette urged. ‘I don’t want to burn you.’

Thrift said nothing, but held herself absolutely still as she heard the rasp of a match being struck and felt the heat against the sensitive skin between her bottom cheeks.

‘There,’ Georgette said. ‘I shall go first with the cane, just to be fair.’

Georgette took up the wicked implement, laying it gently across Thrift’s bottom, between the two candles, the cold, hard wood pressing to the tuck of her cheeks only just above where they met her thighs. The pressure went, she tensed, heard the swish of the cane and felt it bite into the softness of her flesh.

‘One,’ Georgette said.

Thrift bit her lip. She could feel the welt across her bottom, a burning line laid perfectly between the two candles. The mark was going to show, no doubt amusing the audience when she had to strip that evening, and if all six girls gave her three strokes without hitting a candle her bottom was going to be a mess.

‘What about the show?’ she asked.

‘Shut up,’ Georgette answered her and brought the cane down for a second time.

Thrift cried out as her body jerked to the impact, a trifle higher this time, but still leaving both candles lit and firmly wedged in up her twin holes.

‘Two,’ Georgette said, ‘and... three.’

The third stroke had hit across the other two, leaving Thrift gasping and stamping her feet in her pain, which dislodged a trickle of wax, splashing between her bottom cheeks and into the hair of her cunt.

‘Ow!’ she sobbed. ‘Georgette, I...’

‘I told you to shut up,’ Georgette answered and brought the cane down again, full across Thrift’s bottom, well above the candle in her anus.

‘You missed!’ Coco laughed.

‘That one doesn’t count,’ Georgette retorted. ‘It was just to make Udders stop whining.’

‘But you said...,’ Coco began, then broke off at the staccato click of heels from the stairs. ‘It’s M’selle!’

She ducked down to blow the candles out, but when M’selle Laroche appeared in the doorway Thrift was still trying to pull the second candle from her bottom hole. M’selle Laroche barely spared her a glance, but focussed on Georgette.

‘Come with me. You too, Coco.’

There was a hard edge to M’selle Laroche’s voice as she spoke, and both girls were quickly marched out of the dormitory and away down the stairs, leaving the others to speculate on their fate.

‘I’ve never seen her so furious!’ Zara declared.

‘But what have they done?’ Narcisse queried.

The girls exchanged glances, each hoping for enlightenment from the others, but received nothing but shrugs in response. Thrift said nothing, but she was biting her lip as she inspected the four cane marks that now decorated her bottom in the mirror. To the best of her knowledge Georgette had done nothing to warrant M’selle Laroche’s anger, but Coco had, as had Thrift, only she had called herself Georgette at the time. The implications were alarming to say the least, and not merely because her deception was bound to be exposed and so lead to punishment from both M’selle Laroche and Georgette. That she could cope with, but if M’selle Laroche knew what had happened in the Avenue Emile Zola, it surely had to mean that the information had come via the Bureau.

She tried to tell herself that if the Bureau had realised her identity it would not have been M’selle Laroche who walked in on her during her caning, but several agents, that or she would simply have been shot without warning the next time she left L’Huître Rose. It made sense, and while it did little to reassure her she forced herself to follow the train of logic. Unfortunately she knew very little, save that somehow news of her visit to Quigley had almost certainly reached M’selle Laroche. Plainly she had to learn more, and while she could hardly expect to get any useful information from Quigley, M’selle Laroche had no reason not to tell her what had happened, rather the opposite. That meant going to M’selle Laroche and confessing to having broken the rules, which in turn meant having to take some no doubt extremely painful and humiliating punishment. Yet that was likely to happen anyway, because even if Coco kept her promise of silence it wasn’t going to take a genius to work out that Thrift was responsible for the deception.

She drew a heavy sigh and made for the door. The others turned to watch her go, silent, and then in a babble of excited chatter as she started down the stairs. It was not far to M’selle Laroche’s office, and she could hear voices long before she reached the door, first M’selle Laroche herself, loud and angry, then Georgette, louder still and protesting her innocence with mounting fury. Thrift stopped with her hand on the doorknob, her stomach churning violently as she thought of the likely consequences of her actions, and it took all her willpower to go inside.

The first thing she saw was Georgette, who had been hoisted up onto the back of Pierre the doorman, her wrists gripped in his massive hands, her feet well clear of the ground and kicking in furious but futile protest. She was in nothing but a bright green corset and matching pantalettes, from the back of which her bare bottom stuck out, her cheeks squeezing as she struggled to break free. Coco stood nearby, her nose pressed into the corner of two walls, looking thoroughly sorry for herself, while M’selle Laroche was in the act of taking a long, wicked looking cane down from its place on the wall. She alone noticed Thrift’s entrance and looked up with an impatient expression.

‘Well, what is it, Chastity?’

‘I... I think it’s me you need to see, not Georgette,’ Thrift admitted.

‘I told you so!’ Georgette squealed. ‘Now let me down, you great pig!’

‘Stay as you are,’ M’selle Laroche ordered. ‘Chastity, explain yourself.’

‘If somebody came to tell you that Coco and another girl made an assignation behind your back,’ Thrift said carefully, ‘then the other girl wasn’t Georgette, it...’

‘It was you, wasn’t it, you little bitch!’ Georgette screamed, now thrashing so violently on Pierre’s back that he was struggling to keep his balance.

‘Be quiet, Georgette!’ M’selle Laroche snapped. ‘And do stop wriggling like that, or I shall cane you anyway.’

Georgette went still, but she had twisted her head around, to meet Thrift’s eyes with a murderous glare.

‘Well?’ M’selle Laroche demanded, addressing Thrift.

Thrift paused, wondering how best to avoid giving away her real reasons for using Georgette’s name and also to find out how the information had reached M’selle Laroche. Only one solution presented itself, and that far from ideal.

‘I... I pretended to be Georgette,’ she admitted, ‘to try and get her into trouble, but it was wrong, and I’m sorry, so I’ve come to you now. I was only playing about, really, because I didn’t expect that you’d find out.’

‘You little bitch!’ Georgette spat.

‘Georgette,’ M’selle Laroche warning, ‘that is your final warning. No, Chastity, I don’t imagine you did expect to get caught, or you wouldn’t have broken the rules. Girls seldom do, if ever. Unfortunately for you I have rather more friends than you might suppose. Very well, Pierre, you may put her down, but Georgette, in future, do try and show a little dignity.’

Georgette was lowered to the ground, still glaring at Thrift even as she adjusted her pantalettes to cover up her bottom. Thrift ignored her, with far more important matters to think about. M’selle Laroche’s manner was not that of a woman who had just received a visit from the notorious French Bureau, leaving Thrift more puzzled than ever. She decided on a direct question.

‘How did you find out, if I may ask?’

‘To tell you that would be to betray a confidence,’ M’selle Laroche responded, ‘but let us just say that your Mr Quigley was sufficiently impressed by your filthy little performance that he couldn’t resist boasting about it. The rest you may fill in for yourself.’

Thrift gave a single, miserable nod and hung her head, not from shame but in order to hide the relief flowing through her. Evidently Quigley had not reported the matter as suspicious, nor challenged the Bureau for sending two girls to subvert him, as she had supposed, but merely told a friend, perhaps a neighbour in the apartment block, or simply a café acquaintance. With the threat of exposure gone, or at least put back, nothing else seemed to matter, and she felt curiously serene as M’selle went on.

‘So, not only did you make an assignation without my permission or paying your cut, but you used Georgette’s name. Were you seeking a patron? Answer truthfully.’

‘No,’ Thrift mumbled, immediately echoed by echo.

‘That I rather doubt,’ M’selle Laroche responded, ‘so you will be punished for lying as well as deception, both of you, on stage. However, I think it would be best if the two of you were somewhere else for a while, and the punishment will be administered when you return, which should give you ample time to reflect on your sins. By good fortune an opportunity has arisen. Mimi Caze has agreed to perform here, and as part of the arrangement I am to supply two girls for the same period...’

‘What!?’ Georgette interrupted. ‘This pair of little sluts get to perform at Baudelaire’s while I’m stuck here being pushed about by Mimi Caze!’

‘Enough!’ M’selle Laroche snapped. ‘Pierre, spank her, hard.’

Georgette gave a squeal of shock, but Pierre had reacted with impressive speed and already held her by one wrist. She tried to fight, kicking, scratching and even biting, but she was no match for a man so huge, nor so stolid. He simply ignored her efforts, seating himself on one of several straight backed chairs and pulling her firmly down across his knees. Her pantalettes were so brief that most of her bottom was already bulging from the opening, simply because she’d been turned over, but he pulled them down anyway, to leave her cheeks and the cleft between full exposed, the dark spot of her anus on clear view as well as the pouted, hairy lips of her cunt.

She was still wailing, swearing and fighting with all her strength as Pierre began to spank her, his huge hand rising and falling, to cup almost her entire bottom with every smack, and to send thick ripples through the softness of her flesh. Even as her bottom began to go red she wouldn’t give in, howling out her anguish and spitting threats, only aimed not at Pierre, nor at M’selle Laroche, but at Thrift.

‘You two may go,’ M’selle Laroche said to Thrift and Coco, ‘but you are to be in the foyer at three o’clock to greet M’selle Caze, without fail. Her escort will take you back to Baudelaire’s with him.’

Both girls nodded and they left together, walking away down the corridor in hangdog silence as Georgette’s screams and threats faded slowly behind them along with the fleshy smacks generated by Pierre’s hand landing on her bottom.