A Birthday Gift

While Georgina was in ecstasies over what might be done to my poor trembling buttocks, Eliza had stripped off her own straight gown, the better to execute my sentence. I observed that she wore no drawers, or even petticoats, but a curious woven rope between her thighs, of some coarse hairy stuff, and more of the same appeared at the top of her corset, where others might show a little lace or Broderie Anglais.

I had little time to speculate what this might be, for she now directed me to pull out a small armchair into the centre of the room. While I did so she made some practice strokes with the switch. I had not heard its daunting note for nearly ten years, but now it brought back memories of all the pain and torment that I had suffered at Mrs Reed's hands, and I could not help a shudder at the remembrance. Using the doleful rod as a pointer, she had me kneel on the chair seat and then place each leg in turn onto an arm of the chair.

It was a horrible position, even to pose in. let alone receive a length of whalebone in one's naked buttocks. The width of the chair meant that one's thighs were spread so wide as to stretch one in the fork, especially for one such as I, who cannot boast any great length of leg, the tension opening the fleshy lips of my private purse until it gaped.

Then I was made to lean forward. putting my head down onto the cushion of the seat, my arms clasped round the back of the chair, where Georgina seized them excitedly, and drew down on them firmly, so that I could not move in any way.

"Oh 'Liza," she cried, "you must take her really low. I want to hear her cry out, and see the tears on her face."

All this time Eliza's demeanour had been hard, strict, severe, but it had smacked of stern duty and rigorous discipline, and she seemed not to approve of the cruel lubricity of her sister.

"You may be sure, Georgina, that I will thrash her to the blood, if my arm and skill permit it, but because it is Mama's will that she should be disciplined so, and not to give you pleasure. Tonight, when you attend me to perform those services you have promised in the event she bleeds, as I think she will, you will receive a round dozen cuts to your own fat hams."

I heard Georgina gulp at this news, but she was too far carried away by her lust to see me hurt, to be subdued by it, and her crows and exhortations continued throughout my beating.

Coming behind me, her movements now unemcumbered by outer clothing, Eliza laid the evil cutting length of the switch across my proffered cheeks. I flinched, despite my resolve to carry it off as if it were all no matter, and a thing to be taken lightly, but I remembered its venomous bite too well, even after all these years, and its touch on my bare flesh sent a spasm of fear through me.

The contact ceased as Eliza drew back her arm, then I heard the thrum of its passage through the air as it approached my vulnerably stretched buttocks, before it exploded in my poor rear like a red rocket; a veritable signal of distress. I gritted my teeth against the searing pain and tried to allow Georgina neither sound nor movement to give her satisfaction. I must have grunted a little I am sure, the shock was intense, and my buttocks must have jerked, if only from the impact lifting and jouncing them with its force, but I did not pull back against Georgina's grip, nor cry out in any discernible fashion.

As I composed myself Eliza cut me again. The first had been across the widest and fullest part of my slightly fatted posterior, the next an inch below. A third, timed for just that point where I had had most benefit from its predecessor, laced me yet another inch lower.

I had never been caned by Eliza before. In the past, Mrs Reed had done the honours herself, where she felt the seriousness and nature of the offence justified it, while Jack had had my skirts up, and my drawers around my knees, time and again for sport, his and Georgina's, and Eliza's too at that time. It was the unsavoury practice of the siblings to allow him to use their nether orifices after, especially if he had made me writhe and cry in such a way as to particularly please them, but the girls did not wield the rod.

Eliza had been about nineteen when I had left the house for Lowood, so was now twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old. She had not put on the voluptuous flesh that Georgina had acquired, but she had developed a more wiry strength, from walking, domestic duties or whatever cause.

I did not know where she had learnt the skill she showed with that cruel rod, perhaps she had seen something of the Rev Brocklehurst, I knew he visited Mrs Reed from time to time, to rigorously use her in her four poster, or, maybe, Mrs Reed had invited her to share in the disciplining of the domestics, now she was an adult. However she had acquired it, I was by way of being a connoisseur of the cane, from long and very painful experience, and I knew I was being beaten. Not, perhaps the concentrated venom of a Brocklehurst, nor the searing strength of my own dear Master, but a whipping that bit and gripped, never-the-less.

With the steely deliberateness with which she seemed to do all nowadays, Eliza kept that stick slicing my poor bent hinds. Perched on the arms of the chair, I could do little to avoid the cuts, and I was at such a height that she could bring them up from beneath, lifting the jutting sitters with the force of the blow, leaving thick throbbing tracks where the whippy cane had bitten in. I felt each as a burning line of fire, when it first impacted in my soft flesh, then as an excruciating rising tide of pain, as if a screw was being turned in my buttock. It never actually seemed to lessen from its peak while I bent on the chair, it was simply swamped as the next agonised line of torment was added below.

For Eliza was still progressing down my bent buttock, each stroke an inch or so below the last. I had taken nine now, nearly half the total, and was still managing to keep my cries down to a level where I felt I had not capitulated entirely, robbing Georgina of her desire to hear me scream, but Eliza had passed that tender crease that demarcated the difference between buttock flesh, and the thigh proper, and I cringed at each stroke.

Two more and I was pulling back from Georgina's grip, my head lifting off the cushion, my buttocks going back and down as my knees bent, trying to cover my poor thighs.

"You are cringing," Eliza cried out. "Straighten yourself in the pose I set you."

"Cut me in my buttock then, Eliza," I replied, "and I will try and hold still, but you are caning my thighs instead."

"And how else would you have it? Mama is a sick woman, and she may not see so well. How is she to distinguish that you have had your full score, if I do not separate them, and if I give good measure between them, then I must work your thighs as well as your plump hinds."

I had to grant the truth of what she said.

"You are right," I conceded. "Take me on the thighs and I will try and hold still for you."

Reader, it cost me dear. I put down my head, and opened up behind, lifting my buttocks, and exposing the backs of my thighs for Eliza. She accepted my offered columns and sped the rod into the meagre flesh that covered their rear. The pain became such that I could not contain myself any more, and Georgina got her desire after all, as I screamed and writhed on my spread knees. When Eliza had delivered the last I lay there and frankly blubbered, until Georgina lifted my face so that she could gloat over my tear and snot-strained features, my red rimmed eyes, my riven mouth.

"Oh, 'Liza that was heaven. Just look at her face. Have you ever seen anything so delightful? Does she bleed behind? Oh, tell me quick."

"She does, indeed, and therefore, you have a debt to pay this evening. But I will not wait until then for you to pay your other due, despite what I promised earlier. I warned you that you went too far. Jane, put yourself in order, and take your stripes for Mama to count. You, Georgina," and her tone hardened, "will take Jane's place this instant, and receive the dozen I promised you."

I snatched my hands from hers, and struggled painfully to my feet. While I resumed my clothes, and put some order in my person, using Eliza's wash basin and ewer, Georgina took off hers, revealing great sleek masses of pink flesh. As I left to make my way to Aunt Reed's room, she was mounting the armchair, her drawers round her knees.