Oakridge College - Study Group

The air in the upscale neighborhood of Oakridge always smelled of freshly cut grass and quiet money. Sarah adjusted her backpack, the mandated navy-blue uniform skirt brushing against her knees. The freshman student was a blonde, slender woman with a trim figure and gentle curves, her hair always arranged in an intricate long braid. Her style on this day was subtly enhanced by delicate jewelry and makeup that looked effortless and natural. She’d been to Dominic Thorne’s house once before for a group project. It was immaculate, a showpiece of the Discipline Society’s ideals: order, respect, consequence.

She pressed the doorbell, its chime echoing with a sterile dignity. And then, cutting through the silence, came another sound. A sharp, rhythmic crack: not of wood, but of hand on flesh. Then a soft, muffled whimper, distinctly feminine. Sarah froze, her hand still half-raised.

The sounds didn’t stop. They were a brutal metronome. Crack. Whimper. Crack.

The heavy oak door swung open. Dominic stood there, a lopsided grin on his face. He didn’t block the view. He seemed to frame it.

The grand living room was all cream carpets and abstract art. In the center, Mrs. Thorne–she must be in her late thirties– was bent over Mr. Thorne’s lap. Her tailored slacks and immaculate lacey white underwear were pooled around her ankles. Her fat buttocks, full and pale, jiggled with each impact, marked with angry pink splotches growing redder by the moment. Her face was buried in a cushion, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Mr. Thorne, in a crisp dress shirt, brought his hand down with calm, judicial precision. From this angle, her bottom was on full display to the young guest, and while she kept her legs closed in an attempt to maintain feminine dignity, even the fullness of her bottom and thighs did not hide the hint of shaved pink lips peeking from within. Each time Mr. Thorne’s hand slapped across one of her cheeks, it jiggled enough to expose the dark rosebud between them, a further humiliation.

A sour, acrid smell of something burnt—a roast, perhaps—drifted from the kitchen. The cause. The crime.

“Hey, Sarah. Come on in. Don’t mind the… lesson,” Dominic said, his voice light. He stepped aside.

Just then, Mr. Thorne stood up, easing his wife off his lap. She staggered, but remained bent over, hands on her knees, presenting her well-spanked rear. She didn’t look up. Her humiliation was a palpable fog in the room.

“Stay in position, Evelyn,” Mr. Thorne said, his voice devoid of anger, just cool instruction. He walked to the mantle, where a long, oiled leather strap hung, displayed almost like an artifact. He took it down, flexing it. The swish it made in the air was worse than the spanks.

Sarah’s stomach clenched. Her father had always favoured a paddle, but she’d gotten strappings at college and once at the doctor’s. She much preferred the thud of the paddle to the way the strap snapped and bit into the most tender spots.

“Dad’s a traditionalist,” Dominic whispered, leading her past the scene toward the staircase. “The hand is for correction. The strap is for remembrance. She’ll remember not to ruin a hundred dollar cut of beef.”

He chuckled. Sarah **** her eyes to the Persian rug, then the stairs, anywhere but at Mrs. Thorne’s trembling form. But the image was seared into her mind: the stark vulnerability, the absolute power, the terrible, jiggling flesh. The cry that escaped Mrs. Thorne as the first leathery THWACK echoed through the house made Sarah flinch.

Dominic’s room was a sanctuary of normalcy: sports posters, a messy desk, a gaming console, though she saw he had a paddle of his own hung on the wall, its wooden form scribbled with the autographs of girls he’d used it on. She saw several of her classmates’ signatures on there, and gulped. She knew it was risky to take up Dominic’s offer to be study buddies, but to refuse would have meant an instant punishment. She assumed he wanted a blowjob, at the least, but now she wondered if he only had her over to add her signature to his paddle. He dropped his backpack. “So, calculus, right?”

Sarah stood rigid by the door. The echoes of the strap seemed to seep through the floorboards, as well as his mother's wailing. This was clearly a very severe strapping. “Is… is she okay?”

Dominic blinked, then laughed. “What? Oh, Mom? Yeah, of course. She’s fine. It’s just the way it is. You let standards slip, you pay the price. ” He shrugged, and the sound seemed to change, the rhythm slowing, but Mrs. Thorne's cries became ****. "Ah, he's strapping her cunt now. Good, she deserves it. I was looking forward to that roast."

She thought of her own parents, of the quiet discussions behind closed doors, the, grim sound of the paddle from her father’s study.

They opened their textbooks. Sarah tried to focus on integrals and derivatives, but her mind kept graphing a different curve: the arc of the strap, the parabola of a flinch, the exponential growth of shame.