Penalty Accepted

Every teacher wants a class that discusses and participates. That’s how Victoria Chapell had imagined it when she was in college: Hands in the air, counterarguments, a classroom full of thinking minds, taking part in the debate. This… was not what she’d had in mind.

Noah still had the booklet in his hand, his voice firm: “So what do we do now?”

Victoria felt the dress against her thighs, where the hem didn’t quite reach her knees. The airconditioner in the annex hummed. Outside gravel baked in the sun. Inside, twenty adult faces were waiting for her to do more than just write the word contract on the board. “This is one of those situations where I can’t follow the rule,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. Affectionate, firm, but reasonable. “You can make a wish. Should I bring a cake tomorrow?”

Noah shook his head. “No. It’s not that kind of rule. You can follow it and still teach.”

Victoria swallowed. “But it’s not a skirt — it- it’s a dress. When I take it off I’d basically just be in my underwear.”

“We’re all over eighteen,” Noah said, “No problem for us.” There was a polite silence in the classroom. It felt relentless.

“Ah- ahem. Please. Please don’t make me do this.”

“What are we supposed to learn from this? That rules that are unpleasant don’t have to be followed?” Maya asked.

Victoria closed her eyes for a heartbeat. In her mind was the contract with her name on it. In her mind was the principal: If you don’t stay, the students have to leave. In her mind was her own invocation that rules should be followed equally, or they’d be arbitrary. It’d rupture the trust they’d just begun to establish. She nodded. “We- we made a contract,” she said, trying to talk past a crack in her voice, and you can’t break contracts.”

Noah had already started on the sign. A piece of cardboard from the closet, a marker, large, clumsy letters that were still legible. “This is for you,” he said as he threaded the string through two holes.

I BROKE A RULE.

Victoria’s fingers trembled, as she reached for the zipper in the back. The fabric was light, a summer dress, dark blue. Just long enough for a modern school and fatally too short for the year 1970. She slipped the dress of her shoulders and let it drop to the floor.

The class was a silent spectator. Underneath emerged attire no one would have expected from a project day teacher: A skimpy, skin-colored bra that was more shape than concealment, and a matching thong that was a narrow triangle of fabric in the front and barely more than a wisp of a wire in the back. When seen from a bit of distance, like the back of the classroom, the fabric color almost made it look like she was naked already. The bra straps cut delicately into her shoulders. The cups were thin, and her nipples already showed through the fabric, dark and distinct, as if the cool air in the annex had readied her before the punishment. Victoria had hips her dress had only hinted at before. Her waist was narrow, her stomach soft yet firm, a line leading down to her navel; below that, the smooth skin above her pubic area, where the thong sat too tightly. Her thighs were full, warm, and bare. When she bent over to pick up the dress from the floor, the thong dug as a faint dark stripe between her ass cheeks; her buttocks were bare, round, firm, undulating with a slight tremor every time she took too firm a step.

Noah put a pair of scissors on the desk for her. He’d had them ready of course. Victoria began cutting up the dress in front of everyone. One cut across the hem. One cut through the seam. The fabric gave way with dull shrip sounds. She kept cutting until all that remained of the beautiful dress were strips that fell onto the linoleum floor in a tangle of blue ribbon.

All eyes were on her. She was breathing shallowly, glancing from pupil to pupil with awkward exculpatory smiles. Her breasts rose and fell, and under the strain of the thin fabric her nipples became even more pronounced, hard from the knowledge that she was being watched. I can’t believe I’m submitting to a striptease. The thong dug into her skin as she straightened up. This is so degrading, I feel like an exhibit. Between her thighs, she felt a warmth she hated, because it wasn’t supposed to be part of the punishment, and yet it was there.

Noah stepped forward and hung the sign around her neck. The cardboard tapped against her sternum. The text was positioned exactly between the cups. “If anyone asks you,” Maya stated, “you have to answer what you did wrong.”

“I know,” Victoria said.

Class began. She wrote on the board. The air was filled with the scrape of chalk. The sign tap, tap, tapped lightly against her bosom with every movement. When she raised her arm, the bra tightened, and the underbust line became sharper. When she leaned over the first desk to explain an assignment to Levi, her cleavage hung forward. “Look at the worksheet,” she said, and her voice remained that of a teacher. “Not at me. The test won’t ask about the shape of my breasts.”

They had to look at her to pay attention to class though. That was the cruel ingenuity of it. Anyone who had a question found Victoria Chapell standing a meter away: The scent of her perfume, the warm sunlight refracted off her skin, the thong that strained as she shifted her weight from one leg to the other. The fabric between her legs was so narrow that you could sense the curve beneath it. From behind, when she turned and walked to the next row, her buttocks were bare except for a thin thread of fabric — which regularly seemed to disappear within the crack, when the angle was right.

Shockingly often, she was called over to explain something to somebody.

Sofia didn’t understand a source citation. Victoria stepped up to her desk, rested her fingers on the wooden surface, and Sofia would have only had to look at the paper. Instead, her gaze wandered along the inside of Victoria’s arm, down to her chest, where the bra gave way as she bent over, revealing increasing amounts of skin.

Noah had a question about the assignments. Victoria didn’t kneel, but stayed standing and leaned over. The sign dangled. Her nipples were visibly pressing against the fabric. Noah could not fail to spot their outlines, nodding the right direction when the sign swayed in the other.

Levi claimed he couldn’t read the board from the back. Victoria walked over to see for herself. The coverage of the thong was a joke compared to the movement of her hips. Several heads turned to trail her trek to the back of the classroom.

By lunchtime, she had gotten used to it. Well, not really. But the initial shock had given way to a hot, strange sense of routine. She taught, she graded, she said “very good” when someone said something right, and she meant it. And meanwhile students came up with this-and-that excuse to get her to approach so they could take a closer look at her exposed features, or get her to stretch in some subtly more compromising angle. It felt oddly flattering; in a very voyeuristic sort of way.

When the bell rang, she sent the students out.

“Break. Go out and get something to eat. I’ll, um, clean up here.”

No one stood up right away. “Aren’t you coming with us?” Sofia asked.

Victoria instinctively crossed her arms over her chest and then let them drop again. She mustn’t cover herself up all day, those were the rules. “I’m staying here.”

Maya opened the handout, even though she’d long since memorized the page. “The schedule says we all go to the cafeteria together and then to gym class.”

Victoria felt the coolness of the floor beneath the soles of her bare feet. She’d kept her shoes on. That was almost the only thing that still made her look like a teacher. “That’s not possible.”

“But those are the rules,” Maya said.

“There are others under eighteen out there, too,” Victoria said quickly. “Students. Real minors. A whole school. I’m not going to expose myself to the entire school like that. That’s not possible. I’m not even allowed to. It’s bad enough what’s happening here.” For a moment, there was something like relief in the air, mixed with disappointment. The class couldn’t really argue with that line of reasoning.

Maya closed the copy. “Okay. Apparently, this is one of those cases that won’t work. All right, then. We get one wish though.”

Victoria was glad enough not to be forced to leave the classroom for now. So glad that she almost smiled. “Okay. What do you wish for? Nothing that costs money.”

Maya didn’t hesitate. “I’d love it if you served us dinner.”

Victoria nodded. “Agreed.” How bad could it be?

Someone had already fetched plates from the cafeteria. Someone else had food in warming boxes. She pushed the tables together to form a long banquet table, as if Building B, Room 4, were transformed into a dining hall for an hour. Actually, it was quite nice: The clatter of dishes, the smell of sauce and bread, the class staying put instead of disappearing out into the courtyard. It would almost have been festive if Victoria hadn’t been standing half-naked in the middle, the sign dangling around her chest, the thong a barely-perceptible skintone accent against her bare flesh.

“Wait, wait, arrange the tables like this,” Noah instructed. “Plates on the left. Water in the middle.”

Victoria rearranged everything as instructed. Every movement was a small punishment within a larger one, a nesting doll of humiliation rituals. When she pulled a chair to the side, her buttocks tightened. When she lifted a pitcher, her breasts rose in her skimpy bra, and her nipples were hard enough that the fabric could no longer conceal them. She poured more drinks. She brought food. She picked up a fork that Maya had ‘accidentally’ dropped for her, and for a second while her face was level with the edge of the table and her butt hovering at a similar height next to Maya’s chair, the thong was now just a line.

Almost an hour passed. The students ate. They even said thank you. “Thank you, Miss Chapell.” And while they were saying thank you, they often enough tried to see through her panties and bra. The fabric of her thong had subtly darkened in the front — just a hint, where her body was betraying her. Victoria could feel it herself, an exhibitionist’s thrill: She was a little wet from the stares, from bending over, from the fact that twenty people were treating her politely yet undressing her with their eyes — not that there was much left to take. A part of her was almost longing for someone to push the boundaries a touch further, by twanging her brastrap or tugging at the waistband of her thong. It almost felt like being a trophy; a captive paraded at the victory feast in total subjugation. I might as well be wearing a sultry slave girl outfit, but that’d honestly cover more. Her nipples almost ached with tension. Between her labia, the narrow fabric felt both uncomfortable and exciting. Shit, she thought as she poured Levi another drink, leaning over him in the process. Hopefully no one notices. Levi might have noticed though. After dinner, before the desks back into their classroom configuration, she spent an inordinate amount of time arched over the tables to wipe them down, and she could swear she heard camera shutters.

“Next class,” she said hoarsely, clearing her throat to regain her teacher’s voice. “Open your books, everybody. We were on History. If you have a question, ask it. If you’re staring, write anyway.”

Noah straightened the sign around her neck that had gotten twisted. “The rule still applies,” he said calmly. “All day long.”

“I know,” said Victoria Chapell.

She stepped back up to the blackboard. Chalk in her hand. Bare legs. Bare buttocks. Hard nipples beneath thin fabric. The sign dangling from her neck. Outside, the rest of the school lay in the midday sun. Inside, the next class began, and Miss Chapell continued teaching to an attentive audience.