This is a story. It never happened and never will. The General Disclaimer is incorporated herein by reference.

BR&T date: 1993

"You know what I said, Kayannah. If you went the whole week at school without getting in trouble, you would get to go on the fishing trip. If you just couldn't manage to be good for five whole days, you wouldn't go. Would you like to know who called me at work this afternoon? That's right, it was your principal."

Kaiah cringed. She knew there couldn't be anything good that involved the school principal, except a terrible auto accident, and maybe not even then.

Her father continued, "It seems you weren't very cooperative in art class when your teacher picked you as the model for the other students to draw. You should be ashamed. Again."

"But he told me to take o-" she tried to give her side of the story, but as always, her father interrupted her in mid-sentence.

"Keep your excuses to yourself!" he demanded gruffly, without listening to a word she said. His judgement was final, with no appeal.

"... and sit that way in front of everyone!!" she whined. "And anyway, I already got spanked for it," she cried with frustration, "by the art teacher and then the principal."

"Then you must have really deserved it. I only heard about the principal." Both the man's voice and gestures expressed his complete exasperation at his six-year-old daughter's misbehavior. "So you're certainly staying home tomorrow," he declared, unmoved.

"And by six boys. In front of everyone," she ended sullenly. She may as well have kept silent, for all the good her protest did.

"My problem now, Kayannah, is that I don't want to stay home with you and miss out on the fishing trip myself, and it's too late to get a babysitter to stay with you the whole day. It also wouldn't be fair to your sisters. I haven't decided what to do. I'll figure it out tonight. Now go to your room and stay there until it's bath time tomorrow morning."

He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. Raising three girls alone was such a burden. At least as a guard at the lumber mill with very little to do all day, he could bring his younger daughters to work with him until they reached school age. He wondered if he could get help somehow, somewhere. If he couldn't find a way to control his daughters himself, maybe he should ask the principal about it sometime. The principal surely knew someone who could handle them.

('Why does a lumber mill in the middle of town even need a guard, especially only during the day?' he often wondered, while cashing his generous salary checks at the bank. He'd been very lucky to have been recruited by the mill owner right after his wife left him. That chance meeting in a park had been a lifeline, and he'd taken the job without hesitation - as a guard, of all things! - even though it meant moving to a strange town and putting Kaiah in a new school. With the exception of Kaiah's problems adjusting to the new school, everything had gone smoothly, even down to finding a nice house newly available.)

Over breakfast, after her bath, he told Kaiah that he'd made up his mind. "You have to stay home alone. That's settled. But I know if I just tell you to stay in your room, you won't, will you? I thought of something else to keep you out of trouble today, and it'll give you plenty of time to think about not getting in trouble in school." When they finished breakfast, he stood and told her, "Clear the table while I take your sisters to the car."

When he returned, he took Kaiah's arm in a firm grip and pulled her with him, out the back door, through the hedge to the side yard, and stopped at the flagpole beside their house.

He pulled a leather bootlace from his pocket, a spare that fit his fishing boots. Making her hold her left arm out for him, he tied it around her wrist, then pulled her right arm over to cross her wrists together. He wrapped the bootlace around both wrists, pulled it tightly enough to make Kaiah wince, and tied it off, leaving a long strand hanging loose.

Kaiah stood silent, but trembling, wondering what her father was doing. He carefully picked a place on the flagpole chain and tied the bootlace through the chain link at that spot. Then he pulled the chain, raising a flag which was permanently attached to the chain at a fixed place. The chain link attached to Kaiah's wrists first lowered to the bottom of the loop, then rose again, taking her arms with it, as her father worked the chain. He raised the flag to the top of the pole, wrapped the chain securely around the cleat on the pole, and stepped back.

The bootlace attached to the chain kept Kaiah's wrists pulled high. She couldn't reach high enough to unhook the chain from the cleat, but neither could she lower her wrists to untie the bootlace. She had nowhere to go, as she stood beside the flagpole. That was exactly how he wanted it.

"Think about behaving in school next week, and from now on, Kaiah. I'll be back to let you loose later."

Kaiah screamed as he walked away, "Daddy! Daddy!!" He didn't stop, nor look back at her, as he walked through the wooden gate to the sidewalk by the street, turned, and disappeared from her sight.

Kaiah squirmed, pulling on the bootlace wrapped tightly around her wrists, but the effort only made it pinch, hurting her. She gave up, knowing she was going to be there until he untied the knot and let her go. She turned her back on the street and leaned on the pole. Her short flowery dress hung loosely against her slender body, and her long straight blond pigtails pressed against her arms.

The flagpole stood in the center of her play area beside the house. A tall hedge screened it from view of the house. Away from the street, she had a swingset with climbing bars and a slide, with another hedge dividing the play area from the back yard. A short picket fence with a gate ran along the side by the street and the sidewalk, where her father had gone. The fourth side of the play area bordered on a vacant lot.

The lot had been vacant ever since the house that had stood there had burned to the ground, with many fatalities, decades earlier. Though it had been ruled a result of bad electrical wiring, not foul play, the fact that some bodies had never been recovered still made the lot a hard sell. Now it was boarded up with a tall wooden fence all the way around it. The neighborhood kids all knew about a loose board by the flagpole that they could use to sneak in, and the thought of possible ghosts even drew certain types to it. Kaiah knew it, of course, having frequently seen boys cutting through her play area to get to the vacant lot, but her father had no idea.

Several minutes later, Kaiah heard the gate open behind her, and turned her tear-streaked face to see if her father had returned to release her.

A boy about ten years old entered the yard, clearly intending to go to the vacant lot to play, but he immediately saw Kaiah and saw the knot on her wrists above her head. He ran up to the six-year-old and looked her over. "Hey, what're you doing, Kayahhnnah?" he asked, teasingly. "Waiting for someone to play with you? I'm in!" He lifted up her dress, revealing her yellow panties with fanciful pink ponies dancing amid flowers.

"Hey! Stop that!" Kaiah screamed. "Go away!!" she added, when he only grinned and lifted her dress higher, bunching it up in his hand. "Aaahh! Stop it! Stop it!" she screamed louder when her dress came up high enough to show her belly button.

The boy tugged her dress past her titties, up to her neck, and held it there, grinning, looking at her nearly-naked body from her neck to her ankles.

"You'll get in trouble!" she yelled, while trying to squirm away from him. Since her only possible movement was around the flagpole, he easily followed her wherever she went.

"You are in trouble, Kaiah, and this is your punishment!" he retorted, pushing her dress up to her chin.

"Help! Help! Daddy!!" she screamed desperately as the boy pulled her dress past her face and up along her arms, to her wrists. Her pigtails fell back down and lay across her shoulders, not far enough to hide anything that mattered.

He laughed. "I just saw your daddy drive away after hitching the boat to the back of the car. He and your little sisters won't be back for a long long time. But I'll be back very soon, as soon as I go get the rest of my buddies, the ones who aren't already on their way over here to play in the vacant lot!" He wrapped her dress around her wrists, tucking it tightly in the straps so it wouldn't fall.

Just then, the gate opened again. In her attempt to escape, Kaiah had moved to the side of the pole facing the street, and the gate, and the two boys entering her play area. First they had a look of curiosity, then sudden amusement. "Oh, good," the boy beside her teased, "here are a couple of them now, so you won't be alone while I'm gone, Kaiah!" He ran past them as they approached, yelling on his way by, "Don't do much until I get back with the gang!" and vanished around the corner of the tall fence.

The two new boys figured that taking her panties off wasn't much. No one arriving later complained, anyway. They decided to leave her cute girly shoes and socks on until the rest of the gang got there.

Much much later that day, her father returned with a good catch, sent his younger daughters inside, unhooked the boat trailer, set the brake, and replaced the cover on the boat. Inside, he cleaned and put away the fish. Then he remembered that he had something else to do on getting home. Going around the house, he found Kaiah still tied to the pole, crying. He didn't ask about her day, since he already knew, or thought he knew, everything that had happened: nothing, of course. She was tied to the flagpole, after all. What trouble could she have possibly got into while she was tied to the flagpole? He straightened out the strap of her dress for her and untied her wrists from the chain. "I guess you had a long time to think about misbehaving in school, Kaiah," he scolded, "and you'll mind your teachers from now on."

Kaiah just cried, relieved to be released at last, and told him nothing. She had been warned many times that day, by many mean voices, what would happen to her at school if she ever said anything to anyone. Without a single word, she ran inside to get a pair of panties.

After a week without any reports of more misbehavior at school, Kaiah's father congratulated himself on his great idea, which must have been quite effective. He decided he ought to use it for any misbehavior at home, too. 'Why waste a good idea?' he reasoned, as he tied Kaiah to the flagpole for a couple of hours to get her to think about keeping her room neat and clean, and again for dropping and breaking a plate, and again for something he forgot about long before he remembered to release her. He thought he might even punish his other two girls that way, if, or rather when, they deserved it.

BR&T date: 1993 to 1996

Over the years, it saved him a lot of money on babysitters. As another bonus, he discovered that his fishing trips were much more relaxing without her, and he began to punish her for even the most trivial things, and leave her there for the day. (She never went fishing again, except once when her little sister, Terra, stayed home instead, to learn to mind her kindergarten teacher and the school doctor.) Each time, he tied the cord the same way and raised the flag to the top so her arms were held high. He only had to change the link he tied her to as she grew. When she grew enough to reach the cleat on the pole, he bought a padlock.

The neighborhood boys soon learned the signal, and whenever one of them saw the flag go up, he passed the word to his friends, "Kaiah is on the pole!" They always came running. Usually they found Kaiah standing just the way they wanted her, but they were never disappointed if they found Terra, or the youngest sister, Oceanna, instead.

She struggled and cried, but couldn't escape them as they gagged her (sometimes), blindfolded her (rarely), stripped off her clothes until she was completely naked (always), then felt her all over, and spanked her of course. Often they used their belts, but even more often, they had other ideas they wanted to try. After the fourth time, there was always at least one boy with a camera. The warnings grew briefer, but more threatening: if she ever told anyone about anything that just those boys did, she would find herself at the mercy of every boy in the entire school for even worse things.

When her father came to release her each time, he found her just like he left her (from all outward appearances), except naturally she'd been crying a lot. And sometimes she had kicked off her shoes and socks, which he shrugged at, though a few times he marveled at how far she could kick them.

BR&T date: 1995

It always puzzled him, whenever he went to the only hardware store in town, to see the sign "Plumbing and Heating" over the entrance. He wondered how it ended up with such a generic name. It was almost as if some poet only had five syllables to spare, and needed two of them to fit a rhyme. But of all the strange things about this town, that seemed one of the least important. He pulled open the door, noticing as he did that it had a large yellowish-pink "X" sign on it again, another strange thing he never seemed to have time to investigate.

The clerk greeted him, "What'll ya'll have todazy? We got it, no matter how crazy!"

"I just need a few things," he replied, forgetting to ask about the door sign, "and one of them does seem a bit crazy. I've nearly worn out the chain on my flagpole. I'm worried it could break under the load. I mean, it's a pretty heavy flag and all. I need a durable replacement. Very durable. Plus I'll need some of those, whatever you call them, things to hook stuff to the chain. Also very durable. Very heavy flag, you see. Just in case."

"What size chain ya'll need?" the clerk asked.

"Uhh. I don't know." He hadn't even thought to measure it. "About twenty feet high, I'd guess, doubled, but it doesn't need to go all the way to the ground. Thirty feet?"

"Say... There aren't many flagpoles in town that tall. Is yers the one on Indiana Avenue by the vacant lot, by chance?"

"That's it," he admitted.

"Ah'm familiar with it. It's taller than ya thought. Did ya know ya can see the flag on it from blocks away in all directions? It's a real attention-getter! This'n's the one ya'll need," the clerk smiled, as he pulled a flagpole chain off a shelf that had one flagpole chain on it. "Ta the top and back, with enough ta wrap on the cleat. It's the perfect length for ya'll, ta the inch. Got double strong links, better'n what ya'll got now. Uh, Ah'd wager, Ah mean. Told ya'll we got it, no matter how crazy!"

"Wow. That saves me a lot of time," he said, amazed. "I was afraid I'd have to go to the city to get anything close to what I wanted. What'll it cost me?" Though he certainly had the money to spend, he didn't want to be overcharged.

"Ya'll can have it for a good price, Ah promise, and Ah'll throw in a dozen sturdy flagpole snaphooks for ya'll at no extra charge. Just in case ya'll want ta hook anything else to it, ya know. Ya'll want any help installing it? Ah can send over a couple lazy bums and a ladder, too. Don't worry, no charge. If'n we make you happy, ya'll will make us happy, too, we always say!"

He declined the offer of help, not wanting anyone at the hardware store to suspect what he used the flagpole for the most. As he was about to pay for the flagpole chain, he noticed a strange-looking item leaning against the front of the counter. "What's this thing for?" he asked. It resembled an archer's bow, except six feet long, and solid, and it had eye-bolts in several places.

"Oh, that. That's for towing three waterskiers at once. Helps keep 'em from tangling their lines. Ya see, this one in the center ties ta the boat, and the three on the other side each go ta one of the waterskiers. We got one in for a customer, but the manufacturer sent us two for the same price cuz this mount isn't as popular now, ever since some other places made it illegal ta tow more than two skiers at once." The clerk looked up. "Ya'll got a motorboat?"

"Yes, it's a-"

"Ever tow three skiers? Or think ya might someday?" the clerk interrupted, not wanting to waste an hour listening to a boat owner talk about his boat.

"Sure, it's possible, someday," he laughed, trying to imagine his three daughters, eight-year-old Kaiah, and the other girls, six and five years old, all waterskiing behind his boat. None of them had ever touched a waterski, as far as he knew. "But not for a long time."

"Tell ya'll what, then, ya'll can have it free, just ta get it out of our way. If ya'll don't have a use for it yet, just hang it up someplace until ya see something it's good for." The clerk picked it up and handed it to him.

"Free?" He shrugged. Taking another look at it, he came up with a use for it a lot sooner than he thought he would, one that also involved his three daughters. It would be great to finally go on a fishing trip all day, all by himself. Maybe he'd even be able to check out that 'tackle' shop by the lake that he suspected sold a lot more than fishing tackle. Free was a lot cheaper than two more flagpoles, and now he had a stronger chain.

Why had he begun to punish Kaiah (and her little sisters, much later) that way so often??

Maybe he had no idea what happened to her when he tied her to the flagpole. Since she obviously hated being punished that way, maybe that was all the reason he needed to make it her standard punishment, without knowing or even wondering why she hated it so much.

Maybe he overheard talk at work of a girl getting punished by tying her to a flagpole, and figured if other parents did the same thing, it must be common, so he did it more often, then heard more talk. Maybe he saw boys loitering on the street, and hoped that punishing Kaiah where the boys might see her would send a message to the little hooligans, too, and when the crowds only grew, he resolved to send the message more and more often. Maybe he heard frantic wordless screams while she was tied, and just nodded, glad the punishment was working exactly the way he wanted. Maybe all three.

Of course, it was possible that he came back unexpectedly one time and saw what was happening to her, without letting anyone know that he knew, and only then decided to make it a standard punishment. Maybe he knew the talk was about his flagpole, knew why the boys gathered and waited in front of his house and why so many of them brought cameras, knew the reason for the frantic screams he sometimes heard, and felt pleased that his idea worked so well. Let the boys punish her for him, he might have thought. The more they did to her, the better, logic said, since the more she hated it, the better she would behave in order to avoid it. Maybe he was glad that the boys did all the work while he got all the benefit. If any further justification was needed, he had put her there for punishment, after all, so obviously she deserved everything that happened to her there, by definition. And if she didn't deserve it yet, but the boys were already there and waiting, he'd just see that she got punished in advance.

Or maybe one day, as they passed a little tackle shop by the lake, Oceanna surprised him by asking what those things in the window were ("You don't need to know yet."), and why Kaiah was crying in the picture on that box ("What box? Wha!!?"). Maybe he returned later and watched the video titled simply "Kaiah's First Video" and also found old magazines with pictures of Kaiah on the cover and more pictures inside, knowing he was obviously not the first guy to see them, nor would he be the last. Maybe letters to the editor made him feel proud that all those other guys enjoyed his daughter's pictures. Maybe he was relieved to be free of a father's curse, and never had to worry or wonder whether his daughter was still a virgin, that question unmistakably answered in the video at least twenty times in part one alone. Maybe he was thrilled that so many guys had had so much fun with Kaiah, his daughter, back when she was only that old.

Maybe he wondered if anything was happening to his daughters back home at that very minute, and who was there, and if it would ever be in a magazine or video, and how many 'tackle' shops would have it, and how many guys would see it. Maybe he hoped he would be one of them. Maybe he wondered if the new super at the mill knew about the poster of his daughter, Sara Jessica, Kaiah's classmate, and whether or not he should tell him. Maybe it dawned on him at last why he was paid so much just to sit around all day. Maybe he looked for videos and magazines with Terra and Oceanna, and finding neither, decided to do something about that as soon as he got home. Maybe he knew all those guys would enjoy making videos with Terra and Oceanna just as much, and hoped they'd be just as intense and popular as "Kaiah's First Video" so he could ask for a raise.

Maybe he later found another video titled simply "Kaiah Serves Ten" made in an unfamiliar room, of his daughter crying and afraid, reluctantly but submissively taking off a dress and shoes he'd only just given her a week before, showing panties he was sure he hadn't given her, for ten men he was sure he didn't know. Maybe he hoped that something good would happen to her socks, her panties, and especially her, in the last three hours forty-seven minutes of the video, so it wouldn't be a waste of his money. And maybe he got his money's worth ten times over. Twenty, if he counted both ways, even though they were simultaneous.

All the possible reasons were possible.

But which was it? What was his reason for punishing Kaiah, Terra, and Oceanna that way so often, for every little thing they ever did wrong...

... and everything the boys got them blamed for?

BR&T date: 1995

Meekly standing by the dreaded flagpole at the center of their play area, with a wide waterskiing mount hanging from the chain above their heads, almost-nine-year-old Kaiah trembled with fear, as did her six-year-old sister, Terra, and her five-year-old sister, Oceanna.

After tying three pairs of slender wrists in tight leather cords, and securing them high over their heads as he always did, their father scolded the girls angrily. "I found my good twenty-foot garden hose all cut up into ten pieces and laying in a pile by the tap. Which of you three did it? When I know who did it, she'll stay here for four hours and the other two can go play."

The girls all knew who had cut up the garden hose, the previous time they had all been tied to the pole: it must have been the boys, of course, the same ones who had used the pieces to spank them all. None of the girls dared to say so, not only because they had no proof, but also out of fear of what the boys would do to them all at school for telling. They all pleaded that they hadn't done it, and they all said that the others didn't do it either.

He counted to ten. "Alright, since I don't know who did it, you'll all stay here four hours, and I'll leave the pieces of the rubber hose all around you in a circle so you remember why you're here." He ignored the frantic terrified screaming and pleading as he left.

If he noticed when he returned to untie the girls six hours later that the pieces of the hose weren't quite where he'd left them, or that Terra now wore Oceanna's dress and vice versa, he never gave the slightest sign.

BR&T date: 1996

"I found your bike out by the street again, Kayannah. You know what that means. Four hours this time."

"No, Daddy!" the nine-year-old protested. "I left it on the porch like you want! Like I always do! I swear!! Oohhhh no, no, nawww!! Not the pole! Oh please, NOOOH! Not the pole! Oh pleeeeease! Aaaaww! Uhhaaaw! Uuhh AAaauuuuuwww! Nnnnooooooooo!" As her arms straightened out beside her head and the cord cut into her wrists, she bawled out one final plea, despairingly wailing "I left it on the porrrrrrrch!!"

"If it wasn't you, then it was Terra or Oceanna. I'll be back with them in a minute, and the three of you can argue it out. But I better hear which of you did it, or you'll all stay here four hours."

The girls knew what always happened as soon as he raised the flag and left them alone.

But did he know what happened? And did he want it to happen? He's the only one who can say. And maybe he never will.