This short story is an entry in the 2002 Soc.Sexuality.Spanking Summer Short Story Contest and is copyright by the author and commercial use is prohibited without permission. Personal/private copies are permitted only if complete including the copyright notice. The author would appreciate your comments
Category: Period Last in a trio of loosely related WW2 stories.
Rachel's Choice
By
Mara Maharakshasa <MaraMahaRakshasa@aol.com>
The happy newlyweds travel to Geneva, a haven of sanity from the chaos of the collapsed Third Reich. Brian is a major in US intelligence, Rachel his translator, recently rescued from a transit camp. Love at first sight, as the handsome officer met the beautiful woman with the nervous smile and sad eyes.
This is their first time in a comfortable bed together.
Her first, in five years. The hotel seems a fairyland of abundance, luxury and cleanliness. They wander by the lake, talking of the future, their dreams of a better life.
On the third night, after passionate lovemaking, Brian begins to murmur his fantasy to her. To his alarm, she leaps up and rushes to the bathroom. When she returns, her face is swollen from crying, and she's trembling.
"Honey, what's wrong?" he asks, distressed.
"We can't, Brain. I can't ever let you spank me. And I don't want to do it to you, either."
"Why?"
She tells him.
Latvia, 1941. The German Einsatzkommando arrives, with a cohort of police and local uniformed sympathizers. The Jews must be 'evacuated.' Clutching parcels, suitcases, bags of food, they are herded from town, like cattle. Rachel and her family among them.
Out into the forest, to a clearing where Russian prisoners-of- war dug a huge pit. Whips crack, pickhandles and truncheons drive them on. Elderly and sick stragglers are shot. In batches they are ordered to strip, run a gauntlet of taunting local thugs who beat them, then line them up at the pit, to be shot.
Rachel loses consciousness as the machine guns bark, and falls. She awakens, and realizes her plight. Burrows through two layers of bodies to the cold dark night air. A few victims are still twitching. She crawls away into the forest, and joins the partisans.
Sobibor, 1943. She is the last survivor of her Jewish partisan band, killed by rival communists, raped and left for the
Germans to find. Now, only days remain before she'll die. But a riot breaks out. She flees through the barbed wire in the confusion. Is found wandering by a German woman, who inexplicably gives her shelter. Her husband was conscripted, their paraplegic daughter taken away, euthanized. The girl's identity papers let Rachel travel west, her hair bleached blonde.
Brian listens, stunned. She's never told her story in such detail.
She's quivering, hugging herself, wrapped in a blanket.
"Rachel, I'm sorry. I'll never mention it again. I promise."
He takes her in his arms. She hugs him like a doll, slowly calming down.
The next morning, he sips coffee on the balcony, in his dressing gown. Rachel is singing in the bathroom. Some sad folk song.
No, he'll never spank her, nor ask for it.
They'll be happy, have children, a perfect house in the country. Peace.
But, he tells himself, I'll need to find a 'special friend,' because it's in me, this ache. A big blonde girl. It won't be love; it'll be need.
In a way, that's Rachel's choice.
The End
© Copyright This story is copyrighted (c) by Mara Maharakshasa, 2002. All rights are reserved by the author. Do not retransmit, store (except for personal use) or publish without permission.
Reviews
Alex Birch <alexbirch(at)blueyonder(dot)co(dot)uk>
This could have been a bitter sweet love story which left a lasting emotional impression. Sadly for some reason it didnt. Rachel's awful history was recounted and the horrors she underwent but somehow it didn't quite work. I dont kow why and I can be more specific but a good attempt at a different type of human situation
Pablo Stubbs <Pablo.Stubbs(at)newsguy(dot)com>
This feels more like a synopsis for a much longer story than a story itself. It's rushed, incomplete, somewhat perfunctory. The lurches from the girl's history to the rather trivial matters of the man's desires are crude and jarring. There might be a story to tell which uses spanking against this background, but this isn't it.
Sarah Nada <circler73(at)hotmail(dot)com>
I find this story somewhat disturbing. The Holocaust references take it into difficult emotional territory, and the newlywed husband's attitude doesn't quite seem to fit the circumstances. Or maybe he just isn't meant to be a sympathetic character. That said, the author succeeds in creating vivid, memorable images of some horrifying events and their aftermath.
John <johnb(at)ssec(dot)wisc(dot)edu>
This is a talented and imaginative writer, and a plausable premise. But I find myself somewhat unsatisfied. Even though it's in present tense, the pure narrative style produces a lot of distance, which mutes any emotional resonance. We are being told about these people, rather than watching or even living with them.
On another level, I find the man unlikeable. Young people chosing a marriage partner are more often overly willing to believe that any wrinkles will iron out. This one has chosen emotional duplicity from the get-go. In another setting, that could have been simply hotnasty. But here, one wants to sympathize with the characters. The idea that a traumatized young woman who is currently unwilling to engage in s&m nas irreducably chosen a cheating spouse just doesn't do it for me. Especially since it's a 'choice' she doesn't even know she's making.
Standard disclaimers about variation in mileage apply.