"The Armoire"
(c) 2006 EiffelCrisp

Allison waits in the station, bundled in her winter coat, feet scratching the paving stones, brown hair escaping in bezier curls from under a wool hat, and if you looked closer you’d marvel at the textures of her skin, so fine, so perfectly porcelain and warm, the wetness of her lips’ vermilion against the skin forming a sensual frontier.

She holds a suitcase in her hand. She is being evacuated, although just to where she is only somewhat clear. . . she has her travel documents, the ticket to Lesser Witham a village that appears as only the smallest and faintest dot on the map, served with no great frequency by train service, and a letter of introduction from the Relocation Board to her host.

On the train, which rumbles out of the station with black out curtains drawn so as not to be seen from the air, she collapsed back into the leather seat of her compartment, daydreamed as the darkened countryside flowed past her window. Deeper into the country, no roads to be seen, and the train emptied . . . she dozed.

A conductor, ruddy beneath his blue-billed cap, shaking her awake: “we’re here, young lady”, a long climb down the iron step stairs her to a rural train siding under a dark sky filled with shimmering stars. She stands, shivering in the dark, a lone light by the platform casting a tiny pool of light, a little refuge of yellow effulgence standing weakly against the gathered night. 

She stands, uncertain, waiting. Waiting for what, for whom? The instructions were vague. She would be “collected” by her relocation host. “Collected” . . . a word she rolls over her tongue “Do I want to be collected, I wonder?” she frowns, “it rather depends on by whom, I’d guess” she concludes.

“You there, stand up straight”

“Yes you, girl, stand up straight”

She turns and looks, wondering. The formidable voice comes from a formidable looking woman, “Mrs Macready to you and you would be Allison” --she examines the girl’s travel papers, hanging around her neck, just as the Board chaperones arranged them: “I shall call you ‘girl’ as its easier for me to remember.”

She ought to be offended, she thinks and starts to say something,prompting a sharp look, “I know your sort of girl, dear, and I know just what’s good for them . . . you’ll be finding out in more time or less. If I had my way, you’d be bent over right here for a taste of the strap, but Professor says I mustn’t . . .”

A note of alarm shivers its way down her spine.

A firm hand on her shoulder digging, hot breath felt on the fine hairs of her cheek “City girls are no end of trouble, and I told Professor we’d not have them, but he insists. But you’ll be trouble I know”

“I hope not, Ma’am”

Mrs. Macready, bony malice and blonde hair bleached by sun, more than forty, not yet fifty, was not to be placated by goodwill “I know girls like you, sweet and polite to your face till they’re let alone, and then they turn slatternly and shameless, always finding a way to get their fingers sticky.”

“Oh Miss, I’m sure I . . .”

An unkind glance silences her.

“Up in the trap”

This is the country, deep Brittania she thinks, a place where one might still find an untamed Druid, a Pict painting himself with woad . . . she imagines these things, and licks wets her lips as the little wagon is pulled up hill, Mrs. Macready is not shy with the whip, it seems.

How quickly the modern world recedes; only this afternoon she stood in a Terminus, a great hub of Imperial transportation surrounded by reminders of the far flung lands where the King’s writ runs . . . a day’s travel has taken her back to the heart of the nation, to the land before the Romans.

A reverie interrupted by arrival at a gatehouse, unoccupied, where Mrs Macready gets down to open an ancient gate, an affair filled with rusty squeaking, which disturbed some smaller animal, a badger perhaps, and then finally, arrival.

Shown to her room. Its warm and cozy, a heavy wood bed under an old fashioned canopy . . . nights are cold here and the comforter is filled and puffy with down against the chill. Old glass windows, wavy and refracting idiosyncratically, split by leaded mullions, a branch outside scraping, an owl hooting somewhere beyond the window. 

Instructions to the girl, she standing in her nightdress, absorbing the dressing down, Mrs. Macready casting cold eyes on her. Something warming, warming to the severity and the isolation, she is here in this room, in the country, far from the City, the searches, the alerts and bombs

“These are the rules:”

She looks up

“Are you paying attention?”

She nods

“The way I think” and the ‘I’ is drawn out to underline that it stands in contrast to the rules which have been imposed on her by some authority, less wise in the ways of the world than she “a girl like you is best kept whipped-bottomed”

“You heard me—a ‘whipped-bottomed girl” is chastised in mornings – just because—and thus proceeds into her day with a useful reminder each time she sits, as she adjusts her garments, or when her dirty little hands wander somewhere that they ought not.”

So many rules for a girl, shaking, who washes her face and climbs into bed, drifting to sleep, sleeping soundly, thinking of the rules set by the stern Mrs . . . corridors she may not pass, noises she may not make, places she may not touch herself, details about her bath, so many things to remember, talk of the Professor, who to hear tell, is fearsomely annoyed by even the smallest girl-peeps, and busily working on matters of the greatest importance for the nation, something that brought those quiet messengers from the Ministry out on occasion.

Fast to sleep, dreaming big dreams under the warmth of the comforter, even as the night grew colder, not listening to the rattling in the coal scuttle, and not hearing the small bark of fox in the brush near the carriage house.

The moonlight awakened her, bright and seemingly nearer than she’d known, and somehow called her out of bed. 

“And don’t be wandering at night, there will be time enough for you to get acquainted with this house, you’ll only get yourself lost or trip, or rattle about and disturb the Professor . . .” so she’d been instructed, instructions which she ignored.

Hand on the doorknob, cold and brass. Feet on tiptoeing, tracking the carpet runner, walking softly, finding the deliberate step so as not to make the floors creak. Turning to face a heavy paneled door, finding a room lit by moonlight, nearly empty, save a spectre at the far end of the room, ghostly white arms reaching out for her.

She was not afraid of ghosts, and this one stood particularly still. Very still, Suspciously still, she thought as she advanced forward, heart beating in her breast. On further inspection, the ghost was aided in its stationery duties by its true nature, an armoire covered by a white sheet. This she peeled back, and reached for the door, which creaked open. The interior was dark, and seemed deeper than the exterior –a trick of the evening light.

“Do I hear a disobedient girl” that harsh call from the hallway “do I hear the footsteps of a girl who is inquiring where she ought not? 

She was tremulous now, hearing Mrs. Macready call for her, and she stepped forward, into the deep armoire, closing the door on herself, shutting herself in. She stood stock still, trying to make no noise at all. A shaft of moonlight penetrated a crack in the paneling, and as her eyes became accustomed to the light, she began examining the interior space.

Things hanging, straps of some kind. The space is filled, drawers on one side, racks on the other. She notes many curious things, things with odd bulbous shapes whose purpose she cannot fathom. Clothes on hangers, all musty smelling, faintly of naphtha, faintly of something else, She reached out to touch one of the hanging leather straps. . .

“And there you are, just where you ought to be you wicked girl”

The door had burst open and before her stood the fearsome one, a robe wrapped around her, with a nightcap upon her hair, very much appearing as another ghost.

“Well get down from there, and we’ll see to you. I’m sure that the Professor will want to have your hide for this.”

“But Ma’am”

A slap across the face, harsh fire where hard fingers left swelling marks on her cheek.

“A disobedient girl like you will find sitting slightly less impossible if she keeps her mouth shut. I should add that ‘doing as your told might have helped, but that’s clearly not a possibility is it”

She nods sheepishly.

“Shall I show you what you’ve found your way into?”

“You, clever girl, have found your way to the Professor’s arsenal for the correction of disobedient young ladies, a repository whose depths I am sure will be explored.”

Mrs. Macready had found a hurricane lamp and lit it, to provide more light. 

“When Professor gives you your audience, you will be stripped and mounted here, perhaps. . .” as she said this, she moved beyond the armoire, to a piece of furniture that Allison had not noticed before, sitting low and in shadow.

“This is what we call a ‘horse’ where we mount a young lady like yourself, the sort who’s inclined to wander . . . have you been whipped before?”

Allison looked down miserably at her shoes.

“No Ma’am”

“Well that does explain so much. A girl like you needs her whippings. Professor is so fond of the belt for such as you, thick and noisy, you saw them hanging, did you not?”

“Yes, I think so, Ma’am”

“Well such as you can’t be counted on to hold position, or so Professor says. I think he’s just a soft touch for the likes of you, but his word is law in this house. And so he gives you the courtesy of mounting on the horse, you see where you go head down, haunches up. It does provide a very unladylike view of your private bits—but your sort of girl can’t be too demanding in that regard.”

“No Ma’am”

“I shall show you what he will do to you, tomorrow. Get yourself over the horse.”

A hesitation. A hand digging in her shoulder, another taking her by the ear, frogmarching her to the horse, pushed over. Night gown pulled up, exposing her buttocks, white in the moonlight.

“Please Ma’am”

Straps binding her wrists to the forward legs, and her ankles behind. Mrs. Macready searches the armoire and retrieves a sort of spoke with a wishbone like form at either end. Its use becomes clear, when she places it between Allison’s legs, each end engaging a thigh, spreading her legs shamefully.

“The Professor has all sorts of things in this room for a girl like you . . . he has made the improvement of such as you his life’s work, and you will be grateful.”

A hand on her bottom, exploring the groove down to the sparse thatch of hair.

“You’re a little masturbating slattern, aren’t you?”

Allison started to say something . . .but was cut off.

“You needn’t bother to deny it. Professor knows about girls like your, shirkers and loafers, idling away hours that should be devoted to study. He is making inquiry into your . . .” and here Mrs. Macready paused and rolled the following word around in her mouth, to great effect “ . . . habits.”

Jackknifed over the horse, her bottom up and legs spread wide, Allison felt a hand explore her sex. 

“Oh you are a damp little thing”

Fingers explored and Allison twisted to get away, but her nether lips were caught between thumb and forefinger.

“Professor makes the girls dance on the horse. In the daylight you’ll see the stain beneath you, in the leather. He knows your sort – you’ve been selected, you knew that, didn’t you?”

“Selected Ma’am?”

“Chosen . . . for this.”

From the armoire, Mrs. Macready drew a long strap of thick leather, and laid it across the small of Allison’s back.

“This is how he likes to find you, and you should take care that the strap doesn’t fall.”

“You mean you’re not going to let me up. . .”

“No, you foolish girl, once bound for a whipping, a girl doesn’t rise with a bottom so fair as this” and her hand traced a line on Allison’s buttocks.

“But Ma’am, how long. . .”

“Eager for your whipping are you? Tell me girl, are you eager?”

Truth to tell, Allison’s sex was growing mushy and wet; whether the stress of the train ride, her fatigue or because of her wanderings in the night, she’d felt tired and tremulous, now she felt exhilaration and excitement. It was as when she touched herself, when she imagined herself being taken roughly by a coarse man, forcing thick fingers into private places, the warm wet melt that occurred when she read newspaper articles about girls made to expose themselves for men’s pleasure. That feeling suffused her sometimes, leaving her no easy peace, forcing her hands down to her sex . . . the urge that had arisen most recently when she noted a recent series of newspaper articles about the horrors suffered by gentlewomen abducted by raiders while on pilgrimage to the Holy Land came to mind.

“Its nearly dawn, and Professor likes his tea and eggs early, then he shaves and dresses, and usually comes here directly. You shall wait for him.”

One revolution of the Earth can bring so many changes—eyes open for the first time in one day, and close for the last just the same. Allison had woken the day before in the noise and heart of the City, frustrated and lonely. Now she waited as the sun extended its first warmth from the East, filling the sky with glow, her bottom was raised in the air, and she tried not to squirm as she lay.

She waited and worried, thought about the other things that she’d seen or felt in the armoire, prickly mats, and alabaster eggs with sinuous profile. Mrs. Macready had intimated that they were all for the correction of girls, and while the straps and belts had evident purposes, other tools seemed more obscure.
Perhaps she dozed. Perhaps she dreamed. How could she, you may ask, bottom bare, tied tight, frightened and wet? She pressed her mount against the leather of the horse, trying to scratch an itch.

Morning light was pouring through the windows now, and a heavy tread was heard in the corridor behind her. The sound of the door opening, a man’s voice, plummy and rich, self-confident and ever so slightly amused.

“And if that is not the best way to greet the day? Mrs. Macready tells me that you’ve been rummaging about and that’s as good as any to give you a hiding, I suppose, but I suspect a girl like you needs no reason at all.”

His fingers were playing down the long groove that split her buttocks. A finger lingered over her most private place, producing a squeal.

“Sir. ..” plaintively

He bent forward and whispered to her; she smelling him, tea, leather, shaving cream and something that was mustier and older, something like wool and whiskey. 

His finger trying the tight little hole “You needn’t pretend. You’ll find all the things in this room, in that armoire, that you’re meant to find. You’re a whipped girl who’s yet to be whipped, Allison, and that’s just a shame. But now you’ve found what you need.”