"How many this morning, Miss Lointaine?"

"Just three, Headmaster."

"Well that's a comfort. Should take about an hour then, don't you think?"

"Perhaps less, sir. One is a new girl, here just to learn procedure and protocol."

"Brilliant, perhaps I can get over to the annex a bit early, then. They'll be admitting two new incorrigibles this morning. I should like to see that staff is properly following directives I've issued for admission and initial corrective action."

"Oh, and a dozen of the new posture-training devices were delivered. Would you like to see one now?"

"Not just this minute, Miss Lointaine. Perhaps you can demonstrate one later."

Janet Lointaine was taken aback by his choice of words, but didn't respond. She was still relatively new at her job and didn't feel she could question the Headmaster's way of putting things. She went to retrieve the girls waiting in the hall.

It was impossible for Janet Lointaine to assume the stern air she thought necessary as the personal assistant to James Martinet. She was too young, too pretty and too soft. She did her best to play down her youth and beauty by dressing as a dowdy matron, but she failed. Her silver blond hair and smooth complexion made her a striking young lady in spite of her efforts to conceal and deny it. Her innocent sensuality of expression, in spite of her refusal to wear makeup, could not be disguised short of wearing a bag over her head. She hoped her severe hairstyle; swept back tightly on her head tied in a bun at the back of her neck, made her look like a grey-haired nanny. It didn't. Her silvery blond hair was her most striking feature making heads turn to look at its unusual, stark white, platinum cast. She pulled her hair so tightly to her scalp, in her attempt to conceal its oriflamme conspicuousness, that it partially orientialised her eyes. When she had been younger, Janet coloured her hair to diminish her self-consciousness from the attention she attracted as her figure bloomed from nymphean proportions to the generous voluptuousness some would consider a blessing; she thought it a curse. The colour was atrocious; it took months to grow out. When she had interviewed for the job at Birchmont Academy, she wore non-prescription glasses, hoping to appear studious and give an impression of experience she didn't have.

Martinet, the erstwhile soldier of fortune, now the head at Birchmont, saw through all of Janet's veils, hiring her on the spot while subduing his lustful enthusiasm more expertly than she disguised her physical attributes. He had plans for his new personal assistant and the means to implement them, but he knew he had to move cautiously and carefully so as not to frighten the doe-like young woman.

His great good fortune at being handed the plum of Head at Birchmont with staff and students under his sway perfectly fit his peculiar predilections. His mercenary work in North Africa and the Orient had well prepared him to manage the exclusive private girls' school, in particular its disciplinary annex. His first change in policy, having eloquently and convincingly persuaded his faculty of its necessity and effectiveness in the education of young ladies, was the introduction of corporal punishment. Faculty enthusiasm was uncontainable, so he let them establish and implement the rules and regulation of systematic, methodical punishment for the girls as if it were their idea in the first place. They enthusiastically devised a plan that even included female staff and their own female faculty in a twisted logic of accountability that, since it was a girls' school, all females should be held to the same high standards as the students. He agreed with them. He made suggestions in specific areas, especially regarding equipment and he convinced them that, for insurance purposes, he was the only person authorised to administer punishment. There were no demurs.

In a short time, as the girls learned the consequences of wrong deportment as defined by the faculty and administration of Birchmont, a notable change became apparent in classrooms, hallways and on the pitch where sports and callisthenics took place. Girls sat up attentively in class, marched with near military bearing in the hallways and competed hard with one another at lacrosse and field hockey. Morning callisthenics followed the ancient Greek model; they exercised in the nude. The threat of being sent up to room 116, after word spread of what could be expected there, urged the girls to study seriously and the concomitant rise in test scores and obedient behaviour was markedly improved. Parents were delighted, the faculty proud and the girls grudgingly admitted that strict rules and severe punishment for improper behaviour gave them the impetus to achieve scholastically and to conduct themselves in ladylike fashion at all times. The consequences of not doing so were too dire to contemplate. Nevertheless, steady attendance outside room 116 each morning remained constant. It was a humiliating beginning to a humiliating and painful day for those few girls who remained truculent under the bridle of authority and those who were caught out for improper conduct. All newly admitted girls attended a familiarisation session to learn the rudimentary principles of correct attitude and conduct and a salutary introduction to the consequences of misbehaviour. The annex was established for incorrigibles. Martinet exercised exclusive control over that secretive programme. He engaged half a dozen of his former cronies from Africa and the Middle East to run it for him.

At eight in the morning three young women gathered in the hallway outside room 116 for an appointment at nine. The hour wait increased their apprehension and fright at what was to take place while displaying them in humiliation to the other girls who passed on their way to class or other scheduled activities. Karen White, Bonnie Fuller and the new girl Samantha Neif, chatted briefly before Miss Lointaine emerged from room 116. The brave front presented by the older girls vanished before Samantha could glean the details of what happened in room 116. All she found out was she had it easy and wouldn't have to remove her knickers. When Miss Lointaine appeared with three leather belts and three pair of bright chrome handcuffs, Karen and Bonnie turned to face the wall; Samantha blanched as Miss Lointaine gently but firmly turned her as well with the back of her hand at her shoulder. For the first time, Samantha saw the apparatus affixed to the wall, wondering how she could have missed it and the others like it arranged in a row. Cringing in the docile manner of the young faced with newly established authority over them, Samantha stood decorously facing the wall, listening as Miss Lointaine saw to the other girls. Steely ratcheting of handcuffs and muffled gagging sounds preceded in short intervals until Miss Lointaine stood behind Samantha. She reached around the terrified girl's waist from behind, lifting Samantha's arms with her own, fitting the last of the three belts around her waist, drawing it tight and buckling it at her spine. After a brief fumbling at the buckle and a loud snap, Samantha could feel the weight of the shiny handcuffs resting on her coccyx. Grasping her wrists one at a time, Janet placed them in the circles of steel by pushing and making the half-loops of the cuffs swing full circle with loud ratcheting sounds until they engaged around her wrists, imprisoning them in an inescapable thin cold embrace. She located Samantha's wrists so that the cuffs were below her ulnar protrusions, then tightened and locked them irremovably in place so they couldn't move above the projection of her pisiform bones. Samantha squealed from the pressure and started to say something, but Miss Lointaine shushed her with a curt, 'No talking'.

The apparatus attached to the wall in front of her face was made to enforce that strict rule. Samantha had no clue as to the function or purpose of the device and turned her head to look at Bonnie standing next. She seemed to be kissing the plaster. And since Samantha couldn't see the ball that projected from the wall like the one in front of her, she correctly assumed Bonnie had it in her mouth. She found her assumption correct as Miss Lointaine grasped the back of her head with one hand while prying her jaw apart with the other. When Miss Lointaine pushed her head forward Samantha had a ball in her mouth and she too seemed to be kissing the wall. She made the same gurgled protest as Karen and Bonnie had, except she tried to move her head back, but by that time, Miss Lointaine had buckled a thin strap around her neck. A short chain, from which the dog collar had dangled, now held her face indivertibly to the wall with the ball crammed in her mouth. She could neither turn her head nor bring it away. She was silent except for piteous whimpers of fright and distress. With the toe of her sensible oxford inside Samantha's ankles, Miss Lointaine urged her to move her feet apart. When she did, she no longer had to keep her knees bent to accommodate the height of the ball but angled her head back, tightening her neck strap, forcing the ball deeper into her mouth eliciting a gurgle of despair.

"Don't move," admonished Miss Lointaine. Samantha said, "Ghwaah," curling her upper lip, baring her teeth in garbled response and stood in tears, unmoving.

For the hour preceding their nine o'clock appointment, the three girls stood exposed to the shaming jeers and gibes of their fellow students. Defencelessly held to the wall, gagged into silence, they could do nothing to escape the cruel taunts and occasional malicious touch of their classmates. The malevolence of the other girls surprised and frightened the uninitiated Samantha; not so with Karen and Bonnie who had been sent to room 116 before; Karen's habitual recalcitrance making her a candidate for the annex. Samantha squealed when one of the girls flipped up her skirt in back and teasingly said, "Having your buns warmed then this morning, are we?" Moving her hips forward, clenching her buttocks defensively, Samantha pushed her mons to the wall, wishing she could walk through it to escape her humiliation. She could feel her skirt fly up and the cool air on the back of her thighs. It remained up after her anonymous tormentor had gone although she tried by wriggling her hips and flailing her fingers to lower it. Finally, of its own accord it fell, restoring her modesty to Samantha's great relief. She shrugged her shoulders, pulled against the steel rings of her handcuffs and with a burbling sigh remained in her humiliating position of exhibition for the derision of her classmates for another forty minutes, waiting for nine o'clock.

"These will be nice and red shortly."

The unmistakable sound of a sharp slap and a stifled squeal of protest from Bonnie standing beside did not reveal precisely what had happened since Samantha couldn't turn her head, but Bonnie's soft sobs told her it wasn't pleasant. She would have been mortified had she been able to see the other two girls. They stood as she did, held helpless and motionless against the wall, toes to the baseboard, breasts, belly and thighs pressed to its cool flat surface, silenced by the same large rubber balls crammed in their mouths, holding their jaws agape, drool spilling from their lower lips caused by the inability to swallow their saliva, in what Samantha assumed was the same wretched misery and humiliation as she. She knew, since she had heard the ratcheting of their handcuffs, that they too suffered the steel tyranny of the tight cuffs holding her hands in the small of her back. What she didn't know was what they held in their hands compared to her empty, outward turned palms. The back of their pleated uniform skirts were rucked up, loosely rolled and held at waist level in their own hands. Additionally, their knickers were lowered to their knees held just above their white knee-high socks by their widened legs. Consequently, they stood with buttocks bared by their own hands, knowing they must, lest their punishment be increased. Bonnie's right bottom cheek showed lightly pink where her departed schoolgirl chum had chided her with a smart smack. The period of humiliation outside room 116 was but precursor to the near formal ceremony they would undergo once inside. Nevertheless, all three of the young women felt relieved when Miss Lointaine came to retrieve them. The public humiliation was over for the nonce, the private about to begin, with the addition of agony to enhance and accompany it.

Samantha didn't discover the ignominy the other girls had suffered because Miss Lointaine had unlocked their handcuffs and released them from their neck straps before she freed Samantha's wrists and loosed her leather collared embouchure of the rubber ball mounting her silently pressed to the wall. Karen and Bonnie had rearranged their clothing by the time the three of them were ushered into room 116. To the left of the door sat a wooden bench. It was placed beneath a blackboard on which was neatly printed the last name of the three girls. In an encrypted form beneath the names were the degree and severity of punishment to be meted out to each: WHITE-12-BBXN, FULLER-6-BBXB, NEIF-3-I. The other girls read the encoded sentences with undisguised alarm, whining softly, brows furrowed in painful awareness they took a seat beneath their names. Samantha sat in the bliss of ignorance yet with the fear of the unknown beneath her chalky inscription. She rubbed fretfully at the marks on her wrists where the handcuffs had made a deep and lasting impression. The chalk tray beneath the board jutted out at the back of their necks preventing them from sitting back on the bench or resting their heads on the wall behind. They appeared prim and contrite, perched forward on the bench with their heads slightly bowed. Karen and Bonnie studied their bare knees silently while Samantha fidgeted with the hem of her short skirt, folding and unfolding its pleats across her thighs, pulling up her white knee-socks and nervously looking around room 116 in curious trepidation.

She couldn't see much. A high counter opposite the bench hid Miss Lointaine at her desk after she had briskly walked through a swinging wood gate at its right end. A door adjacent with the word 'HEADMASTER' stencilled in black on a pane of pebble glass in its top half glowed with a dim yellow light. Opposite the counter gate and at a right angle to the Headmaster's door was the one to 116, its numbers reversed on the inside pebble glass that repeated the design of the Headmaster's. Samantha wondered if she were better off in the hallway now that she sat like a penitent in room 116. The other girls were awfully quiet, she thought, then remembered she had been shushed earlier and thought better of speaking. She looked around to see if another of those dreadful balls and straps were not mounted in room 116 as well as in the hall. She started when the Headmaster's door opened; Karen and Bonnie turned their heads and, before Samantha could take the measure of the man, he said, "Miss White, this way please."

Karen rose abruptly, nearly rushing through the door held for her by Martinet. She looked to be raising her arms, but Samantha couldn't really tell since the door closed silently and quickly behind her, clicking shut in an instant. She could hear Karen's voice, tremulous and high, then the indistinct bass rumble of a man's voice, then silence. In something under half an hour he appeared again, beckoning and holding the door for Bonnie. Karen didn't reappear. Samantha sat alone and dejected, waiting her turn.

For the third time the door opened. Samantha swallowed hard; rose slowly when she heard her name called and was bid to enter the Head's office. She glanced over at Miss Lointaine who was studying a sheet of paper. A long narrow carton on her desk, although open, concealed its contents behind the raised top. Bold letters stencilled along its length proclaimed: Device, Severe Posture-Training - Female (one each) 1 of 12 - Tegan & Bindan Mfg. Los Angeles CA. USA. She hadn't time to wonder or puzzle over its significance before she sheepishly swept by Martinet and stood forlorn and anxiety ridden in the centre of his office. The door clicked shut behind her. That tiny click signalled a monumental change in the young life of Birchmont students.

Janet Lointaine scanned the instruction sheet for the peculiar contrivance nestled in its long box. Its main component was simple enough, a long stiff wooden brace nearly as long as she was tall. But the complexity of brass buckled leather straps fastened along its length and the tiny brass padlocks packaged with it were inexplicit in design and purpose. Furthermore, one end of what was simply a sturdy hardwood spar held a pair of delicate leather straps connected by a short chain. A ringbolt at what proved to be the bottom of the Posture Trainer permitted the chain to run freely through it. A wide stiff leather piece that narrowed at each end but was much wider at its centre lay neatly placed in the carton at the other end. Its twin buckles at each end suggested its probable attachment to a pair of matching leather straps on both sides of that end of the long wooden brace. A line drawing in the instructions labelled this end 'Top'. Janet so wanted to please her boss that she avidly studied the function of the Posture Trainer trying, with some frustration and twinges of desperation, to understand how it worked. The parts were labelled; she read them aloud as if the sound of her voice would make things clearer in her mind. She knew the last girl would not be long since she was only being given a 3-I.

The girl in the Head's office for her 3-I hadn't a clue what that meant. The Headmaster was so charming and polite, so concerned with her learning experience at Birchmont that Samantha was totally disarmed, charmed by his smiling and gracious manner. Martinet had charmed the pants off many girls and women with his reassuring baritone and avuncular loquacity. From the Orient to the Occident, females of all ranks and ages had succumbed to his persuasive cadenced voice. Duchesses and schoolgirls fell under his sway from the liquid tones and mesmerising influence he exercised while simply talking with them. Samantha was no exception. Quite relaxed in his presence, she too took what seemed to be reasonable suggestions passing easily over the line between reasonable to unreasonable without protest, no matter how humiliated and frightened she might be. He won her over with sheer casuistry. After her 3-I, which turned out to be three introductory strokes with a cane, as instructional and corrective precursors to the harsh discipline she could expect should she not comply precisely with school rules, Samantha tearfully thanked her Headmaster for his time and effort in her behalf. After rearranging her clothing, she was shown out through a door other than the one she entered. She saw both Karen and Bonnie on her way out.

She gasped, taken aback when she nearly walked into Bonnie standing just outside the door in the private hallway leading back to the school corridors. She stood facing the wall much as they had done outside room 116. She wore no handcuffs and was not gagged or held to the wall by a neck strap as before. She simply stood quietly facing the wall except Samantha could see her tear stained cheeks and hear her stifled snivelling. She didn't turn or acknowledge Samantha's presence. Her pleated school skirt was hiked up to her waist in back; slightly lower in front. She held it up with her forearms folded horizontally paralleled across the small of her back, hands open, palms out. There was a delicate precision to the way she kept her arms with the tips of her fingers in the bend of her opposite elbow on one side and touching the tip of her elbow on the other. She wore no knickers either. Her bared bottom and the back of her legs showed six livid stripes where Headmaster had severely laid on the cane, partially fulfilling the requirements of 6-BBXB. Those were the six, that they were on her bared bottom was self-evident. She completed the requirements by standing exhibited, also bared, thereby defining XB. She made a strange picture standing there with her neatly ordered school uniform and her white knee socks and penny loafers yet quite naked from her waist to her knees in shaming exhibition of her recent punishment. Samantha knew what they meant when she was told she had it easy. She scurried down the hall.

A door standing ajar before she reached the exit door, and what she saw through it, arrested her again, curiosity overcoming her natural reticence to watch what she knew to be private. Karen stood facing a wall also. Her arms were raised and her hands were clasped under her hair at the back of her neck. She too wore the neat white knee socks of her school uniform and penny loafers. She was otherwise quite naked. Although Samantha heard men's voices out of her line of vision, she merely shrunk back a little, unable to tear herself away from her clandestine voyeurism. Karen's back was to her, but the light was too dim to make out much beyond her naked form and strictly held posture. Samantha drew in her breath with a hiss when a man's arm entered the partial view she had through the door. He put a small wooden stand and a pair of high-heeled court shoes on the floor some distance behind Karen. Indistinct male voices apparently induced Karen to move back from the wall where she eased her loafers off with the toe of one foot at the heel of the other. She then stepped into the high heels, all the while keeping her arms raised and hands together at her nape. She then gathered her hair, twisting it in a loose coil high at the back of her head, holding it up with her fingers intertwined in a slight variation of her former posture now baring her neck. With one sideways step she mounted the small stool and stood as before except closer to the middle of the room and, of course, elevated about a foot above the floor. It was then that the light in the room came up and Karen's nude white form leapt into bright prominence, revealing the dozen welts that had been applied by Headmaster's cane. Unlike the neatly ordered ladder of pain evident on Bonnie's legs and posterior, Karen's voluptuously displayed bare bottom showed the livid stripes of a seemingly haphazardly wielded cane and the back of her thighs were clear but for one red mark just beneath the jut of her buttocks across the top of both pale thighs. Samantha could see her shoulders raise and lower with her breathing, occasionally shaking convulsively whether from the residual agony of her caning, the embarrassment of standing in nude exhibition, or both. The incongruity of white knee socks and high-heels; her utter nudity and conspicuous exhibition of her nakedness in what could only be called a posture of blatant display, gave Karen the appearance of a very unconventional schoolgirl. It was a conventional stance of exhibition for girls at Birchmont. Although Karen had assumed her coerced exhibitionist stance on previous visits to room 116, she had never stood on the inspection stand before. She had been notified that this was her last visit to room 116. Her next offence, no matter how slight, would mandate a ninety-day term in the discipline annex. To that end, a near certainty, she had to stand for preliminary inspection by two male members of the faculty. Samantha watched as two older men circled the naked display Karen was forced to maintain. She had no wall to conceal her firm uplifted breasts or the large aureoles and generous nipples that tipped their pleasant contours. Her mons and labia, covered only sparsely by the shadowy down of her pubic hair, she divulged in softly rounded definition at the apex of her thighs. Samantha watched her tremble as they moved their hands over the cane welts on her bottom, kneading and manipulating her soft roundness with open fingers, cupping and hefting her cheeks in their palms. One insinuated his hand between her knees, then raised it up on the inside of her thighs. He ran a thumb over the raised red weal under the crease between her thigh and bottom, making her hiss with pain, but she remained unmoving on the inspection pedestal. Samantha couldn't tell if his fingers strayed to her sex. The two men stood conferring at Karen's side occasionally looking up at her staged nudity while one wrote in a small pad. When one of them looked up through the door Samantha shrank back and padded quickly away. She had seen enough, learning the significance of XN by seeing Karen exhibited in the nude.