Chapter 1

 

Gerhard swung the cane once more; scything it down through the air to land with a deeply satisfying, crisp thwack across the centre of Gita's naked buttocks. There was something, Gerhard was beginning to learn, enormously gratifying about the impact of a well swung cane on a shapely, female bottom. There was also something particularly delightful about its impact on Gita's backside. It wasn't that Gita's bottom was an especially appealing one although it was by no means unattractive. For a lady approaching forty years of age, Gita had an admirably trim figure and it was plain to see where her daughter, Elke, had come by her beauty. Nevertheless, one could not expect Gita to possess the well-toned, youthful body of a woman some eighteen years her junior. The passing of years is a cruel master to a woman and Gita's bottom was not the firm muscled, slender, rounded orbs of her daughter's.

In truth, Gerhard did not find that to be detrimental to his pleasure in applying the cane to it. Gita's bottom was, for want of a better word, softer than her daughter's. The cane might strike home on Elke's rear with scarcely a ripple from the harder, muscles of her buttocks. Gita's bottom had much more pliability to it. It wasn't that it was flabby or mushy but it yielded to the cane with much more elasticity; flattening most satisfactorily at the impact of a hard stroke and with a shock wave of ripples radiating out through the looser flesh from the point of contact. Gerhard found the sight of that quite enthralling.

Equally attractive was Gita's reaction to the agony of a well delivered cane stroke. She was not a lady who saw any virtue in stoic resolve. Bravery and fortitude were not Gita's strong suits. A hard caning inevitably reduced her to howling wails of anguish and pitiful tears. It was true that Elke also usually succumbed to shrieks and sobs but, in her case, she would at least make an attempt to take her caning with some display of courage and it normally required a number of strokes to break her resolution. By comparison, Gita was a snivelling coward. She would habitually squeal at the very first stroke and would maintain her caterwauling, ever increasing in volume, until either her punishment was concluded or exhaustion robbed her of breath. Gerhard enjoyed this vocal manifestation of Gita's distress. He felt it the due validation of his efforts; satisfying evidence that he laboured not in vain and that the lesson of the punishment was being duly received and acknowledged. It was music to his ears; a fitting accompaniment to the sharp crack of the cane.

It was a song well known in Gerhard's household by now. Indeed those people familiar with Herr Handler's home could easily distinguish which of the two ladies of the house was being punished that day simply from the tone and timbre of the shrieks resonating from Gerhard's study. Elke's cries were more high pitched and nasal while Gita's were deeper toned, throaty and louder. The gardeners would be pausing in their labours to chuckle today, knowing that the bellowing howls from the study could only have originated with the elder of the two ladies. The delivery man would pause to listen at the kitchen door and would, that evening in the kneipe, recount the tale to his friends, over a glass of beer, that Frau Schreiber had had her deserving backside thrashed with the cane that very afternoon. The story would be all over town by the next day and, should Gita chance to appear in public, people would smirk, wink at each other behind her back and fancy that they detected a certain stiffness in her gait.

In another respect, the cane left a satisfying effect on Gita. Elke was something of a sun worshipper and was apt to frequent the FKK beach at a local lake during the summer months. As a result, she was normally a uniform biscuit tan, unbroken by any bikini line, from head to toe. Gita, on the other hand, was more a night owl and much paler in complexion as a consequence. It was perhaps less attractive than Elke's warm brown tan but, by way of compensation, it did mean that the angry red stripe produced by the cane stood out in much sharper contrast against her paler skin.

This was an important factor to Gerhard who liked to see the physical evidence of his labour etched onto the flesh of his miscreant. He rather prided himself on the distribution of clear, scarlet lines across the backside of the two ladies it was his duty to discipline. Since that memorable occasion when he had first caned the pair of them, he had honed his skills considerably. His accuracy had improved beyond measure and he could now deliver a hard stroke with pin point precision to whatever part of the correctly presented, quivering backsides he so desired. So accurate was he by now that, should he miss his mark, he would normally repeat the stroke on the grounds that the lady being punished must have flinched or moved to so cause him to miss his aim. He insisted that the penitent remain absolutely still, prior to a stroke of the cane. A certain amount of wriggling and squirming he would tolerate after the cane had bitten home, as long as it was not unduly prolonged, but, once he had raised the cane above his shoulder to apply the next stroke, he demanded complete immobility.

Both Elke and Gita were, by now, fully familiar with the consequences of disobedience to this standing requirement. If they should chance to fail to maintain their stance, not only would the stroke be repeated but they could expect an extra stroke as well. If they repeated the offence a second time during the course of their punishment it would mean two extra strokes; a third offence would earn them four; a fourth would mean eight and so forth. They had learned early to remain still, however excruciating the pain from their hind quarters might be.

Gerhard like to see a nice even distribution of stripes down the backsides of whoever it was had earned a caning that day. A vacant gap of unmarked flesh offended his sense of balance and harmony and would do until he had filled it with a well-aimed cut of his cane. He liked to fill the available flesh, from the top of the buttocks down, with an unbroken series of parallel, crimson streaks extending to perhaps half way down the back of the thighs. Because of this, he felt that short canings were unsatisfactory for the simple reason that there were not enough strokes involved to amply cover the target area.

For this reason, Gerhard tended not to address minor disciplinary matters immediately but allowed them to accumulate until such time as they merited a thorough caning. Indeed, to facilitate this, he had begun a disciplinary diary on his computer. Minor infractions were recorded and a sentence of so many strokes awarded. Then, at the end of each month, Elke and Gita would report to his study, the diary would be consulted and the accumulated number of strokes owing duly administered in a single punishment. It had the added advantage of increasing the two ladies' anticipatory anxiety and hopefully cause them to moderate their behaviour as they realised that the tally of strokes being racked up against their name was expanding rapidly. Gerhard's diary had evolved into a punishment record for the house. As an added refinement, each punishment recorded now included a photographic record. Alongside an account of the assorted offences and the awarded penalty would now be a photo, taken on his phone camera, of the miscreant's bottom taken immediately after the punishment had been administered. It leant another layer of humiliation to the chastisement, Gerhard fondly believed, and, in any case, he enjoyed revisiting the diary, in his spare time, to admire the fruits of his handiwork.

Although Gerhard aimed to achieve an even distribution of stripes for the most part, there were exceptions to this sense of order. For instance, he did not always aim a stroke into a hitherto unmarked portion of punishable flesh. Occasionally he would deliberately lay a stroke directly on top of an already existing stripe simply to increase the pain. Then, of course, in the case of particularly severe and protracted canings, he simply ran out of available space and striking already marked areas became inevitable. Then again, there were places which were, he was forced to admit, favourite targets of his. Top among these was that crease that marked the division between the swell of the buttocks and the top of the thighs. Experience had taught him that this was an extremely sensitive region and a good hard stroke delivered carefully into this soft valley was guaranteed to elicit a particularly sonorous shriek of dismay from his victim. He liked to ensure that at least three or four sound lashes found this sweet spot during the course of a punishment.

All of this was eminently satisfactory but there was one other reason why Gerhard took particular satisfaction in caning Gita. In a sense, taking the cane to her wobbling backside was the fulfilment of a fantasy many a married man might entertain. As we have seen, Gita was Elke's mother. Elke, in her turn, was Gerhard's wife and what man wouldn't have cherished the opportunity to cane his mother in law?