SSC '07 Adult
A Poorly-Received Paddling (F/M)
by Daniel, Apple Cheeked Boy

"But Madame," Eric stammered, his knees beginning to shake, "The count was for the strap."

Ms. Livingston eyed him appraisingly. "But isn't the tawse more effective?" she argued.

That's just the point, Eric thought silently. The fire-hardened leather, the heavier weight. And of course the split that seemed to more than double its sting. New or not, she must realize that! A lifetime of practice served him well as he neither protested nor pleaded. "I haven't earned that."

"Your behavior under the paddle was disgraceful," she rebuked. "Fifty-two strokes; over half of your punishment. A fair, possibly generous count, was it not, Ms. Halverson?"

"Very," the young woman confirmed. Surprisingly early in the proceedings she had been required to take him in a half-nelson on the left, right wrist pinned behind his back, chest across her thighs as her determined partner developed Eric's regret from sincere to sorrowful.

"Had you known it was to be the tawse would you have better maintained your decorum?" Margaret asked him.

Eric instantly analyzed this proposition. Say no, and it mattered not which he'd earned; say yes and justify the tawse to better improve his future behavior. "Whatever you think best, Madame Secretary, I will be grateful for," he professed, insincerely but acceptably.

Just when he thought things couldn't get any worse, the young Secretary of Welfare withdrew a second tawse from the drawer.

"This one is slightly longer," she said of the heavyweight weapon. "Does it make a difference?"

This time Eric shook violently, aggravating the pain in his blistered rear. Certainly she knew how vicious the longer one was, despite having never used it. His reddened eyes began to tear.

"We'll have none of this!" Jennifer Halverson, Lady Ashland, commanded suddenly. "Your crying time is past and will come again soon enough, but you will dry those eyes this instant, young man, unless you'd like a bit of my hairbrush."

"Instead of later?" Eric asked automatically, willing to consider anything to delay the terrible tawsing.

"Certainly not. Anything you need now I will repeat when the time comes."

"What's all this?" Margaret demanded. Until now Ms. Halverson had played a subsidiary role in the Prince's discipline. Despite her meteoric rise, Margaret was untitled herself and always worried of being left out around the nobility. Appointed Eric's disciplinarian at the latest triennial change on his twenty-fourth birthday, and co-disciplinarian apparently for the first time, she was unsure how her role meshed with Ms. Halverson's.

"The Queen approved it," Jennifer said of further disciplining Her Majesty's fourth and most difficult son. "You're welcome to observe. I meant to tell you when we had finished here," she concluded just before the senior woman asked.

Eric, resigned but recomposed, shifted uneasily. A quarter's allowance gone in under a month, his blonde starlet girlfriend exposed as a gold-digger, and now "Penny" Halverson, the serious copper-haired ally of his prepubescent youth, assigned as his disciplinarian and waiting with her hairbrush. Along with this little matter of fifty-two strokes.

I felt this was a rather muddled story in which the identities and roles of the players were bewildering until right near the end.  I'm assuming this nobility is meant to be Britain's, and if so it might have been better if Lady Ashland had been referred to as such - or Jennifer - but certainly not Ms. Halverson. I can understand the two women being confused about roles - as a reader I certainly was.

I'm sorry but I thought this was just too messy to sustain interest.

As interesting as this story was, it was also a bit confusing as it seems to start in the middle of something and end before it's over. It's almost as if the author took a chunk out of a much longer story and called it an entry into the SCC.  It is well-written and interesting, just a bit jarring without more context.

This was a great example of an F/M story as far as the reactions go. It was detailed and well-written. I enjoyed reading it. My only problem was that it was a bit confusing as far as the roles went. It is clearly based on real people. I recognize some of the names of course, however, the women in the story seemed to be called so many different things that I had to reread a couple times to sort everyone out. It seemed like this could have been avoided somehow. Between royal titles, job titles, and nicknames... there were a LOT of different handles for 2 women and I think that was what caused my confusion.

However, that aside, the story was awesome and enjoyable.

Effective dialogue, both internal and external, make this a compelling read. It took a little time to sort out the roles, but that sort of ambiguity also works well. I was left wanting to know a lot more about the context, though. The unusual setting and the particular dynamics between the three characters - all in their own ways grown-ups - are sketched, but leave so much unanswered, that there's a sense of much greater richness to be discovered, and some frustration that this is all we have. Slightly more time spent outlining the back-story, perhaps at the expense of some of the haggling over specific punishments, might have worked as a better balance.