The Passion
The Dominatrix and the Magic Cane
In a small town on the edge of the mountains, there lived a dominatrix called Mistress Amanda. She was the town’s only dominatrix, because it was a small place and most of the men there were perfectly normal: enjoying vanilla sex and never dreaming of trying a BDSM fantasy. But there were enough naughty boys needing strict lessons, sissies needing to dress up and scrub floors and also foot or boot fetishists wanting nothing other than to sit before her kissing and licking for hour upon hour, for Mistress Amanda to make a good living.
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| OK, this isn’t actually Mistress Amanda. This is Lady Sophia Black. But she looks remarkably like Mistress Amanda, don’t you think? |
When the town prospered, so did Mistress Amanda. Some years she was so busy she could hardly keep track of which sub was which and once began what was intended to be a realistic schoolboy scene, wearing leather corset, fishnet stockings and a spiked collar. The ‘boy’ explained that this wasn’t what he wanted so Mistress Amanda, with two other sessions already booked in for that same day, airily told him to fuck off and he departed with a flick of her bullwhip. She even had a small financial domination side-line, which in those days before telephones and the Internet mostly involved being sent money accompanied by long gushing letters and responding curtly and dismissively with demands for more cash. And in the leaner years, Mistress Amanda would make some economies but she would get by.
But one year the town went into an economic depression that it couldn’t seem to shake. People laid off from the nearby farms started drifting into town looking for work but there was no work to be had. Inns competed desperately for the dwindling custom, with offers of cheap beer, and the local stonemasons offered half-price carvings to anyone who could provide the stone themselves and every week, it seemed, more and more shops were shuttered. Times were hard.
They were hardest of all for the poor dominatrix. When money was scarce even the most devoted sub usually had higher priorities than getting his bottom spanked – and Mistress Amanda quickly discovered that few of her subs were indeed as devoted as they had always claimed. The pay-piggies stopped responding to demands for cash, the boots went unlicked, the toilet unscrubbed and the cage unoccupied and Mistress Amanda began to wonder whether she should seek other work. She would sit in her dungeon during the dull long evenings trying to think of other professions that might value her specialised skills.
She still had a few clients who paid her the occasional visit. One of the most frequent was Pansy Pink-knickers, an elderly sissy with a small retirement fund which enabled him to visit once a month, put on a maid’s uniform and perform a few random acts of spectacularly ineffective housework before being placed across her knee and given a moderate spanking. The spanking was part of the roleplay, but it never lacked justice for Pansy Pink-knickers was perhaps the most incompetent sissy maid who ever pranced around in stockings. He could be relied upon without fail to use drain-cleaner on the delicate laundry, attack the muddy tiles with a clothes brush or simply accidentally kick over, then hoover up, Mistress Amanda’s earring collection. Remarkably, Mistress Amanda found she herself had to do more household chores in the weeks when Pansy Pink-knickers had ‘cleaned’ than in those when he was absent, as it took her at least an hour to restore the place to its pre-‘cleaning’ condition. But he was a regular client and always paid his tribute without quibbling, so she tolerated him (and he, for his part, worshipped the ground she walked on, even if his attempts to clean that ground were usually disastrous).
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| Ah yes – that’s Pansy. In a position where he can do relatively little damage, thank goodness. |
She also had the occasional passing trade – businessmen and bureaucrats from more prosperous (or rather less impoverished) parts of the realm, who took the opportunity to liven up their evening in the otherwise dull town by being tied up, buggered or peed upon before graciously being permitted to masturbate and leave the poor dominatrix to her gloomy thoughts.
One day, Mistress Amanda was preparing for just such a one-off client, who had booked a schoolboy detention. The days of not caring whether her clients were getting what they wanted were a distant memory, so Mistress Amanda had carefully prepared. She was wearing a blouse, long governess skirt and a black corset and looked the very image of a stern scholastic disciplinarian. The room was set up for the detention session: a blackboard in the corner, a school desk with little chair awaiting the unfortunate miscreant and exercise books and pencils for the written punishments that had been requested by the client, before the inevitable caning. The cane! Mistress Amanda suddenly realised with a shock that she had not brought one out, so she went off to her toy cupboard in the next room. She opened the cupboard and mechanically reached out for one of the canes she knew would be lying on the third shelf – and found none. She looked up and down the shelves in confusion. The cupboard was filled with tawses, paddles, whips and all manner of other leather implements but everything was in the wrong place and she searched ever more frantically for the canes, without success. A faint memory returned to her of ordering Pansy Pink-knickers to tidy the cupboard on his last visit. Of course, he was supposed to do a bad job – that was why he went across her knee – but he’d truly scaled the heights of incompetence this time. Where the hell had the little bastard hidden her canes? A tawse would not do – this client had been quite specific.
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| No, that’s not a cane. She hasn’t got one at this point in the story. Anyway, that’s not Mistress Amanda, remember? It’s Lady Sophia Black. I did tell you that. |
She became aware of a knocking at the door. She closed her eyes, collecting herself, then strode over and flung open the door.
“You’re late!” she snapped, and the eager-looking businessman scurried in. He fumblingly handed her an envelope, which she took with haughty disdain, resisting her frantic temptation to feel and count the so-desperately needed cash within.
“I hope you have your uniform with you, boy!” she said and the man lifted the bag he was carrying with a sheepish grin.
“Well, get changed then!” she commanded. “Don’t you dare keep me waiting – you’re in quite enough trouble already, young man!”
“Oh dear, I’m sorry Miss” her client stuttered, excitedly, removing his clothes. “Please – please don’t cane me!”
“Well…” replied Mistress Amanda, feeling an unaccustomed sense of helplessness. “That’s for me to decide, isn’t it? We’ll just have to see. But you are on very thin ice!”
And with that threat hanging in the air, and with Mistress Amanda wondering how on earth she could deliver upon it, the session started.
Any hopes she might have had that the cane was just an optional extra were swiftly dashed. She rapped his knuckles with a ruler, strapped his palms with a tawse and bent him over more than once for a dose of her heavy paddle. But at the end of each such assault, the ‘boy’ made a remark along the lines of “Oh, thank you Miss. I hope you won’t cane me too. Really – it’s too much, I couldn’t bear it!” Clearly, there was no escape – he expected the cane. But there was no cane to be found.
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| The boy. Do we know his name? Do we care? |
During a slow moment in the session, while the boy scribbled lines in his exercise book (“Boys who are repeatedly insolent get the cane across their backsides – good and hard.”, Mistress Amanda left him alone, walked through her kitchen and opened the back door, hoping the cool evening air might inspire a revelation as to where that wretched sissy might have decided the canes should be kept. No such inspiration came, but just as she was preparing to head back inside, her mind racing with a script explaining that she had decided a caning would be too lenient and she had something much worse in store (with no great hope of getting away with it) – she glanced down. There, on the mat outside her back door, lay a cane.
It was not one of her canes. Nor just any cane. Truth be told, her dungeon equipment was becoming a little shabby and this cane was not one of the tired, chipped specimens that she had expected to find in the toy cupboard. This cane shone with the rich, deep brown that betokens quality wood, worksmanship and care. She bent to pick it up and noticed its weight, which somehow accompanied a remarkable flexibility when she bent it between her strong hands (she did not bend it far – to find such a cane at just the right moment then break it would be a tragedy; incompetence worthy of Pansy Pink-knickers himself). It was quite a heavy cane but thoroughly swishy. She wondered briefly where it had come from, but then heard a sneeze from the schoolroom. Clutching the cane, she marched back through the kitchen, flung open the door to the schoolroom and strode imperiously to the front.
She tapped the end of the cane against a word she had previously written on the blackboard.
“Can you read, boy?” she demanded. “Or is even that simple task beyond you?”
“It, it says s- s- silence, Miss” stammered the boy.
“And what do you think that means?” she inquired, sardonically.
“Erm.. no noise, Miss.”
“No noise.” she repeated, thoughtfully. She tapped the end of the cane gently against the blackboard again. “No noise at all. No talking, no singing, no coughing… no sneezing.”
She took two paces forward, towering over the desk and flexed her newfound cane between her hands.
“I had hoped, perhaps it would not be necessary to resort to this, boy” she remarked. “I was beginning to think perhaps you would manage to behave well enough to leave here with your bottom no more than slightly warmed. However, I see now that I was wrong – grievously wrong – it seems I gave you altogether too much credit. I have been lenient, but leniency has obviously failed, so it is time for sterner measures. Much sterner measures. So stand up – with your hands on your head!”
“Oh, please Miss, don’t” murmured the boy, rapturously, as he struggled to his feet.
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| Here we go. |
Soon his rather ample bottom was stretching the grey flannel material of his shorts as he bent across the desk. Having prepared him with a stern lecture, Mistress Amanda drew her arm back in a well-practised manoeuvre and let fly with a neat flick of the cane. She had found it was best to start fairly mildly, with moderate taps across the shorts, when first using a cane on a new client, to gauge their tolerance. Few wanted or could truly ‘take’ a proper beating and she was aware that this lovely new cane, whatever its provenance, was a fearsome implement.
The rattan impacted the clothed buttocks with the usual slightly disappointing ‘click’ rather than the terrifying ‘thwack’ of CP fantasy. But on this occasion, that sound – and the accompanying sharp intake of breath from her client – was quickly followed by a ringing sound, as of metal striking on stone and she saw a gleaming flash out of the corner of her eye.
She looked down, and there on the floor, just next to the boy’s grey-socked right foot, was a shiny copper coin. She bent down to pick it up, wondering why on earth this client would carry small change in his fantasy schoolboy costume. She vaguely toyed with working it into the scene but could not see any obvious angle and anyway the session had reached the point at which actions were required, rather than words. According to the client’s script, after this caning she would imperiously command him to kneel down and masturbate, to humiliate him and bring home the severity of his crime (which had, in theory, itself been masturbation – but she had long ago ceased to find this contradiction amusing). Once he came, of course, she would break character, offer him wet-wipes or a shower and make rather stilted conversation while he put his normal clothes back on.
So she placed the coin on a shelf, to give back to him after the session (although times were hard, they were not so hard as to tempt her to steal a copper coin and she was fundamentally an honest lady), then placed another stroke across her quivering target, precisely half an inch higher than before (she prided herself on her caning skills).
Again, not only was there the click of impact and a gasp of pain, but a jingle and this time she actually saw a coin fall and roll under the desk.
She struck again. “Three, thank you Miss” gasped the boy, but she was paying no attention to him, instead watching dumbfounded as another copper coin appeared.
She tapped the cane gently, experimentally, across the buttocks a few times. Nothing happened, and the boy’s breathing calmed slightly.
She drew back and swished hard – not by any means full force, but considerably harder than before.
“Ouch! Oh Miss, ow, four thank you Miss!”
But his stern schoolteacher was not listening and had eyes for nothing but the small coin she had picked up and now held between her shapely index finger and thumb. This one was silver.
Again, the cane descended in a sweeping CRACK across the buttocks. Again, the boy shouted out in pain and fear.
And another silver coin.
“Oh… oh… it’s too hard Miss, please Miss.” He gasped. “It really hurts!”
“And it’s going to hurt a lot more” she replied sternly. “Last of the six – always the hardest. Brace yourself, boy – this is going to be a stinger!”
Excitedly she drew the cane back, then swept it forward with all her might. This time the cane connected with the THWACK! of fantasy and the boy leapt up, bellowing.
“Oh CHRIST – oh fuck, that really hurts. Red – red, Mistress, oh fucking hell…”
She ignored him once again, gazing down in satisfaction and wonder at the small coin by her high-heeled black shoe. Her theory had been correct: the lustre was unmistakable. Gold.
“Please Miss” the boy pleaded, half in and half out of character. “I’m sorry, that was just too much, I – “
“No more than you deserve” she replied, severely. “However, I believe that should now constitute a sufficiently… effective lesson.”
The boy calmed down, rubbing his backside ruefully.
“But I am still not satisfied that you are truly repentant” she continued. “Masturbation – a filthy habit and a deliberate breach of school rules! That’s why you were beaten, boy, and you deserved every stroke! But I think I need to bring home to you how ridiculous, how humiliating and shameful such an act can appear. You’re going to masturbate for me – right now, here, with me watching. In your shorts, like the filthy little schoolboy you are.”
“Oh please, Miss, no” he murmured ecstatically, slipping his hand into his shorts and after a minute or two of grunting, accompanied by contemptuous, mocking comments from the schoolmistress, the session was at an end.
Later, her feet luxuriously soaking in the usual post-heels bowl of warm water, Mistress Amanda tossed the coins from one hand to the next for the umpteenth time and thought and thought. The three copper coins and the two silver were together about equal to her regular session fee. But the gold was something else. With copper and silver, she could live her old lifestyle. But with gold, she’d be rich. And the only way to get gold, it seemed, was to flay some poor bastard’s bottom. She had very occasionally encountered clients who sought out ‘judicial’ beatings but she had not seen one for years. A pity, as they were now – almost literally – gold dust. And so Mistress Amanda thought and she thought and she thought – and she came up with a plan.
***
The whole town turned out for the wedding of George Eichert and Amanda Collins. Few could imagine what the statuesque beauty saw in the little old man. They would have said ‘money’ – especially as there were wild and scurrilous rumours about what went on behind the closed doors of her house – but although George was known to have a small nest-egg, the town banker rather indiscreetly explained that it enabled at best a comfortable standard of living.
“I do” whispered George, at the appropriate moment, and mouthed the word ‘Mistress’.
“I do” smiled Amanda back. And she said “Pansy Pink-knickers” just loud enough for the shocked priest to hear.
It had been easy enough to explain to him that, as her longest-standing client, he was her first choice to take on as her 24/7 lifestyle slave in retirement. He had nearly had a heart attack from shock and delight, and then had spent half an hour incoherently slobbering at her feet. Signing the contract to give up any safeword rights had been a little harder, as although Pansy Pink-knickers loved being spanked, anything firmer made him squeal in pain. But she’d explained that if they were going to do this properly it was important that she could occasionally – just occasionally – punish him in ways she knew he would not enjoy. Real punishments to back up the more playful sessions across her knee.
She promised she would do so only in the case of real failings on his part, where punishment was truly warranted. And so he had signed.
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| Ah, the happy couple. Don’t ask what happened to Pansy’s outfit. Let’s just say that cheap fetish maid costumes don’t do well on the ‘boil wash’ setting that he somehow mangaed to find. |
‘Real failings’ she thought happily to herself, gazing fondly at her new husband as the hubbub of the wedding feast swirled around them. She thought back to images of streaks of cleaning fluid distributed across mirrors, of knickers slowly and incompetently handwashed, of floors scrubbed only slightly cleaner by a silly old pervert in a pink frilly dress eagerly pushing the brush around in wild circles. And each one of those images seemed to disappear behind dazzling visions of showers of gold and silver coins, too many to count, so close she could almost touch them. Perhaps he would get slowly better at housework. But she doubted it, at his age. Even with encouragement.
***
Two weeks later, they returned from their honeymoon in a fine coach, pulled by four white horses driven by two strapping young coachmen. Amanda was resplendent, in new dress and a rich brocade coat. Her proud husband seemed more subdued, stepping gingerly down from the coach as if his years had finally caught up with him, and walking stiffly and slowly towards the front gate. Amanda drew out a bag that bulged with coins and generously handed out coppers to each of the coachmen, who later swore that most of the gleaming metal in the bag had the heft and the glow of silver or even gold.
He must have been richer than we all knew, the old skinflint, said the townspeople. And they raised their glasses to the happy and rich couple, while the banker sat quietly in shame.
And right they were to do so. Amanda seemed to have a never-ending supply of silver and gold. She bought a large house and employed over 30 servants, she invested in land and brought prosperity back to the farms, there seemed no limit on her appetite for expensive clothes and jewellery and although even her abundant shower of gold and silver could not by itself solve all the region’s problems, it was perhaps just the boost the region needed and it has been prosperous and bustling to this day.
And so everyone lived happily – albeit in one case very painfully – ever after.
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| Moneybags |
With profound thanks to Lady Sophia Black, both for playing the part of Mistress Amanda in this tale so beautifully and also for providing Servitor with some wonderful sessions. She really was as beautiful and poised as she looks in the photos and as delightfully evil as she seems in her videos – I was very lucky to know her while she was working. But you’re not: she’s retired now, I believe.
When pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.
… and then the pain is back again, and so it goes on.
Astute readers (both of you) will have recognised a Jane Austen quotation, of course, and realised that you are in for a treat. Oh yes – regency femdom! More hot chicks in empire-line dresses! And long sentences, in elegant serifed fonts instead of that dreadful modern Gill Sans.
Swoon on.
Lock me down, lock me up
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| I don’t have much time to think about sex – too busy running this blog and there’s nothing remotely sexy here. |
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| If I’m an adult man, surely I should be allowed to stay up after 8 o’clock? |
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| I never know if it’s one kiss or two. |
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| Only a bit useful. But that’s more than he used to be. |
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| Maybe she’s only looking at Tumblr. No naked women on Tumblr. Vile racism, lies and misinformation, even ‘humorous’ captions about torture and castration, reblogged from here. But no ladies with their clothes off, than goodness, so society is safe. |
Slavish allegiance
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| Well, I’m… I mean they’re shoes, it’s no big… erm. Oh all right then. |
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| Her client minds. But no one cares what he thinks. |
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| Sounds complicated… I’ve forgotten the rules already. Good thing she’s got a whip. |
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| A lot of men are a bit resistant to having an implant, but I’ve never heard a man who had it complain, so maybe the best thing is just give it a go? |
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| Jeremy doesn’t complain, either. Obviously a very happy marriage. |
Clean sweep
A few weeks ago, I published ‘Advice to a novice domme‘ in which, among many other wise and practical ideas, I humbly suggested that dommes should not “assign actual housework tasks to ‘sissy maids’ because they’ll fuck them up and might actually damage your stuff. All they want to do is mince around with a feather duster and then get spanked, anyway”.
It occurs to me that several sissy maids might be offended, hurt and humiliated by this suggestion. That’s absolutely fine, of course, no one cares about a few sulky sissies. I’m sure your mistress can wipe that frown off your face, with a few well-aimed slaps from her palm. And for those who have a humiliation kink, perhaps you should even send me some session fees as compensation, hmm sissy?
But if there are still any sissies out there stamping their little feet, balling their fists together and having squeaky tantrums, here is some actual proof (all images certified collected at random from the Internet, so I think we can agree their accuracy is unquestionable) that you’re all completely useless.
Proud to present: cleaning sissies, on the job
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| A little dishwashing mop, sissy? For that task? Only… I don’t see any dishes there, do you? Oh – and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mop quite so pristine…. I’d have thought that if you’ve been working hard using it, it would have been a little discoloured by now? That lady behind you looks quite cross, doesn’t she? But then maybe that’s what you’re hoping for. |
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| Good idea sissy. Nothing worse than a dusty TV-cabinet. Let’s fluff that dust up so it settles somewhere else. |
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| Dusting the floor, sissy? OK, well, whatever. |
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| Not a shoe brush. And you’re out of uniform, sissy, you bad girl. |
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| Also not a shoe brush. So not a shoe brush. What is that thing? Also, sissy, the technique seems to involve your domme standing on one (high-heeled) foot, holding her other foot off the ground, while you flick at the shoe with… with that. She’s going to be almost as uncomfortable as you are. Well: until she decides to make you more uncomfortable still, I suppose. |
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| Uh-huh. Might take quite a while to get the whole house done. Still… I expect you’re paying by the hour, so that’s not her problem. |
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| I don’t even want to think about what’s going on here, but I suspect it’s not conducive to really effective cleaning. |
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| That’s right, sissy. Mistress is going to be very pleased with you when she looks out through the sparkly clean, erm… lower half of each of her ground floor windows. Dommes never use the top halves of windows; it’s a well-known fact. |
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| What is it with sissy maids and feather dusters? |
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| So… let me make sure I understand. You’ve got the brush from a dustpan and brush set and you’re placing a few bristles from it against the floor? Right. And this is intended to accomplish what, exactly? I mean in cleaning terms, rather than sexual gratification, obviously. |
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| Oh good: another feather duster. And… what are you planning to clean with that, sissy? The floor? That mat? I don’t think so. Not ‘cleaning’ cleaning. |
…and just for avoidance of doubt: if actually instructed to use an inappropriate cleaning implement, then you’d better bend your head down and get on it it, hadn’t you, hmm? That pert little mouth is for scouring and sponging the kitchen floor, not for answering back, girl! And don’t you forget it.
Now: for any sissy maid still offended… Just stop crying, girl, you’re just smudging your make-up and making yourself look even more ridiculous than usual, OK? Don’t worry: no one’s going to take your feather duster away. Or your frillies. Goodness: what a fuss!
And make her some great Princess, six feet high!
Grand, epic, homicidal.
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| Armpit Fetishist Monthly is just another example of the decline of traditional media, another fine publication swept away by the Internet. I recall their cookery page with particular affection. |
…and by the way, I have posted this before even with the same comment, but… Oh. My. Goddess. I have to see this movie!
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| My office established a system of disciplinary procedures for inappropriate sexual activity. Which to my mind is just having your cake and eating it too… or would be, were I allowed cake. |
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| I’m thinking of paella – perhaps a nice Rioja to go with it? And maybe Roger might like to try bastinado, in keeping with the Spanish theme. |
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| With luck, she’ll take up chewing gum obsessively. |
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| Love hurts and so does she. |
By the way, this lady is going to feature here rather a lot from now on. Unless she takes out an injunction or something (don’t you hate it when women do that?). Nata!
I’ve suffered for my art
Now it’s your turn.
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| I suppose a little light felching’s not going to harm my heterosexual credentials. |
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| Brave? I don’t know the meaning of the word ‘fear’. Janice does, though. |
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| Safewords only work if you’re actually safe. |
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| Goths, eh? Better humour her, she’s obviously very upset. |
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| Or unless they commit serious crimes, such as making sexist jokes or publishing disrespectful captioned images of famous actresses, obviously. |
The lovelorn blacksmith
Once, in a small town surrounded by thick forests, there lived a young blacksmith. All day long he laboured, turning out horseshoes, railings and all manner of metal goods for the people of the town. He loved his work and could think of no better way to spend his time than beating hot metal into useful things.
One day, hard at work in his smithy, he looked up and saw a young woman standing by the door. When she smiled, he recognised her as one of the two young women who had moved into a house in the forest just outside town earlier in the year. The townspeople kept away from them believing them to be witches or – worse – lesbians, but the blacksmith was an easy-going soul and always had a kind word for everyone.
“Good day, Miss!”, he said cheerfully. “Were you looking for something?”
The young lady was fingering some of the chains hanging in skeins by the doorway.
“These are very good” she said admiringly. “Did you make them?”
“Aye Miss”, the blacksmith replied, puffing out his (considerable) chest in pride, as making chain was a time-consuming task in those days without machinery and the hanging chains represented several weeks of work.
“I think I’d like to buy some”, she said with a smile. “Always useful to have chains – especially in the forest with so many wild beasts about.”
“Aye, Miss” the blacksmith replied again, and they took to haggling and soon the young lady was the proud possessor of several lengths of chain of different sizes.
“Can you make anything, from iron?” she asked.
The blacksmith paused. “Almost anything, Miss” he replied, cautiously, for he was an honest fellow.
“Could you make…say… a collar? An iron collar, with attachments for chains, and thick flanges for a padlock? And shackles too, the same but already connected to one another with chains?”
“Aye Miss” the blacksmith replied uncertainly. “But a dog’s better off with a leather collar, you know? Iron collar’d be powerful heavy.”
“Oh, this isn’t for a dog.” the young lady replied hurriedly. “It’s for a… a beast. A big, fierce beast that we trapped. A good heavy iron collar is just what it needs. And shackles, like I said.”
“Aye, very well Miss” nodded the blacksmith, secretly rather uncomfortable as he did not believe in cruelty even to big fierce beasts. “But you don’t need flanges and padlocks: I can do you a catch that no beast’ll ever be able to work.”
“No, padlocks are best.” the young lady replied earnestly. “Can’t be too careful.”
So the blacksmith agreed to make collar and shackles, and lengths of chain between them. He tried to make them as light as he could, but iron working in those days was a crude business and the collar with its great thick flanges weighed many pounds.
Nonetheless, the young lady professed herself delighted with them, and struggled off along the path into the forest carrying her heavy load, the blacksmith standing watching her outside his smithy, thinking her a winsome creature and desperately wishing he had offered to carry the heavy restraints himself.
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| These look rather unpleasant. Poor beast. |
Several weeks passed, until one day the blacksmith heard a soft knock on his door and opened it to see the young lady again.
“Good day, Miss!” he greeted her. Not a problem with the ironmongery, I hope?”
“No, no!” she replied brightly. “No, the beast is thoroughly under control. They’re just right for him. And actually, that’s what I wanted to talk about. You see, we were thinking of going hunting. To catch a few more beasts… just as big and fierce. And we were wondering if you could make…. Oooh, shall we say three more sets? Like those? Maybe a little heavier, if you can…”
“Hunting fierce beasts, Miss?” he replied, his brow furrowed with concern. “That doesn’t sound very safe, for a pair of young – “
“We’ll be fine” she said, decisively cutting him off. “It’s what we do. But we need the chains and shackles and things. Can you make them?”
“Of course, Miss” he replied, proudly. “It will be an honour and a pleasure.”
When the work was completed, it filled a large sack that the blacksmith could barely lift. So with much clanking and clashing, he heaved it onto the back of his cart and set off for the young ladies’ house. Along the winding path his horse trotted, before pulling up in front of the cottage. As he dismounted, he fancied he could hear some muffled cries, but when he paused and listened more intently, they stopped, so he decided it must have been only the wind.
He hauled the sack down and dragged it across to the door, knocking gently.
The young lady opened the door with a startled look.
“Oh, hello!” she said.
“Who is it, Melissa?” came a voice from inside. The blacksmith peeked around the door and saw a dark-haired woman, hurriedly closing a trapdoor in the floor.
“Just the blacksmith, Harriet” the young lady – Melissa – replied. “I think he’s brought the things I ordered – for the beasts, you know”.
Harriet came to the door and looked at the sack. “In there? What things?”
“Oh, you remember!” Melissa replied brightly. “You know: chains and stuff. For the hunt. When we go and hunt beasts?”
“Oh yes of course, the beast hunt” Harriet muttered and with a curt nod, she went back into the house. With a certain amount of effort, and still more awkwardness, the blacksmith managed to get the sack into the house, took his payment and departed, kicking himself for not finding some excuse to be invited in by the lovely Melissa.
Back at his smithy, all through the afternoon, he found himself working metal into the shape of a capital ‘M’, with increasingly curly and ornate serifs. He was in love.
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| Harriet and Melissa. I don’t know why they’re wearing nighties… it’s ages until bedtime. |
Four days later, in the forest, Melissa again opened the door to see the blacksmith standing there.
“Oh, it’s you” she said, immediately thinking it an extraordinarily stupid thing to say. “Is everything all right?”
“Well, yes and no, Miss”, said the blacksmith wringing his leather cap in his hands. “See, I don’t know if you heard the news in the town but… three young men went missing two nights back. They were on their way back home from the inn and they just vanished. Everyone’s in a terrible state about it.”
“Yes, we heard about that.” Melissa replied cautiously. “Very sad. I hope they’ll turn up… boys do run off from time to time, though, don’t they? Headstrong things.”
“But not these three, Miss!” the blacksmith responded, earnestly. “One of ‘em was due to be married today – and another his best man! Makes no sense they’d go a-running away before the wedding.”
“But what’s it got to do with us?” Melissa asked.
“Well Miss”, the blacksmith said, wringing his leather cap more than ever. “I was just thinking-like. With those three lads missing… missing in the forest like as not, this forest where the two of you live…”
“Go on…” Melissa said, narrowing her eyes. Harriet appeared, standing silently behind her. She seemed to be clutching something behind her back, but the blacksmith didn’t notice.
“And… and then I got to thinking of all those shackles and chains and things that I made you. Well, I thought…”
“Yes…?” Melissa said.
“Well, I just thought perhaps you could help look for them, Miss. Being such good hunters and that.”
“Oh!” Melissa replied in surprise. “Oh, I see. Because we… because we hunt things. We could help look for them. Yes, that makes sense. Perhaps we could… what do you think Harriet?”
Her friend looked equally surprised. “Yes, we’ll erm… we’ll certainly keep an eye out. When we’re hunting beasts.”
“Yes, we’ll keep an eye out!” Melissa confirmed. “If we see any clues, we’ll be sure to let the town know, all right? Good day, now!”
And she shut the door in the poor lovelorn blacksmith’s face.
***
A week later, the blacksmith was overjoyed to see Melissa walk into his smithy yet again.
“Any news, Miss?” he enquired, eagerly.
“News… about?” she replied, somewhat perplexed.
“The missing lads, Miss. I suppose you’ve seen neither hide nor hair of them.”
“Hide nor hair” she giggled, as if at a private joke. “No, I’m afraid not. No: I came with another job for you actually. Another set of shackles and chains… to collar one more beast.”
“My pleasure, Miss” the blacksmith replied. “Same as before, then?”
“Maybe these ones… we thought…a little bigger?” Melissa replied, looking up at the brawny young blacksmith. “Three more inches for the collar, I’d say.”
She glanced down at his hands. “And maybe an inch or two extra for the wrists – forelegs. For the forelegs. And good and strong and heavy, please: this beast is the strongest of all.”
“Aye Miss” said the blacksmith, and when her lovely form was no longer lighting up the darkened workshop, he set to work.
This time, he didn’t even try to make the devices lighter. His kindliness towards animals had been quite forgotten, in his desire to please the lovely Melissa. So he heated iron and beat and pulled, and quenched and bashed and filed, until he had a set of the most fearsome iron restraints imaginable. The collar alone weighed 15 pounds and when the ensemble was put together, he could barely lift it.
He put out the furnace, left the smithy and carefully locked it all up, as if going on a long journey, without even knowing he was doing it. He was about to load the restraints onto the back of the cart when he thought better of it, patted his horse on the nose and set off staggering under the weight of the heavy irons, all the way along the winding path to the cottage in the woods.
He paused to recover his breath once he’d reached the clearing where the cottage stood. He gazed at the cottage, then took a long look around as if taking in the fresh air, the trees, the sky and all of the smells and sounds of the forest. Then picking up his sack once more, he strode over to the door.
Melissa opened it, before he could even knock and stood there smiling at him. A shaft of sunlight through the forest canopy caught her hair and it seemed made of the finest spun gold, burning in the sunshine.
“Who is it, Mel?” came Harriet’s voice.
“It’s the blacksmith.” Melissa smiled, delightedly. “He’s brought his collar and chains.”
Harriet came to the door and hugged her friend around the waist. “So he has. Isn’t that sweet?”
“Isn’t it just?” Melissa murmured.
“You’d better come inside.”
THE END
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| In the years that followed, the blacksmith got to put his expertise at forming iron into the letter ‘M’ to good use, although he usually had to add an ‘H’ to it as well. |
Harsh sentences
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| The ureasonable thing would be to tolerate disobedience, surely? |
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| They might put on a lesbian show for you, if you’re lucky. |
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| He gets to eat the grape first. Yum. |
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| Dommes and their pets. I visited a pro-domme once and I got a scary thrill when she asked if I could pick up a tin of catfood on the way. But it just turned out to be for her cat! Slaves get dogfood; it’s less fatty apparently although it has always seemed pretty fatty to me. Anyway, I’m sure Fluffles gets a healthy diet. |
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| Oooh – looks like someone’s going to try switch play! He shouldn’t worry, though: she’s only planning to switch roles once. |
