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Last Rites
by Mija

It was the last thing I'd expected to find.

The very last. I hadn't thought of it in twenty years.

But there it was, curled in his sock drawer. Three inches wide, twenty-four inches long, with a brass loop.

The razor strop.

A threat years before I felt it.

"Next time I speak to you about this," he'd tell my paddled repentant self, "next time it'll be the strop."

I knew someday it would punish me. The idea terrified and excited. Was the source of guilty schoolgirl touching beneath the covers. I pictured my father coming into my bed (as he did too often) and discovering my naughty hands. Surely he'd strop me.

The strop wasn't my father's or grandfather's. It merely existed - had life on its own.

I was fifteen when I was stropped for shoplifting - stealing, something which you know he never stopped, merely made me better at. Sitting shamed, waiting for him with mall security, I remembered being spanked for stealing when I was eight. I'd swiped my cousin's blond pocket doll, lying when my aunt questioned me. He punished me with his belt, bent bare bottom over the sofa in their front living room while my cousins watched. Afterwards, as I swore I'd never steal again, he promised if I did he'd wear me out with the razor strop.

My father drove home from the mall in silence. I pleaded, tearfully apologizing, trying to make him understand the irresistible impulse which made me slip those earrings into my pocket. Earrings he purchased and later gave me to keep and wear. To remember.

He pulled into our garage. By an overhead light I saw the strop lying on his clean workbench. I still remember my heart thudding as I realized he'd set it out before coming to get me. My father pulled the parking brake, turning toward me.

"You'll get out of this car, miss, remove your jeans and underpants and bend across that bench."

He said nothing else.

The stropping was dreadful, each of twenty-five strokes making me scream and struggle, searing the skin from my bottom almost to my knees. The agony made me swear never to disobey, steal or love him again. Finally he finished, hung the strop next to the door and left me there, bare, beaten and sobbing.

There were eight more stroppings before I left home at eighteen. Holding the razor strop, I remember each vividly. Can almost feel the flexible heaviness of the swinging strop striking my skin.

Today's the first time I'd been to my father's house in ten years. I took away only the razor strop. Please, my love, I need you to beat me with it. Not spank, but thrash me. Harder than he ever did. I can be yours, then, finally. We can go and clear out that house, keeping what we want and giving everything else away. Everything else in it belongs to me now.

But the strop is unowned. Certainly not mine. Perform these last rites, my love, and it's yours to throw out or hide.

Or keep it - and me - forever.

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