Copyright 1997 to <Pablo.Stubbs@newsguy.com> Please respect this copyright. Don't distribute or archive this story in any way except for personal use without explicit permission. No, it's not in the public domain. Ask first, okay? Thanks.

Spelling
by Pablo

There's a quiet, nervous knock on the study door.

'Come!' the headmaster calls, tidying away the dull papers he's been reading. Time for some real teaching, it would seem.

The heavy door opens, and the eighteen-year-old girl steps carefully into the room, almost as if she thinks that by being extra quiet she'll escape the punishment she dreads, wanting it to be over already. As she moves into the room, her hands take themselves unbidden behind her back, clasping and wringing.

'Take a seat, please, Mija, would you,' the headmaster says, beckoning the schoolgirl to the straight-backed wooden chair which faces his huge desk. Mija sits, demurely, waiting for Mr. Bailey to finish his bureaucratic chores. She's wearing a crisp white blouse, buttoned right to the neck, a blue pleated plaid skirt, and white knee-socks. It's all clean and immaculate - none of the girls would dare to go to the headmaster's office in any other state.

Mr. Bailey clicks on the intercom. 'Ahh, hold all calls and visitors for half an hour would you, Janet. Mija and I have some serious talking to do.' There's a muffled crackling, which the headmaster seems to find an acceptable response, and then he lifts his gaze to the senior schoolgirl's. Mija immediately drops hers to the floor.

'Look at me, please, Mija,' the headmaster says, calmly, knowing that he won't be disobeyed. With some difficulty, the girl makes eye contact.

Mr. Bailey sighs, contemplating a small pile of papers in front of him.

'Do you remember, Mija, the last time I had to reprimand you for poor work?'

'Yes, sir,' she says.

'And do you remember what I said would happen if things didn't improve significantly?'

'Yes, sir.'

'What did I say, Mija?'

The girl blushes. She's breathing shallowly. It's hard for her to say the words, shameful.

'You said you would put me across your knee and paddle my bare behind, like a fifth-grader.'

'Well,' the headmaster says, 'I'm glad you remembered. That's something, at least.'

Mija feels about six inches high. Tears are not so very far away.

Mr. Bailey stands, and begins to walk around the study; he takes Mija's work with him, leafing through it.

'You are an extremely bright girl, Mija. There's no doubt about that. I'm honestly not sure I would be taking so much trouble over your discipline if you weren't. You are capable of a great deal of fine work, yet you let things slip, through carelessness, laziness, sheer apathy.' His voice is increasing in volume, the words hammering into Mija's skull. 'This is going to stop, and it's going to stop now. Do you hear me?'

'Yes,' Mija says quietly.

'Yes, what?!' Mr. Bailey booms.

'Yes, sir,' Mija corrects herself urgently.

'Very well then.' The headmaster sits again, skewering the girl with his gaze. 'Do you own a dictionary?'

'Yes, sir,' she answers, puzzled, her brow furrowing.

'Then why don't you use it, hmm? This work is just full of silly mistakes that a ten-year-old would be ashamed of.'

There really isn't any answer. Mija just blushes, her mouth opening and closing.

'It seems to me that if you insist on making a ten-year-old's mistakes, then perhaps the solution is to treat you as if you were a ten-year-old. You are quite aware of what happens to fifth-grade girls in this school when they misbehave, I believe.'

This, it seems, is a question which demands an answer. It's an answer which had been indelibly imprinted on Mija's little ten-year-old bottom many times over, before she grew too old, according to the school rules, for that sort of discipline.

'You spank them, sir.'

'Exactly right! I spank them, soundly. Which is why, young lady, I am now going to administer the spanking which you have badly needed for a very long time. Stand up.'

Words crowd into Mija's mouth, wanting to be said but ultimately too frightened to squeeze between her teeth into the wide open world. With no option, Mija stands, watching with mounting panic as Mr. Bailey reaches into a drawer and pulls out a large, light wooden paddle.

She wants to run, to hide, to be anywhere but here, but she's paralysed by the inevitability of the fact that her bottom is going to be smacked, hard, and that she knows she deserves it; that, much as it's going to hurt, it's a good type of hurt.

The headmaster begins to come around his desk towards Mija. Then he stops, his attention caught by something on his bookshelf. He pulls out a volume, carries it with him, hands it to her.

It's a dictionary. Mija is puzzled, but only for a moment, because in a quick, practised movement, Mr. Bailey sits on the chair and guides the schoolgirl - still holding the book - across his lap, lifting her forward such a long way that her feet lose contact with the ground. Memories of being across the headmaster's knee as a junior flood back, unwelcomed. She's eighteen-years-old! This can't be happening.

'Very well,' Mr. Bailey says, seemingly happy with the girl's arrangement over his lap. He takes the hem of her kilt, and lifts it right up Mija's back. Simple white cotton panties and bare thighs are revealed.

Mija feels the headmaster's left arm lock her in place.

'We'll start with a little spelling test, I think.'

Mija groans inwardly.

'And, given that you have a dictionary easy to hand, I shall expect every answer to be correct. Is that understood?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And, lest we forget exactly why it is we're in this odd configuration, while the test is going on, I shall set to work warming your bottom.'

Then Mr. Bailey takes Mija's white panties down to her knees, and pats each of her bare cheeks once or twice.

'Spell . . . "egalitarian",' the headmaster commands, then sets to work paddling some colour into Mija's bum, his right palm spanking away crisply, efficiently.

The schoolgirl gasps, her eyes squeeze shut for a moment against the sting, but the spanks transmit some urgency into her brain. She flicks frantically through the dictionary as her bottom flattens and rebounds, the study echoing to smack-bottom slaps.

. . . ec . . . SLAP! CLAP! . . . em . . . SMACK! SPANK! . . . ed . . . WHOP! . . .

Aha!

Mija gabbles it out: 'E, G, A, L, I, T, A, R, I, A, N.' The spanks stop, for a moment. Mija breathes heavily; her bottom is glowing already, the uniform warmth extending from her hips down to her thighs.

'There. That wasn't so hard, was it? Let's try . . . hmmm . . . let's try "numerically".'

This one takes her longer; Mr. Bailey's hand-spanks are really beginning to make an impact on Mija's bare bottom, which is starting to burn quite fiercely.

But she gets there, with huge relief:

'N, U, M, E, R, I, C, A, L, L, Y!'

'Fine, I can see we're getting the hang of this now,' the headmaster says, and he starts to wind up the tempo, spanking harder, faster, causing Mija's body to jolt with each fresh hand-smack, filling her eyes with tears, her head with sorriness, her bottom with fire.

The pair of them, headmaster and senior schoolgirl, go through 'dependent', 'describe', 'consistent', and 'hers' - which Mija is genuinely surprised to find doesn't have an apostrophe. Somehow, in the middle of the pain and the noise and the tears that start to flow freely, the words seem to burn themselves into her brain. She doesn't think she'll ever forget them.

And then it seems to be over.

But Mija remembers . . . and her stomach turns. She feels Mr. Bailey reach down for the wooden paddle that will finish the job.

'Put down the dictionary, Mija,' he says, calmly, as the girl sniffs, and rubs at her eyes. 'To drive the point home, without the aid of the dictionary, but with the helpful assistance of my wooden friend here, I'd like you to spell, if you would, the word "bottom".'

'B,' Mija says, and the paddle splats into her behind. 'O' SMACK! 'T' WHAP! 'T' WHOP! 'E' . . .

WHOP! WHOP! WHOP! WHOP!

'Owwwwwwww! "O!", I mean "O!"'

'That's better.'

'M!'

'Good!' Mr. Bailey seems pleased. 'Now try "bare bottom".'

Oh, when will it end!

As the paddling roasts Mija's already-reddened cheeks, she squeezes the letters out through the sobs, oblivious to the dripping of tears onto the carpet.

'Now try "soundly spanked, bare bottom".'

But she gets there, shouting out the final 'T! O! M!' as if her very life is at stake.

Mija lays heavily over Mr. Bailey's lap, her chest heaving with deep, childish sobs.

She hears a quiet voice, and almost doesn't recognise it as that of the same man who has just spanked her bottom harder than she has ever known.

'Shhh, shhh,' it says. 'All over now.'

Mija feels herself being lifted onto her feet, and somehow her panties are replaced over her blazing, shining cheeks. And then she feels Mr. Bailey's arms around her, only he isn't Mr. Bailey any more - he's just Paul.

'Don't you think you're too big to need to be put across my lap like a little girl?' Paul says gently, letting her drip tears all over him, holding her tightly, tightly, tightly.

'No,' Mija says, her bottom lip protruding, and both of them dissolve into the laughter that's strongest after pain.

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