The door was locked. She tried it again and although it gave a little it would not open wide enough to let her pass. The staircase to her right was rickety and in any case didn’t go anywhere. She was trapped.

She thought about asking the moustached man in the bowler hat who chose that moment to fly by the balcony using only the aid of an umbrella, but he looked at her sternly and did not appear sympathetic.

Downwards there was a long narrow spiral staircase leading to the street far below, but looking down she could already see him on it. He looked mean and angry and she quailed.

The only other way out of what she now knew was a high tower was a plank of wood running from a girder at the top step across gap between the streets to the rooftops on the other side. The trouble was she was wearing no knickers under her short skirt and the people looking up would see… well they would see. She blushed.

The street was terrifyingly faraway bellow so that cars and people moved like ants, but he was getting nearer and he looked mad. But somehow she was halfway across, although she could not imagine where the courage came from.

It was hard to hold her skirt down as she braved the narrow plank and at odd moments the dress flipped up in back exposing her bottom. Perhaps that was why the stern man in the bowler hat with the flying umbrella and moustache was hovering around her.

“Go away,” she cried at him.

But the man ignored her and called out to her pursuer, “She’s getting away. Quick get her, spank her.”

Suddenly the street looked nearer and the people below were looking up to see her was to be spanked.

“Go away,” she wailed, pulling down on her short dress. She was sure it was getting shorter.

The people just below her were pointing at her, they must be able to see up her skirt and she held her hem tight. But the paper fabric began to tear, exposing bits of flesh and even her bottom.

Looking up she saw her pursuer had found an easy way down and was gaining, almost reaching the end of the plank. But the makeshift bridge was somehow only a few feet from the ground and she jumped down into the middle of the laughing crowd.

Almost naked she ran along a line of doors desperate for one that was unlocked before finding one.

There were old men inside playing cards and she ducked beneath the counter while an old woman berated her.

“She is in here, spank her,” the old woman crowed.

She squealed, now almost naked and tried to hide herself with her hands.

“Yes hurry up and spank her,” said one of the men absently, “She is putting me off my game.”

While the woman slapped at her she made a dash for the back door and found a narrow alley full of bins and… rats. Ugh.

She would have run, but at the other end was a pack of dogs that suddenly lost interested in their trashcan dinner and were eying her up hungrily. There was no escape except through the shop’s backdoor. Or their hadn’t been, but suddenly there was a fire escape leading up onto the roof.

“This way,” shouted a man and she looked up.

Her pursuer still looked cross, but concern as well as anger was etched on his face. Still she would have run but the dogs were charging and she fled.

As soon as she got halfway up she could see over the shop and see the crowd she had abandoned in the street all looking up. They were chanting: “spank her, spank her.”

“Got you,” he said, “And you are going to get that spanking.”

“Not here, you can’t,” she wailed, “they will see.”

“You should have thought of that before you ran away,” he scolded her.

As he spoke he put her across his knee, although she didn’t know what he was sitting on. The dress had fallen away completely and she was naked. Just then the man with the umbrella hovered above, only it wasn’t an umbrella but a helicopter with TV news emblazoned on the side.

The TV in the window of the apartment opposite carried a news report about her spanking but the teenagers who had been watching it now watched her through the window.

“Please not here,” she squealed, now releasing that she was naked and bottom up across his lap.

“I am afraid so,” he said sternly as he began the spanking.

The teenagers, the crowd and the newsman on the TV began to applaud while a vox pop of her neighbours and co-workers played.

“Oh she is such a brat, she definitely deserves a spanking,” her best friend was telling them.

One of the interviewees was the nerdy boy from school who always leered at her.

“Please, please,” she sobbed but everyone was ignoring her and watching the big screen in the sky where the woman who was her but not her was getting spanked in the movie. A movie she was watching from the crowd.

“Hey, this is supposed to be my spanking,” she yelled.

“Shush,” several people said.

He held her hand and squeezed it. “Later honey, you’ll get your spanking later, we are missing the movie,” he scolded.

“You big meanie,” she said, stamping her foot and fleeing.

Then she remembered that that was how it had begun.