Oh God, oh God, Oh God, was the frantic thought racing through Jessica’s mind. The two bottles of perfume and one silk scarf felt like a burning ton in her pockets, what had she been thinking? Was it too late to take them back? But at that moment the door to the store’s exit opened wide and allowed the street to swallow her, oh God, she was going to be sick. Too late now, she had officially stolen them.

Got to go now, not too fast, not too slow, she urged herself, damn I must be crazy. The road to her right was a fence of moving traffic and in her mind it was a mile to the crossing up ahead. To her left was a wall of glass, damn the store was big. A row of fashion mannequins stared at her accusingly; among them was her timid reflection, all ashen faced beneath a raven straight-haired bob. She wore a bright red coat to accentuate her curves in all the right places, a gross folly, she now realised. Could I have dressed even more conspicuously, she berated herself?

Any moment the store security men or cops would pounce. Oh God…

“Would you mind coming along with us Miss?” they would say.

Oh God, she hadn’t pulled this stunt since college, she must be crazy.

It took an age to reach the corner and away at last from the store. Still no one had grabbed her. The crossing light went green and in a sudden panic she made a dash to the other side of the road. Then her cool was busted and she ran.

She had run for three streets before she finally figured that she had got away with it. Her heart was still pounding 30 minutes later when she reached home.

*

That night she dreamed. It was a queer sort of dream, too real and yet too fantastic. She found herself floating above her apartment building but even as she looked it fell away like someone had taken hold of the Earth like a ball in their hand and dropped it. But beyond, instead of space there was a landscape like a Japanese painting as done by Turner or… it was astonishing in its beauty.

Then she was on her feet standing outside an old Victorian school surrounded by the impossible beauty of the forests and mountains. That someone was ringing a bell was disconcerting, that she knew it meant that she had to go in now was unsettling.

Stranger still she was wearing a short skirt and little maroon blazer in a kind of parody of a school uniform. For some reason she remembered the shoplifting and not only that day’s. There were many other such pranks as a girl and well into young adulthood. Her tummy lurched and for a second she felt sick. Then she sighed it away and mounted the small wooden steps.

The building inside was like a museum she had once visited. It was all dark oak and old-fashioned school desks stood in rows. In each seat was a young adult dressed in a uniform like her own and each student was grinning and nudging each other as they stared after her passing.

“I am sorry I’m late,” she offered nervously, but late for what?

She hadn’t meant to say that, but…

“You will be,” someone giggled.

Jessica rounded on them in anger but another voice stopped her.

“I am really quite disappointed in you,” the masculine voice intoned.

Whirling around to face the front again she saw a man who hadn’t been there before. He was tall and had an ethereal look about him. Dressed in various shades of black he had perhaps merged with the shadows, but now that he had spoken he looked sharper than the room about them. He had an ivory pale face framed by a jet mane that smiled firmly at her, but it was his eyes that she could not meet; crystal blue gems with over large black pupils that bored into her.

Sensing no malice she wondered at her reaction, but an overwhelming sense of shame held her gaze to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, this time meaning it.

“Come here,” he ordered crooking his finger at her.

She gulped. Looking around she saw the class were now as apprehensive as she was, although some faces looked smile tinged behind forced frowns.

“Look if this is about…?” she blustered.

“Yes?” he said sharply.

She shook her head.

“Come here,” he said again more slowly, each word sharply and distinctly pronounced.

Swallowing down fear she dashed her gaze about for some ally but saw none. Looking back, the door too seemed to have merged with the wall, as if the room was now the entire world. So seeing no options she gingerly placed a foot before her as if the floor would collapse and carefully walked forward.

Certain he would be obeyed the man was no longer watching her, but instead he had placed a great book upon the desk up front and decisively turned over pages.

“What have I done?” she whispered nervously, anxious to see the pages and not knowing why.

“Let me see,” he said in smooth dark tone of doom, “Quite a bit of petty theft, shoplifting mainly. I had hoped you had grown out of that,” he added wearily, “More lying than I can keep track of. Laziness, tardiness, selfishness, the list goes on…”

“I was never caught, I mean… how did you…?” she spluttered.

“Of course you were never caught, I arranged it after all. I adjudged that a criminal record would do you more harm than getting away with it. If you hadn’t… why did you steal those things anyway, you have a good job?” he shook his head in dismay, and continued, “If you hadn’t taken up your old habits again we wouldn’t be having this conversation, although, to be fair I was beginning to despair of you. I rather think my direct intervention was inevitable sooner or later,” the man sighed.

“Who are you?” Jessica gasped.

“Oh… haven’t you guessed? I am your… hmmm, how can I put this… overseer… or godfather, if you will? Macqus Darklast, we meet at last,” he said with a curt bow.

Jessica glanced around to see if this statement gained her any sympathy, after all the man was clearly mad.

“They are other… clients of mine,” he said lightly.

Jessica saw a pretty young woman in front swallow nervously and duck her head.

“You mean you’re my guardian angel?” she almost laughed out loud but his stern gaze held her.

He chuckled silently, but his eyes narrowed with some menace.

“Hardly that,” he said with scorn.

“So what am I doing here?” she asked, although several scenarios fought for a place in her mind and none of them were entirely comfortable.

“I have decided to call you to account and begin to curb your ways,” he said with a note of exasperation.

Jessica swallowed again and shot another hopeful look back for the exit. There was none.

“You will not leave until I permit it,” Macqus intoned.

Jessica was minded of a courtroom and, for some reason, Bambi transfixed halfway across the M25.

“You can suffer a reprimand by way of a marker or we can pick a sin from the book and punish you for it,” he continued. “The deep end might be somewhat traumatic for you, but the alternative sets a precedent for…” he seemed to balance something in his mind before plumping for, “ongoing guidance by means of chastisement.”

“Punish me?” Jessica gasped, “What do you mean?”

“I propose a good sound spanking here in front of the class,” Macqus said brightly, “On the bare bottom, of course,” he added. “But as I said, we can just proceed to… hmm, the cane perhaps. We can save the birch for another time.”

“If you think…” Jessica was stunned and desperately scanned the walls for an escape.

“Come here now,” he ordered. As he spoke he drew her attention to a range of whips, paddles and canes on the desk top that she could have sworn were not there before.

“Please,” she whined, unsure what to do.

“Take your under things right down and bend over the desk,” he told her, “Make sure your bottom faces the class.”

Jessica gaped and shook her head. He could go to hell… she thought, thought but she had no courage to say it.

“I suggest you do it young lady,” Macqus said darkly.

“I won’t do it,” she said breathlessly.

Somehow he moved without haste and took Jessica by the arm. Then with hands of iron draped in silk he led her to a high-backed chair at the apex of the room and sat down. She came tumbling after and in one short motion found herself face down and helpless across his lap.

There were some titters and the atmosphere of the room tightened somehow. Jessica felt hot blood pulse in her face and began a futile struggle against the nonchalant arms that pinned her.

The ridiculously short skirt flipped into the small of back easily and with horror Jessica realised that the entire class could see her knickers.

“Get off,” she squealed.

But worse was to come. A moment later she felt a firm hand at her waist and the brief thick cotton garment was drawn slickly over her bare thighs and right down her legs. They can see my bottom, the thought rocked her, however, before she could digest the idea a stinging hand seared her bottom and she yelled.

The spanking that followed was long hard and efficient. About halfway through Macqus switched to using a slipper and this burned Jessica beyond anything she could have imagined. This is real, my God, this is real, she frantically thought as she remembered that it was all supposed to be a dream. Then she forgot again.

“I’m sorry, please Sir, I’m so sorry,” she yelled, her jaws clamped and by then her breathing much too fast.

“Are you ready to accept your punishment then?” Macqus asked.

“Oh Sir, oooh,” she wailed, “Please, oh please, I have learned now.”

The Faery Overseer shrugged and instead of the slipper took up a medium weight hand paddle and resumed the spanking. This went beyond stinging and began to really burn her bottom.

“Yaaaah,” she howled and renewed her struggled.

“Are you ready to accept your punishment?” Macqus asked her again.

What did he mean? She was being punished, she raged.

“Are you ready to accept your punishment?”

“Yes,” she yelled, knowing no other way to stop the onslaught.

As soon as she was on her feet she spied the appraising stares of the class and burst into tears. Thank God I don’t know these people; she seized on the thought for the scant comfort it gave her.

“Never mind them,” Macqus scolded her, “Come here.”

He had again returned to the book and was scanning its pages.

“Shall we start at the beginning or shall we address the small matter of yesterday’s crimes and work backwards?” he sounded business-like and distracted as he ran a finger down the columns of writing in the tome.

Yesterday, this was all about yesterday, she realised. It was hard to deny then that she deserved all of this.

“Yesterday,” she muttered aloud, unaware that she had spoken the thought.

“Very well,” Macqus announced in a firm voice, “Bend over the desk.”

To emphasise his words he took up a cane from the desk and moved into position.

Jessica gulped and stole a timid glance at the classroom audience. This wouldn’t have been so bad if only… but who was she kidding? Her bottom throbbed with fire and the prospect of more was a minor species of hell.

It took all her courage to bend as ordered and her movements were slow and stiff. A light draft contrasted with the heat of her still roasting bare bottom, mirrored as it was by that suffusing her face.

“Bottom up and out a little more,” Macqus said sternly.

Her face melted as she obeyed. “Oh God,” she moaned.

The cut was bad and seemingly endless in its burn. Worse still the initial pain seemed to breed in her tail so that she imagined a thousand little insects biting her in a line and then having babies to join the fray. She was suffering the bites of their great, great grandchildren when Macqus caned her again, this time forcing a banshee-like scream through her lips.

Three strokes in, her mind had shaken off the insect analogy and had settled on a team of great big hairy lumberjacks working on her as if her bottom was a log.

By six she had no thoughts much at all and was sobbing for England.

“Six of the best from me is worthy of 60 from another,” Macqus told her.

“Eh?” she groaned.

“You may stand up,” the stern creature told her kindly, “We are finished.”

Jessica got stiffly to her feet and gripped her thighs by proxy to a bottom rub. Although tears rolled down her face, she was not going to give the class any further satisfaction.

“You may thank me,” Macqus said as he extended his hand.

“Yes Sir, thank you Sir,” Jessica whispered and limply shook.

Then a strange thing happened. Macqus bowed to her and then to the class, before moving to the wall and pulling back a great curtain she hadn’t before seen. Beyond it was her room back at home.

“What?” Jessica muttered.

“Now I want you to go and stand in the corner with your nose pressed to the join and your hands tucked neatly into the small of your back. No rubbing mind,” he added pointing to her room.

The humiliation of placing herself in such a childish position was almost as bad as the caning she realised, but she had no fight left to resist.

“Now stay there,” Macqus told her sharply.

*

Jessica was unsure where her dream met the brand new day as it crept tentatively through half drawn curtains. It came in grey and then sepia to find her still standing in the corner. She was horrified as she came to; she had never slept walked in her life. But one small move made her bottom flare and terror gripped her as if Macqus would descend for moving unbidden.

It’s only cramp, she told herself as the last shreds of the dream were torn from her. She was cold with the morning chill and wondered at standing so all night.

“God, I’ll never, ever shoplift again,” said aloud. “What a wild dream.”

As she hobbled to the bathroom for a shower she bit down on her lip pensive, the shame of her crime suffusing strangely with the eroticism of the dream: erotic, how? The thought startled her. But all the same the warm water fell like a caress, one which she mirrored with one of her own.

“Crazy dream,” she murmured.

And so it might have been, but from the corner of her eyes she saw an outline of a man in the full-length mirror behind her and whirled with a heart-lurch to confront it. The morning shadow was just that, must have been, she embraced the relief. But this only for a moment, for in the steamy glass her exposed naked form taunted her with its curves and there across the smooth domes of her bottom were six plum coloured lines.