Wives in Service
Ashley Zacharias
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2010 Ashley Zacharias
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Contents
These three novellas present three unconventional forms of obedience by a wife. In the traditional marital vows the wife swears obedience to her husband. This is rapidly becoming obsolete for good reason. Why should a husband know what a wife should be doing better than she knows herself?
But a woman with a masochistic impulse can find alternatives to obedience to her husband.
In these stories, each of the three wives, each for her own reasons, allows some power other than her husband dictate her sexual behavior. In “The Conjugal Clock”, Veronica chooses to obey an unusual family tradition; in “The Man in the Middle”, Marcia chooses to obey her ex-husband; and in “The Baby Machine”, Mindy chooses to obey a scientific law.
These stories are deliberate “anti-romances” because they work exactly opposite of the way conventional romance novels do. In the conventional romance, the woman spends the bulk of the novel debating whether she is going to bestow her favors on a man or not. Then she does so once at the climax, invariably at the beginning of a long-term relationship. Bah! A man would have to be a desperate, sex-starved fool to be willing to put up with all the nonsense that the typical romance novel heroine throws at him. The implication is that the man does put up with all the nonsense will have proven his love.
Not in my experience does such a thing happen.
In the three stories I offer, the women are already married and have reason to give men all the sex they need. In spades. Whether they want to or not. And their marriages are the better for it.
That is something that I can believe.
I present these stories in the order in which I wrote them but am aware that that may not be the order in which you might want to read them.
Personally, I like “The Baby Machine” best because I think that it’s the best written of the three. I enjoyed experimenting with interleaving two first-person present points of view. I also think that Mindy is the best-developed of my three heroines.
“The Man in the Middle” provides the most erotic episodes but they are presented at the distance through descriptions of emailed communications rather than putting you in the bedroom. I hope that your imagination is sufficient to provide additional erotic details.
“The Conjugal Clock” is the most didactic of the three novellas but I hope that I have kept it from being pedantic. More than one man who has read it has said that he wished that he had the courage to ask his wife to read this story. I feel for men who are trapped in marriages that fail to satisfy their needs. I hope that some wives will be willing to read the story without prompting from their husbands. And will consider the advice offered in it. I have found that it takes surprisingly little effort for a woman to turn a poor marriage into a paradise for both her and her husband. She doesn’t really need a special clock to do it. Just a little empathy for her husband.
Ashley Zacharias, 2010
The Conjugal Clock: A Wife Obeys a Tradition
1. The Tradition of Discipline
“That’s a clock?” It resembled an ornately carved grandfather clock, but had only a single hand and no numbers on the plain white face. “It looks old. Is it an antique?” Veronica ran her fingers lightly over the haut relief figures carved into the dark wooden pilasters that ran up the corners but kept her eyes averted. She was embarrassed to be seen examining them too closely because the carvings depicted men and women engaged in all manner of sexual activities, from kissing to copulation. Even if this was a wedding present and family heirloom, there was no way in hell the obscene thing would have a place in her new home.
Anja, her soon-to-be sister-in-law, giggled. “It’s a very special clock. It goes in your bedroom. Your husband winds it.” She giggled again.
Anja’s uncharacteristic bursts of giggles were getting on Veronica’s nerves, but because the entire female side of her fiancé’s family watching her, she had to suppress her annoyance. She told herself that Anja was probably as nervous as she was in the presence of three generations of dour matriarchs.
Wilma, the oldest and dourest of the clan, spoke for the first time. “Do not underestimate the importance of these clocks in our family. Though he would not like to admit it, the tradition of the clock is more deeply embedded in Cary’s soul than you would ever guess. It will take some time for you to understand the role that it will play in your marriage, but you will come to appreciate it, I assure you. For now, we ask only that you trust us and honor our tradition.” Her German accent was heavy, but her words were clear.
“Of course,” Veronica agreed, vowing silently to ditch the ugly thing at the first opportunity.
“We all know exactly how you feel,” Veronica’s soon-to-be mother-in-law, Clay, said in a sympathetic tone. “Every one of us felt exactly the same way, the day before our wedding when we received our own clocks.” She laughed. “Every single one of us promised ourselves that we would throw the thing in the garbage as soon as the honeymoon was over.”
Veronica blushed. Clay was reading her mind.
“But every one of us changed our opinion when we saw how the clock served our marriages. In seven generations, there has not been a single divorce in the Hobard family. That did not happen by luck or because we forced ourselves to suffer through bad marriages; it happened because every marriage in this family is a happy one. These bedroom clocks make our marriages happy. I think it’s fair to say that every one of us has grown to love our clocks, no matter how much we disliked them at first.”
Anja giggled again.
Veronica looked at the clock again, trying to see it differently, but it still looked big and ugly and obscene. “How does it work?”
Wilma answered, “Like Anja said, Cary will wind it for the first time when you return from your honeymoon and he will continue to wind it from then on. It is important that you never let the clock wind down. You must make sure that he winds it often. Remember that. You must make sure that the clock never stops.”
“What if it does stop?” Veronica was puzzled. If Cary were winding it, then how was it her responsibility to make sure that it did not wind down?
“We will discuss that if it happens. If you are a wise woman, we will never have that discussion.”
Anja giggled. “I let mine wind down once and I sure regretted it, let me tell you. If you’re smart, you won’t let it wind down. Then you’ll never have to know what happens when it does.”
Wilma looked at Anja with disapproval, and then turned back to Veronica. “It’s important that you understand something before you take your wedding vows. The Hobard family believes in one aspect of traditional marriages that is too often forgotten today. Tomorrow, you and Cary will swear to forsake all others. This means that you will engage in relations with each other exclusively from that day on. The modern woman is fond of the explicit part of that vow; she loves the idea that her husband will never make love to another woman until the day he dies. But there is an implicit part of that vow that many modern women prefer to ignore. It’s only reasonable to expect your husband to forsake other women for the rest of his life if you are willing to keep him fully satisfied yourself. Hobard men do not stray because Hobard women keep their husbands satisfied. Completely. If you are not prepared to give your husband what he needs to keep him happy within your marriage, then you should not take your vows. No one will think less of you if you change your mind.”
Veronica was insulted by the implication that she might not be eager to please her husband and snapped back, “You mean that you expect me to spend my life barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?”
Clay, her soon-to-be mother-in-law, replied in a reasonable tone, “Hobard wives have closets full of shoes, cooks to prepare our meals, and exactly as many children as we want. You will find more variety in our life styles than in most other families. You will have freedom to excel that feminists should envy. I don’t think you realize how many of us hold senior positions in Hobard companies. If you are willing to do the work, you can be a corporate executive. There’s no glass ceiling for you. Most of us, though, prefer to let our husband earn the money while we devote time to charitable service. Similar work, similar hours, different ends. No one is going to oppress you. All we are saying is that you have a duty to your marriage. The duty of fidelity creates a reciprocal duty of service. If you find the idea of keeping Cary happy in bed to be unreasonable, if you think that is oppressive, then you should not marry him. Think about this before you allow my son to bind himself to you tomorrow.”
“I think that we’ve said enough for now,” Wilma said with a tone of finality. “We hope to see you at your wedding tomorrow and we will be pleased to welcome you into our family.”
The women filed out of the room, leaving Veronica alone with the weird, silent clock.
The wedding was excessive in every way: a wealthy family putting on an extravagant show for their assembled friends and business associates. For average people, the wedding day is the bride’s day, but for the wealthiest, the bride is merely the excuse sitting at the centre of a business affair that has been disguised as a social event. Veronica was not ignored, but she was well aware that she was not the most important person in the cathedral, even though she was the one standing at the altar.
The honeymoon – a week in Hawaii – was far more enjoyable. She loved Cary dearly and could think of no better way to spend her time as a new bride than lounging on the beach in the sun next to him.
She forgot about the clock until she returned home. Then, when they went upstairs to change after their long flight back to Minnesota, she saw that it had been moved into their nuptial bedroom. No one had asked her permission or had even asked how she wanted it placed. It was not discretely tucked into a corner – as she would require if she were forced to live with it – but stood tall and ugly in the large area between the bed and her bureau.
She shrieked at the sight. “Cary, what’s that thing doing there?”
He looked at her curiously. “I thought that Mom told you about the family tradition. Every Hobard home has a conjugal clock in the bedroom.”
She sneered at the man she adored. “Not smack in the middle of the bedroom. You can move it over into the corner behind the door.”
“Actually, I can’t. It’s been installed. It can’t be moved.”
“Of course it can be moved.” She pushed on it, but it did not budge. She tried to push it over, but found that it was firmly affixed to the floor.
“I’m afraid not. It’s bolted to the joists. Actually, the stress is spread over several joists. You could climb to the top and hang your entire weight off one side if you wanted. It would support you just fine. In fact, it would support both of us at the same time. It’s very well constructed.”
Their bedroom was huge; she had ample room to walk completely around the hideous thing. The carvings on the back were even more lewd than the ones on the front. She took the time to examine it more closely than when it had been first presented to her. “Hey, these are our faces carved on these figures. Every one of the women is me! And every one of the men is you!”
He nodded blandly. “Of course. It’s our clock. It was custom made for you and me.”
“Well, I’m not going to have our friends see carvings of you fucking me!” She used crude language to shock her mild husband and convince him that she was serious.
“Of course not. This is our bedroom. We won’t be inviting any friends in here.”
Veronica wanted to scream in frustration. Her new husband’s reasonable responses only served to increase her ire. “The stupid thing doesn’t even tell the right time,” she snarled.
He shrugged. “Not in the usual sense of telling time, but it is a clock of sorts. I’ll show you.” He tugged on one of the carved male figures on the front of the clock and it popped away from the woman that it was screwing from behind. His motion was casual; he knew exactly what he was doing. Veronica looked closely and saw that the little statue’s face – her face – that was turned to look over her shoulder at the male figure – presumably Cary – who was screwing her, had an expression that could only be described as adoration. When the male figure was pulled away from the female, she could see that, in place of the male figure’s penis, a heavy steel shaft entering the clock at the point where the female’s vulva should have been. Cary walked around the clock, pushing and pulling at the carved figures here and there. When he returned to the front, he twisted the male figure around several times. She could hear clicking as the shaft wound a spring mechanism somewhere inside. As he turned it, the single hand on the face advanced clockwise until it had moved almost all the way around the dial. When the figure could be turned no more, he pushed it back into position so that, once again, it looked like nothing more than a wooden carving of Cary frozen in the act of screwing the carving of her from behind.
Both husband and wife stared at the clock silently for a long minute, each consumed with private thoughts. Entirely different thoughts. There was a slow, quiet ticking, almost too soft to hear – the sound of a finely crafted machine performing its intended function.
Finally, Veronica said, “Now what?”
“Now we get on with our lives. This house has been temporarily furnished with the basic necessities but they all have to be replaced. The clock is mine, but you have to furnish and decorate the rest of the house to your taste. You’ve got a lot of work to do. I have the number of an interior decorator who’ll be available to help you. You should call her tomorrow.”
The honeymoon was over and Veronica was too tired after the flight to want to make love to her husband that night.
The next night, she thought that they ought to christen their marital bed properly, and Cary was looking at her rather wistfully, so she let him make love to her.
She was shocked when, as soon as their lovemaking was finished, Cary climbed out of bed and engaged in the ritual of winding the ugly clock. She noticed that the single hand had moved to a position almost straight down – what would have been somewhere near six if the clock face had numbers on it – before he wound it back toward the top – about where the ‘eleven’ would have been if there had been numbers on the dial.
“Why did you do that?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Do what?”
“Play silly buggers with that ugly clock.”
“That’s the rule. Whenever we make love, I have to rewind the clock. Hobard men have been doing that for seven generations. I have to follow family tradition.”
“What if you don’t?”
“Then it would wind down. That can’t happen.”
The penny dropped. Veronica exploded in fury. “What in hell are you saying? Are you telling me that that damned clock is timing how often we make love?”
“Of course. I thought that you understood that.”
She stared at the dial. “You mean that anyone who looks at that clock can see exactly how long it’s been since the last time you screwed me.” Her voice was low and dangerous.
He shrugged nonchalantly. “Well, yes. That’s why it’s called a conjugal clock. But nobody is going to see it. Our bedroom is our private place.”
“The maid will see it.”
Cary looked puzzled. “So what?”
Veronica realized for the first time that Cary did not think of the household staff as people. To him, they were part of the furnishings. “I don’t want the maid to see this clock. Eventually, she’ll figure out what it means.”
“Okay. If that’s a problem for you, then we don’t have to let the maid in here. If you want, you can keep this room clean yourself. Or I will. I may be rich, but I’m not helpless. If you want, I’ll vacuum and dust. I don’t mind.”
She was getting sidetracked by this discussion about housework and got back to her main point. “I’m not nobody. I’m somebody and I’m going to see your damned clock every time I come to bed. I don’t want to have to look at any clock that tells me how long it’s been since I got screwed. I don’t want such a clock even to exist.”
He shrugged again. “Well, we don’t have any choice about that, really. The family is really good about letting everyone live their own lives however they want, except for the conjugal clock. If we don’t follow that tradition, then they won’t consider us part of the Hobard family any longer. They are absolutely rigid about that. Remove the clock and we’ll be disowned. Don’t make me choose between you and the rest of the family. I love you and there’s no question that I’d choose you, but it would be a terrible thing to have to go through. Please, for my sake, just put up with the clock. If there’s some other reason that you can’t tolerate them, if you think they are treating you badly in some other way, then I will gladly turn my back on them. But not over the clock. I’m asking you to do this one thing for me.”
She loved him. Surely, for the sake of love, she could put up with a single ugly clock in the middle of their bedroom.
But, as she lay in the dark, trying to fall asleep, she remembered the gathering of the Hobard women when they gave her the clock the day before the wedding. They had warned her repeatedly against letting the clock run down.
Now that she knew what she had to do to keep that from happening, she wondered what would happen if she failed. And she wondered just how long she would have to abstain from sex before it ran down completely. Judging by how far the hand had moved in one day, it would not take long.
Over the next few months, she was as busy as any lady of leisure could be. Cary worked long hours, doing his part to manage the family businesses, but Veronica never felt alone. Clay, Anja, and the other Hobard women were always ready to help: giving suggestions about setting up the household, providing introductions to the cream of society, helping entertain Cary’s business acquaintances, getting her involved in volunteer activities for important causes. Yet they never seemed to be intruding. A phone call here, a luncheon there, a suggestion for a caterer or florist was as far as they went; Veronica never felt that they were involved in her personal life at all and she gratefully accepted their assistance in charting the deep and dangerous waters of high society. Without their help, she would have been at a total loss.
Veronica had a fine pedigree and a good upbringing. Her family was definitely upper middle class. Her father was a lawyer who had been appointed to the bench and now served in one of the state district courts. Her mother was a partner in a management consulting firm that specialized in business process re-engineering of back office operations of mid-sized retail businesses. Veronica had graduated from Cornell University and earned her MBA at the University of Chicago, going the extra distance to acquire accreditation as a certified financial accountant in the process. As a child, she had never lacked anything and never had to miss any opportunity for lack of money. As an adult, she had been earning a good salary as an accountant for a major national firm.
But none of that had prepared her for the ocean of wealth that she now had to navigate. Being upper middle class is a far piece from being filthy rich; and merely dating the wealthy young man that she had met in graduate school imposed far less demands on her than being married into his family.
The other women never mentioned the conjugal clock again; and she never raised the subject. But the clock never wound down. Cary was a kind and gentle lover but he almost never asked her to make love. He left it to her to decide when and how she wanted to make love to him. And she invited him to bed frequently because the clock kept her aware of his needs. It was not so much that she was afraid of the consequences of letting the time run out as it was being aware that everyone, including Cary, expected that she would make love to her husband often. As the hand drew near to the midnight position – that was how she thought of the hand pointing straight up no matter what time of day it was in reality – she became concerned that she was going to disappoint her husband if she did not accommodate him soon. If she let the hand get too close to midnight, then she began to feel anxious because she felt that she was failing to be a proper wife. She loved her husband deeply and, when she looked at the clock and saw the hand pointing to the last quarter of the dial, she found herself overwhelmed by an urge to fuck him. She had timed the mechanism and estimated that it would take about forty-five hours to wind down. Making love to Cary every second day – every forty-eight hours – was not quite often enough to maintain the schedule, but she did not have to make love to him every day. She could screw him in the evening, take a full day off, and then screw him again the following morning before work and have plenty of time to spare. Once in a while, she even let it go to the second afternoon, letting the hand advance dangerously close to midnight.
Though he worked long hours, he punched no time clock and had no fixed schedule. All his meetings were held at his discretion – he was subject to an endless parade of people who all wanted something from him – but he told her that she could call him at any time and he would be home within a half hour; she learned from experience that he could keep that promise. They developed a code phrase, “I haven’t seen you for a while,” that meant, “Please rush home and screw me as soon as possible.” And, of course, he was rigorous about rewinding the clock every time they finished making love.
Once in a while, he had to go out of town on a business trip. Before he left, he did something to the figures around the clock and it halted; when he returned, he fiddled with it again to restart it.
Veronica had explored the clock in detail, but its function remained a mystery to her. Almost every figure carved on the sides moved in almost every direction, making little clicks before springing back to their original positions. There were dozens of figures, making countless possible combinations of moves; she quickly realized that she would never discover how to halt the timer or reset it from blind trial and error. She soon stopped fiddling with it.
Once she tried following Cary around to the back as he rewound it. He laughed and gently asked for his privacy. But there was an underlying ring of steel in his voice; he had no intention of allowing her to see how to work it.
Only the man could reset the clock. That was an iron-clad part of the tradition.
She hated the clock but she loved her life with Cary. When he had wound it for the first time, he had implied that living with the hideous thing would be a small price to pay for a perfect life. He had been right.
Of course, eventually she let the clock run down. And, of course, it was entirely her fault. They had been married for almost eight months when they had their first real fight. He wanted her to go to a play – Titus Andronicus – with a business associate and his wife but Veronica disliked Shakespeare in general and Titus in particular. She found the gang rape and subsequent mutilation of Lavinia nauseatingly sadistic. Rather than simply saying that she disliked the play, she had told Cary that he was thoughtless to expect that she would be willing to attend Shakespeare’s goriest blood fest. She had screamed that he was a bully and she was having none of his abusive behavior. It was all nonsense – he had never been anything but thoughtful and considerate – but she was feeling bored and wanted a little drama at home instead of having to go to the theater for it.
She was soon to get more drama than she wanted because she had lashed out at him without realizing that she was forcing herself into a trap.
When she stormed up to her bedroom, she glanced at the clock out of habit and saw that the hand was nearing the forbidden midnight position; she remembered that she had not made love to Cary the previous day, which may have been the reason for her boredom. But what could she do now? How could she make love to a man that she had just called an abusive bully?
There was nothing for it but to say, “Fuck that hideous clock,” and let the time run out. And that’s exactly what she did.
She was still in the room three hours later when she heard the clock’s last tick. Its mechanism was almost silent. For months she had been unaware of its slow, barely perceptible tick-tock. But now that it was completely silent, she was sharply aware of the absence of sound. The bedroom was preternaturally quiet. But nothing happened. The clock had stopped and doom had not fallen on her head. She regretted the fight with her husband, had regretted it from the moment that she had stormed out of the room, but found no reason to regret the clock winding down.
Cary went to the play without her. When he came home, he found her already in bed with her back turned, pretending to be asleep. He climbed into his side of the bed and pretended to fall asleep, too. Eventually both fell into fitful slumbers.
The next morning, the storm had blown over; she spoke softly to him; he spoke kindly to her. He apologized, though he had nothing to apologize for. She magnanimously accepted his apology, though she was keenly aware that she should be the one begging his forgiveness.
She still did not feel like making love to him and did not offer. He did not ask. It would have made no difference. Though she did not yet know it, once the clock had stopped, it would not be restarted without outside intervention. He had no power to restart it now.
At ten o’clock, intervention arrived in the form of Wilma, Clay, and Anja. They knocked; Veronica admitted them and rang for tea to be served in the living room.
As soon as they were seated, Wilma came directly to the point. “You allowed the clock to run down.”
She shrugged. If she had not apologized to Cary, who deserved a full measure of her contrition, she was certainly not going to apologize to this old lady. “How do you know?”
“We were alerted immediately. The exact mechanism does not matter. What matters are the consequences.”
“What consequences?”
“By tradition, you have a choice between two options. The first option is to leave your marriage. Under the terms of your prenuptial agreement, you can leave at any time, but you will leave empty handed. No alimony, no support, no remuneration of any kind. You just walk away.”
Veronica did not want to lose her marriage. Apart from the practical issue of having to move back into her mother’s house and look for a job, she loved Cary. Losing him would hurt worse than losing his wealth. “And the other option?” she asked, watching Wilma through narrowed eyes.
“Accept a whipping as well as undergoing a training regimen.”
“What?” Her mind refused to believe what her ears had heard.
“The punishment for letting the clock run down is a whipping. Do not be misled. The whipping will not be merely symbolic. It will be a punishment. It will not leave any permanent scarring, but will be a painful experience. You must accept that pain or leave your home.”
Veronica digested this for a moment, and then flushed with anger and spat, “I won’t do either. I won’t let myself be whipped and I won’t leave my husband.”
“Refusing to make a choice would result in more severe consequences. If you try to stay without submitting to chastisement, then Cary will be told to leave you. One of two things will happen. Either he will do so, in which case your prenuptial agreement leaves you in the same position as if you had walked away, or he will stay with you and be disowned. What you may not realize is that none of our husbands, Cary included, owns anything. Everything, including this house, the businesses, even your furniture is held in trust by the family. If Cary is disowned, he will be left as penniless as you. Really there are only three possible outcomes, you submit to a whipping, you leave without anything, or you drag Cary into penury with you. You have two days to decide. We will return the day after tomorrow, at noon, prepared to administer your chastisement. If you are not prepared to accept it, then you will leave this house immediately. If that is your choice, then I advise you to arrange transportation for yourself as we will not provide cab fare.”
The three women stood as one. “We will show ourselves out.”
Veronica spent the following day in a quandary. There was no way on earth that she would submit to anything as barbaric as a whipping. The idea was medieval. But how could she force Cary to abandon the life that he had always known just to save her an afternoon of pain and humiliation? He was smart, educated, would have no problem finding a new job, but they’d have to start from nothing. No matter how hard they both worked, they would have so little for so long, how could he not end up hating her for her pride.
Her doorbell rang in the early afternoon. She let the maid answer it. A minute later, Clay, her mother-in-law, walked into her family room. Before Veronica could speak, Clay held up her hand and said, “I know that you don’t want to see me, Veronica, but please let me be a mother for a few minutes. I’m here to plead with you on Cary’s behalf. I know how much he loves you. I know that he would let himself be disowned rather than lose you. I don’t want to see him suffer through that. And I don’t want to see you suffer through it, either. Every time you look at him going to work in some tedious job that grinds him down day by day, you’ll feel that you let him down. That you forced him into a life that he never wanted. And that will grind you down, too. You and he will end up resenting each other, no matter how hard you try.
“I know how awful the idea of letting us whip you sounds. It sounds like we’re winning and you’re losing. Try not to think of it that way. Think of it like an initiation into some secret society. Think of it as a few minutes of pain that you are willing to suffer for your love of your husband. Think of it as being like a medical procedure or childbirth. I’ve suffered through childbirth three times. The whipping is less painful than that and it ends a lot more quickly. If I could, I would gladly suffer the whipping on your behalf, but I can’t. All I can do is beg you to go through with it regardless of your distaste. You aren’t alone, you know. Sooner or later every one of us slips up and lets the clock run out. We’ve all faced exactly the same choice that you’ve been given and we’ve all had to grit our teeth and suffer through it ourselves. None of us are going to think any less of you for doing the same. And I can tell you one other thing in confidence. You kept your clock running longer than most of us did the first time. As Cary’s mother, I’m grateful to you for that. I’ve never seen him happier than he has been for the last few months.” She took Veronica’s hand in hers, looked deep into her eyes and said, “Please, for the sake of your love of him, for the sake of his happiness, do this thing tomorrow and let us be done with it and get on with our lives again.”
Veronica could see the fear in Clay’s eyes – fear that Veronica would make the wrong choice.
Clay said no more, but rose and left the room. Veronica heard the front door slam a minute later and she was alone with her choice once again.
That evening, she received a phone call from Anja. “Veronica, it’s Anja. I know that you don’t want to get whipped tomorrow, but I’m hoping that you’ll be brave about it. I love having you as a sister-in-law and really, really want you to stay in the family. Let me take you to lunch on Saturday and I’ll tell you all about when I got my whipping. We’ll laugh about it. Really. It seems horrible now, but afterwards, it’s kind of funny in a way. There’s a ridiculous side to the whole thing that you can’t see now, but, I promise you, it’ll turn out all right in the end. I’ll be here for you. I promise.”
Veronica did not know what to say, apart from, “Thank you.”
“Saturday lunch. Remember. I’m looking forward to it. See you tomorrow. Love you.” The phone clicked in Veronica’s ear.
See her tomorrow? She meant, “See you getting soundly whipped.” Some way to show how much everyone loved her.
Cary had not said a word about the clock since it had stopped, though he was certainly aware of it. They had not had sex in five days – the longest period of abstinence since their wedding day. She wondered if he was being driven mad with horny frustration.
Over dinner, Veronica watched him eat, listened to him chatter on about the last meeting of the family’s charitable foundation, and wondered if he had any idea what she was going through. He appeared to be utterly ignorant about the dilemma that was tearing her apart. Surely if he knew that she was contemplating leaving him tomorrow, he would look at least a little bit worried. Surely if he knew that his family wanted to whip her, he would look either outraged or sympathetic. Instead, he looked like a man at peace with the world.
He looked utterly ignorant.
Six women stood on Veronica’s porch waiting patiently to see if she would answer the bell or if she had moved out of the house. Wilma, Clay, and Anja were joined by Clay’s younger sister, Adalgisa, her sister-in-law, Crystal, and their son’s wife, Lise. Veronica had only met the latter two women a couple of times; they were almost strangers to her.
Anja was twitching with anxiety, but Clay was so terrified that Veronica had made the wrong choice that she could barely breathe. Wilma looked impassive, but there was always uncertainty at this point. The family myth was that no Hobard marriage had failed in seven generations, but that was a lie. Wilma knew of a half dozen failures – three of them because the wives had failed to submit – one a Hobard by birth and two wives by marriage. The true Hobard woman had had the honor to leave alone voluntarily; one of the others had forced her husband to expel her and the third, most tragically, had convinced her husband to leave with her. He was disowned and, after a decade of suffering through an increasingly intolerable marriage, had committed suicide at the age of thirty-five.
In all those generations of marriages, only a half dozen failures was a remarkable rate of success, but the three wives who refused to submit were enough to give Wilma and Clay ample reason to be afraid. Both were certain that if Veronica left, Cary would follow her and be disowned; they could see that his love was that strong. The women on the porch could only hope that Veronica’s love for him was strong enough to protect him from that choice.
Clay wanted to cry with joy when Veronica finally opened the door and said, “Come in.” Veronica’s decision was clear. She was wearing no makeup and her hair was tucked out of the way in a French braid. She was wearing a simple white cotton dress with a high collar and long full skirt.
Anja was reassured by the deliberate symbolism of innocent martyrdom. Veronica was approaching this with an attitude of ironic cynicism that would serve her well. Everything was going to be just fine.
As the women filed through the door, Veronica smiled wryly and explained, “It took me a minute to get down here because I had to answer the door myself. I’ve dismissed the maid and cook for the day. I have no intention of entertaining them with my screams and tears.”
“Take us to the clock,” Wilma intoned. Veronica immediately understood the reason for the pretentious formality. The women were going to follow a prescribed ritual in order to remove, as much as possible, any personal feelings that might give rise to later recriminations and bitterness.
Veronica led the parade upstairs and into the master bedroom. It was large enough accommodate all seven women. She had made the bed, anticipating that at least one woman would need to come up here to reset the clock and had not wanted to appear slovenly.
As soon as all seven women were in the room, Wilma manipulated several figures on the clock. The upper half of the pilaster to the left of the dial rotated away, revealing a hollow space inside. A heavy two-foot-long leather strap with a wooden handle was hanging inside. The lower two-thirds of the strap was divided into two tails. If Veronica were more knowledgeable about the history of corporal punishment, she would have recognized it as a traditional heavy-weight Scottish tawse. Instead, she merely saw it as a heavy leather strap that was going to hurt a lot. Seeing the reality of the thing brought her fear to the surface and her heart began to pound.
Her next thought was that this was not a thing like a cat o’ nine tails that would be used to flog her back. This looked like something that would be used only on her ass. The pain would be bad enough, but the humiliation was going to sting worse. What had Clay said? Pretend that it is an initiation into a secret society and play along. Why had she allowed herself to love Cary so much that she would allow herself to be degraded this way?
Rather than staring at the instrument of her imminent suffering, she turned to look at the other women.
“Remove your clothing,” Wilma said emotionlessly.
Humiliation was to be heaped on humiliation, but this was not entirely unexpected. Veronica refused to turn away in any show of useless modesty, but continued to face them as she slipped her shoes off, unbuttoned the dress with trembling fingers from the collar to the waist, then slipped it over her head and tossed it on the bed. She did not have to be reminded that ‘clothing’ included bra and panties. She slipped the sports bra off, baring her breasts to public view, then slipped her panties down and stepped out of them. She did not look at the other women because she did not want to see them staring back at her.
Wilma did something complicated to the clock and the lower right side folded out and up in two parts, forming a three-foot long wooden shelf – a whipping bench – at waist height that was supported by steel supports extending from the end of the plank to the base of the clock. She had no doubt that the shelf would support her weight even if she were thrashing about on it. And she had no doubt that she would soon be thrashing about upon it because two steel rings had popped out of the clock base, just the right size and in just the right position to enclose her wrists if she lay along the bench. In that position, her hips would drape over the end, her head would lie a scant inch clear of the clock, and her arms would be fully extended.
This clock was full of surprises.
She did not wait to be told, but stepped to the end of the bench, bent over until her breasts were mashed against it, and then extended her arms so that her wrists were positioned next to the rings. It was only slightly less humiliating to assume the position voluntarily rather than waiting for the inevitable instruction.
Anja, more flexible than Wilma, crouched down and, one at a time, opened the rings and snapped them closed about Veronica’s wrists. The rings did not have to be locked with a key because Veronica, with one hand on each side of the clock base, had no way to reach and release them once they were latched.
She had never been in such a physically vulnerable position in her life.
As Anja latched the second steel cuff, she looked at Veronica and whispered, “You may not feel like it right now, but you’re a hero.”
Anja was right. Veronica – naked, exposed, humiliated, terrified – did not feel like a hero.
She heard a noise and turned to see Wilma remove the strap from the hollow pilaster and hand it to Clay. Damn. She had hoped that Wilma, as the matriarch would swing the strap. Clay, at the age of forty-five would be a lot stronger than her seventy-year-old mother. Maybe, though, it would be better this way. After coming to her house yesterday and begging her to submit to the punishment, surely Clay would be grateful and merciful. Surely she would swing the strap lightly.
Veronica turned her head away from Clay, but could not hide her face. The other women in the room moved to take positions on either side of her head. This had a practical purpose: it put them out of the way of the strap, allowing Clay to swing freely without danger of striking anyone but Veronica. Undoubtedly, keeping some woman in her line of sight no matter how she turned had a psychological purpose as well. It ensured that, throughout her punishment, Veronica was reminded that her failure to service her husband was not simply an issue between her and Cary. It was a family matter and the family had a right to witness the punishment that had been earned.
Wilma spoke again, “Veronica Hobard. You have failed to accommodate your husband’s needs. For this, we are obligated to administer chastisement according to our tradition. By remaining in this house, you have indicated your acceptance of this chastisement. For your correction, Clay Hobard will administer thirty strokes of the tawse to the best of her ability.”
Veronica soon learned that Clay’s gratitude did not translate into leniency. Apparently she felt a greater duty to give Veronica a strong incentive to satisfy her son’s carnal needs in the future than to reward the negligent wife for putting herself in this position.
Helpless to protect her ass from the stroke in any way, Veronica could only watch over her shoulder as Clay raised the strap high to the side and listen to it whistle as she brought it down with all her strength.
The crack of leather against flesh reverberated in the large room. Veronica gasped in shock and gritted her teeth against the agony that burned across her buttocks.
Wilma said, “One,” with forced dispassion.
Anja yelped in sympathy, and then looked at her mother, saying nothing but pleading with her eyes for a modicum of mercy.
None was forthcoming. The heavy strap rose and fell with equal force a second time.
Veronica whimpered through her clenched teeth.
“Two.”
Clay’s arm rose and fell again
The room echoed with the crack of the third blow.
Veronica rose on tiptoe, lifting her hips away from the bench, and then raised one foot off the floor as though she were trying to move away from the pain.
Each strike hurt more than the previous. If the blow fell over the same area as a prior blow then the already damaged flesh sustained even more injury; if the blow fell on a previously untouched spot, then the damage was extended over a larger area.
Veronica clenched her fists until her knuckles went white.
“Three.”
Whistle.
She clenched her buttocks tight in reflex against the coming blow.
Slap.
And Veronica cried out for the first time – not loudly but sincerely. She pulled desperately against the steel that enclosed her wrists, frantically trying to free herself and escape further pain. The shackles were as unyielding as the women standing witness to her punishment.
“Four.”
By the tenth blow, Veronica was shrieking from the agony she was feeling, but Anja was sobbing freely. The tears that rightfully belonged to Veronica were flowing down her sister-in-laws cheeks.
Veronica’s entire ass was bright red as blood rushed to the surface, but mottled more darkly where the tawse had struck hard enough to burst the capillaries under her skin. Her anguish was indescribable. She had been suffering for less than a minute, but she felt like she had spent a lifetime locked to the whipping plank.
Her buttocks hurt too much for her to clench them against the blows any longer.
And only a third of her punishment had been administered.
The march of the blows was relentless; Clay’s arm swung like a metronome with a five second long beat while Wilma counted time in a funereal tone. There were no pauses to give Veronica respite or Clay rest, which worked slightly in Veronica’s favor. By the fifteenth stroke, Clay’s arm was beginning to tire. Or maybe Clay was pretending to tire in a belated act of mercy, too late to save Veronica from any noticeable degree of anguish. The big muscles in her ass were bruised so deeply that even a mild kiss of the tawse would cause as much pain as the first mighty blow. Yet Clay’s strokes were anything but mild. To compensate for the fatigue in her arm, she began twisting her body to put real weight into her blows. The strap moved more slowly, but struck with greater force, the follow-through bruising Veronica’s muscle all the way to the bone.
Veronica’s tortured flesh flattened and surged against gravity from the force of each blow. She screamed, not caring if the women standing witness thought she was weak or cowardly; not caring if the neighbors heard her and called the police; not caring if airliners flying overhead were diverted from their flight path. She screamed as loudly as she could in an attempt to distract herself from the torture that was being inflicted upon her ass.
It helped little. She felt pain beyond any previous experience. The toothache that she had suffered in eighth grade, the cramps after eating potato salad left in the sun too long at church camp, the bruised shins from field hockey sticks when her pads slipped, were all trivial nothings compared to this beating.
By the twentieth stroke, she was too sore and too tired to fight against the inevitable any longer. She collapsed against the wood plank, let her wrists hang loose in the steel loops, and lay sobbing uncontrollably as the slow march of blows continued to punish her tortured ass. Her nose filled with mucus and she had to breathe through her mouth as she wept in agony.
Clay’s arm had tired to the point that her last half dozen blows had noticeably less force than her first, but that made no difference to Veronica. Each blow was still hard enough to rock her body on the plank, crushing her naked nipples against the smooth, varnished wood, and stoking the fire in her ass to hellish levels.
“Thirty.”
Veronica barely heard the final count over her sobs, barely noticed that the blows had stopped, because the pain in her ass continued unabated.
Anja was crying too hard to do her part, so, unbidden, Lise stepped around to unfasten Veronica’s wrists. Then, Lise and Anja lifted Veronica’s limp body from the plank and brought her around to lay her facedown on the bed. Crystal thought to pull the quilt and upper sheet aside before the other two women let her sink onto the mattress.
Her beaten ass was so dark it looked more purple than red. Anja sobbed anew at the sight as she pulled the top sheet gently over her sister-in-law’s naked body.
Her own ass had looked exactly the same less than a year ago, but somehow it was harder for her to bear seeing the damage to Veronica’s ass than it had been to look in the mirror and see her own. Possibly because, when she had been in this state, she had been in too much agony to care how she looked; possibly because she felt guilty about her part in convincing Veronica to submit to the beating. Her primary motivation had been selfish. She had helped convince Veronica to suffer because the alternative would have been losing her friendship and Anja wanted to remain friends with Veronica.
Anja bent over and, stifling her own sobs, whispered, “We’ll laugh about this on Saturday.”
Through her own tears, Veronica replied, in a voice made hoarse and soft by her previous screaming, “I’ll laugh if you will.”
She was barely aware of Wilma returning the tawse to the hollow pilaster, twisting it back into place, and folding the whipping bench back into the trunk of the clock.
All the women filed out of the room, save Clay and Anja. Clay put her hand on Veronica’s head tenderly – the same hand that had so recently swung the strap so viciously – and said, “Please forgive me.”
Veronica looked at her and saw that there were tears in Clay’s eyes as well. “You did what you were supposed to do. There’s no fault to forgive.” She did not really believe that, but wanted to show Clay a degree of mercy that had not been allotted to her.
The tears that had been welling in Clay’s eyes overflowed and spilled down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said and left the room.
When Anja was left alone with Veronica, she said, “I’ll stay here with you for as long as you want.”
“No. I’m all right. Really. Please leave and let me rest quietly.”
“Okay. But call if you need anything. Anything at all. Even just to yell at me for helping get you into this.”
“All I need is to meet you for lunch on Saturday.”
Anja smiled. “I look forward to that. I know a restaurant with real soft chairs.”
Veronica almost laughed.
After a half hour, the pain in her ass had subsided from an intolerable level of agony to a barely tolerable throb. She realized that she would have to eat supper standing up. Cary would think that strange. Unless he knew more than he was letting on.
She looked at the clock with renewed hatred. Now she knew that there was a heavy leather strap hidden in the left pilaster just waiting for her next lapse. If she let the clock wind down again, would she choose to suffer another beating rather than dissolving her marriage?
Before the beating, she had anticipated that the humiliation would be the worst part of the experience. She had been wrong. The physical pain was so much worse that she had forgotten to feel humiliated.
But she had suffered the pain for her love of Cary and, even now with the agony fresh and deep in her body, she knew that she would be willing to suffer the same pain and worse all over again if the alternative was to lose him.
The clock was running again and the hand had been wound back to the eleven o’clock position. She had to make love to her husband within the next forty hours. Her ass would still be bruised, still aching something terrible. No matter how soft the mattress, she would have to be on top. And maybe be on top a few times after that, too.
Cary liked to watch his wife undress at night, even on nights when they were not going to make love. Veronica understood. Men liked to see naked women and her husband did not frequent strip clubs. If she was the only naked woman that he got to see, she was happy to let him look all he wanted. Though she felt somewhat self-conscious, she would slip her bra and panties off slowly while he was watching, arch her back and thrust her breasts toward him, part her legs and stick her ass out, strike whatever pose she thought he give him an moment’s pleasure.
It was part of the matrimonial bargain. He would forsake all others, even when he was just looking, and she would do what she could to satisfy his need to see female pulchritude. And he would return the favor. If she wanted to look at his cock, he would wag it in front of her for as long as she wished. The difference was that, whereas he could happily spend hours staring at her naked body, she could see all of him that she wanted in a few seconds.
He did not mind the inequality.
Tonight was different, though. She had told him that she did not feel hungry and let him eat alone. He found that slightly odd, but chalked it up to a long day. Then, after dinner, he came up to the bedroom and found her lying in bed. Seven o’clock was early for anyone to be in bed; it was especially early for Veronica. He sat on the bed beside her and asked if she felt all right.
“Just fine,” she lied brazenly.
He stroked her hair for a minute, then casually drew his hand down her back and gave her butt a tender squeeze, as was his habit.
She yelped loudly.
He snatched his hand back. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s okay. My ass is just a little tender right now.”