A Scandal at Burnmarsh Chapter 2

Emma exited the teacher’s lounge and returned to her classroom. Opening the door, she was relieved to see that her three charges had remained where she had left them. Isabel, the ringleader, regarded her with a sort of overconfident malice. But Emma suspected both the bravado and the hostility were a performance; her crossed legs were bouncing nervously. Isabel Briffet, Izzie to her friends–a group that included no teachers–came from wealthy stock. But her parents, glamorously absent financiers, had invested in her like a long-term bond–all expenses paid up front, and then left alone to mature quietly. It was clear, to Emma’s teacher’s eye, how much this treatment had wounded Isabel. But she had managed to sublimate her opulent neglect into both popularity and low-level delinquency, a combination that, at her age, tended to be mutually reinforcing. She was also very conventionally pretty, with green eyes and a wild mane of straight brown hair. Emma felt for the girl. But Isabel’s choices made that hard, at times. Isabel had transferred into her class midsemester; she forgot the exact details as to why, but was pretty sure it had to do with the student creating more challenges than her previous teacher wanted to deal with. Up to now Isabel had narrowly avoided her teacher’s lap. In hindsight, Emma suspected she should have brought things to a head a lot earlier.

Next to Isabel was the cheating conspiracy’s male representative: Alex Persaud. Emma’s impression of Alex was that he was very smart and very nice: a fundamentally good kid. But that he was occasionally afflicted with a desire for social approval so fierce it could override his basic programming to be good. Alex was co-captain of the track team, and his tall, lean build reflected this. Emma had not had cause to discipline him before, but she knew he had felt the principal’s paddle a couple times, and she was pretty sure another teacher recently had paddled him on the bare bottom over some alcohol brought onto campus. If she remembered that correctly, it was a good example of Alex most likely getting roped into some other student’s stupid plan. Here in the classroom, he was also making a show of bravado, but unlike Isabel, he wasn’t very convincing. Emma remembered his mother’s request and couldn’t help but be curious about what, exactly, it meant to ask for a spanking “like he does at home.”

The third student sitting before Ms. Cawthorne was the great surprise of the bunch. Josephina Transom, or Jo to her friends–a group that did include a few teachers–was one of Emma’s star students. Jo didn’t just do her work, she engaged with it, often reading beyond assigned pages or seeking out related materials, and asking thoughtful questions in class. Jo was, Emma supposed, a nerd. She was an attractive one, though, as far as these things go, red-headed and curvy with thick, hip glasses and a friendly smile. Jo’s enthusiasm for the material made it clear, in a way you couldn’t fake, that she didn’t need to cheat to ace Emma’s tests. So Emma was baffled as to why Jo would be involved in this tawdry scheme. It was Jo’s mother that had declared that Jo could expect double at home of whatever Emma decided to give her. Jo looked openly terrified, and judging by what Emma had in store for the three students, she should be.

Emma Cawthorne stood for a moment in the doorway, taking in the three students, their various states of duress. It was almost three, and outside, the October sun was beginning to halo the trees in a sad copper light. Emma moved to her desk and leaned on it. With her arms crossed, she began to relate to Isabel, Alex, and Jo all that was about to happen.

“Okay, I just finished speaking to your parents. I explained everything that I’ve uncovered here, and they are, I mean, you won’t be surprised to hear they’re pretty disappointed in you guys. They are absolutely in agreement with me about what I plan to do about it, what discipline I’m choosing…”

“You talked to my mom?” Isabel interrupted, her voice suspicious.

“Yes, Isabel, I did. She…”

“On the phone?”

“Well…we texted. I did call, but she wasn’t available just then to talk, but she did text me back.” Emma knew as she was saying this that it was the wrong way to phrase it. But she couldn’t think of what the right way would be. She saw a look of genuine pain flash across Isabel’s face. But a moment later it was gone, the same performative glower from earlier reclaiming control. Not knowing what else to do, Emma continued.

“You are going to be spanked, each of you. I don’t think this is a surprise. In addition, I will be striking every test score you’ve earned in my class. As of this moment, you all have a cumulative test score of zero. Over the next couple weeks you will take new tests, with new questions. Only the new tests will be counted towards your final grade.

“Now, because of the very real possibility that such an approach may have a catastrophic impact on your grades for this class, I will also be providing you with a series of extra credit assignments. At a minimum, these assignments should allow you to bring a failing grade back into the realm of passing, should that be necessary. Each one will be completed entirely in my classroom, after school, and I expect will be accompanied by a session of discipline. The details of these assignments, and any accompanying motivation, will be worked out between the principal, myself, and your parents. Is that all understood?”

Alex and Jo, beginning to look a bit green, let out a faint “yes, ma’am.” Isabel nodded. Emma cleared her throat and continued.

“Alright. So, right now we’re not doing any testing or extra credit, but I am going to discipline you. And that is happening right now. So I need you all to remove your shoes, then stand in front of your desks with your hands behind your neck, fingers interlaced, elbows out. Now, please.”

There was a moment of stillness, as the students thought about these instructions. Then the clatter of desks and limbs filled the quiet, as the students stood up, awkwardly divesting themselves of their shoes and then coming to stand in front of her. There was a further moment of hesitation, then, as each student looked to the others. No one wanted to be the one to comply too enthusiastically, but no one wanted to be seen to be defiant, either. But then Isabel, sighing loudly, laced her fingers behind her neck and looked straight ahead, her elbows up. The other two quickly followed suit.

Emma moved to Jo’s side, first in line on her left, and deftly unsnapped and unzipped the flouncy gingham skirt she was wearing. The fabric dropped to the floor in a floof. Underneath, Jo was wearing full-back, heather grey cotton underwear, which didn’t quite contain the full curve of her bottom. Jo blushed deeply and let out a little moan. But Emma, ignoring this, moved on to Alex. Reaching into the waist of his black workout pants, she pulled free the laces holding them up. Then she slowly and deliberately slid them down to his ankles, and then off. Alex had snug blue boxer briefs underneath. Finally, she moved to Isabel, who had remained staring straight ahead, as if willing her mind to be elsewhere. Isabel was wearing a pair of houndstooth trousers that were both very expensive (she imagined) and very tight. Probably too tight, in her opinion, and definitely not something she would have let her daughter wear to school. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? No one at Isabel’s home probably even noticed what she wore to school. But cheating is cheating, Emma reminded herself, as she unsnapped the girl’s pants and began to wrestle them off her hips. The last thing she needs is to have another poor decision be ignored by the authority figures in her life. At last she managed to get the trousers down to the girl’s ankles, and then off, one foot and then the other. Isabel was wearing sheer pink lace panties that were full back, but might as well not have been. Emma was momentarily shocked that one of her students even owned underwear like this. But she managed to not react outwardly, figuring they would be coming down soon anyway.

Having completed the disrobing, Emma moved to the wall of her classroom, where a small, faded couch had been placed against the wall. This tended to be where Emma conducted extra help sessions with students, or occasionally graded papers. It was the sort of couch one sunk into and fought off the urge to nap. Generally, Emma thought of the aged couch as a symbol of the sort of warm, safe environment she sought to foster in her classroom. But it was also where she conducted discipline. Whenever possible, Emma preferred to spank students over her lap, in the traditional way. Using the couch for discipline allowed Emma to maintain the closeness, control, and intimacy that she felt was important during physical punishment, while mitigating the inevitable size differences when she had to punish, say, the co-captain of the track team.

Sitting down at the couch, Emma looked back at the students. “Josephina,” she said, “come to me, please.” Jo hesitated only for a moment, then padded over in her pale pink socks, until she was standing in front of her teacher. Emma noted approvingly that her hands had not strayed from her neck. Looking into Jo’s eyes, she said gently but in a voice that was loud and clear, “Josephina, I’m going to remove your underwear so that your bottom is undressed, and then I’m going to have you lay over my lap, and I’m going to give you a spanking on your bottom with my hand. Your spanking is going to be good, long, and hard. Then when I’ve finished, I’m going to have you stand with your spanked fanny on display for all of us to see. Then I’m going to do the same with Alex and Isabel. Do you have any questions for me?”

Jo shook her head. Her face betrayed a mixture of acceptance–this was clearly not the first time she had been lectured like this–and utter shame and embarrassment. Indeed, while Jo could often present as younger than her years, with her cute glasses and her vaguely witchy aesthetic, it was as though the girl was visibly regressing before Emma’s eyes.

Jo felt her teacher’s warm fingers in the waistband of her undies, and then the cool air on her bottom and privates as her underwear were transposed slowly to her ankles. Emma could see that Jo was waiting for a sign to lower herself over her lap. But Emma wasn’t done with this part of the punishment, not quite yet.

“Jo, your mom told me that you can expect double whatever discipline I give you back at home. That includes how much time you spend with your bottom bare. Is that right?” Jo nodded, clearly wanting to die.

“Your mom also told me that you don’t really do normal corner time at your house. Your mom does something a little different, doesn’t she, and that it has a name? Can you tell me what that name is?”

The words hit Jo like a death sentence. For a moment, she was genuinely speechless. But Emma could see her good girl instincts begin to take over. She took another moment to collect herself, aware of the spectacle she was making in this intimate position. Simply wanting the interaction to end, she muttered something, too quiet for Emma to hear.

“I couldn’t hear you, Josephina. Please speak up.”

“It’s called…uhhh…my…my naughty bottom time.”

Emma smiled, trying to reassure the girl. “Yes, that’s what your mom said. And what happens during your naughty bottom time? No, that’s alright, how about I tell you what your mom told me, and you can just confirm whether it’s accurate or not, okay? Okay, great. So, your mom told me that when it’s naughty bottom time, you put on one of your old nighties without any underwear on. And that your mom pins it up in the back, nice and high, so that your whole bottom is very bare. And then you and your mom just spend some time together, cooking or doing chores. But that the whole time, you have your little bottom exposed. Is this all accurate so far?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Jo had begun to cry quietly. Emma noted that Alex and Isabel were listening intently. They had not expected this.

“But there’s a bit more to it, right Jo? She told me that part of naughty bottom time”–intentionally repeating this draconian phrase–”is that she wants to keep your bottom pink and warm, so that you remember that you’re being punished. So in between tasks, you get lots of brisk little spankings, with her hand, or a spoon, or maybe a spatula. By the end of your time your bottom is very pink and stingy, and I bet you feel like a very punished little girl, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Yes what? Answer me in a full sentence, please.”

Jo gulped. This was maybe the worst pre-spanking lecture she’d ever received. It wasn’t even a lecture: it was acute verbal torment. “How…okay, um…yes…ma’am…by the end of my, uhhh, my naughty bottom time, I do feel punished.”

“Hmmm. That’s very close, but I want you to try one more time, and understand that if you can’t do this properly, we’re just going to keep at it. So really try to do a good job for me, Josephina.”

While Jo had never experienced anything as socially devastating as this moment, it was not the first time she had been made to contribute verbally to her discipline. And she knew, through woeful experience, that the only way out was through. So she stood up straight, looked her teacher in the eye, and in a voice shaky but clear, said, “yes ma’am, by the end of my naughty bottom time, I am a very punished little girl.” The last word was more of a hiccup, as the full humbling enormity of speaking these words in front of one of her favorite teachers fell upon her. But it was too late, she had said it. Everyone had heard. And now, at last, Emma took her wrist and pulled Josephina down over her lap. Emma was wearing khaki slacks that, while certainly not tight, were fitted such that they nicely framed her hips and thighs, which like her charge were on the curvier side. It leant the teacher a warmly ample lap over which to turn her wayward students. And so she did so, letting the girl fall crosswise across her flank. Jo’s bare seat came to rest square between her teacher’s thighs, pale and soft. Emma ran a hand over it, almost reverently. She did not consider physical discipline to be a central part of her job description, would not have even mentioned it as part of her day if someone asked. Yet she did believe her duties as a teacher extended beyond the simple merchanting of facts. There was, through the application of deadlines and expectations, homework and classwork, the mandatory stretching of young hippocampuses towards new ecologies of seeing and thinking, something that might vaguely, reluctantly be called character being grown. And moments of discipline, particularly this act of administering a spanking, made her role in the raising of her students viscerally apparent to her. Always, still, this floored her. And it steeled her to do her duty properly, no matter how much she felt for Jo. Cheating is cheating no matter who does it. And so she raised her hand above the girl’s still-snowy bottom and brought it back down sharply.

Jo gasped. Somehow, despite all her experience, she was still surprised how much the start of a spanking stung. Ms. Cawthorne quickly delivered another swat, and then another, falling into a brisk and natural rhythm. Emma was spanking hard right from the start, letting her hand course every inch of Jo’s bottom, which almost immediately colored to a sunset pink. Emma’s charge fought to keep still, allowing small exclamations to escape her lips but struggling nobly to keep her hips still. Jo wasn’t sure what her teacher’s policy was, but she knew her mother did not tolerate excessive wriggling. That was a good way to get a spanking relocated to one’s thighs.

But Emma did not intend to spare them, no matter how this little girl took her spanking. She climbed with her palm the scumbled rose hills of Jo’s bottom, up the fullness of the summit, then back down to the tender valleys of her sit spots, and her poor, unfortified thighs. Jo was soon crying freely. Yet Emma continued to spank her bare backside for several minutes more. At last, sensing that Josephina had reached a state of total collapse, she let her palm slow and then stop. Jo continued to sob into the couch pillows. Her bottom and thighs were a pulsing scarlet. Aside from the faint sound of crying, the classroom was suddenly quiet. Emma looked up. Alex and Isabel were anxious statues, incongruous in their regular tops and just their undies on bottom. The teacher let the moment sit. From outside, the sound of a lawnmower whined on somewhere, probably the last job of the day. It mixed with the lilt of voices in departure, the rustling grunt of cars exiting the lot. For so many, the main events of their day were coming to an end. But not these three, she thought. She looked down at the wrecked little girl across her knee, and gave her lambent behind a gentle pat.

“Okay, sweetie, time to get up. I can help you.” Awkwardly, heavily, Jo gathered herself back to standing, her teacher holding her hips to steady her. A beat, and then Jo’s hands shot back to the top of her head. “Good girl,” her teacher said, sincerely. “Without even having to be told. Thank you for being such a cooperative girl.” Emma stood up too, putting a hand in the small of her back and propelling her towards her classmates. Jo was keenly aware of how much she was showing them, but also knew better than to resist. Once she was standing right in front of Alex and Isabel, Emma stopped her, and then slowly rotated her so that her backside was on show.

“Do you see this little girl’s bottom? Do you see how I spanked her until she cried, and now she has a hot, sore little fanny? I just want to be very clear that this is exactly what I’m going to do to both of you. You are both going to have bottoms that are just as hot and sore. And you are both going to be just as sorry and embarrassed. Okay, now that we’ve made that clear, Jo, you can stand here next to Isabel. They both got to watch your spanking, so I would like you to watch while they get theirs before you all go in the corner. Okay, good girl.”

With Josephina aligned next to Isabel, Emma walked back to the couch. Sitting down, she said, “Alex, would you come to me, please? It’s your turn to get a spanking.”