Iconic Images 4

What have we here? A picture by an artist called Mike Hoffman. I don't know much about him, almost nothing, to be honest, besides what I can see, myself, that he is immensely influenced by the master of fantasy art, himself, Frank Frazetta.

I don't know anything about this picture, where it comes from or if it illustrates a story or anything. I just like it as it is.

When looking at a picture like this we know a lot about it. The man in the middle is the villain and the hero is lying at his feet and beside the villain is a damsel in distress. This one is a little more daring than the mainstream illustration of a story set in the Wild West. Nothing unusual about the villain or the hero. They look quite as you would expect them. No, it is the heroine that is a little less clothed than what you would expect.

Enough analysis. I like this image. I wonder what is going on, what will happen. Why is the heroine almost naked? Looks kind of deliberate to let her have some kind of skirt or cloth hanging on her hips but almost falling off. Another step and she will be naked. Hands behind her back. Could she be bound? I believe she is.

She is in peril, isn't she? Half naked, bound, in the hands of a vicious bandit and with her hero on the ground. Will the hero rise up and fight her captor or will he get himself killed? What will the evil man do to her if the hero is not up to it?

I don't want the hero to pull out a gun and shoot the villain and then ride off with the heroine into the sunset but after he has giver her his shirt or something. No, I kind of, fancy the hero to be a coward and run away or simply be shot and the pretty lady is left in the hands of the bandit. What will he do? What will happen to her? Will this thug be able to restrain himself when he knows he is in possession of a half naked (or now naked) heroine somewhere in the wilderness?

And who knows, maybe this rogue is a blessing after all. Maybe he knows what he wants and in the process makes the heroine happy. who could resist something like that? Isn't it like that in fantasy land?

Rantings

More than one person have told me that the men in my stories often are quite unpleasant characters, rather cruel and generally not very nice. I so wonder why that is. To be honest, I don't think it is completely true, there are some that are quite nice but I agree that there are some quite horrible people there.

I have thought a lot about this and have no really good explanation. I have some ideas though. One thing that springs to mind is that I use the first person narrative quite often and when I don't, I still identify with the one being spanked. That is not always true but most often. This is about fantasies and it is about being on a strange journey, experience something that is unusual, out of the ordinary, something shocking but also exciting and arousing. That is the nature of my fantasies, the very reason for them to be there. And if I, as the one having the fantasy and writing a story with it in, if I side with the one being on this journey, I am selfish enough to think of me, how I feel, how shocked I am, how aroused I am and how much it hurts. I don't want to be concerned with the other. I relinquish control and I don't want to be responsible for the other, the one doing this to me. I think they may become quite anonymous and perhaps a little dark for that reason. They have a role to play, the role of being cruel and unkind, because that is what they are supposed to be. They are not real characters in real stories about believable people. They are actors in a fantasy.

Another explanation has to do, perhaps, with something I have very mixed feelings about. It is about love and relationships. We all know that a good relationship should include love, mutuality, equality and friendship. Not trying to be exhaustive here...smiles. Of course spankings can be combined with that as long as you love and care for each other. It is not that. It is more about something that happens in my head. When I think of really good relationships; fantasise about people falling in love, there is a certain sweetness and care and tenderness that I think of. In my head I do have a hard time combining that with smacking someone's bottom in order to cause pain.

This is just me. I know that most people have no problems with this and can see the sweetness in the spankings or just think of it as something fun. There are so many ways you can get this together and I am fine with that, rather impressed really. What I am saying is that when I fantasise I have a hard time combining the sweetness with the harshness of spankings. I have written stories where I try to do that but it is never simple.

So, I live in a relationship that is based on love and equality and a lot of good things. There is sweetness and care. Maybe it is why I go to the extreme in my fantasies, that I allow myself the cruelty and harshness of spankings, of wanting it to hurt. As a contrast to the sweetness that is in love.

My thought is that the spankers in my fantasies are a bit dark and cruel and unpleasant because they are doing that which is painful and mean, because that is how I want it in my fantasies. I go somewhere else for the sweetness. That is just one thought.

It doesn't explain, however, as someone pointed out, why the women are so much nicer, even if they are spanking, in my fantasies. So maybe this was just a lot of rubbish.

In my defence, I can only say, that if there is somewhere where it should be ok to be contradictory and weird, it should be in your very own fantasy land.

More Waiting

I am amazed about the attention my story Waiting created. Mind you, I have managed to write two stories with that name. I am referring to the newer one. There is an older story with that name too, quite different.

Anyway, it seems as if this story captured the imagination of some of you Readers. I am chuffed, I really like that. I have to admit that it was just an idea, something that just happened, a fantasy. I had a very vivid image of what happened and I wrote that down but I don't know the circumstances, who the girl is and why she has to follow orders, who the woman is and what she is planning. Truth is, I have no idea what will follow.

Anyway, long time ago, longer than I feel comfortable thinking about, I got this continuation of the story sent to me. It is once again Ollie who is the creator. He has already written Waiting Another View... and now he follows up with a continuation. The reason I had for waiting (no pun intended) with publishing it was that I thought I should follow it up with my own continuation. I have no idea what it would be so I decided to, at last, put Ollie's story up anyway. With kind permission.

I think this is a continuation I never would have written. Still I think (and perhaps because of that...) it is brilliantly done and with a twist. That we all think so differently about a subject only shows the power of imagination. Read and enjoy!

No-one spoke as the car purred smoothly along, unhurried to its destination.

The expensive woman looked straight ahead, inhabiting her own secret world, maintaining the perfect poise of the rich and contented which I envied but could never share.

If the driver had any emotion he didn't show it. How had he felt when he took me? Was there any pleasure? Was it just a job for him to violate a woman for his mistress? Just something which needed to be done like filling the car with fuel or doing the shopping?

He merely drove, as if he was on a quiet Sunday outing, nothing out of the ordinary, the late summer sun, the first hints of tiredness creeping into the leaves, that dusty taste to the air which remains unstirred by the absent breeze, and a rape to be performed. The banality of the situation started to overcome me, and as the pain from my whipped buttocks began to recede I found myself looking through the window at the scenery passing by. I knew where we were, driving out of the city, through the farmland with its hedges and coppices, the almost overwhelming variety of greens and browns distracting me from my predicament and the impending punishment.

Slowly the landscape of small holdings gave way to larger industrial sized farms, with ugly utilitarian buildings, threatening grey silos like something from a James Bond film and the occasional huge mechanical monster grazing the fields with implacable determination.

On and on we drove, through the late evening, till the sun died bloodily into the wheat white western horizon.

On and into a small town. I knew this place. It was the town where I had been born, grown up, where my parents still lived, and where my roots lay buried shallow.

Through nearly to the centre to an area of tall town houses, where the better off people lived, where I'd hoped, as a girl to own a house one day, knowing all the time that I could not. This place was not for people like me. I might aspire only to serve the people who lived here, perhaps to be used by them, that was all.

The car stopped suddenly, outside a house, black doored, its windows unlit and foreboding.

“You will get out” said the woman. It was not unkind, not even peremptory; just a bald statement of what would happen.

“Wait here”

The car drove off, leaving me beside the road for the second time that evening, waiting, obvious and exposed in my tiny red bikini, its strings frail and vulnerable, as if a wisp of wind would untie them, and send it fluttering down the street, leaving me bare and in public. I felt naked enough already as the evening darkened, and the hopeless insobriety of my attire became more obvious. If I carried a towel it might, just might seem as if I was home from the beach, but I had none, just the scarlet fragments to cover my scarlet soul.

There was a lamp post, and I turned with my back to it, keeping my stripes and my evident wantonness hidden, despite the puddle of growing brightness in which I found myself. I pulled off my hair band and allowed long hair to fall lank about my face, making curtains for me to hide behind. They seemed pitifully thin.

A few people walked by; the women bearing unkind judgemental glances, taking me for what they thought I was, the men taking me also with hypocritical lust. I was to wait, for what I knew not, just that I was to be punished.

Suddenly he was upon me, a man in one of those long leather coats which you see German officers wearing in old war films. He seemed overdressed for the summer evening, but gave the impression that he never wore anything else, the coat was a part of him as naturally as my pathetic bikini was a part of me.

He stopped and I automatically looked down, as if I was not permitted to see his face. He did not disabuse me of this, placing a hand on each shoulder he turned me round, examining the weals on my behind, lifting the bikini bottoms away to see more clearly.

He turned me back and wiped a single finger between my legs, stroking my sex just once, not gently, not with aggression, just a single firm stroke. I expected more, expected him to perhaps invade with his fingers or to remove my clothes and take me a second time here on the street, but he only raised his finger to his nose and inhaled.

A quality control test. Had I been whipped? Had I been penetrated? Was I ready?

He took something long from his coat pocket. A very thin leather belt? Was he going to whip me again then? But no, he took a red leather dog collar with stereotypical conical studs and fastened it round my neck, attached the lead and walked off down the street, making me hurry to keep up.

I was led leashed along the roads I knew so well, through the empty market with its smells of rotting vegetables, past the end of my parents' road where I had been born; where they would be sitting indoors for the evening.

On past the junior school with its spear shaped railings whose paint was always flaking when I was a child. I remembered in a flash standing inside the grounds one break time, picking off pieces of rusty paint, fascinated by the one side being rough and brown, the other faded institutional grey, and being sent to the headmistress for doing so. I had been punished then too.

The man led me jogging on my bare feet to keep close, to shorten the lead, for if I could just make it seem as if I was with him, his equal, then the lead might be invisible, might not be seen by any of the people with whom I had grown up, with whom I had lived, who knew me.

All the time I knew this was a fancy, for my clothes gave me away. I was not his equal, dressed as I was in the most revealing of scarlet scraps, almost every part of me from my scarcely covered too-white breasts to the plain whip marks on my bottom displayed to the world.

He walked as if he owned me, and I trotted obediently after as if he did.

We passed the café where I'd had my first part time job as a waitress, a little money, my first tiny piece of independence, then past the bus stands. I remembered waiting there for the bus to take me away to college to a new life, always waiting.

On we went, passing the school where I had returned to teach, to be placed in charge of the children of my less careful contemporaries. They'd come to the school to parents’ evenings, remembering me, the girl they'd mocked as a boffin, calling me “Miss” with lightly disguised reverse snobbery.

Another layer peeled away; and I let the lead lengthen.

Finally he stopped, and I realised that we were only just round the corner from where I had been left, at a similar house with steps up to the glossy black door and railings protecting it from the unworthy world.

The man tied my lead to a boot scraper on the top step; too short, I had to bend over, place my hands on the upper steps, my feet on the pavement; no option now to hide my behind with its charge of disgrace. I was glad of the small cover my hair afforded, dangling over my face, making me feel slightly hidden in a thicket of my own making.

He left and I waited as the night darkened, with growing discomfort from the position and a sudden realisation that my bladder was full. Now nothing I could do could distract me from the increasing pain in the belly, which could so easily be relieved, and yet at what cost? I was certain that I was watched. I started to dance my feet, desperate not to humiliate myself further, and summoned all my reserves of determination to resist the clarion demand from below.

I was on the point of succumbing and releasing my wet charge when the door above me swung open and a pair of female feet stood on the top step. I lifted my head to see her face; she was dressed as a maid and had a face which would scarcely float a stick on a puddle, much less launch a thousand ships. She looked into my eyes, into my soul and saw what was within. Without speaking she removed my collar and turned away from me, waiting quietly on the step, giving me the opportunity to flee before leading the way into the house. Cravenly I followed.

We went through a darkened hallway, all colour washed away by the night, and into a large room.

It might once have been a banqueting hall, hung with expensive tapestries and gilding on the ceiling, filled with meticulously crafted furniture, each piece containing some of the soul of its maker. Now I expect they used the utilitarian epithet “conference room” though from the conferences I had attended there was very little conferring, merely presentation.

A room carpeted with commercial coldness, it had a low stage at one end. The floor had several small tables with people seated. It felt impolite to look at them, I knew I had no right so to do, but I did. They were plainly dressed, and in all shapes and sizes, what was so shocking was their ordinariness, the image of everyman.

The girl led me to the stage where a spotlight blinded me, making me in an instant totally alone in a crowd, the centre of attention. Apprehension grew in me, my only protection the gossamer of a bikini and my drapes of hair.

A flat disembodied voice, a man's I thought, spoke causing the burble of chatter to subside.

“Why are you here?”

Unused to being addressed and with growing fear I opened my lips to reply, but my mouth was arid, the tongue seemingly swollen to twice its normal size, and no sound appeared.

The voice came again, more kindly this time

“Why are you here?”

Knowing I had to reply I forced the words out:

“I am to be punished”

“You will have to speak louder, everyone needs to hear”

“I am to be punished”

“And are you here of your own free will”

I had to answer:

“Yes”

“And do you truly want this?”

My inner thoughts were being teased out carefully. He knew.

“Yes”

“Is this the deepest craving of your heart?”

There was nothing left. He knew, they all knew, they had seen inside me, seen the desire within my traitorous heart

“Yes”

“Remove your clothing”

I had expected it, but the very act of hearing the order caused something in me to want to rebel. I froze; my arms incapable of obeying even the most urgent strictures of my brain. I thought bizarrely that my pathetic triangles could scarcely be considered clothing, and yet they covered something, just a little, and were enough to give me a small piece of self in this place.

“Remove your clothing”

The order was repeated, and this time I obeyed, removing the top, allowing my breasts to swing free for the audience before pulling the strings of the bottoms and letting my last vestige of dignity fall discarded to the ground.

I heard a noise behind me and my arms were grasped gently by invisible hands. I was turned away from the light and saw a chair facing the audience. It had posts fixed to the front in the shape of a V, and as I was ushered into it I could see at once their purpose.

Wooden horseshoes stuck out from the top of the post, and my ankles were lifted into their support, opening me wide to scrutiny. There were no straps or threats securing me to the chair; I had the knowledge that I was free to leave at any time, I would have to stay here with my legs lifted and separated purely by my own will regardless of what they chose to do, however they wished to punish me.

I had waxed recently, which usually made me feel sexy and powerful, but as I felt their eyes resting greedily on my most intimate parts, I knew I was even more naked without my natural covering. There was nothing, nothing at all between me, my bared soul and those who sought to punish.

The fear began to struggle against my determination, but I found that pride prevented me from flight, prevented me from lifting my legs down and giving myself blessed covering. As I was now stationary and seated the fullness in my bladder returned to the centre of my mind, mocking me with the prospect of losing control not just in the pseudo public of the street, but here in front of a watching audience.

I heard a quiet buzzing behind me, and the fear mounted. Was this some electrical torture device, banned no doubt by the United Nations but now about to be used to inflict pain on this victim?

The buzzing continued, and I felt nothing.

Perhaps it was not, perhaps it was a device they intended to use to arouse me and force me to wanton orgasm again and again here in front of the audience, for their pleasure. I didn't know if I would have preferred the pain.

I felt something touch the back of my neck, cold and vibrating, running up and over my scalp, leaving a cool unfamiliar lightness behind. It was repeated but not in exactly the same place and as I felt a second hank of hair fall the horror of what was transpiring bit deep into me.

I sobbed, pouring out remorse as they continued cutting off my hair.

When my head was completely shaved gentle hands lifted my legs down and the ethereal voice floated across my mind announcing that my punishment was complete, and that I was free to leave, but that I could not wear the bikini. So I was taken by the hand and shown out into the outside world completely naked.

More Talking

Here is a story; or not really a story; something I wrote; one of those dialogues. I feel as if I have written this before. Maybe I am starting to repeat myself. I don't know. Anyway, a conversation between two people. Here it is.

'Do you ever...', she stared in front of her.

Her red haired friend smiled and looked at her.

'Do I ever, what?'

'Nah, nothing,' she replied.

The two women were sitting at the foot of the big statue, overlooking the open plaza. There were people all around but with the cars and and the noise they were strangely alone sitting there. No one would hear.

They had bought tea and were cluthching their paper cups and looking at the city in front of them. The woman with the auburn hair, who had interrupted her speech looked at her friend and saw the setting sun reflect in her red hair and make it shine with a lustre that seemed almost out of this world.

'Come on!' the red haired said, 'come on! Now I am curious.'

'Do you ever feel...feel weird.'

'All the time,' she replied smiling, 'but I don't know if I am in that particular way.'

'In what particular way?'

She sounded a little annoyed.

'The way you are thinking.'

'What am I thinking?'

The red haired woman smiled.

'Come on! Tell me!'

The auburn woman stared out into nothingness.

'I have these strange thoughts,' she said after a while.'

'Like urges or ideas,' she continued.

The red haired nodded for her to continue.

'Have you ever...I mean...have you ever had your bottom...well, smacked.'

Her friend held back a little laugh.

'Pinched but not smacked.'

'What would you think if someone did it, like, smacked your...bottom?'

'You are telling me that you want your bottom smacked?'

'No...well...yes...sort of...I guess.'

'Don't blush! Nothing strange with that. You want a little hanky panky, nothing wrong with that.'

She sat in silence. The red haired woman looked at her and saw that perhap she meant something different. She waited.

'No, not just like that,' the auburn haired woman said in a soft voice.

'In what way then?'

And now the friend's voice was very soft too.

'Oh, I am weird, I am.'

'Are you sure?'

'I can't help it, it is like a poison, all those fantasies. I kind of have those images in my head, when I see a man, someone I fancy, or even if I don't fancy him, some of them are quite...well, repulsive but I always, always think the same.'

She fell silent.

'About smacking your bottom?'

'Yeah, that's the weird point, isn't it? I always see them smacking my bottom. Or smacking my bottom sounds nice. I think of them throwing me over their lap and whacking my bottom, real hard, like with their full strength, like they were angry or something. Hard, on my bottom so that it hurts. I mean, imagine a strong man, smacking your bottom, hard!'

'Yes, I see.'

'You see what?'

'Well, I don't really, or I do. I see what you mean. You have these thoughts of being spanked, that is not so bad. It could be worse.'

'It is worse.'

'They are just thoughts.'

'Well, listen to this! He is not satisifed with just smacking me. He pulls down my trousers and knickers and smacks me on the bare, and it really hurts. Imagine how it hurts? It must hurt, mustn't it? I mean, a strong man, smacking away on your naked bottom. I mean, and he often uses, like a hairbrush or something, something hard, so that it will hurt more.'

'Yes, it hurts, I can imagine. Can't think you are so weird. Spanking is not that strange, really, lots of people do it.'

'You don't do it.'

'Perhaps not, but I am not all and everyone.'

'But I am weird. I know people, sort of, do it, to, sort of, you know...spice up, you know...what they do...in bed. I never thought it was anything more than a few slaps and just like...smack and while you are at it, sort of. This is different.'

'Different?'

'Yeah, like he wants it to hurt, likes it to be bad for me. And I always think he will just take me over his knee, wherever we are, like if I saw someone now, I would think he would do it here. Knickers down and smack my bottom, in public, like he wants to...well, humiliate me and make me suffer, like he wanted all to see.'

'I don't think you are weird.'

'It is weird, the worse he is, the better it is, I sort of always want it to be really bad, like he hits me with something heavy, something I can't stand, somethng that would really, really hurt.'

They sat in silence for a while. The red haired woman looked calm, intrigued. Her friend seemed to be in distress and was looking at her friend with worry in her eyes, as if to seek approval.

'When you think like that,' the red haired said, 'when you think like that, are you aroused?'

The auburn woman took some time before she replied.

'Yes,' she said and looked at her feet, 'I am, very much so, that is the worst, like, as if I wanted it.'

'Maybe you do.'

'I can't, no one can...I can't possibly, who would want...that?'

'I think you do want it.'

The auburn woman looked distraught.

'Do you...ever...want that?' she asked.

'No, never,' the red haired woman said.

Her friend looked devastated, lowered her gaze, blushed.

'I am...I am weird,' she said.

'But,' the red haired interrupted her, 'but I do think of those things.'

'You do?'

'Yes, a lot.'

'But...but, you just said.'

'I said I didn't want to have my bottom smacked.'

'I don't understand.'

'Well, I tend to be the one with the hairbrush.'

The Grey Story

Dear Readers, I am, again, sorry I have taken so long to get another post up but here is a brand new story. I have to warn you though, that this is a dream story, not a spanking in sight, no nudity and no dropped knickers. Those of you who know your H. P. Lovecraft will see that I am, indeed, inspired by the master.

By the way, the picture is a close up of the electric ring from our cooker, after the explosion. It is a very old cooker, I believe it is from the 60s or 70s.

"No eye had seen, no hand had touched that book since the advent of man to this planet."

(The Shadow Out of Time, H. P. Lovecraft, 1936)

In the first dream she found herself flying over a strange and frightening landscape. Before her eyes endless vistas of dead and tormented wasteland stretched to the horizon. The colourless landscape appeared moonlit but there was no moon in the sky. Nor where there any stars or planets. She moved swiftly through an empty sky across an endless wasteland.

The wind hit her face but she sensed no joy, no pleasure. The air seemed stale despite her speed and her whole being was in agony, her soul oppressed by the weight of inevitable doom.

She wanted to cry but there were no tears, she wanted to take a deep breath but she could not fill her lungs.

In this wasted land there appeared a strange city. She knew it was an ancient city, she knew it had not been seen by humans. It was older than man, older than time. It lay there on the surface of the blistered earth, like a blasphemous prayer cut in rock.

She circled the city and in the gloomy light she started to discern some details. She saw a grand edifice in the centre of it. It had the outline of a gigantic dome crowned by a high spire. When she got closer she saw that the dome was not round, not arched but made of gigantic rocks cut in odd angles and placed in a way that made them seem to be thrown there by a giant.

Around the angled dome there lay low grey buildings. She saw no pattern, no order among the buildings, there were no streets, no plazas in the city, only oddly angled open spaces between the houses that were built in strange shapes. It appeared to her as if the whole city consisted of randomly placed shapes that seemed designed by some madness.

She saw that the shapes were not random but built deliberately as they were planned but she could not see a reason or a purpose for the strange shapes. She felt dizzy as she circled the odd city with its distorted grey buildings.

There were no windows and for a moment she thought they were only stones and this was not a city but some odd freak of nature. Then she saw that there were doors. Every building had a square, jet black openings to the interior of the buildings.

She felt herself lowered towards the city. A great horror came over her and her mind was full of fear of having to come close to those distorted structures, to have to see what dwelt inside them

Then she fainted.

She screamed as she woke up and her husband came rushing to her. She was held by strong arms and her mother and the maid came in. She cried and talked as if she was delirious for a long time before she started to calm down.

She wanted to speak of the dream, to tell about the horrible city and the doom that she knew was there but she couldn't. She could not tell anyone. She had no words for what she had seen.

She fell asleep again and this time her husband sat by her side. He was worried about her but did not know the nature of her fear, the cause of her agony. He silently prayed the it was not the madness that had fallen upon her.

The sun was shining as she woke up and slowly the terrible dream faded. She deliberately averted her eyes from the images that still lingered in her head and soon the sun and the green lawns of their house and tea that was served made her heart beat slower and the darkness dissolve.

Although she forgot about the dream the grey fear lingered. She was suddenly afraid of the dark and could no longer stand when the sun was shaded by clouds. She could not explain and she could not tell and she saw in the eyes of her mother, her husband and the maids that they feared for her.

The second dream came some weeks later, when she had started to feel at ease again and when she no longer felt that she had to leave the candle burning at the bedside to be able to go into dreamland without fear.

This dream was different. She was inside a building. The walls were grey and seemed to be made of stone, not blocks standing on each other but smooth stone as if the whole room was cut from the bedrock.

She knew she didn't belong. She knew that she should not be there. She knew she was a stranger. And she knew she was in that city, that horrible city she had seen from the sky.

She was in one of those oddly shaped buildings and when she looked around she saw that the room had more than four walls. She could not count them; five, six or even seven, she could not say but there were more than four.

She was standing on a stone step and she was holding her hands in a kind of basin that seemed to be cut from the same stone as the walls. It had the same grey colour or lack of colour. Her hands were immersed in some strange substance. She found she was kneading a repulsive kind of dough. She imagined it to be made from flour made from the rock, inedible and horrible and forbidden for humans.

Then she realised she wasn't alone. There were others in the room. She knew she could not show her surprise. She had to stay calm. She pulled the hood down over her face. The shapes, the figures that stood around her were cloaked and hooded as she was but she felt her whole body freeze, her breathing stop because of their presence.

They moved in odd, smooth movements but said nothing, gave no sound. She glanced at them from under her hood but she could not make out their shapes. She knew, though, that they were not human.

She was then forming a rounded shape from the dough that seemed to set and become hard under her hands. The ordinariness of her movements and the strangeness of the dough filled her with terror.

She saw an odd kind of instrument lying beside the shape. It had a crooked handle and an edge that had the same grey colour as the walls. She took the instrument with trembling hands and before the dough had become hard as the stone she cut the surface of it with the instrument.

She knew she had no time and felt an overwhelming urge to finish the job before the doom came over her. She cut the surface and struggled with the strange material and marked the shape with a letter, the letter K for her first name. She knew she had to do this, to mark as hers this strange shape she had created.

She didn't scream as she woke up. This time she lay panting and staring at the ceiling. She felt strangely calm. She had gone back to the city and she knew she wasn't done with it.

She could not speak of it. She could not explain and share what she had experienced and in the company of her lovely friends and family she knew that it was only a dream, only a dark shadow that came in the night and scared her.

Her husband had asked her cousin to come visit and he managed to keep her occupied with parties and theatre and all sorts of activities. She knew he was worried. She knew he did it for her, to drive away the evil he feared had come to her. He didn't understand but he knew something was amiss.

She couldn't hide her fear. He noticed how she seem to be startled by any sound when they were sitting together by the fire in the evening and how she never went to bed alone or left the room without company. He knew she was afraid of something. He knew not what it was. She didn't know what it was. Her dreams had faded but she had kept the fear.

When the third dream came she was almost prepared, almost waiting for it. She was back in the city. This time she was in one of those open areas between the houses.

She was moving among those cloaked and hooded creatures. She felt the same fear of giving away she was not one of them. She was carrying the strange loaf or shape she had made the last time she visited the city. She looked at it and saw the letter she had carved in it.

The throng of creatures seemed to move in one direction and she followed, moved among them, tried not to touch them but followed the flow of them. She saw that they were carrying things. Everyone of them were carrying something. Some of them had round things like the one she was carrying, others carried small spire like sculptures crowned with spiked spheres, others carried glowing orbs.

It was at that moment she realised that these creatures had arms and hands. This familiar detail filled her with an unexpected fear and she felt like she was about to faint. She wanted to faint. She wanted to go back to sunshine and husband and green lawns.

She moved among the oddly angled streets and more and more of the cloaked figures joined the crowd. She realised that they were moving towards the angled dome in the centre of the city.

She knew she had to go there, she knew she had to be there among those creatures and move to that dome, to that temple and there she knew she had to do what was required of her. She knew now that the round shape, the strange loaf she had baked and marked was an offering. It was a gift to that which dwelt in the dome.

She knew she should not see what was in that dome. She knew she would not return should she see it. She knew she could not give her offering to it. She looked around but she could not turn around. She had to follow.

She had come to the gigantic dome and she stood at the foot of the stair. She saw the odd angled dome towering over her head and she saw the grey steps leading up to a black opening. She saw the cloaked and hooded creatures scrambling up the stair and entering the dome. She fainted.

This time it took more than an hour before her husband could understand her ramblings. He held her close and felt the fear that held her in its grip. He held her and loved her and wanted her to be safe with him.

She was exhausted and stayed in bed the whole morning but in the afternoon she was well enough to dress and join the others. She tried to smile and say she had had a headache and not felt well but that she now was much improved. They saw that she was still shaken but they reassured her.

Later they went to the museum, the museum of natural history. Her husband knew she loved it and there was an exhibition of fossils that was new to the museum. Anything to keep her mind from wandering, the husband thought.

It was a strange place for the change to take place. She was forever changed when she fainted in the museum. It was inside the new exhibition and no one noticed what happened until she sighed and fell to the floor. Her cousin managed to hold her so she didn't hit the floor too hard and she recovered as she was carried out into the sunshine again.

Those around her didn't noticed the change at first but her husband felt it immediately. It overwhelmed him and it was the fear of that change that made him leave her side, as he had never done before and go back into the museum.

He went back to the place where she had fainted and stood in the place she had stood and he looked at the showcase she had been looking at. There was nothing special there, just a round grey rock with a fossil in its surface. He looked at it and found it odd that the fossil, black against the grey looked very much like the letter K.

Emptiness

Daydreaming, fantasising, letting your mind fly, call it what you want but there is something pleasant in it. We use our imagination to conjure up something nice, perhaps, to flee from our mundane everyday life. That is how it often is perceived and how it works for many people. That is how it is supposed to work.

I find that I am not very good at escaping to fantasy land when I am stressed out, angry or really sad, the times when I need it most. My fantasies are most colourful when I am in a good mood.

When I am happy or inspired I like going there, to roam in the endless green forests of dream country, to stand in awe in front of the high castles, to be amazed by the temples and spires and golden domes of unheard of cults. Then I stare at beautiful slaves and grim warriors of ancient and impossible times. When I am in a good mood I give in to the passions of the slave and the excitements of captivity and strange submission. On a stage, in my mind, I see strange dramas play out, some of them become stories, others stay in my head.

But when I am stressed out and angry it seems as if my imagination doesn't work. Then there is no inspiration and no colourful dreamland. That is sad.

That is where I am now. Don't really know why it is like that at the moment but I don't seem to have time for stories and fantasies and that gets to me. I don't like that.

Today something scary happened. I work from home a lot and today when I was preparing lunch an electric ring on our cooker exploded. Or at least it seemed like an explosion. There were flames and strange sounds and it was like a firework. I have never seen anything like it before.

So, please, forgive me for a gloomy and uninspired blog post. I wish I could write something nice and inspiring but today I am not in the best mood for that.

What I Saw

Back again. Broadband is working although it is still too slow, only a quarter of the speed we pay for. Anyway, here is a little story I have written. You know me by know. I am still struggling with this sense of disbelief regarding all those fantasies and activities.

I had been fascinated from the moment she mentioned it, fascinated and appalled. At first I thought she told me just to tease me, to try to make me believe something that was just silly, and foolish to believe. Then I realised that it was actually true. From that moment I was obsessed with it.

When she later told me I could join her, or rather be a witness, I said no. I didn't want to be involved. It was too far removed from me for that. She had to ask me several times before I realised I wanted it. I wanted to see it.

I had met her partner before. I didn't like him. He was the kind of man you couldn't trust. He was handsome in some strange way but there was also something immensely menacing about him. He scared me in a way I didn't understand. I confided once in her and told her about this. She laughed at me and said that it was because he was too much a man for me.

That evening, the evening when I was to see it I stood in front of their door with pounding heart. I thought of turning around and leaving but I didn't.

It was he who opened the door and in the instant his eyes fell on me I realised my mistake. My sleeveless dress was too short and too sleeveless and too clinging for that man. His dark eyes seemed to scrutinise me.

He was dressed in jeans and a shirt, he was unshaven and I thought he tried to look rugged, rough and ready. Maybe he even wanted to impress me with his manliness, his male charisma.

He had dark, very intense eyes and I felt that I could love those eyes if they had not belonged to him. He scared me and the glint in his eyes made me feel like he had plans for me, not only his partner.

My friend joined us and took me by the arm and led me into the house. I felt relieved to not have to stand alone in the hallway with that man.

She explained to me that this was a punishment and that it was not for fun. She didn't specify why she was to be punished, she said it was enough that I knew she deserved it.

She placed me in an armchair and I sat down. It was a too comfy armchair, the kind you could lean back in and fall asleep in, but that was too awkward to sit in with a skirt that didn't reach beneath your knees. I pressed my legs together and tried to look relaxed.

I was given a glass of wine and was told not to interfere or talk. I nodded consent, unable to speak. My mouth was dry and my body trembling. I felt awkward and wrong, an uninvited guest, a stranger that was not welcome despite all the reassuring words she spoke in her soft voice.

The repulsive man came into the room and my friend, suddenly became another person. She stopped being the smiling, self assured and bubbly friend I knew and stood silently waiting.

The man ignored me and gazed at my friend. He looked stern, almost angry. He made a gesture towards the sofa and my friend hurried away. She was dressed in a white and wide shirt and thin and wide blue linen trousers.

She untied the drawstring in her trousers and swiftly pulled them down. They fell to her feet. I heard myself gasp and felt my heart beating harder. The man made another gesture and my friend pulled down her knickers. It was all done very swiftly and without any ceremonies. She moved as casually as if she were taking her coat off in the hallway.

All this shocked me. I knew what was to happen but to see my friend take down her trousers and knickers like that was still quite strange. Despite the swiftness and the casual way she did it, the mood in the room had changed. I didn't dare to breathe and I saw that she was shivering a little.

At another gesture she leaned forward and placed herself over the armrest of the sofa. She seemed to know the drill. I watched in amazement as she adjusted her body so her very naked bottom was sticking up.

The awkwardness and strangeness of the situation made me almost want to laugh. We were some friends in an ordinary sitting room but one of us was now lying with naked bottom over the armrest of the sofa. It was absurd.

I stared at my friend's white and very soft bottom. I had seen her naked before but she appeared more vulnerable than ever.

The man was now standing behind her. I gasped again as I saw what he held in his hand. She had talked about the cane but in his hand it looked menacing.

I felt my cheeks burn as I saw him place the cane against her bottom, her very naked and vulnerable bottom. I held my breath as he lifted it and I didn't breathe as he waited.

I jumped as he let the cane fly through the air with its evil hiss and then land on my friend's bottom with a sharp report.

I cringed as I realised the power he had used. I didn't know if he used all his strength but he was not gentle. He had struck her hard and she gasped for air. I saw a welt appearing across her buttocks and I felt dizzy, not able to comprehend what I was seeing.

He had hit her and I felt in my body how it must hurt. I couldn't understand how someone could hit someone like that, just to cause pain. It was even harder to accept that someone would accept this to happen to her.

He hit her again and she moved about a little. My heart started pounding and I was transfixed. I didn't want to watch but I could not take my eyes from it. I could not understand how she could endure this brutality.

He gave her ten more, I counted them, twelve in total. She didn't cry, she didn't scream but I could see that she was in pain. She moaned a little and wriggled her bottom. But the man felt no pity. He whipped her remorselessly.

When it was over, she got up, pulled up her knickers and trousers. The man had left the room. She turned to me and I saw her flushed cheeks. And to my utter amazement, she smiled.

I didn't have to meet the man again. My friend asked me if I wanted anything but I just shook my head. She escorted me to the door and I left. She gave me a hug and I stumbled out into a strange world.

My heart was beating wildly. I was shocked and appalled and scared of what I had seen. I could not understand it. I knew they did this for pleasure. She liked it, she had told me she liked it. I could not understand it.

Later, that evening, I stood in my room, in front of my mirror. I had turned my back to the mirror and was looking at my own bottom. I could not imagine, ever, to let anyone take a cane to it. It was too brutal, too painful, too impossible to think of.

But what was I to do with that other aching sensation in my body, the one that wouldn't go away, the one I knew but didn't want?

Broadband

Dear reader, I am sorry I have taken so long to blog. It is more than a week now and there will be no story this time either. I have been a little annoyed this week. Friday afternoon when I was about to connect to the glorious Web my modem refused to work. After some testing and thinking and trying to figure out what was wrong I called support. I spent half an hour in a queue. I hate queues so I wasn't my sunniest self when I finally got through. I wasn't rude or anything but not a happy coney either.

It took some time to explain that I hadn't installed anything new, hadn't changed socket and that I had indeed tried another computer, another modem and several other filters and cables and still the same symptoms. Finally the kind man at the other end realised that it may be some real problem here. He promised to call back on Saturday which he did and told me it was something with the 'exchange'. And it could take up to a week to fix.

Broadband was dead until Wednesday when it lived for a while, died again and then worked. Thursday came with more problems and then it working again. Today it has been working all day but only with a quarter of the supposed speed.

I could have been busy writing stories during this time but I do need my broadband for work and I get annoyed and frustrated so I really had no inspiration for blogging. I am sorry about that. To add to my ordeal I had to go to the dentist on Tuesday, only a minor thing but I am really scared of dentists so it was still a kind of ordeal. To be honest I cope quite well nowadays, I have, almost, conquered my fear. When I was younger I had to tell myself, while sitting there waiting for the dentist, that I would survive, I would in half an hour walk out of that door and live.

This fear of dentists makes me think about how this affects my fantasies. There are things that reminds me of the dentist. Being very scared for something and having to wait for it. having someone being intrusive and even hurting you, something that I have to submit myself to and accept. I think I recognise some elements in my fantasies there. I think that, perhaps, I take something that scares me and include it in my fantasies and conquer it by making something positive of it.

Next week will be more normal, I hope and I will try to blog like I use to. Take care and do something nice!!