Redefining Punishment... Again

Hot breezes brush our faces as we exhale. That which I say next surprises me as much as Cathryn.

"I love you, Cathryn! I've loved you since I first laid eyes on you, only...yesterday!"

Her eyes twinkle, almost moist.

"You're the most lovely, beautiful, comely, stunning young lass I have ever seen in all my life!"

"Any beauty of mine cannot begin to compare to your own, me dahling!"

I cannot contain my joy. I squeeze Cathryn so tightly she almost pops. "I adore you, angel!" I cry.

Her fingers ride through my mane. "Me dreams have come true since I met you, princess!"

"This is a true fairy-tale! Love at first sight! Oh, this was all I could think about with you yesterday, Cathryn Taylor!"

"I knew something magical drew me here! Oh, Delilah Gainey, you're everything Mum told me you were and more!"

"Mum...yes..."

...Mum?

Mommy??

I gasp. "Oh, no!" I lament. "We can't! Cathryn, we cannot do this! Mommy won't allow it!"

The disappointment reads clear in her face.

"But...but, I'm-I'm sure if we ask her for permission, she will!" I hopefully amend.

"Oh, I do hope so!" says my sister. She places one hand on my cheek and the other on my breast. "I just crave you so, Delilah!"

Cathryn bats her eyes at me.

...Her little innocent cat-like eyes...

...Like the little innocent kitty-cat she is...

...I cannot, resist, those eyes.

I settle back down into the bed with her.

"Well, maybe we'll just ask a little later," I sigh dreamily, slipping my hands under her jammie top.

She giggles. "Oooh, that tickles, Delilah!" She pecks my cheek. "I like it."

I fondle her belly, up to her waiting, shapely, curvaceous breasts, which I can tell are beautifully perky without even having to see them. I shan't be taken wrong, however; I most certainly do want to see them.

I stop just before, nuzzling her nose.

"May I?"

She beams with longing.

"How I do wish you would."

I grin, eyes glued to her face, smoothing my thumbs over her nipples. My jubilation is multiplied tenfold as I watch her face wince into a mask of relinquent pleasure. Her head cranes back, accentuating her swan-like neck. My smile spreads ear to ear.

My touch is magic.

She likes me.

I take her in anew. Her rich, full, thick brunette locks, her gentle, unassuming feline-like baby greens, her soft, straight-edged adorable nose, her expressive, smile-framing, blushy cheeks, her pink, almost fuchsia, velvety lips, her flawless complexion—which could lure anyone into thinking she's wearing makeup when she is not—her sumptuous curves, her brilliant lines, her...

...Her Promised Land. The upper peninsula. The majestic valley betwixt her luxurious orbs.

Up goes her pajama top.

And there they lie. Modest-sized but amply pleasing, dancing with jiggles at the slightest touch, just for me.

I begin by kissing them. Softly, tenderly, gingerly. My lips leave the most delicate graces upon her heaving flesh. So supple, so proud, so elegant, so grand, so...

She gropes me.

"Ohhh!" I groan. "Oh, sweetheart..."

"Baby..." I hear her coo to me.

Dare I adjourn to the lower peninsula of your precious Promised Land?

Cathryn whips off her pajama top for me and begins to do the same with her bottoms.

Oh, my Goddess...yes, yes, please...

I am seconds away from bringing my trembling hand to rest on my dear sister, Cathryn Athena Taylor's...

...Waiting...yearning...dampening...oh, I am so close! Oh, I can taste it! Her...

Her...

"AND JUST WHAT IN THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?!"

My heart stops.

Our eyes fill with horror.

Mommy.

We freeze in action, knowing we have been caught.

Oh, have we been caught.

***

October 12th, 11:03 a.m.

Our proverbial geese are cooked.

We have been forced down into the dungeon. Our hearts are pounding like wildfire. I have been bolted to the far wall in the corner, in the same spot where Mommy fixed me to stay on Mother's Day, after she punished me the first time for my tardy arrival, and subsequently adopted me. I am shackled and facing the center of the room, trying best I can to hold my eyes closed, so that I mustn't behold the terrifying sight awaiting me.

My forbidden angel has been suspended by her ankles—again, just as I had been in May—frightened from her poor mind. Mere words cannot begin to describe the magnitude of my shame. I have allowed my infernal hormones to interfere with the harmony of our happy household, and now...I have made the ultimate sacrifice. I have led her directly into this imprisonment. It could be no less Cathryn's doing. I committed the breach, and now the love of my fairy-tale life...

...Is about the pay the price for it.

Herself.

Cathryn will soon be run through with the quite literal heat and hell with which I am only too familiar.

I am silently weeping before Mommy even arrives in the dungeon.

How could I have allowed this to happen??!

It is simple, really; I am a bad girl.

A very bad girl.

It seems evident I have failed to learn my lesson.

"I am so, so sorry, Cathryn, I am so, so very sorry," I repeat again and again. "This is my fault. Completely, my fault."

I've not the first what Cathryn is, may or would be saying were she able to speak to me. I shan't blame her if she doesn't again. I have betrayed her, beyond all known reaches of sin.

I am certain most of the blood has left her feet by now. One part of me wants Mommy to come down here and just have done with this so that we may cry, bleed, ache and perhaps one day heal. The other part of me wishes she would never rejoin us and we could be blessed with the privilege of starving to death instead.

Alas, we do at last hear the sharp clap! clap! clap! of Mommy's heeled boots growing louder and closer as she nears to make us wish we were never born. She takes her time, prolonging the already unbearable torment.

I hear a swishing sound accompanying the boot clacking. I open my eyes, and immediately regret doing so. Mommy is holding and brandishing about her infamous cat-o'-nine-tails, with which she too has traumatized me as well, whipping it in an ominous figure eight pattern. My poor pussy smarts just remembering the sound with which the horrific device threatens.

She glares back and forth between us. Finally, she speaks.

"Now, then...I believe that I have adequately devised just such a punishment, to fit the severity of your crime, young ladies..."

This is too much. I reflexively try to throw out what I already know is a futile but necessary plea.

"Mommy, please! Please, don't punish Cathryn! It was all my doing! Honestly! I coerced her! It was I who seduced her, and she innocently succumbed to me! If anything, punish me, twice as severely! Please, Mommy, PLEASE! PLEASE let her go!!"

She turns to the nearest wall and in one sharp, fluid gesture cracks the cat-o'-nine-tails against it. We gasp as the reverbing echo crashes around the room, like a vicious thunderstrike.

"SILENCE!"

We obey.

Mommy smooths out the nine tails and paces around us, in slow, daunting strides.

"As I own and exercise full power of authority inside this home...Cathryn...Delilah...your collective fate lies in my hands. And as is well within my rights, as your adopted guardian...administration and distribution of said punishment remains my, and only my decision, to make.

"...And my will...shall be done.

"NOW...as I was saying...you, Delilah, will go into the adjoining boiler room and shall be shut inside until such time as business between our Miss Cathryn Taylor and myself is concluded."

I am not sure I quite understand. The...boiler room? But...why?

"Um...per-permission to speak freel—"

"Permission denied." She marches on me and detaches me from my corner. She points to the floor. I lower myself on hand and knee, and she walks me into the boiler room. Once inside, she shuts the door from the exterior and slides the lock into place with a solitary click. I spring to my feet, pad back to the door on tippy-toe to attempt reducing the echo, and cautiously try the knob. Indeed, it is secured.

Panic-stricken, I try to think rational thoughts, and to arrange them in an order that makes some sense. I am petrified of what is to follow, and yet, my curiosity also holds a hand in the given situation. Why has Mommy banished me inside here?

My first consideration to mind is illogical. The echo from the dungeon does carry into the boiler room, I know this, and so Mommy has organized such a castigation whereby I shall...hear Cathryn's suffering torment, but not see it? It would seem to me that in order to effectively in turn torture me, she should surely force me to view the ensuing horror show, taking it all in with my own eyes, a blend of images and sounds that would forever haunt my senses and wreak havoc on my mental peace.

On the other hand, I next process, leaving it all wholly and unanimously up to my imagination to conjure, by a token, could be argued as a severer abuse, I suppose. Mommy and I are both fully well aware that I know of just what she is capable, both via proxy, and first-hand experience. If fed code decipherable only by the auditory organs...

...The mind indeed may just terrorize itself, a dozen times over, able to merely speculate nature of the mayhem.

Oh, dear me...oh, this is not fun to think about.

So this might yet prove more excruciating, more inexorable, more tempestuous a method. I must remind myself that Mommy is omniscient, and knows always what she does. She—

Just a moment...what is happening?

My thoughts are interrupted by the semi-faint sound of Mommy's voice on the other side of the cement wall.

Oh...I know I am going to regret this, still...I press my ear to the bricks.

"You've disappointed me, Cathryn."

OH, NO. Oh, no, Mommy, not "disappointed!" I know what that means!

"Worse yet, you have deceived me.

"You have demonstrated a grave infraction of your owner and guardian's personal instruction and design, under her own shelter and property. Are you aware...of what this means?"

Yes! Say yes! SAY YES, Cathryn!

She whimpers. I barely make out her timid response.

"I...I do not, Mum."

Oh, hell.

For a few more moments I hear nothing save for Mommy's footsteps. I am uncertain where she is, or which way she is taking.

It comes before I can even begin to anticipate.

SNAP!!

"AAAAAOOOWWW!!" Cathryn cries out in a bloodcurdling shriek.

I believe her exclamation is followed up by a bawling, "NO, MUM, PLEASE!" but I have been sliced through the heart by the first far too blindingly to distinguish anything more. I collapse to my knees.

"NOOOOOO!!" I roar, fruitlessly slamming my clenched fists against the boiler room wall. I break down and cry along.

WHACK!!

"OOOOOOWWWW!! PLE-E-E-EASE, MUMMY-Y-Y-Y!"

My own screams harmonize with my sister's, almost somehow euphoniously. I wing my head back and forth, flinging paw and palm against the door and walls. I am sealed, and I know it. But I do not process it. Cathryn's wracking sobs continue to penetrate and cut me deeper and deeper, slashing my heart, mind and soul to lonesome shreds.

"Perhaps NEXT time you'll think TWICE before causing poor Mummy such GRIEF! Hmmm??!"

Another snap of the weapon. Such bestial, primal screams have I never heard before. I die inside. I suffer for her.

"SPEAK, slave!!" SLAP!!

"AAAAAAAAAAHHH!! YES, MUMMY-Y-Y!"

"InDEED! And won't poor little Delilah be heartbroken to find that you cannot use THIS for months at a time!" WHAPP!!

Another agonized screech. Oh, I can take no more. I despise myself for doing so—feeling as if I am abandoning her in some way—but I jam my fingers in my ears and seek cover behind the water heater.

Oh, it is hot inside. It is so hot I am dripping with sweat, in my own bared flesh, especially behind the heater, but its comforting, loud hum shields me from the aural horror oozing through the walls. I must keep my ears plugged simultaneously, but at last, try as I might, I can hear no more.

I feel selfish, but there is nothing I can do. I cannot break through to throw myself into the path of the brutal cat-o'-nine-tails, nor can I rewind time to erase this dreadful act from history.

All I can do is...wait it out.

Wait...

...And cry.

***

October 12th, 2:02 p.m.

As expected, Mommy knew what she was doing to me all along. Her method of torture was direct and merciless, compounded by a despicable ultimatum: burn up a bit by the wall listening to Cathryn's painful whipping...or take refuge behind the water heater, unable to hear the terror, but hence burn up all but to the point of suffocation.

Streams of solution mixing tears and sweat pour from my head. Just about by the point I am ready to surrender my sanity—

Click! Snap! Creeeeeeeaaak...

I exercise discretion, slowly removing my index fingers and looking up.

The door is open.

Part of me does not even wish to leave. After simply hearing what poor, poor Cathryn has been subjected to, this doomful portion of my will wishes to just stay here and sear, perspiring and burning away until I literally melt to death. I am shattered. The love of my life has been assaulted, nay, annihilated by our evil, horrible Mommy...

...No.

Not Mommy.

Mistress Helen. This woman could not be my Mommy. I was mistaken all along. I had allowed myself to be lured in by her charms and believe that she really did love me. She did not. She cared nothing for me. Ever.

I just feel so betrayed, and so destroyed, on a dozen different levels.

"Oh, Delilah, dear?" she calls. "Time to come out!"

I care no longer what she may say or do to me. I need to look her in the eyes and say one thing to her, right now.

I emerge from behind the water heater, pawing traces of sweat and teardrops from my eyes, trying to focus. I'm dizzy, disoriented, and I have a terrible pounding headache. But I am determined to say this one single thing.

As I near the door, shuffling along in my shackles—I have become so used to them, I hardly even notice they are there anymore—Mom—Mistress Helen's figure floats into my sight line. I narrow my eyes into hostile, piercing slits.

I muster my courage, and finally push the words out.

"You are a horrible person.

"I detest you.

"You are not my Mommy.

"You are a sadistic...tyrannical...vindictive...psychotic BEAST.

"I never wish to see you again.

"I would sooner kill myself than ever forgive you."

She waits until I am finished, and sighs, clapping off her hands.

"Such is life," she philosophizes. "Alas, young Delilah...not all wishes can be granted.

"Yet..." She leaves my scope of vision.

How dare you walk away from me! I think furiously, marching and metallically rattling after her.

Her voice continues.

"Yet, if you believe...

"If you truly believe, just intently enough...just hard enough, dear Delilah..."

I stamp back outside, in angry pad-pad-pads, to where she and Cathryn await.

"...Tragedies of today...

"...Can reveal themselves to be but mere incidents of yesterday."

I stop in my tracks, dumbstruck by what I see.

Cathryn Athena Taylor stands before me...in an ostensible total of no agony whatsoever...

...Wearing a soft pale yellow Renaissance peasant blouse...knee-high stockings...and patent buckle low platforms.

What on Earth...?

"Delilah Olivia Gainey...

"...I'd like you to meet Cathryn Athena Taylor."

I am positively confounded.

"Wh—...WHAT?! What in the hell is going on?!" I demand to know, half a mind to repeat the ferocious question she barked at us in the bedroom, scaring the very daylights from us.

"It's really quite simple, my dear little waif. You see, my young apprentice Cathryn is a talented, locally theatrical actress."

She pauses before going on. Registering this random piece of information, I cannot define what I am feeling just now, but I do not believe it a peaceful, easy, happy thought.

"And once I had seen for myself just how marvelous she was, I decided to...sort of adopt her."

My eyes narrow, darting back and forth at them.

"What do you mean, 'sort of'?"

"Why, much rather in the same way that I adopted you, my pet," smiles Mistress Helen calmly. "With, you might say, something of a twist added. Knowledge in much that Cathryn is a skilled actress, as well as the fact that she too dwells alone, I elected to bring her home with me, to meet you. You see, Delilah, I knew that you would fall helplessly in love with her."

"W-what?? How could you know that??"

She laughs. "Why, Delilah, have so soon you forgotten? Mommy Helen knows everything." She advances a few paces on me.

"I know you better than you know yourself."

Cathryn jumps into the story, narrating, to my utter astonishment, now with no British accent whatsoever.

"Right, Delilah. So then, Mistress Helen says to me, why don't we h—"

My hands go up. "WHOA! Whoa, wait a minute here!

"You're not British??!"

She grins at me. "Pretty good, huh? Had you fooled!"

As this diabolical story continues, I begin to feel my blood boil just a tiny bit.

Cathryn goes on. "So she says, 'I know Delilah will just go wild for you, so why don't you pretend like you have the exact same feeling when you first see her?'"

My heart liquefies, and splatters my insides.

"...What?"

Mistress Helen takes over. "Yes. Then we decided further, Delilah knows that I do not permit unauthorized acts of an intimate nature in my home, so why don't you seduce her along a bit, let her do the rest, and then let me catch you in the act?"

...

"...WHAT??!"

"That's right," says Cathryn. They are both being totally matter-of-fact with their replies to me, as if this is no big deal at all! "Which of course then led into our final act here."

"That it did," adds Mistress Helen. She retrieves the cat-o'-nine-tails, demonstratively rears back, snaps her wrist and lets loose with a sickening CRASH!...

...On the floor, to my downright shock.

At the sound, Cathryn lets out what I now can incredulously deduce is an artificial thespian cry, for my edification—

"AAAAAAAAAAOOOOWWWW! PLEASE, MUMMY, NO!!"

"Sound familiar?" asks Mistress Helen.

As the puzzle is finally put together for me, I find myself abruptly...seeing red.

Lots...of red.

"You mean...

"...That you tricked me??! This was all just a hoax?! A-a-a...a performance, for God's sake??!"

"Brilliantly worked out, young Delilah!" congratulates Mistress Helen. "Take a bow, Cathryn!"

They do. They bow, right the hell in front of me. Suddenly, my blood is boiling so furiously I can practically hear it.