Kaylee's Keeper (8 page)

An open kitchen fed into a home-style dining room, complete with adult-sized highchairs and a table for the "big" kids. Two full-time nurses were hard at work in the medical office, with at least one patient already in residence. The curtains were wide open, granting the patient no privacy at all while he was bent over the end of an exam table. One nurse was preparing to take his temperature and, with his pants already dangling around his ankles, it was not destined to happen orally. The other was filling an enema bag. Kaylee had no idea what he’d been brought there for, but judging from his worried look it did not look good.

Feeling no desire to watch, Kaylee turned and instead stared through the open window into one of three Time-Out rooms, each one clearly labeled. One was in use and though she couldn’t hear a sound, the young lady within was clearly not being quiet. Her mouth was distended from shouting, her face was wet with tears, her feet and one free arm were kicking and flailing wildly, and yet her governess continued to paddle away with steady vigor and very little mercy. A Bad Baby paddle hung on each of the other two doors, patiently awaiting the next misbehavior to be corrected. Kaylee wasn’t even tempted. She wasn’t comfortable. She was, in fact, seriously unnerved.

Rooted to the linoleum, Kaylee glanced nervously at Abigail, standing patiently beside her, and hugged her backpack tighter. Her fingers were beginning to ache from the strain. “I don’t think this is, er—” How could she say this without offending any of the other ‘littles’ within earshot? “—quite right…for me.”

Patting her back, Abigail just smiled. “Judging by the outfit you chose, I suspected as much. Come along, sweetheart. You’re very late for school.”

She led Kaylee through the nursery, past "babies" spread out on toy-filled blankets and "toddlers" busily coloring with crayons, and out through the other side into a long and narrow barracks-style bedroom. Rows of single cots interspersed with private lockers lined both walls all the way down to yet another door.

“Your barrack’s attendant sleeps there,” she said, pointing to an office positioned halfway between both doors. There was a lethal-looking two-tongued strap hanging from a hook on the wall. “His name is Mr. Collins and he tends toward no-nonsense, so consider yourself warned.”

Eying that well-used length of strap, Kaylee followed Abigail to the far door and outside onto a huge patio of stone and steps that overlooked the east garden. From here, Kaylee could see a waist-high hedge maze, dotted by a fountain in the center, lawn chairs on a narrow stretch of well-kept lawn and a few picnic tables.

“For school breaks and after dinner,” Abigail explained, continuing straight on across the second-floor patio and into a grand library every bit as magnificent as the one downstairs, minus the television set. Here, books lined the walls from floor to ceiling and wrapped the entire room, fully surrounding two long rows of tables with chairs enough to comfortably accommodate (or perhaps not so comfortably, considering the cushion-less seats) twenty or so visitors. “Everything you need to help with your homework assignments you can find in here.”

“Homework?” Kaylee almost laughed, except Abigail did not appear to be joking. “Seriously? We have to do schoolwork?”

“The school has been in a state of rebellion practically from the moment of its conception,” the governess said, making no effort to hide her amusement. “Still, on the off-chance that you might occasionally want to sit down or avoid Mr. Collins’ strap for incomplete grades, then you have that option. I tell everyone this their first day here, but almost no one pays me any attention. By the second day, it’ll be standing room only, I promise you.”

Kaylee tingled at the implication and on through the room they went, filing into the narrow hallway beyond.

“These stairs take you straight to the lunch cafeteria.” Abigail pointed to the left end of the hall. “To the far right is the Meeting Room where you might be called if you warrant a visit from either Principal Shaffer or the duty Daddy who will be assigned to ‘drive in’ from out of state to deal with your poor behavior.”

It looked like such an innocuous door, complete with an obscured-glass window crowned with the words ‘Principal’ in neat, black ink. Her bottom tingled all over again.

“These are our three schoolrooms: gym—” she pointed, “—foreign languages and detention. There is no assigned schedule. You are encouraged to visit all three. Simply take your books with you when you leave at the start of your regular break and enter a new room by the end of said break. Switching classes in the middle of the hour is viewed as running out of one class and arriving tardy to the next. Discipline will be meted out for each offense accordingly, and just to be clear, we don’t often bang erasers here. Do you understand?”

“You’re telling me I’ll be spanked by one teacher for leaving and the next for arriving.”

“You might also land yourself a visit from Principal Shaffer or Daddy Dearest, and then just wait until your barracks attendant gets his hands on you. I sincerely recommend you play by the rules as much as possible since little infractions have their way of snowballing wildly. After a day or two once you get the hang of things, then if you crave more, you can dig yourself into a nice deep hole.”

Kaylee shifted a little. That actually made good sense. “Got it.”

“Every spanking you receive is a demerit earned and accumulated throughout your stay. On your last night, you will be given the chance to clear your demerits by writing an essay, the topic of which will be selected for you. Or, if you’d rather, the morning of your scheduled departure, Principal Shaffer will be happy to clear those demerits the good old-fashioned way. At that point, I guarantee two things are going to happen. One, you will leave here knowing exactly how it feels to receive a real disciplinary caning, with the quantity of demerits determining the number of strokes (we do not believe in a nice comfortable ratio of one for one, by the way). And two, you will leave here unable to sit down. The choice is entirely yours.”

Images of Master Marshall’s cane planted itself firmly in her mind. Kaylee stared at the three classroom doors, her palms already beginning to feel damp. She rubbed them against her trembling thighs. She had come a long way for this. She began to feel a little giddy again as she tried to guess the math. She had come here specifically to be spanked. She hoped she got it more than once. But if once meant a minimum of two real cane strokes and more than once meant more than that…the giddiness intensified. Her bottom fairly crawled. She suddenly became very much aware of the slow, erotic pulse as the flow of her blood shifted, warming low down in the pit of her belly and making her sex throb. How hard was ‘real’ and how many strokes did she want to take? She wasn’t sure, but what she did know was this: she had absolutely no intention of writing any essays.

“Ready?” Abigail asked.

Maybe.

“Sure,” Kaylee replied.

“One more thing.” When Kaylee looked at her, Abigail’s smile grew. “Are you a new student here, or did I just discover you cutting class?”

* * * * *

Kaylee walked into gym class first and promptly turned around and walked back out again when she found herself staring at eight women in a common shower while the ‘teacher’—a burly woman in shorts, sweatshirt and authoritarian whistle hanging around her neck—barked orders at them. She gave the detention hall (the next door over) a long look, but then walked into the actual classroom.

There was a woman standing in the corner with twin blonde braids hanging down her back. She had a dunce cap on her head, her skirt was pinned up around her waist and four neatly parallel and deep red lines laddered across the lowest curve of her naked buttocks. Kaylee had no idea where her panties were. She wasn’t wearing any, not even tangled up around her ankles.

It was a small class, filled by ten good little schoolgirls in nearly identical uniforms and from the moment Kaylee received her “Welcome to St. Castle’s, Sarah. Now, please find a seat and we’ll begin” speech, from the very back row, Selena’s hand shot into the air and she was beckoned down the row of desks to the rear of the room.

“I’m so glad you changed programs!” Selena very softly squealed and then grabbed her arm, ushering her into her seat. “We’re going to be best friends and get into sooo much trouble together!”

She was thrilled, practically bubbling with enthusiasm. Kaylee was a little more subdued and slid into the desk/chair combo beside Selena. She tried to smile back, despite the sudden knots that her stomach became when the teacher shot Selena a Look and included her in his disapproving frown.

“Settle down, Amy,” he warned. “Or do I need to put your names on the blackboard?”

Including Kaylee, there were now eleven women in this class (not including the dunce) and seven names on the blackboard. Some even had checks behind them. For such a small class, that was a lot of misbehavior.

“No, Mr. Emerson.” Selena turned the volume down on her excitement…or at least, what must have been down for Selena. She was still grinning and bouncing in her seat, and shooting Kaylee a slew of devious ‘I-can’t-wait-to-misbehave’ grins.

“Back to our books, then. Sarah, we’re studying our French tenses—past, present and future. Page fifty-three. Repeat after me: I have been a very bad girl.
J'ai été une fille très mauvaise.
”

Kaylee quickly unpacked the language arts book Wardrobe had provided while her fellow students obediently echoed the phrase back to him, first in English and then French. A smattering of giggles accompanied the foreign phrase. Selena was one, turning to give Kaylee a shoulder-hunching, nose-wrinkling grin at the end.

The teacher pretended not to notice. He walked the aisles between the three rows of desks, trailing a lithesome switch behind him while he recited, “I am a very bad girl.
J'étais une fille très méchante
.”

Kaylee flipped rapidly to page fifty-three and managed to get her tongue untied enough to fall into sync with everyone else. She stumbled a little on the French part, but she wasn’t the only one mangling the fragile foreign nuances and that made her feel better.

Mr. Emerson nodded, continuing his leisurely pace as he strolled around Selena’s chair and continued back down the aisle between her and Kaylee, heading for the front of the room. “In future, I will be a very bad girl again.
À l'avenir, je serai une fille très méchante encore
.”

There was more than just a smattering of giggles that accompanied this repetition and Kaylee found herself far from immune, although probably not for the same reason as everyone else. Her nerves were tightening, responding to the giddiness of the room. Her palms began to sweat and each time she stumbled over the French approximation of "bad girl" she couldn’t quite keep herself from squirming a little. Apparently, neither could Selena. She couldn’t seem to hold still for more than a few seconds at a stretch.

Mr. Emerson smirked, that switch in his hand beginning to bob in cadence as he waited for their recitation to conclude. “Please give me a spanking.
Donnez-moi, s'il vous plaît, une fessée
.”

Kaylee blushed. Mr. Emerson locked his eyes on each of them in turn, and when he got to her, unable to hold his gaze, she looked at her tightly clenched hands instead. She flushed hotter, her tongue tied and her body quivered, titillated. “Please give me a spanking.” Her whole body thrilled, as if she weren’t parroting the phrase but asking him directly. “
Donnez-moi, s'il vous plaît, une fessée
.”

And he answered. “Certainly, ladies. Stand.”

Three rows of schoolgirl marionettes stood up at their desks, startling Kaylee all over again. Her bottom tingled intensely as she followed suit, her sweaty fingertips dancing and tapping nervously at her open schoolbook and along the sides of her narrow desk top.

That slender switch no longer tucked behind him, Mr. Emerson took up his position to the right of the first girl in the front right row. “Bend,” he said, and like one, every girl put herself flat over her desk.

Kaylee belatedly followed their lead—hands grasping onto the far side of her desk, her bottom rounding prominently. Most of those around her held themselves straight and properly still. Some, like Selena, wiggled in nervous excitement. Some were quivering, like the girl directly in front of her. Kaylee had a really good view of her and the peekaboo of black thong panties under the pleated folds of her schoolgirl skirt. She tried not to look.

“Skirts up,” Mr. Emerson ordered, and eleven good little marionettes hiked their skirts all the way up to their waists, each baring her own bottom for castigation.

Kaylee tried not to, but she couldn’t stop herself. She stared at the round curves of the bottom directly ahead of her—trim, plump, a cute butt, really, and already bisected by four hot and evenly spaced welts.

She could do this. For crying out loud, she’d come all this way just so she
could
do this! So what if it felt a little…contrived and…ridiculous. This was a fantasy. Role-playing make-believe, something she had personally done a thousand times in her own head while tucked into bed, one hand squeezing at her breast and the other busily working between her thighs. Maybe everyone felt like this the first time. Maybe there was a learning curve to roleplaying. Maybe, once she’d taken a few licks, she’d be able to relax a little and then she’d sink right into the proper headspace and have a wonderful time.

Maybe.

Trembling just a bit, marionette number eleven, she held on tightly to her desk and was silently grateful that no one was sitting behind her. She tried to relax, but she just could not make her bottom stop clenching.

“I believe this is our third round of discipline, isn’t it?” Mr. Emerson asked, and nodded when he was met with a sing-song chorus of agreement. “The count, then, is
trois
.”

“
Trois
,” said the girl in the first row when he tapped the switch full across her plump buttocks.

Being the proud owner of a veritable library of erotica books on the subject, Kaylee thought she knew what would happen next. According to all those well-thumbed pages, this was where Mr. Emerson was supposed to swish the switch once or twice through the air, test its flexibility and/or durability, then measure for precision against his victim’s quivering backside and strike. She lay tense on top of her desk, mentally ticking down through that list of actions, secure in the knowledge that at least she knew how it was going to happen and so she could brace herself accordingly.