Pets 2: Pani's Story (17 page)

Unfortunately, it wasn’t Papa who came to take firm hold of her arm, but Etle, tall and beautiful, with all that long dark hair piled in curls on top of her head. Irritated beyond belief—

nothing she’d tried was working!—Pani tried to wrench her arm away. She’d let Papa spank her if he saw the need for it, but she’d be damned if she submitted to anyone else!

She locked her knees and grabbed the doorknob, refusing to be pulled, only to have that lovely, dainty-looking giant bend and scoop Pani up under one arm as if she were no more than the child her clothing suggested she ought to be. And a disagreeable child at that, who grabbed desperately to latch onto Papa’s arm as she was dragged past. At the very last second, however, Papa stepped backwards out of reach.

He really was going to leave her here.

The realization hit her like a physical blow to the gut. Pani scrambled, scratching and clawing as she tried to twist in Etle’s grip just far enough to catch a glimpse of Papa’s tall, frowning visage as they retreated down the long, dark hallway.

“No!” Pani wailed. “Don’t you leave me here!” Etle crossed the threshold, tapping the light on before closing the door behind her, lending a false sense of dreadful privacy to what was about to transpire.

“Papa!” Pani cried out, as she was carried to the bed. “Don’t go! Don’t go!” She fought Etle’s hold from the minute the tall woman sat down at the edge of the bed. Etle 75

pulled the long skirt of her elegant dress up high enough to bare her thighs, freeing her legs to capture both of Pani’s in a shockingly strong vise-like grip the instant she spread Pani across her lap. She held Pani down with ridiculous ease. Her wrists were captured next and pinned one to the other at the very small of her back while with her free hand Etle reached for the wooden-backed hairbrush that lay upon the night table.

“Papa!” Pani wailed again, higher pitched and near-hysterical as her dress was tucked up out of the way and her panties—a woefully inadequate barrier to start with—pulled down her thighs as far as Etle’s restraining leg would allow. “Papa!” He didn’t come, and for all her kicking, flailing, clawing and bucking, all Pani could do was lie there and scream, angry, scared and helpless to stop it while Etle lit into her backside with a calm, unruffled vengeance.

It was every bit as awful as Binnie had made it sound. Etle needed very little force to chase the anger from Pani’s cries, leaving her small body awash in heat and pain, the hairbrush scorching her with a penitent fire that laved her from bottom to thighs and left the comforter below her face positively soaked with tears.

By the time Etle set the brush aside, Pani could barely breathe beyond the intensity of her racking sobs. All she could feel was the throbbing ache that consumed her flesh, and all she knew was that Papa hadn’t come to save her from it.

Pulling her upright, Etle sat her upon one thigh, and Pani stayed there, bereft, hardly able to think beyond her abandonment or see beyond her tears, until the other woman very gently wiped at her eyes with a soft tissue and coaxed her to blow her nose. She cupped the far side of Pani’s face just long enough to press a comforting kiss upon her cheek, and then Etle let her go, opening her thighs enough to free Pani’s imprisoned legs and smoothing down the back of Pani’s dress to cover the beet-red swells of her chastened rump.

In her haste to reach the door, Pani forgot to pull her panties up. She left them in a puddle on the bedroom floor and, once she got the door open, never looked back. She cried out when she saw Papa, still standing exactly where she’d left him but with a strangely tense look on his face.

It eased the minute he saw her into something that might have been intense relief as Pani raced back down the hall. He caught her when she launched herself into his arms, and held her so tightly close that she almost couldn’t breathe.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again!” she raged through her tears, but she said it in English, following it in his language with the closest approximation that she knew, a woefully inadequate,

“No more spanking, Papa!”

Dislodging her from his arms, Papa set her roughly on the floor, shaking her once by the shoulders as he thundered, “Be good!”

Shocked at the frustration and anger that she read on his face, Pani stumbled when he marched her back to the table. It was vacant; Minmin, Binnie and Sassa being nowhere in sight, although she thought she could hear soft footfalls thumping on the ceiling overhead. Picking her up, Papa sat her firmly back on her chair, ignoring her cry when her aching bottom met the unforgiving seat.

“Eat!” he ordered, and dropped three of those large, cookie-ish lumps onto her empty plate.

This was what had got her spanked? Her refusal to eat and not her subversive attempt to get 76

him to leave?

“But it’s nasty!” she wailed, wishing she knew how to say it in his language. Raising her hand to her mouth, she made puking motions and then quickly slapped both hands over her nose when he went to flick it. He gave her a light, three-fingered bonk on the top of her head instead.

If only they could communicate better, it might make all the difference in the world! At the very least, she wouldn’t be sitting here on a bottom so blazing hot that she couldn’t even move without wincing.

“Eat!” Papa commanded, as implacable as granite.

A soft whisper of a closing door signaled Etle’s return to the living room. And when she did appear, it was with that awful hairbrush held loosely in the palm of her hand.

Pani gave in. Bowing her head, she took a cookie from her plate and brought it to her mouth. She began to cry, but she made herself eat it. Chewing mechanically; swallowing past the dryness of her mouth and the tightness of her throat which closed in on every mouthful she struggled to choke down. She shuddered twice and gagged once, but he remained pitiless until her plate held nothing but crumbs and her stomach felt uncomfortably heavy with unpalatable food.

“Good girl.” Touching her gently then, Papa stroked his hand once down over her pigtails and the back of her neck, rubbing a measure of forgiveness into that spot between her shoulders.

Elbows braced against the edge of the table, sniffling and still leaking the occasional tear, feeling supremely sorry for herself, Pani let herself be comforted. She even leaned against him, burying her face into the softness of his shirt.

“Be good,” he said again, sounding tired.

Tired of being the only long-tailed cat in this particular room full of rocking chairs, she muttered back, “Papa be good.”

She felt him start, his hand settling again on the back of her head as he looked down at her.

Then Etle tsked and the silence was broken when both Papa and Ralhan laughed.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Papa be good, too.”

At least he didn’t leave her here. On the way home, however, he stopped at a store long enough to buy a hairbrush just like Etle’s, and something told Pani, it wasn’t going to be for her to use on him.

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She hated this corner.

Perched on her Bad Baby chair with a doll that she refused to cuddle lying neglected at her feet, Pani glared straight at the wall ahead of her and fumed.

She really hated this corner. She hated everything about it; from the paleness of the paint, to the little white timer than hung eyelevel on an otherwise barren landscape of plaster, slowly counting down the length of her remaining punishment in impossible to comprehend blinking neon dashes, to the faint toe-prints her bare feet had left behind each time she churlishly kicked the wall. She’d spent a good hour this morning in the garden helping Papa weed, but she hadn’t realized how filthy it had left her feet until now. Frowning, she kicked the wall again and, sure enough, left a second smear of toe-prints overlapping the first.

“Pani,” Papa warned from across the room.

Her frown deepening, very slowly and deliberately she put both feet out and smeared more dirt on the wall.

Needless to say, the Communication Project was not going well; he was making her work way too hard at it, and so far, Papa wasn’t quite catching on to what she wanted. He’d given her a second breakfast when she pointed at the kitchen table, a mid-morning nap when she pointed at the stairs, and a very embarrassing trip over his knee to have her temperature taken when she came up from that nap more cranky than when she’d gone down. She seriously doubted if she was running a fever, but that didn’t stop Papa from pouring a teaspoon of incredibly nasty medicine down her throat before he put her back into bed for another even longer nap. The screaming fit that followed ended with a lot more screaming, as well as kicking, crying and flailing when back over his knee she went, albeit not for another round with the thermometer. In the end, she took that nap on her stomach, eventually falling asleep with tears still drying on her face and a muted burning still sizzling across the surface of her bottom.

Today was the worst, gaining her nothing but disaster from the moment Papa roused her from her crib. One rotten misunderstanding after another until here she was, on the tail-end of a fifteen minute timeout that had resulted from knocking a lamp off the table when she’d tried to climb up on the couch.

It was an ugly lamp, anyway.

She kicked the wall again, this time hard enough to crack her toe knuckles and jostle the chair she was sitting on.

Breathing heavily, Papa got up from his computer desk. She gave in to the tears that were beginning to sting behind her eyes, but he still pulled her up from her seat, pulled her panties down to her knees and lay a half dozen sharp slaps all over her squirming backside. Then back up her panties came and back down she was plunked, once more centered upon the Bad Baby chair to contemplate the join of the walls and the gradually reducing countdown reflected by the timer. Only now, she was left to do it with a smarting bottom.

“Behave,” he ordered before returning to his computer.

“No,” she grumbled, glaring at the wall so blackly that it was a wonder she didn’t leave 78

scorch marks. Unfortunately, she hadn’t muttered her defiance quite softly enough, and although he’d only just sat back down, Papa promptly got up again.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Already frustrated beyond bearing, Pani leaned back and furiously drummed the wall with both feet, leaving walking footsteps as far up as her legs could reach. “No!” she threw back her head and bellowed. “No, no, n-Oh!” Papa hauled her up off the chair by the scruff of her dress. Marching her down the hall to the bathroom, he parked her on a stool in front of the sink, leaving her staring at her own rebel countenance in the mirror. The balefulness in her eyes and tightly frowning mouth made her almost ugly to look at. She shifted her gaze to glare at Papa’s reflection instead; Papa, who didn’t look particularly upset, or even irritated really, but who nevertheless turned on the water.

Ignoring it when she clapped both hands over her mouth, he picked up the bar of soap and her toothbrush, wetting both under the water before scrubbing the soap until he had thoroughly saturated the bristles with white suds.

With a firm but gentle grip, he peeled her hands away from her lips and took hold of her lower jaw. “Open.”

If only she were braver, she’d have covered her mouth again. But recognizing that she’d pushed about as far as she was going to without incurring some very, very unpleasant consequences, she swallowed hard and pried her lips apart in a pained grimace of a smile.

He washed out her mouth with soap, starting with her teeth, scrubbing every inch of them until the lather began to invade between her tightly clenched jaw. The chemical taste of it spread in her saliva until there was no corner or curl for her tongue to retreat into where the flavor could not reach it.

“Spit,” he said, letting go of her jaw and withdrawing the brush.

When Pani only stared up at him, forlorn and trying her best not to drool all down the front of herself, he bent over and spat into the sink himself.

“Spit,” he said again and, eyes lighting with understanding, Pani quickly followed suit. It didn’t help. The taste was everywhere in her mouth now, and when she tried to rinse out her mouth with cool running water, Papa caught her hands and pushed them away.

“No.”

“Spit?” she begged, but Papa picked up the bar of soap and quietly lathered her toothbrush all over again. As if there weren’t enough soap on it already. Pani clamped her lips tight together when he took hold of her jaw, but it was a minute revolt that sagged into instant defeat when he simply held up her toothbrush, looked into her eyes expectantly and waited.

Her trembling lips parted in another cringing grimace, but he continued to wait, making no effort to take advantage of her capitulation.

“Open,” he said again, his tone mild. Congenial even, all things considered.

Shuddering, Pani tightened her grip on the edge of the sink and, whining softly, opened her mouth.

He scrubbed every inch of her tongue, both on top and underneath. He scrubbed the backs of her teeth, her gums, even the roof of her mouth, and while he scrubbed, he scolded. She caught about half of it. “Pani…Papa no…Pani…stop…bad…Papa…spank Pani’s bottom…very sorry little girl.”

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She guessed her vocabulary was expanding after all.

She was also already very sorry. She bounced on the stool, struggling not to gag while he finally finished scrubbing. He then stepped back, watching her but saying nothing. Pani held herself stubbornly still, blinking back at him, desperate to spit the lather from her mouth but knowing if she did so without his approval, she’d probably get another soaping.

Nodding once in satisfaction, Papa gestured to the sink. “Spit.” She launched herself into obedience, spitting repeatedly, her shoulders beginning to shake as she dissolved into tears.

He turned the water back on for her. “Rinse.” It still didn’t help. No matter how many times she filled her mouth and frantically swished, the chemical taste of the soap remained.

Way too soon, Papa turned the water off. Picking her up off the stool, he set her back on her feet, aimed her for the door and nudged her back out to the living room. He steered her back to her corner and left her standing there, contemplating the smudge of toe-prints until he returned a few minutes later with a bowl of warm soapy water and a clean cloth. Setting the bowl on the seat of her chair, he wet the cloth, wrung it out and then deposited it into the palm of her hand.