Chapter Three
Like most children who grow up in comfortable circumstances, Kim had been naive and immature. Though her parents had always tried to teach her high moral values, they had been indulgent and permissive as well. She had attended church every Sunday, and a parochial school during the week. She was an obedient child, not because she feared authority, but because she believed it was proper to honor the wishes of her elders. In school she avoided the corporal punishment common there, and ignored the internal imps that urged her to misbehave, just once, to find out what punishment was like.
There had been boys, though she had never loved any. During her seventeenth summer she had surrendered her virginity to a boy whose name she had since forgotten.
It was during her eighteenth summer she went to stay with Aunt Sarah and Uncle Emil.
They were a strange couple. Kim only knew them from family reunions, where they patted her head and bottom and remarked at her growth. They weren’t even really related to her. Aunt Sarah had once been married to a former husband of a half sister or something like that. Kim had always been a bit hazy when it came to the family history. It was a complete surprise when they showed up at her high school graduation and offered to pay her college tuition that year in exchange for her help as a live in housekeeper on their farm. It seemed to be a generous offer to a family barely climbing above the working class. Kim wasn’t getting along that well with her parents just then anyway, since her mother had discovered the two joints Kim thought were safely hidden under her dresser drawer. At the time, getting out of the house seemed like a good idea.
She had been shy at first, a bit afraid of the strange old couple. They had no television, only listened to hymns, and only read the Bible. Kim’s attempts at levity met only dark looks, and all conversations seemed to end with Uncle Emil’s ranting. Kim decided it would be best to do the work expected of her and keep to herself. It was soon obvious no one ever visited the isolated farm, and the old couple seldom went anywhere.
Kim was expected to help Uncle Emil in the barn morning and evening, and clean house during the afternoons. The work was hard, and Kim never seemed to do anything well enough to satisfy. She was reprimanded severely for minor mistakes, and constantly lectured on the evils of laziness. Nevertheless, Kim remained cheerful, her spirits buoyed by open spaces and contact with animals.
It all came apart the night she refused to eat turnips.
Her eating habits had never been an issue at home. Never a “picky” eater, she had simply been allowed to select from a variety of good foods. She wasn’t a child any more, and found the old couple’s insistence on her cleaning her plate laughable.
Uncle Emil wasted no time arguing. Instead he announced in a chillingly quiet voice what Kim needed to set her straight was a good stropping.
“Oh, come on now!” Kim said, getting irritated.
Suddenly, Kim found herself being wrestled to the floor by four gnarled and work roughened hands. At first she only tried to get away, but when they began to strip off her clothes, she fought. A lifetime of hard work had given the old couple more strength than Kim had expected them to have, and in minutes the girl had been stripped naked and dragged into the bedroom. There she was thrown face down on the bed. Aunt Sarah held her wrists while Uncle Emil struck her naked bottom several times with his belt. Kim thrashed helplessly, unable to twist free of her Aunt’s iron grip. Once she managed to flop over, only to catch a savage blow which bit at her hipbones and touched her pubic mound. Then she had been forced back into position and given an extra ten strokes for resisting.
She was sobbing hysterically when the beating ended. Aunt Sarah crooned softly to her and kissed away her tears, planting a final kiss full on the girl’s lips before releasing her.
Then Uncle Emil seized her wrist and dragged her into the kitchen. Since she still had a tender bottom, she was allowed to stand while she ate the turnips cold, gagging on every bite. Despite her distress, she was expected to clean the kitchen that evening. Uncle Emil sat in his favorite chair with his belt draped across his lap as a reminder the punishment could continue at any time. Aunt Sarah sat beside him with her knitting.
Kim had not been allowed to dress, and her naked welted body was in full sight of the old couple while she did the dishes and scrubbed the kitchen floor on her hands and knees.
Finally Aunt Sarah took the girl to bed and tucked her in. Kim was given a lecture and told to pray for forgiveness for the trouble she had caused. When Aunt Sarah kissed her goodnight, Kim thought she felt the old woman’s tongue flicker across her lips.
She cried herself to sleep that night, more from shame than from the already ebbing pain. Though she was mature enough to see that her Aunt and Uncle were mentally unbalanced, she was still young enough to feel that she was somehow at fault. Her parents had almost never punished her, and certainly never like this, but not because she had never deserved it. She was still impressionable enough to concede guilt. Until now, she had tried to be respectful and obedient, thinking her elders were wise and just. Now, faced with an intolerable situation, she knew she should get far away from this place as soon as possible.
Sometime during the night, she woke alone in the darkness. The lingering warmth in her bottom had triggered an unexpected response. Her fingers trailed over her body, examining the welts with wonder. Then the questing fingers found an area that gave her pleasure, and stayed there until she shuddered and fell asleep.
She woke the next morning filled with guilt. Her response to the beating had been inappropriate, she thought. She was no stranger to sexual pleasure, but the circumstances were all wrong. Her religious training was no help to her in this situation. Sex was for reproduction, she had been taught, and self induced pleasure was a certain sin. She knew only confusion and a need to go home.
Morning brought surprises. Kim’s eyes were hardly open when the old couple entered her room without knocking, and set to work with hardly a glance at the girl in the bed. Kim watched, unbelieving, as Aunt Sarah opened her suitcases and began to take Kim’s clothing out of the closet and dresser.
They’re sending me home, Kim thought with relief.
Then Kim noticed what Uncle Emil was doing, and suddenly nothing made sense any more. He was putting a deadbolt lock on the door.
If I’m going home, she thought, they don’t need to lock me out of this room. Then she realized that the lock was keyed on both sides. They weren’t planning to lock her out.
They intended to lock her in.
Kim leaped from the bed. “What are you doing with my clothes?” she demanded.
Aunt Sarah was unruffled. “I’m putting them away. You won’t be needing them for a while. We have decided that you will remain naked while you are here.”
Wishing to avoid another beating, Kim stood helplessly and watched as her clothes were packed up and taken away.
Kim really didn’t think that Uncle Emil would make her go out to do the morning barn chores without letting her dress, but half an hour later she was carrying buckets of water to the cattle, shivering in the early morning chill. It was this indignity which convinced her. She no longer doubted her Aunt and Uncle were as mad as hatters.
Her escape attempt was unplanned, but probably would not have been successful if it had been. When her Uncle’s back was turned to her for a moment, Kim ran to the pick-up truck parked in the driveway. There were no keys in it. Reasoning that she would be easily overtaken on the road, she set out at a run across the open field behind the barn. The stubble of the new mown hay was sharp under her bare feet, forcing her to pick her way carefully. She aimed for the gate on the far side of the field, hoping to lose herself in the woods beyond. She wondered how far it was to the nearest road, and whether she would be able to reach the police before some passing farm boy decided to take advantage of a naked girl wandering down the road.
Looking back, she saw Uncle Emil standing in the barnyard with his hands on his hips. A moment later, she heard an engine roar to life, and Uncle Emil came racing across the field astride the three wheeled off road vehicle she had once heard him affectionately call his “mule”. She ran faster, knowing that the race was already lost.
A naked girl on foot was no match for a man on a machine. Kim’s mad flight turned into a nightmare. Whenever she came close to a gate, the three wheeler was there ahead of her, charging at her and turning her aside. Uncle Emil herded her home like a stray cow, and it was a sobbing and thoroughly dispirited girl who surrendered herself to Aunt Sarah in the barnyard.
This time they tied her to the bed before they beat her.
In the evening, Aunt Sarah came in to check on her. Kim had been bound to the bed all day. She had been thinking hard, and found that a burning bottom was a potent aid to meditation. She was a prisoner. Her parents would come for her in ten weeks, but until that time, she had no serious hope of escape. She had reached the unhappy conclusion that her safest course was cooperation. She had to appease her captors, humor their madness as much as possible, and come out of this situation without suffering serious harm.
So, when Aunt Sarah felt the subdued girl’s forehead and pronounced her feverish, Kim did not contradict her. She even managed to hold her tongue when the old woman prescribed an enema to “purge the bad humors”.
Crouching naked in the old bathtub, Kim cringed as the greased nozzle slid into her tight behind and filled her with soapy water. She was not even allowed privacy while she expelled it.
After that day, everything changed. Sensing their power over the girl, the old couple became increasingly dominant and abusive. Uncle Emil began to wear two belts, one to hold up his pants, the other to correct his young charge. The slightest balkiness or clumsiness on Kim’s part was instantly punished. Leather straps were installed at the corners of her bed so Kim could be secured there three or four times a week when the old couple found a sufficient excuse to give her a severe beating. After one long and savage whipping with a supple green birch limb, Kim had been left strapped to the bed for the entire night.
She was no longer allowed to sit in a chair, and had to take her meals kneeling on the floor. Denied utensils, she ate with her hands.
The enemas became a frequent ritual which never failed to shame and humiliate her, though she secretly came to enjoy the nozzle’s warm penetration, and the relaxed feeling she had after she had been thoroughly purged.
In the darkness, locked in her windowless room, Kim came more and more to find comfort in the pleasure her own hands provided. While the punishments were a stimulant to her senses, Kim would never admit to herself the pain was in any way connected to her secret pleasures. She told herself the punishments were just, though not for the reasons that the old couple gave. The thrashings became a sort of penance on account, granting her license.
A week before Kim was to return home, the beatings ceased. The morning Kim was expecting her parents to come for her, Aunt Sarah came into her room.
“Go and stand in front of the mirror,” she commanded.
Kim got out of bed and did as she was told.
“Turn around and look over your shoulder. What do you see?”
Kim looked, turning this way and that. Her bottom had healed. Even her thighs, once so badly welted, no longer bore the faintest trace of a mark.
“Nothing,” she said, surprised.
“If you go to the police today and tell them that your old Aunt and Uncle whipped you, what evidence will you have?”
Kim looked in the closet and found her suitcases had been returned. She knew before her parents arrived the straps would be off of the bed, and the lock would be off of the door.
“None,” she admitted, ruefully.
Aunt Sarah smiled smugly. Suddenly, she didn’t seem so crazy after all. “I have a large check to give you today,” she said. “It will be more than enough to cover your expenses for an entire semester of college. In three months I will give you another check for the same amount. Do we understand each other?”
“You are buying my silence.”
Aunt Sarah’s smile was warm. “I knew you were a sensible girl. Nothing has been injured except your pride. We have had our fun, and you have made two old people very happy. Now you can go off to school and forget that the whole thing ever happened.”
Kim dressed and said nothing. She was imagining the difficulty she would have proving that two pillars of the community were sexual sadists. She had no physical evidence and no witnesses. No doubt her Aunt and Uncle were fully prepared to tell stories which would make her look like an ungrateful slut.
When she was dressed, Kim took the check, feeling like an accomplice. Then she carried her suitcases outside and waited.
When her parents came they were surprised at the quiet way she greeted them, and the submissive manner she displayed. Her mother held her silently on the way home, and thought it was homesickness which caused Kim to sob into her shoulder like a child.
Now, years later, Kim found herself a prisoner again. With the memories of that summer came a return of the confusion she had felt then. She was about to be punished, and could not shake a secret feeling that she deserved it somehow. In her mind she was nothing but a naughty child.