The Storyteller (22 page)

Carla opened her eyes to find herself alone, looking at the match cover in her hand. She was back in the dorm room and though she was breathing heavily, she felt no pain in her rear end. She was still sitting comfortably. Benjamin Bennett had been the product of her own imagination or maybe, as she’d been told in the confines of her own mind, the product of an inexplicable vision.

Slowly, she put the match cover back and looked at the box. It was beckoning her onward. She felt its call.

“Just one more,” she muttered. “Just one more.”

She scooped up a match book that bore the logo of Cherry Wood Apartments and shut her eyes. Once more, the dreams came.

She could see a girl around her own age in what looked to be an apartment bedroom. The only difference was their hair coloring, as this girl was blond. Like in her mysterious session with Bennett, this girl had a disciplinarian of her own. He was also an older man, but not great looking. Instead of demonstrating his sexual prowess in bed, however, he was giving the unlucky girl a spanking. Carla found the show far too familiar.

“Learn to like it. Learn to like it. Learn to like it.”

With each slap, the girl jerked and thrashed about, but she was being held across her tormentor’s lap, and he had pinned her own arm behind the small of her back, just as Bennett had threatened to do with her. Thus, she could not cushion the blows, but was forced to receive them.

“Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!”

The spanking had clearly been going on for a while, as her bottom glared red. The tone was deepening quite visibly, with every brutal strike she received.

“My butt’s gonna have marks on it,” she protested. “Ow! Ow! Ow!”

“Take your punishment,” was the man’s only reply. “Take this, Blair! Take it!”

So that was her name? Not that it mattered much.

“Take it, damn you! Take it! Take it, Blair! You learn a lesson!”

The brutal ass-whapping continued.

“Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!”

Suddenly Carla saw the girl start to shake in a feeling all too familiar to her. Blair stiffened, and her ass muscles tightened against the pounding, surely making them hurt all the more, but something different was happening.

“Ooooooooooooooooooooooo! Yessssssssssssssssssssss!”

The girl was coming right there on the man’s lap, in the midst of her severe spanking.

“Yessss...”

“Bad girl,” the man chided. “Nasty girl! You weren’t supposed to have that until after the spanking. You were supposed to wait until I licked your cunt. Now you have to take some more discipline.”

Again the reign of blows came, and once more, the girl was indicating she clearly felt the brunt of her punishment.

“Ow!” she cried out. “Spank me, lover. Spank me!”

Once more, Carla opened her eyes, letting the match cover drop back into the box as she did.

The only sound was her labored breathing. What had she stumbled onto this day?

“Oooooooo!”

This time the noise came from her own lips. Uncontrollably, she knew what had to be done.

“Oooooooooooooooooo! Oooooohhhhhhh! Ohhhhhh!”

Rising, she undid her pants and stepped out of them, removing her panties as well. She was bottomless except for her socks and shoes. These she also removed, along with her top.

Wearing nothing but her bra, she threw herself down on the bed and positioned herself on her back, looking up at the ceiling. In no time, one of her fingers was buried deep in the hole between her legs, moving back and forth in a simulation of fucking.

“Oooooooooooooooooo!”

Faster and faster, she fingered herself, imagining Benjamin Bennett on top of her. He knew what sex was all about, too. When he wrote, he most surely did so from lengthy experience, as he fucked her mercilessly, forcing her to let out a series of guttural cries.

“Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh!”

Twirling around she bent on the bed with her knees tucked below. In this position, she furiously hit her own ass several times, bringing bursts of pain as she did.

“Ow. Ow.”

Again she rolled over and fingered herself, totally hypnotized. She was caught up in a dreamscape. She existed as one with her pleasure.

“Ooooojjjjjjjjj.”

Frantically, Carla moved her hips up and down in relation to her thrusts. She mouthed words of praise for her imaginary lover.

“Oh, you fuck good. Oh, you fuck good. Oh, you fuck good...”

Carla’s entire body trembled, and she found her soul torn free from her body.

“Ooooooooooooooooooooooo. Yessss...”

Just as she came with the power of a rocket launch, she heard the door lock click and Gillian walked in, staring down at her in this uncompromising position.

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” she frowned. “I could have helped you with that.”

“Well come on down,” Carla invited, spreading her legs wide. “Come on down.”

Shutting her eyes, she envisioned not what was about to happen with Gillian, but how she could put it into words.

Chapter Nine

The Hot Cup Cafeteria

“Is there anything else I can do before you leave?” the waitress asked Carrie as she took the tip offered her on the table.

From her seated position, Carrie gave a grin.

“Yes. This is a small town, and I’m just a visitor. Do you know where I can find a church with a minister in it?”

“Protestant?” the waitress asked.

“Protestant. Yes.”

The waitress thought for a second, then pointed to the right.

“Just up the main road from here. Go right as you pull out and right again when you see it.”

Carrie rose and took the check to the cash register. As she waited for her change, she took a book of matches, examining them before sticking them in her purse. She then said the name of the place aloud.

“The Hot Cup Cafeteria.”

As she went out the door, she nearly collided with a heavyset man who looked like a farmer of some kind. He was wearing suspenders and a belt.

“Do you know of a church up the street?” she asked, just to find out if the mutant was capable of speech.

“Sure do,” he answered, pointing to the right. “Just follow the road.’

She wanted a keepsake, for this town might well be the one where she found her freedom over what had been the most mind-boggling decision of her life. She wouldn’t say bad, for it hadn’t been entirely bad, but it was certainly life-changing, and now, wanting to change once more, she had to tell someone. Only a stranger and only a miracle could help her now. She was seeking freedom from a once glorious romance that had not worked out like she expected.

That was what brought her to Strasburg. It was a small Ohio town where everyone knew everyone else there, but would not know her. That was what she wanted. She’d found the place on the map, and just from what she had seen, it fit all of her stereotypes.

“And so it begins,” Carrie mouthed softly. “Now we start.”

She found the church, and as she anticipated in a town like this, the door was open.

“Hello?” she called out. “Is someone here?”

Empty churches gave her the creeps more than full ones. Catholic churches in particular, with all those dead Christs and saints all over the place, seeming to watch her from the heavens and know of her sins. That was one reason she selected a Protestant church. This one would do, though she hadn’t been inclined to look at the denomination or the name when she pulled into the parking lot. It was a small church, and that was all that mattered. It even had a steeple.

She imagined the sins of the congregation. Someone probably drank too much on Saturday night after being at work all week and could barely pull himself together for the Sunday morning sermon, conveniently overlooking the part about drunkenness. At least one person was having an affair, and another couple had to be secretly considering a divorce. They had it so easy when compared to her. How little they knew.

“From the Hot Cup Cafeteria and into the arms of the church,” Carrie whispered, as her eyes darted about, taking in everything. She had been told, in spite of the legend, demons could in fact enter a church. Unseen, it was where they did their dirtiest work, and that stood to reason. Why influence the hell hound? Get the ones going to heaven and lead them astray.

Olivier had taught her that. Though greed and dominance were his main realms of power, he knew about lust, too.

“Is anyone in here?” she called out to the emptiness once more.

“I’m Pastor Henson Crabwater,” came a voice from a doorway near the altar. “How may I help you?”

He was a tall young man, seeming too young to be a pastor, but in a town and church like this, he probably did well. A name change might have been in order though, for it sounded truly silly to have a title like Pastor Crabwater.

“How may I help you?”

“Call me Carrie,” she smiled informally as she stretched out her hand for the shake. His touch was warm to her.

“Welcome,” he replied, giving her an assuring smile. “How may I be of help?”

Carrie hesitated, not sure if this was going to be the part where he thought her insane.

“I need to confess.”

“Confess? We aren’t...”

“Repent then. Change direction. Break a bad contract I made with evil.”

“I see,” the minister nodded, considering her situation, His smile turned into a blank look. “Would you like to talk in here or in my office?”

“The office,” Carrie shot back without hesitation. “I’ll have you know before we even start that it’s going to be a long and unbelievable story.”

“It couldn’t be any more peculiar than anything I have heard from others,” the minister reassured her. “Everything you tell here is confidential, too. I am sure you know that.”

“Good.”

Pastor Crabwater ushered her through the door from which he had materialized and down a hall into his office.

“Come in.”

Just as the church looked like a small-town spiritual haven should look, so did the office. There was a desk and chairs. The book case was filled with religious books. There was a small cross on the wall, but nobody nailed to it.

“So what brought you here to begin with?” the pastor asked.

“I found you by accident. I wanted to find a church as far away as I could from where I really live. I wanted to go to a place where I’d never been before and had never lived. I wanted to be a complete unknown in an unfamiliar town and find a church where someone would listen to my story. When done, if the man listening believed, it would be great, but if he thought me crazy it would not matter. I need to tell the story. So here I am.”

“Would you like me to pray with you before we begin?” the minister asked.

Carrie shook her head in the negative once more.

“I want solutions and not necessarily prayers. Now let me ask the question right off the bat for you. Do you like spankings?”

Pastor Crabwater sat silent behind his desk and thought upon the question.

“Well, there are parents who believe in corporal punishment. My parents believed in it, too. Why?”

“That’s not what I mean,” she retorted. “I’m talking about sex spankings. Do you know the kind I mean? Spankings for pleasure – stripped, shamed, and slammed...”

The pastor sat in silence, and though he had claimed to have heard it all, this was evidently a new one for him.

“If you’re uncomfortable with the material, I can leave,” she offered.

The minister gave as confident a smile as he could muster.

“No. Go on.”

Carrie gave a slight grin, but as she did, she was naturally fighting down the compulsions of old. Was this minister studying her name or her face for other reasons? She was average in height, but a little better than average in looks. Her hair was a rusty brown, but still more brunette than red. She was still in her late twenties, and that was something he didn’t need to know. She was, as of this moment, soon to be no longer involved with her lover. So far, so good, or so it seemed. Was this minister, however, mentally undressing her?

She wondered if in his mind, he was taking off her jeans and panties, to learn her pubic hair matched the hair on her head. Was he envisioning what she looked like without her top? Did he want to fondle her breasts? They were average in size but very eager to be manipulated. Did he want to lick the nipples? Was he going to hurl her around, and if so, would he wonder about the bruises on her ass that were still there? Olivier had been the cause of this, and the final episode with him was what drove her to seek relief. The relationship had to end.

“Take your time,” Pastor Crabwater compassionately suggested. “This works fine. I have no other meetings on my planner today.”

“I first thought of spanking for pleasure when I got hold of one of my father’s old adult magazines,” she explained, and it was the truth. “That was how this got started. I read one of the letters some reader had sent in, about how this chick was spanked with a belt when she was sixteen and how she nearly had an orgasm like nothing ever before. She then went on, telling how she would pick fights with her father and get in trouble, just to get a bare bottomed spanking. Now, personally, I figure looking back, that was a whole piece of fiction, but at the time, it got my thoughts hot. The woman writing in told of afterward, as an adult, how she and her boyfriend got real heavy into spanking. She’d even had a paddle made with her name on it.”

“So this article opened the doors for sexual fantasy?” Crabwater noted. “I can tell you right now, I’ve dealt with these things before.”

“Not quite like in my case. Give me a minute.”

Carrie shut her eyes and thought backward, picturing herself as it had happened long before. She was a teenager herself.

“I’m remembering some stuff,” she informed the pastor, with her eyes still shut. “Give me a minute.”

“Take all the time you need,” the voice reassured her, but it was fading away.

In her thoughts, she remembered the incident just as it had happened. Her parents and little sister were gone, leaving her alone. It was then she had decided to experiment. She would bring the thoughts created in the magazine article into action.

“My parents never spanked me, and even if they did, they would have considered me too big to spank by the time I was a teenager,” she mouthed. “I was sixteen, like the woman said she had been in the article, when she first discovered the pleasures of what was supposed to be a painful lesson. I decided to find out for myself.”