Katie

     Katie and Jeff were, at last, airborne from their

intermediate stop at Cairo, squeezed into "el cheapo" seats

on a foreign airline that made BA, "Bloody Awful", seem

like luxury in comparison.  Katie was glad she took so little

into the cabin with her, just her handbag, with her passport,

ticket, purse, lipstick and cigarettes. Of course, there was

no smoking allowed.  She was dressed for comfort in the

tropics, casual slip-on shoes, socks, not nylons, a

lightweight cotton dress, light green, to compliment her

russet hair, and a "sports bra", a simple, knitted thing, that

she could wear for hours and hours without it binding or

leaving strap marks.  When flying coffin class, looks don't

count.

     Somewhere over central Africa, the captain came

on the speakers, first in French, then Arabic, then English.

Jeff went stiff before Katie understood the message.  There

were reports of a bomb on board, and they would have to

make an unscheduled emergency landing.  Twenty white-

knuckle minutes later, they were on the ground near some

awful African town with an unpronounceable name.  The

emergency slides were deployed, and the passengers slid

down, to stand on the tarmac.  It wasn't easy to get

information, but no, they could not get their baggage.  The

airplane would stand there, to see if it blew up, and if it

didn't, every bag must be searched.  Yes, arrangements

were being made to put them up at a hotel.  A bus was

being found, which would shuttle them to town.

     It was hours later that they checked into the Prince

Edward Hotel, which might once have been grand but

which looked as if it hadn't been cleaned or repaired since

Prince Edward died, roughly a hundred years ago.  It was

also not really adequate for a whole plane load of

passengers.  Jeff and Katie would have to share a narrow

bed in a tiny room with a bath down the hall.  The sun had

not yet gone down, so the temperature was still  a few

degrees above body temperature, and, of course, Prince

Edward had never heard of air conditioning.  The dining

room, it seemed, would not be open until dark, so Jeff and

Katie went out for a stroll.  The humidity was oppressive,

and Katie's panties were drenched with sweat, clinging and

riding up between her legs.  "Jeff," she said, "we have to

find a shop where I can buy a hat and some sun screen, and

maybe some clean underwear.  If we have to stay here long,

I'll be a mass of freckles.  You know redheads don't tan

properly."  Jeff, ever amiable agreed.  After all those years

of marriage, he knew it was pointless to disagree.  Secretly,

he wished that Katie would be  a little less the strong,

independent businesswoman and more the traditional

British bride, whose primary desire is to serve her master.

Well, at 46, she wasn't going to change.

     They found street of shops, noisy and confusing,

and Katie finally found a stall with a big, floppy hat, just

the thing to keep the sun off.  "How much?" she asked the

shop keeper.  He clearly didn't speak English.  She tried

again to communicate, but it seemed hopeless.

     Jeff said, "Look, just hand him a bill and hope he

gives you the correct change."

     Katie took out her purse and selected a ten pound

note.  She held the hat in one hand and handed the note to

the shopkeeper with the other.

     The shopkeeper looked at it and said, "British

pound sterling?"

     "Yes, yes," replied Katie, with appropriate nods and

gestures.  The man squatted down and rummaged under the

counter, coming up with a huge wad of the local currency,

which he handed to Katie with a wide grin and happy-

sounding noises.  She put the hat on her head and held the

wad of bills in her hand.

     "So, how much did he charge you?"

     "Haven't a clue."

     "How much did you get in change?"

     "Haven't a clue.  For all I know this could be toilet

paper.  But even if it cost me ten pounds, I'm glad to have

the hat. Now, let's look for a chemist or a lingerie shop."

     At the corner was a uniformed policeman.  He

looked at Katie, at her wad of local currency, and asked,

"Excuse me, madame, but where did you get that money?"

     "A shopkeeper, down that way, gave it to me in

change."  She gestured toward the shop.

     "And how much did you give him?"

     "Ten pounds."

     "And how much did he give you?"

     "I don't know." she fanned out some of the bills

and held them so the policeman could see.

"I'm afraid, madame, that you will have to come with me."

     "Why?"

     "Illegal exchange of currency."

     "It can't be all the serious.  Here, you take the

money and let us go."  He was not dissuaded, though he did

take the money and her passport.  He led them to a tiny

police station and spoke to the sergeant in charge in the

native language.  The sergeant gestured and spoke rather

loudly, pointing at a squalid jail cell with bars and a hole in

the floor for a toilet.

     "Madame, you will have to spend the night in jail,

and tomorrow you will meet the magistrate.  Your husband

is free to go."

     "No, no!  That can't be.  I won't run away.  We're

staying at the Prince Edward Hotel, just down the street.

Can't you release us, and I'll come back tomorrow?"

     After some discussion with the sergeant, the

policeman said.  "All right.  Be at the Central Court at ten

o'clock, sharp.  We must keep your passport,"

     "Yes, of course.  Where is the Central Court?"  The

policeman showed her on a map.  It wasn't far from the

hotel. "And what will I be charged with?"

     "Black market currency trading and attempting to

bribe an officer.  You would be advised to plead guilty."

     "Oh, and if I don't plead guilty?"

     "You will be remanded for trial, kept in jail until

your court date.  I expect they will keep you maybe ninety,

a hundred days, and then you will be convicted and given a

more serious sentence, because you are not contrite."

     "Oh, then, I give you my word I'll be there at ten,

ready to plead guilty.  Ah, what is the sentence likely to

be?"

     "For a first time offender, probably corporal

punishment, the cane."

     "The cane?  You beat criminals in this forsaken

country?"

     "You bet, madame.  Very low recidivism rate."

     That night, at the hotel, was hellish.  They bolted

the door of the little room and stripped off everything, as

they had no night clothes, and they were dripping with

sweat, even after sundown.  Jeff tried to cheer up Katie by

being extra affectionate, trying to make love, but Katie

could not be consoled.  All she could think of was the

punishment she might receive.  She had seen pictures of a

man being caned in Singapore, she thought it was.  He had

been trussed up on a sort of triangular frame,  while an

athletic looking chap beat his arse with a six foot cane!

She didn't get much sleep, especially as Jeff took up two

thirds of the narrow bed.  She would have fled, if she could

have, but the plane was not ready, and there was no where

to flee to.

     They had asked at the hotel for a lawyer, but the

best they could get was a young woman, an interpreter, not

a lawyer.  The three of them were at the Central Court

Building at 9:30 and before the magistrate precisely at

10:00.  The interpreter was impressed.  She had expected

they might have had to wait for hours, even days.

     The arresting officer was there, and he spoke to the

magistrate earnestly for several minutes.  The magistrate,

already perspiring in his black robe and white wig, so

strange on a native, took it all in.  He spoke to the

interpreter in the local lingo, and she replied in kind.  The

judge said one short burst of words.

     "What did he say?" asked Katie.

     "He says that, since you plead guilty, sentence can

be carried out immediately."  Katie almost fainted. She had

not yet come to grips with the idea of being caned.

     "And what is the sentence?"

     "Very light.  Practically nothing.  A dozen strokes,

on the bare, below the waist."

     Katie might have collapsed, except that two burly

bailiffs took her by the arms and half carried her down the

corridor from the courtroom.  Jeff tagged along behind.

Katie was taken into room at the end of the hall, but the

interpreter told Jeff he must remain outside.

     A uniformed woman policeman stood impassively

beside a large wooden table, eight or nine feet long.  She

spoke to the interpreter, who translated for Katie.  "She

wants you to take off your dress.  Don't worry, I'll stay

here with you."  Katie pulled her dress up and off over her

head.  The interpreter  hung it on a peg.  "She says now you

must take off your panties."  Katie slipped the damp

panties down her long legs and off over her shoes.  She was

taller than most of the locals.  The uniformed woman

approached Katie and buckled leather straps, cuffs, on her

wrists and then on her ankles, over the knee socks.  There

were chains attached to the cuffs.  She motioned to the

table.  Katie didn't quite understand what was required.

She had quite enough coping with being practically naked

in front of strangers, even if they were women.  The young

translator explained what to do.  Katie had to climb on the

table and lie on her front, arse uppermost.  In the middle of

the table was a wooden post, approximately a cube of

wood, perhaps ten centimeters on a side, which stood up

between Katie's necessarily parted thighs.  The police

woman pulled on the ankle chains, dragging Katie across

the table until the wooden cube was pressed up against the

curly red hairs between Katie's legs, mashing her labia and

digging into the flesh of her thighs on either side.  The

chains fit into slots at the corners of  the table, to hold them

taut and keep Katie's limbs spread in a vee.  The chains

from her wrists went to the other corners, holding her down

tightly, with her full breasts pressed flat against the table,

stretching her bra out of shape..

     "The wooden post was introduced when male

prisoners complained that the cane damaged their testicles.

It is for your protection, so the cane cannot strike your

private parts."  The policewoman put a leather strap across

Katie's back.  "To assure that the strokes hit below the

waist, avoiding possible damage to the spine or kidneys."

Katie, stretched taut, as on a medieval rack, wondered what

sort of weapon might break her spine.  The policewoman

went to the door and let in a man in a suit, some sort of

official witness, Katie supposed, incongruous in a suit in

the tropics.  A second man entered, carrying a cane, narrow

but long and gleaming wet.  The man, in shorts and a short

sleeved shirt, looked like a weight lifter, about six and a

half feet tall and bulging with muscles, maybe 250 or 300

pounds of him.  His head was shaved and looked like an

eggplant, gleaming black in the sun which streamed in

from open windows high on the walls.  Katie could hear

noises form the street, and conversations from the hallway,

so surely passers by could hear her screams, if she did not

control herself.  When he saw Katie, the executioner made

a noise like a suppressed laugh and spoke in a deep voice,

like James Earl Jones.  The interpreted told Katie: "he says

he sometimes gets women, but never a white woman of

such charms, mature and curvy, with such nice, soft, full

arse cheeks.  He says he will enjoy his work."  Katie

shivered at that.  Stretched out as she was, she could do no

more than shiver.  The man in the suit said something, and

the big man swished his cane through the air.  Then,

suddenly, it fell right across Katie's upthrust buttocks.

     Jeff, in the hall outside, could hear everything, for

the walls were mostly louvers, to let the air through, and

the sound came through, too.  He heard the translator's

explanations, and imagined his wife, stretched out on the

table with a wooden post pressing her vulva.  He heard the

swish of the cane, heard the crack as it met soft flesh, heard

the scream as Katie reacted, heard a monosyllable from the

suit, and the translator saying, "One."  He nearly wept, at

the idea of Katie suffering, but his imagination pictured her

quivering arse, and his own penis stirred.  It seemed half a

minute before Katie stopped blubbering, then there was the

"swung-splat!" of the cane and another torrent of

incoherent screams and sobs.  The translator said, "Two."

     By the fourth stroke, Jeff had a problem with his

penis trying to climb behind his belt.  It had been years

since it felt so stiff and insistent.  The translator said,

"Madame, you must control yourself, or it will take all

morning."  Katie must have bit her lip or something, for the

next swish-splat elicited only a brief yelp of pain, and it

was not until the twelfth blow that Katie again dissolved

into squeals and sobs.  Jeff pressed on his penis, willing it

to go down, but that, of course, wouldn't help.

     Even before Katie stopped sobbing, the executioner

left the room, and Jeff got a quick glimpse of his wife's

white arse, striped with parallel bright red welts in a neat

horizontal array from the tops of her thighs to the top of her

arse crack.  Then the door closed.  It seemed several

minutes before Katie and the interpreter and the man in the

suit came out into the hall.  Jeff went to Katie and put his

arm around her, thankful that his erection had subsided.

Katie sobbed into his shoulder, "The beast took my panties

as a souvenir."

     The interpret said softly, "You are better off

without them.  You will want to lie on your bed at the

hotel, naked, with nothing touching your sore bottom until

you recover from the caning.  If you like, you can give me

some money and I can get it changed legally, at the official

rate.  You will only have about a third as much as the

shopkeeper would have given you, but it will spare your

bottom.  Perhaps I can buy you some soothing lotion, and,

if you insist on wearing panties, I can get you the thong

type, which will not press on your bruises."  Jeff gave her

some pounds and said he would appreciate her help in that

respect.

     Back at the hotel, Katie lay on the bed, totally

naked, still smarting from the judicial punishment.  Jeff

wanted to comfort her, but she wouldn't let him touch her,

and he was forced to sit there, only two feet from his naked

wife, staring at her plump, garish bottom.  He could see the

wisps of reddish pubic hair peeping out between her thighs,

each of which sported a bright red track where the cane had

fallen.  He could see the swell of her breasts, on the bed

sheet, there below her arm pits.  He lusted for his wife,

whom he hadn't seen naked in daylight for years, as best he

could remember, and he wondered if, when they got back

to Merrie ol' England, he would ever again see her naked

in the sunlight.  He rather hoped he might.  "Jeff," she said,

her face still stained with tears, "I'm sorry this happened.  I

love you."