The Cane, Thank You Mistress

I make my way down 28th Street in Midtown Manhattan, weaving though the lunchtime crowds that flow in streams and eddies along the sidewalks. The street is jammed with taxis, cars, and delivery trucks. I walk slower than I usually would, not wanting to be either late or early for my appointment. Just beyond 6th Avenue, I stop before an unmarked gray door, check the time on my watch, and push the button for 7A on the intercom.

The intercom squawks "who is it?" I give my scene name and I hear the buzzer vibrate on the door, letting me in. I walk down a short dimly lit hallway to an elevator. If dungeons in Middle Ages were in the subterranean vaults of castle keeps, in New York the "dungeons" are now in the lofts of buildings left behind when high rents drove light industry out of the city. The elevator rattles and rocks as it ascends to the 7th floor. The door opens and I walk down the hallway to the metal door marked 7A.

When I open the door and step inside a small anteroom, she is there to greet me. She is Asian - pretty, petite, with long, straight, black hair and flashing eyes. She is dressed in street clothes - a crisp white blouse, a pair of dark slacks and flats. She holds out her hand and calls me by name. With me in my suit, we could be having a business meeting. There is still business to transact, although that is not why I am here. It occurs to me that I must be her first client of the day, although instead of "client" the word "victim" forms in my head. The juxtaposition of the two words feels perversely amusing.

I take her offered hand and and am impressed by her firm grasp.

"It is a pleasure to meet you," she says.

"The pleasure is mine, Mistress," I reply, to which she smiles. I wonder how much pleasure I will feel amidst the pain. This is our first session together. I am both excited and frankly frightened.

She releases my hand, turns and opens another door. She gestures that I should go inside.

"Put the tribute on the table. Take off your clothes and kneel facing away from the door. I will be with you in a few minutes."

Her voice, warm and welcoming a moment before, now sounds cold.

"Yes, Mistress," I reply. I step through the threshold and the door closes behind me.

Within a few minutes, I am naked and kneeling on the cool concrete floor facing away from the doorway, as instructed. My clothes are folded on a chair by the door. I have placed a white envelope with the tribute on the small table next to the chair.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light. A window overlooking the street is blocked by a heavy curtain with the glow of daylight escaping only at the edges. A torchiere shining faintly at the high ceiling in the far corner of the room is the only other illumination.

Soon I can make out a large St. Andrew's Cross, with straps to hold a willing supplicant, against the far wall. Nearby is a flogging bench in front of a large wall-sized mirror. Along the remaining wall, whips, canes, and bondage gear hang from pegs, at the ready.

My eyes are fixed on the canes. I have sessioned many times before and have endured whips and paddles but I have never been caned. I am told that caning can be the most intense, nasty form of play, more vicious and yet possibly more satisfying than any other impact play. I have wondered how I will handle the sensations. Will I be stoic or will I break down sobbing, begging for mercy?

In our phone conversation of days before, I mentioned an interest in being caned to Mistress and she had reacted with an evil chuckle. Looking at the rattan and poly canes of various sizes, I wonder if once again, I should be more careful what I wish for.

My heart is racing. I breathe deeply to regain control. I am both frightened and exhilarated. I can feel the change beginning to take place.

A few minutes ago I was one of the myriad New Yorkers in business attire, trapped in offices or rushing to meetings. Now, I am something entirely different. The outside world is somewhere else. I have been stripped naked, literally and figuratively. I have become primal. Naked. Ready to bare both my flesh and my soul to the whatever my Mistress will subject me to. Whether ice or fire, it will be both catharsis and a voyage of discovery.

I am grateful that she has given me some time to prepare myself, to shed my other existence as well as my clothes. I listen to the sound of traffic from the street, floors below. The sound seems to flow in waves like the call of a distant ocean. I let the waves wash over me. I am breathing slowly and deeply now. I close my eyes and draw myself inward. I am ready.

After about ten minutes, I hear the door open and close, followed by the click, click, click of heels on the concrete floor. She is small, wearing a black leather bodice and knee high black boots. I am over six feet tall, but on my knees, she towers over me.

She looks me up and down as if to inspect the specimen that she has to work with. With one hand she gently caresses my face and then an instant later, slaps my cheek. The slap is not hard, as if to merely catch my attention.

She looks deep into my eyes and steps closer, reaching out for my nipples. I am reminded of her firm hand shake as her strong fingers squeeze and twist. Her nails are short, but they feel like sharpened steel as they seem to slice into the tender flesh. I gasp. She smiles.

As she works on my nipples, I feel the blood rushing to my cock. She glances down.

"Well, I see someone has woken up."

She gives my nipples one last particularly hard twist and lets go. She reaches lower, ignoring my hard cock. With one hand, she cradles my balls, rocking them back and forth as if they were dice she is about ready to throw at a roulette table.

Then slowly, ever so slowly, she begins to squeeze. She is looking into my eyes and tightening her grasp around my balls. The pain starts out as an ache and keeps building until I open my mouth in a silent scream. I close my eyes to the blinding pain.

I hear her laugh. She lets go of my balls and is smiling at me as I open my eyes again.

"Stand up. Let's have some fun," she says at little more than a whisper.

She walks over to the rack on the wall and takes two canes - one wooden and one plastic.

"Normally, I would choose, but as this is our first time together... Should I use the rattan or the poly?" She smiles, rather sweetly, as if she is offering me choices from the desert tray in a restaurant.

I have no idea which instrument is better or worse. And what is better and what is worse? More pain or less? I am struck by the absurdity of it all. I came here to be be beaten. I am paying to suffer at the hands of such a lovely young woman with a reputation as a vicious sadist.

Why would anyone ask for pain? That is a long, complicated, and probably pointless discussion. All I know now is that at this moment, that is what I want.

"Rattan, please, Mistress. Thank you."

"Good choice," she replies.

She walks back to the wall, rehangs the canes and then takes down two leather cuffs off the rack.

"Hold out your hands, " she says. I do and she buckles the cuffs on my wrists.

"Get on the bench."

"Yes, Mistress."

The flogging bench is covered in black leather. I lie down on my chest. There are padded pockets for my knees. My arms hang down on either side and Mistress clips the shackles on the cuffs to pad eyes on the bench. I feel her pull a wide strap across my back, tightening it down so that I can't move an inch. A few minutes later I feel her tightening straps behind my knees. I am now fully immobilized. My ass feels particularly vulnerable.

Completely under her control, she stands over me. I can see her pale reflection in the wall mirror as she gently drags her fingers across my back. It feels good and strangely, I feel safe and cared for. Naked, strapped down, and about to be beaten, how severely, I have no idea, by a woman who I have just met, and yet, I feel at ease. I am not the same person who walked in the door in a business suit fifteen minutes ago. Now I am merely a creature of my desires, who wants to take whatever the beautiful sadist in leather is willing to give.

She drags her fingers across my back for an instant longer before reaching back and giving my ass a hard slap.

"This ass is just begging to be beaten."

She smiles and takes a black flogger off the wall.

"Let's warm you up a bit before things get really serious."

I feel the flogger tails strike my back. Not hard, a pleasant sting but nothing more. Each blow becomes slightly harder in a steady tattoo, until the rhythm pauses for a moment. Then suddenly, I am stunned as the wind is knocked from my lungs. The flogger hits my upper back at its full weight and at full speed. A few seconds later, as I am still gasping, another solid blow slams against my flesh, crushing and cutting at the same time. A third blow and a fourth has me reeling. And then it stops and I feel her small hand, cool on my burning back.

"I am remiss," she says playfully. "I have ignored your ass entirely. Can't have that."

She begins flogging my ass, not gently, but not yet at full strength. Progressively, the blows fall harder and and harder. I glance forward at the wall mirror and see her reflection swinging the flogger with an almost maniacal glee as the skin of my ass burns and stings.

And then the flogging stops. She hangs the flogger back on the wall and steps back to the bench. I feel her spreading some sort of cream across my battered backside.

"You said that you wanted a real caning experience. I am going to give you one. I just put some antibiotic on your cheeks in case the cane breaks the skin. Do you remember your safe word?"

"Yes, mistress," I reply.

"Good."

For a moment I close my eyes to calm myself.

I had heard about canes, read about caning, watched videos of caning. I did not understand canes until the first strike.

She walks over and picks up the rattan cane. She stands behind me and swings it in a figure eight above her head, making a vicious hissing sound. I wince and she laughs.

Then she stands slightly to the side. She presses the cane against my ass and slides it to just the right position. She draws back her arm slightly, pauses for an instant, and swings.

The pain feels like a knife slicing through my buttocks. I gasp and let out a small moan. Then as the blow fades, there is an aftershock, a second pain, intense yet deeper, that seems to slice through me as if to cut off my legs. I cry out in both surprise and agony.

I hear her laugh. "Amazing, isn't it?"

With that, she strikes me a second time, which feels harder and nastier than the first. The pattern is the same - an instant blinding pain followed by an aftershock that rips through my entire body. There is something different this time, however. After the second wave of pain, I feel a warmth flowing up my spine - an afterglow after the aftershock. I feel the exhilaration of complete submission. It flows through every atom of my being.

Suddenly, Mistress is bending over next to my face.

"How are you doing?" she asks.

I could only nod my head and mumble, "OK."

She smiles. "I do six strokes and then I stop for a short rest. You have four more before I stop. After a break, if you can take it, we will do six more. And then six more and six more again. If at the break, you want to stop, just say so. If we are in the middle of a series and you need to safeword out, that's OK too. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mistress."

"You are new at this so I've cut you some slack, but after each blow I want you to say, "Thank you Mistress." Do you understand?"

"Yes. Thank you Mistress."

The third strike of the cane hurts more than the first two, but the afterglow feels stronger.

"Thank you Mistress."

She pauses between strikes to let the sensations of both agony and contentment wash over me. I watch her reflection in the mirror in equal parts horror and wonder.

"Thank you, Mistress."

Another strike and a pause. "Thank you, Mistress." I am beginning to get my breathing under control. The pain is overwhelming but so too is warmth which follows.

And another. "Thank you, Mistress."

By the sixth stroke, I am not just repeating a phrase. I mean it, sincerely.

"Shall we go for twelve?"

I take a deep breath. "Yes, Mistress."

I had no idea how much more I can take, but I know I want more. The seventh stroke hits. "Thank you, Mistress." And another and another. "Thank you, Mistress." "Thank you, Mistress."

I slowly became aware that the periphery of the room seems to be blurring. The only things in sharp focus are the flogging bench and the reflection in the mirror of the sadistic goddess swinging the cane. The world has disappeared and we are all that is left, somewhere flying through space in this weird dance of agony and joy. "Thank you, Mistress." "Thank you, Mistress."

The pain is still there, intense, rending, impossibly real and yet now I can take it. Wherever I am, whatever I have become, the pain is now part of me and I am part of it.

"Shall we continue? Another six?"

"Yes, Mistress. Thank you, Mistress." I want more. And more.

Through it all, we are flying, perhaps propelled by the pain, the agonizing afterburner that drives us past the stars to the rhythm of the swinging rattan.

"Another six?"

"Yes, Mistress. Thank you, Mistress."

And then there is quiet. The swish of the cane is stilled. Everything has slowed to a stop. I realize that Mistress has pulled up a chair next to the bench.

"How are you?" she asks.

"Fine, I think." I pause for a moment. "That was ..." I am not sure what to say. "That was beyond words..."

"You took 24 strokes. They called that a military caning. Not everyone can handle it. You did very well for your first time. I didn't go easy on you."

"I didn't want you to," I reply.

She unclips the cuffs from the bench, then loosens and takes off the strap across my back. I feel her release the straps from my knees.

"Stay still. I want to show you something."

She jumps up and wheels a portable full length mirror over from another corner of the room. She turns up the lights and positions the mirror behind the bench so I can see the damage to my ass.

"You mark so beautifully."

I agree. In the reflection, I see angry red stripes, parallel lines in red and purple, a livid and living reminder that still ached. I am sure I will hurt for days.

"You have a deft hand with a cane."

She smiles. "Why thank you. Happy to beat your ass anytime. I wonder how many strokes you could take."

I wonder as well. But all I want to do now is to curl up at Mistress' feet. I know I can't. No doubt she has other clients awaiting her not so tender mercies and I too have things to do. Despite the pain I feel getting dressed, I know that I am at least partially returning to the person who I was only an hour or two before. I feel both sad and exhilarated.

Mistress is waiting for me in the anteroom. Instead of the handshake that I had received on my arrival, she gives me a hug.

All I can think to say is "Thank you, Mistress."