Most of a recent Sunday was taken up with driving – a three hour round trip in one direction to drop someone off in the morning, another three hours the opposite way late afternoon to my parents’ house.
Wanting to be fresh and alert for the second journey, I went for a short early afternoon nap after lunch. Looking at the clock when I awoke from the deepest sleep, I can only have been in bed for 20 or so minutes. But what intense dreams!
In the first of two scenes, I was an officer in a punishment centre. A pretty young woman*, there to be caned, stood nervous and shaking in front of me. In my hands were two items – a towel and a plain, short white smock.
I ordered her to strip, take a shower (how the cold water would shock her!), then to put on the dress. “And then I’ll take you along the corridor to the punishment room, so that I can carry out your sentence.”
She hesitated for just a fraction too long… My threat – “If you need me to strip you, I will” – did the trick, and she started to disrobe, trembling fingers struggling with buttons that were oh-so impractical for this particular appointment.
I hadn’t imagined this to be an institution in which inmates were detained; I hadn’t met the girl before, and assumed she had been sent from the courtroom simply to be flogged and then released. But the second scene in my dream was set later the same night, featuring the same girl, was set in a residential detention centre – although this time I wasn’t administering the punishment myself.
Rather, I was the officer responsible for a particular group of girls. As I reported for duty on the night shift, I knew that one of my favourites had been due to receive a caning during the day. When I reached the wing, she was still wearing the white dress that girls wore when being flogged. (Of course, it would have been lifted up to bare her for punishment, before she’d been bound in position over the whipping horse).
I sent the girls to bed, but beckoned the girl in the white dress into my office. She avoided my gaze as I questioned her about the caning – thirty strokes, it seemed – and then I made her bend over the table in the corner of the room, and lifted her skirt to inspect her stripes.
I woke at this point, so was deprived of a satisfactory ending to the scene. Did I reassure her, applying soothing cream? Did I tell her that I hoped she’s learnt her lesson, and pack her off to bed? Or did I get up to something far, far ruder – with her consent, or without? But at least, dear readers, my early awakening gave me some lovely options to ponder on the long drive north…
* Actually bearing a remarkable resemblance to the lovely Emma Jane – not that she’s naughty enough to need caning. Oh no!