Sharing the pain

“Thank you for waiting, counsel. The case is being heard in the judge’s private chambers: would you mind removing your shoes, as the carpets are very delicate?”

I bent down. And my hands were trembling so much that I could hardly untie my laces…

—

I’d met up with Emma Jane half an hour before, a short walk away from the venue for her impending judicial punishment. She’d scanned the shelves of a local store, looking for a sandwich to eat: none seemed to be to her taste, and I could say nothing right. I’d expected her to be worried about what was to come: her too-evident stress took me aback.

It was a few moments before three, last Friday afternoon. The court, I knew, would send a message when they were ready for us. We headed to a coffee shop to kill time, and ordered hot chocolates. I sipped mine; EJ toyed with hers. “They make you wait,” she said. “The tension’s part of it.”

Was she scared? ‘Petrified’ was perhaps more the word that came to mind. We held hands across the table, but she wasn’t with me: her mind was processing – trying to process – what was about to come, wondering (perhaps) why on earth she’d chosen to inflict this on herself. Waiting… waiting… waiting together. And then the chirp of an incoming text, and I picked up the phone. One word: “Ready.”

As we walked along the street, I held her hand, squeezing it tight through her gloves. She was trembling. I tried to put it down to the cold (which she’d said was worrying her – surely the punishment would hurt more as a result); I feared it was not. The walk was less than five minutes; we said very little, floating through the passers-by, before turning a corner. EJ didn’t know the specific venue; I did: “This is the street”. And after a few moments, I held her hand more tightly and stopped outside one of the buildings: “We’re here”. I felt her whole body shift away from me, as if in shock – momentarily, instinctively wanting to continue down the road and away, before she meekly followed me through the gate.

A court official was waiting inside the door, as I knew he would be. He invited us to take off our coats and hang them up – and then, before we could say a word, he told EJ to follow and led her away.

I waited alone, as my email instructions had instructed me to do, until his return. He showed me into the courtroom: an ordinary (lovely) living room. I saw the implements first – a table filled with canes, straps, a birch. I was asked to take one of the two chairs in the centre of the room, and to wait – and it was only whilst I did that my eyes fell on the white cloth covering the whipping bench. My heart beat faster, as the other official entered the room.

We shook hands. She was polite, thanking me for coming. I explained – as confidently as I could, trying to get into role – that I was sure we wouldn’t detain her long: there had clearly been a misunderstanding that we could clear up quickly. She seemed unconvinced, and left me to wait – and to worry about my girl in her ‘cell’.

She must have been brought in to stand by me relatively soon, but it felt like forever. Her hands were handcuffed behind her back; her face was covered by her hair, as if she was hiding from view as best she could. She looked adorable; I wanted to hug her. “Please stand for the judge”. And then he was there, in front of us, taking his seat behind the table and inviting us to sit.

He opened with a brief introduction: that Miss Woodhouse had been convicted by the court in July of being a member of the mafia, and had been flogged. She had now been found guilty of continuing her association with the mafia and of money laundering: would I like to say anything in mitigation before he passed sentence?

My mind raced; I panicked. Guilty? I’d prepared, polished a short speech in my ward’s defence; I’d been determined to condemn the court for its mistake in bringing her here. Yet the condemnation had already taken place. I stumbled nervously over my words as I improvised a plea – and asked the judge not to send her to prison. Community service, perhaps? Clearing the snow from the streets of the city? The judge questioned me: did I realise that the only alternative he could offer to imprisonment would be corporal punishment, and that given her past record, it would be particularly severe? I did, but begged his leniency, before he ordered one of the officials to take Miss Woodhouse to her cell whilst he weighed judgement.

We came out of role for the next few minutes, discussing the sentence: which implements, how many strokes. I knew that EJ was expecting a severe punishment, and this had been agreed in advance. Indeed, it was the very essence of the scene. Yet here was I, a conspirator in deciding how soundly she’d be thrashed, how much she’d be hurt – whilst wishing I could protect her from what was to come. The hairbrush? Not sufficiently ‘judicial’. Tawse? More scholastic or reformatory. 30 strokes? 10? 50? We discussed, debated, and my mind kept flashing across to how lonely, scared, she must be feeling as we kept her waiting.

When she was brought back – still handcuffed – they made her stand next to me once more, facing the judge to hear her fate: one minute with the spray birch, then 24 strokes of the cane. He turned to the court officials, urging them to apply the sentence with the greatest vigour: he wanted them to make her cry out in pain, and “I don’t want her to be able to sit comfortably for several weeks”. (I was reminded suddenly of a chilling phrase from the organiser in an email before the event, not seen by EJ – “the judge would like to hear her in pain, as would I”.)

Furniture was quickly rearranged: the bench was uncovered, pulled into position in the centre of the room. The discussion, the inevitable banter of roleplay was suddenly absent. The days of planning, the hours of logistical chaos as we tried to coordinate the scene amidst snow-disrupted travel chaos? My ability to cuddle my girl, or even speak to her? Gone. Everything now was about the flogging that was to come.

They ordered her forward; she removed her boots, trousers, socks and climbed up onto the punishment frame, bending forward over it. They buckled her, tight – ankles, legs, arms, wrists, a leather strap across her back pinning her down. Checked, double-checked. I recall being thankful for the care they were taking – reminded once again that these are the most trustworthy of players. And I recall wondering what Emma Jane must be thinking, and praying she was in the right headspace, just as they lowered her knickers. I heard a noise and tried to dismiss it, but it was there again: she was crying gently already.

Yet during the birching? Throughout each batch of thirty seconds, after that terrifying countdown: “3 – 2 – 1…”? She remained silent, save for the occasional gasp for breath. I’d decided beforehand to count the strokes – perhaps to give me focus on something other than how much it must be hurting her. But frankly, as I observed, my overwhelming feeling was one of relief. My goodness, the first official was whacking her hard, plainly at full strength – but I knew that, incredibly agonising as it clearly was, EJ could take this.

She sobbed after the first batch of 53: oh, how my poor girl was hurting, how red and sore her backside looked. But she was bearing it so bravely. They lifted her head to offer her water, which she seemed to struggle to sip. And then there was a pause before the second official took up position, measured the birch across her, and added another breathtaking 61 in his allotted half-minute. Yet still she remained silent and still – until the flood of tears at the end. I knew she’d mark this as a victory; beaten yet not beaten. I was so pleased for her, proud of her.

That, however, was the appetiser. It was now time for the caning. The implement selected was, quite frankly, scary – far more so than any in my own (pretty extensive) cane collection. Straight, particularly long, with the weight of a Singapore cane – yet slightly less thick, hence far whippier. Yet EJ has taken hard canings before, with harsh implements, from experienced and severe tops (myself included) determined to hurt her, inflicting far greater numbers of strokes: despite the main court official’s scary reputation, surely it couldn’t be that bad?

My illusions were shattered by the first stroke, the punishment officer swinging her whole body into, through the stroke, bringing it down with astounding force. It was as if the stroke wanted to keep going: that it had found EJ’s buttocks in its way of its momentum, that it pushed her as hard as it could against the bench and then cut into her when she could yield no more. I knew straight away that it would have utterly terrified its victim – that any questions in her mind as to whether this would be like ‘normal’ hard play, or whether it would be an entirely different proposition, would have been answered in that split second.

The second was still harder – slightly higher, marking out the upper boundary for the strokes that would follow. It took my breath away, marking a clear, long white line so deeply across her skin. The official took her time – fifteen, twenty seconds, an eternity between strokes; EJ was trying desperately not to cry, but the gasps with each blow grew louder and louder. I’ve seen hard canings before; administered many myself. Long, extended, full-strength punishments. I’ve been at shoots at Lupus, the company that make possibly the most severe spanking movies. And it was all too plain that I have never seen strokes even approaching this strength, or administered with such an evident lack of mercy, with such a desire to hurt.

On the sixth, perhaps the hardest yet, she let out a full-bodied scream – loud, long, uncontrolled – that I will never forget. Picture yourself sitting, a few feet away, from a girl you love – watching her being whipped harder than she could ever have imagined possible. Knowing that the pain must be unbearable. Knowing it had scarcely started, that she would be panicking inside as to how she could bear the rest of the strokes. But knowing too that it was how, not if – that she would see this through, that safewording wouldn’t be an option, wouldn’t enter her mind.

I was so close, yet so very far away from what she was experiencing. Feeling so protective. Feeling so utterly powerless. Able only to watch her writhe, to hear her cry out and sob. Clenching myself before each stroke, my whole body wincing as they fell, sometimes almost lifting off my chair – as if I could try and take some of the impact for her. Marvelling at the strength and accuracy of the flogging. Marvelling at my girl for taking it.

They tied her hair back after twelve, so that we could see her face in the mirror. Tear-stained, in such obvious agony. And then they gave her the hardest stroke yet. How I loved her, how proud I was of her, how I willed her on.

Would the official ease off? Far from it. If anything, I felt the strokes were getting harder. EJ somehow slid her hands from their bonds: freer to move, her agony as each cut fell became even more evident, her vulnerability even more shocking. The individual lines that striped her were beginning to merge. And still I could do nothing to help.

Number 23 was astounding – but after that, I knew she’d made it. The last… well, you know the tradition. But it was over – at least, the infliction of the ‘punishment’. The processing, the subsequent pain, was still to come.

They untied her afterwards and told her to stand; she was momentarily unsteady on her feet, as they ordered her to face the judge. Still fierce, unforgiving, he warned her not to return, and that a custodial sentence would be inevitable if she found herself before the court again. (Why did I suddenly imagine that their prisons would surely include floggings?).

And then, the words I wanted to hear: “You may go back to your counsel.” She turned towards me and hesitated – as if dragging herself from the absolute solitude of being flogged, and came close into my outstretched arms.

After, we left her to herself for a few minutes in a bedroom, before the officials went to check on her. And then, only then, was I allowed to go and see her, to hold her tight as she shivered uncontrollably, and curled up at my feet in tears on the bathroom floor. To cuddle, to marvel, to listen to her first reactions (her shock at the severity, beyond anything she’d expected), to tell her how proud I’d been of her. I shared that the Judge had just described it as the hardest caning he’d ever seen, concurring with his opinion. And within minutes, the whole group was sat round sipping champagne on the sofa, and my girl’s eyes burned bright as she flew once more.

—

With such thanks to the amazing friends who set up and ran the scene. There are few people with whom I could even conceive of doing something like this, and they made EJ (and me) feel so cared for – and safe – throughout. To be able to trust people so totally is very powerful.

I’ve not named them in the narrative above – for, during proceedings, they were to me anonymous. Had I thought of them by name at the time, I’d have been jolted too far back out of that room, of the proceedings, and that would have made it still harder to observe. But to Ms Switch, Mr Allen and the Judge, the very greatest of respect, praise and gratitude. And the tightest, tightest of hugs for the amazingly brave, adorable Emma Jane herself.