And if not, what of the more recent, horizontally overlaid, gridiron-branding of pinky-width flaming scarlet; would the sight of that have been enough to twist his best intentions? Expertly drafted from the very uppermost curving slopes of that tight, almost heart-shaped little bottom and extending to near-on halfway down the backs of those milk-cream thighs, until where finally curtailed by the intervention of the girl’s leg-brace straps; right at this very moment in time these were so fresh as to be actually visibly throbbing. What with those still-developing wheals and the local involuntarily twitching of muscle fibres sending little patches of soft girl-flesh, alternatively tautening and relaxing, dancing bewitchingly across the surface of that peachy behind of hers – what with all of that in the background, if he had been asked at that moment whether he might perhaps prefer her kept there after all…what would have been his answer?
What of the girl herself? What of young Meredith Hewson? A young woman so well shielded from reality, his reality, any reality, as to inhabit, for the most part, a shadowy self-built world of uncertainly-flitting phantasms and constructed of self-doubt and inconsistency - what care could she have that someone, somewhere, searched; even if that searcher was her ex-lover? As crushed as she felt at that moment, she would only have viewed it as false hope – for surely her situation was beyond hope.
After was said and done, she had thought herself safe, here in hospital. But they had let her down; he had still got to her, the old man, that old church-man from her nightmares, the priest or whatever he was. But they were not nightmares, were they? They never had been; they were memories pure and simple - as unlikely as that might seem - she was certain of it. Just as she was certain that he had come to her - just when she was at her most powerless to resist, strapped down, bent over from the waist waiting for her examination and X-ray and left so open and vulnerable with her legs spread wide and immobilised in those awful leg callipers they kept her in.
Of course she hadn’t actually seen him, how could she have, strapped face down like that? But surely they could have seen the physical evidence in front of their own eyes. Not satisfied with anally raping her he had viciously taken a cane to her defenceless bottom prior to the act – just as he had always taken that heavy leather strap of his to her in the parsonage to “beat the devil” from her before he would take her from behind. Besides, they had cameras just about everywhere; someone somewhere must have seen it all.
Yet they denied that anything had been seen, denied the existence of the frenzied web of burning cane-lines she could feel blazing agonizingly across her backside, even denied that she had been left alone for much longer than a minute or so – a period ridiculously too brief for the events of which she complained of to have occurred in.
It had all been in her head, just as all of that other stuff she seemed to remember had been fabricated in her head – and surely the very existence of those security cameras only went to underline the truth of that statement. She had just been in a car crash, an accident, that was all – they said so, constantly. All those other things had just been delusions and dreams, wicked dreams…dreams that she had no right to have, that had to be eradicated, that she had to have therapy for…that she had to be punished for. It was all for her own good.
Here was a personality folding in on itself - day by day, week by week and month by month. Psychologically, she was nowhere now that he would recognise - not that her physical surroundings would match more closely his common experience in any case. The ‘squeaky bouncy little thing’ of old was stood here now, a quiet, hunched and mouse-like little thing – quenched indeed.
But was that really so surprising? After all, she had just been caned by her therapist, by a woman doctor, in front of two waiting nurses as witnesses and simply for having just previously been caned by someone else; or so it seemed. She had just been caned for having been caned, for daring to complain about having been caned and anally abused - or rather for sticking to her conviction, for refusing to admit that she was deluded, that she was in fact mentally ill.
They had carte blanche over her. It was a dream come true for any possessed of her carer’s predilections - besides, her presence attracted substantial funding…and from an impeccable source.