Damsels in Distress by Amanita Virosa

doubt what awaited her on that heathen alter. Yet the whip swung in Dagonard’s hand, she had nowhere to run, and she found she simply lacked the courage to say nay. As if in a trance she gave him her hand and let him help her onto the stone platform, and the dwarf positioned her by the upright.
    ‘Now, my lady, if you would be so good as to put your head and shoulders through the hole,’ he ordered, and she felt entirely powerless to resist him. Bending, Eleanor did as she was told, and as her arms passed through Dagonard grabbed her wrists and pulled until her torso was wedged through the oval.
    ‘That’s it, my lady,’ he beamed, ‘now just rest there.’
    The stone was cold and a little rough, but oddly comforting. Dagonard did not let go of her wrists, but transferred both into one of his brawny hands and produced one of his thongs, and in a few deft movements her arms were bound together. Then the stunted man bent to pick up a length of thin chain from the base stone, and then looping it between her bound wrists he doubled it back and pulled until there was sufficient tension to hold her in that position. Then a padlock secured the chain into place.
    ‘If I might crave a moment or two more of your sweet patience, my lady?’ the dwarf sneered, then scurried out of her sight, and Eleanor heard a chink and felt her right ankle being pinioned in an iron cuff, and then the same was done to her left. There was more clinking and she felt chains tugging, pulling back first her left leg, then her right, until they were stretched wide apart and she was barely able to move any limb more than an inch or two in any direction.
    And the expected punishing strokes were not long in coming.
    ‘I am sure that my lady would like to be warmed up for what is approaching,’ she heard him say. ‘Damsels generally find it preferable, but please, do not clench those pretty buttocks like that. I am going to spank them, but if you persist in clenching I shall have to relax those lovely chubbies with my whip.’
    Eleanor tried, but her bottom twitched despite her efforts. The waiting seemed the most terrible thing. She was completely at his mercy, unable even to see him raise his arm.
    She felt it though. There was an almighty crack that echoed around the depressing chamber, and she gasped as her bottom cheeks exploded with pain.
    Eleanor, in her innocence, had imagined that a spanking, humiliating and undignified though it might be, would be nothing compared to a flogging with the dwarf’s terrible whip, but instantly she realised her misapprehension. Dagonard’s calloused hand was as hard as his short arm was strong. It cracked down, each strike sounding like a thunderclap as it echoed around the vaulted chamber, again and again, submerging Eleanor into a delirium of pain.
    Crack !
    ‘Oh, mercy!’ she wailed.
    Crack !
    ‘I cannot bear it!
    Crack !
    ‘Oh no, it is too much!’
    Crack !
    ‘Mercy, my bottom is afire!’
    Crack !
    ‘No mercy here, my lady,’ he scoffed. ‘You must be thinking of some other place.’
    Eleanor fought her bonds with no effect. Her belly writhed on its stone support as the spanking hand splattered down again and again. She could not think of anything except how much her bottom hurt. The scorching, stinging, punishing hand drove everything out of her mind, except for pain.
    It stung so much that for a few moments she was barely aware the spanking had stopped. Gasping, writhing, moaning and begging pitifully, tears ran freely down her flushed cheeks, but eventually it dawned on her that, though her bottom was still scalded and throbbing, no new smacks were raining down on its sore surface.
    As awareness slowly returned she remembered her position; naked, helpless, bound, and at the mercy of Sir Peris’s wicked servant, who was again standing before her. Blinking away the tears she saw him waiting, fondling his groin in the lewdest manner and grinning at her, clearly enjoying her travails.
    ‘Well,’