Moonlighting: A Thanksgiving Story (2 page)

I looked at
him, stricken. I was from a good family, but not a wealthy one. I needed my
job. I told him so, my voice shaking and on the verge of tears.  “Mr. Edge.
Please….” I began.

“I am not
entirely unsympathetic to your plight,” he said. “But there must be
consequences. When students here disobey, they are sent here and corrected with
the cane. It is always a choice - the cane or expulsion.” He paused. “I’m
prepared to offer you the same choice.”

It took a few
moments for the words to sink in. I was a teacher, not a student. The idea of
being caned was mortifying. My mouth grew dry as I stood there staring at him
in disbelief.

“I’m waiting
for your answer,” he said. “Will you accept correction or will you leave?”

I could not
leave. Tears welled up in my eyes and I began to shake. I would never make it
outside of this school, especially if I were turned out without a reference.  “Please,
sir,” I begged. “Can’t I explain?”

“You can
explain after your correction, should that be what you choose.  If you choose
to leave, then your explanation is irrelevant. Lying is not tolerated. For any
reason.”

“I can’t
leave,” I said.

“And so…”

My voice was
shaking. “If I can only stay by choosing the cane then I….”

“Then you
what?”

Could he be
so cruel as to make me say it? I took a ragged breath and finished the
sentence. “Then I accept the caning.”

He nodded, as
if we’d just come to the end of some business deal. And I suppose for a
practical man, it was a bit like that. I’d broken the rules. He was giving me a
chance to make amends, and keep my job. If I were an awful teacher, he’d have
sent me away. But I was not, and we both knew it. Still, there had to be
consequences. But this?

“Bend over
and put your hands on my desk,” he instructed as he turned to remove the cane
from the wall.
I complied, feeling shaky and scared. Mr. Edge walked behind me and I gasped as
I felt him clutching the sides of my skirt at the hips and pulling them upward.

“Sir! What
are you doing?”

“Surely you
do not expect me to correct you effectively through all that fabric?” he asked,
as if I were simple for even asking. “Rest assured your modesty will be observed.
It is simply the skirt that is being moved aside.”

I knew this
meant he would be leaving my undergarments in place, but they were thin cotton,
and the shape of my bottom was quite visible through the material. I felt my
face flush red with shame as the cool air of the room raised goose bumps on the
skin of my bottom through the undergarment. I felt exposed and tears of
humiliation trickled from my eyes as a small sob choked itself past my lips.

“Now, now,”
he said. “I’ve not even begun your punishment and you’re already crying? I have
students who are braver.”

“Forgive me,
sir,” I responded. “I doubt they feel the same level of embarrassment, given
that they are youngsters better suited for correction.”

He gave no
warning and he brought the cane down hard across the middle of my bum. I cried
out and began to sob.  “Every disobedient spirit is suited for correction,” he
said. He’d leaned over and his mouth was inches from my ear. I could feel his
breath on my neck. I could not move. “Hold still,” he said.

I did. The
second blow crisscrossed the first and I had to hold the desk to keep from
sinking to my knees. The third blow caused a blinding flash of white to appear
before my eyes. It was getting hard to catch my breath. I’d actually sent
students to Mr. Edge’s office for this?

I sobbed
through the last seven blows, praying for strength as I tried to stop my hips
from rocking back and forth. It became harder and harder to hold my position
and he helped me but putting his large hand on the small of my back, pinning me
in place even as the pressure forced me to arch my bottom upward in what I was
sure was a most unseemly display. I never thought it would end. With each blow
of the cane, my bottom blazed with agony.

Then,
finally, it was over.

“Stand up,” he
said…. As I raised myself to standing I realized how wet I’d become between my
legs. The throbbing want was as intense as the throbbing pain in my bottom. Mr.
Edge’s authority was like a beacon. It was all I could do to keep from rushing
to him, from begging him to hold me and bruise my lips with a kiss. Did he feel
the same way? I did not know. Not then….
Charlotte stopped. She’d been writing for two hours and her stomach was
growling. She went to the kitchen and fixed a chicken salad sandwich, a sliced
apple and green tea. She flipped on the television as she ate, skipping past
romantic comedies and reality television shows to select a documentary on
Victorian England. She smiled sadly was she watched, recalling what Mr.
Longbridge had said about traditional values. She felt the same way; if only
she could find a man who shared her odd beliefs, a man who wanted to be head of
household, a man who would love her enough to cherish, guide and correct her.

She yawned. It
wasn’t bedtime, but she realized she was tired. Charlotte went back into the
kitchen and packed the remainder of her uneaten dinner into a Tupperware
container for next day’s lunch. Back in the living room, she printed out what
she’d written so far to take upstairs to read. But the phone rang, distracting
her, and she laid the papers down on her desk. The call was from her mom, and
an hour later she realized she was too tired to hold her eyes open. Tomorrow
was another grueling day filled with lessons and rehearsals for the
Thanksgiving play. She needed to get some sleep.

“Oh NO!”
Charlotte sat bolt upright in bed. She’d been dreaming that she was standing on
a beach, watching a ship out at sea. She’d been wondering why the bell on the
ship kept tolling but then opened her eyes and realized the tolling sound was
her alarm, and that it had been going for some time.

She cursed
herself roundly as she got out of bed and ran to the shower. She’d gotten a
good night’s sleep and had still overslept? How could this have happened?
Fortunately for Charlotte, she selected a week’s worth of outfits and hung them
in order in her closet. She quickly reached for the next one - a blue pleated
skirt and pink blouse. She slipped her feet into her blue pumps as she put her
earrings on. Her long auburn hair was easy enough. She fastened it into a
quick, loose ponytail and hurried downstairs to put her lunch in a bag and grab
a muffin. In the living room she shoved the papers on her desk into the mended
bag and rushed out the door. Cross-town traffic wasn’t as bad as usual and she
made it to school just as the final bell was ringing. Late, but not technically
tardy.

Still, it didn’t
get her day off to the best start. Charlotte liked having everything planned to
the letter, including her schedule. She stopped by the teacher’s lounge to
check her box and stuffed the papers inside in her bag. As she did, she
realized with frustration that she’d pulled the mail from the box of Wendy
Tillman, the teacher next to her. With a grumble she reached in her bag, but the
papers back in Tillman’s box and grabbed her own.

The kids were
already in their seats. She had good students. Laura - the assistant who came
in two days a week - smiled at her and waved. Charlotte nodded and went to her
desk.

“OK, guys,”
Laura was saying. “Let’s begin with the pledge!”

Charlotte
watched her students saying the pledge and could not help but smile. There were
fifteen of them, all good kids with involved and caring parents. She felt lucky
to have her job, even if she did have to write on the side and clip coupons to
keep it.

The rest of the
morning went well. There were phonics drills and story time and art. With
Thanksgiving right around the corner, the theme was consistent with the
upcoming holiday. Charlotte bit her tongue as Laura spoke of how the pilgrims
and Indians were good friends. She knew the reality of the first Thanksgiving
was much different. The play perpetuated the same false theme, but then again Sue
Ellen Forrester, who was as conservative a person as Charlotte had ever met,
had selected it.

By mid-morning
recess, Charlotte had put the rough start to her day behind her. It was cool
and sunny. Laura took the students out to collect leaves for the next day’s art
project - turkeys with leaf tails. The other teaching assistants were already
filing out with their classes. Charlotte decided to enjoy a cup of coffee with
the other teachers in the break room.

But when she
reached the room, the mood was quiet. Everyone was standing around, whispering
as they passed a paper from one hand to the other. Expressions ranged from
shock to anger. Charlotte’s eyes continued to scan the faces as her heart
clenched in fear.

“What is it?”
she asked. The first thing that came to her mind was that the bad economy had
hit Falmont, and the paper they were looking at was a memo notifying them of
layoffs.

But it turned
out to be something worse.

Sue Ellen
Forrester was holding the paper and her hands were shaking as she looked at
Charlotte, her face flushed and her lips pursed with righteous indignation.

“Pornography!”
she said. She shook the paper, turning as she did to the other teachers.
“Pornography! Here! In our break room!”

Charlotte stood
rooted to the spot, still uncertain of what’s going on.

“This,” Sue
Ellen said, was found in Wendy’s box this morning. She walked over and handed
it to Charlotte. “Filth!”

Charlotte took
the paper, and as she looked down at the story she’d been writing before she
felt the blood pounding through her head. How could this have happened? And
then she knew. In her rush to get ready for work, she’d shoved all her papers
on her desk into her bag, including the illicit story. When she accidentally
put the papers into Wendy’s box and retrieved them, she’s left one behind. A
very crucial one.

“Does anyone
know how it got there?” she asked, hoping her voice didn’t betray the panic she
felt rising in her chest.

Sue Ellen
snatched the paper from her hand. “No, but I’m going to find out. It has to be
someone in this school. A janitor perhaps. Only someone…unrefined and…..un-Christian…would
write such…”

Her voice
trailed off and Charlotte felt herself growing angry. “Are you assuming that
Mr. Vaughn is not Christian?” she asked, referring to the janitor. "Sue
Ellen, just because someone works in housekeeping does not mean that they are
not as good as you or I, or any less refined.”

“What? You think
it was a teacher or other staff member?” Sue Ellen screeched. “I can guarantee
you that no teacher would write this…”

“Well, how do
you know whoever put it there even wrote it?” Charlotte asked, thinking fast.
“They may have just copied it off the Internet.”

Wendy Tillman
stepped up. “That’s what I thought, too. But it’s not a printout from a Web
page, Charlotte. It’s a Word document. Whoever put it in my box wrote it.”

“And there’s a
name on it,” Sue Ellen said. “Brita Sinclair.” She held the paper up and shook
it. “You’d better believe I’m going to get to the bottom of this. Such smut
should not be tolerated. It should be outlawed, if you ask me.”

“What should be
outlawed?" Mr. Longbridge had entered the room. The women instantly fell
quiet. Charlotte felt a surge of renewed panic. There was no way she could stop
what she knew was coming.

“This.
Pornography.” Sue Ellen Forrester walked over and held the paper out to the
headmaster. “Someone put this in Wendy Tillman’s box this morning. We have no
idea who it is, but it’s someone in this school.”

Nigel Longbridge
took the paper, scanned it and then raised his eyes to the women around him.  “This
is a serious matter,” he said. “But it is not one I want discussed further
here. I do not want children overhearing this matter in conversation,
understand?”

The women
nodded. Charlotte wondered whether or not Nigel Longbridge could hear her hear
pounding from where he stood feet away.

“I will get to
the, uh, bottom of this..” The principal paused. Several women looked down,
trying not to react to his poor choice of words. “Whoever is behind…responsible
for this will certainly face consequences.”  He cleared his throat. “I believe
break time is over. I hear children coming back in the building. All of you,
back to class. Off you go!”

Charlotte’s
wonderful day had turned to shambles. It was all she could do to finish her
classes. Even Laura noticed something was wrong, and asked Charlotte if she were
OK.

“I’ve just got a
touch of a headache,” she said, turning her head and blinking back tears.
“Migraine.”

“Do you want to
leave early? I’m sure they’d let me cover for you.”

Charlotte shook
her head. That was the last thing she needed. If she left early, suspicion
would instantly turn to her, and that was the last thing she needed.

At lunch, her
fellow teachers disobeyed orders and whispered together about the bit of
erotica that had turned up in the break room. Sue Ellen’s whispering was
punctuated by angry hisses and by the looks of things she was eagerly rallying
other teachers to her cause of ferreting out the author and making him or her
pay. Charlotte was angry and frustrated that she’d been unable to contradict
the older teacher’s characterizations of erotica writers. She was neither evil,
nor a slut. She’d grown up in a strong Episcopalian family. Her great uncle was
the bishop of a small diocese in Maryland. To insinuate that she was anything
other than a good person because she enjoyed and wrote about sex infuriated
her. Yet, she had to be realistic.  If she got caught, it could result in her
job loss.

She could not
stop kicking herself for being so careless. The one thing she had going for her
was her publisher’s commitment to protecting the anonymity of the writers. Most
Moonlight authors wrote under pen names, for obvious reasons. Anyone trying to
find out the true identity of Brita Sinclair would be met with a dead end.

But Charlotte
may not have felt quite so confident if she’d known at that very moment Nigel
Longbridge was in his office Googling the name of Brita Sinclair. His first
click to her most popular novel, “The Translator,” about a woman hired to
translate for a mysterious Russian man suspected in a crime. The man turned out
to not only be innocent, but the hero of the story. In the book, he and the
main character, Tessa Bellington, fall in love when he awakens her submissive
side through rough sex and spanking.

Other clicks took
him to titles like,
LaCrosse Rivalry
,
A Knight to Remember: Book One
in the Renn Faire Series
, and
The Perils of Fanfiction
. The covers
were typical of the genre, featuring handsome, muscle-bound men and beautiful
curvaceous women.

Brita Sinclair
was described in the Moonlight Author bio as living a quiet, pastoral life in a
picturesque town. Interests included gardening, studying foreign languages,
gourmet cooking and traveling. There was no age or picture associated with the
bio. The author did have a Web site and a blog. Nigel clicked on it but found
nothing more than a list of her current titles and a notice to check her blog
for more updates and news. Nigel followed the link and noted that the blog had
been virtually neglected until December a year ago. At that point, “Brita”
announced that she was back to writing and looking forward to delighting her
readers with more books. Judging by the comments section, she appeared to have
quite a following. Nearly a hundred readers expressed excitement for her
getting back into business.

The headmaster
sat back in his chair, chin in hand. Whoever this Brita Sinclair person was,
she was very careful about covering her tracks. She gave no clue as to exact
location, marital status or employment outside of her writing career. But he
also knew that information could be gleaned about the author by reading her
books. People write about what they know, and he had an idea that if he
downloaded the author’s work, a picture would emerge of just who she was.

He picked up the
paper and smiled. Sue Ellen Forrester was livid about this bit of writing, not
that it surprised him. The prudish pickle of a woman got on his last nerve, and
he credited his stiff-upper-lip upbringing for his unflappable demeanor around
such an annoying person. He wondered what the judgmental old harpy would think
if she knew that he personally identified with the headmaster in the story. It
was like the author had gone inside his head, plucked out his thoughts and put
them to paper.

In fact, Nigel
was no stranger to the cane, having endured it growing up in England and having
employed it as punishment with at least one female partner. He’d always been
very straightforward with the women he got involved with; in his house, his
word was law. He was an old-fashioned man and believed in the benefits of
corporal punishment to the betterment of miscreants, regardless of age or
gender. His last two partners had been lifestyle submissives, but while they’d
acquiesced he’d found them boring. He knew there had to be a complete package
out there - a woman with submissive tendencies, beauty and brains. He just had
to find her.

But as a school
administrator he could not risk going to clubs or looking for willing
submissives on Craigslist. As headmaster of Falmont Academy, his image had to
be above reproach. What went for the teachers went double for him. He was seen
as the town scholar, the moral rudder for the school that had educated
generations of townfolk who considered themselves genteel people. The Falmont
atmosphere reminded him of the uptight little English village that had been his
home until he’d moved to the United States, but such linear thinking did have a
downside. He did not think whoever penned the paper that had ended up in Wendy
Tillman’s box was a bad person. He enjoyed a bit of pornography from time to time,
as did most men. In fact, nothing delighted him more than the image of a
beautiful female bottom turned cherry red by a good, sound thrashing. So being
put in the position of Sue Ellen Forrester’s Witchfinder did not set well with
him, but on the other hand if he did nothing, word would leak to trustees, he
was sure, and then there would be questions as to why nothing was done.

He hoped that
Forrester and the other teachers would follow his orders and refrain from
gossiping, but he knew the nature of the town and didn’t expect what happened
in the break room to be a secret for very long. He was sure that this Brita
Sinclair was one of the teachers. He was equally sure that the paper had not
ended up in the box on purpose.  He did not believe that any teacher who wrote
under a pen name should be fired, but he worried that there were those who
would disagree with that. He had to find out who it was, and then he would
figure out what to do next.

Nigel pulled out
his iPad. He wasn’t about to order a bunch of erotica through the school’s
computer. The search he could explain, but not the purchase. But he knew
purchasing and reading the books would give him the information he needed to
discover the identity of the author.

And then? Well,
that was the big question, wasn’t it? If word got out in the conservative
community, there would be an outcry. The Falmont teachers were put up on an
unrealistic pedestal, and the morals clause in the contract would most
certainly be used to fire her.