Ten Stinging Stories: A Spanking Anthology

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

Catching Carl Where He’s Not Supposed To Be

Dressed in a baby pink colored tank top sans bra and a pair of tight-fitting jeans plus clunky platform sandals, twenty-four-year-old Louisa Cannady knew that she looked good. She had the sort of hourglass figure and rolling walk that invariably turned men’s heads. Heck, she ought to have a good figure! For one thing, she watched her weight very carefully, often turning down the ice cream and chocolate candy she craved. For another, it had cost her parents a pretty penny to shell out the money for the boob job that got her breasts that would fill a C-cup but which she often let go braless since the silicone sisters were so wonderfully perky.

Louisa boasted a body that could have got her into Playboy and a face that might have looked just right for the cover of Vogue or Cosmopolitan. It was a heart-shaped face with regular features, a softly turned-up nose, large pouty lips, and big sky blue eyes. She had never had much acne even as a teenager and her fair skin was creamy and clear. Her teeth were pearly white and straight (thanks to years of braces!) and she was often complimented on her smile that showed off those teeth along with her dimples. Her hair was a natural sunshine shade of blonde. She kept her hair looking silky and she was currently wearing it parted on the right side and past her shoulders, straight until it got to the ends where there was a little bit of a curling under like in a pageboy.

Not that Louisa Cannady was a beautiful airhead. She was not a stereotypically “dumb blonde,” not at all. She loved to read, especially biographies of famous people who had overcome terrible obstacles. She also liked to look at works of art and visited art museums with some frequency.

Of course, Louisa was not really a classic “egghead” type either. She had never been a great scholar in school and had sometimes teased those who were although she would secretly admit to herself that she envied them. After high school, she had not wanted to go on to college. It was just too much time and expense and she did not look forward to writing a lot of essays like so many people did in college. At eighteen, she already had a job in a grocery store where she had gone up from bagging to cashiering. She enjoyed working the cash register at the grocery but also wanted something more so she had enrolled in a school that taught medical support positions and now worked fulltime in a doctor’s office as a medical and coding specialist while still working in the grocery store part-time on the weekends.

Louisa was really the type of woman who could get just about any man she really wanted. However, she only wanted one: Carl Cannady. They had started going together a couple of years earlier and had been married a few months ago. Louisa loved Carl deeply and believed that her love was returned. She had been strongly attracted to him when they first met which was when he was a customer at the grocery store. Carl looked exactly like Louisa’s type of man. Only two years older than she was, Carl was a robust, muscular sort who showed off his physique in tight t-shirts and jeans much as Louisa showed off her figure in revealing clothes. He had jet-black hair and a swarthy skin due to the Italian and Native American parts of his ancestry. His features were strong and he had a sensuous mouth, high cheekbones, and a jut-jaw that made him look very traditionally masculine, a look Louisa had always liked. Partly because of her fondness for men with that macho look, she was a fan of old movies starring Clark Gable and John Wayne. She had often m*********d while watching classic flicks. She was especially aroused by John Wayne movies in which he gave a woman a spanking but she had always wondered what it would be like if John Wayne had gotten a spanking. She did not believe he ever had in a movie but he had been occasionally spanked in Louisa’s fevered fantasies.

Carl worked full-time as a house painter and used to work part-time driving a van for a senior citizens’ home. He had quit the latter job because he was getting more hours painting houses and that work paid a little better. Carl was a kind man with a good sense of humor and could be wonderfully patient. He was a hard worker and, unlike some traditionally masculine men, he easily expressed affection.

However, Carl also had a bad side – or more accurately a foolish side -- and Louisa feared he might be exercising it just about now. She hoped that she would not find him where she expected to find him but catch him she certainly would if he was there.

Louisa left her apartment and walked down the stairs to the parking lot. She opened up the driver’s door to her candy-apple red Toyota Camry and slid behind the wheel. As she put her key in the ignition, the radio automatically turned on and the Jonas Brothers came on belting out That’s The Way We Roll. Louisa looked behind her and saw that another apartment resident was walking pretty close so she waited until he passed before backing out. As she turned her head around, she smiled just slightly. She liked the Jonas Brothers and especially liked this song. Louisa thought it was good that those handsome young Jonas Brother wore purity rings symbolizing their commitment to remain virgins until they married. Of course, Louisa had not been a virgin when she met Carl but she occasionally wished that she had saved herself for him. Carl had told her that he had had s*x with only two women before her although it was four if you counted oral s*x.

She slowed to a stop at the entrance to John Adams Dr. and waited for first a white SUV and then a small black car to pass. It still was not clear so she waited for another car to pass before pulling onto the street.

Oh, she did love Carl! She had never felt closer to any other man and could not imagine having a better s*x life than she did with him: it was beautiful. Carl liked to do a lot of kissing and foreplay that got her aroused and he could stay hard a long time so she could often have more than one orgasm. Even when Louisa did not have an orgasm, she very much enjoyed the intimacy of s*x with him. She had never faked it or lied about it because, unlike some guys, Carl’s ego was not bound up with her having a climax every time they had s*x.

If only he would not . . .

The light up ahead went to yellow and Louisa did not have enough time to get through safely so she slowed to a stop. On the radio, Pink came on to sing So What about the break-up with her racecar driver husband. Louisa sure hoped that the problems she had with Carl would not lead to the finish of their marriage!

When the light turned green, Louisa’s foot went from brake to accelerator and she was soon going about 60 miles per hour along with the other cars on the road. She drove past several streets until she saw Lewis Blvd. where she made a left.

Soon she was in the parking lot in front of the establishment of “Madam Dirk, Psychic Reader.” So was the beige Hyundai that belonged to Carl. As Louisa turned off the ignition of her vehicle, her hands clenched into fists. She waited for a while and when Carl did not soon exit the establishment of Madam Dirk, Louisa decided it was best not to make a public scene. She would confront him when she got home.

She did a slow burn all the way home. Why did Carl have to be taken in by all that hocus-pocus rubbish? It was the sort of thing that attracted fools and dumb characters in movies. How could Carl, the man Louisa loved, let himself fall for such obvious con jobs? What made it most aggravating was that they just could not afford it. They were not going homeless or hungry – but they might if Carl kept turning money over to fortunetellers. The two of them wanted to have a baby in a couple of years so they had to put together some savings and they had almost nothing in the savings account. Louisa was not extravagant so she believed that Carl’s trips to fortunetellers were a large part of the reason they were just getting by.

It was a little over an hour after Louisa’s stop at Madam Dirk’s parking lot that Carl came home. “Where have you been?” Louisa asked, hands on her hips and eyes narrowed, when her husband came through the front door of their apartment.

“Oh, just here and there,” Carl answered with a shrug. “I stopped off at a*****e and had a coffee, then I went to the library and looked at a few magazines, and I stopped off for a beer. Only one!” Carl winked and then smiled broadly, displaying his straight white teeth.

Louisa frowned. “Is that where you were?” she said in a razor sharp voice.

“Yes, honey,” Carl said. “That’s where I was.”

“You’re lying,” she told him, her blue eyes like bullets.

Carl felt a tremor go through him: he loved Louisa. What did she think? Did she believe that he had been out screwing around with another woman? He had not! If she was suspicious of him that way, it was completely unfair.

Carl cleared his throat. Then he earnestly declared, “I haven’t been out cheating. I swear to God, Louisa. You’ve got no reason to be jealous! None!”

“I didn’t accuse you of cheating,” Louisa told her husband.

“Yeah but that seems to be what you think,” he said.

“Well, it’s not,” she said. “I said I know that you’re lying about where you’ve been. Now tell me the truth – the whole truth and nothing but the truth just like you were in a court of law.”

“I did, honey, I just did,” he insisted. “I told you everything.”

“No, you didn’t,” she angrily retorted.

“Yes, I did.”

“Oh, Carl!” Louisa exclaimed. Her arms crossed over her ample bosom. “It just so happens I went to Madam Dirk’s. And I saw your car there.”

Carl looked down at the dark green carpet and at his black sneakers-encased feet. He took a long, deep breath and then swallowed hard. “OK, OK, I went to Madam Dirk,” he admitted. “Look, honey, we don’t agree about spiritual matters. But I’m your husband, not your slave. We can disagree about these sorts of things.”

“We don’t have the money for you to go wasting it on fortune-telling foolishness!” she said in a furious voice.

“Well, at least I wasn’t cheating,” Carl pointed out.

“You’re not supposed to be cheating. You’re also not supposed to be wasting our hard-earned cash. How much money did that awful Madam Dirk charge you for getting the wool pulled over your eyes, Carl?” Louisa asked.

Carl bit his lower lip and looked down again in embarrassment. “It’s really none of your business, Louisa,” he told her.

“What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is yours,” she said. “That’s what marriage is all about.”

There was a pause as Carl shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes.

“Well, Carl?” Louisa prodded.

He bit his lip and looked down again. “I spent one hundred and twenty dollars there,” he confessed.

“One hundred and twenty dollars!” Louisa shrieked as she stamped her foot on the carpet. “That’s outrageous! How can my husband be such a sucker!”

“But Louisa, Madam Dirk really seems to know what she’s doing,” Carl said. “I think she’s a good psychic.”

“There’s no such thing as a good psychic,” Louisa retorted. “They’re all a bunch of phonies and you just pissed our money away, Carl!”

“I think she saw things for real,” he said. “In fact, she said that our financial situation will be bright. She saw brightness for us in her crystal ball. She also said we’d have a healthy baby in a few years. She said we had a good marriage. I think Madam Dirk really has that sixth sense people talk about.”

“Carl, I’m not going to put up with this,” Louisa told him as she shook her head, causing her blonde hair to swish. “Madam Dirk didn’t see your real future. She didn’t see your real future at all!”