Date: Sat, 7 Sep 1996 11:52:47 -0400 X-Sender: teddyt@teddyt.pop.crosslink.net Mime-Version: 1.0 To: laura@netgate.net From: Ted Subject: Rufus' Rainy Day Rufus' Rainy Day (F/m)(F/F) Rufus sat lonely on the canopied steps of the apartment where he and his divorced mother lived on the outskirts of downtown. The rain puddled just beyond his torn sneaker toes, and his best friend, Skipper, had just been called inside for God-knows-what kind of retribution for the report card he had brought home. It was Rufus' after-school routine to perch on the stoop and watch the traffic, counting through his thick lenses the smoke- belching buses passing by. He daydreamed always, and, lately, he began forming mental pictures of the spankings that both Skipper and his older sister, Missy, always seemed to be screeching about through the thin walls of the art-deco building. Troubled by the inactivity imposed by living in the city and by the family's housekeeper, a stout Austrian spinster named Gretna Green, Rufus decided today would be different. When the Number 30 bus rolled to a stop in front of the building, the chubby 10-year old climbed aboard, deposited his loose change and wobbled, dripping rainwater from his yellow slicker, to the rear, plopping down on a hard bench atop the engine. He had ridden the bus before, but only to school and only with his mother on shopping trips. This was an adventure in itself, for Rufus was one of a tiny minority of males recently reported in a prominent medical journal to experience an erection while bouncing on the seat of vehicular mass transit. (Other men in the study reported becoming aroused while riding in cars with bad suspension -- a trait we now know is labeled "autoeroticism.") The boy didn't originally know where he was going to go, but he must have known that the Number 30 was the green and white monster that carried his mother to and from work every day. So in precisely 24.99999728 minutes, the bus stopped in front of the Pentium Building, at Kai Square, where his mother worked. Rufus used the rest of tomorrow's lunch money to buy a carnation from the flower vendor in the lobby, then rode proudly up to the 8.99999183rd floor to surprise his mother. And surprised she was! She quickly hung up the phone and turned a picture frame on her desk upside down as he appeared at the door to her office. "Rufus! What are you doing here? Is something wrong? Oh my God!" The boy stepped forward with the carnation, beaming. 'Here, Mama, this is for you. I got bored and wanted to see you." His mother was a jumbled muddle of emotion -- proud of her little man, shocked that he could find his way here, angry that he took off on his own. But her first reaction was maternal, taking the raincoat off of her son and pulling him upon her lap for a long tight cuddle, letting his tousled red hair splay across her chest. "Baby boy," she cooed, "I am soooo worried about you. I'm glad you arrived here safely." Then her plump face clouded. "Young man, what have you done! You left home, you got on a dirty bus full of derelicts and you interrupted my work. And what about Gretna! Oh, how worried she must be." Before Rufus could formulate a reply, she dumped him to his feet, spun him around and slapped him hard twice on the seat of his corduroy trousers. It didn't hurt at all, but at last Mama was showing him the kind of concern he felt was missing from his life. The boy succeeded in jerking away, scowling at actually being reprimanded in plain view of the secretaries in the vestibule, but secretly puffed up at finally experiencing what he had so often heard about. "Because of your irresponsibility, Rufus, I have to leave work early and get you home," his now angry mother lectured as she marched him to the elevator. Luckily, the next Number 30 lumbered to a stop to board the angry mother and her smirking miscreant progeny. She sat him down hard at the front of the bus and for the whole ride glared and whispered at him so loudly that the driver offered the kid a mournful shoulder shrug when they alit. Stepping off the bus, both Rufus and Mama recognized the real trouble his misadventure had caused. Three paramedics and four policemen were surrounding the prostrate Gretna Green, taking reports from neighbors and talking on their radios. Down the street, three robberies, one carjacking and a morals violation were occurring in plain view. Neither the boy nor his mother had thought to phone the housekeeper before leaving the office to prevent this kind of wasted municipal activity. Trouble now, Rufus thought to himself, and after a very embarrassed and tearful mother had explained the situation and helped the rotund housekeeper back to their apartment, the air inside was thick with impending consequence. The housekeeper began ranting in German rummaging through the kitchen drawers for the wooden spoon. Mother was apologizing to her prized employee, and Rufus was just slumped against a wall, red-faced and morbidly curious about what was to follow. Mother took the spoon from Gretna, beckoned her wayward son to the kitchen table and with the older woman's help bent him over the formica edge and lowered his pants. "Mmmmaaammmmaaa!," he finally had the presence to yell. "Don't do that! I apologize. I didn't mean to cause trouble!" "Son," she said firmly, "there is no excuse for what you did, and I have been so worried for so long about you. This is going to be a good thing for both of us." Without a moment's further hesitation, she began paddling his underpants hard with the spoon, forcing whimpering squeals from his pursed mouth. The first two tears dammed up on the lower curve of his glasses. He grunted with each whipwhack of the spoon. Gretna stood next to him, arms folded triumphantly, enjoying every wicked lick. In no time, Rufus was crying his high-pitched pleas for mercy, just as Missy and Skipper did just about every Friday night. After 15 solid wallops, Rufus could stand it no more, and in stomping his foot down, accidentally landed on his mother's bunioned big toe. "That's it!" she yelled, and she pulled his underpants down, to reveal a sizable patch of spoon-shaped strawberries flowering his chunky behind. In her anger, mother had dropped the spoon to the floor. So she began slapping his red and white bottom so rapidly he could not even match his wails to the firestorm of spanks. She had achieved her intended effect when Rufus began crying like the bouncing baby she had tendered many years before. It was no fun for the adventurous Rufus for quite some time. But as he lay in his bed after dinner, the memory of the bus ride, the recollection of cuddling to his mother's breast, and the remembrance of his first pants-down spanking gave the boy a self- actualizing empowerment he had only read about in dirty books. For dessert, that night, he heard the bossy Gretna Green spitting out vehement German rebukes to his own mother about not having informed her right away of his absence that afternoon and about how she was raising a juvenile delinquent. He heard a door slam down the hall and, as he lay dazed with pleasure, the recently imprinted memory of the wooden spoon slapping bare skin wafted into his room. This time, as he rubbed his stocky bottom and refolded the bus schedule, the shrieks of remorse were not his, but those of his beloved mother. # # #