The Orphanage Boys Chapter 1

The Orphanage Boys Chapter 1
by Chadlad

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This story is intended for ADULTS ONLY It contains explicit depictions of sexual activity involving minors. If you are not of a legal age in your locality to view such material or if such material does not appeal to you, do not read further, and do not save this story.
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(The orphanage boys is the first of a planned occasional series documenting the experiences of Jake Saltus and Sam Phelps, a pair of 12-year-olds consigned to a Catholic orphanage in the late 1930's, and possibly various other orphanage members. The orphanage is very conscious of the sinful nature of boys and especially punitive toward any signs of sexual behavior in them. The nuns run a tight ship, enforced by many kinds of corporal punishment, sometimes aided by the older girls at the orphanage. This first story will cover several chapters and describe Jake and Sam's introduction to the orphanage following the arrest and jailing of their prostitute mothers, and their first taste of the iron-handed orphanage routine.)

Chapter 1: The Escalator

Jake Saltus was a happy-go-lucky boy with fair skin and brown hair and blue eyes, who'd only recently celebrated his 12th birthday but could have passed for 11 or even a late 10. His face was narrow and elfin in appearance, and he had two large front teeth the protruded slightly, giving him a bunny-like innocence. His build was somewhat slight for his age, with a thin chest and average shoulders, a full mouth and a slightly snub nose. His light coloring meant that he tended to freckle, especially on his cheeks. His waist was narrow, broadening into a sturdy boy-butt with slightly rounded cheeks. His body showed little signs of growing up, yet, but he'd been excited just the week before to note, while drying himself after bathing, that his formerly smooth groin sported three distinct, brown pubic hairs. They weren't curly like he'd expected them to be, but still they were pubic hairs, and he expected great thing to happen to him soon. So far, though, his genitals had remained little-boy small, his uncircumcised penis normally only projecting about an inch, with the foreskin drooping another ½ an inch, barely enough to make it dangle downward over his tight little purse of a scrotum with its small balls the size of marbles, and not big aggies or shooters, but small dime store commons. His center front teeth protruded slightly, giving him the look of a large rabbit.

Jake's life up to the present had been a comfortable, sheltered one. He had lived as long as he could remember with his mother and her best friend, and her best friend's son, who was his best friend Sam. Each woman had occupied a bedroom of their three-bedroom apartment, and he and Sam had occupied the other room, sleeping like brothers in the same bed, peeing on each other in the night when they were preschoolers with a bed wetting problem and savoring each other's warmth, snuggling together when they were older out of habit. He and Sam had always been together, in the same classrooms of the same schools, eating at the same table, playing in the street or vacant lots together, and doing homework together. It might be the Great Depression, and Adolf Hitler might be upsetting the adults with his demands for a new, expanded Germany, but their lives continued on the pattern they always had. Until recently.

Indeed, Sam was here with him now, not more than 3 feet away. Sam was seated in a chair by a door, his eyes locked with Jake's, eyes full of a mixture of sympathy and apprehension. The two of them were in a most peculiar room - a small room with glass walls on all sides beginning about 2 and a half feet above the ground. The room itself was in the main dormitory of the Sisters of Mercy Orphanage. The room had curtains that could be closed to cover each of the four walls, or could be opened one at a time, in pairs, or all together. Each wall looked into a dormitory sleeping room. The west wall looked into the dorm for boys 10 to 11, and the north wall allowed views of the dorm for boys 12 and 13, the dorm that had become, 2 days ago, Sam and Jake's new home, the two of them given adjoining cots in less prestigious middle of the room. (The corner nearest the bathroom and showers shared by the north and west rooms was the most prestigious, and the boys with the most clout and longest seniority slept there. Beyond that, the walls were most prestigious, because you only had boys on one side of you and not the other, affording greater privacy because you could turn yourself to the wall there. The center cots, surrounded by others on all sides, had the least privacy and most neighbors and were the least desirable, so that's where they were).

The south and east walls looked into a similarly designed pair of girls' sleeping areas, one for girls 10 to 11, one for girls 12 to 13. Diagonal walls separated boys' and girls' dorms, running from the corner of the glass room to the corner of the building itself. The glass room was accessed by a hallway that ran to the corner of the building on one side, whereas the dorm rooms had doors that opened out the sides of each room. Normally, the curtains of the glass room were closed, or would be opened for one sex's dorms at a time, either into the two boys' or two girls' dorms, because otherwise the boys could look through the glass right into the girls' dorms and vice versa, and of course the children had to dress and undress there so that wouldn't do at all. Up to a few minutes before, Sam and Jake hadn't yet seen the room with the curtains open or in use, so hadn't paid the curtained room any attention in the two days they'd been there.

Various boys and girls were sitting on beds dangling their legs over the sides, leaning on headboards, or standing against this or that wall, all with their attention on the glass cubicle where the two boys were at the moment. And the reason for all that attention was clear. Because Jake, normally a happy boy, was not happy at the moment. For one thing, he was stretched across a desk top, grasping the lip of the far side as he looked into his friend Sam's eyes. The desk was hard topped plywood, slickly covered in old varnish and hard as a rock, but that wasn't the chief thing that was making him uncomfortable. No, what was making him uncomfortable was that his pants were completely down around his ankles, so that only his skimpy, threadbare, and gray with age little-boy underpants were covering his private areas, and all those children watching from the four dorms were seeing his underpants-clad butt and the tiny bulge between his legs as he bent over the side of the desk. He wasn't so worried about the boys seeing him in his underpants, though. After all, they shared the same open, communal showers and toilets, and open mean just that - the urinals were on one wall of the bathroom, and they weren't the tall narrow type you could belly up to and have some privacy while peeing - no, they were like narrow toilets without seats, jutting into the room so that you stood 3 or 4 feet from the wall to pee, with the boys peeing on each side of you able to see your stuff while you went. The showers were totally open against the inside wall of the of the room, with pipes that stood up to nozzles in the center, and only a berm around the edge to keep the water in and out of the rest of the bathroom, so the boys stood naked in the open while showering, the nuns controlling the water flow with a big valve by the door. And worst of all for the privacy-loving Jake, the toilets were similarly open, lined up against the wall adjoining the urinals, so that a guy taking a poop had to sit there in plain sight, where anyone could watch him, and comment on any odd postures or faces he might make, or embarrassing noises or grunts he might produce while pooping. And you had to wipe right in front of them, too, and wiping was super embarrassing. Jake had fought the urge the first day, but eventually a guy has to poo, and he had. He'd picked a time when most of the boys were settled in bed already, but still, even though he was quick, a couple of boys came in and out while we was sitting there, walking to and from urinals to pee, some in pairs, some alone. Most of them acted like you weren't there with your pajamas around your ankles huddled over the toilet seat, deliberately looking to the other side of the room as they walked in and out. But a couple of the boys appeared to enjoy looking at him on the toilets, staring as if sizing him up, studying him brazenly as they walked in and out, smirking at his embarrassment.

So it wasn't so bad that the boys saw him bent over in his underpants - they'd seen him naked in the showers just that morning, and they'd been naked, too, although he'd been careful not to be seen looking at them as he and Sam had soaped up under the same shower head with two other boys (they had to group four to a shower head before the water was turned on, and those four shared a bar of soap - the nuns said that was the rule so as not to waste hot water or expensive soap. Two other boys had pushed in with him and Sam, boys very much like the two of them - smooth skinned and hairless-crotched boys with small penises that looked different from his and Sam's - mushroomed and shorter and not so pointy (Jake hadn't seen a circumcised penis up to that point and found the difference still a bit disturbing two days later, although he was getting used to it by the second morning).

So being in his underpants in front of the boys wasn't so bad. But the girls, some of whom had shown an avid interest in the proceedings, were another matter. He'd seen them pointing and even laughing behind their hands in the moments between when his pants had come down and he'd managed to bend over the desk and hide his front at least, but he was sure the girls in the dorm directly behind him could see his bulge from the back as he bent over, and that had been very distressing.

But that wasn't the most distressing thing. No, the most distressing thing was that Sister Mary Catherine had one hand on the small of his back pressing down on it, holding his shirt out of the way, and the other gripping firmly a short-handled paddle with a broad, round face, and she was vigorously paddling his underpants-clad butt with it at a rapid pace, faster than a blow a second. The desk was short enough that the boys his age and older were expected to keep their feet on the ground, so he wasn't kicking embarrassingly (something the little boys did when the sister paddled them, but Jake wouldn't know about that, yet). Still, the paddle stung his poor, barely protected butt something awful. He was sure, under that thin cloth, that his butt was already bright red, and Sister Mary Catherine seemed to be just getting a head of steam up.

And getting paddled in front of other kids was embarrassing. You knew the other boys were judging you, watching your reaction, seeing if you cried like a little kid or not, and in that era there was nothing worse a half-grown boy could do than cry in front of other boys. And the girls were seeing you get it in your underwear!

He hadn't quite been expecting this when he and Sam had been dragged by the arms down the hall from outside and through the door in the glass room. He didn't even know the hall led to the glass room. He and Jake had heard a steady slapping noise as they were hustled down the hall by Mother Superior, but they didn't know the source. By the time the approached the door, the slapping sounds had stopped, and only when the door was opened did they realize where they were. On the other side, a flushed-looking boy from their dorm room, a quiet little red-head with his hair askew and his eyes moist, was just buttoning his pants, biting his quivering lip. He'd looked up as Jake and Sam were dragged in. "Two more for you," Mother Superior had said to Sister Mary Catherine. "And I'm afraid it's the escalator for these two."

Jake didn't know what an escalator was, so he wasn't afraid then. He didn't know what an escalator was now, several minutes later, but he knew what a spanking was, and he was getting a doozy. Mother Superior had released them and Sister Mary Catherine had stalked across the room and opened the curtains on the girls' sides as the boy headed for the door, walking slowly and carefully. "Only wussies cry," he muttered to the boys as he passed by. "And don't let go of the desk or she ties you and you get double." That's when Jake noted, with rising anxiety, that there were straps with adjustable buckles on either side of the desk, straps that could be used to bind a boy's wrists. And then he felt real fear.

So Jake was holding the edge of the desk for dear life, and he was trying his best not to cry. But that turned out to be tougher than he had first thought. He wasn't bawling like a little kid, at least, but he couldn't keep quiet from the first blow onward - each slap of the paddle on his underpants clad skin was driving an involuntary "Uh," or "Ow," or "Oh," from Jake, and he couldn't seem to stop himself from doing it. His butt was a mass of fire, a million bee stings that just keep stinging, so his face was red and his eyes were tearing slightly, and his mouth was open and he panted and uttered his sharp little yelps with every smack. And poor Sam sat and watched Jake's face, knowing his turn over the desk was next, and becoming more concerned looking as the paddling went on and on with no sign of stopping. Sister Mary Catherine was huffing and puffing as she swung the paddle hard into Jake's sturdy butt, expertly covering Jake's entire underpants area with some slight overlap onto his thighs. And, just adding to the insult of it all, Phillip (Flip) Hartborough was in plain sight there in the dorm, sitting on Sam's own bed, right next to Jake's in the middle of the room, watching the paddling of the new boys so intently that Jake, even with his butt burning like fire, could still feel Flip's eyes boring into him. A small smile quirked up the corner's of Flip's mouth, not quite a smirk, as he watched, clearly a smile with some satisfaction associated with it. And that smile made Jake burn with hatred and humiliation.

Jake's knuckles whitened as he gripped the edge of the desk with all his might, trying hard not to let go and suffer the humiliation "getting double." After opening the curtains, Mary Catherine had simply pointed to the far end of the desk and said, "You first, boy. Pants down."

Jake walked into position and had pulled his pants down as instructed, reluctantly. Boys who'd been watching the redhead get paddled were already in place, and he could see girls rising and gathering near the windows on the girls' side, moving right up to the glass as they realized the curtains had been opened, shouting to their companions to hurry in and see. The boys were acting quite differently by contrast, hanging by the walls on the boys' trying to feign disinterest, but all present in their rooms and watching intently nonetheless. He had barely lowered the pants below his shirt tails, but Sister Mary Catherine had bent and shoved them down all the way to his ankles, then pressed the small of his back to bend him over the desk. "Grasp the edge," she'd ordered, and he had. He'd felt her pull his shirt tail up, then, exposing his scantily clad butt. And then the spanking had started immediately, no warning, no preliminaries, not even a courteous inquiry of whether he was ready. And his embarrassing yelps had begun with the first spank. And now the spanking was going on and on.

A tear trickled down Jakes right cheek, then his left. He blinked rapidly to keep more from falling. Sam swallowed nervously but didn't take his eyes off Jake's face, his eyes burning with emotion for his friend and himself. Mary Catherine had increased the strength of her blows, practically driving Jake's groin into the back of the desk as she whaled away on his barely protected butt. Jake's vision was blurry, and his world had narrowed - his butt took up most of his sensibilities - a white hot thing with explosions going off in rapid succession, the sting palpable and unbearable. His feet danced on the floor as little spasms shook his legs. He tried clenching his butt every so often, a move that simply increased the sting of the next spank, yet he couldn't stop doing it. Finally, Mary Catherine huffed, landed one more mighty spank, and stopped, removing her hand from his back. It took Jake a moment to realize his spanking had stopped - his butt was throbbing terribly, but no more new pain was joining it. It was over, he'd survived, and he wasn't crying! He started to straighten up, hoping to pull his pants up quickly, but his butt protested mightily and cramped up, and he had to stop, hands on his thighs, butt thrust backward, panting for moment before he could reach down and get pants. Giggles erupted from the south side of the room and he realized a group of girls up near the glass were pointing at him crouched there in his underpants. He snatched at his pants and pulled them, with difficulty, over his butt, fumbled at the fastener, and moved, hesitantly, toward the door, his butt throbbing in pain with each movement. Sam looked more worried than ever and didn't meet his eye, which was fine with Jake. He wanted out, wanted away. But there was nowhere to go but the dormitory, where the girls and boys who'd just witnessed his humiliation and were now waiting eagerly for Sam's lived. He saw Flip out of the corner of his eye, licking his lips with a complacent expression as he watched the drama play out. Flip, who had caused all this, had set the two boys up for this humiliation. He put his hand on the doorknob, wishing he could say something to Sam. But had he tried to speak, he'd have started crying, and what could he say, anyway? He certainly couldn't say, "It's not so bad," because it had been horrible - the most horrible spanking he'd ever had, and the most humiliating. He couldn't say, "it doesn't hurt that much," because it did - his whole butt was a mass of fire. He knew Sam wanted to see something hopeful in his face, but he couldn't provide it. He turned the doorknob, looking away from his friend. Sam was still waiting. Mary Catherine shifted her paddle and set it on the desk.

"All right," she said firmly to Sam. "Pants down." Sam got up slowly as Jake eased carefully through the door, his sore butt protesting every movement. Sam was lowering his pants, fumbling at the buttons. Mary Catherine turned to Jake. "I hope by the time this is all over you boys will have learned your lesson about the sinfulness of your inclinations."

Jake slid the rest of the way through the door, the import of her words lost on him. He walked slowly down the hall, using short steps, trying not to stretch his throbbing butt muscles. He had to go outside, around the corner, and into his dorm, because he had no doubt that if a sister caught him lingering outside the dorm he'd be trotted back to the glass room and paddled again. But he hated to go in and face all those boys, after they'd just watched him get paddled, and hear his shameful yelps of pain. And dinner would come soon, and he'd have to go to the dining room with the rest, and face those girls who'd just seen him spanked in his underwear and had heard his embarrassing cries. As he neared the end of the hall, behind him, he heard the beginning of the steady slap, slap, slap of the paddle on Sam's underpants covered butt. He felt a momentary sense of vindication as Sam also began yelping in synchrony with each slap just as he had, yelps that sounded more like "Ow,' than his had but just as loud. He slid out the door at the end of the hall and walked around the corner, still moving painfully. He took a deep breath and swiped at his moist eyes, gently reached back and probed his tender butt with both hands, winced, and then squared his shoulders and manfully pulled open the dorm door. He ducked through and entered the 11-12 boys' dorm.

The steady slaps and Sam's loud cries of "ow!" were much louder in the dorm. Most of the boys in the room were still lounging near walls or sitting on beds, casting sidelong looks to the glassed in room, where Sam was bent over the desk, his underpants threadbare and gray like Jake's. They had the side view of the paddling, the back view and other side belonging to the girls, the front view to the younger boys. Sam appeared to be gripping the edge of the desk as tightly as Jake had, hanging on for dear life. Jake felt a wave of sympathy for his life-long friend. He moved quietly and slowly through the room toward his bed, and the other boys, apparently embarrassed for him or engrossed in Sam's spanking, looked away. But as he neared his bed, he remembered that Flip was sitting right there, on Sam's bed, and Flip didn't ignore him at all. He turned his attention from Sam's paddling to look right at Jake, his eyes moving down to Jake's stiffly held butt, and then back up to his still flushed face. His lip curled into a smirk. "Wussie," he muttered. "You think that was something? Just wait until tomorrow." The boys near Flip laughed loudly.

Now what did that mean? Jake wondered. He walked slowly to the other side of his bed, where he wasn't looking at Flip but could feel the other boy's eyes boring into his back. Unfortunately, that meant he was facing the glass room and his best friend's punishment. His vision was softened by his wet eyes, but he could see Sam's firm, rounded butt bouncing with each spank, could even see the little twitches Sam's flanks made in reaction to the pain, pain Jake now understood perfectly well. He himself had looked up while being spanked, had looked right into Sam's eyes for strength and solace, but Sam was looking down, his shoulders hunched. Mary Catherine was working herself up as the spanking neared its end, her paddle landing faster and harder as she did, just as it had on Jake. Then she stopped, and Sam gave one last anguished yelp, trembled, then hesitantly straightened up and fumbled with his own pants, his eyes moist like Jake's had been, his face flushed. He walked unsteadily toward the door. Jake pulled his legs up to the edge of the bed and buried his face in his knees, even though stretching his hot butt hurt something awful. He wanted to cry, but he remembered the admonition that only wussies cried, and he swallowed down the urge, pressing his face to his knees to block the tears.

Around the room, he heard rustling as kids moved, the show clearly over and Mary Catherine already closing curtains. Conversations quietly picked up in the room. In another minute, he heard soft footsteps approaching, then Sam, his voice hoarse, muttering, "Hey, man, that's my bed—get off." Jake raised his face enough that he could see over his knees and rotated to look over his shoulder. Flip was slowly, arrogantly sliding to his feet. "Can't wait for tomorrow," he said. "Should be quite a show. Separate the men from the boys. Wussie." And then he sauntered off.

Sam, moving slowly, gingerly settled his butt on the bed, rose quickly again, and began rubbing his butt with both hands slowly. "Man, she really roasted our butts," he commented, his voice still with a catch in it. Jake didn't say anything. "We shouldn't have got caught," he finally added.

Jake looked up. "He told us we wouldn't get caught." He nodded toward Flip, now talking two some of his cohorts over by the far wall, the location of the cots of the in crowd. Flip was quite obviously their leader, it hadn't taken Jake any time at all to work that out. "He said the nuns never go to that part of the yard, and all the boys watched from there."

"He set us up," Sam agreed, still gently rubbing his butt. Jake let his hands slip down to his own butt, just holding, not caressing openly like Sam. "We just have to learn from this and be smarter next time." He rubbed his butt some more, now slipping his hands inside his underpants so he could feel the bare skin. "And not trust him and his friends. Man, she really blistered me," he said. "I'm glad that's over with."

"It ain't over," a boy two beds away said. Jake hadn't known he was listening.

"Shut up," the boy sitting on the bunk next to him said. "You want Flip down on us?"

"What's he mean?" Sam asked the other boy. But the boy looked away, and the two of them got up and headed toward the bathroom. "What's he mean?" Sam asked louder to the room in general.

"They're not going to say, are you, boys," Flip said loudly from the side of the room. "They don't want my boot up their assholes. You'll just have to wait and find out." He turned to his friends. "Big babies," he said to them. "New brats are such balless wonders." Flip's friends laughed. The other boys quickly turned away and busied themselves with other things. Jake and Sam sat in silence, each nursing their sore butts and trying to puzzle out what was going on, and what the other kids weren't telling them. Moments later, the dinner bell rang out. Sister Grace, the one in charge of their dorm, appeared in the dormitory door.

"Wash hands and line up for dinner," she said in a no-nonsense tone. The boys began funneling into the bathroom, taking turns at the sinks, laughter and horseplay returning and breaking the silence that had prevailed everywhere in the room but Flip's corner since the spankings had begun. Sam and Jake waited their turn with the smaller, younger boys on the far end of the bathroom - only Flip's crowd got to use the close sinks, urinals, or toilets. The boy at the sink where they waited handed Jake the soap and rinsed his hands.

"Don't mind them," he said softly under his breath as he dried his hands on the loop of cloth towel that hung out of the towel machine. He looked around to make sure no one could see he was talking to the two, but the other boys were busy with their own horseplay. Jake, having washed his hands, pulled down on the towel to bring himself a dry area and began wiping his hands as Sam washed his. "Just be tough, and if you are when it's over you'll get some respect, 'specially among the girls." He walked away.

"What did that mean?" Jake asked Sam. Sam shook his head. They walked to the other side of the room where almost all the boys were out and lined up now, and Flip, as appointed leader of the boys, was waiting for the room to clear to join in his place at the back of the line.

"Hurry up, you little pants pissers," he admonished the two as the approached. As they passed, he aimed a hard swat at each of their sore butts, connecting solidly and getting twin yelps from both boys. "Wussies," he said again, and the boys at the back of the line laughed.

"Decorum, gentlemen," Sister Grace warned. She frowned at Jake and Sam. "You two are in enough trouble - don't make the head boy have to admonish you, too." She looked at Flip. "Don't forget that you can request use of the glass room if you need it to correct these boys." She opened the door to lead the line down the hall, out into the compound, and across the way to the dining hall. Other strings of boys and girls were also converging from their separate rooms. Jake thought about the events that had led him and Sam bent over the desk getting their behinds painfully walloped. It had started that morning, when Flip had given them a line about taking them under his wing and helping them settle in with the other boys. He told them that there were all sorts of traditions new boys had to uphold, and had listed a number of things - going out at night and spending an hour in the haunted gazebo on the hill, stealing Mother Superior's pen and then putting it back without getting caught, and so on. And how if they were to do any one of them, the other boys would welcome him and Sam and they'd be part of the group. And he'd set his hook then, casually mentioning, with the other choices, sneaking around to the hillside next to the girls' bathrooms and watching the girls during morning showers. Of course, being totally naïve, they'd bitten on that one right away. Sam had said that one sounded the best. Jake had worried that they'd get caught. Flip had reassured them, surrounded by his posse, that the nuns never went out to that side of the dorms in the morning, that they could easily hide in the trees that overlooked the opaque glass windows running along the top of the bathroom, windows that would be open to let out the shower steam so that they could look right in at a whole bevy of girls their age bare naked in the showers. "We'll even keep watch and warn you if anyone comes," one of the other boys had said.

"Yeah, we go watch the girls all the time," another said. "You're not one of us until you've seen the girls naked. There's some nice pussy in there!"

Jake and Sam, fools they were, believed every word of what their new "friends" had told them. They'd hurried through their showers that morning, jumped into clothes, and let Flip lead them up the hill and point to the trees they should climb. And sure enough, the shower windows were open, and through them and clouds of steam both boys did, indeed catch tantalizing glimpses of naked female flesh, including a number of bare, feminine butts, a lot more immature butts, and even some budding breasts and, once, a quick sight of someone soaping dark pubic hair. And then they'd almost wet themselves when the stern voice of Mother Superior, out on her daily walk, ordered, "Come out of there, you disgusting little beasts." In moments they were both cowering before the Mother Superior's desk, who thoroughly dressed them down and then sent them to lessons, promising to deal with them later, at the end of classes. Sister Margaret had kept them in at lunch and recesses, so they hadn't been allowed to talk to anyone, but they'd found out from her that everyone knew Mother Superior took her morning walk up the hill behind the girls' side of the dorm during shower time, and that she'd been surprised the other boys hadn't warned them of that fact. She'd also sternly reminded them that God punishes lust, and that Mother Superior was God at the orphanage.

At the end of school classes, Mother Superior herself had appeared to take the two of them in hand, taking them first to her office (which is why they missed out on seeing Mary Catherine's first victim receive his punishment, which, coincidentally, had been the first time the glass punishment room had been used in several days). They'd been marched immediately to the glass room, where they'd received their own vigorous spankings. Now Jake gently rubbed his own butt, which had now cooled to the point it was not longer too painful to touch. It itched and burned all over, still. Sister Grace stopped and let the line walk past her, until she was adjacent to Jake. "Stop that," she said, slapping at his hands. "Sister Mary Catherine works very hard warming you boys' bottoms - don't show contempt for her work by trying to rub it away."

They lined up at their usual table, the string of boys from his dorm down one side, the string of girls from the corresponding same-aged dorm down the other. The nuns apparently thought that it did both sexes good to eat across from each other at dinner, perhaps hoping the girls' presence would make some manners rub off on the boys. At Sister Grace's command, the boys were seated, Jake and Sam sitting last and more slowly than the rest and obviously painfully. A group of girls opposite them giggled.

"How red are you?" the girl directly across from Sam whispered. Sam shrugged. "You didn't look?" she said. "We always look afterward - all the girls want to see."

The boy next to Jake spoke up. "We don't look until bedtime," he said. "Then the boys who got it have to show everyone. It's a tradition."

"Quiet, children! It's time for grace," Sister Grace admonished.

All through dinner, Jake's butt ached and burned. He'd never been spanked like that before. His mother had given him a dozen slaps now and then with the bare hand, sometimes on the bare butt, but it hadn't been like the licking Sister Mary Catherine had given him and Sam. And his butt had stung, but it hadn't itched and burned like this afterward. Now that the girls had mentioned it, he wondered what his and Sam's butts looked like after their spankings. And what did that boy mean by the remark that they "don't look until bedtime?"

Jake and Sam usually liked to play dodgeball in the courtyard with the boys - they had done so their first two evenings here, but that night they stretched out on the lawn with the other boys taking it easy and watched, lying on their stomachs rather than their backs. The other boys left the two alone, apparently not daring to approach lest they incur Flip's wrath. "Did you hear with Sister Grace said," Sam finally murmured to Jake. "She said that Flip could ask to use the glass room. Does that mean he can spank us, too?"

"How would I know?" Jake said irritably. He found the whole thought that the mean spirited Flip could spank him with the nuns' approval disturbing, and vowed to stay out of hi way. Finally, Sister Grace announced it was time for bed, and the boys trouped back into the dorm, the sister admonishing Flip to "sort out your boys," and then leaving them alone to change into pajamas. Sam and Jake went to their beds and opened their foot lockers as usual, moving with the other boys, but as Jake was poking through his chest, looking for his least torn pair of PJs, a commotion around him made him look up. He was surprised to find that all the boys in the dorm had pushed inward, making a circle around them, and they all appeared to be intent on something. They pushed the red-head in next to where Sam and Jake were standing.

"Take 'em off and show us," a boy standing next to a smirking Flip said. "Drop your drawers and let's see the marks."

Jake looked at Sam. Sam looked at Jake. The redhead reached down and lowered his pants and underpants as threadbare as Jake's had been, revealing a plump, mottled-red butt and a fat, dangling little sausage of a penis wobbling over balls at least twice the size of Jake's. Without invitation, he settled down, bent over Jake's bed. The other boys crowded around, commenting on his bruises.

"Now you two," the boy next to Flip said. The redhead got up, but instead of pulling up his pants just pulled them and his underpants off his ankles, gathered them up, and started back to his own bed, moving with those slow steps that Sam and Jake had come to know so well.

"What if we don't want to?" Sam asked.

"Then Flip puts you on report for something," the boy said. "And he takes you to the glass room tomorrow morning after shower, before you dress."

"But we haven't done anything," Sam said.

"Sure you did, boys," Flip said with oily assurance. "You didn't flush the toilets when you took a dump, and you didn't wipe your little butts, either. Sister Grace is on a high horse about hygiene - I'd get to give it to you bare for that."

"But we did flush!" Sam protested. "And we always use toilet paper!"

"You didn't if I say you didn't. Everyone here will back me up on it," Flip said. Flip's posse nodded. Sam looked ready to take issue, but Jake put a hand on his arm. "Come on, Jake," he said. "They just want to see. We're all boys, anyway." He unbuckled his pants, feeling eerily like he was back in front of the punishment desk, and slipped his pants and underpants somewhat painfully off his butt, lying across his bed in front of the boys. Sam, after a moment, pulled his down too and lay beside him. The other boys crowded in, gazing in silence.

"Wow," one kid finally said. "Nice blisters."

"Sister really takes a whack," another added. Jake reached back and felt his butt, then raised his head and craned his neck to look. His butt was a mottled red and pink, with little red spots covering it. The surface was bumpy and hot, and slightly itchy. The boys surrounding them began dispersing.

"Wonder how they'll look tomorrow," one kid said. Flip gave him a glare and he scurried off. The other boys began undressing by their beds, and soon began the usual horseplay that naked boys engaged in, pokes and shoves and comments about boners and fakes at racking each other's balls. Boys wandered into and out of the bathrooms naked or partially clothed, most taking a quick pee before bed, a few taking a dump huddled over the open toilets. Jake slipped on his pajama bottoms as Sam bent over his foot locker, folded his clothes and put them away, still naked. Jake's eyes darted toward Sam's butt, mentally comparing it to his own. Both boys appeared to have suffered about the same damage, Sam's fair skin just as mottled, bumpy, and blistered as his. But as he turned over, Jake could see just how far the paddle had penetrated Sam's butt crack - the center of Sam's butt was still lily white and untouched by the paddle, the blisters starting a couple of inches from there. He supposed his own butt looked that way. Sam bent over further, flashing Jake a quick look at his butt hole and the backside of his scrotum before straightening up and facing Jake as he put on his pajama bottoms as well. Jake didn't think Sam had any hairs on his crotch yet, at last, none he could see without looking close up, which of course he'd never do around all these other kids. But Sam's scrotum was bigger than his and the balls in it were bigger. He knew because they had compared genitals many times as roommates and buddies. And Sam's uncircumcised penis was narrower at the tip, and had a longer, more droopy foreskin, so that it looked like a small bottle attached upside down to his crotch. And his penis always sagged more than Jake's and looked bigger most of the time, and the pee hole pointed down, not straight out like Jake's often did. Sometimes Jake wished he had Sam's penis and his scrotum, too, with its bigger balls, but he'd never told his friend so.

"I wonder what she meant by 'escalator,' today," Sam said to Jake, startling him. "Mother Superior, I mean. "She told Sister Mary Catherine that it was an escalator for us."

The fat boy on the next bunk pulled his pajama bottoms out of his chest and stood a moment facing them, his tiny, barely projecting penis dwarfed by his huge thighs and hidden in a bulge of smooth, hairless pubic fat. He held pajama bottoms as big as a small tent up and slipped a foot into a leg hole, then flicked his eyes in Flip's direction and saw he was occupied. He put his other foot in the other leg hole and made furtive little glances to either side. "She means you're getting spanked again tomorrow," he whispered. "And punished again in other ways every afternoon after that all week. And each one is going to be worse," he said. "I've never seen an escalator myself - they haven't done one in years. But I've heard of them. They say they do different stuff each time so you won' know what to expect, even if you ask other kids. So I don't know what you're getting tomorrow, but it'll be worse than today. And the next one will be worse than that." Another boy came out of the bathroom and headed their way, and the fat boy turned abruptly and climbed into his cot, plunking down and turning his back.

Sam and Jake looked at each other, the phrase, "It'll be worse than today," echoing in their heads. Suddenly, tomorrow and the rest of the week looked much, much less sunny.