Lisa Gets Taken to the Woodshed
By Lisa and Yu May
I was fifteen that summer, spending the long months on my uncle’s farm the way I did every year. The days were full of chores, wide fields, and the kind of freedom that always came with a hard curfew. My cousin was my uncle’s daughter, a year younger than me. We both knew the rule by heart: back at the house by ten. No exceptions.
That night we broke it by two full hours.
We slipped in through the side door just after midnight, trying to be quiet, but the old farmhouse floors gave us away. My uncle was waiting in the kitchen, arms crossed, the single overhead light casting sharp shadows across his face. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to.
“You’re two hours late,” he said. “Both of you. You know what that means.”
We did. My uncle had made it clear from the first summer I stayed that he would enforce the same rules he set for his own daughter. There was no surprise in it, only the heavy certainty that we were in real trouble. Neither of us argued. Neither of us begged. We simply followed him out the back door and across the dark yard toward the woodshed.
The air smelled of cut wood and damp earth. Inside, the single bare bulb threw yellow light over the stacked firewood and the low wooden bench that sat in the middle of the floor. My uncle pointed to it.
“Shorts and panties off. Both of you. Now.”
We did it ourselves. No hands helping, no further orders needed. I stepped out of my clothes and left them in a small pile on the dusty floor. My cousin did the same. The night air raised goosebumps on my bare skin. We stood there, waiting, while my uncle took the razor strap down from its nail on the wall. It was thick, dark leather, the kind used for stropping a straight razor, and I had never felt it before.
He nodded at my cousin first.
“Over the bench.”
She bent forward without a word, hands gripping the far edge, bare bottom raised. I stood a few feet away and watched. The first stroke of the strap landed with a heavy, flat crack that echoed off the wooden walls. A broad red band bloomed across her skin almost instantly. She flinched but stayed in place. The second and third strokes followed in steady rhythm. Halfway through she started to cry. Quiet at first, then louder, the sound mixing with the repeated slap of leather. By the time my uncle finished, her bottom was a deep, uniform red from the top of her cheeks to the upper backs of her thighs. She stayed bent over for a moment longer, shoulders shaking, before he told her to stand.
Then it was my turn.
“Your turn, Lisa. Over the bench.”
I took her place. The wood was cool and slightly rough under my palms. I gripped the edge tightly and tried to hold still. The first stroke of the razor strap hit like a line of fire. It was heavier and broader than any belt or switch I had felt before, the pain spreading wide and deep instead of sharp. I sucked in a breath and locked my knees. Another stroke followed, then another. I kept my eyes fixed on the grain of the wood in front of me and forced myself not to twist or kick. The heat built fast. Every new lash layered over the last until my entire bottom felt swollen and burning. Tears came, but I stayed as still as I could manage. I didn’t want to make it worse, and I didn’t want to give him reason to start over.
When it finally ended, the air in the shed felt thick and quiet except for my uneven breathing. My bottom was a solid, blazing red. No broken skin, no deep bruises that I could see later, just that fierce, thorough color that throbbed with every heartbeat.
My uncle hung the strap back on its nail.
“Pick up your clothes,” he said. “We’re going back to the house.”
We stepped into our shorts and panties carefully, the fabric scraped against the hot skin, and followed him across the yard in silence. Inside, he walked us straight to our rooms and left us there without another word.
My cousin and I didn’t stay apart for long. As soon as the house settled, I slipped into her room. We compared the damage in the low light from her bedside lamp. Both our bottoms were the same vivid red, warm to the touch. She had a small jar of cooling cream. We took turns, each of us gently smoothing it over the other’s sore skin until the worst of the heat eased a little. We talked in whispers about how much it had hurt, how the strap felt different from anything else, and how we would never risk that curfew again. Then we went to our own beds.
There were no extra spankings waiting when I eventually went home. Summers at the farm belonged to my uncle’s rules alone. But that night in the woodshed stayed with me.
The sound of the strap, the sight of my cousin’s bottom turning red, the way I forced myself to stay still while the leather did its work, and the quiet care we gave each other afterward. It was the first time I ever felt a razor strap, and it remains the clearest memory I have of being spanked as a teenager.
The End
