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Rapunzel was feeling quite proud of herself. Mother was wrong about the outside world. She had to be. She was certainly wrong about men. Sharp teeth and glowing red eyes. Pah! The man Rapunzel had tied up and stuffed in her armoire certainly didn’t fit that bill. She’d show her mother just as soon as the woman returned home. Rapunzel was ready to go out and explore the world. Mother would see .
Mother did not see. Rapunzel had tried to talk to her the moment she came home, just as she had planned. But in her plan, Mother had listened and agreed with Rapunzel. Mother didn’t yell and scold and order Rapunzel to fetch her special hairbrush.
“I hardly think now is the time to brush my hair , Mother,” Rapunzel had argued, rolling her eyes skyward.
“Oh, I wasn’t planning on using it on your head , flower,” Mother replied ominously.
Rapunzel gulped and took a step back. It had been some time since she’d last found herself sprawled across a maternal knee having her bare bottom thrashed soundly. Only one day shy of her eighteenth birthday, she really had thought she was far too old for such things. The look on Mother’s face told her she most certainly was not .
“No, Mother, please. I won’t bring up the floating lights—I mean stars —again!” Rapunzel had pleaded. She was quick to correct herself on the stars (even though she knew that they were, in fact, floating lights). Her mother was advancing on her and it was never a good idea to make her even more angry when she was like this—the state of Rapunzel’s bottom depended on it.
“I’m growing tired of your disobedience and defiance, young lady. Fetch me the hairbrush—now!”
“But Mother—”
“If I have to tell you again, Rapunzel, it will be the strap,” Mother had threatened. That was all Rapunzel needed to get her feet moving up the spiral staircase to her bedchamber.
Rapunzel now had an up-close-and-personal view of the stone floors as she dangled precariously across her mother’s lap. She was pushed so far forward over said lap that in order not to have her head hang nearly upside down, she had to hold herself up with a firm grip on the chair’s rungs. It was easy enough to do now , but would be decidedly less so once her mother’s heavy wooden hairbrush was being applied liberally and quite forcibly to her naked backside.
Rapunzel squirmed and groaned as her mother raised her dress and folded it over her back. Her heart beat faster as her undergarments were undone and pushed down her legs to rest around her knees. Her bottom prickled with gooseflesh as cool air kissed bare skin. As the hairbrush came to rest against her bottom, Rapunzel couldn’t help herself. She began to beg.
“Please, Mother,” she beseeched. “I’m sorry. I promise I won’t defy or disobey you again. You don’t have to do this, please—”
“You promised you wouldn’t ask to leave this tower after the first time, flower. Your promises mean very little to me,” Mother said, rubbing the smooth back of the brush across her rear end.
The smooth coolness left and Rapunzel held her breath in anticipation. She knew she shouldn’t tense, but it was hard not to when expecting a fierce blow to your person. When it came, the teenager sucked in a harsh breath through gritted teeth. Pain bloomed across her cheek. The next blow landed before the sting from the first had even reached its peak.
“Ow! M-Mother, please!” Rapunzel gasped, tears already welling behind long lashes. She wished Pascal was here with her now, but she had left her color-changing friend upstairs where he was safe. He never did like when Rapunzel was being thrashed.
Each and every one of her pleas and promises went ignored, the heavy brush painting Rapunzel’s skin a fiery red. The girl gasped and moaned and cried and kicked, all to no avail. Her mother was relentless in her correction and Rapunzel could do nothing but take it.
When Rapunzel’s tears were numerous enough to form a puddle on the floor beneath her and her bottom throbbed with a pulse all its own, only then did her mother stop her assault and rest that wicked hairbrush against glowing skin. Rapunzel sagged in relief and exhaustion.
“Tell me, Rapunzel—what lesson are you learning?” Mother asked.
Rapunzel stiffened at the question and let out a dejected sob. What lesson are you learning ? That meant it was active and on-going. The punishment wasn’t over! “Mo—Mother, please! I’m sorry!” the teenager wailed.
“Not sorry enough if you can’t even tell me the lesson , Rapunzel,” Mother responded, tapping her brush in warning.
“ No, Mother, I—I’m learning! I’ve learned! ” Rapunzel insisted, praying her mother would take pity on her and decide she’d had enough. “I w—won’t disobey or be d-defiant with you. Never again, Mother—I promise!”
“Hmm. Yes,” Mother said, almost soothing in tone. Her hand replaced the brush and for the briefest of moments she used it to whisper tenderly over the worst of the fire. “I do believe you are learning, flower.”
“I’ve learned! I’ve learned my lesson! Please don’t—”
“The lesson needs to be learned on the back of your thighs still, child,” Mother pronounced. Rapunzel’s tears grew despondent.
There was no warning as the brush returned to its task, cracking down now on Rapunzel’s most sensitive area where bottom met thigh. The teen wailed, straining her vocal cords. She’d scream herself raw by the time her thrashing was finished. Her anguish had no effect on her mother’s current course of action. If anything, Rapunzel felt her mother was striking her harder because of it.
Rapunzel’s sobs grew silent as her mother worked her way down her thighs. The girl desperately wanted to reach back to protect her scorched bottom, but she didn’t dare. Mother had never taken kindly to that and Rapunzel was hoping the end of her punishment was near. (It wasn’t.)
It did end eventually, as all things do, and Rapunzel flinched as her mother returned her undergarments to their proper place. Her dress was lowered and Rapunzel was being tipped back on her feet. She felt light-headed as the blood rushed back to her brain, and her legs were wobbly; she steadied herself with a firm grip on the high back of the chair her mother was still sitting on. Her mother let out a long sigh and green eyes flicked to meet steely gray.
“I do so hate being the bad guy, Rapunzel. You know that, don’t you?” Mother asked.
Rapunzel’s shoulders shook with her continued sobs and she wanted nothing more than to limp off up to her room and lick her wounds in private. She nodded her head to her mother’s words, hoping it was enough to appease her.
“That’s the worst part about being a mother, I’m afraid,” the woman continued, resting her head in her hand and rubbing at growing tension in her temple. “As much as I hate to do it, sometimes you need me to be the bad guy—to teach you to mind me. And I do hope you’ve learned, Rapunzel. I’d hate to have to repeat this lesson. I will each and every time, child. Do you know why?” Gray eyes rose again and bore into Rapunzel, sending a shiver through the girl.
“N-No, Mother,” Rapunzel managed.
“Because Mother knows best. ”