Punishment

(After The Great Mermaid Hunt)

Mom, Dad and Annie sat at the dining room table to go over the full confession. Dad was amazed at the technique she'd used to remove the painting. Mom was sure they should have cleaned up a bit.

Annie was humble about her accomplishment, and serious about her guilt. "I broke a lot of shit, Mom. I don't even WANT to sweep it up and minimize his anger. I mean, if he notices three things are missing, and he punishes me and forgives me, then a week later notices something else is missing?

"It'd be like living with a land mine."

"A land mine that loves you," Dad said. He stroked the sylph's back with a fingertip.

"Well, yeah, loves me, of course," Annie said. "Who wouldn't? But for that unpredictable five minutes before he remembers that he loves me…."

Mom pat her head. "And this way, he'll get to vent a lot of his anger on the drive over."

"That's right," Annie said, very nearly smiling. "His profanity per mile will be impressive. Hey, is there any way we could move a little farther away for the hand-off?"

"The Landing?" Mom asked, naming a shopping mall in the center of town.

"Pensacola?" Dad suggested, a town on the Florida panhandle.

"Los Angeles?" Annie asked. Dad pretended to think about it. The phone rang. Dad picked up the handset and placed it in front of the sylph in one smooth move.

"Hello," she said as she knelt at the mouthpiece.

"ANNIE! Are you okay? You alright? Were you hurt?"

"I'm okay!" she shouted. "Just like Dad's note says!"

"What note?"

"It's on the poster," she told him.

"Dad's been here? Does he know what happened? Oh, wait. Annie's alright. Call when… Oh, Lord. Did you do all this?"

"I can explain fully," she said.

"And I'm supposed to be mad at you?"

"Aren't you?" She rocked back on her heels, looking up at their parents. They were surprised, too.

"I thought you were under this somewhere. I called to see if Mom or Dad had heard anything or could come help me search." He sighed and it wasn't his 'I'm so put upon' sigh, either.

Ray was truly relieved. She could feel the weight falling off of his shoulder. "Okay," he said. "Tell me what happened. Wait, let me sit down."

"You… You wanna come over here?" she asked.

"You're there for sanctuary in case I blow my top, right?" he said with a laugh. "Let's just wait to see if I blow it."

"You're not mad?"

"Not yet," he said. "Although you're probably grounded."

"I DID break the accountant figure to a million pieces," she pointed out.

"Oh?" There was rustling. "A million six, I think. Well, maybe we'll offer a plea bargain for time served."

Dad offered her a thumb up, then mouthed 'pizza.' She nodded enthusiastically and he stood to find his car keys.

She didn't have to order, Dad knew what she and Ray would both want for toppings.

She got comfortable and started explaining her day. She never mentioned cameras or blind spots, just frankly discussed everything stemming from the fact that the destruction of the poster was a mission from God.

"Damned straight," Mom nodded. Ray sighed. This sigh was one Annie was familiar with…

----------

Ray arrived at his parents' home about the same time Dad returned with the pizzas. Annie was, if not forgiven, at least fully understood. Ray was not angry about the loss of the poster and prepared to negotiate her punishment for the collateral damage.

For her part, Annie sat docile, guilt stricken and apologetic. Her legal counsel, however, was none of those things.

"She was honest!" Mom said loudly.

"Of course she was," Ray said. He slid half of one slice onto the sylph tray and placed it before his pet's table. "Candor is the most polite way people talk about Annie after they meet her."

"I mean, she didn't want to diminish her blame in any way. She wouldn't let us clean up."

"So, because the mess is entirely on my shoulders, she should get a reduced sentence?"

"We'll still help," Dad said. Mom swung on him.

"We will?"

"Mom?" Annie asked.

Mom leaned towards Annie's chair. "Of course we will, sweetheart." She sat up straight and glared at her son. "It just shouldn't be part of the sentencing process."

"Look, she destroyed-"

"Phrasing!" Mom snapped.

"Look, her actions led, however inadvertently, to the shattering of a family portrait, with creases in the photo."

"YOUR act of hanging that pornographic poster led, however inadvertently-" Mom accused, raising her voice a little more.

"I teased my sylph!" Ray said. His voice was increasing, too. "I always tease my sylph and you know it. She said nothing about the poster until all at once, she destroyed-" Mom started to open her mouth, Ray raised his hand, palm out, to finish his thought. "DESTROYED my living room."

"Stuff you can afford to lose!" Mom shouted.

"It's not the loss that pissed me off," Ray said, not noticing the vulgarity used in front of his mother. Annie and Dad, however, shared a look of horror. "It's trying to clean ALL the broken glass out of a shag carpet so I don't spend the next twenty years worried she's going to cut herself on shards that were my responsibility to clean up!"

"POINT OF ORDER!" Annie screamed desperately. The other Fosters stared down at her. She took a deep breath. "Much as I love you, Mom, could you try not to antagonize my owner until AFTER he sets my punishment? Maybe in writing?"

"Oh, Annie," Mom said. Then she paused. "Wait, you go out of your WAY to antagonize him in the middle of-"

"From her it's an act of love," Ray said, defending the defendant from counsel. Mom looked nonplussed. Dad snorted.

"But YOU, Master!" Annie shouted as she spun around. "Watch your language in Mom's presence?"

"Huh? What did I say?" His eyes flicked from pet to parent and back. But Mom didn't remember any offensive words and pliers couldn't have torn it out of Dad. Annie refused to use 'such language' in Mom's presence.

"Does it matter?" Mom asked. "Two people we both love think you should feel apologetic about something you said in my presence."

"And you're going to use that as leverage against me and the proper castigation of my post-annihilation pet," Ray guessed. Mom nodded happily.

"Okay," Ray said after he deflated. "Okay, no physical punishment. And I won't take away the chat room-"

"Chat room?" Dad asked.

"Later," Annie said, waving him off. This was not a time to get sidetracked away from things he would NOT punish her with.

"I won't completely take away chocolate." The qualification worried Annie, but Dad gave her a little nod. The Foster Prison Reform Effort would limit the risk of intolerable chocolate shortages. "But I may have to take the cost of some repairs out of her allowance."

"But it was an accident!" Mom insisted.

"So was the death of every single rose bush I was grounded for," Ray pointed out evenly. "And it was someone in this room who felt that, in respect to at least one incident…. What was it they said?" he asked Annie.

She shook her head, quietly trying to convey complete and total amnesia with respect to the quote he was about to screw her with.

He shrugged and went on. "Something like 'Accident or not, it was a pretty elaborate effort to engage in without ONCE looking around to see if something important might catch fire.'"

"That's why I didn't shoot the poster with flaming arrows," Annie said softly.

"See!" Ray said with a smile. "Being held responsible for an accident DID teach her a lesson, and prevented future fire based mishap. So now…"

He tapped his lower lip for a moment, thinking things through. "Actually, you know what?"

"What?" Dad asked.

"I think maybe I'll make her clean the living room."

"Maybe you could spank me instead," Annie said instantly.

"No," he said.

"No, really!" she pressed. "Spank until you're not mad anymore!"

"You're my familiar," he pointed out. "Spanking you would hurt my behind, too."

"Oh, yeah," she mumbled. "So instead of you saving me from the dangers of unnoticed glass fragments caught up in rug fibers, you're going to make ME clean the rug of glass."

"That way, if you bleed, it's part of your punishment!" he said with a smile. "Not my negligence. And also karma! See? It works on several levels!"

"I'd like to request a rethink on the spanking idea," Annie said, standing and turning her back, bending over slightly. "One on each cheek, one on each thigh, rotate around so each slap hits fresh, non-stunned nerves. Maximum pain and minimal long-term damage."

"You'd rather that?" Ray asked.

"You can't be serious!" Mom protested. Dad squirmed a bit in his chair.

"Hey, I have no problem with my pet suggesting what's going to keep her from making the same mistake," Ray said. He watched as she lifted her skirt to bare her panties.

Everyone in the room had seen her naked for years, this wasn't even sort of humiliating.

Ray reached down to grasp her torso. Her legs dangled over the heel of his hand. A thumb at the small of her back pinned her and her skirt in place. She swallowed hard and stared down at his palm.

"I think a quick resolution will be the best for everyone," he said. He drew his hand back.

"Oh, for the love of God!" Dad cried. Mom started to stand, reaching for the sylph. Ray's hand snapped down and laid a loud, meaty smack… on his own wrist.

Annie howled as a soul in eternal torment. Mom screamed, Dad swore. Then they realized where the blow had actually landed.

-----------

Annie cuddled the hollow of Ray's throat as he drove home. "Good thing they can't ground you anymore," she said.

"They can't send me to my room AND kick me out of the house at the same time," he said with a smile.

"And that's what you wanted?" she realized. "So you could be alone with me to set the punishment!"

"Defending counsel made her case, but it's still my decision to make," he said firmly. He pulled into his own driveway.

Inside he put her on the kitchen counter. "Okay, I'll clean up glass and metal and plastics and porcelain-"

"Yeah, yeah, Master, I get it."

"No, you don't. YOU get the poster." He opened the closet and brought out the vacuum cleaner.

"That's my punishment? I have to put the poster back up?" She placed her hands on her hips, carefully not making fists.

"That would be appropriate, but that poster's toast." He checked to make sure the bag was empty. "No, you have to manage to get the poster, or the ex-poster, into the trash can."

"That's all?"

"Poster, tacks, dental floss, straws," he said. All of that's your responsibility. And THIS trash can." He pointed to the can under the counter.

"You're so MEAN!" she cried. Now she made fists and ground them into her eye sockets. "My meanie master hates me so."

He went into the living room to start sorting through the devastation. She ran around the kitchen counters to watch. She noticed the heap of poster still tied to the fan blades.

"When you say the floss is my responsibility…" she asked.

"You got it ONTO the fan," he pointed out. She stared up at the ceiling. "No chocolate until it's all gone."

"What?" she protested, but not violently.

"And don't expect Dad to airlift supplies in, either." He finished picking up the biggest glass pieces from the Foglio frame and dumped them into the wastebasket. "Dad's mad at you, too."

"What'd _I_ do?" she asked

"He thinks your scream at the spanking was part of the act."

"I was sincere! That smack sounded like you'd just broken me in half!" she cried. After a moment, though, she had to admit it would be in character for her to do something like that.

So, Master had managed to frame her for a criminal act of 'gotcha' she was totally innocent of, just to isolate her from allies for her actual crimes.

"Sneaky bastard," she muttered. The vacuum started then. She covered her ears and ran away from the room.

-------

For several weeks, the first question anyone asked in Chat was how far along Annie was on reducing the poster.

It was slow. At first she wasn't even allowed into the living room due to the glass hazard. And after Ray shampooed the rugs, she physically couldn't walk across the wet carpet.

With Florida's humidity, the carpet took simply forever to dry.

Then it was long days of climbing floss strands, cutting floss wrapped around the blades and descending again.

For a long time the only actual status to report was that the straws had made it to the trash and were still in the trash.

The day she'd found two of the tacks and managed to separate them from the tape was hailed as a national celebration by the other sylphs.

Then she was finally ready to start reducing the poster itself. The sylph-shears Ray had bought her only barely handled the floss. They would do alright for paper, but the thick felt sort of crap on all the black spots and areas resisted them, too.

She had managed to find one of the tears from the Great Mermaid Attack and continued it to an edge, pulling on one side while stamping her feet on the other.

She had removed about four square inches of poster when Ray came home. That was all and she hadn't dragged it over to try to get it up into the kitchen trash, yet, either.

So Annie wasn't looking too chipper even though it was a Chat night. Ray paid no attention to the poster or her mood and scooped her up to put her on the keyboard.

He navigated to the room and then went outside to fire up the barbecue. She was sullen as she typed her usual 'whatsupyall' greeting.

Then she watched Ray through the window as he prepared the grill. She noticed he was firing up double the usual amount of charcoal, then turned to the monitor.

No one had replied.

No one was logged into the room. One or, in Brad/Ellen's case, two people not being there was rare but not unheard of. NO ONE being in the room hadn't happened since their owners brought them together.

So on top of a disappointing afternoon of punishment, now she found that her friends all had something better to do.

"Great," she moaned. Ray came back through the living room and she made sure it was a chat night.

"Far as I know," he said. Then he grabbed a bag of steak and marinade out of the fridge. It was a really big bag. And he grabbed a bowl with about eight ears of corn.

She didn't know there was that much grill food in the entire house! "Mom and Dad coming over?"

"Hope not," he said. "Won't have nearly enough food if they do." He went back outside to set up his prep area. She usually enjoyed watching his meticulous attention to food because the results were clearly worth it.

Now she just felt abandoned.

She heard a car door slam, then someone opened the gate on the fence. Ray had instructed several of his girlfriends to let themselves into the back if he was grilling, since Annie couldn't open the door.

But he had been between girlfriends…

Chrissy greeted Ray and asked where the Poster Girl was. Annie ran to the edge of the desk and jumped to the window.

Chrissy was setting a bowl of some sort of salad on the unfinished-food end of the prep table. Ray gently corrected the problem as she turned to the house.

She opened the sliding glass door just enough to slip Cherry through on the floor, then went to hang out with Ray.

Annie was about to climb down to the floor when the gate opened again. "Beer's here!" Melvin shouted as he held the gate for Margaret.

-------

The humans entered the living room once. When all were assembled, Ray gave a tour of the original site of the poster and the destruction that had been caused.

Then they went outside to watch the steaks cook.

The sylphs remained. Clint had brought a nail file that had been cut into a two-handled saw. "I figure we can cut through several strips at once."

Ellen and Brad had a toe-nail clipper. "We just want to start a tear, then rip it along."

Cherry had a heavy piece of sharpened metal she called a machete. No one tried to correct her.

Nearly in tears, Annie thanked them all for coming.

"But then we gotta get all the trash up into this disgustingly tall trash bin," she pointed out.

"No," Clint said. "We knock the trash bin over, and drag the strips of poster into it. If Master wants it to stand, Master'll lift the god-damned thing himself."

"Smart," Brad said.

They ripped, cut and tore the poster into several large pieces and dragged them into the trash bin. Annie thought they probably looked like the guys dragging tarps onto a baseball infield during rain. They were policing the last of the confetti by the time Ray announced that the steaks were done. Owners carried exhausted sylphs to the patio table and fed them.

Ray had cooked one entire steak for the sylphs to choose their pieces from. He claimed it was Annie's idea. They all knew she'd been caught by surprise by the party, but everyone thanked Annie anyway.

Melvin was generous with the beer and Margaret brought two cakes. One for slicing, one for diving into.

After dessert, the sylphs were naked, glazed and positively paralyzed. It wouldn't last, the metabolisms were too demanding for stomachs to remain full for long. But at that moment, Annie felt like a pressurized container. She struggled to stand when people started to make noises about leaving.

Ray lifted her to her feet, bravely ignoring the chocolate icing covering her from hair to toes. She stumbled around to give everyone a goodbye and thank you hug, and to offer effusive thanks to the owners.

"It was entirely our pleasure, Annie," Melvin said. "I have to admit, I've learned a lot about owning sylphs from you and Ray."

"Thanks," she repeated. He turned to Brad and Ellen where they stood, wiping the bigger glops off of each other.

"Now, you two behave for Mister Foster, alright? Don't cause any trouble and I'll see you in the morning."

"What?" they asked in clear shock.

"Same for you, Cherry," Chrissy said. Cherry's mouth gaped.

"I expect you to refrain from damaging anything else in Ray's house," Margaret said to Clint in a stern tone.

"I won't break anything in Annie's house," Clint replied. "Honest." Margaret shook her head and went to pick up her cake pans.

Goodbyes were made and Annie and Ray were left with four guests. Stunned, surprised guests. Ray used a clean plate to convey all the sylphs to his kitchen. There, he carefully filled the sink and set sticky sylphs to soaking. A dollop of liquid soap was place on plastic scrubby he set to floating, then they were alone while he cleaned up the patio.

"Never been in a group bath before," Annie laughed. Clint and Brad both offered to soap her back. She winked at Clint, then looked between Ellen and Brad. "Don't you two want to…?" she started to ask.

"Well," Brad started to say.

"Frankly," Ellen said, "I wanna soap Cherry's back. If you know what I mean."

"Oh," Annie replied.

"Ahhh," Clint commented.

"Oh, baby," Cherry purred. She started to scoot/float in Ellen's direction. Annie stood and beckoned Clint and Brad, both.

"What the hell?" Ray's voice sounded. "Who tipped the trash can over?"

"My FRIENDS!" Annie shouted back.

"Oh. Carry on, then," he said.

"We will," the sylphs replied in a ragged but giggly chorus. Ray blushed and fled.

He suffocated the coals, bagged the leftovers, and stacked the plates and pans on the kitchen table. They could be washed tomorrow. Late, tomorrow. After a moment's thought, he brought the carrier in out of the car and set it next to the sink. The living room carrier went next to that, then he brought the bedroom carrier out and put it in the line.

While he was retrieving that one, someone had crawled up to turn the water on, the drain was pried up, and sylphs were showering themselves off under the faucet.

Ray covered his eyes with one hand and stepped to the sink. "I have five washcloths piled up here," he said, "and enough carriers for three groups to sleep."

"Thank you!" Annie said. The others repeated it.

"Okay, your owners left envelopes with changes of clothing, those are stacked by the last carrier on the end. Does anyone need anything else?"

"Is he afraid to see us naked?" Ellen asked.

"Or maybe us boys," Clint suggested.

"He's promised not to try to see Cherry's famous bosom," Annie explained.

"So, you DO have him broken to the leash," Cherry said lightly.

"Does anyone need anything else?" he repeated. No one did. He left a light on in the living room, turned off the kitchen lights and went to bed.

Annie, still the hostess, showed Cherry and Ellen to the car carrier. "There's some snacks in the closet, here, water bulbs there, and towels." Then she led the men into her actual bedroom.

Annie allowed Clint to take her in his arms for a long, slow, deep kiss. She melted into his embrace, but didn't forget her other partner. She curved her ass in his direction, lifting and tightening.

"What, uh," Brad asked, "do you want me to do with that?"

Annie disengaged and Clint let her. She turned to face Brad. "Brad? Are you a virgin?" He looked down at the floor.

"Ellen never really… I didn’t want to force… Um."

"Well, would you rather play with my breasts?"

"Yes," he said, still staring down.

Clint's hands stroked her ass cheeks gently but firmly. "I'm okay with that," he said in her ear.

"Are you an ass man, Clint?" Annie asked.

"I'm a beautiful woman man, Annie," he replied. She smiled and reached back once to stroke the head of his dick, then turned to Brad.

"C'mere, you," she invited him. He happily knelt before her, licking and kissing at her breasts. Clint knelt to kiss her ass, lipping and lightly biting.

Annie widened her stance to let Clint touch and stroke her pussy, since Brad had a death grip on each boob.

She writhed and encouraged both men with gentle strokes and deep purring. They soon moved to the bed. She sat Brad at the headboard and knelt to kiss his cock.

For the very first time in her life, she was glad that Master had given her a Barbie doll bed. Scaled for an 11 inch fashion doll, there was plenty of room for the 6-inch sylphs to spread out and play.

Clint crawled up behind her and regarded her ass for a moment, hands constantly touching and stroking her somewhere. He finally opted for a game of telephone and rolled onto his back between her legs.

She felt him just beginning to lick her when Brad exploded. She swallowed and lapped up the spills. He apologized as he softened. She rose up enough to place a finger on his mouth.

"Shhhhh! Nothing's wrong. Nothing CAN go wrong, okay? Did you enjoy it?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am," he said enthusiastically. She felt Clint snort beneath her.

"Quiet, you," she growled, squeezing her thighs in warning. Holding Brad's eyes with hers she said very sweetly, "Don't call me ma'am, kid, and I won't call you kid, okay, kid?"

"Yes, Annie, sorry, Annie." She pinched his lips together.

"Stop apologizing, Brad." He nodded. She looked down and very gently fondled his limp, sensitive prick. She started to describe what she'd do with it if it were hard again. She felt a movement inside.

As Clint explored her pussy with his tongue, and stroked the crack of her ass with a couple of fingers, she got a little louder, her descriptions a bit shorter. Brad got harder.

She writhed across Clint's face, shaking her breasts as they dangled in Brad's view. He got a lot harder.

Tugging on his hips got him to scoot down a bit and she squeezed his dick between her breasts. She moved faster and faster, driving Clint's efforts and nearly making Brad faint.

He came, a hot surge on her breasts and throat. That pushed her over the edge and she came, too. She stopped wriggling and bore down. Clint stopped licking and sucked hard.

When her screams stopped, she threw a leg over Clint and crawled quickly to reach his cock. It was large, firm and straight. He lasted only a little bit longer than Brad had. "Oh, God," he moaned. "That was… fantastic."

"Yeah," Brad sighed.

"What color is my ceiling magnet?" Annie asked. Both men told her it was yellow. She shook her head. "If you can still see in color, I can do better." She moved both men to the pillows and lay between them. "Just…not RIGHT away." They cuddled, kissing and stroking.

And neither man acted territorial about her naked body, she noticed happily.

--------

As always, Annie woke five minutes before Ray's alarm clock went off. She luxuriated in the unusual warmth of her bed that morning.

Then she noticed that the snoring was in multiple phases and didn't rock her spine from the volume. A lift of her head revealed several other heads.

The pile included all four sylphs that were visiting. Cherry and Ellen were wedged in on either side of her, the men on the ends. She started to move, trying to slide out of the puppy-pile of sylphs. That woke Cherry up.

"Hey, Annie," she said dreamily.

"Hey, Cherry. You guys snuck in here?"

"We finished the, uh…"

"You finished," Annie said with finality.

"Yeah. And we were cuddling. And I said I bet Annie's really warm between those two, and Ellen said that Brad's a freaking furnace at night, so one thing led to another."

Annie looked again. Clint cuddled up against Ellen and Cherry had Brad against her back. "Figured to snuggle while the snuggling was good," she said.

Cherry nodded. "Oh, and one other thing." She grabbed Annie's head and leaned down for a long, intimate kiss. Annie didn't resist but didn't quite join in, either. She waited it out.

When the other woman pulled back, she smiled and said, "Now you can decide if you want to tell Master you slept with a Playboy model."

"Well, not when he's driving," Annie said immediately. "But thank you! That's a wonderful thing to be able to tell Master."

"Use it carefully, grasshopper," Clint said. Annie turned to him. "And you were right. I AM able to see colors again."

"Great," Annie said. She clapped her hands. "Now, come on, up, we have to get showers and dressed and then it'll be breakfast and hit the road."

Another communal trip to the sink was initiated. Annie knew the exact angle to open the faucet to for shower temperature water. Then everyone soaped everyone and rinsed and dried.

The outfits in the envelopes turned out to be brand new, t-shirts and shorts. Ellen squealed, the first to realize the shirts had their chat room initials across the back: RWF.

Clint was the one who noticed there was even an envelope for Annie.

And Cherry was the first to find an empty pop-tart wrapper outside of the microwave. Ray had somehow slipped two fudge pastries into the oven with no one noticing. The microwave that was purchased exactly because the controls were entirely in Annie's reach.

"The bastard must have unwrapped them in his bedroom so we wouldn't hear it," Annie mused. "And I'm guessing he opened the microwave door before bringing us into the bath…"

"Yeah, yeah," Brad said. "He's sneaky. Can we open this thing?"

"Why two, though?" Clint wondered. "We'll never eat an entire one, much less two."

"We COULD eat one cold," Cherry said, eyeing Brad's almost frantic bouncing on the balls of his feet. "If some of us can't wait for a warm breakfast."

"I'll get it!" Brad and Clint both shouted. They kicked the release and hefted out one of the pastries.

Annie looked to Cherry and Ellen. "Men," they said in chorus. The superior women were willing to wait for properly prepared pastry.

---------

Owners and pets were reunited in the parking lot. Annie kissed each sylph good-bye then drifted dreamily in Ray's pocket for the rest of the day. She also caught up for a lot of lost sleep.

About noon, she crawled up to his ear and thanked him for the wonderful party. "Don't give me too much credit," he said. "It was the other owners' idea. They insisted."

"Master? Are you aware that Clint was in Margaret's planter when you asked her, I think he even used the word 'begged,' implored for her to let her sylph play sleepover for a night?"

"Didn't happen," he insisted. "Clint's probably trying to make you feel better about me."

"Sylph uprising Lucifer wants to improve the master-slave relationship?" she asked. There was no need for sarcasm in her tone, that was clear in the content of her comment.

"Um… I have no reply to that," he said. She yelped and started to run down his arm, but he caught her at his elbow. She screamed as he tickled her maliciously.



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